freeing one from attachment and clinging

Chapter 6: Tolerance without Resentment

The Buddha said, “When a malicious person hears about

goodness and intentionally comes to provoke trouble, you should

restrain yourself; do not be angry or reprimand him. Evil deeds

will fall back upon the evil-doer.” 

                       -- The Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters

Going about my business, listening to The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Hegel, I hear the words "In the void, nothing is known."

And I am intrigued.

Does it suggest that that in the void "nothing" is known? Or the opposite? That not-knowing is the essence of the void?

That not-knowing is most intimate?

Dizang asked Fayan, "Where are you going?"

Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."

Dizang said, "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?"

Fayan said, "I don't know."

Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate."                             

 -- Zoketsu Norman Fischer

 https://everydayzen.org/teachings/not-knowing-is-most-intimate/ 

Weary of the blah, blah, blah of the cultural/political instigations and posturing of the majority of DC provocateurs, I content myself with denser diversion and intellectually intriguing possibilities in philosophy and spirituality. I prefer my own unintelligible investigation.

I find this paper:

Law entails its own inversion, Hegel tells us: the law of electricity necessitates its positivity and negativity together as one; the law of against murder entails the constituting the crime, the punishment, and the absence of murder as a positively existing condition, all together in one totality (Hegel 2018: 96).10 Hegel makes a very simple remark about this situation, one which we’ve already touched on. The beyond is the simple turning-away of immediate objective existence from itself. To say that the laws of the world are beyond the immediately sensible world says nothing else than that this immediate world possesses negativity within itself. Immediate objects automatically exclude us from them; further, they (the objects) posit a beyond that mediates the differentiation of themselves. The world immanently excludes itself from itself, positing a beyond of itself from within itself. Thus, this supersensible realm that I must by necessity presuppose is not negatively nothing. It is the positive nothing that belongs to the objective world as such; it is what Hegel calls the “void:” 

 

in the void, nothing is known… because it is defined as the very other-worldly beyond of consciousness… Suppose we are nonetheless to take there to be something in the void after all; this is a void which came about as the void of objective things but which now must be taken both as emptiness in itself, or as the void of all spiritual relations, or even as the void of the differences of consciousness as consciousness – and if the void is taken as this complete void, which is also called the holy, nonetheless there is supposed to be something with which to fill it out, even if it is only filled out with daydreams, or with appearances which consciousness itself creates. If so, then consciousness would just have to rest content with being so badly treated, for it would deserve no better, while daydreams themselves are still better than its emptiness (Hegel 2018: 87). 11

The other-worldly-beyond of the understanding is just the negation of this understanding within the world. This amounts to everything we have already proposed: the understanding demands its own negation, its own exclusion. But, furthermore, it is the void of consciousness as positively determined in the structure of the objective world. The understanding is slowly approaching its act of self-exclusion, in terms of the self- exclusion of the world. The holy is the daydreaming of the understanding; the real existence of illusion in the world, the truth of which is the frozen night of the world, constitutive of consciousness as such. That emptiness which the understanding wants to fill its own errors with is the nullity of the world to itself. The understanding had to posit the supersensible world of law as the determining principle of its own experience, but the consequence is that the differentiation of objects in the world is the world differentiating itself and thereby explicitly determining the possibility of error, the partiality of objects according to their property-being or their thing-being.

(-- from Hegel's Understanding: Absence, Accident, Alienated  by Virgil Lualhati McCorgray, University of Georgia, United States, in International Journal of Zizek Studies, Volume 15 Number 3)

Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with this:

"ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things." 

https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.1.i.html

And the question arises for me, is the desire to know a reluctance to not-know? If not-knowing is most intimate, is there a built-in avoidance of intimacy in our desire to know? Is the second noble truth -- “that suffering is caused by craving (or tanha), which includes desire, attachment, and aversion to sensory pleasures, existence, and non-existence" (AI) a clarification of a way of being that might be more advantageous to our human experience -- namely, to live without craving or desire is (paradoxically) a more radically desirous way of being for us?

Is desire itself different from desiring something? Is ignorance itself different from not knowing something?

A student I am working with is studying Śūnyatā. 

In Buddhism, śūnyatā (Sanskrit for "emptiness") is the concept that all phenomena, including the self, lack inherent, independent existence and are instead interdependent and constantly changing. It doesn't mean "nothingness," but rather that things are empty of fixed, isolated reality, existing only in relation to causes and conditions. Understanding śūnyatā is a profound insight that leads to the cessation of suffering by freeing one from attachment and clinging. (AI)

As the world changes, I change. As I change -- does the world change?

Is attempting to know “other” -- is the desire to possess, manipulate, or occupy “the other” -- a formula for detached being, alienation, aloofness, and coldness?

Is intimacy authentic suffering? Is the icon of the Bodhisattva of compassion, the one who hears the cries of the world, an example of authentic suffering different from the artificial suffering of our personal desires?

Is desirelessness an entranceway to the type of suffering pointed to in the Christ story, in the Bodhisattva ideal wherein communion and community -- a mystical body incorporating and incarnating our nascent wholeness -- is a reality where nothing is known?

Where nothing is known . . . (with all the ambiguity and seeming contradictoriness involved) . . . is everything loved?  

Is this why Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Jesus are so difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to follow?

Is this why true and profound intimacy is such a strange notion to the ordinary way we view the world?

vida con gracia

My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is non-doing, to speak the speech that is inexpressible, and to be trained in the discipline that is beyond discipline.

Those who understand this are near; those who are confused are far. The Way is beyond words and expressions, is bound by nothing earthly. Lose sight of it an inch, or miss it for a moment, and we are away from it.

-- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters, in dailyzen

 Brew coffee

Forget news

Try something else

Not sleeze and riches

Listen to Zen Physics

The Science of Death, 

the Logic of Reincarnation

c.2012 David Darling

Sidestep the crude 

Let first family accrue billions

It’s beyond you, let them grift

they are so good at it

no, for us, the hoi polloi, 

life is not luxurious, not 

full of coverup and payoff

but, rather, coffee and donuts

and sitting in chapel-zendo 

walking vespers, lighting 

incense, two candles, turning

hourglass, watching 

hola !

life 

with 

grace 

aliens and hoaxes

Sex trafficking

Is ok with Donald Trump 

Maybe he will re-think

This awfulness

Maybe rivers will turn

And run backwards

étonnamment

the point of prayer

is silence

stillness

where nothing

happens (astoundingly)

until the heart bows

with reverence at

the simplicity of it

fausseté

 no one likes a liar

(that’s a lie)

we love liars

they’re so unreliable

you never know 

what they’ll say

which end run 

around truth

we’re learning a lot

about lying

how truth is cheap

bought and sold 

by creeps who 

don’t care, don’t dare

face veracity

their scarcity

their empty soul

equally empty eyes

their disguise

tries to mask their death 

never having learned

truth tellers cannot die

wait for it

 Maybe Texas National Guard

Will fight Illinois Guard

In the streets

Trump will declare

Martial Law and that

Will be that

The rest of us

Will buy groceries

And wait it out

The end of democracy,

Voting, and whatever

It was we once knew

saved by reluctance

 thought about buying a car

found out it costs money

in dooryard, my old pickup

needing inspection and work

we know one another

thinking about fixing it

like any relationship

the cost of continuance

la insouciante

 One day

I wrote

Nothing

Forgive 

me my

Insouciance

knowing (not) being

 I have nothing

To say

To you

But you

Want something 

Else

You

(Know)

It

but was absolutely unscrupulous

 Woke up thinking of Alcibiades.

Alcibiades (born c. 450 BCE, Athens [Greece]—died 404, Phrygia [now in Turkey]) was a brilliant but unscrupulous Athenian politician and militarycommander who provoked the sharp political antagonisms at Athens that were the main causes of Athens’ defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War(431–404 BCE).

… 

In 412 Alcibiades helped stir up revolt among Athenian allies in Ionia, on the west coast of Asia Minor, but Sparta now turned against him, and he moved to Sardis to exercise his charm on the Persian governor. When some Athenian officers in the fleet began to plan an oligarchic coup, he held out hopes that if the democracy was overthrown he could secure financial support from Persia. In this he failed and, discarded by the oligarchs who had seized power, he was recalled by the Athenian fleet, which remained loyal to the democracy and needed his abilities. From 411 to 408 he helped Athens to a spectacular recovery, defeating the Spartan fleet in the Hellespont at Abydos (411) and Cyzicus (410) and regaining control over the vital grain route from the Black Sea. These successes encouraged him to return in 407 to Athens, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm and given supreme control of the conduct of the war. In a typically bold gesture he led the procession to the Eleusinian festival by road in spite of the danger from the Spartan force at Decelea, but, in the same year, after a minor naval defeat in his absence, his political enemies persuaded the people to reject him, and he retired to a castle in Thrace. He remained, however, a disturbing influence on Athenian politics and destroyed any hopes of a political consensus. When the Athenians at Aegospotami (405) facing the Spartans in the Hellespont grew increasingly careless, he warned them of their danger. But he was ignored, and, when the Athenians lost their whole fleet in a surprise attack by the Spartan admiral Lysander, Alcibiades was no longer safe in his Thracian castle. He took refuge in Phrygia in northwestern Asia Minor with the Persian governor, who was induced by the Spartans to have him murdered. 

 

Perhaps the most gifted Athenian of his generation, Alcibiades possessed great charm and brilliant political and military abilities but was absolutely unscrupulous. His advice, whether to Athens or Sparta, oligarchs or democrats, was dictated by selfish motives, and the Athenians could never trust him enough to take advantage of his talents. Moreover, the radical leader Cleon and his successors carried on a bitter feud with him, which at the critical period undermined Athenian confidence. Alcibiades could not practice his master’s virtues, and his example of undisciplined and restless ambition strengthened the charge brought against Socrates in 399 of corrupting the youth of Athens.

—Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alcibiades-Athenian-politician-and-genera

 History has had its share of figures whose allegiances and ambition rifled the course of nations, states, and persons’ lives.

There’s a troubling example of that in the United States these days.

Ah, history, we hardly know ya!

the point of cruelty is cruelty

Too many surds

I can’t know

What the irrational

Mean means

but you have to leap.

 Robert Reich shared this poem:

Leap Before You Look 

-- by W. H. Auden (1940)  

 

The sense of danger must not disappear: 

The way is certainly both short and steep, 

However gradual it looks from here; 

Look if you like, but you will have to leap. 

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep 

And break the by-laws any fool can keep; 

It is not the convention but the fear 

That has a tendency to disappear. 

The worried efforts of the busy heap, 

The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer 

Produce a few smart wisecracks every year; 

Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap. 

The clothes that are considered right to wear 

Will not be either sensible or cheap, 

So long as we consent to live like sheep 

And never mention those who disappear. 

Much can be said for social savoir-faire, 

But to rejoice when no one else is there 

Is even harder than it is to weep; 

No one is watching, but you have to leap. 

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep 

Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear: 

Although I love you, you will have to leap; 

Our dream of safety has to disappear.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/two-poems-that-feel-apt 

via haecceitas

 I am not god

I am good with this

This is enough

in, field, practice

 Well, that’s that. No wearing white after Labor Day

Listen to Keith Olbermann on Tommy John surgery

Read about Bobby Shantz soon to be 100, he lives

Where I lived in Pennsylvania

The quiet of it! September first on sunporch with cats

The quiet of it, bees purpling morning moist

Of course we are poor passing facts

Remaining nameless, dog barking on mountain 

remembering a ritual, 31 august

 

with obscure curiosity

Amidst a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams 

There lives one ex-scholar,

By day wandering these green mountains

At night coming home to sleep beneath a cliff

Suddenly spring and fall have already passed by

And no dust has piled up to disturb this stillness

Such happiness, what do I depend on?

Here it’s as tranquil as autumn river water.

Han Shan (~ 730) in dailyzen

august 31 is new year’s eve

tomorrow, September, begins anew 

drawing down summer, arising autumn

recalling when I stepped into classrooms

that first day of classes, the newness

now an old man, reading Philo, Hegel, 

Maseo Abe, Thomas á Kempis, Sunday

New York Times, Philosophy Now, 

The New Yorker --- just to keel, keep hand in

on off-chance someone asks for lecture

I could tell them something un-understandable

asking them to ponder incomprehensible things

like someone beyond Being wandering trail

up and around mountain, on roads, in dooryard --

my mind has gone on walkabout, listens to

unfamiliar, sees without understanding

takes joy in absence of felicity, content

with obscure curiosity, the passing breeze 

fletcher and harper

 say nothing

watch sun on leaves

breeze wavering

branches

these two children

killed in church

leaf and sunny rustling

Minneapolis to Maine

Sunday morning coffee

Irish cap, New York Times

companioning sorrow

tears

sit with me

dear children

we will watch

two cats walk though

one brown dog 

aground in dooryard

they, too, know you

know they love you

genug

 Not to

Want

Anything

Just to

Be

Enough

la solitude

 Bees on 

afternoon purple

Outside porch 

One lingers

Breeze through 

Slant sun

we need a script supervisor

 Of course a country can go wrong. 

Representatives of the people can get shut up in their own interests. 

A bad man can ascend to power, surround himself with other bad people, and create havoc and bedlam.

And here we are.

God or nature will have to intervene.

The people are too afraid.

Tonight it rains in maine. That’s a good thing.

Tomorrow the bad people might fall under their own weight.

We can only wait and see.

We are fair people.

We’ll wait.

And see.

ό,τι λέγεται έχει γίνει

 She said 

Christ's love 

is shunyata

What is 

said 

is done

arrive where you are

• Truth sits on the lips of dying men. (– Matthew Arnold) 
• If you speak the truth, have one foot in the stirrup. (—Turkish proverb)

 If you wonder

Why truth is so

Rarely spoken

You do not think

You are

Dying

Or, you have no

Horse tied

Outside door

But I’m sure

There is a 

Proverb for you

Try this:

Most of us are

Already dead

But do not 

Hear sound of 

Mourning yet

πρωτότυπη ολότητα (original wholeness)

Reading about Augustine, whose date of death (430AD) the church celebrates today.

I wanted clarification of the teaching of original sin he espoused .

Came across this:

Romans 5:12, translated properly (as in the NRSV and other translations), says: “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned—“

The “one man” is, of course, Adam. And Paul seems to be saying, quite clearly in fact, that death spread because all have sinned. Now what that means exactly needs some clarification, but that isn’t the issue here. The issue is that Augustine, working from a poor Latin translation of Romans 5:12, has “in him” where the Greek has “because.”

You can see the problem. Augustine’s reading is that death spread to all because all sinned in him [in Adam]. In other words, death spread to humanity because all humanity was somehow “present” in Adam’s act of disobedience.

This bad reading of Romans 5:12, rooted in a bad Latin translation of the Greek, has led to the notion that all humans are culpable (guilty) with Adam for what Adam did—all humanity sinned in him.

Augustine’s reading is what many Christians believe Paul actually said, and which is why Augustine’s notion of “original sin” is defended with such uncompromising vehemence as the “biblical” teaching. But neither Romans nor Genesis or the Old Testament supports the idea.  

(--by Peter Enns (Ph.D. fall-augustine-really-screw-everything )

A translation difference. But, then, most difficulties are brought about by errors in translation. 

If “sin” is separation, then we’ll have to reconsider this difference in translation.

Matthew Fox likes “Original Blessing.” Maybe.

I’ll go with πρωτότυπη ολότητα. (protótypi olótita), (original wholeness)

And with the title of Jean Gebser’s book, “The Ever-Present Origin” we can always begin again that which is our original nature in deep mutation.

Without excuse.

Without apology.

Just humility, returning home.

which is why I’m telling you about it

Reading Frank O’Hara. Send a copy to a man I know from prison.  O'Hara was just 40 when he died, in July 1966, after being hit by a jeep on Fire Island.   https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/11/books/frank-ohara-having-a-coke-poem.html

Some say it’s hard to always know where to end your poem.

At times a Jeep will end it.

              it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience

which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it

            (--from poem, Having a Coke With You, by Frank O’Hara) 

χωρίς λογότυπα, (chorís logótypa), (no logos*)

*In literature, logos is a rhetorical appeal to an audience's sense of reason or logic, employing facts, statistics, data, historical precedents, and clear, rational arguments to persuade the reader. It focuses on presenting well-supported claims that make logical sense, ensuring a story or argument remains plausible and engaging by avoiding logical fallacies.  [AI]

for now

this sorrow

is pulsing from

Minneapolis

children shot dead

elsewhere, wherever

elsewhere is, 

they say

life goes on

but it doesn’t

you can utter words

say anything

but not every word

is λόγος 

and with our absent brothers and sisters

 “This is my body”

shots, shots, shots

"Go, the mass is over”

america, america, america

why america is rusting

they pray to Monica

children are shot dead

this is how america

functions day to day

always someone 

shooting

always someone

saying crazy things

then he shot himself

the sacrifice at the altar

wasn’t enough for him

it wasn’t holy for him

president trump will fix this

he will tell us what he thinks

everything will get better --

except for that death thing

any questions

If eternal

Means only now,

No time --

Then now is

Only what

God is

Only what

Life is

eternal life

 It is no timeline

Right now, just now

Nothing gone by.

Nothing ahead

Now, now, now

No pre-life, no afterlife

Just life-now

Free from before and after

Here here here, and

Gone gone gone

What joy

What grace

coming round

 I have not forgotten who you are

Let me think for a moment

Nothing

I do not remember who I am

Let me think for a moment

Nothing

Would you like a glass of water

Yes, that’s it, a nice cold drink

That’s something 

the external appearance of inner experience

Not just our inner experience, but all inner experience. 

 “Matter is the external appearance of inner experience.” (--Bernardo Kastrup)

Perhaps, beyond being, the inner experience of what some call God.

The cosmos is experienced from within.

Mind, rife throughout the universe, is also well within human beings.

We apprehend things even without apparent direct contact with them. Hence, cosmic entanglement.

Hence, the vestiges of telepathic intercommunion.

Thereby, Trump is no stranger to me. Would that his strangeness would give way to a more interconnected sensitivity to his fellow beings rather than the obsession of control and cashing in on all of it in his purview.

A true spirituality would see things in a more benevolent way.

May the divine assistance visit and remain with all of us now and for all time and beyond! 

something darker and more dangerous

 J.B Pritzker according to Heather Cox Richardson:

Then Pritzker turned to a warning. “To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your national guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people,” he said, “cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation, and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.”

He went on: “The state of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever in our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.”

“Finally,” he said, “to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous, we are watching, and we are taking names. This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now. And eventually, the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf. You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually.

“If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law. As Dr. King once said, the arc of the moral Universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Humbly, I would add, it doesn't bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.”

https://substack.com/home/post/p-171959225

Good to hear.

May good return to what is here. 

And, finally

If It Be Your Will

    By Leonard Cohen

If it be your will

That I speak no more

And my voice be still

As it was before 

I will speak no more

I shall abide until

I am spoken for

If it be your will 

If it be your will

That a voice be true

From this broken hill

I will sing to you 

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing 

From this broken hill

All your praises they shall ring

If it be your will

To let me sing 

If it be your will

If there is a choice

Let the rivers fill

Let the hills rejoice 

Let your mercy spill

On all these burning hearts in hell

If it be your will

To make us well 

And to draw us near

And bind us tight

All your children here

In their rags of light 

In our rags of light

All dressed to kill

And end this night

If it be your will  

If it be your will

https://youtu.be/fICsHinJNbc?si=e2mCTZqw88Q2T6d2

verbindung

We do not have a political problem, nor a moral problem. We have a spiritual problem. 

Defining spirituality is tricky; the word is amorphous by definition, slipping through your fingers just as you think you’ve captured it. “Belief in a spiritual realm” gets close, in the way it hints at or hopes for something beyond the material world.Many people explain spirituality through the lens of connection: connection with God, connection with their innermost selves, connection with ancestors, connection with fellow humans.  

https://www.templeton.org/news/speak-to-the-earth-and-it-will-teach-you

If we were to become a spiritual community, a careful, caring community -- we might have a chance. 

pointing to the road

I'm glad the Buddha taught for so long. 

And so well.

Despite the obstacles,
I pursued the great monk
The misty mountains a million layers high
He pointed to the road back home
One round moon, lantern of the sky.

—Han Shan (c 730)

He touched the earth.

As the earth touched him. 

ucana or tnau

 In prison today we solve the problem of border control in the United States.

We were talking about schismogenesis. 

Gregory Bateson developed the concept of schismogenesis in the 1930s in reference to certain forms of social behavior between groups of the Iatmul people of the Sepik River in New Guinea. Bateson first used the term in a publication in 1935,^[1][2] but elaborated on the concept in his classic 1936 ethnography Naven: A Survey of the Problems suggested by a Composite Picture of the Culture of a New Guinea Tribe drawn from Three Points of View (reissued with a new epilogue in 1958).^[3] The word "naven" refers to an honorific ceremony among the Iatmul whereby certain categories of kin celebrate first-time cultural achievements. In a schematic summary, Bateson focused on how groups of women and groups of men (especially the honorees' mothers' brothers) seemingly inverted their everyday, gendered-norms for dress, behavior, and emotional expression. For the most part, these groups of people belonged to different patrilineages who not only did not regularly renew their marriage alliances, but also interacted through the mode he called schismogenesis. Men and women, too, interacted in this mode. And thus the naven ritual served to correct schismogenesis, enabling the society to endure.^[4] wikipedia

Then we decided to revamp the geographic and political landscape of North America to incorporate the nascent thinking of the current American president and flesh out a longer term resolution and composition.

Canada, the United States, and the countries of Central America will merge into one entity while honoring their individual expressions.

It would be called UCANA. That is "Union of Central America and North America."

Canada, US, Mexico, and the 7 countries of Central America would take on an identity in the same fashion of The European Union. It could also be called The North American Union.

We will leave the details of organization to more sophisticated minds than ours.

But we would like the planning of such an evolution of composition to begin forthwith.

intrigante

Bonaventure said that creation itself is the first scripture.

All the scriptures of all the religions attempt to explain the first scripture.

The original always intrigues.

Let’s be intrigued.

incarnation is resurrection

 it was conversation

things were said

thinking passing through

and so, this:

the incarnation is

the resurrection

being-born is

passing through 

non-being

into existence

standing out 

appearance

Christ is revealed 

as God as man

once so, no 

reversal, being-born

is where beyond-being

entered into standing-out

now, standing-within

and standing-out coincide

this coincidence, this

uncaused manifestation

contains and encompasses

all semblance of opposite

until, no-other appears

and with no-other what we

call sin cannot abide

separation becomes inseparate 

separation becomes the illusion

of erroneous belief 

(are all beliefs erroneous?)

rather, direct experience

reveals our neighbor 

as ourself, until (uh-oh) we 

believe other-unwisely

rather, self-secluded

enclosed and suffocating --

no, no -- re-surrect, breathe

through, breathe through

breathe through this Being