(Bell sounds!)
Thich Nhat Hanh is saying on tape that if pride holds us back from saying, "Darling, I am suffering," we go hide ourselves in our room and cry silently, pretending "I am not suffering, I don't need her, I don't need him." (in "Teachings on Love" How Mindfulness Can Enhance Your Intimate Relationships, by Thich Nhat Hanh, c.1996)
Is something missing, some comprehension lacking, in the way we live?.
"If pride is there it means that your love is not true love yet. If you really love him or her then when you suffer you have to go to him or to her and ask for help because a lover is for that." (Hanh, Teachings)
In the silence of the empty space following Eucharist this morning, the antiphon for Canticle of Zechariah: "If anyone wishes to be my disciple, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me, says the Lord." (from Thursday after Ash Wednesday)
If we translated this saying into another idiom, might it read: "No-self enters the ordinary, and follows where it leads -- this is where Christ resides."
Is Christ's lead Christ's reality?
Everything asks for translation. Everything is a two-way mirror -- one looking through while the other sees only their own image reflected back.
Sylvia brought a reading from Taoist tradition for Wednesday Evening Conversation. There was a sentence that caught the attention of a few -- about no longer knowing how to live one's life, nor needing to 'know' how to. It jumped out at me.
The Taoist point of view celebrates this non-knowing immersion as spiritual and artistic self-expression of what is called God. These days it feels less grand -- more like a stark not knowing how to live my life.
Some days there's a different take that goes: Don't go looking for your life, you have no life -- (no separated, disconnected, isolated life) -- that's the gift. Rather, look through the life being lived all about -- what is looking in is what is looking out, is what is looking through.
To translate, (i.e. L.'trans' = beyond, or through; L. 'latus' = carry, bear, or change from one place, state, form, or appearance to another)
There is much to be angry about, Joanie and John agree, reading the report on sudden climate change -- attitudes that violate earth and environment, denial which comes in all shapes and sizes. Being angry, or suffering, is not the problem. What seems like a problem is not simply acknowledging we are angry or suffering; instead, blaming and faulting someone else for what has happened in our life. However accurate and right the assessment assigning responsibility to another or even to ourselves -- something is missing, some comprehension lacking. What is that?
Does it have to do with "Deny your self," or, in translation, "No self?"
When Jesus is asked in the Gnostic Dialogue of the Savior, "How does the small join itself to the big?" he replies, "When you abandon the works which will not be able to follow you, then you will rest." Knowing which works can "follow" you -- which works, in other words, can be taken into the new realm of love and charity which the soul recognizes as its divine truth -- demands a total restructuring of the whole of one's life and aims. As Jesus says later in the same Dialogue, "Strive to see that which can follow you, and to seek it out, and to speak from within it, so that as you seek it, it can be in harmony with you."
This "saving of that which can follow you" demands total commitment to the new life that awakening has revealed and to a steady reordering of all the senses and energies of the old self to reflect the nature of God.(p.109, in The Son of Man, by Andrew Harvey, c.1998)
Jesus sorrowed and endured. He went through. He wants us to follow him through.
Buddha said there is suffering in life. The eightfold path will help us through the suffering even if it cannot be eliminated.
What does Christianity mean by "Deny yourself?"
What does Zen mean by "No mind" or "No self?"
These 40 days are just beginning, and already we are entering the invitation of Lent -- the word which derives from the Anglo-Saxon word 'lencten,' meaning 'spring,' suggesting 'lengthen.'
The invitation: contemplation -- a long loving look.
What is in the mirror? What is in harmony with us?
(Bell sounds! Now -- to follow this sound)
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
Remember. It is time to turn again.
Remember we're dust. Ok. We're earth. More, says Gale, we're star-dust. It's Ash Wednesday -- it's anybody's guess what we are. I give up. Su Sane says she's given up Ash Wednesday for Lent. Michelle says, as a mom of 2.5 children, she's glad just to have adult conversation.
I won't let even the
Buddha and Patriarchs
Through my gate,
So I never thought
To welcome some guests
And roll my eyes at others.
I open the gate a little
To thank you for your visit,
And at once the mountains
And the rivers stand up
And start the famous dance.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
After Mass at St. Bernard's this morning I sat in solitary silence before getting up to go. I circle the chapel looking at stations of the cross along the walls. After the 14th, Jesus laid in the tomb, there's no 15th. They end with tomb. I glance at the tabernacle just off to the left of the 14th station. The tomb and the tabernacle.
Tabernacles celebrate the dwelling of real presence of sacramental species -- in short, a temporary repose, a reposition of the Blessed Sacrament, a presence (among others) of Christ. There is no 15th station -- no empty tomb, no resurrection -- no additional metaphor of the transcending transformation following Jesus' death and burial. Still, to the left, the tabernacle.
12 "Even now," declares the LORD ,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning."
13 Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity
and leave behind a blessing-
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the LORD your God.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly.
16 Gather the people,
consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
gather the children,
those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her chamber.
17 Let the priests, who minister before the LORD ,
weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD .
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
'Where is their God?' "
18 Then the LORD will be jealous for his land
and take pity on his people.
(Joel 2:12-18: New International Version (NIV))
Eucharist, thankfulness and shared gratitude, follows the closing of the story depicted in the stations -- the 'via dolorosa' (the sorrowful way). What is this relation between sorrow and gratefulness in our lives?
From the tomb in this story the eye moves to the dwelling which builds shared gratefulness -- that which feeds one another with strength to continue on the way. The way where? Where, indeed, are we going?
I go with Cesco to Rockland Harbour for Lauds -- the psalms of morning prayer. Snow piled high. Fishing boats and working schooners under wraps on the hard. At this beginning of the season of Lent, many ask -- (some even aware they are asking) -- 'Where is God?'
Where?
We back out from end of wharf where gate to Coast Guard station is rolling closed.
At this beginning is the meditation for these next 40 days.
We're dust. We're the earth itself. Whence we come, thence we go. The earth from star somewhere beyond calibration -- a piece of the universe turned into light and life. And even though, with T.S. Eliot, we do not hope to turn again -- we turn anyway, this way and that, looking behind us and ahead of us -- wondering what was before womb and what is beyond tomb.
Jesus the Christ took his turn. Where do we turn?
Thank you for your visit.
Stand up and start the famous dance.
Remember we're dust. Ok. We're earth. More, says Gale, we're star-dust. It's Ash Wednesday -- it's anybody's guess what we are. I give up. Su Sane says she's given up Ash Wednesday for Lent. Michelle says, as a mom of 2.5 children, she's glad just to have adult conversation.
I won't let even the
Buddha and Patriarchs
Through my gate,
So I never thought
To welcome some guests
And roll my eyes at others.
I open the gate a little
To thank you for your visit,
And at once the mountains
And the rivers stand up
And start the famous dance.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
After Mass at St. Bernard's this morning I sat in solitary silence before getting up to go. I circle the chapel looking at stations of the cross along the walls. After the 14th, Jesus laid in the tomb, there's no 15th. They end with tomb. I glance at the tabernacle just off to the left of the 14th station. The tomb and the tabernacle.
Tabernacles celebrate the dwelling of real presence of sacramental species -- in short, a temporary repose, a reposition of the Blessed Sacrament, a presence (among others) of Christ. There is no 15th station -- no empty tomb, no resurrection -- no additional metaphor of the transcending transformation following Jesus' death and burial. Still, to the left, the tabernacle.
12 "Even now," declares the LORD ,
"return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning."
13 Rend your heart
and not your garments.
Return to the LORD your God,
for he is gracious and compassionate,
slow to anger and abounding in love,
and he relents from sending calamity.
14 Who knows? He may turn and have pity
and leave behind a blessing-
grain offerings and drink offerings
for the LORD your God.
15 Blow the trumpet in Zion,
declare a holy fast,
call a sacred assembly.
16 Gather the people,
consecrate the assembly;
bring together the elders,
gather the children,
those nursing at the breast.
Let the bridegroom leave his room
and the bride her chamber.
17 Let the priests, who minister before the LORD ,
weep between the temple porch and the altar.
Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD .
Do not make your inheritance an object of scorn,
a byword among the nations.
Why should they say among the peoples,
'Where is their God?' "
18 Then the LORD will be jealous for his land
and take pity on his people.
(Joel 2:12-18: New International Version (NIV))
Eucharist, thankfulness and shared gratitude, follows the closing of the story depicted in the stations -- the 'via dolorosa' (the sorrowful way). What is this relation between sorrow and gratefulness in our lives?
From the tomb in this story the eye moves to the dwelling which builds shared gratefulness -- that which feeds one another with strength to continue on the way. The way where? Where, indeed, are we going?
I go with Cesco to Rockland Harbour for Lauds -- the psalms of morning prayer. Snow piled high. Fishing boats and working schooners under wraps on the hard. At this beginning of the season of Lent, many ask -- (some even aware they are asking) -- 'Where is God?'
Where?
We back out from end of wharf where gate to Coast Guard station is rolling closed.
At this beginning is the meditation for these next 40 days.
We're dust. We're the earth itself. Whence we come, thence we go. The earth from star somewhere beyond calibration -- a piece of the universe turned into light and life. And even though, with T.S. Eliot, we do not hope to turn again -- we turn anyway, this way and that, looking behind us and ahead of us -- wondering what was before womb and what is beyond tomb.
Jesus the Christ took his turn. Where do we turn?
Thank you for your visit.
Stand up and start the famous dance.
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Knocking at shop door today were spontaneous quarrels. What was each looking at?
Today the talk, by nearly anybody who came in, is about 'anybody but Bush.' We get back after a week of door's being closed and find things humming.
It started early. It continues even now, six hours later. Unlikely people with strong opinions are concerned this administration's policy is dangerous and the men that run it intent on single-mindedly reforming the world in their image.
The voice of success and profit
May stir the vault of heaven,
But not this place.
In the rounds of the day,
You wear threadbare clothing
And eat simple fare.
When the mountain snow deepens,
Your thoughts
Are far from those of men.
Occasionally,
Immortals pass your door
And knock.
- Kuan-hsiu (832-912)
Richard and Tommy, were they not in their 70s and 60s, might have erupted into a fistfight. Joanie interrupts for clarification of something to do with Korean or Vietnam war. Charlotte has just walked a labyrinth in Lincolnville and emits Quakerly disinterest. John returns for Buddhist conversation and jostles the edge of a disagreement. Jim is hoping the Amnesty International potluck goes well tonight. Karl writes in his palm pilot and is heading home to attend to caring for his cold.
Earlier Leonard and another man with his small daughter had the same intensity standing in front of the counter about the neocons and hardliners whose brazen certitude, they feel, threatens to further harm the principles of democracy and self-determination with which the United States birthed itself.
All day the level of discourse is charged with dissatisfaction. Even the documentary filmmaker talking with Sam and Susan and ready to set off to get footage of them rowing their dory stops to write down three websites dealing with issues (surprise) that seem controversial and worry of conspiracy. The conversation up to that point was about Cape Breton boatbuilding and he'd never been in before. Is it the icon of Christ or the photograph of Palden Gyatso that reminds him of the need for passionate but loyal dissidence?
Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" and Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" were interspersed into the conversation mix of politics and religious thought.
(I, at this point, imagine myself looking out a hermitage window in Cape Breton as the light of dawn sweeps snow from windowsill.)
...we are told things about the world [today] by people whom we do not know, working in places we have not been. Trust is no longer bestowed on familiar individuals; it is accorded to institutions and abstract capacities thought to reside in certain institutions.... We trust the truth of specialized and esoteric scientific knowledge without knowing the scientists who are the authors of its claims.... The gentleman has been replaced by the scientific expert, personal virtue by the possession of specialized knowledge, a calling by a job, a nexus of face-to-face intervention by faceless institutions, individual free action by institutional surveillance. (Steven Shapin, quoted in article "The Dawn of McScience," by Richard Horton, in The New York Review of Books, March 11, 2004)
A former president of Harvard, Derek Bok, says Horton, argues:
The concerns of research...have become skewed toward answering questions that are concerns of industry, not of the public. Secrecy disrupts a productive collegiality among scientists, leading to waste and inefficiency as investigators are forced to duplicate the hidden work of others. Opinions are rented out to the highest bidder. A nefarious web of incentives is introduced into research. And most worrying of all, public confidence in medicine, science, and the academy is undermined. Knowledge is just one more commodity to be traded. (Horton, p.9, NYRB)
Shunryu Suzuki's writings on Zen end the day with quiet reflection:
So the important point is to practice without any idea of a hasty gain, without any idea of fame or profit. We do not practice zazen for the sake of others or for the sake of ourselves. Just practice zazen for the sake of zazen. Just sit.
Thank you very much.
(p.32, in not always so, practicing the true spirit of zen, by Shunryu Suzuki, c.2002)
Suzuki said: I used to think that after attaining enlightenment, I would know who was in the backyard talking, but there is no special person hidden within who is explaining a special teaching. All the things we see, all that we hear, is an expression of Buddha nature. When we say Buddha nature, Buddha nature is everything. Buddha nature is our innate true nature, which is universal to every one of us, to all beings. (p.31)
The backyard was abuzz today.
Nothing special was said.
Only what we see.
Today the talk, by nearly anybody who came in, is about 'anybody but Bush.' We get back after a week of door's being closed and find things humming.
It started early. It continues even now, six hours later. Unlikely people with strong opinions are concerned this administration's policy is dangerous and the men that run it intent on single-mindedly reforming the world in their image.
The voice of success and profit
May stir the vault of heaven,
But not this place.
In the rounds of the day,
You wear threadbare clothing
And eat simple fare.
When the mountain snow deepens,
Your thoughts
Are far from those of men.
Occasionally,
Immortals pass your door
And knock.
- Kuan-hsiu (832-912)
Richard and Tommy, were they not in their 70s and 60s, might have erupted into a fistfight. Joanie interrupts for clarification of something to do with Korean or Vietnam war. Charlotte has just walked a labyrinth in Lincolnville and emits Quakerly disinterest. John returns for Buddhist conversation and jostles the edge of a disagreement. Jim is hoping the Amnesty International potluck goes well tonight. Karl writes in his palm pilot and is heading home to attend to caring for his cold.
Earlier Leonard and another man with his small daughter had the same intensity standing in front of the counter about the neocons and hardliners whose brazen certitude, they feel, threatens to further harm the principles of democracy and self-determination with which the United States birthed itself.
All day the level of discourse is charged with dissatisfaction. Even the documentary filmmaker talking with Sam and Susan and ready to set off to get footage of them rowing their dory stops to write down three websites dealing with issues (surprise) that seem controversial and worry of conspiracy. The conversation up to that point was about Cape Breton boatbuilding and he'd never been in before. Is it the icon of Christ or the photograph of Palden Gyatso that reminds him of the need for passionate but loyal dissidence?
Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the Christ" and Dan Brown's novel "The Da Vinci Code" were interspersed into the conversation mix of politics and religious thought.
(I, at this point, imagine myself looking out a hermitage window in Cape Breton as the light of dawn sweeps snow from windowsill.)
...we are told things about the world [today] by people whom we do not know, working in places we have not been. Trust is no longer bestowed on familiar individuals; it is accorded to institutions and abstract capacities thought to reside in certain institutions.... We trust the truth of specialized and esoteric scientific knowledge without knowing the scientists who are the authors of its claims.... The gentleman has been replaced by the scientific expert, personal virtue by the possession of specialized knowledge, a calling by a job, a nexus of face-to-face intervention by faceless institutions, individual free action by institutional surveillance. (Steven Shapin, quoted in article "The Dawn of McScience," by Richard Horton, in The New York Review of Books, March 11, 2004)
A former president of Harvard, Derek Bok, says Horton, argues:
The concerns of research...have become skewed toward answering questions that are concerns of industry, not of the public. Secrecy disrupts a productive collegiality among scientists, leading to waste and inefficiency as investigators are forced to duplicate the hidden work of others. Opinions are rented out to the highest bidder. A nefarious web of incentives is introduced into research. And most worrying of all, public confidence in medicine, science, and the academy is undermined. Knowledge is just one more commodity to be traded. (Horton, p.9, NYRB)
Shunryu Suzuki's writings on Zen end the day with quiet reflection:
So the important point is to practice without any idea of a hasty gain, without any idea of fame or profit. We do not practice zazen for the sake of others or for the sake of ourselves. Just practice zazen for the sake of zazen. Just sit.
Thank you very much.
(p.32, in not always so, practicing the true spirit of zen, by Shunryu Suzuki, c.2002)
Suzuki said: I used to think that after attaining enlightenment, I would know who was in the backyard talking, but there is no special person hidden within who is explaining a special teaching. All the things we see, all that we hear, is an expression of Buddha nature. When we say Buddha nature, Buddha nature is everything. Buddha nature is our innate true nature, which is universal to every one of us, to all beings. (p.31)
The backyard was abuzz today.
Nothing special was said.
Only what we see.
Monday, February 23, 2004
As we are.
Joy and sorrow dwell together. Suffering and awareness resound love.
Looking for Immortals
At the stream's source,
The path leads on
To gray cliffs.
Everywhere,
Among blossoming apricot trees,
Dwell immortals.
A hermit says,
"More can be found
on West Peak,
and two or three
have their home
in the clouds."
- Chang chi (776-829)
It is the price paid for remaining engaged with the world and one another. A Bodhisattva continuance. A Christ emergence.
We each stay with one another to see one another through.
No love without suffering; no joy without sorrow.
This -- this is the dwelling place of the immortals. This is where love lives.
As it is.
Joy and sorrow dwell together. Suffering and awareness resound love.
Looking for Immortals
At the stream's source,
The path leads on
To gray cliffs.
Everywhere,
Among blossoming apricot trees,
Dwell immortals.
A hermit says,
"More can be found
on West Peak,
and two or three
have their home
in the clouds."
- Chang chi (776-829)
It is the price paid for remaining engaged with the world and one another. A Bodhisattva continuance. A Christ emergence.
We each stay with one another to see one another through.
No love without suffering; no joy without sorrow.
This -- this is the dwelling place of the immortals. This is where love lives.
As it is.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Chains cannot hold breath.
Chains can only restrict bodies and restrain movement toward or away.
There are Zen students who are in chains
When they go to a teacher,
And the teacher adds another chain.
The students are delighted,
Unable to discern one thing from another.
This is called a guest looking at a guest.
- Linji (d. 867)
A foot of snow overnight. Jim comes by with plow. Sando groans on daybed. Ralph Nader announces his candidacy for president as an Independent. He joins Bush, Kerry, and Edwards as the men most talked about as winter saunters toward March.
In this country we so much want to believe that one man will lead us fairly and wisely. It is a curious belief. Forces of market money, corporate power, cultural and religious passion have overtaken that belief and tossed it to the sideline. The world has raced ahead of any system that claims to bridle and brake it. The term 'war' is applied to almost every aspect of the effort to contain runaway forces governing peoples everywhere.
There are 'wars' on poverty, on drugs, on terrorism. There are culture wars, religious wars, ideological wars, and sexual wars. And of course there are military wars -- the ones using guns, bombs, and fighting troops splattering human blood and remains -- splintering what remains of the human -- across streets and fields and into newsprint and videotape for our eyes to view.
We used to speak of peace. Peace sounds like a quaint word these days.
What would 'peace' even look like if we were able to imagine all these 'wars' being transformed into a different metaphor? It seems that the metaphor of 'fighting' prevails. We fight bad breath, fight aging, fight illness, fight for our rightful places, and we fight death.
In proposing a framework of moral principles to serve a strategy for peace, this book rejects the many calls for a "new ethics" or for some worldwide religious or psychological or political conversion after which peace will arrive, as it were, by itself. We cannot count on such a transformation of society to wipe out the threat of war. Conversions, moreover, can go astray and new ideologies disappoint. When mass transformations bypass reflection, they open the way to uncritical acceptance of beliefs; they can then find unanticipated and brutal outlets, as we have surely witnessed in our own century. The verdict attributed to Voltaire still holds: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." (pp.xvii-xviii, in A Strategy For Peace, Human Values and the Threat of War, by Sissela Bok, c.1989)
Believe absurdities, commit atrocities -- a scary formula that seems as solid as two plus two equals four.
In beginning to work for piecemeal rather than global change as part of a strategy for peace, we can learn from a suggestion of Gandhi's that we carve out spaces or territories in personal relations where violence, say, or deceit will not be used: territories in the family, in the community, with friends and even opponents, where we have more control and also greater responsibility. Such an effort requires that we reconsider the role of violence or deceit in our work -- as news reporters or police officers, as public servants or industrial workers, as scientists or executives -- and at home, with family and friends, in community service, recreation, and entertainment. If one begins thus, with the personal and the piecemeal, one can then try to expand the reach of these spaces or territories of peace. This is the path already chosen by many individuals, community groups, professional organizations, and religious bodies in searching for ways to establish nonviolence.
I see all those who strive to reduce distrust as working for peace, even if they produce no immediate and direct effect on the nuclear balance of terror. (pp.151-152, Bok)
Maybe two plus two equals what goes into the formula, not an end product.
We are encouraged to trust only what is trustworthy. If trust begets trust, and fear begets fear -- a formula confirming what we most long for needs be created.
Perhaps one plus one equals each one.
Breathing centers one entering and leaving. Learning liberates one wondering and watching. Loving releases one trusting and asking.
Breathing learning loving -- we confirm one and one and one again -- a worthy trust.
Unchaining.
Chains can only restrict bodies and restrain movement toward or away.
There are Zen students who are in chains
When they go to a teacher,
And the teacher adds another chain.
The students are delighted,
Unable to discern one thing from another.
This is called a guest looking at a guest.
- Linji (d. 867)
A foot of snow overnight. Jim comes by with plow. Sando groans on daybed. Ralph Nader announces his candidacy for president as an Independent. He joins Bush, Kerry, and Edwards as the men most talked about as winter saunters toward March.
In this country we so much want to believe that one man will lead us fairly and wisely. It is a curious belief. Forces of market money, corporate power, cultural and religious passion have overtaken that belief and tossed it to the sideline. The world has raced ahead of any system that claims to bridle and brake it. The term 'war' is applied to almost every aspect of the effort to contain runaway forces governing peoples everywhere.
There are 'wars' on poverty, on drugs, on terrorism. There are culture wars, religious wars, ideological wars, and sexual wars. And of course there are military wars -- the ones using guns, bombs, and fighting troops splattering human blood and remains -- splintering what remains of the human -- across streets and fields and into newsprint and videotape for our eyes to view.
We used to speak of peace. Peace sounds like a quaint word these days.
What would 'peace' even look like if we were able to imagine all these 'wars' being transformed into a different metaphor? It seems that the metaphor of 'fighting' prevails. We fight bad breath, fight aging, fight illness, fight for our rightful places, and we fight death.
In proposing a framework of moral principles to serve a strategy for peace, this book rejects the many calls for a "new ethics" or for some worldwide religious or psychological or political conversion after which peace will arrive, as it were, by itself. We cannot count on such a transformation of society to wipe out the threat of war. Conversions, moreover, can go astray and new ideologies disappoint. When mass transformations bypass reflection, they open the way to uncritical acceptance of beliefs; they can then find unanticipated and brutal outlets, as we have surely witnessed in our own century. The verdict attributed to Voltaire still holds: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." (pp.xvii-xviii, in A Strategy For Peace, Human Values and the Threat of War, by Sissela Bok, c.1989)
Believe absurdities, commit atrocities -- a scary formula that seems as solid as two plus two equals four.
In beginning to work for piecemeal rather than global change as part of a strategy for peace, we can learn from a suggestion of Gandhi's that we carve out spaces or territories in personal relations where violence, say, or deceit will not be used: territories in the family, in the community, with friends and even opponents, where we have more control and also greater responsibility. Such an effort requires that we reconsider the role of violence or deceit in our work -- as news reporters or police officers, as public servants or industrial workers, as scientists or executives -- and at home, with family and friends, in community service, recreation, and entertainment. If one begins thus, with the personal and the piecemeal, one can then try to expand the reach of these spaces or territories of peace. This is the path already chosen by many individuals, community groups, professional organizations, and religious bodies in searching for ways to establish nonviolence.
I see all those who strive to reduce distrust as working for peace, even if they produce no immediate and direct effect on the nuclear balance of terror. (pp.151-152, Bok)
Maybe two plus two equals what goes into the formula, not an end product.
We are encouraged to trust only what is trustworthy. If trust begets trust, and fear begets fear -- a formula confirming what we most long for needs be created.
Perhaps one plus one equals each one.
Breathing centers one entering and leaving. Learning liberates one wondering and watching. Loving releases one trusting and asking.
Breathing learning loving -- we confirm one and one and one again -- a worthy trust.
Unchaining.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will re-open Tuesday, Feb. 24th.
.....
It's nice to know there's nothing(ness) to worry about.
The news headline read -- "The universe has at least 30 billion years left."
It's also nice to know there's enough time to shingle the barn roof.
A detailed analysis of light from ancient exploding stars has yielded powerful support for the idea that recently discovered "dark energy" that pervades the universe might be what Einstein originally dubbed the "cosmological constant." If confirmed, the findings support theories that the cosmos will continue its slow expansion toward nothingness instead of violently ripping apart or collapsing, astronomers said.
The results were hailed as pivotal new data that will help answer the most pressing and profound questions about the universe, such as what makes up most of the void and what eventually will happen to it.
..."The simplest assumption is that the universe will become ever darker, and ever emptier, as the galaxies recede from us," Rees said. "And in the very far future, there will be nothing in evidence. Everything will have disappeared beyond the horizon."
(from "'Dark Energy' Backs Idea Einstein Junked," by Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, February 21, 2004; Page A02)
In cabin this evening, glancing out over Sando's stretching body, through windows to old apple tree, Sally's land disappears into the horizon. Snow and sleet hit against north windows; an 'Open' banner creaks in wind at southwest corner of porch.
There are other things inviting our attention:
Proverbs 30
2 "I am the most ignorant of men;
I do not have a man's understanding.
3 I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
4 Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
5 "Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
6 Do not add to his words,
or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.
7 "Two things I ask of you, O LORD ;
do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
15 "The leech has two daughters.
'Give! Give!' they cry.
"There are three things that are never satisfied,
four that never say, 'Enough!':
16 the grave, the barren womb,
land, which is never satisfied with water,
and fire, which never says, 'Enough!'
18 "There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand:
19 the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.
29 "There are three things that are stately in their stride,
four that move with stately bearing:
30 a lion, mighty among beasts,
who retreats before nothing;
31 a strutting rooster, a he-goat,
and a king with his army around him.
32 "If you have played the fool and exalted yourself,
or if you have planned evil,
clap your hand over your mouth!
33 For as churning the milk produces butter,
and as twisting the nose produces blood,
so stirring up anger produces strife.
(New International Version (NIV) © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society)
So much of this part of the universe cries out 'Give me, give me,' and, 'It's mine, it's mine,' and, 'It's not enough, it's not enough.'
With 30 billion years left, perhaps we'll forget the impertinence of small mean men -- the individual...
who retreats before nothing;
a strutting rooster, a he-goat,
and a king with his army around him.
Let's not retreat before nothing, let's stop strutting, and let's graze the pastures of kingless, armyless wisdom.
Nothingness, like Godliness, is next. Cleansed minds and refreshed hearts have no need of worry.
Gratefulness and nothingness are friends.
All is as it is.
Friendly.
.....
It's nice to know there's nothing(ness) to worry about.
The news headline read -- "The universe has at least 30 billion years left."
It's also nice to know there's enough time to shingle the barn roof.
A detailed analysis of light from ancient exploding stars has yielded powerful support for the idea that recently discovered "dark energy" that pervades the universe might be what Einstein originally dubbed the "cosmological constant." If confirmed, the findings support theories that the cosmos will continue its slow expansion toward nothingness instead of violently ripping apart or collapsing, astronomers said.
The results were hailed as pivotal new data that will help answer the most pressing and profound questions about the universe, such as what makes up most of the void and what eventually will happen to it.
..."The simplest assumption is that the universe will become ever darker, and ever emptier, as the galaxies recede from us," Rees said. "And in the very far future, there will be nothing in evidence. Everything will have disappeared beyond the horizon."
(from "'Dark Energy' Backs Idea Einstein Junked," by Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, February 21, 2004; Page A02)
In cabin this evening, glancing out over Sando's stretching body, through windows to old apple tree, Sally's land disappears into the horizon. Snow and sleet hit against north windows; an 'Open' banner creaks in wind at southwest corner of porch.
There are other things inviting our attention:
Proverbs 30
2 "I am the most ignorant of men;
I do not have a man's understanding.
3 I have not learned wisdom,
nor have I knowledge of the Holy One.
4 Who has gone up to heaven and come down?
Who has gathered up the wind in the hollow of his hands?
Who has wrapped up the waters in his cloak?
Who has established all the ends of the earth?
What is his name, and the name of his son?
Tell me if you know!
5 "Every word of God is flawless;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
6 Do not add to his words,
or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar.
7 "Two things I ask of you, O LORD ;
do not refuse me before I die:
8 Keep falsehood and lies far from me;
give me neither poverty nor riches,
but give me only my daily bread.
9 Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you
and say, 'Who is the LORD ?'
Or I may become poor and steal,
and so dishonor the name of my God.
15 "The leech has two daughters.
'Give! Give!' they cry.
"There are three things that are never satisfied,
four that never say, 'Enough!':
16 the grave, the barren womb,
land, which is never satisfied with water,
and fire, which never says, 'Enough!'
18 "There are three things that are too amazing for me,
four that I do not understand:
19 the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a snake on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.
29 "There are three things that are stately in their stride,
four that move with stately bearing:
30 a lion, mighty among beasts,
who retreats before nothing;
31 a strutting rooster, a he-goat,
and a king with his army around him.
32 "If you have played the fool and exalted yourself,
or if you have planned evil,
clap your hand over your mouth!
33 For as churning the milk produces butter,
and as twisting the nose produces blood,
so stirring up anger produces strife.
(New International Version (NIV) © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society)
So much of this part of the universe cries out 'Give me, give me,' and, 'It's mine, it's mine,' and, 'It's not enough, it's not enough.'
With 30 billion years left, perhaps we'll forget the impertinence of small mean men -- the individual...
who retreats before nothing;
a strutting rooster, a he-goat,
and a king with his army around him.
Let's not retreat before nothing, let's stop strutting, and let's graze the pastures of kingless, armyless wisdom.
Nothingness, like Godliness, is next. Cleansed minds and refreshed hearts have no need of worry.
Gratefulness and nothingness are friends.
All is as it is.
Friendly.
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed for the remainder of the week. We will re-open Tuesday, Feb. 24th.
.............
The rolling hills and snowy roadside drifts are lovely.
We travel the length of Maine this week doing the part-time work that actually contributes to making payments for rent, oil for shop, propane gas for house, wood for stove, and those nice people who really hate the thought of charging late payment fee at credit card companies.
Sages since time immemorial have only explained the problems of pollution. If one does not have all that false consciousness, emotional and intellectual opinionatedness, and conceptual habituation, one is clear as autumn water, pure and uncontrived, placid and uninhibited. Such people are called Wayfarers, or free people.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)
On the road 1000 miles so far this week: six bottles of water; three salami sandwiches; one pizza; some Chinese food; three coffees; five cadbury fruit and chocolate bars; trudges through snow; walks on rural roads and sidetrip stroll on Canadian beach.
The dogs think we've moved into the car. A little small, they think, but ok. Time for another walk? -- cool!
Nomadic conversations.
Where is home?
Vagrant. Vagabond. Wayfarer.
Take this turn.
.............
The rolling hills and snowy roadside drifts are lovely.
We travel the length of Maine this week doing the part-time work that actually contributes to making payments for rent, oil for shop, propane gas for house, wood for stove, and those nice people who really hate the thought of charging late payment fee at credit card companies.
Sages since time immemorial have only explained the problems of pollution. If one does not have all that false consciousness, emotional and intellectual opinionatedness, and conceptual habituation, one is clear as autumn water, pure and uncontrived, placid and uninhibited. Such people are called Wayfarers, or free people.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)
On the road 1000 miles so far this week: six bottles of water; three salami sandwiches; one pizza; some Chinese food; three coffees; five cadbury fruit and chocolate bars; trudges through snow; walks on rural roads and sidetrip stroll on Canadian beach.
The dogs think we've moved into the car. A little small, they think, but ok. Time for another walk? -- cool!
Nomadic conversations.
Where is home?
Vagrant. Vagabond. Wayfarer.
Take this turn.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday this week. We're on the road doing other work.
....................
"Phenomenology is a means of being led by the phenomenon through a way of access genuinely belonging to it." (Richard Palmer, in Hermaneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthy, Heidegger, and Gadamer, p.128, c.1962)
Each thing, each person, belongs to itself. When we allow that understanding to become a way of being-in-the-world, we participate in the liberation of each to dwell in their true home.
Comprehending the fundamental,
Embracing the spirit,
Roam the root of heaven and earth,
Wander beyond the dust and dirt,
Travel to work with noninvolvement.
Take care not to let mechanical
Intelligence burden your mind;
Watch what is not temporal
And remain unmoved by things.
- Lao tzu
What does 'unmoved by things' here mean?
If each thing is what it is, and there is no gap between ourselves and each thing, therefore when each thing moves we move, being what we are.
Each thing, each person, is not an object for us to move, or to be moved by. If each-is-each, when one moves -- all moves. I am not separate. "That is what 'I' means. 'I' means everyone." (Maezumi Roshi)
So when you practice shikantaza, just sit. This is the condition of openness. Then being totally open, you are nothing other than all space and time. Dogen Zenji says, "On this body, put the Buddha seal." The Buddha seal is this openness, where there is no conditioning, no division between yourself and the object, no division between yourself and your life. (from article "Appreciate Your Life," by Maezumi Roshi, in Shambhala Sun Magazine, May 2001)
Just like that -- morning comes. And we drive to Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Lincoln, and Millinocket.
No gap. Just miles.
Embracing spirit!
....................
"Phenomenology is a means of being led by the phenomenon through a way of access genuinely belonging to it." (Richard Palmer, in Hermaneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthy, Heidegger, and Gadamer, p.128, c.1962)
Each thing, each person, belongs to itself. When we allow that understanding to become a way of being-in-the-world, we participate in the liberation of each to dwell in their true home.
Comprehending the fundamental,
Embracing the spirit,
Roam the root of heaven and earth,
Wander beyond the dust and dirt,
Travel to work with noninvolvement.
Take care not to let mechanical
Intelligence burden your mind;
Watch what is not temporal
And remain unmoved by things.
- Lao tzu
What does 'unmoved by things' here mean?
If each thing is what it is, and there is no gap between ourselves and each thing, therefore when each thing moves we move, being what we are.
Each thing, each person, is not an object for us to move, or to be moved by. If each-is-each, when one moves -- all moves. I am not separate. "That is what 'I' means. 'I' means everyone." (Maezumi Roshi)
So when you practice shikantaza, just sit. This is the condition of openness. Then being totally open, you are nothing other than all space and time. Dogen Zenji says, "On this body, put the Buddha seal." The Buddha seal is this openness, where there is no conditioning, no division between yourself and the object, no division between yourself and your life. (from article "Appreciate Your Life," by Maezumi Roshi, in Shambhala Sun Magazine, May 2001)
Just like that -- morning comes. And we drive to Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Lincoln, and Millinocket.
No gap. Just miles.
Embracing spirit!
Saturday, February 14, 2004
If we become what we love, and we see what we are, then, will we be able to say what we love?
This middle February seems laden with odd truths. And odder loves.
"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream -- a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -- a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.
(-- final lines, "The Mysterious Stranger," in Mark Twain's Best, Eight Short Stories by America's Master Humorist, c.1962)
Ask someone what they love -- if you dare. You are asking them to face a truth that is fraught with questions. And those questions, if also faced, are fraught with further questions. Further and deeper, deeper and further fraught-filled questions follow each enquiry.
Paco wondered yesterday in prison if the questions were worth asking. Ryan, Diane, Mike, Saskia, and I were also taken up into the question of grace at the Thin Place where one thing shines through another -- where revelation takes place in and through the most peculiar and often terrible metaphors found in prison.
How retain one's feeling humanity in the face of hateful, harmful experiences? How retrieve trust in an atmosphere of deceit? How believe in the integrity of the relationally-felt when so much fragmentation occurs in the numbing-distortions?
And there we sat.
With one another in the questions.
Don't be surprised,
Don't be startled;
All things will arrange
Themselves.
Don't cause a disturbance,
Don't exert pressure;
All things will clarify
Themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu
If we become what we love, and we see what we are, then, will we be able to say what we love?
For a period of time -- in prison and in middle February oddities of love -- we sift through our dreams and questions.
Arrange.
Clarify.
See.
Say.
This middle February seems laden with odd truths. And odder loves.
"It is true, that which I have revealed to you; there is no God, no universe, no human race, no earthly life, no heaven, no hell. It is all a dream -- a grotesque and foolish dream. Nothing exists but you. And you are but a thought -- a vagrant thought, a useless thought, a homeless thought, wandering forlorn among the empty eternities!"
He vanished, and left me appalled; for I knew, and realized, that all he had said was true.
(-- final lines, "The Mysterious Stranger," in Mark Twain's Best, Eight Short Stories by America's Master Humorist, c.1962)
Ask someone what they love -- if you dare. You are asking them to face a truth that is fraught with questions. And those questions, if also faced, are fraught with further questions. Further and deeper, deeper and further fraught-filled questions follow each enquiry.
Paco wondered yesterday in prison if the questions were worth asking. Ryan, Diane, Mike, Saskia, and I were also taken up into the question of grace at the Thin Place where one thing shines through another -- where revelation takes place in and through the most peculiar and often terrible metaphors found in prison.
How retain one's feeling humanity in the face of hateful, harmful experiences? How retrieve trust in an atmosphere of deceit? How believe in the integrity of the relationally-felt when so much fragmentation occurs in the numbing-distortions?
And there we sat.
With one another in the questions.
Don't be surprised,
Don't be startled;
All things will arrange
Themselves.
Don't cause a disturbance,
Don't exert pressure;
All things will clarify
Themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu
If we become what we love, and we see what we are, then, will we be able to say what we love?
For a period of time -- in prison and in middle February oddities of love -- we sift through our dreams and questions.
Arrange.
Clarify.
See.
Say.
Friday, February 13, 2004
Are we the story we tell about ourselves?
Vast and far-reaching
without boundary,
secluded and pure,
manifesting light,
this spirit is without
obstruction.
Its brightness does not
shine out but can be
called empty and
inherently radiant.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
The thought comes, following Thursday Evening Conversation, that everything really is relational -- felt relational -- or we are adrift in a numbing sea of abstract ideas and calculated complaints (consciously, or more likely, unconsciously formulated) that separate us from each other; a separation, only seemingly real, made rigid by unfeeling judgmental mind.
Depression is not about pain. Depression is about the absence of pain, the absence of feeling.
Depression covers anxiety and fear like a fog. Once depressed, I was no longer anxious about my children. If I drank a cup of coffee, my mood was not enhanced; if I went to a party, I didn't feel better.
If I read poetry, my soul no longer blossomed as it had in the past. No feeling is what depression is about, and the condition created a barrier between me and my children, my husband, my friends.
Depression is not about pain: it's about everything gone away. ...
Women in each generation of my family endured lives of poverty; they passively suffered the births of many children, yet they knew there were other lives they could have lived. They were afraid to look. ....
At an early age I learned that things stand for other things. ...
I have had to look at my life. And I have escaped from madness by understanding transformation, how each thing transcends its own reality. I either go mad or I learn about metaphor.
(from "Thorazine Shuffle" by filmmaker Allie Light, in the book Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness, ed. by Rebecca Shannonhouse)
Light's final three sentences are the map to relational feeling; to what is relationally felt.
Is 'what is' relationally felt?
Is 'God' what is touching and holding us together, each to each?
What story are we telling today?
Vast and far-reaching
without boundary,
secluded and pure,
manifesting light,
this spirit is without
obstruction.
Its brightness does not
shine out but can be
called empty and
inherently radiant.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
The thought comes, following Thursday Evening Conversation, that everything really is relational -- felt relational -- or we are adrift in a numbing sea of abstract ideas and calculated complaints (consciously, or more likely, unconsciously formulated) that separate us from each other; a separation, only seemingly real, made rigid by unfeeling judgmental mind.
Depression is not about pain. Depression is about the absence of pain, the absence of feeling.
Depression covers anxiety and fear like a fog. Once depressed, I was no longer anxious about my children. If I drank a cup of coffee, my mood was not enhanced; if I went to a party, I didn't feel better.
If I read poetry, my soul no longer blossomed as it had in the past. No feeling is what depression is about, and the condition created a barrier between me and my children, my husband, my friends.
Depression is not about pain: it's about everything gone away. ...
Women in each generation of my family endured lives of poverty; they passively suffered the births of many children, yet they knew there were other lives they could have lived. They were afraid to look. ....
At an early age I learned that things stand for other things. ...
I have had to look at my life. And I have escaped from madness by understanding transformation, how each thing transcends its own reality. I either go mad or I learn about metaphor.
(from "Thorazine Shuffle" by filmmaker Allie Light, in the book Out of Her Mind: Women Writing on Madness, ed. by Rebecca Shannonhouse)
Light's final three sentences are the map to relational feeling; to what is relationally felt.
Is 'what is' relationally felt?
Is 'God' what is touching and holding us together, each to each?
What story are we telling today?
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
Are we listening?
Suicide bombing in Iraq; 20 Iraqis killed. Next day, another suicide bombing in Iraq; 50 Iraqis killed. Calculations take place. On one side: can we start a civil war? On other side: how do we get out of this country.
Evening meditation,
Enfolded in mountains,
All thoughts of the
World of men dissolve.
Quietly sitting on my cattail cushion
Alone, I face the empty window.
Incense burns away
As the dark night deepens,
And my robe is a single fold
As white dew thickens.
Rising from deep meditation,
I stroll in the garden,
And the moon is already above the highest peak.
( - Ryokan)
Zen poet monk Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) (nicknamed Great Fool) wrote of his life simply, wisely, and directly. He was no politician. He didn't have to explain his whereabouts during an awful war. He didn't have to justify every word and act over the past 30 years. Nor did he have to accumulate a hundred million dollars in order to get the one job that could distribute hundreds of billions of dollars around the world and at home to loyal friends.
I've made my choice for the upcoming presidential election. I want to come out early, once, and finally and be done with it.
I support no one for president. I recommend a council of the wise -- elderly and young -- to take on the conversation daily about how to live in this world with others toward mutual support, respect, and well-being. This council of the wise will know what to do -- they're wise. Whether they model after Native American Circles, or Canadian/British Parliamentary representation, I'm confident they'll find a system that is fair, representative of all Americans, and responsive to the needs of the whole globe.
No more fund-raising. No more advertisements as though candidates were underwear being sold. No more buying and selling of votes and influence so as to benefit and profit a few at the expense of and exclusion of others.
I have fallen to less useful diffidence.
Too confused to ever earn a living
I've learned to let things have their way.
With only three handfuls of rice in my bag
and a few branches by my fireside
I pursue neither right or wrong
and forget worldly fortune and fame.
This damp night under a grassy roof
I stretch out my legs without regrets.
(- Ryokan)
Tuesday Evening Conversation followed reading on 'Changing Karma' by Shunryu Suzuki.
In conversing it seems it is not a matter of right or wrong -- as though dualistic list-making and side-taking could remedy complex human difficulties. It is more the willingness to look hard and long at the difficulties and let arise from the core of the difficulty itself information necessary to move to the next step in the right direction. "Enjoy your life," Suzuki said, "and do not be fooled by things."
All karma is present at each moment. We might not even know what good or bad effects of good or bad causes are there in the moment, in the very next action we are about to perform. It is not necessary to know, to be able to predict or analyze outcome or payoff. What is necessary is to engage what is there and next there with attention and clear mind -- to do what is requested by the situation to be done -- without concern for the fruits of the action, without calculation of benefit or deficit following. A clear and selfless act records no karma.
The flame of attention both lights up and dissolves karma. Loving attention needs nothing other than itself.
REPLY TO A FRIEND
In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone
befriended by trees and herbs.
Too lazy to learn right from wrong,
I laugh at myself, ignoring others.
Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream,
a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather.
Living thus, I want for nothing,
at peace with all the world.
(- Ryokan)
There are many worlds, worlds beyond description. 'Universe' and even 'Multiverses' probably do not begin to reveal the worlds-within-worlds and the worlds-beyond-worlds gracing what we call existence or being. Each human being, each animal, each insect, each life-cell -- each a world unto itself that we find convenient to categorize into species and bio-animate clusters. Billions and trillions of worlds to the nth power reside side by side near and far. What would it mean for us to be "at peace with all the world"?
Your finger points to the moon,
but the finger is blind until the moon appears.
What connection has moon and finger?
Are they separate objects or bound?
This is a question for beginners
wrapped in seas of ignorance.
Yet one who looks beyond metaphor
knows there is no finger; there is no moon.
(- Ryokan)
Richard's contribution ended the final circle comments. In them, in that way he has, he called the other four of us 'novices' in our understanding. This I took as a great compliment. To be a beginner is just about where I suspect I am, we are, he she or it is -- if we are in the process of approaching and stepping into right understanding of life. Lloyd laughed. Saskia laughed. John laughed. I laughed. And Richard? -- he too laughed.
Winter dinghy, overturned with crusty snow atop blue covering tarp below birdfeeders and tucked underside Loon IV, bobs in sea of ignorance riding swelling stillness and solitude.
Ryokan has it: there is no ocean, there is no land.
There is just question -- and metaphor.
Ask, or don't ask -- still, one speaks through another.
Only listen.
Suicide bombing in Iraq; 20 Iraqis killed. Next day, another suicide bombing in Iraq; 50 Iraqis killed. Calculations take place. On one side: can we start a civil war? On other side: how do we get out of this country.
Evening meditation,
Enfolded in mountains,
All thoughts of the
World of men dissolve.
Quietly sitting on my cattail cushion
Alone, I face the empty window.
Incense burns away
As the dark night deepens,
And my robe is a single fold
As white dew thickens.
Rising from deep meditation,
I stroll in the garden,
And the moon is already above the highest peak.
( - Ryokan)
Zen poet monk Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) (nicknamed Great Fool) wrote of his life simply, wisely, and directly. He was no politician. He didn't have to explain his whereabouts during an awful war. He didn't have to justify every word and act over the past 30 years. Nor did he have to accumulate a hundred million dollars in order to get the one job that could distribute hundreds of billions of dollars around the world and at home to loyal friends.
I've made my choice for the upcoming presidential election. I want to come out early, once, and finally and be done with it.
I support no one for president. I recommend a council of the wise -- elderly and young -- to take on the conversation daily about how to live in this world with others toward mutual support, respect, and well-being. This council of the wise will know what to do -- they're wise. Whether they model after Native American Circles, or Canadian/British Parliamentary representation, I'm confident they'll find a system that is fair, representative of all Americans, and responsive to the needs of the whole globe.
No more fund-raising. No more advertisements as though candidates were underwear being sold. No more buying and selling of votes and influence so as to benefit and profit a few at the expense of and exclusion of others.
I have fallen to less useful diffidence.
Too confused to ever earn a living
I've learned to let things have their way.
With only three handfuls of rice in my bag
and a few branches by my fireside
I pursue neither right or wrong
and forget worldly fortune and fame.
This damp night under a grassy roof
I stretch out my legs without regrets.
(- Ryokan)
Tuesday Evening Conversation followed reading on 'Changing Karma' by Shunryu Suzuki.
In conversing it seems it is not a matter of right or wrong -- as though dualistic list-making and side-taking could remedy complex human difficulties. It is more the willingness to look hard and long at the difficulties and let arise from the core of the difficulty itself information necessary to move to the next step in the right direction. "Enjoy your life," Suzuki said, "and do not be fooled by things."
All karma is present at each moment. We might not even know what good or bad effects of good or bad causes are there in the moment, in the very next action we are about to perform. It is not necessary to know, to be able to predict or analyze outcome or payoff. What is necessary is to engage what is there and next there with attention and clear mind -- to do what is requested by the situation to be done -- without concern for the fruits of the action, without calculation of benefit or deficit following. A clear and selfless act records no karma.
The flame of attention both lights up and dissolves karma. Loving attention needs nothing other than itself.
REPLY TO A FRIEND
In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone
befriended by trees and herbs.
Too lazy to learn right from wrong,
I laugh at myself, ignoring others.
Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream,
a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather.
Living thus, I want for nothing,
at peace with all the world.
(- Ryokan)
There are many worlds, worlds beyond description. 'Universe' and even 'Multiverses' probably do not begin to reveal the worlds-within-worlds and the worlds-beyond-worlds gracing what we call existence or being. Each human being, each animal, each insect, each life-cell -- each a world unto itself that we find convenient to categorize into species and bio-animate clusters. Billions and trillions of worlds to the nth power reside side by side near and far. What would it mean for us to be "at peace with all the world"?
Your finger points to the moon,
but the finger is blind until the moon appears.
What connection has moon and finger?
Are they separate objects or bound?
This is a question for beginners
wrapped in seas of ignorance.
Yet one who looks beyond metaphor
knows there is no finger; there is no moon.
(- Ryokan)
Richard's contribution ended the final circle comments. In them, in that way he has, he called the other four of us 'novices' in our understanding. This I took as a great compliment. To be a beginner is just about where I suspect I am, we are, he she or it is -- if we are in the process of approaching and stepping into right understanding of life. Lloyd laughed. Saskia laughed. John laughed. I laughed. And Richard? -- he too laughed.
Winter dinghy, overturned with crusty snow atop blue covering tarp below birdfeeders and tucked underside Loon IV, bobs in sea of ignorance riding swelling stillness and solitude.
Ryokan has it: there is no ocean, there is no land.
There is just question -- and metaphor.
Ask, or don't ask -- still, one speaks through another.
Only listen.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Tommy sits by fire. He tells of Sunday caucus. Maine turned out.
Flat Lake cold penetrates
Water-lily clothes
The mountain by the lake
Is neither right nor wrong
Dusty tracks all end
The world is far away.
White clouds and gulls
Have no hidden plans.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
Tommy tells me to go back into solitude when I say I'd begun to feel sorry for Bush Sunday morning as he tried to present himself as a war president with war before his eyes everyday. A conservative columnist for the New York Times suggests Bush is living each day as though it were September 12, 2001. The nation has gone forward 880 days.
Tommy's for Kucinich. He'll be a state delegate.
Joanie comes in. She and Tommy debate whether he really was able to tell she wasn't wearing her leg brace anymore. She claims he couldn't tell. He said he could. It's like listening to the argument before the invasion into Iraq whether it was possible to prove there weren't any WMD. It's always hard to prove a negative. Tommy and Joanie go to opposite corners of the shop for a spell, then reach a truce. She asks him for a ride home when he leaves. He wonders if the step on his pickup is too high for her. If only Saddam had asked the same of Bush -- just give me a ride out of Iraq when it's time for me to go.
Richard comes in and Joanie tells the story of her fall, hit head, and broken elbow to him. He and Tommy talk football. They're still rolling about the Patriots win in the Super Bowl.
It's a hard emergence from solitude. Were I more gracious I'd emerge more easily.
On way to cabin this morning, crunching frozen snow. Dogs arrive. Saskia arrives.
No hidden plans.
Flat Lake cold penetrates
Water-lily clothes
The mountain by the lake
Is neither right nor wrong
Dusty tracks all end
The world is far away.
White clouds and gulls
Have no hidden plans.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
Tommy tells me to go back into solitude when I say I'd begun to feel sorry for Bush Sunday morning as he tried to present himself as a war president with war before his eyes everyday. A conservative columnist for the New York Times suggests Bush is living each day as though it were September 12, 2001. The nation has gone forward 880 days.
Tommy's for Kucinich. He'll be a state delegate.
Joanie comes in. She and Tommy debate whether he really was able to tell she wasn't wearing her leg brace anymore. She claims he couldn't tell. He said he could. It's like listening to the argument before the invasion into Iraq whether it was possible to prove there weren't any WMD. It's always hard to prove a negative. Tommy and Joanie go to opposite corners of the shop for a spell, then reach a truce. She asks him for a ride home when he leaves. He wonders if the step on his pickup is too high for her. If only Saddam had asked the same of Bush -- just give me a ride out of Iraq when it's time for me to go.
Richard comes in and Joanie tells the story of her fall, hit head, and broken elbow to him. He and Tommy talk football. They're still rolling about the Patriots win in the Super Bowl.
It's a hard emergence from solitude. Were I more gracious I'd emerge more easily.
On way to cabin this morning, crunching frozen snow. Dogs arrive. Saskia arrives.
No hidden plans.
Monday, February 09, 2004
Three days solitude.
Snow fell wet and slippery. Crusted with cold. Now softens with warmer light.
Cranes in the wilderness,
Lonely clouds,
Their destination is uncertain;
Where in this world
Am I to address my deepest thoughts?
Forest trees in serried ranks
Ascend the cliff walls.
Like a series of brush strokes,
Hills and peaks arrayed
Out to the horizon;
My mind brims with
Zen clear as water,
Old bones jut angularly
Thin as kindling;
Fame is nothing one can keep for long;
A hundred years of light and dark
Before we reach our end.
- Betsugen Enshi (1296 - 1364)
If I never again left this hermitage I'm not sure I'd miss anything beyond the gate.
"Since I have embarked on the wide ocean, and given full sails to the wind, I say there is nothing in the whole universe that persists. Everything flows, and is formed as a fleeting image. Time itself, also, glides, in its continual motion, no differently than a river. For neither the river, nor the swift hour can stop: but as wave impels wave, and as the prior wave is chased by the coming wave, and chases the one before, so time flees equally, and, equally, follows, and is always new. For what was before is left behind: and what was not comes to be: and each moment is renewed.
(--from Ovid, Bk XV:176-198 Pythagoras's Teachings: The Eternal Flux)
It is narrow corridor passing between simple accepting appreciation of everything, and indifferent allowing of everything to be what it is. While the former seems the more attractive attitude, given our penchant for positive engagement -- the latter seems to be a step back non-engaging mere viewing of what is there. They might not be any further apart than the middle lines running through their midst -- both horizontally and vertically.
"Son, thy sins are forgiven thee..." Jesus says to the paralytic lowered thru the roof in Mark 2:1-10. Some thought he blasphemed. Jesus told him to "...arise, take up thy pallet, and go to thy house." Jesus often was quoted using the words, "Go thy way."
What we call sin is personal. We feel its effects. We feel outside. We're unsure why. We don't know. We can't see clearly. Our movements are constrained. We feel there's no place to go. Life is suffering.
Sin, from another view, is the fact of existence not a thing in existence escapes. Whatever 'is' finds itself deeply rooted in the fact of existence -- suffering uncertainty.
If sin is taken away, do we then no longer suffer? Are we no longer uncertain? Is the central fact of existence dissolved? Are we indeed free? Are we no longer a felt fact suffering unknowing existence?
I don't know. I am a fact of unknowing existence. I am what some call sinner.
If Jesus takes away, or forgives, sin in individuals, or even the world -- what is taking place? Is there no longer sin? So far, even with the life of Jesus celebrated as the life of the Messiah, the one who takes away the sins of the world -- sin seems secure and well situated in the world. What, if anything, has changed?
Nothing.
Nothing has changed. But -- something has been added. That which has been added is awareness. Awareness has been introduced to complement ignorance. Unknowing existence is no longer simply blind, no longer simply paralyzed. It no longer simply follows the dictates of mind and emotions, rote and mechanical.
Awareness is the crossing line in existence.
Rather than increasing suffering, awareness sees suffering as it is. Rather than numbing us to the consequences of our actions and choices, awareness places us within the very fact of action and choice. Awareness takes away nothing -- awareness is not a thing. Rather, awareness shines light through nothingness, right through the center nothingness.
This is how awareness and sin coexist today -- one shines through the other -- and in that passage through, we are able to see, affirm, and release what light has illumined. Some might want more: the elimination of the experience of separation, or eradication of remorseful residue caused by hurtful acts or attitudes. It's something else I look to.
I want no amputation of human existence. I'd rather the light shining through human existence -- with its cruciform intersection illuminating and liberating -- pointing out from within the way before us.
Sins are for giving each one of us light to show us through this existence.
O happy fault! Light's Christing passage!
Light, like time, "... flees equally, and, equally, follows, and is always new. For what was before is left behind: and what was not comes to be: and each moment is renewed." (Ovid)
"Go thy way," Jesus tells them.
We assume they do.
Snow fell wet and slippery. Crusted with cold. Now softens with warmer light.
Cranes in the wilderness,
Lonely clouds,
Their destination is uncertain;
Where in this world
Am I to address my deepest thoughts?
Forest trees in serried ranks
Ascend the cliff walls.
Like a series of brush strokes,
Hills and peaks arrayed
Out to the horizon;
My mind brims with
Zen clear as water,
Old bones jut angularly
Thin as kindling;
Fame is nothing one can keep for long;
A hundred years of light and dark
Before we reach our end.
- Betsugen Enshi (1296 - 1364)
If I never again left this hermitage I'm not sure I'd miss anything beyond the gate.
"Since I have embarked on the wide ocean, and given full sails to the wind, I say there is nothing in the whole universe that persists. Everything flows, and is formed as a fleeting image. Time itself, also, glides, in its continual motion, no differently than a river. For neither the river, nor the swift hour can stop: but as wave impels wave, and as the prior wave is chased by the coming wave, and chases the one before, so time flees equally, and, equally, follows, and is always new. For what was before is left behind: and what was not comes to be: and each moment is renewed.
(--from Ovid, Bk XV:176-198 Pythagoras's Teachings: The Eternal Flux)
It is narrow corridor passing between simple accepting appreciation of everything, and indifferent allowing of everything to be what it is. While the former seems the more attractive attitude, given our penchant for positive engagement -- the latter seems to be a step back non-engaging mere viewing of what is there. They might not be any further apart than the middle lines running through their midst -- both horizontally and vertically.
"Son, thy sins are forgiven thee..." Jesus says to the paralytic lowered thru the roof in Mark 2:1-10. Some thought he blasphemed. Jesus told him to "...arise, take up thy pallet, and go to thy house." Jesus often was quoted using the words, "Go thy way."
What we call sin is personal. We feel its effects. We feel outside. We're unsure why. We don't know. We can't see clearly. Our movements are constrained. We feel there's no place to go. Life is suffering.
Sin, from another view, is the fact of existence not a thing in existence escapes. Whatever 'is' finds itself deeply rooted in the fact of existence -- suffering uncertainty.
If sin is taken away, do we then no longer suffer? Are we no longer uncertain? Is the central fact of existence dissolved? Are we indeed free? Are we no longer a felt fact suffering unknowing existence?
I don't know. I am a fact of unknowing existence. I am what some call sinner.
If Jesus takes away, or forgives, sin in individuals, or even the world -- what is taking place? Is there no longer sin? So far, even with the life of Jesus celebrated as the life of the Messiah, the one who takes away the sins of the world -- sin seems secure and well situated in the world. What, if anything, has changed?
Nothing.
Nothing has changed. But -- something has been added. That which has been added is awareness. Awareness has been introduced to complement ignorance. Unknowing existence is no longer simply blind, no longer simply paralyzed. It no longer simply follows the dictates of mind and emotions, rote and mechanical.
Awareness is the crossing line in existence.
Rather than increasing suffering, awareness sees suffering as it is. Rather than numbing us to the consequences of our actions and choices, awareness places us within the very fact of action and choice. Awareness takes away nothing -- awareness is not a thing. Rather, awareness shines light through nothingness, right through the center nothingness.
This is how awareness and sin coexist today -- one shines through the other -- and in that passage through, we are able to see, affirm, and release what light has illumined. Some might want more: the elimination of the experience of separation, or eradication of remorseful residue caused by hurtful acts or attitudes. It's something else I look to.
I want no amputation of human existence. I'd rather the light shining through human existence -- with its cruciform intersection illuminating and liberating -- pointing out from within the way before us.
Sins are for giving each one of us light to show us through this existence.
O happy fault! Light's Christing passage!
Light, like time, "... flees equally, and, equally, follows, and is always new. For what was before is left behind: and what was not comes to be: and each moment is renewed." (Ovid)
"Go thy way," Jesus tells them.
We assume they do.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Saturday, February 07, 2004
Solitude with cat.
Mu-ge stretches on black daybed cover in kitchen. There's no more cut wood. There is Irish music on "Thistle and Shamrock."
I cannot get used to war.
THE MIRROR
Seeing is believing.
Whatever was thought or said,
these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,
our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.
Whatever the hope,
here it is lost.
Because we coveted our difference,
here is the cost.
(Poem by Robert Creeley, in Life and Death, c.1998)
Same and different, the Zen Master said, exist only in the mind. The mind with fondness for war is not easy to understand. The mind making excuses for war is hard to listen to. Those who say, "We're all the same!" are as difficult to listen to as those saying, "We're all different."
DIVINE CONTEMPLATION
Who in this mortal life would see
The Light that is beyond all light,
Beholds it best by faring forth
Into the darkness of the Night.
(from "The Cherubinic Wanderer," by Angelus Silesius, 1624-1677)
It is quite a dance twirling between birth and death, light and dark, something and nothing. I cannot help wondering what it is I do not yet comprehend about myself and fellow humankind that we so easily put to death and cause to be annihilated those animals and humans getting in the way of our craving minds.
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. (- Paul Valery)
Mu-ge is on watch. The sounds in the walls will soon begin.
Solitude is like that.
Mu-ge stretches on black daybed cover in kitchen. There's no more cut wood. There is Irish music on "Thistle and Shamrock."
I cannot get used to war.
THE MIRROR
Seeing is believing.
Whatever was thought or said,
these persistent, inexorable deaths
make faith as such absent,
our humanness a question,
a disgust for what we are.
Whatever the hope,
here it is lost.
Because we coveted our difference,
here is the cost.
(Poem by Robert Creeley, in Life and Death, c.1998)
Same and different, the Zen Master said, exist only in the mind. The mind with fondness for war is not easy to understand. The mind making excuses for war is hard to listen to. Those who say, "We're all the same!" are as difficult to listen to as those saying, "We're all different."
DIVINE CONTEMPLATION
Who in this mortal life would see
The Light that is beyond all light,
Beholds it best by faring forth
Into the darkness of the Night.
(from "The Cherubinic Wanderer," by Angelus Silesius, 1624-1677)
It is quite a dance twirling between birth and death, light and dark, something and nothing. I cannot help wondering what it is I do not yet comprehend about myself and fellow humankind that we so easily put to death and cause to be annihilated those animals and humans getting in the way of our craving minds.
God made everything out of nothing, but the nothingness shows through. (- Paul Valery)
Mu-ge is on watch. The sounds in the walls will soon begin.
Solitude is like that.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Charlotte and John play guitar earlier and sing. One goes; one stays sitting in silence.
Looking out at harbor, a glaze of white falling snow. In right hand pane of lower window, reflection of fire back across the room.
This message is not just
For the rich and noble
The thousand flowers
And the hundred grasses
All have spring within them
Profound people in later days
Who read the sutras
Do not ask the way to the
Great road of enlightenment.
Stop! Stop!
Why do you have to wander the south?
The site of enlightenment is right
Under your feet.
- T'aego (1301-1382)
News brought through shop is of a man who summers across harbor, he has a type of cancer; will we keep him in prayer? Another man from nearby is separated from wife and child; he's been seen and doesn't look good, (says the bearer of news), thinks he is hiding -- maybe drinking?
An emigre says this country is beginning to unravel the lies and distortions surrounding the war against Iraq, bad economic policy, and perhaps the deeply disturbing atmosphere of intimidation and fear will begin to lift -- won't it? Commissions are being formed, special investigations begin, newspapers and magazines are emboldened raising questions and expressing opinions -- truth will out?
Open your ears, O God, to my prayer,
and do not hide when I call on you:
turn to me and answer me.
My thoughts are distracted and I am disturbed
by the voice of my enemy and the oppression of the wicked.
They let loose their wickedness on me,
they persecute me in their anger.
My heart is tied in a knot
and the terrors of death lie upon me;
fear and trembling cover me;
terror holds me tight.
I said, "Will no-one give me wings like a dove?
I shall fly away and rest.
I shall flee far away
and remain all alone.
I shall wait for him who will save me
from the stormy wind and the tempest?"
-- Psalm 54 (55)
Snow blows dusk into harbor. Tide rises, lowers, ebbs, turns again. Turning hidden beyond storm clouds, full moon is somewhere else seen.
If enlightenment were to be of anyone's concern, it could be looked for embedded in each person's life and situation.
If we were to wish to fly away and rest we could turn around right where we are -- far away and absolutely near where our thinking thought we were -- recognizing the place as origin -- remaining, all, alone.
Psalmist words for us: O God -- Turn to me as we to thee.
In turning is the return -- whether turning toward or away -- it is in the return to origin we find what we are looking for.
Loss only prepares in us what we are reluctant to acknowledge.
What is that?
If we look under our feet, what is seen...?
Looking out at harbor, a glaze of white falling snow. In right hand pane of lower window, reflection of fire back across the room.
This message is not just
For the rich and noble
The thousand flowers
And the hundred grasses
All have spring within them
Profound people in later days
Who read the sutras
Do not ask the way to the
Great road of enlightenment.
Stop! Stop!
Why do you have to wander the south?
The site of enlightenment is right
Under your feet.
- T'aego (1301-1382)
News brought through shop is of a man who summers across harbor, he has a type of cancer; will we keep him in prayer? Another man from nearby is separated from wife and child; he's been seen and doesn't look good, (says the bearer of news), thinks he is hiding -- maybe drinking?
An emigre says this country is beginning to unravel the lies and distortions surrounding the war against Iraq, bad economic policy, and perhaps the deeply disturbing atmosphere of intimidation and fear will begin to lift -- won't it? Commissions are being formed, special investigations begin, newspapers and magazines are emboldened raising questions and expressing opinions -- truth will out?
Open your ears, O God, to my prayer,
and do not hide when I call on you:
turn to me and answer me.
My thoughts are distracted and I am disturbed
by the voice of my enemy and the oppression of the wicked.
They let loose their wickedness on me,
they persecute me in their anger.
My heart is tied in a knot
and the terrors of death lie upon me;
fear and trembling cover me;
terror holds me tight.
I said, "Will no-one give me wings like a dove?
I shall fly away and rest.
I shall flee far away
and remain all alone.
I shall wait for him who will save me
from the stormy wind and the tempest?"
-- Psalm 54 (55)
Snow blows dusk into harbor. Tide rises, lowers, ebbs, turns again. Turning hidden beyond storm clouds, full moon is somewhere else seen.
If enlightenment were to be of anyone's concern, it could be looked for embedded in each person's life and situation.
If we were to wish to fly away and rest we could turn around right where we are -- far away and absolutely near where our thinking thought we were -- recognizing the place as origin -- remaining, all, alone.
Psalmist words for us: O God -- Turn to me as we to thee.
In turning is the return -- whether turning toward or away -- it is in the return to origin we find what we are looking for.
Loss only prepares in us what we are reluctant to acknowledge.
What is that?
If we look under our feet, what is seen...?
Thursday, February 05, 2004
A locked church sent him into the shop.
His brother dies and is not found for over two weeks. He takes a friend into his house the night before he learns of his brother. The needy friend reminds him of his brother. Why do we pray?
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
We stumble into one another's presence.
We pray to recognize each in each.
His brother dies and is not found for over two weeks. He takes a friend into his house the night before he learns of his brother. The needy friend reminds him of his brother. Why do we pray?
A single moon
Bright and clear
In an unclouded sky;
Yet still we stumble
In the world’s darkness.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
We stumble into one another's presence.
We pray to recognize each in each.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Power is passing.
When the fury of emotion appears before us or within us -- bow head, be submissive, surrender to the passing enormity that cannot be controlled -- only let go,
Creaking to the post office
on my rusty bike
I saw one purple iris
wild in the wet green
of the rice field.
I wanted to send it to you.
I can only tell you
it was there.
(-- Maura O'Halloran, in Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, The Zen Journal and Letters of Maura "Soshin" O'Halloran)
At Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation we pronounced questions that accompany us on spiritual path. Eight silences speak the same number of questions.
Encircling the middle, interest ("inter"= between; "esse"= to be) in what is asked.
What is asking is what is answering.
In silence, listening with one another, and speaking.
It was there.
When the fury of emotion appears before us or within us -- bow head, be submissive, surrender to the passing enormity that cannot be controlled -- only let go,
Creaking to the post office
on my rusty bike
I saw one purple iris
wild in the wet green
of the rice field.
I wanted to send it to you.
I can only tell you
it was there.
(-- Maura O'Halloran, in Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, The Zen Journal and Letters of Maura "Soshin" O'Halloran)
At Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation we pronounced questions that accompany us on spiritual path. Eight silences speak the same number of questions.
Encircling the middle, interest ("inter"= between; "esse"= to be) in what is asked.
What is asking is what is answering.
In silence, listening with one another, and speaking.
It was there.
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
In Boothbay the man about to turn 80 said over soup and sandwich, "You know what it's like to experience the futility of life?" With his eyes he anticipated a yes. I said yes.
When silent illumination is complete,
The lotus will blossom,
The dreamer will awaken.
The hundred rivers flow to the ocean,
The thousand mountains
Face the loftiest peak.
Like the goose preferring milk to water,
Like a busy bee gathering pollen,
When Silent Illumination
Reaches the ultimate,
I carry on the original tradition.
This practice is called Silent Illumination.
It penetrates from the deepest to the highest.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)
Lighting fire this morning I thought about the realities of solitary life. It's not so much being alone that characterizes a solitary life. It's more a willingness to be irrelevant.
The supreme support for a person who has just died is the depth of our own practice and the strength of our positive, compassionate intention. If through our practice we are familiar with the nature of mind and can rest undistracted in that state, then meditating on behalf of our deceased friend will "show" him the truth of his own nature. As Padmasambhava said:
"As soon as our body has separated into mind and matter, in the gap before it has been encased once again in the net of a future body, the mind along with its magical display has no concrete material support. For as long as it lacks such a material basis we are independent and we can recognize. This power to attain stability by just recognizing the nature of mind is like a torch which in one instant can clear away the darkness of eons."
(p.189, in Facing Death and Finding Hope, A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying, by Christine Longaker)
Irrelevant, I light fire in the morning; and in the afternoon break ice by dock in harbor alongside Sam and Susan's dory.
To be irrelevant is to love to be unknown.
Just recognizing.
Enough for now.
When silent illumination is complete,
The lotus will blossom,
The dreamer will awaken.
The hundred rivers flow to the ocean,
The thousand mountains
Face the loftiest peak.
Like the goose preferring milk to water,
Like a busy bee gathering pollen,
When Silent Illumination
Reaches the ultimate,
I carry on the original tradition.
This practice is called Silent Illumination.
It penetrates from the deepest to the highest.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)
Lighting fire this morning I thought about the realities of solitary life. It's not so much being alone that characterizes a solitary life. It's more a willingness to be irrelevant.
The supreme support for a person who has just died is the depth of our own practice and the strength of our positive, compassionate intention. If through our practice we are familiar with the nature of mind and can rest undistracted in that state, then meditating on behalf of our deceased friend will "show" him the truth of his own nature. As Padmasambhava said:
"As soon as our body has separated into mind and matter, in the gap before it has been encased once again in the net of a future body, the mind along with its magical display has no concrete material support. For as long as it lacks such a material basis we are independent and we can recognize. This power to attain stability by just recognizing the nature of mind is like a torch which in one instant can clear away the darkness of eons."
(p.189, in Facing Death and Finding Hope, A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying, by Christine Longaker)
Irrelevant, I light fire in the morning; and in the afternoon break ice by dock in harbor alongside Sam and Susan's dory.
To be irrelevant is to love to be unknown.
Just recognizing.
Enough for now.
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Fire sparks at end of day in shop fireplace. At Hermitage, woodstove in cabin easily warms interior now that temperature has neared +20. Kitchen woodstove cheers the house.
Silvery moon hangs high in the sky.
I ride a tiny boat in the vast and misty sea.
Moon and sea forgotten;
I forget that I have forgotten.
And before the window
I sit quietly in meditation until midnight.
- Jakushitsu (1290 - 1368)
Maybe for only Sunday Evening Practice tonight.
Chris read from William James at Saturday's Poetry, Tea, and Literature. I find this today:
Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs: --
1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance;
2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end;
3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof -- be that spirit "God" or "law" -- is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics: --
4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.
(p.475, Lecture XX Conclusions, THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, A Study in Human Nature Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902)
It occurs to me writing someone in the Midwest that all we can do is try to see what is being seen:
As a practitioner of Buddhism I subscribe to the middle way. As a Christian I've always believed Christ was the center, at center, of everything in creation -- literally in the middle of everything. So, the middle is a good place to be aware of -- but it takes practice for me.
If I were looking with an open heart, I'd be looking through that middle reality existing at core and between you and me. If I were aware of what I was looking at and through, I'd be ok.
Darkness is ending. It is February. The sun warms.
Hugh C. writes, "Hello Liam O' hAlpin," and sends the following:
IMBOLG or BRIDGID'S DAY
Imbolg (Feb 1) is "a solemn and joyful time: the ending of darkness after
the 'seed of light' which began at the Solstice [which] gradually pushes
its way into the air." It is also the time when first-born lambs emerge and
the hours of daylight increase. Imbolg is called St. Bridget's Day and she
is still known as Mary of the Gael. She is invoked with Mary (spelled Muire
in Gaelic) in birthing or in lighting the fires or in the evening by
"smooring" or putting ashes on, the fire. She is petitioned with prayers to
protect the house and the household throughout the night. According to
legend she was the midwife and wet-nurse to Jesus and as such was invoked
during childbirth. Above all doorways it used to be the custom to place a
Brigid's Cross (the off-centered cross symbolizing also the wheel of life).
It was traditionally woven with rushes (reeds) on the eve of Imbolg. In
times gone by the response to a greeting such as "Dia agat" was "Brid agus
Muire agat" (breejus mwirragut).
Women in the Highlands of Scotland invoked St. Brigid with the prayer
Come, thou Brigid, handmaid calm
Hasten the butter on the cream
See impatient Peter
waiting the buttered bannock
Come Mary Mother mild
Hasten the butter on the cream
See Paul and John and Jesus
Waiting the gracious butter.
Brigid was Abbess of Kildare and is the patron saint, not only of birth and
milking and churning, but also of poets, smiths and healers. In these forms
she is the continuation of the "tripartite goddess: the young girl, the muse
of the poets; the matron, whose skill...also shapes the material world; and
the crone, the old woman, whose wisdom enables her to heal those who ask her
for help." Cormac's Glossary (10th century) says that Brighid [was] a
poetess, daughter of the Dagda. She is the female sage, woman of wisdom, or
Brighid the Goddess, whom poets venerated because [she was] very great and
famous for her protecting care. She was therefore called "Goddess of Poets".
Her sisters were Brighid the female physician, and Brighid the female smith;
among all Irishmen, a goddess was called "Brighid." According to Eric
Partridge, the etymologist, her name is akin to the Sanskrit "brhati",
meaning lofty and hence powerful.
(Quotes are from "The Celtic Year" by Shirley Toulson and "The Encyclopedia
of Celtic Wisdom" by Caitlin Matthews.)
It cheers there are such women and men about who are willing to look and to see.
For each and all of us this day: Assurance of safety, a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections!
And may we see and find ourselves a middle way.
Silvery moon hangs high in the sky.
I ride a tiny boat in the vast and misty sea.
Moon and sea forgotten;
I forget that I have forgotten.
And before the window
I sit quietly in meditation until midnight.
- Jakushitsu (1290 - 1368)
Maybe for only Sunday Evening Practice tonight.
Chris read from William James at Saturday's Poetry, Tea, and Literature. I find this today:
Summing up in the broadest possible way the characteristics of the religious life, as we have found them, it includes the following beliefs: --
1. That the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance;
2. That union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end;
3. That prayer or inner communion with the spirit thereof -- be that spirit "God" or "law" -- is a process wherein work is really done, and spiritual energy flows in and produces effects, psychological or material, within the phenomenal world.
Religion includes also the following psychological characteristics: --
4. A new zest which adds itself like a gift to life, and takes the form either of lyrical enchantment or of appeal to earnestness and heroism.
5. An assurance of safety and a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections.
(p.475, Lecture XX Conclusions, THE VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE, A Study in Human Nature Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902)
It occurs to me writing someone in the Midwest that all we can do is try to see what is being seen:
As a practitioner of Buddhism I subscribe to the middle way. As a Christian I've always believed Christ was the center, at center, of everything in creation -- literally in the middle of everything. So, the middle is a good place to be aware of -- but it takes practice for me.
If I were looking with an open heart, I'd be looking through that middle reality existing at core and between you and me. If I were aware of what I was looking at and through, I'd be ok.
Darkness is ending. It is February. The sun warms.
Hugh C. writes, "Hello Liam O' hAlpin," and sends the following:
IMBOLG or BRIDGID'S DAY
Imbolg (Feb 1) is "a solemn and joyful time: the ending of darkness after
the 'seed of light' which began at the Solstice [which] gradually pushes
its way into the air." It is also the time when first-born lambs emerge and
the hours of daylight increase. Imbolg is called St. Bridget's Day and she
is still known as Mary of the Gael. She is invoked with Mary (spelled Muire
in Gaelic) in birthing or in lighting the fires or in the evening by
"smooring" or putting ashes on, the fire. She is petitioned with prayers to
protect the house and the household throughout the night. According to
legend she was the midwife and wet-nurse to Jesus and as such was invoked
during childbirth. Above all doorways it used to be the custom to place a
Brigid's Cross (the off-centered cross symbolizing also the wheel of life).
It was traditionally woven with rushes (reeds) on the eve of Imbolg. In
times gone by the response to a greeting such as "Dia agat" was "Brid agus
Muire agat" (breejus mwirragut).
Women in the Highlands of Scotland invoked St. Brigid with the prayer
Come, thou Brigid, handmaid calm
Hasten the butter on the cream
See impatient Peter
waiting the buttered bannock
Come Mary Mother mild
Hasten the butter on the cream
See Paul and John and Jesus
Waiting the gracious butter.
Brigid was Abbess of Kildare and is the patron saint, not only of birth and
milking and churning, but also of poets, smiths and healers. In these forms
she is the continuation of the "tripartite goddess: the young girl, the muse
of the poets; the matron, whose skill...also shapes the material world; and
the crone, the old woman, whose wisdom enables her to heal those who ask her
for help." Cormac's Glossary (10th century) says that Brighid [was] a
poetess, daughter of the Dagda. She is the female sage, woman of wisdom, or
Brighid the Goddess, whom poets venerated because [she was] very great and
famous for her protecting care. She was therefore called "Goddess of Poets".
Her sisters were Brighid the female physician, and Brighid the female smith;
among all Irishmen, a goddess was called "Brighid." According to Eric
Partridge, the etymologist, her name is akin to the Sanskrit "brhati",
meaning lofty and hence powerful.
(Quotes are from "The Celtic Year" by Shirley Toulson and "The Encyclopedia
of Celtic Wisdom" by Caitlin Matthews.)
It cheers there are such women and men about who are willing to look and to see.
For each and all of us this day: Assurance of safety, a temper of peace, and, in relation to others, a preponderance of loving affections!
And may we see and find ourselves a middle way.
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