Yes
If I forget
Remind
Me again
“Soul force
Pure and
Simple”
Suffering in
One’s
Own
Person
it marshalled
their
inner most
resources
Gandhi
Uttered the words
“He Rama!”
[Oh God]
Saying it
All
cf. https://www.sahistory.org.za/archive/documentary-history-indian-south-africans-edited-surendra-bhana-and-bridglal-pachai
The ugliness of American and Canadian governments stealing native/first world children from their parents, from their people.
Shame!
Necessary reading.
The euphoric rampage of Oct. 7 that killed some 1,400 soldiers and civilians has not only hardened Israeli hearts toward the suffering of Gaza civilians. It has also inflicted a deep sense of humiliation and guilt on the Israeli Army and defense establishment, for having failed in their most basic mission of protecting the country’s borders.
As a result, there is a conviction in the army that it must demonstrate to the entire neighborhood — to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the Houthis in Yemen, to the Islamic militias in Iraq to the Hamas and other fighters in the West Bank — that it will stop at nothing to re-establish the security of the borders. While the army insists that it is hewing to the laws of war, it wants to show that no one can outcrazy Israel to drive its people from this region — even if the Israeli military has to defy the U.S. and even if it does not have any solid plan for governing Gaza the morning after the war.
As Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told reporters on Wednesday: “Israel cannot accept such an active threat on its borders. The whole idea of people living side by side in the Middle East was jeopardized by Hamas.”
This conflict is now back to its most biblical and primordial roots. This seems to be a time of eyes for eyes and teeth for teeth. The morning-after policy thinking will have to wait for the mourning after.
(--THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, I Have Never Been to This Israel Before, Nov. 9, 2023, NYTimes)
Pointing out a necessary wariness and troubling prospects for a future resolution full of difficulty.
It is curious to see the word savour. It looks like saviour, but is not.
“Take for yourself what you can, and don’t be ruled by others; to belong to oneself—the whole savour of life lies in that,” (—Ivan Turgenev, First Love)
To belong to oneself. Not ruled by others. To take, to grasp, what is needed, an action within one’s ability.
There’s something both intriguing and existentially authentic in gathering to one’s self /oneself that which belongs to itself as an arising event. It feels like an etymological somersault to long for savour rather than saviour.
The inner appreciation and inchoate realization of personal accomplishment arising in the moment is a savouring experience of delight and unexpected surprise.
Is it in our nature to project this particular experience out onto an external personage who does it for us? Hence, a saviour.
Have we extrapolated and projected the inner to the outer? That which is our own to that which is other than us? Is the perceived need for a saviour a reluctance to own the savouring insistence of interior realization?
“Whereas I think: I’m lying here in a haystack... The tiny space I occupy is so infinitesimal in comparison with the rest of space, which I don’t occupy and which has no relation to me. And the period of time in which I’m fated to live is so insignificant beside the eternity in which I haven’t existed and won’t exist... And yet in this atom, this mathematical point, blood is circulating, a brain is working, desiring something... What chaos! What a farce!”
(—Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, in Fathers and Sons)
I recall a book I enjoyed, and taught from in several courses, captured the inner/outer dynamic surrounding and emerging from us.
The Inner Reaches of Outer Space is a 1986 book by mythologist Joseph Campbell, the last book completed before his death in 1987. In it, he explores the intersections of art, psychology and religion, and discusses the ways in which new myths are born. In writing the book, Campbell drew on transcripts of a series of lectures and conversations that he gave in San Francisco between 1981 and 1984,[1] including legendary symposiums with astronaut Rusty Schweickart and with members of the Grateful Dead.[2] (--wikipedia)
New myths are being born.
What we call "being" might be seen as the irruption of what-is-not-yet into the realm of what-is-revealing-itself.
The touch and taste of this emergence need not be given away to some deus ex machina lingering outside above and beyond individual and ordinary human experience. The dualism of our rational mind tends to do this.
The world, one might say, is rolling out from within.
Own it
And let it be
So
Are you worried?
Yes.
About Trump?
Yes.
Do you think he will escape prosecution and be elected again?
Yes.
Will he be as bad and dangerous as some fear?
Yes.
Imagine -- what might Being be?
The thought arises that either there is something, a perpetual undergirding reality some call Being (a metaphysical affirmation) -- or, there is nothing undergirding anything, but the immediate appearance of what we call "the real" brought about by the emerging event of action/thought into the phenomenal world.
Or, as Julie Andrews sang in "The Sound of Music" --
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
(--from "Something Good," by Richard Rogers)
Is there an invisible, non-substantial, ever-potential, intimation of what might be called "good"?
Just what does obliviousness to Being mean? It means obliviousness to the clearing or lighting (Lichtung). Heidegger, it must be kept in mind, distinguishes between what is and the event in which what is comes to be displayed as such. He refers to the event itself as the lighting and it is only in the light of the lighting, he tells us, that what is can be. Obliviousness to Being is obliviousness, not to some highest existent or even to the whole of beings, but to the Being event, to the lighting. "Metaphysics," in seeking the ontos on, the being which in being most truly underlies all other existents, forgets the event in which any being, even the highest, comes to be. Consequently, instead of experiencing temporal presencing, arising out of non-presence, das Nichts, "metaphysics" reduces anything which comes to be to something which always is in steady presence. Obliviousness to Being is, if seen in this way, obliviousness to the nicht-ist, das Nichts from which any ist originates. That shows up in Rilke in that for him beings are not "dissolved in void nothingness (das nichtige Nichts), but instead resolved into the whole of the Open" (p. 262, 106), which is to say, the pure presence of nature as a whole.
(--From P. CHRISTOPHER SMITH, HEIDEGGER'S MISINTERPRETATION OF RILKE Project Muse)
It intrigues me that there might be an emerging potential insinuation into what might be called "good." And that it arrives from nothing other than the absence of something other than the surprising emergence of an affirming "yes" into appearance and manifestation.
The event or instant is a participatory creation of two beings in traverse of what we've come to call space/time. What is space/time? I really don't know, not in this context.
So, for now, I will call it "what is coming-to-be, the surrounding preparation toward emergence."
Heidegger asked, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"
German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s angst-ridden non-answer to what he called “the fundamental question” was that a fear of nothing was the defining feature of the human condition. We certainly seem scared that nothing is some kind of universal default. But why should we presume that nothing is more likely than something? After all, if we accept that we exist to ask the question, then we’ve proved something exists. It’s a whole lot harder to prove that nothing can exist.
It’s tempting to think that modern physics has made this line of reasoning easier. According to quantum field theory, even the vacuum of space is a lively soup of particles and fields popping up out of nowhere. This kind of random fluctuation is thought to have ultimately created our cosmos of stars, planets and existential worriers out of the quantum vacuum – admittedly abetted by some as-yet-unexplained happenstance, such as a period of faster-than-light inflation in the early universe, and matter somehow winning out against its evil twin, antimatter.
--Metaphysics special: Why is there something rather than nothing? (new scientist.com, 31aug2016)
The event of Jesus, as the tale goes, on the cross is articulated across the centuries as the emergent possibility of what has been called 'resurrection', or, the swallowing up of death.
The event of Buddha under the Bodhi tree where, it is said, he became enlightened, signified his realization of no separate self and interconnection with all things everywhere.
Did these things or states of consciousness exist prior to these events? (Do they continue in existence since, and contemporaneous to, our asking?)
Is everything new and original in our experiential genesis? Or, are we eternally recurring, enduring a repetition of matter and biology in a Sisyphean trudge of endless recycling?
What, indeed, might Being be?
Are we to conform to pre-set ideal forms as replicas seeking simulacra? Or are we ever-new expressions of emerging potential giving shape and form to never-before instances of creatio-ex-nihilo this once, this once, this once?
We are asked to consider this koan:
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens
(--William Carlos Williams, “The Red Wheelbarrow” from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams, Volume I, 1909-1939, edited by Christopher MacGowan. )
A Poem
I suppose
you might think
never before, never again
but I wouldn't know
(and I don't, know --
I suppose you
(have) (had)
to be there
Assimilation
Bringing together what has
Never been apart —
So much fear of unity
What our nature longs to share
Cats chase each other
Hissing and growling — can’t they
Behave like humans
Kings and Presidents, Prime Ministers and Dictators — all have decisions to make that the rest of us have little say about.
Except that the historical reviewing of decisions tend to be both fluid and diverting. Some call the review of historical decisions alternate interpretations. Some refer to them as lies.
What some call truth is more and more difficult to discern.
Reservations about David’s Final Instructions
Scholars are divided on the question to what extent David’s dying charge to Solomon to execute Joab and Shimei troubled the author of Kings.[10] On the surface, David’s instructions appear harsh, particularly since one of those men (Joab) served David loyally for many years, and the other (Shimei) received David’s vow that no harm would come to him (2 Sam 19:24). These issues did not escape the attention of the classical rabbis or the medieval Jewish interpreters, many of whom grapple with the problem. We will look at just a few examples.
(—from, King David’s Troubling Deathbed Instructions
Before his death, David commands Solomon to kill two men: Joab, his loyal general, and Shimei, his enemy, whom he had sworn not to kill.
By Dr.David Glatt-Gilad https://www.thetorah.com/article/king-davids-troubling-deathbed-instruction
Yesterday in prison we spoke about Tolstoy and Turgenev, as well as the heartbreaking rifts and sorrows experienced in families, as one participant emotionally related.
Last evening we watched the PBS about John le Carré (David John Moore Cornwell) in Errol Morris' new documentary "The Pigeon Tunnel". A wonderfully done piece worth seeing. In it Cornwell speaks about betrayal, treachery, deceit, and scams in a way that is thought-provoking.
We live with lies and betrayal everyday in our world. We think that systems of ethics and churching of morals will protect us from the men and ideas of greed, conquest, hate, and power.
I don't think such protections are possible, not in our constitution, our legal system, our lawmaking, or our institutions of governance and education.
What, then, are we left with?
It's worth a conversation.
Which might be all that's left us.
Trail passes by brook
We climb as water falls, dog
Greets man and young child
Riding in carry-seat — he
Hand-holds orange bandanna
There are times when I think I’ve had it..
Nothing’s left.
When I find you again,
It will be in mountains;
This morning I lose you
Once more to farewell.
Free of attachment
In heart and mind
Is that why you can go
Ten thousand li alone?
Traveling without disciples,
You have only
A white dog
For company.
Chia Tao (779-843) dailyzen
At those times, having had it, there’s nothing there.
Footsteps through blanket of leaves,
Communio
Notas mihi fecísti vias vitai:
You have made known to me the ways of life;
adimplébis me laetítia cum vultu tuo, Domine.
you will fill me with joy by your countenance, O Lord.
(Neumz) https://app.neumz.com/listen/missa-notas-mihi-fecisti-7-95049/05-11-2023
I think I understand what’s going on with the new and unusual movement in right wing republican states and communities to discourage and forbid the teaching of American history that conflicts with their preferred narrative and eliminates any harmful facts indicating racism, slavery, discrimination, sexism, brutality, prejudice, or outright cruelty committed in the name of narrow-viewed governance or religious beliefs.
The movement seems to say — Don’t tell them what happened, tell them how great we are and why our actions are justified according to our superior status and unimpeachable ideology.
If they heard the truth, they would oppose our privileged status and run amuck attempting to correct injustice and try to bring about some sort of fair and equitable way of abiding together in some manner of liberty, justice, and freedom for all.
Holmes compiled statistics specifically for Golden Gate jumpers, something not done before. Over 15 years, he found that three-quarters of them were men. The average age was under 40. About 85 percent lived in the Bay Area, and more than 7 percent were from out of state. The most common occupation was student, followed by teacher. (—What the Golden Gate Is (Finally) Doing About Suicides, nytimes, 5nov23)
Suicide by excess knowledge, mental confusion, and emotional overwhelm is a bridge we do not want to cross.
Some say reality is too much to contemplate.
To get down to it is a long hard descent from lofty illusion and theoretical speculative or ideological heights that formulate upper crust superiority and fabricated privilege. Don’t you dare challenge our tier of perspective!
Some have a differing point of view.
“In my case Pilgrim’s Progress consisted in my having to climb down a thousand ladders until I could reach out my hand to the little clod of earth that I am.” — C.G. Jung
We have wrestled with the metaphor of coming-to-earth for a long time. So too, coming-to-reality. As is, know-thyself (Greek: γνῶθι σεαυτόν or gnothi seauton).
I recall the Alan Watts The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, c.1966. (see details)
The metaphor and the reality might be accounted for by an apostrophe.
Take suicide. There is the killing of oneself, and there is the killing (or the letting go) of one’s self. Perhaps our mistake is forgetting the space and the apostrophe.
Either way, it seems that the person jumping off the bridge is forgetting there is One Self within which we each and all dwell. Likewise, there is the lack of appreciation of the meditative/spiritual practice of coming to realize that one’s self is that which does not exist, the illusion of which must be abnegated and released.
The Buddhist teaching of anatta (non-self, not-self, no-self) is here described:
Contrary to popular conception, we have no record of the Buddha ever saying, “There is no self.” In the entire preserved volumes of the Buddha’s discourses, in only one place did someone actually ask the Buddha: “Is there no self?” The Buddha refused to answer the question. The same person then asked: “Is there a self?” This too the Buddha declined to answer. What the Buddha did say repeatedly is that no particular aspect of our psycho-physical being qualifies as atta or the Self. Not our body, not our feelings, not our thoughts, not our dispositions, and not our consciousness.
The Buddha’s teachings on self and not-self get even more subtle and fascinating. Aside from the specific definition of self he refuted in the Anatta Lakkhana Sutta, he argues that it is not useful to frame Buddhist practice through any conception of self. Views about the existence or non-existence of a self, or identifying the self with any characteristic or experience, even awareness itself, lead to a jumble of speculation. And more importantly, he claimed that they would not lead to liberation. https://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/anatta-and-the-four-noble-truths/
And yet our culture and society promulgates the self as the all-important be-all and end-all that commands never-ending attention and cultivation.
American religion has become individualistic.
This from Maggie Ross:
Thirty years after Tillich published The Courage To Be we see all around us the myth of the macho person, man or woman, the one who is unrelated, unconnected,, and who can solve the problems by sheer dint of brute force of will. This is a travesty of what Tillich was talking about, but this is the sort of life it can result in. Tillich would doubtless be horrified.
Overvaluing the self, undervaluing everything else, Americans have overdosed on the language of radical individualism, undermining their capacity to conceive and articulate, much less act upon, the common good. Individualism . . . has grown cancerous, eating at the vitals of our social ecology. Leaving us ill-equipped to confront “structures of power and interdependence in a technologically complex society dominated by giant corporations and an increasingly powerful state,” the hero worship of the self has become an invitation for the self to “twist in the wind.”
If we were to succumb to the “extreme fragmentation” of the modern world — not to ignore the “extreme threat” it poses to our very individuation — then a new level of social integration is required. Indeed, the straitjacket of the self-militant militates against the kind of collective self-awareness that would restore public involvement and responsibility to the place of privilege in the American psyche. Arguing that we are doomed if we don’t, the authors concentrate their hopes—along with their analysis—on the restoration of those sentiments and practices—“habits of the heart.” in de Tocqueville’s phrase— that would bring about renewal of community and commitment. 45
(--pp.76-77 in The Fountain & the Furnace, The Way of Tears and Fire, by Maggie Ross, c.1987
We need not kill ourselves. Nor anyone else. But we might consider letting go deceptive thoughts about our detached individualism, our secluded coteries of like-minded and exception-driven gated-cohorts.
Let the Golden Gate Bridge return to its connective function.
If you must leap, leap into reality.
What's real is underlying unity, a singularity of mutual concern, a union of unlikely inhabitants, a coincidence of opposites.
Let's look for
One-
Another
(t)here!
You get old
Energy depletes
What do you think will happen?
I get old
Energy goes elsewhere
I know what happens
In fire ring
Old wood
Becomes white ash
Given a thought, we try to create a world.
No-thought might be worth considering.
Given silence, what we once called “God” becomes presence.
Presence, pure and simple, is the only possession worth valuing.
Wittgenstein’s “Don’t think, look!” might be the clearest scripture
What am I waiting for?
You tell me.
Autumn night, unable to sleep,
I leave my tiny cottage.
Fall insects cry under the rocks, and
The cold branches are sparsely covered.
Far away, from deep in the valley,
The sound of water.
The moon rises slowly over the highest peak;
I stand there quietly for a long time and
My robe becomes moist with dew.
Ryokan (1758-1831) dailyzen
Every minute passing itself with shrug of shoulders.
Itself saying nothing.
You tell me.
Not everyone wants fame and notereity.
Tao's autobiographical summary of several paragraphs, "Biography of the Gentleman of the Five Willows," written in the third person, is a stylized tour-de-force that does not reveal much but is infused with self-abnegating simplicity.
Quiet and of few words, he does not desire glory or profit. He delights in study but does not seek abstruse explanations. Whenever there is something of which he apprehends the meaning, then, in his happiness, he forgets to eat. ...
His house with surrounding walls only a few paces long is lonely and does not shelter him from wind and sun. His short coarse robe is torn and mended. His dishes and gourds are often empty, yet he is at peace. He constantly delights himself with writing in which he widely expresses his own ideals. He is unmindful of gain or loss, and thus he will be to the end.
--Tao Chien (Tao Yuan-ming), Poet of Reclusion
It's a big world.
Plenty of room for the small.
Tao Chien has a profound affinity for the recluses and sages of the past:
Far off, I gaze at the white clouds,
I think deeply of the ancients ...
I think of you, recluses:
A thousand years after, I cherish your principles.
Searching their essence, I cannot exhaust it. ...
That the ancients cannot be with me
only I can know how sorely I regret it.
Poet of Reclusion
Is God still?
What does stillness look like?
If we were still, would we “know that I am God”?
The phrase reads: Be still and know that I am God.
I’m not sure we even begin to comprehend this pericope.
We ask: Is God still here? And the subtle multitudes of meaning elude considerations.
Still here.
We wonder whether and where God is.
We stumble upon the question: Is God still here?
And we run around the question picking up words and phrases, hermeneutical analyses and source archeology to shoehorn the phrasing into semiotic and cultural adhesion justifying stated concepts explaining a world view.
But what if God is still here?
Is
God
Still
Here?
Is that what medieval philosophers and theologians meant by their saying that God is the unmoved and unmoving mover?
Is the movement of God stillness?
Has the response of God to millennia of prayers been:
I
Am
Still
Here —
Be
Still and
Know that
I
Am
God
(?)
War seems to be the natural state of humankind.
Taking from others, punishing them if they resist, annexing their land, taking their resources.
The thing about war is that cruelty and maiming is ok.
We are armed with weapons of war.
We are a cruel and maiming people.
Whatever country, territory, or faction you belong to — you are cruel, maiming, murdering and misanthropic.
So is your god, your savior, prophet, leaders, generals, and populace supporting the ugliness.
Tolstoy focuses on “Resist not evil.”
An impossible precept.
A ridiculous Christic proclamation.
No wonder they murdered the Christic proclaimer.
No wonder churches nominalize his anguish for their own benefit.
God surrenders.
What kind of strategy is that?
What do we do now?
Purring cat on brown blanket looks toward drops of water leaning at bottom of open window. It’s 26° outside.
I listen to office of Prime from France. It is feast of All Souls.
I read E. Jean Carroll’s 1981 (repub. 31oct23) Outside Magazine piece “Cowgirls All the Way.”
Sun comes up far right in window frame highlighting water on pane. And, it is November, a thought that passes through me like sound of cars up and down mountain sluice with no guess to destination.
I consider I’ve died but my hearing notes with disinterest familiar sounds that no longer matter.
I thought it was today’s date, but it was yesterday, the first, that seven years ago my friend/soeur Jo-Ann died. She’d left her religious congregation, married a Cambridge University chemist, and spent last years, according to obituary he wrote, traveling, shopping, eating at fine establishments, teaching literature at local college, and entertaining at their near-water home. It’s what you do after religion.
My birthday haiku to her seven years ago, two months prior to her death, sits in return to sender envelope over wohnküche doorway these seven years later because I sent it to their street address and the Madison Connecticut post office couldn’t be bothered to either deliver it or put it into their post office box.
*Respiritualigion (my gift to lexicon) {pronounced: re-spiri-túá-lig-ion} [you're welcome!] is the practice of the day. When in doubt, stay connected with yes!
Yes is the threshhold coincidentia oppositorum expression of no. Right there, at juncture of antithesis, sic et non, we foray the middle way multiple significances of any word.
Such as the word soeur.
Vide:
The school uses the fictional sœur system where any second- or third-year student, the grande sœur ("big sister"), might pick a younger girl who will become her "sœur" (sister in French). The grande sœur gives her the petite sœur ("little sister") a rosary and promises to look after her and guide her. The basic etiquette demands the petite sœur to call her grande sœur "onee-sama" (older sister in Japanese). Aside from being used in prayer, the rosary is the instrument that certifies the sœur union and relationship between two students.[3] There is an implicit code of behavior between sœurs, especially in the Yamayuri Council—the student council of the school: quietness, measure and respect towards each other; values deeply attached to traditional Japanese education.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria-sama_ga_Miteru#Sœur_system
She’d taught in Japan, and we corresponded faithfully, for ten years, while she was there. She tried to recruit me to go teach there. The small hand reaching out with small flower (in card she send and still on wall) that never passed into small hand open and stretched out remains in that coincidentia these sixty years extended and ungrasped.
Soeur, mon cher ami, je te salue, avec amour!
It is what thresholds are for, as Rilke said, where two solitudes greet, touch, and protect each other.
It’s where respiritualigion steps into and through our lives, where our lives do the same with one-an-other.
Millions of leaves spread
Over mountain trail solo
Hike — Tolstoy’s Kingdom
Of God is Within my ears
One step next step sounds the sound
Buddhist prayer flags hang outside Wohnküche between yew tree and overhang. They are threadbare, wrinkled, creased, and overworked in the first of November breeze.
They are my prayer.
The wind articulates them. bamboo wind chimes on either side give basso support to their silent dance. Sunlight tries to accentuate their once vibrant colors now drab and tired looking.
This is my prayer.
I have nothing to say. No-one to say it to. Nada. Nulla. Niente.
Still, deep memory and heartfelt longing gives urge and urgency to the archeological dig pleading along surface terrain for retrieval and new hermeneutic of lost civilizations of prayerful resonance.
(In background the catholic liturgy from Le Barroux, France begins to fade with organ solo after their liturgy for All Saints Day.)
I sit with this sound and sight of prayer flags, wind chimes, and cars passing on Barnestown Road. Cats fed, dog awaiting, coffee made, November here, temperature chilly, soul quiet, mind disturbed, a chocolate donut from Moody's Diner by breadbox.
It occurs to me, again, that we do not pray -- it is not I, me, you, we who pray -- that self-referential conceit is mere self-aggrandizing dualism affording upset when the (so-called) recipient of our prayer -- God -- does not respond in any manner recognizably in accord with our petition, praise, or petulant posturing.
Prayer is (these days) the stillness of deep reality.
It dwells undergirding the tumultuous comings and goings of opinion and belief besotting human beings.
It seeps into the paws and pores of animals, birds, and the scales of fish as each traverses the contours of earth.
Prayer (I suspect) is other than our wants, our negligent premises, our negotiating promises, our suspicions as to what is good or best for our benefit and auspices.
Prayer is (Itself).
It is as-it-is within (Itself).
Prayer prays (Itself), as-it-is, in every moment, at every place, through every dimension, for the sake of What-Is, as it comes to be, ever and anon.
I do not pray.
I am prayer Itself as it surrounds and passes through what I blithely refer to as "me."
If I act as a barrier, boundary, or impediment to the natural emergence of what-is-coming-to-be, I (we) remain objects and statistics, casualties and hostile aggressors seeking to impose our will on the incalculable mystery of Life/Being, the cosmotheandric inclusion of (what used to be known as) Divine Presence or Reality.
So, I step(s) aside.
My calculating and assessing rationalizations as to the comparative worth of other species, races, nationalities, economic status, belief systems, and opinions -- all fade like the hues of colored flags, all of which are prayer allowing themselves to be moved.
I surrender.
To no-one there.
Feeling the feelings that arise.
Engaging, when possible, to possibly relieve suffering and encourage healing.
Living a life...
Of prayer.
We need to experience saintliness today.
Can we feel it?
The (w)holiness of interrelational being…
The integrity of intrarelational existence
We say no innocents should be killed. It is a good rule. But like war itself, absurd.
Innocents are killed. The guilty are killed. Bombs destroy anything they touch.
Perhaps we should say something else. What would that be?
Stop the world, “I” is getting off.
Everyone all at once is realizing the self-referencing ego has imprisoned our hearts and shriveled our minds.
Let the “I” go.
Begin to live and start to love again.
Dinghy back from sea
Now with canoe by cabin —
Pals for winter chats
We are, slowly, coming to an appreciation of what the phrase “All my relations” implies.
During these days of mass killings in American cities and Middle East locales, we contemplate with Native American recollection and contemporary musical reflection the invitation to remember and include, to move with one another into daylight.
With respect,
s&b
Just
Bare attention
Nothing else
Perhaps,
There,
No need
For
Anything
Other
The concept
Of god
Disappears
No voices,
No manipulation
Nothing
Just
Bare attention
Of
What is
I respond to him:
c,
Thanks.
And yet, I remain unmoved.
Might be the profound sorrow I feel for all the deaths all the suffering all the despair.
For me, tonight, prayer is the longing for what is not there, what is not here.
Nor do I expect, nor even want, that longing to be satisfied.
Like zazen, I attend, without hope, expectation, or desire for any particular outcome.
Yes, I pray.
It is prayer of non-intentional attention . . . non-other than attention itself.
Just here.
With all that is here . . .
Which I vaguely imagine is what God is — here.
Cheers,
b