a dialogue

RE: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain

COLLAPSE

“A life depended on what the doctors answer was. Maybe he really didn't know whether his patient would live or die. But in any case, he could not have been one hundred percent positive. Which meant that he chose to play God. Was he right to do so?”(JB)

...

Your words make me think of words and the power they have. 

If the 2nd commandment, as you point out in the Catholic tradition, is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” ... then, how does that apply to Dekalog 2?

A rabbi who studies Semitic languages pointed out that, in the Hebrew Scriptures  when the name of the giver of the 10 commandments was asked for, the response was recorded and reduced to four consonants “YHWH”. Vowels were to be added by those who knew what to add. He said that the pronunciation of the letters, which were simply an inbreath and outbreath, required no movement of either lips or tongue, and sounded like mere breath coming in and going out.

What could this mean? Is the name of God the practice and sound of breath? And does the vibration of sound, the pronunciation of words, have something to do with the vibration of God in the world?

When the doctor spoke, finally, in response to Dorota, and said not to have the abortion, that her husband surely would not live — was he “playing God” by attempting to persuade her to have the child? We’re unsure if he knew whether or not the husband would die — nor do we know whether his prime motivation was to attempt to retrieve in some way the lives of his own children killed in the war some 40 years earlier.

Such considerations revive, for me, the question of the name of God as it might apply to our ethical understanding of the world. Are we to consider that the name of God is the breathing of life? That we should not waste our breath on that which is not in the service of life, that is, anything that diminishes or denigrates life, that diminishes or denigrates people or other beings in life, any words or actions that are contrary to the caring compassion needed to assist life to thrive in the world? 

Is Kieslowski pushing us to think in a new way? And what of the feeling we might have that any interference into our ordinary (either/or) thinking is undesirable?

In other words, we ought not to take the name of (that which is) life in vain.

On another level, breath and words can and do bring things into being, and breath and words can and do remove things from being.

Do you think it is possible we do not (yet) comprehend and appreciate what the real value and function of words are?

(And perhaps the fact that the above words are being written as I sit in the parlor area of a hospice house on Saturday evening is influencing what I am writing.)

Thanks, JB, for the prompt!

—bh

meetingbrook described -- cosmotheandric campers

At morning practice, this arose, should anyone ask:

 Q: How do you describe meetingbrook hermitage?

A: We are Cosmotheandric Campers

Q: How's that?

A: Cosmotheandric* is a Raimon Panikkar term combining Cosmos, Theos, and Andros (universe/nature, divinity/God, beings/humanity). By an unseparated combining Panikkar is pointing to the new template of thought that must take into consideration all three aspects of the one reality permeating this existence. Undo focus on any one to the diminishment of either of the remaining two will result in continuation of fragmented, divided, deficient perpetuation of separation and discord.

Q: How does this apply to meetingbrook?

A: We wish to focus on visible cosmos, invisible divinity, and coming-to-see humankind.

Q: And "Campers"?

A: Campers stands for

contemplative 

and 

meditative 

practitioners -- 

engaging, 

recollecting, 

silenting.   

Q: Silenting?

A: As in quieting, stilling, and cultivating silence. (Not in the sense of silencing anyone -- but in the sense of creating an environment for listening and hearing the sound of what is, being, said.)

Q: Anything else?

 A: As cosmotheandric campers we wish to free, transform, perceive, and embody all that we find in creation, illusion, reality, and awakening (essentially the Bodhisattva Vows) and the two Great Commandments (inviting into love of God, wholeness, and neighbor).

We also note the character of such a worded designation as pointing to movement, impermanence, practice, ephemerality, diaphaneity, and peaceful presence -- qualities that allow a way through time and place encountered by everyone sharing this existence.

Q: Thanks...?

A: Yes, gratefulness, appreciation, and acceptance -- thanks, indeed!

...

* Cosmotheandric or theo-anthropo-cosmic (dimension)

“The cosmotheandric intuition is the totally integrated vision of the seamless fabric of the entire reality… the undivided consciousness of the totality” (The Cosmotheandric Experoence). 

“There are not three realities: God, Man, and the World; but neither is there one, whether God, Man or World. Reality is cosmotheandric. It is our way of looking that makes reality appear to us at times under one aspect, at times under another. God, Man, and World are, so to speak, in an intimate and constitutive collaboration to construct Reality, to make history advance, to continue creation: (The Triniity and the Religious Experience of man, London and New York 1975).  

 The cosmotheandric intuition expresses the all embracing indissoluble union, that constitutes all of Reality: the triple dimension of reality as a whole: cosmic-divine-human. The cosmotheandric intuition is the undivided awareness of the totality." What Panikkar proposes is to live so open to this triple dimension of reality, open to others, to the world, and to God that we might achieve harmonious communion with the all: the cosmotheandric reconciliation. It is a matter of an experience more mystical and ineffable than philosophic in the traditional sense, but it breaks the customary philosophico-theological molds. 

http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-cosmotheandric.html

haiku

it is about guns

it is, about, guns -- you see

they mostly kill, guns

goodbye country, hello neighbor

There must be a belief there are too many young students in the United States.

It’s open season on them. AR-15s are for sale, weapon of war, to be owned and used by Americans who belief their freedom to shoot whomever and wherever they wish.

It is curious, isn’t it?

Some say it is our unique quest to discern what is right and what is wrong and act on our findings in each situation..

There is a moment when deliberation gives way to speech about our findings, when speech gives way to action, when actions intimately entwine our life with others’ lives.

Is it really about guns?

Or is it about who we are and what we wish to be with one another?

close the schools with your feet

Perhaps it is

time for

all parents

to stop sending

their children

to school

until sane

and responsible

gun legislation

is enacted.

unnouncing

no

words

reveal everything

unnouncing

nothing

near-

by

until I’m not

Sometimes depression and sadness is the only response.

And when we get tired of that response, we will overthrow the stupidity of automatic assault rifles encouraged and sold cheerfully by hucksters.

Until then, it’s depression.

And sorrow.

Let the official condolence politicos offer their prayers and somber statements about the aberration of mass school shootings.

About mental health.

About domestic terrorism.

About the better place that innocent children and youth go to be with their dead loved ones and welcoming deities.

I’ll just sit.

In silence.

Depressed.

And sorrowing.

Until I’m not.

all I need is the air that I breathe

How do I pray?

You don’t.

Waddya mean?

You don’t pray. Prayer prays you.

Air is breath. Breath is God.

Each breath is God’s name in

and out of you.

on phone with Maryland

Faith is going on through the unknown.

Trust in God is the willingness to affirm reality as being what is here.

Each, an acceptance with compassion.

a gift of god riding bike in cemetary

Once it was the Bible

Then one who would be Christ

Who was locked inside a church

Until a monk remembered scripture


Today it is the cosmos

It is mind that looks through it

Existence asks for nothing

Some bow to empty air


Some say we have no myth

To narratize under our feet

I sit with woman in hospital room

Telling stories of mountain street


There is no meaning to life going

Forward— only a bit of soil

Underfoot as turning body

Asks after someone, is hit, and dies

and where it stops, no one knows

Love

makes the

world

go

          r          

 o                d

     u         n

      

they say they didn’t do it

men needing women

punching bags get white

house refuge apologist —

no apology 

champion-slips ragged mtn

rain on snow

tobogganers drip

saturday slide

showing up

In prison today

someone said “I love you”

meditation with bells

origination, depend on it

This is because that is.

that’s not the answer

If I told you the story of the red stocking, would you have it?  (A koan my father asked repeatedly in a house on a Brooklyn street mid-century ago.)

of it

She wanted to know

what I believed

Nothing, I said

Nothing? Really — is that

what you believe?

No, I said.

I don’t believe

Nothing as well as

Anything

Think of it this

way —

Without belief

everything is exactly

what it is

as it is.

Ok, she said

I believe you

And nothing

came of it

more feeling less reason

The felt fact

of the experience

is always more

compelling than

the proposed

reason

for the fact.

day after

I’ve lived in Philadelphia

I’ve never lived in Boston or Massachusetts

Well, that’s over with

about the game

I’m rooting for New England’s Maine to become part of Atlantic Canada’s time zone.

Let’s touch down in a kinder more civil field with much less bullying or roughing.

let’s meet for coffee and talk about this

How democracies die, explained. The problems in American democracy run far deeper than Trump, by Ezra Klein, 2Feb2018, Vox

worth...keeping

Buddhism and Christianity meet in the realization of two words: whole, and, self.

Matthew 22:34-40 “But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. 35 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, 36 Master, which is the great Commandment in the law? 37 Jesus said unto him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like unto it, You shall love your neighbour as thyself. 40 On these two commandments hang ALL the law and the prophets.”

Whole heart.
Whole soul.
Whole mind.

Neighbor is yourself.

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.[b] 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

And:

 17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:17-18)

Whole Self.

What is the One that is called G-d?

Wholeness without division or separation.

Self/neighbor — no barrier, no other.

Until we realize the true nature of reality there is no self, no G-d.

When we realize the true nature of reality, there is no self, no G-d.

Between the two, there is only love (only Lord). And when there is love (only Lord), there is no two, no one.

Only this realization loving one and all. One is all. All is one.

These are good commandments.

Worth...keeping!

and that is

Let me be

                      What

I am

carrying on

The breathing flowers

in front of Buddha’s hands

next to Madonna and child

photo of Thich Nhat Hanh

practice walking with monks

counter top broken incense

few remaining tea candles

waiting for new breath

wood matches at ready —

Once when breath carried

her body there were troubles

with divided mind at odds

with itself, so it seemed.

Now, no body, no mind apart

her breath drifts floral scent

over zafu and zabuton, along

shelves of books at meetingbrook

electric radiator and gas stove

glowing welcome for visitors

this cold morning; silence

breathing free of division

free to wander open door

to commingle all breathing

beings sound mind and sounding

body turning with recognition

midst all her familiars

for as long as there is breathing

we carry one another on

future tense

I can imagine a time to come when bullets will fly between trumpian loyalists and those angered by him.

Is what is wanted dissolution of government in favor of private wealth and business?

It will be a difficult time.

consequential segue

Candlemas, also known as the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord Jesus and the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is a Christian Holy Day commemorating the presentation of Jesus at the Temple. Wikipedia

Candlemas. “Candlemas commemorates the ritual purification of Mary, 40 days after the birth of her son Jesus. This day also marks the ritual presentation of the baby Jesus to God in the Temple at Jerusalem. ... The festival is called Candlemas beacuse this was the day that all the Church's candles for the year were blessed.”

Imbolc or Imbolg (/ɪˈmɒlɡ/ i-MOLG), also called (Saint) Brigid's Day (Irish: Lá Fhéile Bríde, Scottish Gaelic: Là Fhèill Brìghde, Manx: Laa'l Breeshey), is a Gaelic traditional festival marking the beginning of spring. ... For Christians, especially in Ireland, it is the feast day of Saint Brigid.
(Wikipedia)

In maine today we celebrate rain and smoosh and snow and wind. Gray dripping February drear. Even the
Prison says stay away; they are overrun with flu. It will be memo-day in DC when republicans will attempt to bring down the fbi and Justice dept so as to raise up the current president from wallow of illegality.

Time, they say, is running out.

What will follow once time has gone?

All in one place.

Without time everything aggregates in a single spot.

It is a contracting without extension, an inseparate aggregate without wholeness.

I cannot see around this trumpian perfection— all is him, and only him, as if some grotesque revelation were at hand.

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

This by William Stafford:

A Ritual to Read to Each Other

BY WILLIAM E. STAFFORD

If you don't know the kind of person I am 

and I don't know the kind of person you are 

a pattern that others made may prevail in the

           world 

and following the wrong god home we may miss

           our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind, 

a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break 

sending with shouts the horrible errors of

          childhood 

storming out to play through the broken dike.

And as elephants parade holding each

          elephant's tail, 

but if one wanders the circus won't find the

          park, 

I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty 

to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something

         shadowy, 

a remote important region in all who talk: 

though we could fool each other, we should

         consider—

lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the

dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to

          sleep; 

the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

William Stafford, "A Ritual to Read to Each Other" from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1998 by William Stafford.  

howling bitter air

A hundred plus miles through whiteout snow storm.

Then blueberry pie.

Machias reward.

we don’t put an end to anything

“Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to transform them.” (One of four bodhisattva vows, per Upaya Zen Center)

At table Sunday Evening Practice someone wanted to think about that wording.

So, it seems, did Roshi Joan Halifax.

Here’s what she wrote.

The second vow begins “Delusions are inexhaustible”. I changed the second part of the vow. Originally it was “I vow to put an end to them”, but my experience as a woman and a Buddhist is that we don’t put an end to anything. When we work with our delusions, what does happen is that we transform them. We even discover wisdom in their corners. This wisdom is the hidden treasure that rewards our most fearless and diligent examination of our own delusions. Now we chant, “Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to transform them.”
https://www.upaya.org/dox/You.pdf

Wisdom in the corners of delusions?

I vow to transform the corners of the seemingly delusional person in executive position of highest office of this increasingly sad country.

being breathed

The breath.

When breathing stops,

does the breath go out and away?

Or does it go deep and hidden within?

Breath, the name of The unpronounceable One!

everyone you knew from back then is a success

Satchel Paige said

“Don’t look back” —

Good advice

(There’s nothing there).

He said:

“You win a few,

you lose a few.

Some get rained out.

But you got to dress

for all of them.” (SP)

Where’s my

Beret and

Walking stick

Allons

Marchez

Vers l’avant

There are

Elephants

Crossing a

Bridge of

Dreams

fleet foxes, white winter hymnal

Why not?
https://youtu.be/DrQRS40OKNE

collating suffering

Two responses, two students:

1.

“Just because one person is suffering doesn't mean two people have to suffer.” (CZ)

...

This is a good line. I agree with it. The sense I reflect on is that no one should have suffering forced on them by another. it is something we seem to do, namely, use our suffering to clobber others. Intentionally or unintentionally.

It makes me further reflect that — in ways I do not fully grasp — whenever anyone suffers, I too am part of their suffering, even if I am not being clobbered by it. It is this natural collation, one life shuffling through another's,  that fascinates me and keeps me wondering.

2.

“ I truly believe I am 'self defined' by how I reflect the world around me.” (EC)

...

Yeah, I do too. 

In some ways it’s like a hall of mirrors —everywhere you look, there you are. 

When Flip Wilson’s Geraldine would say, “What you see is what you get!”— it seemed a simple statement. Reading your above line, it now seems to take on a different meaning, namely, what we see in the world, the way we see it, the way we allow ourselves to be tutored by what we see, then, that is what we become.

No longer is it a matter of “This is what I get to possess,” but rather, “This is what I will become.” The world we see is the world that we will live in. So, my consciousness is asking me, “What do you see?”

an ugliness looms

If Robert Mueller continues to be trashed by Trump and republicans in Congress, and a series of firings and pardons follow, what then?

Then, I suspect, a people’s court will convene and move on those who have attempted to overthrow our democratic representative republic and, in a series of state and regional jurisdictions predicated on the US constitution, decisions will be made to activate local juridical authority and mobilize local national guard to stand by to stand up to those intent on destroying the laws and values of the land.

There is, beyond the drama of a lawless executive and complicit sycophants, an antidote.

The people, by and large, are decent. They know right and wrong. They will not, ultimately, permit criminal lawless self centered looters to run roughshod over the land and the citizens.

Justice will prevail.

If those responsible for protecting the country fail, the people of the country will, on their own, rise up and demand fairness, decency, justice and removal of those violating the constitution.

In this regard, I am optimistic.

The Trumps and irresponsible minions surrounding him will be taken down and replaced by law abiding leadership intent on serving and protecting our country from all threats, foreign or domestic.

This eventuality requires a new alertness.

Awareness demands attention.

For which, we must pay.

And pray for justice.

And mercy.

God help us!

An ugliness looms.

still?

Still!

will they help me to notice

This, from “Fragility and Repetition: On the Poetry of Robert Lowell,” by Katie Peterson, November 1, 2017, in American Poets:

The events of Lowell’s actual biography made him give up a sense that his life would be either healthy or straightforward. His imagination enabled him to create work that still matters to us, none of whose lives seem, at this point, to be easily recognizable as either. His poems about mental illness anticipate a twenty-first-century culture in which having a diagnosis has become as overstated and necessary as having a college degree. In the best of these, illness refuses to pigeonhole itself as a disability or dramatize itself as a privilege of the artist. “Notice,” from Day by Day, passes into the twenty-first century familiar to anyone who’s ever mistaken a medical professional for someone who can tell you the meaning of life:

The resident doctor said,
“We are not deep in ideas, imagination or enthusiasm—
how can we help you?”
I asked,
“These days of only poems and depression—
what can I do with them?
Will they help me to notice
what I cannot bear to look at?”

A poem like this doesn’t only anticipate a world in which no “normal” exists, either in psychological condition or in life plan: it imagines a world in which the idea of “the normal” has been almost forgotten. Nowhere is this understanding more moving than in Lowell’s treatment of his complicated family life, in Notebook, For Lizzie and Harriet, and especially The Dolphin, with his last two marriages braided together in time with children and stepchildren and across an ocean. Don’t we all wish we—or someone—could have planned our lives better? Lowell admits that feeling and lets it go. He stands vividly in the midst of experience, when all we’d thought we’d known demands to be known again. The final lines of “Notice” remind us how bravely Lowell stood in his own discomfort: “Then home—I can walk it blindfold. / But we must notice— / we are designed for the moment.”

---

This essay originally appeared in the Fall-Winter 2017 issue of American Poets, the biannual journal of the Academy of American Poets. Copyright © 2017 by the Academy of American Poets. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/fragility-and-repetition-poetry-robert-lowell

out of darkness

da
wn’
s

ear
ly

li
ght
is

si
len
ce

mer
ly

a
ri
sing

ev
er
y

th
in
g

wi
th
in

i
tse
lf 

remembering Abbot Robert OCSO from Berryville Trappists

A year on since his death, I remember sitting in parlor across from Fr. Robert in the late 90’s when I stayed as guest in community. 

In our conversations he showed me a real monk — joy amid doubt, trust within discouragement, wisdom wandering edges of nescience. 

Reading James’ words reflects a clear black and white portrait.

My time with Robert and the community was sufficient to ease me into renewed life as hermit in the world and monastic in service to fellow and sister sannyasa in hospital, hospice, nursing home, prison, and house of prayer.

I remain fond of Robert, Benedict, Mark OCSO’s— each gone beyond — and all the Trappists met. 

Gassho!

echo

when it

is time

tell me

your name

and I

will tell

you mine

it falls apart at end

it is
difficult

listening
to

bu
ll

sh
it

yet it
has

beco
me

what is
heard

everyday
from our

so-called
le

ade
rs 

let’s pay attention

If you think funding and economic capitalism is merely a kabuki dance, remember:

The First World War ... 1914–18. In those years, more than 15 million men of the major nation-states massacred each other in the interests of their respective capitalisms.   

(—in, Introducing  Heidegger, A Graphic Guide, by Jeff Collins)

There’s more at issue here than the posturing rhetoric suggests.

in process, étude-en-silence

Gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate, bodhi svaha  (from Heart Sutra)

Traditionally translated: gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, oh joy!

Conversation with J in reception area, mango-peach walls surrounding the quiet of large room with center fireplace on Saturday night, speaking about death, heaven, what we hold as true (for now) where we think of what happens with death.

Every conversation is open invitation to go beyond what we know. It is revelation of what is within what appears to be.

We so often think of death as a going somewhere, somewhere else, without body, no longer in time, to what some call heaven. We say we leave the body, going out, rising to celestial embrace, returning home, with the Lord, or, in the bardo, free from mortal core, released and at peace, enroute new beginning.

This morning, yule tree still on sun porch, still lighted, electric candles yet in windows, recent snowfall dripping from roof, house quiet, humming choir in ear, breathing at ease, something occurs to me.

Perhaps there is no out there.

What we call body is the exterior expression of interior manifestation.

Breath is connective energy keeping inner and outer in same place. As a lamp gives light when plugged in and switched on, so too, breath is how our body lights physical space for particular moments of time.

Breath, (spiritus, pneuma, prāṇa, rûaħ), is the invisible energy (except in freezing Maine mornings, when seeing ones breath means put your good wool hat on). 

Breath makes visible that through which it breathes.

And here we are!

But when breath ceases to breathe the exterior expression of interior manifestation, where does it go? Where does body go? And where does the invented or formulated “I” that has become associated with that bodily expression go?

Can we say that everything returns to the completely within?

Breath, (spiritus, pneuma, prāṇa, rûaħ), is the manifesting origination of everything that is, everything that has come to be, the creating touch moving out into existence.

And when we ‘die’ — what happens?

Perhaps return to inner source.

Breath unbreathes us from visibility. We return to invisibility, our senses or skandas disappear from view. 

We go within.

We go completely within.

And am “I” there?

“I” has been the particular form consciousness of the undivided and original awareness that resides nowhere with nothing outside itself. In death the “I” -- the external particular thinking feeling form -- goes, and is gone, beyond. 

Beyond, at or to the further side, or what Keiji Nishitani called, the absolute near-side. This beyond is the nothing we do not know. Buddhists call this emptiness, itself. In Hebrew scripture, I submit, it was called the ’no other.’ (How often is it read: “I am the Lord, and, there, is -- ’no other’.”

Contemplatives abandon themselves to the interior life. Zen practitioners sit in silence, as do Quakers, Sufis, and poets at the revelation of word-at-source.

Monks, monastics, mystics and other fools for wholeness, somehow understand the paradoxical call to die daily, to live with death as invitation to the radiant silence of the wholly other near side within which all belongs to itself, and nothing else is.

Nothing else is.

I don’t think we can easily (or hardly) grasp this. Hence the prayerful mantra/koan, “What Is This?”

J and I finished our conversation in the grand room of Sussman House, the peach-mango walls quietly surrounding, she behind desk, I in rocking chair, as both nurse and cna pass by and smile.

I return through corridor, pass to other side of swinging doors, and chat awhile at nurses’ station. 

The two patients I’d sat with, my teachers in breath, were now with family or friend. The unexplainable admixture, sorrow of heart and peace of mind, rapt me.

The hours or our holy étude-en-silence together tonite yields a deep quiet that walks out front door through refreshing cold to black truck parked under two flagpoles at edge of trees.

I turn and deep bow gasshō* toward the sacred space and holy individuals within.

It is a silent drive, a left, two rights, and straight northeast.

The zen master’s words background: only go straight -- don’t know!

...   ...   ...

* gassho A position used for greeting, with the palms together and fingers pointing upwards in prayer position; used in various Buddhist traditions, but also used in numerous cultures throughout Asia. It expresses greeting, request, thankfulness, reverence and prayer.

whose breath is it, anyway

does body
leave breath

or breath
leave body —

at hospice
tonight

question is
very near

as we
share breath

in dimly
lit rooms

where fabric
needles and

cat behind
fridge

are out
of sight

‘tis of thee

one year

later —

it’s not

too late

ji-ji-muge*

my room 

Is silent

as is

the house

waking up

to no 

one

here

...   ...   ...

* According to the Kegon teachings, when applied to human activity ri-ji-muge denotes seeking for the Buddha in the mind. The ji-ji-muge concept denotes looking for the Universal Buddha in the body. Following out the former idea, the flesh is regarded as a shackle imprisoning the enquiring spirit, so that by retiring from the world one should reduce it to proper submission and thereby obtain enlightenment. With the ji-ji-muge concept, however, illumination can be found only through perfecting flesh by bringing out its latent potentialities and thereby uncovering the Buddha hidden in the human heart. When applied this concept to the Mahayana schools of Buddhism, one may say that ri-ji-muge is the Way of Sitting (Zazen in Soto), while Ji-ji-muge is the Way of Moving in the World.  

(see P.K. Eidmann’”The Lion Roar”, Jodo Publishing, 1947 also various books by Kegon scholars such as Shinya Kasugai, Ryosho Takamine) 

(—from, Ji-ji-muge and Economics of Enlightenment, Chris J. Czerkawski, (Received on April 1, 2005, Hiroshima Shudo University Repository)

happy birthday, 1/2 dogen & francis hermitage lineage

Dōgen Zenji (道元禅師; 19 January 1200 – 22 September 1253), also known as Dōgen Kigen (道元希玄), Eihei Dōgen (永平道元), Kōso Jōyō Daishi (高祖承陽大師), or Busshō Dentō Kokushi (仏性伝東国師), was a Japanese Buddhist priest, writer, poet, philosopher, and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. (—Wikipedia)

If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? [Dogen] 

Do not fragment your attention but see what each moment calls for. [Dogen] 

Old buddhas and new buddhas reveal their bodies and expound dharma. [Dogen] 

Use your own hands, your own eyes, your own sincerity. [Dogen]

Take continuous care. [Dogen] 

http://oaks.nvg.org/dogen-quotations.html

prelude to new ethos

1. Challenge:

In the premodern world, ethics received its authority from cosmology. The sacred order of the cosmos dictated the right order of society and the normative virtues for individuals. Each society thought its way of life reflected the universal and sacred natural order of things. With the emergence of the comparative study of cultures, through modern historiography and the social sciences in the nineteenth century, the cosmic world-views of all cultures were relativized. At the same time philosophy, which had already declared its independence from religion, attempted to find a new authoritative ground for ethics in the Enlightenment ideal of a universal rationality independent of any given culture. We now live in a time when this modern attempt is widely viewed as having failed. Indeed, Jean-François Lyotard suggests, in The Postmodern Condition,4 that a key indicator of the emergence of our postmodern situation is the collapse of all metanarratives, whether the ancient cosmic religious stories or modern cosmic stories of universal rationality and scientific progress.

According to the metanarrative of the Enlightenment, in the ancient childhood of the human race people lived by stories (myths), then in the medieval adolescence of the human race, humans embraced rationality (logic and speculative metaphysics). Finally, in the modern adulthood of the human race, humans learned to think for themselves, threw off their childish and adolescent ways and embraced empirical scientific rationality and technological progress. “Man” had “come of age” and no longer needed story – or so the story goes. Contemporary narrative theorists like Stanley Hauerwas 5 and Alasdair MacIntyre 6 have pointed out that even the modern claim of the narrative independence of rationality is dependent on a narrative – the story of the three ages of the human race. They have rightly argued that all rationality is narrative dependent. If this is the case then our postmodern situation is that, on the one hand, our metanarratives (grand stories) have been relativized and, on the other hand, we cannot escape narrative. So with what are we left?

(—from, Teaching Comparative Religious Ethics Online and in the Classroom, Introduction, For the second edition of: Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach to Global Ethics, (2011) by Fasching, deChant, Lantigua), Wiley Instructor Companion Site

2. Response:

I would have said, “So what are we left with?” But I suspect, “So with what are we left? is better grammar. Still, the question is good — do we have a story that makes sense today?

I love stories. Here’s what I’m left with: You and I are stories being written. The old stories are there for us to read. The many stories of many people are here for us to listen to. We are left with one another. And what are we? And what are we doing?

My story says we are ever-beginning. You and I, so too our culture, era, and community, come alive to the extent we speak with and listen to one another. Talking about ethics together is part of ever-beginning.

I like the word ethos. The Oxford Dictionary defines it: “The characteristic spirit of a culture, era, or community as manifested in its attitudes and aspirations.”

heading out of town

Shared psychosis.

That’s what a psychiatrist said happens to those who get close to someone who is powerful and needy.

Something odd is taking place in Washington DC.

Best to stay away.

Anyway, I’m not that good at sharing.

op cit

“Monastics and hippies and poets . . . we’re deliberately irrelevant.” (Thomas Merton)

Anything I could say about Merton’s quote wouldn’t matter.

‘cuse me while I disappear

Friend in Mexico writes chapters of autobiography. Tells of recent gift of wall mirror. Giver wants nothing further to do with him. He wonders why.

It will snow tonight in Maine. I take to bed to rest under congestion and cough in hopes of sleeping it away. A gift a nice lady in narrow office area gave me last week.

It is tiring watching the tedious drama of Washington DC play out in endless scenes of infuriating lack of courage. If missiles fly or palace intrigue beheads unsuspecting necks it seems a natural outcome of current duplicity, pettiness, and embarrassment.

How would you want to study ethics? I would want to learn the fascinating ambiguity of my life. How my being and the manifestation of culture, era, and community all intersect as trampolene springing foreword.

Mirrors reflect what is presented to them. They show what stands behind us. They give a room broader boundaries. We are not meant to occupy a mirror. We either step aside and view what surrounds, or we take a more radical action.

We step into the mirror.

No reflection.

Just disappearance.

when the male in charge is nothing like the one we need

Nietzsche says that opposition is necessary.

If that is true, we have what is necessary.

Opposition seems to be the political weapon of choice.

The content of our character, that which is beyond behavior, is our destiny.

In the United States, on this feast of Martin Luther King, our destiny currently feels to be crude, cynical, and cantankerous.

Help us, O spirit of courage and good words, to find the opposite of our current destiny!

itinerary

Here comes Monday!

One minute at a time, and it will go by.

Do nothing. Go nowhere.  Love each step!

ontology as erasure

bent back
      new yorker

louis menand
     piece, comment

words of the
     year, 8jan18

“fake” is now
     used to mean

“I deny
     your reality.”

It is a new year,
     a new fear

snow machine and hospice room

night belongs to groomers on mountain

and those that barely breathe in beds —

both laboring for smooth passage, one more