until it’s gone

 The theoretical physicist is saying that all the mammals on earth live for the same number of heartbeats, about 1.5 billion heartbeats. Then he posits that these days the average human gets 3 billion heartbeats, 70-80 years. He also says there’s no life after death.  (Sean Carroll, in The Nature of Reality  A Dialogue Between a Buddhist Scholar and a Theoretical Physicist)

Surely (at my age) the heartbeat count hovers near 3 billion. 

Elsewhere I read: “There are approximately 7 x 1027 atoms in the average human body.”

The physicist suggests there’s no way these atoms, processes, and interface connections carry on once death has interrupted, silenced, and dispersed everything.

This eventuality, or non-eventuality, is fine with me. I can imagine nothing happening — no meetings, no reward or punishment, no astonishment at divine beatific vision, no horrific repulsion at horrible demonic miserableness.

All of which makes this life such a curiosity. 

The time we have.

IX

Time comes into it.

Say it.        Say it.

The universe is made of stories,

not of atoms.

(—from poem, The Speed of Darkness BY MURIEL RUKEYSER)

Yes there is suffering and death.

Yes there is joy and life.

Given the choice between cruelty or kindness, I’d prefer to be kind.

If feeling were available to us, I prefer to feel what another is feeling so to be in sympathetic appreciation for and with my fellow being.

As the folk singer Joni Mitchell, (in an exquisite rendition of the song), concluded: I really don’t know life at all. (Both Sides Now)

Some find absurdity too much to shoulder.

Others…

Happily, not knowing, go on, until gone.

unmove

 Gone.

Taoist poem from 8th century:

I asked the boy beneath the pines.
He said, “The master’s gone alone
Herb-picking somewhere on the mount,
Cloud-hidden, whereabouts unknown.”

[Chia Tao (777-841)]

 For the moment, rain is gone. It hovers. Will return. But I do not clutch it. Can’t. Never could. Birds sing in it. Green leaves unmove for time being.

But, gone.

What is here is here.

But … gone.

 Noting “gone” allows you to experience “This too is passing,” which will provide more comfort than if you just try to remind yourself “This too shall pass.” Noting “gone” creates a stillness and tranquillity within you; this is a natural consequence of the nature of vanishing.

But there is another effect that people often report and that seems to go against the nature of vanishing. Some people find noting “gone” to be rich and sensory-fulfilling. Where things go to is where things come from. Each time you note “gone,” for a brief instant your attention is pointed directly toward the richness of the Source. That is what’s behind the seeming paradox of satisfying nothingness. There is a word that means both “cessation” and “satisfaction” as a single linked concept. The word is nirvana.

(—from, The Power of Gone, by Shinzen Young,  Tricycle, Fall 2012)

 At Sunday Evening Practice woman in Massachusetts said she was calm and at peace with herself, happy to be there. It was final circle. 

Words of e e cummings lingered;

let all go – the

big small middling

tall bigger really

the biggest and all

things – let all go

dear 

so comes love

Which suggests:

Where things go to is where things come from. 

how things change

                   (se souvenir jo-ann)

my dear friend does not

worry about storm surge near 

house — since death came by

paragate

sound neighbors clear out

dirt bike four wheeler hard rock

big truck tires — bare yard

night

 rain drops

porch roof

sound

pattern

resembles

nothing

familiar

falling

go on, ask

 There is suffering

in life, hurt, disappointment —

How we think of God

Is how we think each other

So ask yourself, who is God

unfathomable jaunt there to here

 I used to think God

was all there was. Now I think

God is all here is

follow the thread

 Doc says: sure I’ll cut

you open, sew some stuff, stitch

you up, send you home

sudden breeze through window

 You cannot give me your death.

O Lord, give everyone his own death, 

A death stemming from his own life. 

—Rainer Marie Rilke

Nor I give you mine. 

Here’s to your own!

because I was looking

 hummingbird hovers

at emergency room door

left right up down leaves

sanus, sana, sanum

 What keeps me sane? No-

thing. There is no sanity —

We have gone insane

komusō*

*Priest of nothingness, monk of emptiness. 

This komusō within which and wherein I stand and walk and sip my coffee.

Practicing suizen, blowing air through this physical shakuhachi of lungs and nose, throat and hara.

Jewelweed crop is plentiful. Bees attend their morning liturgy. Sacred buzz-chant ripples out from their offices. An undulating eucharist, as if open field hesychasm in mid-august creating new welcome to all who've abandoned their formal churches for deeper elevations of dirt and soil and earthen resurrection.  

Topsoil gives grass, wildflowers, worms, ants, small frogs and crawling caterpillars. 

 "God is a dirt farmer, not a garden cultivator." (David Roberts, Patheos)

There are days when all man-made creations feel shallow and fallow. Machines, banking systems, automatic weapons, fighter jets, bombers, lawn mowers, cars and trucks, stock markets, public relations firms, cable news outlets, glocks, clocks, and conference rooms.

Then there are days when being a komusō with repetitive om mani padme hum on fingered beads as sole companion feels good enough for now.

Monastic of no other.

Priest of nothingness.

Monk of emptiness.

Hanger of laundry on sunporch.

Feeder of cats in their separate quarters.

Washer of dishes.

mendicant crown beads

origin beckons

destination dwelling home

middle — step by step

dory dockside ritual

 penny placed on thwart

under securing line draped

over gunnel green

looking at us

 Bush, Obama, Trump, 

Biden — Afghanistan, war —

This time so awful

literature

 Finished Jayber Crow —

Wendell Berry from ground up

Feeling full feeling

unsatisfying exchange

 War is when we fail

Talking with each other, set

Down words, take up pain

in and out and back

 Pray if you got ‘em!

Military personnel 

Take a break broken

losing twenty year war

 “Afghanistan is at the end of nowhere.” 

       (Retired General Barry McCaffrey on MSNBC re: the ability of  US sympathizing Afghans to flee the Taliban today overrunning Kabul as compared to Vietnamese fleeing Saigon by sea in 1975)

an uncaptured eventuality

Thought is, as yet, elusive.  

 

 They’re alone at the fountain, in a dark well.

They’ve been exiled by the world of hope,

which is the world of action,

but the world of thought hasn’t as yet opened to them.

When it does, everything will change.

(—Excerpt from: "A Village Life: Poems" by Louise Glück. Scribd)

 

For us, to think, is to become an uncaptured eventuality lingering just outside the circumference of campfire light in a dark unseeing that nears and enthralls.

regaled and astonished by the possible in our surround and imagination.

The astrophysicist gives the example of an ant watching a sheet of paper disappear.

It had been on a two dimension surface of desk when a human lifted it up to be placed into a third dimension paper holder extending upward from the desk. To the ant it simply disappears, having no reference to a height in its length and width world.

Today is the feast of the Assumption of Mary into “heaven.”

Not even time, the fourth dimension, comes close to explaining her disappearance into some heavenly dimension we have no capacity to detect or understand.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, like some modern day evangelist for planetary scientific description, tells us about the universe with grace, wit, and clear examples, enjoying the story-telling and narrative excitement of emerging human knowledge and discovery.

Today we say Hello Mary in a new way.

The world has not yet yielded, with grace and wit, all its theoretical manifestations and dimensional mysteries.

And yet, here we remain, regaled and astonished by the possible in our surround and imagination.

post tenebras (after concealment)

 Mary, so

ordinary 

Held what

we are

Not yet

able to

Imagine —

Her origin

eternal now

and

completion

at once

Come

to light

why there is waiting in emergency department

 You hurt

Are worried

How serious

Is this

“Have a seat, 

Nurse triage

Will be soon

With you”

Then you wait

Some two minutes

Some 30

Feeling a lifetime

Here is where

Practice begins

You cannot help

Looking around

Others nearby

Also waiting

Uncertain, afraid

Inventorying

Do you feel

For them

Wish silently

Them well

Pray for

Them

If you do

Your practice 

Has begun

is ripe

Here’s the secret —

We pray for 

One-another

Because we are

One-another

A practice worth

Becoming

A becoming 

Worth 

Being

Let’s

Emerge

There

Here

facts

 Yes

We will all die

By virus

Or vaccine

Fire, cancer

Old age or

Car crash

We will

All die —

(Be of

Good

Cheer)

Now, then

What else 

Shall we

Talk about

if yes, then no

 Do I have faith? Is

What is happening good, true?

Do I dare affirm?

thinking of clare, her day

Clare and Francis, the way they were. 

 A mendicant (from Latin: mendicans, "begging") is one who practices mendicancy, relying chiefly or exclusively on alms to survive. In principle, mendicant religious orders own little property, either individually or collectively, and in many instances members have taken a vow of poverty, in order that all their time and energy could be expended on practicing their respective faith, preaching and serving society.

Mendicancy is a form of asceticism, especially in Western Christianity. In Eastern Christianity, ascetics are referred to as Fools for Christ.    (Wikipedia)

Their

Respective

Faith 

clear revelation

 Clare knew Francis well

poor peace’d mendicants they loved

as God/Nature shown

within silence

 Leave no trace — zen words

pass through everything without

once being pronounced

blank eyes

 unrecognizing

everything becomes unfelt —

decadence unfurls

悲しみと恥 *

 Nagasaki bomb

Showed world how little we care

About other lives —

So the story became save

Our boys kill the Japanese 

….  …   …

* Kanashimi to haji

悲しみと恥 

sadness and shame

co-monastic

 woman celebrates

meals continuation joy

nears as love nears here

arriving at something

 The lad from Vermont

Travels to this place grandparents

Fashioned from nothing

double fours sevens eights

 when mother father

were born they became today

sevens on eight eight

quiet and simple

As Tibetan bells solemnly sound, from distant edges of a spaceless clearing where all worlds settle in together, this:

The River Village

      by Tu Fu 

          

The river makes a bend and encircles the village with its current.
All the long Summer, the affairs and occupations of the river village are quiet and simple. 
The swallows who nest in the beams go and come as they please. 
The gulls in the middle of the river enjoy one another, they crowd together and touch one another.
My old wife paints a chess-board on paper. 
My little sons hammer needles to make fish-hooks. 
I have many illnesses, therefore my only necessities are medicines. 
Besides these, what more can so humble a man as I ask?

            (—Poets.org)

There is no place to go that is not here

 No one and nothing can be left out

The sound of the bell is heartbeat of great emptiness

Crossing the divide

sandokai and transfiguration

 holding 

       together

a place

       of resolve

transfiguration (inside out outside in) revisited

                         (a trinity of waka)

 1.

Bursts light through surface

Christ (and Krishna) transfigure 

Reveal all through each —

What hides is no longer stealth

What can be offered is seen

2.

But American

Little Boy and Fat Man bombs

Mire Christ and Krishna —

Celebrating destruction

Rationalizing cruel death

3.

There is no beauty

In war suffering and pain

Replace the humane —

Resolve rather one’s zazen

Embody cross the divide

to pass the time

 The playwright in 1955 wrote of my 1962 experience in the mailroom of NYLIC in Manhattan.

One’s life in words.

Wraiths sitting around sixty years practicing their lines.

 KENNETH, to Larry: Ah, you can’t blame the poor feller; sixteen years of his life in this place.

LARRY: You said it.

KENNETH: There’s a good deal of monotony connected with the life, isn’t it?

LARRY: You ain’t kidden’.

KENNETH: Oh, there must be a terrible lot of Monday mornings in sixteen years. And no philosophical idea at all, y’know, to pass the time?

(—from, A Memory Of Two Mondays, One Act Play by Arther Miller, 1955)

All those men and women in my interstice year — my tutors and fellow thespians at pinning table off Madison Avenue.

(Mac and Della, Joe and Franko, Ed and Frankie, Eddie and Helen, Chico and Vinney)

The pedagogy of it! 

Proscenium steps circling false starts.

never seen you before

          (a tanka for 7 second amnesiac)

 Clive Wearing knows now

nothing before, and now goes

into nothing now

You might think ah, zen alights!

But you would be wrong, ask him

….  …   …

 (footnote, spoken by daughter: “It must be really frightening, to be constantly waking up to something you do not recognize, every seven seconds…”)

tanka (two of one mind)

In life, suffering,

In death a cross with harsh pain —

Two men, one teaching.

What are we to make of it — 

Buddha, Christ, their agreement

under the shade of overhead branches

The Irish zen peace professor sends eight poems for August.  With dice and slice I respond:

Go raibh maith agat

-b

1.

 “the Sun” from whom 

nothing is hidden.

….  ….  …

2.

Earthshaker, you

the gods endowed　with double honor

to be tamer of steeds　and savior of ships.

….  ….  …

3. 

Praise the body 

For still being a body 

And not a headstone. 

Praise the body, 

For being a body and not a police report

….  ….  …

4. 

Do you know

just how much we love you and are 

praying for your lives?

….  ….  …

5. 

My Willem,

between us, God has descended in all His atoms.

We have not yet learned to hold Him.

….  ….  …

6. 

Somebody in my soul is tortured, and demands a prayer.　

　　　So I jabber on and on 

　　　Senselessly until dawn.

….  ….  …

7. 

Forgiven, they go

free of you, and you of them;

….  ….  …

8. 

And those house-bound against infections

watch life come forth under the shade of overhead

branches, 

...   ...   ...

Is fealsúnacht í an fhilíocht, is í an fhealsúnacht filíocht. *

cheers!

...   ...   ...

* (Poetry is philosophy, philosophy is poetry.)

mytho-america

Morning news interview.

The good guys always win in the end. (Joe Scarborough quoting friend about America and Hollywood movies)

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing - after they've tried everything else. (Churchill, quoted by Alexander Vindman)

The joy of recognition.

The irony of accurate perception.

One can hope, but it is an expensive state of mind.

Placing us in hock.

bees of the invisible

Sangha elder Doris sends this Monday Poem: 

Sonnet to Orpheus IX 

 

Only he whose bright lyre

has sounded in the shadows

may, looking onward, restore

his infinite praise.

Only he who has eaten

poppies with the dead

will not lose ever again

the gentlest chord.

Though the image upon the pool

often grows dim:

know and be still.

Inside the Double World

all voices become

eternally mild.

                                               Rainer Maria Rilke

                                               Translated by Stephen Mitchell

 

 

Just before his death Rilke wrote about the Double World: “We are continually overflowing toward those who preceded us, toward our origin, and toward those who seemingly come after us.... It is our task to imprint this temporary, perishable earth into ourselves so deeply, so painfully and passionately, that its essence can rise again invisibly, inside us. We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.”  (--Rilke from a letter to Halewicz, cf. we-are-bees-of-the-invisible-rilke-from-a-letter-to-halewicz)

Perhaps we are both at origin and at end. Perhaps our end is our beginning, our beginning our end.

In this moment, at this place, the zazen of breath and quiet watchfulness surrounds the whole with the part we occupy on our way through the infinite with love.

linguistic hospitality

How far does translation go?

Will it metamorphose into a living thing?  

 In On Translation, Paul Ricoeur spells out important implications of this paradigm of linguistic hospitality.

Translation sets us not only intellectual work . . . but also an ethical problem. Bringing the reader to the author, bringing the author to the reader, at the risk of serving and of betraying two masters: this is to practice what I like to call linguistic hospitality. It is this which serves as a model for other forms of hospitality that I think resemble it: confessions, religions, are they not like languages that are foreign to one another, with their lexicon, their grammar, their rhetoric, their stylistics which we must learn in order to make our way into them? And is Eucharistic hospitality not to be taken up with the same risks of translation-betrayal, but also with the same renunciation of the perfect translation?    (Ricoeur 2006, 23), 

(—in ch.14, Translating Hospitality, A Narrative Task, by Richard Kearney, from Language and Phenomenology, Edited by Chad Engelland, 2021)

Can we find a home with a new being in a new understanding of Being? 

Will the palette carry a new hue into its workspace?

Are we willing to be connected, each to each to all?

as quick as that

 Crow complains dooryard

Flight, goes across Barnestown road

Silence flies away

name change

 Just like that July

Gone, now here this it’s Sunday — 

August, window sun

ignacio

 Having studied with

Jesuits, I remember

thinking with delight

un buen hombre

 Mater misericordiae

We all should be a mother of mercy

 Et cum fratribus nostris absentibus et sororibus absentibus

Especially tonight Peter M. on hearing of his death lejanas filipinas

experiential learning

 Where do the dead go?

Go where the dead do.

prognosis

Even this pain 

Will

Fade

Wait it out

One day it

Or you

Will be gone

¿Entiende?

memoryless joy

 What fine phrasing:

“the memoryless  joy of a man just risen from the grave” (—from Wendell Berry novel Jayber Crow)

And curious prospect. 

uta (詩) for republican smallness

 no use thinking there

will be change of mind in them

only seeking self --

they sink in mud up to mouth

feet long lost hope long gone choked

via negativa

 at conversation

I am defined by what I'm

not, everything gone --

paring down stripping away

til left with nearly nothing

et tu, brute

 The mockery crowd 

Mock four police officers

For telling their truth --

It is a side of these times

Rotten festering ugly

which is worse -- the war against iraq or the war against america

The seesaw teeters. 

Will anyone (above the rioters) be held accountable for 6Jan2021 insurrection, riot, terrorism against America?

How about the 2003 invasion of Iraq?

 Everything is different, but nothing has changed.  (--Capital Police Officer Harry Dunn, Select Committee 6Jan21 Hearing on Insurrectiuon, held 27July21)

The application of justice to crimes is a noble ideal.

But it is often dangerous to apply justice to wrongdoers.

Take the former president. Or the one before the one before.

Not bad men, argumentatively, just not held responsible.

without reference

 I would 

Pray but

I’ve fallen

Between bows

Empty zendo

Empty cross

Bird flies

Into day

before chimes

Not caring

Nor worrying

Morning arrives

Without sound

In dooryard

Light orange

the difficult thing

 Why is it so many people are judgmental?

“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”                                                                 ( ~ Carl Jung. Born on this day, in 1875)

And if to think is to thank, why is it gratitude is so rarely expressed in our troubled time? 

you demonstrate the truth of zen

Town is busy.

So many distractions. 

Living secluded

Above the cloud

At the top of Mount Su

Abiding in your origin

You demonstrate the 

Truth of Zen

You have moved far from town

From now on you renew

The Way of Bodhidharma.  

- Soseki

Origin is quiescent.

As is right concentration. 

no you in connection with

Make the world go away. 

 Again Bahiya pleaded “Awakened one, no one can know for sure the dangers there may be for you or for me. Teach me the Dhamma for my long-term welfare and lasting happiness.”

Finally, the Buddha relented: “I will teach you the Dhamma, Bahiya. Listen carefully to my words. Train your self in this manner: In what is seen, there is only the seen. In what is heard, there is only the heard. In what is sensed, there is only the sensed. In what is cognized, only the cognized.

This is how you should train yourself. When for you there is in what is seen only the seen, in what is heard only the heard, in what is sensed only the sensed and in what is cognized only the cognized, then Bahiya there is no you in connection with what is seen, heard, sensed or cognized, there is no you there. When there is no you there, you are neither here nor there nor anywhere in-between. This and only this is the end of stress and unhappiness.”  (—from, BAHIYA SUTTA, UDANA 1.10, THE MINDFULNESS OF BAHIYA, BY JOHN HASPEL)

Become one with it. 

seeing through icon

 Small crosses hanging

in windows — what is seen there

what they tell us — now

do over, do other

 Is Nature saying something?

China, Europe, India flooding,

Northwest US heat and burning,

Moral cowardice snorted by hacks

Ethical indifference by us all

Here we are —here we stand

We cannot do other

this strange atmosphere

Like walking across kitchen with dog and cat on floor. 

Climbing a Mountain

The Eastern Peak is towering high;

Summit of beauty, it soars to the blue heavens.

Among its crags is an empty dwelling place,

Peaceful and lonely, fill with the Mystery.

Not made by workmen nor by artisans,

Its cloudy beams are Nature's work.

My search for a spot with this strange atmosphere

Has sent me wandering around time and again.

Now that I'm free I'll make my home right here,

Where I an live out my heaven appointed span.

-

 Hsieh Tao-yun (399) Dailyzen

They look up, your footsteps steering clear of their muzzle, their tails, their paws.

Falling back to quiet slumber. 

knowing within/without knowing.

 If someone sees the light, they see everything contained within light.

 And he knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information. (— The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)" by Don Miguel Ruiz, Janet Mills)

 Seeing, some say, is believing. 

Perhaps. 

I think that seeing is illuminating not-knowing.

You could say we don’t know who or what we are.

Nescience or ignorance? Or something else?

 https://ourfreesociety.com/nescience-vs-ignorance/

What is the something else?

Knowing within/without knowing.

This palindromic phrasing places us in an intuitive suffusion of what-is-to-be-coming-to-be.

What we are we were not and what we will be we are not yet.

Light is that suffusion.

Articulation and recall are subsidiary skills — highly valued in our culture — but subordinate to the primary essential/existential awareness and embodiment of knowing within/without knowing.

And yet, few would recommend such a state of apophatic being/becoming in-the-world.

It might resemble an idiot. 

idiótés: a private or unskilled person 

Original Word: ἰδιώτης, ου, ὁ

Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine

Transliteration: idiótés

Phonetic Spelling: (id-ee-o'-tace)

Definition: a private or unskilled person

Usage: (unofficial, hence) an amateur, an unprofessional man, a layman; an ungifted person.

HELPS Word-studies

2399 idiṓtēs (from 2398 /ídios, "own") – properly, of one's own self; used of a person who conspicuously lacks education or status – hence, easily misunderstood as being uninstructed (unrefined, "unlettered in speech").    https://biblehub.com/greek/2399.htm

And then, there’s this:

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot the title refers to the central character Prince Myshkin, a man whose innocence, kindness and humility, combined with his occasional epileptic symptoms, cause many in the corrupt, egoistic culture around him to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche applies the word 'idiot' to Jesus in a comparable fashion, almost certainly in an allusion to Dostoevsky's use of the word:^[28] "One has to regret that no Dostoevsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most interesting décadent; I mean someone who could feel the thrilling fascination of such a combination of the sublime, the sick and the childish."^{[29][30]  (Wikipedia)}

I once read a description of an idiot as one totally imbued with their surroundings. (It eludes me the source.)

And yet, the phrase “It eludes me the source” is as good a koan to begin this day as any.

And it is “any” we are! 

Definition of any

 (Entry 1 of 3)

1

: one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind:

a

: one or another taken at random

Ask any man you meet.

b

: EVERY  —used to indicate one selected without restriction

Any child would know that.

2

: one, some, or all indiscriminately of whatever quantity:

a

: one or more  —used to indicate an undetermined number or amount

Do you have any money?

b

: ALL  —used to indicate a maximum or whole

He needs any help he can get.

c

: a or some without reference to quantity or extent

I'd be grateful for any favor at all.

3

a

: unmeasured or unlimited in amount, number, or extent

any quantity you desire

b

: appreciably large or extended , could not endure it any length of time                               https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/any 

To paraphrase the Kingston Trio lyric, "And if you knew [your] heart, [you'd] be grateful for any." 

not gone very far away.

 Listening to book — Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, — Written by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.

The Oval Office arrogance, misdirected motives and insufficient acuity is stunning.

As with the question as to whether the former occupant actually believed the seeming absurd pronouncements or if it was an act, a charade of egoistic uncaring — no one can say for certain.

We are poorer and have been ill-served.

What really is upsetting is the allowing of it — the moral and character sluggishness on the part of those invested with the responsibility of maintaining and protecting the public good.

We’ve been weakened.

The infection have not gone very far away.

Not the person.

Not the virus.

the most difficult step of every interpretation consists in its disappearing

To see and grasp the thing itself, without interpretation or criticism, is a stark and radical excursion of the thing itself, the poem itself, with what attends it.

To think is to simply dwell with what is appearing and moving through the field of our attendance.

To think-with is to travel accompanying what presents itself, traveling through a solitude of unencumbered relationality. 

The fault of modern civilization is not that we have technology, but that we see the world through our technology, through science alone. Science, to Heidegger, doesn't think, it works things out technically. Poetry however can think. In articular, it is Heidegger's engagement with the work of Friedrich Hölderlin that was most fruitful for his developing thought. Hölderlin (1770-1843), was one of the most important poets of the German Romantic movement, and influential in the development of philosophical idealism in Germany. But to Heidegger, engagement with Hölderlin's 'thought', offered the possibility of articulating the very essence of the current age, in which divinity had defaulted, and know-how had come to obliterate actual thought on human being and being itself. In his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel, [https://www.lacan.com/heidespie.html], Heidegger stated, “I do not consider Hölderlin to be just any poet, whose work literary historians also treat together with many others’. Hölderlin is for me the poet who points into the future, who awaits the god.” In the prefaces to his collection of lectures and essays on Hölderlin, written decades after the works, Heidegger is careful to clarify his intent in studying thought through poetry. His intention is not to engage in literary criticism, but to enter into the truth of the poems studied. The author's Preface from the 1971 edition: "The present Elucidations [Erläuterungen] do not claim to be contributions [Beiträge] to research in the history of literature [literaturhistorischen Forschung] or to aesthetics. They spring from a necessity of thought." In the 1951 preface, he explains his hope that

For the sake of preserving what has been put into the poem, the elucidation of the poem must strive to make itself superfluous. The last, but also the most difficult step of every interpretation [Auslegung], consists in its disappearing, along with its elucidations, before the pure presence of the poem. The poem, which then stands in its own right, itself throws light directly on the other poems.

Because Heidegger believes that language is so fundamental to human being, true poetry, a "poetry which thinks" [denkende Dichten]. through its intense and thoughtful use of language, reveals and even shapes the essence of human being, if it is not reduced to an aesthetic experience. To Heidegger, our current technological world-view presents a world of subjects and objects, of material and human resources, giving us an understanding of existence increasingly framed by technology. Poetry offers us a possible path out of this dangerous world-view, which led us to Hiroshima and Auschwitz. This poetic path is one Heidegger spent many decades following, and which led his philosophical work to become increasingly poetic in form. 

Heidegger's approach to poetry, which he takes pains to disclaim as literary criticism, does perhaps anticipate more recent 'literary' approaches to poetry. This might partly be due to the great indirect influence Heidegger has exerted on literary studies, perhaps also due a broadening of the methodologies used in studying literary texts during the earlier part of the twentieth century, which had more to do with philology than philosophy. Heidegger's work on poetry attempts mitdenken to 'think with' the poems he elucidates. In exploring the relation between poetry and philosophy, Heidegger illuminates both modes of discourse. In his use of the term thought, rather than 'philosophy' in much of his later work, he bridges the gap between those two modes. Thought is what poetry and philosophy have in common. To Heidegger they are simply differing modes of expressing it, different languages in which thought occurs. 

(--from, Heidegger and Poetry, Introduction: A Thinking Poetry)   https://sites.google.com/site/heideggerandpoetry/ 

We're unfamiliar with and unaccustomed to being alone with others or another.

The poem is another.

Individuals are others.

By engaging and practicing thinking poetry and thinking others we move together through the canals, channels, and countrysides of our Umwelt, our surround and surroundings, with one-another, perhaps lovingly and with grace.

What is your thought?

and tender with

Today from Sojourners: 

Verse of the day  So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.  - Ephesians 4:25

Voice of the day  The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other.  - Kiese Laymon, Heavy (2018)

Prayer of the day  Work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth.  - The Book of Common Prayer

There -- a verse. voice, and prayer -- worth a glance. 

not done yet

 Reading about her —

(Dorothy Kilgallen) -- death,

Who will tell the truth

whose eyes

Yeah, you don’t. 

“You never know whose eyes God is watchin you through. It might not be your teacher, your preacher, or your Sunday school teacher. More likely it's gon' be that bum on the street.”

― Ron Hall, Denver Moore

Nah, you can’t. 

even if it is broken up into a million pieces

The mytho-morphic words of consecration, "This is my body," are deeper and wider than we think.

To receive this being-one-with is what holiness longs to embody. 

On the night of his enlightenment, the story goes, the Buddha was visited by the forces of Mara, the Evil One, who was determined to stop the Buddha from achieving awakening. Most of Mara’s devastating and spectacular display of hopes and fears had to do with the body, either sensual allurements or threats of bodily harm. Declaring that the many threatening minions arrayed behind him were his army, Mara defiantly called out, “Where is your army, oh Buddha?” In response the Buddha touched the ground and said, “The Earth is my witness and support.”

In touching the Earth, the Buddha was not only calling on the Earth goddess to be his protector. He was saying, the Earth is my body. My body expresses Earth, is produced and supported by Earth, is made exclusively of Earth elements. Nothing on Earth, no matter how frightening, can threaten this indestructible Earth body. Even if it is broken up into a million pieces it remains, going home to its Mother who gave birth to it, who embraces it now and always will embrace it.

With this gesture of truth, belonging, and ultimate invulnerability, born of surrender to and identity with the Earth, Buddha expressed his absolute fearlessness, and in doing so defeated Mara. After this, his enlightenment unfolded.

And this is exactly true of all of us. Our bodies too are the Earth. They rise up from her, and are nurtured, fed, and illuminated by her. our bodies are in constant touch with Earth, and return to Earth, from which they have never parted.

(--from, What Is Your Body? BY NORMAN FISCHER| JULY 13, 2021, Lion's Roar )

This earth.

This field of play.

We are.

Is what I am.

Is who I am.

Wandering at foot of mountain.

canvas life

 Fog saunters up road

Mourning Dove calls from green branch

Nothing here leaves still

precarious crossing

Barn floor sags.

This hut is small,

But contains the world;

The old man in the tiny room

Has come to understand.

Great bodhisattvas believe without a doubt,

But when lesser beings hear it, 

They think it strange.       

 (- Shitou Xiqian (700-790), dailyzen) 

Believe without having beliefs. 

Things fall apart. 

Of course they do.

unbinding from all views

nameless reality… 

 The Buddha taught a specific meditation technique with specific goals. This meditation technique, Jhana meditation, was to be practiced within the entire framework of the Eightfold Path if it would contribute to and support awakening.

I found that the Buddha described awakening not as finding an essential inner nature, or “Buddha-nature” but as unbinding from all views that developed from a doctrine of “I.” The Buddha described the state of mind of an awakened human being not as “Buddha-nature,” or “Buddha-hood,” but as released, unbound, and calm.  https://becoming-buddha.com/john-haspel/ 

 released reality. 

ehipassiko

if so… 

  I found that if his Dhamma was engaged in wholeheartedly, the Buddha used the word “ehipassiko,” (come and see for yourself) — any human being could develop an understanding of dukkha and experience the cessation of confusion, delusion, and suffering.                       (—BecomingBuddha.com, homepage)

 ah, so!