你好吗i nǐ hǎo ma how are you

How do we meet?

Martin Buber said that meeting is the essence of human activity, 

In order to preserve the imbrication of singular selfhood and the bonding of human personhood, Buber rejected the false choice between individualism and collectivism. As Buber always understood it, human wholeness lies in the meeting of the one with the other in a living fourfold relation to things, individual persons, the mystery of Being, and self. Every living relation is essential and contributes to human wholeness because human wholeness (“man's unique essence”) is known or posited only in living out a set of relations. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/buber/

I meet this gentleman sleeping in his hospice bed on Saturday night visit to this dedicated hospice house Thanksgiving  holiday weekend.

Between moans and snores there are the pauses of breath. Then remnants of interior proclamations of thought reaching for vocal chords but losing its way through washed out roads and blocked bridges.

I’ve wandered into this space under tv playing extreme weather stories to far end of room where abandoned remote sits alongside someone’s two handled bag.

From next room the fussing sounds of an infant. My companion, in his doze, resounds similarly. An antiphony of inquiring protestations of arriving and departing consciousness separated by eighty decades of mirrored colloquy.

About Buber:

He is best known for his 1923 book, Ich und Du (I and Thou), which distinguishes between “I-Thou” and “I-It” modes of existence. Often characterized as an existentialist philosopher, Buber rejected the label, contrasting his emphasis on the whole person and “dialogic” intersubjectivity with existentialist emphasis on “monologic” self-consciousness. In his later essays, he defines man as the being who faces an “other” and constructs a world from the dual acts of distancing and relating. http://www.iep.utm.edu/buber/

We face each other by means of sounds and presence. Always in conversation, like newborn and long-live’d facing one another by sound alone, the calling-card of shy presence, we negotiate the nexus of invisible interstices the way mild evening mist and pre-dawn freezing flecks interconnect in what is between what is inbetween.

Where we meet is that emptiness between what is inbetween and what is not there.

My companion resumes recitative of snore, moan, and detoured proclamation.

Refrigerator motor harmonizes with weather numbers from unmatched images.

We pray the prayer of meandering breath. In. Out. Pause. Resume. Oremus.

We have met and do meet in this sacred ground we do not know the name of. So, we call it “here.”

Here we are.

Here is who we are and what we are as we encounter all we meet in unknowing intimacy.

There’s nothing to do here but be here.

This is how we are,

how difficult it is to remain just one person (Milosz)

At prison. On mountain. At home. At conversation.

With poetry.

Friday after Thanksgiving.

As it is, lovely.

gracias, grazie, merci, danke, shokran, xièxie

Humility never says "It's me!"
Kindness doesn't ask for a receipt.
Everydayness doesn't care about future payoff.

No one can control the behavior of another.
But what comes out of us in response is our character.

On Thanksgiving, gratitude is gifting another a loving response.

ask not

Fifty four years ago a sacrifice was made.

America sacrificed a president.

It broke something important.

It broke our will.

We wanted truth.

We got lies.

Shame.

covering jfk

I think of jfk on eve of assassination.

The death of our country with lies and deception.

Still covering.

unfolding itself right before your eye

Blue Jay in Yew bush picks at green needle. Hops to ground. Companion picks with her on empty husks for fresh seed. Ever skittish. Ever vigilant.

My morning teachers.

From An Introduction to Zen Buddhism 

Is Zen a religion? It is not a religion in the sense that the term is popularly understood; for Zen has no God to worship, no ceremonial rites to observe, no future abode to which the dead are destined, and, last of all, Zen has no soul whose welfare is to be looked after by somebody else and whose immortality is a matter of intense concern with some people. Zen is free from all these dogmatic and "religious" encumbrances. ... 

As to all those images of various Buddhas and Bodhisattvas and Devas and other beings that one comes across in Zen temples, they are like so many pieces of wood or stone or metal; they are like camellias, azaleas, or stone lanterns in my garden. Make obeisance to the camellia now in full bloom, and worship it if you like, Zen would say. There is as much religion in so doing as in bowing to the various Buddhist gods, or as sprinkling holy water, or as participating in the Lord's Supper. All those pious deeds considered to be meritorious or sanctifying by most so-called religiously minded people are artificialities in the eyes of Zen. It boldly declares that "the immaculate Yogins do not enter Nirvana and the precept-violating monks do not go to hell". This, to ordinary minds, is a contradiction of the common law of moral life, but herein lies the truth and the life of Zen. Zen is the spirit of a man. Zen believes in its inner purity and goodness. Whatever is superadded or violently torn away, injures the wholesomeness of the spirit. Zen, therefore, is emphatically against all religious conventionalism. ...

(--from, D.T. Suzuki, in The Question of God, Other Voices, PBS, 2004) 

 At Sunday Evening Practice we read at table from Tomorrow’s God, by Neale Donald Walsh.

A single oak leaf falls into Yew.

This moment.

I chant morning invitatory in cabin chapel/zendo. Light candle.Light stick of incense.

And this moment.

Sip coffee. Eat cereal. Take pills.

Charles Manson dies in prison at 83. Donald Trump lives in Washington DC at 71. Alabama will elect a man to the US Senate who is accused of sexual inappropriateness with teenage girls. Minnesota has to wonder about its senator. Every man who thought it was ok to take liberties with woman is now reappraised and under scrutiny.  Women who have been intimidated or silenced emerge from under the cloak of male privilege. A woman, unbelieved and unlistened to for so long regarding undesired behavior by men toward them, now speaks openly.

Justice is not out there somewhere. It is either in ourselves or it is nowhere. Not even in our institutions of law and systems of courts.

Justice has no separate existence from mind and heart of those who feel their way into fair and equitable balance between all beings, all things, all existence.

"The way to ascend unto God is to descend into one's self"; — these are Hugo's words. "If thou wishest to search out the deep things of God, search out the depths of thine own spirit"; — this comes from Richard of St. Victor. When all these deep things are searched out there is after all no "self" where you can descend, there is no "spirit", no "God" whose depths are to be fathomed. Why? Because Zen is a bottomless abyss. Zen declares, though in somewhat different manner: "Nothing really exists throughout the triple world; where do you wish to see the mind (or spirit, *hsin*)? The four elements are all empty in their ultimate nature; where could the Buddha's abode be? — but lo! the truth is unfolding itself right before your eye. This is all there is to it — and indeed nothing more!" A minute's hesitation and Zen is irrevocably lost. All the Buddhas of the past, present, and future may try to make you catch it once more, and yet it is a thousand miles away. “Mind-murder" and "self-intoxication", forsooth! Zen has no time to bother itself with such criticisms. (--D.T. Suzuki)

There is no justice. It doesn't exist.

There are individuals, though.

The grey cat eats kibbles on kitchen island. The white dog scratches on sliding door to come in.

Fire catches on right side of wood in wood stove.

Therefore, anything that has the semblance of an external authority is rejected by Zen. Absolute faith is placed in a man's own inner being. For whatever authority there is in Zen, all comes from within. This is true in the strictest sense of the word. Even the reasoning faculty is not considered final or absolute. On the contrary, it hinders the mind from coming into the directest communication with itself. The intellect accomplishes its mission when it works as an intermediary, and Zen has nothing to do with the intermediary except when it desires to communicate itself to others. For this reason all the scriptures are merely tentative and provisory; there is in them no finality. The central fact of life as it is lived is what Zen aims to grasp, and this in the most direct and most vital manner. Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of all religions and philosophies. When Zen is thoroughly understood, absolute peace of mind is attained, and a man lives as he ought to live. What more may we hope? ...           (--D.T. Suzuki) 

Yellow Finch on feeder as chimney smoke downdrafts across their feeding. 

what if God is the present moment

There it is, the question: What if God is the present moment?

What would change in our thinking? What would become of our lives?

Jesuit priest Jean Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751) called it the “sacrament of the present moment.” His book, Abandonment to Divine Providence, was the book most recommended by spiritual directors for many decades. His key theme is: “If we have abandoned ourselves to God, there is only one rule for us: the duty of the present moment.” To live in the present is finally what we mean by presence itself! 

God is hidden in plain sight, yet religion seems determined to make it more complicated. Much of low-level religion suggests that to find God you need this morality and that behavior and this ritual and that performance and this belief system. Western Christianity has largely refused to allow God to be as simple, obvious, democratic, and available as God has made (and makes!) God’s self—right here and right now.

(—from, Time-Tested Wisdom, Sunday, November 19, 2017, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM)

Thich Nhat Hanh’s gatha is gentle resonance of this.

I have arrived. 

I am home. 

In the here. 

In the now.

What traditionally has been called ‘belief’ is now mere realization of what is here as what is here.

No one tradition owns God. No one owns God. God is one’s own.

This realization changes everything.

And the more things change the more they become themselves.

As God is.

As you are.

As is each thing, each being, each instant.

Becoming what is!

In practice.

“would dying be here” (Robert Creeley)

Middle-night stillness

Dog’s breath beside bed

Really

There’s no one here 

turning to

even now,
wind gust
crosses road --
for the wind
there is no
other side --
only cross
with no other.
If you want
to learn love
begin here --
as sun nods
to tree top
turning to
light

no, afterlife

             (a haiku for Dan)


in her turned garden

white ashes scattered after months

what remains of thislife

in

If you ask: Do I believe in God?

I will have to ask: Where am I?

If I look at where I am, and see ‘I am here’

and to be here is to be ‘in God’,

then I am being asked

if I believe where I am.

The sorrow of our time is

we do not believe where we are.

join them

true, world’s nuts

it’s how we keep on

until we stop,

get off, safely insane

break fast

I’ll have coffee and rye toast. A side of sausage links. And, please, could you bring me a new White House. Hold the current thinking, it’s gone bad. For a change I’d like sincerity, kindness, and truth with marmalade. What will that cost?

if you hear my voice today, harden not your hearts

We read psalms

we wonder

praying our

understanding

will transcend

dualistic flaw

mind cringes

implication

Lord punishes

and causes pain

But “his love

endures forever”

Reality is reality

Love is love

no dual reading

says Yes as

one and other

are not two.

By the way,

don’t make one

but see whole

the absence of

which is why

we don’t pray

or know what

prayer is

briefly

Purring cat

it is November

between blankets

edge; else

The edge

of what?

It is all I know

what is touched

there, intermingling

boundaryless this

with that, like

emptiness, we are

open space, where

nothing separate

is what we are

Nothing else

salute and sorrow

sun moves southeast rising
just to right of cedar trunks
coming up over woodpile and
chimney smoke through dooryard

female grosbeak lifts from seed-
hull ground to yew branch as cat haunches
at sliding door, barn-side thermometer
steady at 19°F this Veteran’s Day chill

counterintuitive cycle -- warriors fight
senseless wars keeping each other alive
until home when 20 suicides a day is
daily reminder cost subtracted patriotism

a man I know thinks I’m against veterans
it’s easier for him to think so
I’m against the stupidity of aggressive war
wasting lives posturing power deriding God

david stinson, friend and meditation companiero, 25sept25 -- 5nov17

Haiku,

(for David)

at first sight, walkway

seems empty — at bridge, at heart,

there is (MU) one there

MYTOI GARDEN (BLANK)

Art: Roberta Jackson

(e-card image from gratefulness.org; haiku by wfh) 

anthony sanborn, time served

I am pleased for Tony Sanborn.

I know him as a good man. 

I’m glad he continues to assert innocence.

In Hosea 6:6, some clarifying and difficult words: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.”

May Jessica Briggs rest in peace.

May the Sanborn and Briggs family live their lives in peace.

And may Hosea’s words both disturb us and burrow into our meditations.

Good for Anthony Sanborn for his exit from prison. And good for Fairfield and Zerillo for their work on his behalf and in the name of responsible justice.

The murder of Jessica Briggs was a terrible event. The clear and definitive resolution of responsibility for her death does not appear to be any closer. 

The “elegant solution” allows a good man to resume a life in our community. It also reminds us that fair and responsible justice remains a fragile commodity in the hands of a powerful law enforcement and prosecutorial system perennially in need of oversight and review. 

The Sanborn case serves as warning and instruction. 

We have work to do.

the tent

At prison today, an academic symposium.

Learning, such as this, cannot be found anywhere else.

Men asking, and answering, what it means to engage in education.

From bottom up.

coming to word; coming to body

Violence is the failure to see our way clear.

Hatred is the failure to see the Way through.

What is our way? What is the Way?

Let’s look at this. Let’s look as this. 

This is our body. All of this.

It is time to incarnate.

words and good wishes will never suffice

Autocrats are arising.

Or, as someone we know likes to say, we’re just finding out what always has been in hidden operation. Ok. The man in the White House is only the public face of real power brokers and billionaire backroom manipulation of public belief in everyday democratic participatory republic consensus.

The ‘people’ are not in charge. Nor are they revolting. Everyday people and ordinary life are outside the concern of those growing in power and wealth.

The power elites attempt to discredit those who resist. They force them to struggle to make an income. They push them to the margins of society. They write them out of the official narrative. They deny them the symbols of status. They use the compliant liberal class to paint them as unreasonable and utopian. 

Resistance is not, fundamentally, political. It is cultural. It is about finding meaning and expression in the transcendent and the incongruities of life. Music, poetry, theater and art sustain resistance by giving expression to the nobility of rebellion against the overwhelming forces, what the ancient Greeks called fortuna, which can never ultimately be overcome. Art celebrates the freedom and dignity of those who defy malignant evil.Victory is not inevitable, or at least not victory as defined by the powerful. Yet in every act of rebellion we are free. It was the raw honesty of the blues, spirituals and work chants that made it possible for African-Americans to endure. 

Power is a poison. It does not matter who wields it. The rebel, for this reason, is an eternal heretic. He or she will never fit into any system. The rebel stands with the powerless. There will always be powerless people. There will always be injustice. The rebel will always be an outsider. 

Resistance requires eternal vigilance. The moment the powerful are no longer frightened, the moment the glare of the people is diverted and movements let down their guard, the moment the ruling elites are able to use propaganda and censorship to hide their aims, the gains made by resisters roll backward. We have been steadily stripped of everything that organized working men and women—who rose up in defiance and were purged, demonized and killed by the capitalist elites—achieved with the New Deal. The victories of African-Americans, who paid with their bodies and blood in making possible the Great Society and ending legal segregation, also have been reversed.

(-The Cost of Resistence, by Chris Hedges, in truthdig, 5nov17)

It is difficult to remember that the human spirit longs for what might be called Itself.

This Itself is reality without corruption or distortion. Without spin, yarn, denial, or hype.

The Itself was once called Truth. It was simple, stark, and sovereign. Above the hazy fog, above and beyond, is the luminous light of this galaxy’s inexorable star blazing necessary centricity for our ability to thrive and grow.

But the Itself is not enough for many of us. Instead, we seem to gravitate to that which is not itself, that which is artificial, substitute, lesser, derivative, less true, even false. In our ignorance of what is real, in our greed for what is false, and in our angry delusions positing ‘other’ and ‘enemy’ — we fail to see and feel that which is actually nearest to our very center, namely, reality/truth/itself.

"In the long run, no one can show another the error that is within him, unless the other is convinced that his critic first sees and loves the good that is within him. So while we are perfectly willing to tell our adversary he is wrong, we will never be able to do so effectively until we can ourselves appreciate where he is right. And we can never accept his judgment on our errors until he gives evidence that he really appreciates our own particular truth. Love, love only, love of our deluded fellow man as he actually is, in his delusion and in his sin: this alone can open the door of truth. As long as we do not have this love, as long as this love is not active and effective in our lives (for words and good wishes will never suffice) we have no real access to the truth. At least not to moral truth."

(- Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, p. 69, in http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/)

Downstairs, Ethiopian Sidamo Italian coffee beans from Green Tree roaster in Lincolnville wait for grinder, water, and flame. The barn sits patiently waiting to be sorted and emptied. Chill morning waits for white dog to find soccer ball to dribble down dooryard.

It is voting day.

Maybe this time something good will come of it.

abnegatio

In 1968 we thought the world was coming apart. It did.

In 2017 we know the world has not only come apart, it has been kicked into the gutter.

Call me sentimental, but it’s perfectly clear that delusion and insanity have become the default ground of everyday activity and thought.

Guns and bullets.

Lies and narcissism.

Celebrity and wealth.

Hypocrisy and arrogance.

Now that I’ve given my credentials as a failing human being, I bow my head in expiation.

Ignore me.

I’m not here.

to know you’re not there

Zen masters would slap you upside the head. So would inner city mommas and drill sergeants and boxing trainers and someone suddenly realizing they’ve been standing just outside the universe in a deep void of detached forgetfulness.

Ms. Langer: Most people are just not there, and they’re not there to know that they’re not there. And when I address the difference between mindlessness and mindfulness — so since my mindlessness was leading in my thinking, there was no reason for me to appeal to anything Eastern. This was all a Western scientific notion as I was developing it. 

Ms. Tippett: Right. So interesting. 

Ms. Langer: And so mindfulness, for me, is the very simple process of actively noticing new things. When you actively notice new things, that puts you in the present, makes you sensitive to context. As you’re noticing new things, it’s engaging, and it turns out, after a lot of research, that we find that it’s literally, not just figuratively, enlivening. 

   So the Eastern notions — I did research, again, back in the ’80s, on transcendental meditation, and that’s also — meditation is also useful, but it’s quite different, and different ways of getting to the same place. Meditation, no matter what kind of meditation, is engaged to produce post-meditative mindfulness. And the mindfulness, as I and my students… 

Ms. Tippett: You’re saying it’s a means to an end, and you’re going straight to the end. 

Ms. Langer: Exactly. So for us, you’re noticing new things. You’re there. And I think that over the last ten, maybe even 20 years, that if you look at all of the different forms of treatments to become more mindful — this means to the same end — that they have become more and more like what we’ve been studying from the beginning. Meditation that used to be required 20 minutes twice a day is slowly changing. 

   But I find that what lots of these people do — and it’s also part of folk psychology, where you tell people, “Be there, be in the moment” — when you’re not in the moment, you’re not there to know you’re not there, so it’s really an empty instruction 

 (-Ellen Langor in conversation with Krista Tippett, Science of Mindlessness and Mindfulness, On Being)

Worrying about tomorrow makes waste of today.

At Friday evening conversation two attendees said they are future oriented. I realized I have no future in my attention.

Now and here seem to be sole attendants to my cell of solitary unconfinement and ever-present origin refinement.

For the time-being, that which surrounds the inner core of timeless mirroring ubiquity, it is our instant to instant practice to gassho and bow, sit ready and stand alongside what-is here-now in its very appearance.

Existence-in-Itself asks; Do you see this? Do you hear this? Do you feel what surrounds, is near, within?

Last night I held the hand of someone in dimly lighted room in hospice house. She welcomed me with this holy human hospitality. We sat in silence. Just that. Sharing what was there. Then, a family member returned. And we touched hands.

Today’s difficulties look at us, and seeing no one there, choose to evaporate.

 “Mindlessness is the application of yesterday’s business solutions to today’s problems.” 

 “And mindfulness is attunement to today’s demands to avoid tomorrow’s difficulties.”   (—Ellen Langer)

I don’t know the difference between life and death.

It seems mindless of me.

It seems we believe there is a difference.

If I had any beliefs they would be looking toward a realization that any sip of coffee, any glance at November leaves, or added hour in an arbitrary designation of time, is the whole of new light shining through and through each being arising in awareness of deep intimacy and perennial presence.

Bells announce what is brought to mind.

Sounding, as each thing does, the beginning-ending, the ending-beginning of everything.

have you ever seen such a sight

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.

Donald, Mitch, and Paul.

Where’s the farmers wife when she is needed?

only to

There is nowhere to go.

Not-now does not exist.

Siddhartha sat still.

Jesus arrived alone.

Here’s what I think: not fond of the metaphors ‘ransom’ and ‘debt’, I wonder how to say ‘emergent’ and ‘perfecting’ without holding some finished and final ideal in mind.

The words ‘beginning’ and ‘arriving’ come to mind. We are always doing one or the other without ever completing.

Complementing, yes. Complimenting, yes.

Nothing fixed that is not flowing. Nothing carved in stone that is not breath and water moving in and out with grace.

Even if the idea of God crumbled and lost its meaning, making no sense, having no cogency . . . 

Remaining would be here, 

Appearing would be now,  

Emerging would be this.

Three forms of presence: here, now, this — situation, circumstance, surrounding — these companions on the way: sat, chit, ananda (being, consciousness, bliss).

Perhaps we have only to look,

Only to listen,

Only to 

Only to,

Only to . . .

———————.      ———————-       ———————

(-from dictionary app):

only

ohn-lee IPA

— adverb 

1. without others or anything further; alone; solely; exclusively: This information is for your eyes only. 

2. no more than; merely; just: If it were only true! I cook only on weekends. 

3. as recently as: I read that article only yesterday. 

4. in the final outcome or decision: You will only regret your harsh words to me. 

— adjective 

5. being the single one or the relatively few of the kind: This is the only pencil I can find. 

6. having no sibling or no sibling of the same sex: an only child; an only son. 

7. single in superiority or distinction; unique; the best: the one and only Muhammad Ali. 

— conjunction 

8. but (introducing a single restriction, restraining circumstance, or the like): I would have gone, only you objected. 

9. Older Use. except; but: Only for him you would not be here. 

— Idioms 

10. only too, 

1. as a matter of fact; extremely: I am only too glad to go. 

1. unfortunately; very: It is only too likely to happen

what does it mean to be ‘doing now’

The two Jehovah Witnesses showed a brief video which was interesting.

We had a conversation which was interesting.

What was taking place between us (inter-esse) was as the question at end of video posed itself, namely, “What is Jesus doing now?”

What is, is reality.

Jesus is the perfection of human spirit.

And ‘doing now’ is the very name and definition of God.
(E.g., to the question “What is God?” The answer, “God is ‘doing now’!”)

Imagine!

Yes —

What are you doing now?

頂きます（いただきます）

Jo-Ann taught me the word during 50 years of friendship.

THE MEANING OF ITADAKIMASU 

In its simplest form, Itadakimasu 頂きますいただ　 is used before receiving something. That's why the most common itadakimasu translation is:
頂きます（いただきます）TO RECEIVE; TO GET; TO ACCEPT; TO TAKE (HUMBLE).

A year ago tomorrow (2nov16) she bowed to the guest who bowed back to her.

And went beyond.

Receiving, accepting, love.

I am a slow student.

In memory, today, I say はい!

Hai!

Yes!

do not hide your face from me

It matters, a sense of the holy.

This eve, it matters.

names

No one dying doesn’t want to live.

Does that desire propel life through death into another version of life pre-death?

I look into this. And see only to the edge of disappearance.

At Sunday Evening Practice we spoke aloud the many names of departed meetingbrook community members who’ve disappeared at that edge the last twenty five years. So many names!

patient visitor

In hospital rooms we laugh about things that are petits riens.

In a full heart there is room for everything, and in an empty heart there is room for nothing. Antonio Porchia

When you think about it, what else is there?

touching her hand

when someone dies,

      in that place, that instant,

in your presence;

      the very next breath we take —

still, silent,

      unseeing,

the wonder of it . . .

this realization

Adonai, you have made me alone!

I am alone as you are alone.

There are, it has been said, no others.

Shema’ yisrael Adonai elohenu Adonai echad!
   (Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord alone!)

It means there are no others.

Does that sound scary?

If this were a horror film with horror thinking, yes, it would.

But as an ontological theological existential consideration, it suggests that our beliefs — that we are isolated alienated antagonistic individuals vying against one another for goods, possessions, and power — are error-ridden and illusory misunderstandings about the true nature of reality and being, illusions that keep us warlike and cruel.

We are alone.

Notions of a god that chooses some over others are deluded notions. Notions of a god that is better than other gods are mistaken notions. And notions of superior races, purer peoples, advanced intelligences, and higher classes of cultured and wealthy people — are historical and psychological aberrations of sociological and colonial fabrication.

We are alone.

And it takes courage to see this.

And willingness to realize this.

An awareness beyond ego myopia.

A humility to recognize god alone.

God is this realization!

hoc est enim corpus meum

In prison we spoke of current koan. I tell of eating apple cider toast in truck driving to Warren. I held it up and said, “this is my body.”

I bite into toast while aware of sky, fields, trees, colorful leaves — and, looking around, I think, “this is my body.”

I come to prison building, walk in with AA volunteer, NAACP volunteer, and loose shoelace caseworker. In front desk area I greet D’s father arriving for visit. In inside corridor I greet D being patted down for visit. In yard I greet S going to job repairing furniture. Arriving at education area I greet N assisting an inmate in class. In room used for Buddhist group I greet the men attending.

And I realize: this is my body, these are my body.

As the morning continued.

All of it . . .

Is my body.

what everything is filled with.

There are times when you don’t care. When you stay at home and rain falls persistently. When nothing seems to enliven.

He who has seen everything empty itself is close to knowing what everything is filled with. — Antonio Porchia

It is too difficult trying to follow the news out of DC.

As much as I’d like to think there’s something there, there isn’t.

I turn.

And leave.

let’s start with this

All this will pass.

A zen master said, “truth is just like this.” He said that definition of truth would still be true in 500 years. Truth is just like this!

So, we ask: What is this?

Many centuries ago, the Greek philosopher Socrates used to walk through the streets and marketplaces of Athens, teaching his students. He would say to them, “You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself! You must understand yourself.” Then one day a student said, “Sir, you always say we must understand ourselves. But do you understand yourself?”   

“No, I don‘t know myself,” Socrates replied. “But I understand this ‘don‘t know.‘“ This is very interesting teaching. Buddhist practice points at the same experience, because most human beings pass through their lives without the slightest sense of what they are.   

We understand many things about this world, but we don‘t understand ourselves. So why do human beings come into this world? Why do we live in this world? For love? For money? For respect or fame? Do you live for your wife, husband, or children? Why do you live in this world? If someone asked you these question, you might very well answer, “I live for my children. I live to earn enough money for them, or maybe just to have a good life.” Most people think like this. They live only for their family, for some fleeting social respectability, perhaps to enjoy art or to get some powerful position. Everyone wants to have a good situation for themselves. If you look at this world very closely, it is easy to see that most people eat and sleep and live merely for their own personal happiness. Yet these things are not the real purpose of human beings‘ life. They are just temporary means for living in the world. If human beings cannot find who they are, how can they ever be truly happy?  

(—from The Compass of Zen  p.28, by Zen Master Seung Sahn)

 The events of these days and months in America’s political landscape have been, and will continue to be, bizarre and confusing. The president, some feel, is unhinged, petty, mean, and a narcissist of enormous and dangerous proportions. Others feel he is the perfect antidote to a stuffy, controlled, and ineffective governance in Washington DC.

I don’t know.

I have an opinion. It is my opinion that the divide between philosophies of governance, the divide between ethnic groups and races, the divide between sane use of force and insane use of guns and violence, the divide between responsible and respectful behavior of men to women and the crude, power abusing, sex using disrespect of women by pretentious men, the divide between wealthy and poor — all these divides have deepened and separated and stand against each other with little hope of reconciliation or harmonious outcome.

But this opinion, too, will pass.

We live in an existence that is fluid and ephemeral.

In this impermanent circumstance — Who are we?

What am I?

Socrates didn’t know.

I don’t know.

It becomes our task, our profound duty, to understand this “don’t know.”

I am “don’t know.” As are you.

Let’s start with this!

the word, of

Hear, O Lord, the sound.

Of.

My voice.

. . .

Note:  

of 

əv/
        preposition 

1.
expressing the relationship between a part and a whole.
"the sleeve of his coat"
2.
expressing the relationship between a scale or measure and a value.
"an increase of 5 percent"

fed up

The notions of truth or falsehood have been tossed out by this White House. Now the standard is ‘whatever we say is true; what you think about what we say is false.’

It will have to be a serious and concerted effort on the part of thoughtful people to resist and counterbalance the distortion and newspeak that cynical provocateurs serve as rancid food to hungry citizens.

gone

No
t
me

No
me

No
thing

Per
fect 

zen in- sight

Not one, not two.

Therefore,

don’t make two

Don’t make one

Come to

Think of it —

Don’t make

Don’t take . . .

Be-

hold!

Be

whole

we’ve got you

We’ve got you.

Is what we say when someone’s soul is shared and held by those whose love is shared.

Shared.

Soul.

and here we are

We don’t want to get used to it. Nor make lite of it. We don’t want to shrug and say, “He’s just being who he is!” as though that was both excuse and pardon for behavior and speech that is . . . troubling . . . and unfortunate.

According to James Murphy’s translation of Hitler’s “Mein Kampf”:

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”

The text continues:

“It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.”

(--from, Trump Isn’t Hitler. But the Lying …by Charles M. Blow OCT. 19, 2017 NYTimes)

 Cheslaw Milosz wrote:

If among pairs of opposites which we use every day, the opposition of life and death has such an importance, no less importance should be ascribed to the oppositions of truth and falsehood, of reality and illusion. 

 ... 

Only if we assume that a poet constantly strives to liberate himself from borrowed styles in search for reality, is he dangerous. In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. And, alas, a temptation to pronounce it, similar to an acute itching, becomes an obsession which doesn't allow one to think of anything else. That is why a poet chooses internal or external exile. It is not certain, however, that he is motivated exclusively by his concern with actuality. He may also desire to free himself from it and elsewhere, in other countries, on other shores, to recover, at least for short moments, his true vocation - which is to contemplate Being. 

(--from, Czeslaw Milosz - Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1980)

Saying truth is elusive mirrors Heidegger’s saying that truth conceals as much as it reveals.

In letting beings as a whole be, which discloses and at the same time conceals, it happens that concealing appears as what is first of all concealed. Insofar as it ek-sists, Da-sein conserves the first and broadest undisclosedness, untruth proper. The proper non-essence of truth is the mystery. Here non-essence does not yet have the sense of inferiority to essence in the sense of what is general (koinon genos), its possibilitas and the ground of its possibility. Non-essence is here what in such a sense would be a pre-essential essence. But "non-essence" means at first and for the most part the deformation of that already inferior essence. Indeed, in each of these significations the non-essence remains always in its own way essential to the essence and never becomes inessential in the sense of irrelevant. But to speak of non-essence and untruth in this manner goes very much against the grain of ordinary opinion and looks like a dragging up of forcibly contrived paradoxes. Because it is difficult to eliminate this impression, such a way of
speaking, paradoxical only for ordinary doxa (opinion), is to be renounced. But surely for those who know about such matters the “non-” of the primordial non-essence of truth, as untruth, points to the still unexperienced domain of the truth of Being (not merely of beings). 

...  

Man errs. Man does not merely stray into errancy. He is always astray in errancy, because as ek- sistent he in-sists and so already is caught in errancy. The errancy through which man strays is not something which, as it were, extends alongside man like a ditch into which he occasionally stumbles; rather errancy belongs to the inner constitution of the Da-sein into which historical man is admitted. Errancy is the free space for that turning in which insistent ek-sistence adroitly forgets and mistakes itself constantly anew. The concealing of the concealed being as a whole holds sway in that disclosure of specific beings, which, as forgottenness of concealment, becomes errancy.

Errancy is the essential counter-essence to the primordial essence of truth. Errancy opens itself up as the open region for every opposite to essential truth. Errancy is the open site for and ground of error. Error is not just an isolated mistake but rather the realm (the domain) of the history of those entanglements in which all kinds of erring get interwoven. 

(--from, On the Essence of Truth, by Martin Heidegger. Date of original version: 1943) 

Perhaps the real estate salesman turned president is become, for us, a meditation on errancy and concealment.

But we are not as opaque as Heidegger, nor as poetic as Milosz.

We are simple creatures intent on imprinting what we experience, as Conrad Lorenz studied:

In the latter part of his career, Lorenz applied his ideas to the behaviour of humans as members of a social species, an application with controversial philosophical and sociological implications. In a popular book, Das sogenannte Böse (1963; On Aggression), he argued that fighting and warlike behaviour in man have an inborn basis but can be environmentally modified by the proper understanding and provision for the basic instinctual needs of human beings. Fighting in lower animals has a positive survival function, he observed, such as the dispersion of competitors and the maintenance of territory. Warlike tendencies in humans may likewise be ritualized into socially useful behaviour patterns. In another work, Die Rückseite des Spiegels: Versuch einer Naturgeschichte menschlichen Erkennens (1973; Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge), Lorenz examined the nature of human thought and intelligence and attributed the problems of modern civilization largely to the limitations his study revealed.  

(--Konrad Lorenz,  AUSTRIAN ZOOLOGIST )

The question could be posed: Are we, the citizens of the USA, imprinting the chief executive of the executive branch of government? Or, is he imprinting the citizens of this country -- himself a creature of the culture he so unawaredly foists himself and his opinions upon -- to the consternation and paralytic unbelief of the majority of the voting populace?

The final numbers:
Clinton received 65,844,610 votes, or 48.2% of the total vote.
Trump received 62,979,636 votes, or 46.1% of the total vote. (That's a difference of 2.86 million votes.) 

(cf. Public Records Branch Public Disclosure and Media Relations Division Office of Communications Federal Election Commission)

And here we are! 

you in the end find your way . . . with clarity, compassion, and caring consequence

Anthony Sanborn review is held in Portland. The stress, I suspect, must be high.

I know Tony. He is a good man. I’m rooting for him.

What we call truth is a variable thing. We can only experience what is going on now. So, it can be asked, right now, do we know what occurred surrounding Jessica Briggs death in 1989?

Reviewing the trial 25 years later, was it truthful and fair in 1992? Was the information and the testimonies given believeable and accurate?

They review these questions along with transcripts and personnel involved in the case.

The fact is, only Tony knows where he was and what he was doing that day. For the rest of the people only surmise and speculation surround.

“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

The iffy and precarious fate of any individual is held aloft amid words and recollection, deduction and inference.

“Only describe, don't explain.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

For the rest of us we hold our direct and hopeful experience of one another in the courtroom of personal appraisal and long for, pray for, what is right to now take place.

My experience of Tony in the time I’ve known him over these twenty eight years going into Maine state prison is that he is a man who has helped people learn and better themselves during their incarceration.

He is a good and true individual.

“If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.” ― Ludwig Wittgenstein

Prayers for Jessica Briggs. Prayers for Tony Sanborn. Prayers that truth now reveals itself.

We are variable human beings.

May what changes become itself with clarity, compassion, and caring consequence!

particularly complicated

Listening to Yuval Hoah Harari’s work on audio book.

Helps.

“Homo Deus” takes off where “Sapiens” left off; it is a “brief history of tomorrow.” What is the natural culmination of the scientific revolution, Harari asks. What will the future look like? “At the dawn of the third millennium,” he writes, “humanity wakes up, stretching its limbs and rubbing its eyes. Remnants of some awful nightmare are still drifting across its mind. ‘There was something with barbed wire, and huge mushroom clouds. Oh well, it was just a bad dream.’ Going to the bathroom, humanity washes its face, examines its wrinkles in the mirror, makes a cup of coffee and opens the diary, ‘Let’s see what’s on the agenda today.’ ” 

... To describe this ascendancy, Harari examines the factors that made the human species so special. “Homo sapiens does its best to forget the fact, but it is an animal,” he writes. So how did this animal come to claim dominion over all other beasts? The answer, he argues, lies not in the uniqueness of our emotions, sensations, morals or moods. Pigs and monkeys share many of these with us — including the capacity to feel anger, envy, pain — and even a desire for justice. Humans exceed these capacities by encoding complex algorithms — “a methodological set of steps that can be used to make calculations, resolve problems and reach decisions.” Pigs, dogs and monkeys — indeed, all living beings — also encode algorithms, Harari tells us; the human ones happen to be particularly complicated and powerful.  

(--from NYTimes Book Review,  The Future of Humans? One Forecaster Calls for Obsolescence, about HOMO DEUS, A Brief History of Tomorrow, By Yuval Noah Harari. Reviewed by SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE, MARCH 13, 2017  Harper/HarperCollins Publishers.

In the United States a great deal of attention is taken up trying to decipher whether the president of the country is competent to lead, whether he is a threat to initiate a conflagration with North Korea or Iran, whether he will escalate hostilities with rhetoric presaging warfare replete with nuclear weapons and massive destruction, casualties, and disruption of global security.

To begin with, we’d like more gracious behavior.

It’s hard to walk tall when the ceiling you’ve set for yourself is so low. 

pre-dawn

Stillness

prayer, detectionless presence beyond

At Sunday Evening Practice, at table, we read interview from Beliefnet: Caroline Myss: ‘God Doesn’t Want Your Real Estate’.

It helps:

In the new book, “Entering the Castle,” you talk about “mystics without monasteries.” What does it mean to be a contemporary mystic?A mystic is someone who has a sense of interior connection with a force of life, of meaning, much greater than themselves, a connection to God. There are people who are called to be a part of the world with the same passion that once drew people out of society and into monasteries or into ashrams. And now, the calling is to engage [with God] and remain within the mainstream of life. It is the need to live a life that is very clearly full of meaning and clear direction. When somebody says, “For what reason have I been born?” that is a question they are, in fact, releasing to God. That type of invocation ignites a deeper force from within. 
And can that kind of question lead to a more mystical life? I do believe that. I think that leads to a longing for a much more passionate connection to the divine. There is a fundamental need in us to connect to something greater than ourselves. And that’s just the way we are designed. We do not want to think that, at the end of the day, we are simply flesh and bones. The second thing is we have a need to believe that, if we close our eyes and say, “God help us,” there really is someone on the end of that phone call. There is a part of us that absolutely longs to know that’s real.
The tortured mystic seems on a unrelenting search to find out where they should be, what they should be doing, what perfect prayer should they pray.   (--Beliefnet)

The ordinary mystic is where they are, doing what they are doing, praying as they look and listen in their longing to realize what is real in each here and now of their daily existence.

Prayer is how we step into circumstance, reflectively.

Prayer is how we sit silently centering the surround even as it resounds inward to outward pulsing the mystery of God’s detectionless presence beyond any experience or belief thereof.

Oremus!

wait a minute

flaws

(like clouds)

dissolve

soon enough

into other

dawns and

weather

continually

changing

our views