yū and mu

Living mostly in the world of form, I have little familiarity with the formless. But at times I wonder if that is really the case.  How much of my life is lived just outside the edge of consciousness, just beyond the corner of form? We chant the Prajna Paramita several times a week. In it — That which is form is emptiness, that which is emptiness, form. (cf. Commentary by Venerable Zasep Tulku Rinpoche). 

John W.M. Krummel writes about yū and mu (being and nothing, form and formlessness):

Being and Nothing, Form and Formlessness 

Nishida often characterizes the distinction between being and nothing in terms of the cultural contrast of West and East.  In the preface to Hatarakumono kara mirumono e(『働くものから見るものへ』 ; From the Working to the Seeing) of 1927, he contrasts the “brilliant development of Western civilization that takes form as being…” and “the root of Eastern culture that harbors within itself that which sees the form of the formless and hears the sound of the soundless” (Z3 255) — a formlessness that has nurtured the traditions of the East.  The distinction he makes here between West and East is that between form (keisō 形相, katachi 形) and formlessness.  Being (yū) corresponds to form and the nothing corresponds to the formless.  Beings accordingly are what are present in determinate form, contrasted and differentiated from one another.  In Tetsugaku no konpon mondai (『哲学の根本問題』; Fundamental Problems of Philosophy) of 1933-34, Nishida reiterates this contrast by stating that the thought of being is at the root of Western culture while the thought of the nothing is at the root of Eastern culture. (Z6 348)  Here as well, reality for the West is grounded in being qua form, while reality for the East is grounded in the nothing as formless.  Because the European tradition conceives the root of reality to be being (yū) or the “possession of form” (yūkei 有形), it prioritizes “the form-possessing [katachiarumono 形あるもの], the determinate [genteiseraretamono 限定せられたもの], as reality [jitsuzai 実在].” (Z6 335-36)  On the premise that “something cannot be born from nothing” (ex nihilo nihil fit), the ancient Greeks came to conceive of the source of all beings in terms of a constant and unchanging primordial being.  The prime example here would be the Platonic ideas serving as principles of the actual world, and among which the ultimate source would be the “idea of the Good.” The Platonic concept of the idea (ἰδέα) etymologically means “form” (eidos, εἶδος), which also literally means the “look” of a thing, and hence that which can be objectified in its visibility to the eye, or by extension, its intelligibility.  In Nishida’s view, ancient Greek philosophy that became the source of Western culture took form in this sense as the ground of what is real.   By contrast, the Eastern tradition takes a certain formlessness or non-substantiality — as in the Buddhist sense of the emptiness of substance (Skt. śūnyatā, Jp. kū 空; Skt. nihsvabhāva) — to be the source of everything.  Nishida makes the same contrast in 1940 in Nihon bunka no mondai (『日本文化の問題』; The Problem of Japanese Culture) when he speaks of Western antiquity as conceiving the root of reality to be being (yū) and the formed (yūkei 有形), and Eastern antiquity as conceiving the root of reality to be the nothing (mu) and the formless (mukei 無刑). (Z9 60)

(—from, Chapter 17, Anontology and the Issue of Being and Nothing in Nishida Kitarō, [Published in JeeLoo Liu & Douglas L. Berger (eds.). Nothingness in Asian Philosophy. London: Routledge, by John W.M. Krummel)

The wind gusts hard through night. The frightened border collie is finally calm and sleeping after trying to climb onto desk and settling awhile on bed. Rest comes hard for the anxious.

The gate to dooryard is closed. Sheltering in place (a good name for hermitage) serves as a novitiate of sorts for the many, few of whom would voluntarily choose it. There is a split between the anxious and the skeptical as to what this current state of affairs means or portends.

I read, take walks, read numbers to worker’s comp numbers cruncher, eat peanut butter and jam on toasted english muffin, take morning coffee, do silent sitting, listen to medieval chants and music, and wonder.

About the root of reality.

And this interchanging spate of time.

We move, uncertainly, through.

a word, solivagant, from merriam-webster

solivagant

 noun

so·​liv·​a·​gant | \ sōˈlivəgənt \

plural -s

Definition of solivagant

 (Entry 1 of 2)

               : a solitary wanderer

solivagant

 adjective

\ " \

Definition of solivagant (Entry 2 of 2)

              : rambling alone : marked by solitary wandering

History and Etymology for solivagant

Noun 

          Latin solivagus wandering alone (from soli- + vagus wandering) + English -ant

Adjective

Latin solivagus + English -ant

--Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Pronounced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-E-tQQV8HU

diminishing ice

Believe?

Or remain wondering?

For centuries the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer, has been a changeless feature of life in the Arab world. In war or peace, prosperity or famine, the same rhythmic chant echoes across cities and towns five times each day. Midway through comes an exhortation to worship. But on March 13th a muezzin in Kuwait, his voice plainly cracking with emotion, made a small tweak. Instead of “hayya alas-salah” (come to prayer), he told the faithful “as-salatu fi buyutikum” (pray in your homes). Words that seemed immutable were no longer such.                (—from, Prayer in a Pandemic, 19mar20, The Economist)

Walking down hall to WC I think about the book I was reading while soaking in tub last evening. Traditional theology about a perfect God and a sinning couple, the fire of God scorching anything other than himself that seems unfaithfully separate, the incarnating Christ a perfect sacrifice, how no personal goodness does the trick, how only blood sacrifice brings us in.

I wished I’d grabbed a different book off the shelf.

Walking back to room this morning I wondered how that story took such fast hold on the psyche in the West, how much work there is to undertake to square the scriptural belief with natural experience and secular metaphor.

Come to mosque? (Or temple, church, synagogue). Or pray at home?

Is the person the new platform for prayer? Is this virus crisis, for example, with stay-away mandate, offering individuals the sudden opportunity to discover a different locus for (what is called) prayer? Solitary. Idiosyncratic. Personalized. Idiorhythmic.

The solo zafu. The armchair. The open field between pond and mountain. The overturned toboggan sluice and the beached handicapped kayak launch as meditation sitting spots.The bedridden turn of mind to wondering.

The story of blood sacrifice rescuing mortal humans into the company of a perfectly loving yet just God is a story from a timepiece of needful precision.

Ours is a breath rhythm of silent stillness that is open to sky and ground, water and wood stove smoke, watching what-is-there as a holy pantomime reflecting reverence and reverie as evaporating materiality and metamorphic unfolding dance before us and within us in freedom and creative transformation.

We’re going to need new story.

One that emerges from the wandering pilgrimage we’ve become.

One that complements the wandering home we are.

One that wonders, deeply and widely, about the unfathomable, the unsurpassable, the uncontainable thisness and thusness of an emerging and evanescent facticity — everyday reality and ordinary mind.

We are what is becoming itself (without fear) in love — in, amongst, for — one another. Perhaps of such is the nature of prayer.

rest, assuredly

This,
too
will

pass

As we will

Pass
in
time

(dear
friends)

practice is endless

A friend wondered in an email what Eihei Dōgen Kigen Zenji (1200-1253) would say about the immense opportunity for changing mind resides beneath the current situation.

I don't know what he'd say.

But here's something he has said:

“Long ago a monk asked an old master, “When hundreds, thousands, or myriads of objects come all at once, what should be done?”The master replied, “Don’t try to control them”What he means is that in whatever way objects come, do not try to change them. Whatever comes is the buddha-dharma, not objects at all. Do not understand the master’s reply as merely a brilliant admonition, but realize that it is the truth. Even if you try to control what comes, it cannot be controlled.” 

― Dōgen, Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dogen

And: 

“This is the Way of Dōgen Zenji. For him, the Way is not simply one direction from starting point to goal; rather, the Way is like a circle. We arouse bodhi mind moment by moment, we practice moment by moment, we become fully aware moment by moment, and we are in nirvana moment by moment. And we continue to do it ceaselessly. Our practice is perfect in each moment and yet we have a direction toward buddha. It is difficult to grasp with the intellect, but that is the Way that Dōgen Zenji refers to in Bendōwa. So our practice is not a kind of training for the sake of making an ignorant person smart, clever, and finally enlightened. Each action, each moment of sitting, is arousing bodhi mind, practice, awakening, and nirvana. Each moment is perfect, and yet within this perfect moment we have a direction, the bodhisattva vows. "However innumerable all beings are, I vow to save them all. However inexhaustible my delusions are, I vow to extinguish them all. However immeasurable the dharma teachings are, I vow to master them all. However endless the Buddha's way is, I vow to follow it." These four bodhisattva vows are our direction within our moment-by-moment practice. And yet each moment is perfect. Since our delusion is inexhaustible, at no time can we eliminate all our delusions. Still we try to do it moment by moment. This trying is itself the manifestation of the buddha way, buddha's enlightenment. But even though we try as hard as possible to do it, we cannot be perfect. So we should repent. And repentance becomes energy to go further, to practice further in the direction of buddha. That is the basis of bodhisattva practice. Our practice is endless. Enlightenment is beginningless.”   

(― Dōgen, The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dogen's Bendowa, With Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi)(Goodreads) 

There's joy in experiencing how much so many dear hearts long to reach out and effect a gathering communal comfort distance sangha during this suffering time. 

ways to way itself to dwell as reality

Perhaps all inquiry, even what we call prayer, is the longing for manifestion and realization of what is the inapparant and inconspicuously real. We might say that what we see and what we don’t see are the same thing, undifferentiated and inseparately there.

“Nature loves to hide” (Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεί), Heracleitus of Ephesus is famously credited with having said.1 But where does nature hide? In what place or space? Has it always hid from the beginning? Or is the beginning the event of the hiding? Nature and the elemental are inextricably connected. And the question of the elemental is bound to the question of the beginning. Does nature hide behind the elemental? Or is the elemental the open hiding place of nature?
(—from, Hiding Between Basho and Chōra Re-imagining and Re-placing the Elemental, Brian Schroeder, Rochester Institute of Technology, Research in Phenomenology, brill.com/rp)

 You are who you are. I am what I am. What is seen is what is there. The internexus — the connection between, of seeming opposites, their border transit, like contemporary and ancient migrations — tell the tale of our longing for interpenetration, marriage, coalescence.

Even the stated preference for distinctness, individuality, autonomy — however misunderstood — is the confusion we experience of the hidden wholeness grounding reality that is our nature. We rest by changing, Heraclitus said, not by holding tight to static patterns of being.

Altering the ways in which we think about and respond to the global problem of rapid environmental change is the first step toward adequately addressing a long-term solution for our current and future problems. Fundamental to the East Asian perspectives presented here is the emphasis on the principles of unity and balance from a holistic and organic standpoint. This has implications for the way that causality is conceived in the external environing world and for understanding internal life-movements. Arriving at this realization of balance and unity necessitates turning away from our anthropocentrically based conceptions of nature, space, place, ecology, environment, and world toward a vision of shared dwelling on the Earth, wherein the metaphysical and epistemological dualisms that still hold sway over the popular mind-set are “cast aside” or “drop off,” to use Dōgen’s expression.4 Though distinct, the classic philosophies of Daoism, Buddhism, and Zen (as well as Confucianism, which will not be taken up here) share the common perspective that the human and the nonhuman inseparably coexist. How we view this interrelationship is what defines our existence. At the risk of over-generalizing, this standpoint is what distinguishes East Asian philosophies from most Western philosophical, theological, and scientific perspectives. (—ibid)

As everything shuts down — schools, businesses, church gatherings, restaurants, pubs, border crossings, predictability — fears slowly insinuate into daily routine.

The names of our pets signal to us a way through this time:

• bodhi chitta — the mind of enlightenment, the excellence of awakened heart;
• panta rhei — everything flows, eternal change; and
• max manjushri  — gentle glory, bodhisattva of  wisdom.

As two cats and a dog prowl the borders of their particular beings, searching for ways to dwell in harmony, so we do the same.

It is questioned whether our true nature is harmony, or whether it is strife.

What disturbs us defines us, the novelist Wiesel wrote.

Our particular being is not other than universal being.

自体

Jitai.  (Itself)

は

wa.     (Is)

実態

Jittai.   (Reality)

Reality is Itself.  Itself is Reality.

So, we ask: “What am I?

May that which is truly itself help us learn the answer to our inquiry!

speaking into a void

Innocence is no longer sufficient.

When false accusations or inflated imaginative malfeasance threaten to destroy a life, there’s a need to battle with wits and whatever wisdom is available.

Two women suffered a wrong. One wrote about the ordeal.

If I could return to that job interview from more than three years ago, to that moment when I was asked about my responsibility as a creative-nonfiction writer in the post-truth world, I know what I would say now: Our allegiance as nonfiction writers is not so much to truth as it is to honesty. Because truth can be spoken into a void, while honesty implies an audience, a reader, real people to whom you commit to tell your story as accurately and truthfully as you can so that they can then differentiate for themselves the facts from the lies, the truth from the fiction.
(--from, The Accusations Were Lies. But Could We Prove It?  by Sarah Viren, March 18, 2020, The New York Times)

In an instant, in seems, what we once called truth is optional in the hands of some people. The false and the fake litter our minds and clog our experience.

The models we thought we had have crumpled.

Diogenes is still looking.

one function

Come to think of it, there probably is one function of language — prayer.

And one function of prayer — silence.

Then, one function of silence — unwavering gaze.

Seeing everything through.

the day before today

beginning solitude

zazen seat, 19 degrees

when skiing is done for the season

and ice sings its final echoes with departing cracking arias

tuesday morning

Border Collie jumps up to bed while I am down the hall. He stretches. Paw on right shoulder. For the moment he is not running in his sleep.

We all seem to be running in sleep.

We close roadside gate to keep the Max-manjushri from running out onto Barnestown road. It feels like a closing in. Dung this time of sequestering, the hermitage feels like a hermitage.

It dawns on the populace — this is different. Don’t be flip. Sober down.

Looking around, everywhere a greater stillness moves closer in.

Morning light up east.

This time will change everything we think we know.

Look to the left, look to the right; stand up, sit down, fight fight fight!

seeing through

We're in it now. Nor do we know for how long.

I walk Rockport cemetery listening to Joseph Campbell's book Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal on audio. Then I am talking with the pianist by phone who is excited about a Bach Chaccone. He describes it with passion and intensity. And would I look up a gravesite of someone from twenty years ago he's not been able to find. We won't be getting together for a dinner, something we've never done, because everyone is sequestered in social distancing washing our hands every fifteen minutes and cultivating solitude as though one might be a hermit or a recluse. Which is what I am. So this time is gift. Every activity I engage in of a public nature I've been excluded from -- prison, nursing home, college independent study, hospital, hospice house -- leaving me happily cancelled for unknown duration. So walking in a cemetery for two plus miles this afternoon, and walking field of snow bowl this morning for two plus miles, is the briar patch Ive been thrown in.

In My Own Way  2008/08/08 “Why – and again why – do you want to know whether there is a God, whether there is a life after death, or what method you should follow to become enlightened, liberated, or realized?  Could it be that you identify yourself with a merely abstract ego based on nothing but memories?  That therefore you are not alive and aware in the eternal present, and thus worry interminably about your future?  Furthermore, don’t you realized that when you accept someone as a spiritual teacher, you do so by your own authority and choice?  You yourself license the Bible, the Koran, or the Gita as infallible.  Wake up!…and, without putting it into words, watch what is, now.  You thus realize that there is no ‘feeler’ apart from feelings, and no granular, billiard-ball ‘self’ confronting the universe.” (--Posted in quotes | Tagged eternal present, ji-ji-mu-ge, Krishnamurti, spirituality )

I talk afterwards to hospice volunteer who is seeing a patient who tightens with pain. They meditate together. She just wants to connect with another hospice volunteer about what she knows to be true -- you can't take away another's difficulties -- you can, however, be with them as they arise and as they ease away -- the difficulties and, ultimately, the person. It is the gaze that compels us to pay attention. We look upon, and are looked upon. Between the gaze and the gaze is the span of existence seen through with what develops into fond presence.

Bach, grief, the dying, cemetery, walking solitude, friendship at an expanse of space between.

I visit Herb and Polly's graves. I thank him for his visit in my dream the other night, and ask what he wanted. Two of his paintings hang in the hermitage. "What Jew do you know just finished a painting of the crucifixion?" he asked some fifteen years ago. "I want you to have it." he said. It hangs in the front room. 

There's fear and concern about the pandemic virus circling the globe. Everything is shutting down. Many think it's a hoax. Many think it will simply pass away. Many have no idea. Shelves in grocery stores empty. 

I don't know. Which is right where I prefer being.

Being can't be known.

Just seen.

Through.

buonas noches

note: we are suspending public practice until it is resumed

Hello friends,

Notice: We are suspending public practice until it is resumed.

There will be no Sunday Evening Practice tonight at the hermitage. 

In consultation with some who attend we've decided to exercise discretion toward precaution in line with self/social-distancing during this time. 

(As an eremite, this decision has dancing feet. Whereas Saskia, more cenobitic, is less thrilled. She'll probably bake five deserts to exercise her disappointment.)   

As always, we will hold you in heart and mind.

May you be happy, safe, free, and rest easy in your (true) home!

—Bill (and Saskia)

Here is One-
Another Itself
             
meetingbrook 
      hermitage
               בס”ד 

when carnival barker’s hustle becomes faint memory

Of course we choose to believe we’ll be alright. This crisis will pass. We’ll again become inattentive and happy. Toilet paper will miraculously refill empty grocery shelves. The person across from us no longer has a viral dagger up their sleeve.

And the president will be looked at as quaint and outdated.

Very stable genius. Millions of Trump’s supporters aren’t blind to the president’s clownishness and ignorance. But they’ve been relatively indifferent to both, because they find the first entertaining and the second irrelevant to his overall performance. Who cares what a president knows about epidemiology, so long as the markets are up? 

They care now. The coronavirus has exposed the falsehood of so many notions Trump’s base holds about the presidency: that experts are unnecessary; that hunches are a substitute for knowledge; that competence in administration is overrated; that every criticism is a hoax; and that everything that happens in Washington is B.S. Above all, it has devastated the conceit that having an epic narcissist in the White House is a riskless proposition at a time of extreme risk. 

Will Trump’s declaration of a national emergency change this? 

Maybe, and the president has a belated opportunity to demonstrate seriousness he has lacked so far. But nobody should forget that such seriousness would only be a function of political expediency. Should coronavirus recede in warmer weather, you can depend on Trump to declare his premature victory — not warn that winter is coming. 

It should not have had to take a deadly virus to expose this presidency for what it is. But it’s fitting that it has. A man who thinks he can twist every truth to suit his needs has at last discovered that he cannot twist the truths of nature and of one of nature’s gods. Her name remains Nemesis.

(from, Trump Meets Nemesis, Punisher of Hubris, By Bret Stephens, March 13, 2020, NYTimes)

Even the most fun roller coaster ride ends. Wheels stop. Safety bar releases. Riders step out and can’t believe they survived. They wander off to the midway for hot dog and cotton candy.

Then they go home.

The carnival barker’s hustle becomes faint memory.

There are lives to be lived. Everyday concerns and routines.

The dear shill, they find, really didn't care for them.

It was bread and circuses.

Every rube has virtual tattoo across their forehead — “Theres a sucker born every minute.”

The hat-hawking salesman takes his wares and disappears.

fifteen march tomorrow, and all is not well

The oracle resounds

across the public square --

Beware the

Idiots

of March!

sequestered, yet simpatico

I can hear singing from the White House Residence -- "O Sole Mio!" 

And the echoing refrain from Number One Observatory Circle 2.5 miles away -- "Tutti quanti bello!"

Oh, the evening seranade cascading the empty streets and equally empty promise between these two!

we’ll see

The millionaire who founded the credit card bank had a yacht named “So far, so good.”

It could have been the medieval theologian’s definition of God.

Today his mansion on the hill overlooking the bay is a treatment center for wealthy folks with alcohol addiction difficulties. “One deity at a time” might be a contemporary definition of God.

I have no definition of God.

If I did —

Mine could be Geraldine’s logion “What you see is what you get.”

Or Wittgenstein’s “Don’t think, look.”

We’ll see. . . 

simply put

Wa-
sh-
ing

Ha-
nds

https://twitter.com/cdcgov/status/1235314322814971907?s=21

the more affection

Something from Trappist monastery:

"It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them…Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say, because I come to see who I am."Photograph by Brother Brian. Lines by Thomas Merton

Merton reminds me there is, often, a wide difference between what words we choose to say about who we are and what we actually are once words look around and walk away.

The only time, it seems, we near who and what we actually are is when we fall into silence surrounded by nothing diverting nothing draping us from inconspicuous and undisclosed manifestation of our field of emptiness wherein only what-is-itself resides within-itself as-itself revealing itself as a whole without division a whole within an all-encompassing realization of  ji-ji-mu-ge* and tat-tvam-asi.**  

...   ...   ...

* “I can have the feeling ‘self’ only in relations to, and by contrast with, the feeling ‘other.’  In the same way, I am what I am only in relation to what everything else is.  The Japanese call this ji-ji-mu-ge, which means that between every thing-event (ji) and every other thing-event there is no (mu) barrier (ge).  Each implies all, and all implies each.”

(—Alan Watts)  https://quotesfromtheunderground.wordpress.com/tag/ji-ji-mu-ge/ 

** On hearing this reply from his son, the father (Uddalaka) slowly explained to him using simple examples: "Son! Have you not seen the clay in front of the potter's house? It becomes a pot in the hands of the potter. If the clay is known, then all things made of clay are known! Similarly if you know gold, things made of gold like ornaments are known. If you know iron, all things made of iron are known. In the same way, if you know "Brahman" then all the things (the entire universe) that cannot exist without Him are also known." He continued his teaching and concluded with the statement, tat tvam asi. In very simple terms, tat represents brahman and tvam identifies the divine soul (Atman) that resides ‘within’ the jIva. asi is an affirmation equating Brahman and Atman. In very subtle terms, Uddalaka tells us that by knowing the SELF (Self-realization) we will be able to recognize the entire Universe because of the fact that the Universe cannot exist without the presence of Brahman. It is just like saying there will not be a pot without clay and there will be no more golden ring without the gold! Sri Adi Shankara interprets "tat tvam asi" to mean "The jIva and brahman are identical so that there is no difference between the Atman of jIva and Brahman. Sri Adi Shankara correctly assumes the "svarUpa aikyam" that is the absolute identity between the jIvAtman and the paramAtman (brahman).
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/definitions/tattvamasi.htm

this poem in a time for poetry

 A poet today sends this poem by Lynn Ungar (3/11/20):

Pandemic 

What if you thought of it
as the Jews consider the Sabbath—
the most sacred of times?
Cease from travel.
Cease from buying and selling.
Give up, just for now,
on trying to make the world
different than it is.
Sing. Pray. Touch only those
to whom you commit your life.
Center down. 

And when your body has become still,
reach out with your heart.
Know that we are connected
in ways that are terrifying and beautiful.
(You could hardly deny it now.)
Know that our lives
are in one another’s hands.
(Surely, that has come clear.)
Do not reach out your hands.
Reach out your heart.
Reach out your words.
Reach out all the tendrils
of compassion that move, invisibly,
where we cannot touch. 

Promise this world your love--
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
so long as we all shall live 

     (Poem by Lynn Ungar, 3/11/20) 

hoop-less and hope-fraught

Watching the stock market.

All my money is tied up in peanut butter, pretzels, and english muffins.

Half of my wealth is still half of nothing.

I don’t wish to sound insensitive. But there’s nothing there.

It is, however, painful to listen to and read the petty swipes clawed at Europe, Democrats, China, and the politicians who seem more irrelevant than ever.

It used to peeve me when trump would boast and posture and act like a snide drunk. Now he just seems an also ran in an unimportant foot race. We look beyond him.

I listen to Joseph Campbell pieces gathered into book, Myths to Live By. Some light in a shadowed time! Myth and symbol, story and wisdom are so welcome in this time of scary feeble minded schoolyard banter.

My patience has run out. So little integrity and courage!

I buy more chocolate milk. Jam. Yoghurt. And Annie’s soup.

My prayer life comprises of saying Oh s^~t, and what the f*#k?  It is a litany and mantra practice that must be done in solitude. (There’s so much about prayer that is apophatic!)

I’m not much company. But then, I never was. When someone mentions my name the standard response is — Who? And, why?

Enough.

Care for one another, eh? Just try it!

With no NBA nor March Madness and no Europeans for a month — what else is there to do?

end in itself

Ask anyone whether we need monitoring and surveillance and mostly you will, reluctantly, hear -- Yes, we do!

What is the difficulty in keeping tabs on ourselves, setting moral direction, and remaining ethical and moral beings?

Whether we are writing poetry or constructing arguments, playing sports or baking cakes, we human beings are governed by laws we impose on ourselves. But of all the forms that self-government takes, one has been singled out for special philosophical attention, perhaps because it appears to underlie all the rest. This is the self-governed (and self-governing) activity we call “making up one’s own mind about how to act.” It is generally agreed that our capacity to do this is quite a marvelous evolutionary achievement. Indeed, many believe that being able to determine one’s own will is intrinsically valuable—an “end in itself” whose value does not depend on anything else. For this reason, they say, self-governing (“autonomous”) agency has deep moral signif-icance: autonomy is both the source of fundamental rights and the key to understanding what these rights are and what we must do to acknowledge them.1
The suggestion that there is a link between autonomy and morality is highly plausible. If we really do have a moral status that distinguishes us from all other animals, then on what can this status depend if not on the fact that we alone are not mere pawns of nature, at the mercy of our instincts? If we are especially worthy of respect, then mustn’t this be because we alone can and do decide for ourselves whether and how our inclinations are really worth satisfying? If there are limitations on how we can justifiably treat one another, then isn’t this, in part, because, independent of our more particular concerns, it is a good thing for each of us to determine our own will?  

(--from, Valuing Autonomy and Respecting Persons: Manipulation, Seduction, and the Basis of Moral Constraints*, by Sarah Buss, Ethics 115 (January 2005): 195–235, 2005 by The University of Chicago.)

When we encounter people in our houses, on our streets, in corporations, or in government leadership positions who are untrustworthy, egoistically driven to the point of self-serving actions instead of the good of others -- we soberly reflect on the need for controls, checks, holding accountable, taking off the streets.

What codes, what laws, can we lay out for ourselves that would obviate the need for strong and rigid correctives coming from an overseeing authority? Or, is such a question naive? Are we, by nature, untrustworthy? Or, is something else at play?

Here's my poem:

Nothing  

I see  

is mine

you can have it 

I only ask 

your measured 

kindness 

and to be 

left 

alone  

to find 

nourishment 

in itself 

a lively interest

Are these the Europeans who will be remaining in Europe for the next month?

So let us not place any particular value on the city's name. Like all big cities it was made up of irregularity, change, forward spurts, failures to keep step, collisions of objects and interests, puncated by unfathomable silences; made up of pathways and untrodden ways, of one great rhythmic beat as well as the chronic discord and mutual displacement of all its contending rhythms. All in all, it was like a boiling bubble inside a pot made of the durable stuff of buildings, laws, regulations, and historical traditions. 

The two people who were walking up one of its wide, bustling avenues naturally were not thinking along these lines. They clearly belonged to a privileged social class, with their distinguished bearing, style of dress, and conversation, the initials of their names embroidered on their underwear, and just as discreetly, which is to say not for outward show but in the fine underwear of their minds, they knew who they were and that they belonged in a European capital city and imperial residence. Their names might have been Er- melinda.Tuzzi and Amheim-but then, they couldn't be, because in August Frau Tuzzi was still in Bad Aussee with her husband and Dr. Amheim was still in Constantinople; so we are left to wonder who they were. People who take a lively interest in what goes on often wonder about such puzzling sights on the street, but they soon forget them again, unless they happen to remember during their next few steps where they have seen those other two before. The pair now came to a sudden stop when they saw a rapidly gathering crowd in front of them. Just. a moment earlier something there had broken ranks; falling sideways with a crash, something had spun around and come to a skidding halt - a heavy truck, as it turned out, which had braked so sharply that it was now stranded with one wheel on the curb. Like bees clustering around the entrance to their hive people had instantly surrounded a small spot on the pavement, which they left open in their midst. paper, clumsily waving his arms as he tried to explain the accident. The glances of the newcomers turned to him, then warily dropped to the bottom of the hole where a man who lay there as if dead had been bedded against the curb. It was by his own carelessness that he had come to grief, as everyone agreed. People took turns kneeling beside him, vaguely wanting to help; unbuttoning his jacket, then closing it again; trying to prop him up, then laying him down again. They were really only marking time while waiting for the ambulance to bring someone who would know what to do and have the right to do it.

(—p.4-5, part I,  THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES, by Robert Musil)

We must wonder about the truck driver, the couple, the awaited ambulance, and, of course, the man down whose carelessness consisted in being where he was when Herr Uncertain appeared to say ”hello, I’m here, do you mind, no need to bother, yes, I’ll stay awhile, then, you know, go.”

easy, pass

They build high speed E-ZPass in York Maine turnpike. Big job. Soon we’ll be having our intentions scanned.

Colleges send students packing as spring break comes saying classes will resume online, don’t come back here until...

Professional basketball suspends games as season stalls prohibiting large crowds from assembling. Will LeBron still be named MVP?

College basketball tournaments and March Madness will occur to empty arenas with only tv cameras.

In Italy stores close.

Travel from Europe to US is suspended for 30 days. Except for exceptions. Goods and money only. Starting Friday midnight.

The president and right wing commentators momentarily suspend sharing their opinions that coronavirus is a left wing plot to remove him from office. Fake. Hoax. Somehow, Obama.

Meanwhile, silence deepens within this space wherein I dwell.

Liverpool loses at home.

Tom Hanks and wife announce they’ve tested positive.

We’re all bohemian now. Coffee and newspaper, an affect of pas de problème that looks hard and insouciantly at the inevitability of whatever will occur. I straighten my beret. I walk the boulevard.  I’d smoke ‘em if I had ‘em, but I don’t.

The border collie decides that insanity is the only saving grace responding to the terrifying ordinariness of the world he encounters outside his very busy mind and nervous system.

For however long I might be able to survive on peanut butter, english muffins and coffee.

I will be cremated and the coffee creamated. All my possessions will go to Good Will. I tried to have good will these past decades. I was an inconspicuous and nondescript failure.

Il n’y a  pas de quoi.

Dog is asleep across my legs.

Charles Olson wrote “There is no intelligence / the equal / of the situation.”

We have a situation here.

What we need is a good idea.

And yet...there are no ideas but in things.

And things are made of words.

And words are where silence hides in plain sight.

news

Pandemic gets notice.

I pray all remain safe.

One day one person at a time.

home, home on the range

In the dream I visit an artist on deathbed. A small bedroom on top floor. I bow.

I remain befuddled. Talk to woman outside. His death years before was not his death. It was faked. He’d been here in this large old house. Very few knew.

She drives away in a banged up yellow orange amphibious vehicle. Tall wood ladder leans against house. I think it is mine.

I cannot find the person I came with.

One of the passthrough rooms upstairs is built into bedrock.

Looking back on dream I am aware I have no wish or hope for there to be something, some life, after death.

Let all familiarity, all knowing, all memory be extinguished. No reward. No punishment.

I recall in the dream passing children. A young boy is looking for something. We look to the sky. I sing, “and the skies are not cloudy all day.”

finger-wagging experience

After watching Death of a President, Kanopy, a mockumentary from British filmmaker Gabriel Range, this comment 

Assassinations are troubling and abhorrent. I'm glad this didn't happen. Still, the aftermath and the mentality of those empowered to exercise so-called justice resonates recognizably. In real politics Cheney was frightening in his single-minded obsession. And while Bush has become again the country boy regular fella with Texas charm, it is a reminder of the anguish and disbelief of a vanity war with its sorrowful deaths and ruined psyches of veterans. We remain a nation of profoundly skeptical and deeply distrustful people. Witness the current example of political meshugana in Washington DC.

The Iraq incursion, the Afghanistan never-ending debacle, the protests, the troubling deaths there and returning suffering here, the industry of mercenary killing and defense bonanza -- these have entered our national bloodstream like a slow and deadly virus effectuating a lack of confidence and bizarre behavior in leaders and political posturing.

The aftershock continues.

I wish Bush well.

I wish Cheney well.

I wish the families suffering through loss and ptsd a healing recovery.

And to the deranged misleading ethos rifling our system of government operative today -- I wish a speedy exit and finger-wagging experience in the future.

Don't forget the things that were done. Don't forget the names of those responsible. Mostly, don't forget those we have seen, and still see, before our eyes, with mournful remembrance.

All’s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace of accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination
stealing like the tide across a map
to his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.

(--from poem, Epilogue, by Robert Lowell) 

just before stepping on apm*

Gate closed. Mud softens. Raw air.

Silence reveals nothing.

I listen.

Cannot hear any-

thing.

Blood beats left ear.

Sound of no-

thing.  Coney Island

was end of line,

Sea Beach train.

West End seemed

more interesting

alternative. Not his kind

of people, left handed

catcher said about new

york party.  He was right.

I have letter from Vietnam

saying how

lucky we were


...   ...   ...

          * anti-personnel mine

put it all down

There’s a virus. And, we’re all gonna die!

Those two sentences, while true, are not necessarily related to each other.

Enough of pretending and tap dancing.

Take a quiet walk instead.

table koan

‪If love is all there is — the very core and whole of existence, ‬

‪And we don’t believe we are in love —‬

‪Where do we think we are?‬

how are you?* have you eaten?**

Time
      to go

Take out
      with seconds

Fortune
      took ease

Chinese
      dow no ching

Vir-us
       femina-non

America,
        sine compos mentis

Remove
         your shoo(s).

 Ni
          hao ma?   *


Ni
          chi le ma?  **
    

of a sunday afternoon

Lighting fire in yurt.

Sunlight through trees alongside brook.

Barking dog wants sticks I gather for wood stove.

All things love each other. All nature is oriented toward a thou. All beings are alive in communion with each other. All plants, all animals, all beings are fraternally united by the phenomenon of mimesis. There are insects which mimic flowers and flowers which act like insects, animals which resemble water or rocks or desert sand or snow or woodlands or certain other animals. And thus all beings love each other and feed each other, and are united in a gigantic process of birth and growth and reproduction and death. In nature everything undergoes mutation, transformation, and change, everything embraces, caresses, and kisses. And the laws which rule all animate beings and to which inert nature is also subject (for nature, too, is alive and animated by a life that is imperceptible to us) are variants of the one law of love. All physical phenomena are likewise manifestations of the identical phenomenon of love. The cohesion of a snowflake and the explosion of a nova, the tumble-bug that clings to a heap of dung, and the lover who embraces his beloved, manifest the same phenomenon of love. Everything in nature seeks to transcend its own limits, to go beyond the barriers of its individuality, to meet with a thou to which it can give itself, an “other” into which it can transform itself. The laws of thermodynamics and electrodynamics, the laws of the propulsion of light, and the universal law of gravity are all manifestations of the one law of Love 

(—Ernesto Cardenal, Excerpt from: "From the Monastery to the World: The Letters of Thomas Merton and Ernesto Cardenal" by Thomas Merton. Scribd.
https://www.scribd.com/book/354255655)

Down road neighbor cuts logs for later splitting. At Snow Bowl skiers sound enjoyment and excitement.

Sitting in gritty plastic adirondack in front of pocked screen door of green yurt there is no other sound than the sounds coming to me.  Even the border collie tires of sounding his desire.

Picture of the man who died at dinner table in Florida hangs behind lattice above woodbox inside yurt door. Aviator sunglasses of the man who put the picture there before departing to France and Russia hang by east-facing window. Mice have taken edges of cloth cover on crescent teak table next to black office chair near bed.

I repair dooryard gate, hang sign and small garden flag, tie on bell-buoy clanker and cow bell to arm holding "meetingbrook" sign knocked down last autumn by delivery truck, lace green fencing wire with white cord found in field to wood slats of hefty gate, place red candle-lantern ready for tonight's practice.

"All physical phenomena are likewise manifestations of the identical phenomenon of love" says Ernesto Cardenal. Seems true at the moment. No big deal. What is is what is. It will change of itself. No need to fret and fuss. Look at anyone you love. Look at anyone you dislike. Each, in time, will die. No need to try to prevent, prolong, or precipitate. Appreciate the appearance and the recollection.

And while we're here, while we're still standing, breathing, listening or watching -- why not just do that with as much awareness as we can muster.

An hour was taken from us last night. It changed all the clocks, As the farmer from Warren used to say at the shop, "Oh well!"

It all goes by. Panta the cat decides it is time to crawl around my midsection and purr, possibly sleep. The dog in in the truck with door open, and is not barking. Chitta the cat is on the porch snoozing on wicker divan. The woman is at her computer crunching numbers thinking of a new tomato soup for table practice.

If there is only love, and we exist, do we have to search for love as one might for pushpin or ginger snap? Love is not a search. It is the fact of things.

I have lost sanity.

Th insanity surrounding the place I once inhabited is where I long resided. I am emeritus insane now. With all the rights and privileges there attached. When I look at the world wherein I live and breathe and walk the roads, I am looking into a peripatetic mirror. And there I am.

May what is imperceptible to us become obvious.

May the inconspicuous reveal itself.

And may you become whole and entire as this universe is such and so!

no seeing this

When I went insane

Nobody noticed

What I no longer

Noticed

poiesis (from ancient greek: ποίησις) is what you make of it

In a dark time the ayes begin to see.