stanzas decrease

Sheilah with an "h" -- one of our poetry group, has ended her poem, putting down her book.

I sat in her normal place today.

Our stanzas decrease.

Anne sends "Unwelcome" by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge.

Skip reads her own "Happiness."

The two of us consider "don't know" mind.

they plan trouble and practice deception

Yes. 

The desire for justice has both sides of the ideological divide bending toward middle ground as arrogant scandal and scorching rifle fire echo the environs of Washington DC.

The prayer for justice these days evokes as much fear of being heard and responded to as the apprehension that it will be ignored. 

Prayer is a dangerous resort, even as last.

14 See how wicked people think up evil;
    they plan trouble and practice deception.
15 But in the traps they set for others,
    they themselves get caught.
16 So they are punished by their own evil
    and are hurt by their own violence.

17 I thank the Lord for his justice;
    I sing praises to the Lord, the Most High.

(--from Psalm 7, Good News Translation)

this is not going to change soon

Guns.

They kill us.

They kill those killing us.

This is not going to change soon.

We have to think about and hold in prayer those who shoot and those who have been shot.

We must witness.

itself without other and within no-other

 I recall Keiji Nishitani saying that fire doesn’t burn fire, water doesn't wash water.

When not-other than something, then just-as that thing.

There is absolutely nothing for the just man to fear; the whole of creation serves him. Listen to another promise that God makes him through the prophet: If you pass through fire, the flame shall not burn you, for I am the Lord your God. The just man is everywhere welcome, and everything renders him due service. 

 (--from Office of Readings, Wednesday 14june2017, Second reading, From a homily on Joshua by Origen, priest, The crossing of the Jordan)

Some will point out that fire does indeed burn anything not it.

There's the point -- become it and there is no burning. 

In the same way, just as what is not itself is consumed and devoured by the other, so too what is itself becomes itself in the presence of no-other.

What falls away is always the idea and fear of separation.

What remains is nothing that is not itself in the moment.

Is this, finally, the mystery of God? The mystery that God is that which is itself without other and within no-other?

Is this why we fear God?

That we lose something to dwell in everything?

That we become what always is and never will be other?

I must learn how to pray!

a numbered universe yields

Another number added to someone’s age. 

Yesterday.

Poetry.

Art and flowers.

Living in a numbered universe yields these things.

items to consider

New York cheese cake

Bouncing bug at screen window

Monarch in White House. Courtiers bow.

United States slides into Southern Hemisphere.

Break up golden state warriors! 

saskia

HAIKU
       (--for mendicant/monastic on her birthday)

So many appear

helping in time of shared life --

for this,      each is,      born

       (--with gratefulness for present/presence, dance)

washi no tomodach

HAIKU
          (--for Jo-Ann, わしの友達, washi no tomodach, my friend)

child's hand reaches out

yellow daffodil offered

always,      almost,      held

          (Jo-Ann Veillette, 9sept1941-2nov2016)

correlative

Arriving is Reality of God.

Home is Creator (father/mother)

Here is Christ (son/daughter)

Now is Holy Spirit (participatory relational interbeing)

So, Thây's chant is perfect: we are arriving, we are home, in the here, in the now.

In fact, these days, there is nothing that is not correlative.

trinity; transcending transforming tenderly

Three

is the resolution

of two (duality)

and one (monism)

by giving

either/or

and

my-way

an escape

into

our-dance-together

. . .

Chapter 2.  The Great Unsaying (p. 25-26) 

The unspeakability of the Hebrew name for God (YHWH) has long been recognized, but we now know it goes even deeper: formally the word was not spoken at all, but breathed!  Many are convinced that its correct pronunciation is an attempt to replicate and imitate the very sound of inhalation and exhalation. – p. 25 

The one thing we do every moment is therefore to speak the name of God.  This makes it our first and our last word as we enter and leave the world. – p. 26 

There is no Islamic, Christian, or Jewish way of breathing.  There is no rich or poor way of breathing.  This divine wind “blows where it will” (John 3:8), which appears to be everywhere.  No one and no religion can control this spirit. God is as available and accessible as the very thing we all do constantly – breathe. – p. 26 

Isn’t it wonderful that breath, wind, spirit, and air are precisely nothing – and yet everything? – p. 26 

Just keep breathing consciously in this way and you will know that you are connected to humanity from cavemen to cosmonauts, to the entire animal world, and even to the trees and plants.  And we are now told that the atoms we breathe are physically the same as the stardust from the day of creation.  Oneness is no longer merely a vague mystical notion, but a scientific fact. – p. 26

(--from, The Naked Now: Learning to See as the Mystics See, by Richard Rohr, 2009

refusing more

is

never

the 

less

dhāraṇī

Sun also rises Saturday morning.

As does book shed thermostat to counteract dampness from night rain open windows.

But, then, the choice is to begin the move to meditation cabin.

The light. The airiness. The new season.

There will be silent sitting.

During which

Nothing

Will

Take place.

I know this because every Saturday morning nothing takes place in formal practice. Just thirty minute sitting, chanting heart sutra, reading fragment of dharma writing, each giving circle response,  a metta blessing, and final bell chant.

Even the bell monastic fresh into sixth day of 1st regimen performs duties with grace and sympathy for small spider trampolining inside meditation bell wondering who these interlopers might be in its environment.

Gassho and bow.

Disappear.

Gone

Gone

Gone beyond

Completely beyond

Waking

As 

Joy

bewith: a universal prayer

May

God

Bewith

You

the president and his republicans

It’s hard to imagine

what,

in humans' name, 

they actually

believe in.

They seem so

alienating and

disingenuous.

(I could be

Wrong, and

Hope

I am)

rain helps

Maybe all we have is rain on a Friday afternoon.

After a night of hard navigating.

Day five of 1st round of chemo.

A Mack truck of disagreeable illness hits and runs.

Another few hours in-dripping in oversized chair.

The rain helps, finally, sleep after iv’s and more iv’s.

It falls and mutes what passes by.

There are so many rules.

Everywhere.

splashing down

As when, sometimes, things get overwhelming and you’d rather things not be as they are.

There’s nothing to do but say it, feel it, and return to the walk, slowly and deliberately, where feet follow ground.

And dog offers constant gift of green tennis ball.

And day 4 slips into what dusk brings.

Maybe Caesar’s salad.

And, of course, glasses and glasses of water.

...as...

Yes

Choir mate Mourning Dove begins unresponded antiphonal at 4 AM in dooryard as white dog comes deeper into room and cat meows from somewhere downstairs.

Soft breeze carries chorus of mountain trees and waking birds supporting soloist Dove with wind chimes both wooden and aluminum.

Morning prayer. Listening obedience. Collation and recollection.

This is why we are alive.

To live a life of prayer,

Mere listening.

Importunate attentiveness.

The very fact of

Being

Alive and

Present

...as...

Love

Is

half

 Cart wheels wobble down hall.

Woman coughs in lab waiting room. A heavy cough.

Hospice training session ended 15 minutes early at Lighthouse Museum building in Rockland. On compassion fatigue. And can we have support gatherings?

Hardly anyone anyhere wants to leave behind someones they've spent meaningful time with.

And yet, it is the emptiness that shapes character and permits us to act with integrity in the moment.

(Sonnet 116)

William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.
Love ’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle’s compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me prov’d,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

Day three. Here in Rockport.

Reading John Dear’s preface on Dan Berrigan in the latter’s book, Testimony, The Word Made Flesh (2004).

Here’s why we both liked and disliked -- and a little intimidated by Dan Berrigan:

“Advent Credo” by Daniel Berrigan, SJ 

It is not true that creation and the human family are doomed to destruction and loss—
This is true: For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life; 

It is not true that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination, hunger and poverty, death and destruction—
This is true: I have come that they may have life, and that abundantly. 

It is not true that violence and hatred should have the last word, and that war and destruction rule forever—
This is true: Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, his name shall be called wonderful councilor, mighty God, the Everlasting, the Prince of peace. 

It is not true that we are simply victims of the powers of evil who seek to rule the world—
This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth, and lo I am with you, even until the end of the world. 

It is not true that we have to wait for those who are specially gifted, who are the prophets of the Church before we can be peacemakers.
This is true: I will pour out my spirit on all flesh and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall see visions and your old men shall have dreams. 

It is not true that our hopes for liberation of humankind, of justice, of human dignity of peace are not meant for this earth and for this history—
This is true: The hour comes, and it is now, that the true worshipers shall worship God in spirit and in truth. 

So let us enter Advent in hope, even hope against hope. Let us see visions of love and peace and justice. Let us affirm with humility, with joy, with faith, with courage: Jesus Christ—the life of the world.
– – –
From “Testimony: The Word Made Fresh,” by Fr. Daniel Berrigan, SJ Orbis Books, 2004. 

A half day.

And half again tomorrow.

What’s true and not true sit together in six chairs in the infusion room.

first light

Dove calls

Branches glance east.

Dog sleeps.

Cat leaps from shelf.

seeds and probiotic

Day two

Nuts and raisins and yogurt.

A sort of grainy prayer.

And from chemo room down angled hallways this text:

"I'm love stench my to t nnhanh while last one drips"

The fog of being poisoned and the attempt to make sense!

I think she's listening to Thầy,

That's the title of teacher or master in Vietnamese. 

She's probably listening to a talk by Thich Nhat Hanh.

It's the end of her day.

And she's probably loopy.

It happens to monastics.

sitting

Then there’s the poisoning of someone’s body so as to extend life.

Hospital chapel/quiet room.

First day, first regimen.

Monday afternoon.

5June17

real gift

Sunday morning. Pentecost. Coffee brewing. Divine Office playing from speaker. Cat looking out at seed feeder.

They say the Spirit of the Lord enters creation in new way. They say it created the known and unknown universe with its billions of galaxies billions of stars billions of human beings.

Mass movements, writes Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, are one of the core elements of totalitarianism. Arendt does not say that all mass movements are totalitarian; to take seriously President Trump’s claim to be the mouthpiece of a movement is not to claim that he is a totalitarian leader or that he is leading a totalitarian movement. He has not mobilized terror, concentration camps, arbitrary arrests, a secret police, and a party apparatus that rises above the state — all of which were essential parts of Arendt’s description of totalitarianism in power. Mass deportation of undocumented immigrants — disgusting as it is — is not the same thing as de-naturalization, imprisonment, and deportation of citizens. Common sense insists that we not abandon reality and imagine that the United States is experiencing totalitarianism. 

It is equally irresponsible, however, to ignore the important similarities that the president’s self-professed movement shares with totalitarianism. President Trump has repeatedly asserted he leads “a movement like the world has never seen before.” He has shown a willingness to assert his personal control over reality. And he has positioned himself as a Janus-faced figure who can present one version of reality to his followers and another version to the outside world. These are all characteristics Arendt attributes to leaders of totalitarian movements. 

There is always a temptation to rationalize what is happening in politics, to say: this has all happened before. There is a voice in each one of us, wheedling us with common sense, telling us that Trump is simply another instantiation of American populism. That voice is likely correct. But we should be wary of such voices, Arendt warns, for “the road to totalitarian domination leads through many intermediate stages for which we can find numerous analogies and precedents.”  (Why Arendt Matters: Revisiting “The Origins of Totalitarianism” Roger Berkowitz,   P LARB,)

Someone to speak for us. To speak within us. With us. Through us.

Someone who knows that reality has no opposite nor love any partiality.

The real gift of the Spirit is a listening heart.

each one, and each none

This heartbeat

This heartbeat

skip

This heartbeat 

skip

This heartbeat

skip

skip

Comes Holy Spirit 

seeing through God

There’s no path to follow

No way to embrace

Only this:

There’s no seeing God

only seeing through God

as air between us is seen through

as breath coming and going is breathing us

Walt

The 97 yr old man read a poem to the group about growing lovely growing old.

Then he said it was the last time he’d be coming to the Poetry, Tea, & Thee group after 7 years.

The ordeal to get there was too much for him.

He thanked us and said he loved us.

He cried. 

Everyone did.

Let Me Grow Lovely  

Let me grow lovely, growing old-- 

So many fine things do: 

Laces, and ivory, and gold, 

And silks need not be new; 

And there is healing in old trees, 

Old streets a glamour hold; 

Why may not I, as well as these,

 Grow lovely, growing old?  

                               (--Poem by Karle Wilson Baker)

how get rid of fools

Time

sunlight on new green

It is June.

Things
are

Still.

egomaniacs are people for whom others don’t exist

Republicans vowed to dismantle the US government.

They elected Mr. Trump to carry out their desires.

He’s doing so.

Perhaps nobody listened.

This year Hannah Arendt is alarmingly relevant, and her books are selling well, particularly On the Origins of Totalitarianism. She’s been the subject an extraordinary essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books and a conversation between scholar Lyndsey Stonebridge and Krista Tippet on the radio show “On Being.” Stonebridge notes that Arendt advocated for the importance of an inner dialogue with oneself, for a critical splitting in which you interrogate yourself—for a real conversation between the fisherman and his wife you could say: “People who can do that can actually then move on to having conversations with other people and then judging with other people. And what she called ‘the banality of evil’ was the inability to hear another voice, the inability to have a dialogue either with oneself or the imagination to have a dialogue with the world, the moral world.”

Some use their power to silence that and live in the void of their own increasingly deteriorating, off-course sense of self and meaning. It’s like going mad on a desert island, only with sycophants and room service. It’s like having a compliant compass that agrees north is whatever you want it to be. The tyrant of a family, the tyrant of a little business or a huge enterprise, the tyrant of a nation. Power corrupts, and absolute power often corrupts the awareness of those who possess it. Or reduces it: narcissists, sociopaths, and egomaniacs are people for whom others don’t exist.

(-- REBECCA SOLNIT: THE LONELINESS OF DONALD TRUMPON THE CORROSIVE PRIVILEGE OF THE MOST MOCKED MAN IN THE WORLD), in LITERARY HUB,CREATED BY GROVE ATLANTIC AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE

as in paradise

Is it

possible

God

Is each

One of

Us

each, one, of, us

I shall not want.

Everything is given and available.

Attention, awareness, and appreciation are the necessary conditions.

And the realization that anything happening anywhere affects everyone everywhere.

It is the character of authentic soul that the web of interdependence is connected within and through each one of us.

Not to see this is to risk the integrity of existence.

We must submit to this integral whole or remain as fragmented desolation.

Choose life. Choose what life longs for. 

Choose this longing for this revealing itself -- to and as, each, one, of, us.

yes, the dead and deadened

This Memorial Day

We

remember

And pray for

All

Dead

And deadened

By war.

antipathy

Beginning season one of West Wing (1999-2006). Intelligent, witty, fast-paced, and poignant.

Meanwhile, back in real time, the actual occupant of the White House returns from overseas to the simmering turmoil of investigation, lies, and obstruction.

We seem to forget that the stated goal of the majority ruling party is to dismantle government in favor of private interests and corporate power brokers.

A large portion of the populace is confused and uncertain now that the actions equivilate the intent. It feels like there is a long desolate desert looming large into the horizon.

I'd prefer it were different, but it is the way it is.

Feels like a coup d'etat.  Feels like something equally revolutionary will rise up to offset the smallness shrinking the spirit of America on the part of one particular party in power.

I wait to see what arises.

I'm uncertain what it will look like.

I'm afraid an ugly time is rapidly forming.

Antipathy.

I am trying to achieve

 Arguing with someone at table last night; then reading Johnson quoting Conrad this morning:

In one of the rare interviews he did, the fiction writer and poet Denis Johnson — who died on Wednesday at 67 — was asked about his craft, and he quoted these lines from Joseph Conrad:  

“My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything.” 

-- Denis Johnson’s Poetic Visions of a Fallen World, The New York Times, 26May2017

To think is not a mere rationalizing. It is hearing, feeling, and seeing. 

here

is who
I am

this
is what I am

this
what is

here

both sides now

this is

what

I

am

I

what is

this

one care short

The inmate student said he was "one CaRe short."

I told him that was a good title for his memoir.

Mine, as well.

new crude flashing

In carafe 

             Yesterday's coffee

Considers half and half

             

In mind

              America fears

New hatred of itself

In early morning

               Rain steadily

Falling through growling

Thunder

                Off

Our fading memory

good night and joy be with you all

The Remarkable Death and Life of John Shields is well worth the read and the viewing of brief videos.

you

The Egg, by Andy Weir.

The narrative:

http://highexistence.com/images/view/the-egg-by-andy-weir/

A film adaption:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1VN5zICGeU#t=427.719997955

An excerpt:

You were on your way home when you died. 

subicio

and

when

I

dies

who

will

object

only words

Remember when words seem to have unambiguous meanings?

That never was the case.

Let words be words -- ever the same, ever changing -- and we with them.

A Bushido manual, the Hagakure, offers the following instruction:

Every morning make up thy mind how to die. Every morning freshen thy mind in the thought of death. And let this be done without end. Thus will thy mind be prepared. When thy mind is always set on death, the way through life will always be straight and simple.         (Bellah, p.91, in Comparative Religious Ethics, Fasching & Dechant, 2001, p.63) 

The only way to live is to die.

The only way to die is to live.

They’re only words.

is there, you ask, something wrong with the world

Yes

There is a choice

Lies or truth

Choose

Remain locked, or

Walk free

Whether enclosed or

Wandering open

again...the blindness?

Memory. "The Keepers".

The awful ignorance and pathetic complicity of abuse.

Makes the thought of avenging reciprocity against perpetrators surprisingly attractive.

No authority can be trusted.

We are stopping into a very dangerous deficiency.

The perverse are no longer safe.

Nor are the compromised.

Why, again...the blindness?

trinity

Three

When two

Need one

To transcend conflict

Beyond, dancing

tranquility

Birds don't care about politics.

Morning comes, they sing.

They fly to feeder & eat.

It is spring.

Green grass & budding leaf.

Maine.

Quies

untidy pachyderm

Ego

dies

with

death

Why not

Start now

two ways of finding out

if I
die
before
I
wake;

If
I wake
before
 I
die

rouwbeklag

From the Netherlands: 

"And now we are very tired and we must find the way to normal life again." (WvdB)

After a death. A home vigil. A cremation service.

A new and empty space.

Domine labia mea aperies et os meum adnuntiabit laudem tuam

Mourning Doves at first hint of light

Monk-chant the morning

Recitative dawn voices background

we're still a nation of laws, right

Turn the page

The story changes

Denouement

Molasses cookies and coconut milk ice cream

A temporary turnaround

this is not a typical situation

The future of this country

Moment by moment is called into question

Except for three men who whistle past the graveyard

Mr Ryan, Mr McConnell, Mr Trump

It is nighttime

nada más

Question Zen; there's no answer.

Question God; no One answers.

Question Self; one knows nothing.

Ask no question; get no response.

no, we can’t see

We might think the least of our worries is a president who lacks the ordinary skills of a united states president.

But it could be more.

That’s what some are frightened about.

If it is intentional -- the destruction of trust, the annihilation of governance, the sabotaging of people for the gain of the powerful -- then we have a serious conceit and deceit infiltrating civic stability.

Maybe the course of this country has been run and is exhausted.

How impotent our elected officials!

What will be next?

oh, that’s what happens

At 8:24am at Saturday Morning Practice, the following was said:

“The thinking mind having exploded in the mouth.” (SH)

Says it well. 

a minute ago

I do not hear ghosts

Nor God

I hear rain

On porch roof

4:09 am

Remembering 3:16

And wondering what 'giv-

ing' one's 'only son'

Means

m (om h) ère

she brought

me

here,

God's name

is "here"

so tell me,

if one's mother

makes here

appear

how can anyone

say they've

never seen

mom 

no accounted for

When I wasn't

a monastic,

Nothing mattered.

Now a monastic

Nothing matters --

The difference?

I disappeared

Becoming

Present and

Of no account-

ed for

mu

Yes

No is not

Yes?

mess

Maybe it doesn't matter what the politicians say or do in Washington.

Maybe it does.

In the middle of the muddle they manufacture it is hard to tell.

a vision softly creeping

We need a new language.

Let's call it a language of presence.

It speaks and hears experience.

Beyond words, emotion, and thought.

It resides in the intelligence of the present moment revealing itself to those with ears and eyes.

It is the place where particular languages abandon their differences in order to empathetically become that which is beyond difference.

Our new language is the next sound we hear.

elsewhere life is here

maybe

what we call

death is

life-being

called

elsewhere

an ancient enmity

Against Certainty

by Jane Hirshfield

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us.
Each time I think “this,” it answers “that.”
Answers hard, in the heart-grammar’s strictness.

If I then say “that,” it too is taken away.

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity.
When the cat waits in the path-hedge,
no cell of her body is not waiting.
This is how she is able so completely to disappear.

I would like to enter the silence portion as she does.

To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live,
one shadow fully at ease inside another.

(Source: Poetry Foundation; Jane Hirshfield. After. Copyright 2006 by Jane Hirschfield)

As is.

Source of learning.

One seeking wisdom.

this is water

This is my favorite part about philosophy:

.

There are these two young fish swimming along, and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, “Morning, boys, how's the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes,

.

“What the hell is water?”

(--David Foster Wallace, (text) http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf, and (shorter video) This is Water Commencement Speech by David Foster Wallace)

.

There, in a nutshell, or small pond, is our study.

between certainty and the real hides presence

Feels like heart is stopping.

Shhhh

Give it a rest.

watch this white house

Is it a coup?

Or revolution?

Or a cornered brat?

it's the right thing to do

Are you
(Yes?)
tired?

Get some
sleep.
Yes.

I will
sleep
now.

if we define what the true and the false are

These are good words:

Aristotle defined truth in words of one syllable: "If a man says of what is that it is, or of what is not that it is not, he speaks the truth; if he says of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, he does not speak the truth." Defining truth is easy, finding it is harder.)   http://schoolsucksproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Logic-Podcast2.pdf 

Elsewhere:

Greek	Latin	English
ἀλλὰ μὴν οὐδὲ μεταξὺ ἀντιφάσεως ἐνδέχεται εἶναι οὐθέν, ἀλλ᾽ ἀνάγκη ἢ φάναι ἢ ἀποφάναι ἓν καθ᾽ ἑνὸς ὁτιοῦν. [25] δῆλον δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὁρισαμένοις τί τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ψεῦδος. τὸ μὲν γὰρ λέγειν τὸ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἢ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι ψεῦδος, τὸ δὲ τὸ ὂν εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἀληθές, ὥστε καὶ ὁ λέγων εἶναι ἢ μὴ ἀληθεύσει ἢ ψεύσεται: ἀλλ᾽ οὔτε τὸ ὂν λέγεται μὴ εἶναι ἢ εἶναι οὔτε τὸ μὴ ὄν.	At vero nec medium contradictionis nihil esse contingit, sed necessarium aut dicere aut negare unum de uno quod>cumque. Palam autem primum quidem diffmientibus quid ↵ verum et * falsum. Dicere namque ens non esse aut hoc esse falsum *, ens autem esse et non ens non esse verum *; quare et dicens * esse aut non verum dicet aut mentietur; sed neque ens dicit non esse aut esse neque non ens,	Chapter 7. But on the other hand there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate. This is clear, in the first place, if we define what the true and the false are. To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true; so that he who says of anything that it is, or that it is not, will say either what is true or what is false; but neither what is nor what is not is said to be or not to be.

--Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book 4, Ch.7 http://www.logicmuseum.com/wiki/Authors/Aristotle/metaphysics/l4#jp383

We need simple words. We need new words. So to be able to speak what is revealing itself constantly before our faces in our seeing and in our hearing.

This is why we study. This is why we converse.

What is true matters.

What is false matters.

And the courage to distinguish.

is silence nothing

I ask myself: Would I be interested in living a life of prayer?

"Souls of prayer are souls of great silence "-Mother Teresa

My self, having become more stupid and ignorant than I can remember, thought a minute.

Then another minute.

Is there anything you wish to say?

(Nothing is heard.)

whether Heidegger’s Being and Time, or Dogen’s Time-Being

Excerpt:

Uji: The Time-Being, by Eihi Dogen

Translated by Dan Welch and Kazuaki Tanahashi
from: The Moon in a Dewdrop; writings of Zen Master Dogen

1 An ancient buddha said: For the time being stand on top of the highest peak. For the time being proceed along the bottom of the deepest ocean. For the time being three heads and eight arms. For the time being an eight- or sixteen-foot body. For the time being a staff or whisk. For the time being a pillar or lantern. For the time being the sons of Zhang and Li. For the time being the earth and sky.

"For the time being" here means time itself is being, and all being is time. A golden sixteen-foot body is time; because it is time, there is the radiant illumination of time. Study it as the twelve hours of the present. "Three heads and eight arms" is time; because it is time, it is not separate from the twelve hours of the present.

2 Even though you do not measure the hours of the day as long or short, far or near, you still call it twelve hours. Because the signs of time's coming and going are obvious, people do not doubt it. Although they do not doubt it, they do not understand it. Or when sentient beings doubt what they do not understand, their doubt is not firmly fixed. Because of that, their past doubts do not necessarily coincide with the present doubt. Yet doubt itself is nothing but time.

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Dogen_Teachings/Uji_Welch.htm 

God; Zen: definition

Student:

Perhaps it is the old -- ‘We are made in God’s image’ that is the reason that people fall into the extreme vanity of imagining that God looks like them. (DP)

Responding to student:

At times I imagine the definition of God and the definition of Zen are the same: [God] [Zen] is this moment revealing itself for all to see. (--bh)

cheers, Lydia

Lydia, at 101, dies.

A regular at poetry group for 8 years, she read poems about cats.

Today we read Milne, Oliver, Sandberg, Rumi, and two others.

We happily listen to the voiced words.

And to the words without voice.

revolting

Here's what's new:

There are too many people not worth much.

They don't deserve to live.

Do I have that right, Republicans?

transmigration of soles

If last sound I hear is car rolling down hill between ragged and bald mountains then I'll wonder myself into that car and greet driver looking out window to road side newly green grass where discarded aluminum can mud splattered on side by broken branch snapped at final snow plowing converses with fresh dirt unearthed ant mound volcanoed outward alongside layered asphalt edge of which deer tracks imprint unseen passage of dusk migration to brook running strong after days of rain our May sun here at last.

speaking of treachery

Russia helped Trump win the election.

That's what's being said

Trump doesn't like it said

Nor do we

Like it

Said

And done

60 years ago today, signed treachery

Quote:

May 3, 1957Discussions between officials of Los Angeles, including City Attorney Roger Arnebergh, and Walter O’Malley were held at the Statler Hotel. The result of this meeting produced a document known as “The Arnebergh Memorandum”. The memo is as follows:

At a conference today, held at the Statler Hotel, discussion was had involving the possibility of bringing Major League Baseball to Los Angeles. It was indicated that the City and County should be prepared to make an offer containing the following provisions:

1. City and/or County to acquire and deed to the Major League Baseball club 350 acres in Chavez Ravine, including the present 257 acres now owned by the City, the additional acreage to be adjacent thereto. Such 350 acres to comprise an approximate circle, if possible. 
2. City and/or County to provide access roads. 
3. City and/or County to superficially pave parking roads.
4. City to accept dedication of circumferential roads. 
5. The 350 acres, together with improvements, etc., to go on tax rolls. 
6. There should be no deed restrictions on use of such 350 acres except that a modern major league stadium will be built and Major League Baseball brought to Los Angeles.
7. Major League Baseball club, at its sole cost and expense, to build modern baseball stadium and bring major league team to Los Angeles.
8. Wrigley Field to be deeded to City and/or County in present condition as partial consideration for said 350 acres, with restriction against Major League Baseball being played in Wrigley Field. 
9. Major League Baseball club, as further consideration for said 350 acres, will agree to construct, maintain and make available to the public, free of charge, various recreational facilities such as tennis courts, junior league baseball field, basketball courts, etc., these to be more specifically determined later.
10. As further consideration for said 350 acres, Major League Baseball club to agree to admit, at specified times, juveniles to ball games free, as an aid to the City and County in combating juvenile delinquency, etc.  http://www.walteromalley.com/57-58_timeline.php

:Unquote

The only good part was that some Los Angeles kids, at those “specified times” would get in free.

Meanwhile. We Brooklyn kids, some of us, looking around, saw the end of loyalty to any sport team for any time to come.

That day the Dodgers died.

I have a blue Dodgers cap with white ‘B’ that stays with me. I used to go to wakes often. It is a memorial.

When Boston fans nod and smile in some fraternal solidarity, I nod as one would on being asked how your mother is who died 10 years before. They have the wrong information, the wrong ‘B’.

a limited life-span

Two die in car crash yesterday morning on Route 1 in Warren.

An hour later, a half mile from their terrible wreckage, I turn in Warren toward morning philosophy class at the maximum security prison.

We enter the experience of the class:                                                                                                                                                 

Theme:  

     “see everything 

       and ourselves in everything  

               healed and whole 

               forever”        

   (--Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, Eight Elegy) 

Sorrow rises from that moment and that roadway.

In an instant.

Things turn.

In class we speak about Pierre Hadot, the Epicurians, and the Stoics.

Epicurius’ disciple Metrodorus wrote:

Remember that, although you are mortal and have only a limited life-span, yet you have risen, through the contemplation of nature, to the infinity of space and time, and you have seen all the past and all the future. (Hadot, 1995, p.266) 

We live in the cosmos.

Some, now, more so than before.

isn't

people wonder

about heaven

they worry

about hell

I don’t

heaven is where

hell isn’t

and no

p-

reacher

knows any-

thing about

what isn’t where

they are

nada

The word ‘affright’ came to mind.

And I remembered:

         Saint Teresa

              (1515-1582) 

 Lines Written in Her Breviary 

Let nothing disturb thee, 

Nothing affright thee 

All things are passing; 

God never changeth; 

Patient endurance 

Attaineth to all things; 

Who God possesseth 

In nothing is wanting; 

Alone God sufficeth. 

—H. W. Longfellow (translator).
From: Hispanic Anthology: Poems Translated from the Spanish by English and North American Poets. Collected and arranged by Thomas Walsh. G. P. Putnam's Sons. New York, 1920.

There are nights when nothing matters.

When nothing is wanted.

Nothing

   is

      being

            done

un-dashing

thank the

press-

ident for


tears

of service

the da-


ze

of clarity

and wor-


tieds

desolate

hurting hearts


Sm-

all

wonder


so m-

any

are deep-


pressed

into

darkness

watcher, Kieslowski’s gift

COLLAPSE

He was there again. In Dekalog 8. In the ethics class. As Elzbieta told story. And Zofia listened. He watched. Looked to one. Then the other.

I do so like this watcher. He gazes. Saying not a word. Just eyes. At junctures of pivotal human moment. He looks. And, maybe, he sees.

I wonder if our engagement with life, with ethics, with one another begins with the foundation of looking.

And listening.

The ground of presence.

So much is unaccountable in human behavior. We hardly know what we will do in any situation. How we will respond. How we will think.

I like this character Kieslowski gives us. He seems gentle. His eyes seem compassionate. 

Even if we wish he'd intervene and save us from drowning, making choices that are troubling, deceiving another -- these wishes belong to us, they are not the purpose of his character.

It is enough for us to contemplate someone is there with us -- a benevolent, if incomprehensible, watchfulness...