Zen is this moment speaking. Zen is this moment seeing.
Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it?s all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle to both mortals an sages. Seeing your nature is zen. Unless you see your nature, it?s not zen.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)
When we say what we see, and when we see what we say -- everything is revealed as what it is -- just this, nothing more.
"See. Either we are one with the Holy Spirit, or not. Eh? And if the incarnation, the 'Word Made Flesh', is a living reality - then the whole cosmos is sacramentalized...is sacred and holy...is redeemed....
"To appreciate this you've got to know that revelation is all around you, all the time. -Revelation expressing itself as beauty, truth, goodness, and especially love!...Creation is lit up with the numinous...
"And faith is the surrender to this great gift of love, Life!...to be alive in Creation....Submit to it - not in the sense of passive resignation, but in acceptance and participation in being!...
"In total inhalation, in the act of Eucharist, you eat the Mystical Body, the Cosmic Christ, by accepting, by participating, in joy, the total charity of your being in creation! -The I of you dies to One...You are, in the truest sense, what you eat.
"And in total exhalation you offer up, give back, go home in redemption....You do this by curing the inner split between you and God (the incarnate Creator) - this division, what we often-times call Original Sin in mystical theology.
"That's why you go to the monastery, the primary reason anyway. It's to do that - to heal the illusion of separation...the separation of you from your true person, from the world in creation, and especially from God.
(Thomas Merton,in Song For Nobody, by Ron Seitz)
We are not to disparage what is.
God is pure no-thing,
Concealed in now and here:
The less you reach for him,
The more he will appear.
~ Angelus Silesius
It is enough to see, say, and be what is here to see, say, and be.
This moment.
In passing.
Touch and go.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
When someone appropriates as one's own that which belongs to everyone -- that is what some call sin, others call abuse of power, some say capitalism, and (after the recent vote) what some are calling stolen votes.
Autumn’s colors dropping from branches
In masses of falling leaves,
Cold clouds bringing rain
Into the crannies of the mountains:
Everyone was born with the same sort of eyes –
Why do mine keep seeing things as Zen koans?
- Dogen
The Zen koan my eyes see this morning is: What have we lost that belongs to US?
Quickly! Can you find the response of your soul?
Autumn’s colors dropping from branches
In masses of falling leaves,
Cold clouds bringing rain
Into the crannies of the mountains:
Everyone was born with the same sort of eyes –
Why do mine keep seeing things as Zen koans?
- Dogen
The Zen koan my eyes see this morning is: What have we lost that belongs to US?
Quickly! Can you find the response of your soul?
Friday, November 05, 2004
In prison Joe and I worked an Icelandic folktale. When it came to right or left in that instant Joe remembers, the pain said right, but the turn went left. After a million visits to that turn, Joe went back fresh.
Outside my window, plum blossoms,
Just on the verge of unfurling, contain the spring;
The clear moon is held in the cuplike petals
Of the beautiful flower I pick, and twirl.
- Dogen
At Interreligious Dialogue of a cold night at the shop Richard said the words, "What is the meaning of life?" Lloyd said the words, "I don't know what God is."
The first one spoke the purity of the meaning of life -- "What is." The second one spoke the enlightenment of "not knowing," the integration of "What is" with "God" in medio, the Thin Place revelation of life and existence.
I am honored to be in the presence of all three.
Chaplain brought sweetgrass for smudging.
And the merman smiled.
Outside my window, plum blossoms,
Just on the verge of unfurling, contain the spring;
The clear moon is held in the cuplike petals
Of the beautiful flower I pick, and twirl.
- Dogen
At Interreligious Dialogue of a cold night at the shop Richard said the words, "What is the meaning of life?" Lloyd said the words, "I don't know what God is."
The first one spoke the purity of the meaning of life -- "What is." The second one spoke the enlightenment of "not knowing," the integration of "What is" with "God" in medio, the Thin Place revelation of life and existence.
I am honored to be in the presence of all three.
Chaplain brought sweetgrass for smudging.
And the merman smiled.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
Chill bright morning.
Disentangling oneself
From desire and evil ways
Requires both vision and wisdom.
Disentangling oneself from the world
And discovering inner joy
Is the start of meditation.
- Perfection of Wisdom
Cesco stretches in sun by barn door. Sando rises and turns on mattress, wearing orange bandana. November hunting season. On C-Span the recently elected President outlines his agenda at his first press conference following the election.
In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
(Poem by Theodore Roethke)
There are facts and there are mythologies. There are personal opinions and there are strict interpretations of the law. We can deal with whatever is real.
Right now, the dogs snooze, the President fields question about America's image in the wider world, and the morning turns with November light.
"When the American President speaks..." -- the American President is saying -- "people had better listen... I mean what I say."
I turn off the television. The sound is gone. It is an odd time.
We are at odds with circumstance.
The recent wind tears apart.
Still, illusion lurks.
Silence speaks.
Healing.
Disentangling oneself
From desire and evil ways
Requires both vision and wisdom.
Disentangling oneself from the world
And discovering inner joy
Is the start of meditation.
- Perfection of Wisdom
Cesco stretches in sun by barn door. Sando rises and turns on mattress, wearing orange bandana. November hunting season. On C-Span the recently elected President outlines his agenda at his first press conference following the election.
In a Dark Time
In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.
A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
(Poem by Theodore Roethke)
There are facts and there are mythologies. There are personal opinions and there are strict interpretations of the law. We can deal with whatever is real.
Right now, the dogs snooze, the President fields question about America's image in the wider world, and the morning turns with November light.
"When the American President speaks..." -- the American President is saying -- "people had better listen... I mean what I say."
I turn off the television. The sound is gone. It is an odd time.
We are at odds with circumstance.
The recent wind tears apart.
Still, illusion lurks.
Silence speaks.
Healing.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
It's been a day of silences muted by odd opinions following concession of election.
With one who does not
Speak his every thought
I spend a pleasant evening.
- Hyakuchi (1748-1836)
There is a mess to clean up. Those who made it best should clean it. Simple parenting. Put the kids to work fixing what they busted. Smart country.
It's a new beginning. Breathe in, breathe out.
On balance, the world will right itself.
Delia Mae said we must remember to forget.
With one who does not
Speak his every thought
I spend a pleasant evening.
- Hyakuchi (1748-1836)
There is a mess to clean up. Those who made it best should clean it. Simple parenting. Put the kids to work fixing what they busted. Smart country.
It's a new beginning. Breathe in, breathe out.
On balance, the world will right itself.
Delia Mae said we must remember to forget.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
All Saints Day wanders into All Souls Day, which in America this year is also Election Day.
Oh leaves,
Ask the wind which of you
Will be the first to fall.
- Soseki (1867-1916)
One will fall, and we will see, among the others, one with all.
To find release you must begin to regard life and death as identical to Nirvana, neither loathing the former nor coveting the latter. It is fallacious to think that you simply move from birth to death. Birth, from the Buddhist point of view, is a temporary point between the proceeding and succeeding; hence, it can be called 'birthlessness.' The same holds for death and deathlessness. In life there is nothing more than life, in death nothing more than death: we are being born and dying at every moment.
(Dogen Kigen Zenji, 1200-1253)
Today we pray for one in all.
One through all.
Oh leaves,
Ask the wind which of you
Will be the first to fall.
- Soseki (1867-1916)
One will fall, and we will see, among the others, one with all.
To find release you must begin to regard life and death as identical to Nirvana, neither loathing the former nor coveting the latter. It is fallacious to think that you simply move from birth to death. Birth, from the Buddhist point of view, is a temporary point between the proceeding and succeeding; hence, it can be called 'birthlessness.' The same holds for death and deathlessness. In life there is nothing more than life, in death nothing more than death: we are being born and dying at every moment.
(Dogen Kigen Zenji, 1200-1253)
Today we pray for one in all.
One through all.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Tuesday is Election Day in the United States.
Everyone hopes that the American people are not stupid. They are not stupid. They will elect the right man for this time. That man might be George W. Bush. That man might be John F. Kerry.
The final days leading up to the election are filled with passionate, some say blind faith, positive endorsements of either man. You would think you’d have to be insane and a vile terrorist sympathizer to vote for the opposite man and not the partisan favorite.
It is what some call the messiness of democracy. Others call it a foundational patina of distortion, distraction, and dissembling.
Those who have strong passions are never able to perceive the Way; for it is like stirring up clear water with hands. People may come there wishing to find a reflection of their faces, which, however, they will never see. A mind troubled and vexed with the passions is never able to see the Way.
- Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters
Some of us drop out. Some leave for Waterville to canvas for their candidate. Some let the dogs out and prepare to take the soup and bread into the shop.
{There are two paths leading to oneness with the Tao.}
The first in the path of acceptance.
Affirm everyone and everything.
Freely extend your goodwill and virtue in every direction, regardless of circumstances.
Embrace all things as part of the Harmonious Oneness, and then you will begin to perceive it.
The second path is that of denial.
Recognize that everything you see and think is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth.
Peel all the veils away, and you will arrive at the Oneness.
Though these paths are entirely different, they will deliver you to the same place: spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness.
(#48 from The Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu)
As a political agnostic, I can only try not to resemble the unlovely. In the middle core of this swirling cacophony of frantic grasping for power there is a still and quiet loveliness dwelling in our hearts.
The lovely longs to be our home, our moveable dwelling place, capable of seeing us through whatever falls across our path.
I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
(Bede Griffiths, writing on Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury)
The center seeing in every direction with love and compassion is the very being we seek by looking everywhere else but where seeing itself sees us through.
God bless no exception!
In every way we step.
Do not be fooled.
Everyone hopes that the American people are not stupid. They are not stupid. They will elect the right man for this time. That man might be George W. Bush. That man might be John F. Kerry.
The final days leading up to the election are filled with passionate, some say blind faith, positive endorsements of either man. You would think you’d have to be insane and a vile terrorist sympathizer to vote for the opposite man and not the partisan favorite.
It is what some call the messiness of democracy. Others call it a foundational patina of distortion, distraction, and dissembling.
Those who have strong passions are never able to perceive the Way; for it is like stirring up clear water with hands. People may come there wishing to find a reflection of their faces, which, however, they will never see. A mind troubled and vexed with the passions is never able to see the Way.
- Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters
Some of us drop out. Some leave for Waterville to canvas for their candidate. Some let the dogs out and prepare to take the soup and bread into the shop.
{There are two paths leading to oneness with the Tao.}
The first in the path of acceptance.
Affirm everyone and everything.
Freely extend your goodwill and virtue in every direction, regardless of circumstances.
Embrace all things as part of the Harmonious Oneness, and then you will begin to perceive it.
The second path is that of denial.
Recognize that everything you see and think is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth.
Peel all the veils away, and you will arrive at the Oneness.
Though these paths are entirely different, they will deliver you to the same place: spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness.
(#48 from The Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu)
As a political agnostic, I can only try not to resemble the unlovely. In the middle core of this swirling cacophony of frantic grasping for power there is a still and quiet loveliness dwelling in our hearts.
The lovely longs to be our home, our moveable dwelling place, capable of seeing us through whatever falls across our path.
I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
(Bede Griffiths, writing on Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury)
The center seeing in every direction with love and compassion is the very being we seek by looking everywhere else but where seeing itself sees us through.
God bless no exception!
In every way we step.
Do not be fooled.
Saturday, October 30, 2004
This is no time to fall apart and throw away what holds us together
We’ve grown accustomed to explaining things away.
I wonder when we will near embodying what is true.
Good is to practice the Way and to follow truth.
Great is the heart that is in accord with the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
October will fall into November in two days. The light in Northeast New England will dim and shrink on the ground with curling leaves drying in night frost.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough
(Poem, "In a Station of the Metro," by Ezra Pound, published in Poetry magazine in 1913J
We’ll think of saints and souls. We’ll continue to pray for Ed who sleeps deep in hospital.
We’ll look to the end of Election Day and hope for the spirit of a people to rise from its own dark slumber.
We will cease explaining when we embody truth. We will present ourselves. We’ll see through one another.
Let’s pray for that. Let’s elect this prospect.
We’ll be indistinguishable word/body/act.
The word of God will return in us.
We’ve grown accustomed to explaining things away.
I wonder when we will near embodying what is true.
Good is to practice the Way and to follow truth.
Great is the heart that is in accord with the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
October will fall into November in two days. The light in Northeast New England will dim and shrink on the ground with curling leaves drying in night frost.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough
(Poem, "In a Station of the Metro," by Ezra Pound, published in Poetry magazine in 1913J
We’ll think of saints and souls. We’ll continue to pray for Ed who sleeps deep in hospital.
We’ll look to the end of Election Day and hope for the spirit of a people to rise from its own dark slumber.
We will cease explaining when we embody truth. We will present ourselves. We’ll see through one another.
Let’s pray for that. Let’s elect this prospect.
We’ll be indistinguishable word/body/act.
The word of God will return in us.
Friday, October 29, 2004
Charlie feels acceptance is giving up.
Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering, and all will be revealed to you.
(- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters)
Michael feels similar to Doug. As does Ryan, Greg, Les, Rusty, Vaughn, Eli, Saskia and I. As well as Lao Tzu and David Wagoner.
Stand still. We know where you are. You are not lost.
To see what is really there we need one another. The Sangha. The community.
The conversation in prison listens to the voice of the soul.
Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering, and all will be revealed to you.
(- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters)
Michael feels similar to Doug. As does Ryan, Greg, Les, Rusty, Vaughn, Eli, Saskia and I. As well as Lao Tzu and David Wagoner.
Stand still. We know where you are. You are not lost.
To see what is really there we need one another. The Sangha. The community.
The conversation in prison listens to the voice of the soul.
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Today the way opens for New England baseball fans: The Boston Redsox have won the World Series!
If you endeavor to embrace the Way through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is this Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
An email from Chicago:
From Peter Gammons, quoting someone else (I believe):
"Calvinism is finally dead in New England."
I can't help but think of the fellow who lived above the shop, listening to the games on his radio during summer evenings, that loyalty for all those decades without his team winning the Series. Imagine.
It's like we're free now. The Sox are just another team, its fans just another set of fans. The misery and negativity and fear and paranoia: all gone. It's just a game again, not a history of failure.
Red Sox Nation is no longer Preterite Nation. Amen to all that.
Dan comes into shop with guitar in its case. On the case a sticker: "Thank God I'm an agnostic."
Joanie sorts common-reading-box. Myles' bookcases have fit themselves throughout shop and hermitage harbor room. Tom the mailman says he's from Connecticut -- an ambivalent topography of baseball allegiance. Leonard demands I read, not return to him, Pete Hamill's Snow in August. The crisp air in Maine feels clear and full of sunlight.
It's only a game -- that's what they say.
And water is only wet.
Wash well today!
If you endeavor to embrace the Way through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is this Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
An email from Chicago:
From Peter Gammons, quoting someone else (I believe):
"Calvinism is finally dead in New England."
I can't help but think of the fellow who lived above the shop, listening to the games on his radio during summer evenings, that loyalty for all those decades without his team winning the Series. Imagine.
It's like we're free now. The Sox are just another team, its fans just another set of fans. The misery and negativity and fear and paranoia: all gone. It's just a game again, not a history of failure.
Red Sox Nation is no longer Preterite Nation. Amen to all that.
Dan comes into shop with guitar in its case. On the case a sticker: "Thank God I'm an agnostic."
Joanie sorts common-reading-box. Myles' bookcases have fit themselves throughout shop and hermitage harbor room. Tom the mailman says he's from Connecticut -- an ambivalent topography of baseball allegiance. Leonard demands I read, not return to him, Pete Hamill's Snow in August. The crisp air in Maine feels clear and full of sunlight.
It's only a game -- that's what they say.
And water is only wet.
Wash well today!
Wednesday, October 27, 2004
I got irritable yesterday when a bevy of "Defeat Bush" passions found themselves gathered at the shop. It wasn't that I disagreed with their assessment. It was more that the negativity coming from the Bush-likes and Bush-dislikes is wearying and yet so vital as election nears.
To be free from the passions
And to be calm,
This is the most excellent Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
Excellent way or not, there are innumerable voices claiming we are lost should Bush and cohorts be elected. It would be, they say, a confirmation for the first time by the people of the United States that we are, indeed, what George Bush says we are. This prospect of resembling what Bush and Co say we are -- empire, pre-emptive warriors, ignorer of human rights, ignorer of environmental sanity, ignorer of democracy and rights of citizens, global omnivores, and Christian fundamentalists intent on saving our sorry souls and ignoring the rest of the world -- this is what those who fear and feel helpless in the face of Bush are worried about, this is what their passionate desire to defeat bush is all about.
Are we lost?
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
(Poem by David Wagoner)
The irony. Even this beautiful poem sounds calm and ready to carry on should our lostness and our Bushness coincide.
We'll have to find a new creativity to help see our way through.
I'd rather George Bush go back to Texas.
That's my feeling.
But for now, I'll be still.
And be found.
Here.
To be free from the passions
And to be calm,
This is the most excellent Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
Excellent way or not, there are innumerable voices claiming we are lost should Bush and cohorts be elected. It would be, they say, a confirmation for the first time by the people of the United States that we are, indeed, what George Bush says we are. This prospect of resembling what Bush and Co say we are -- empire, pre-emptive warriors, ignorer of human rights, ignorer of environmental sanity, ignorer of democracy and rights of citizens, global omnivores, and Christian fundamentalists intent on saving our sorry souls and ignoring the rest of the world -- this is what those who fear and feel helpless in the face of Bush are worried about, this is what their passionate desire to defeat bush is all about.
Are we lost?
Lost
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
(Poem by David Wagoner)
The irony. Even this beautiful poem sounds calm and ready to carry on should our lostness and our Bushness coincide.
We'll have to find a new creativity to help see our way through.
I'd rather George Bush go back to Texas.
That's my feeling.
But for now, I'll be still.
And be found.
Here.
Monday, October 25, 2004
There is a light that goes beyond the muted faint shadows of our current world. We wander in dark confusion away from our true home.
Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.
- Lao-tzu
Buddhist Zen and Christian Contemplation work together to let authentic light through.
"… For me the mu-experience, triggered by my working on the koan of Joshu’s dog, literally shook me inside out, and kept me laughing and even crying for about three days, as I remember. People around me must have thought I was going crazy then. I can only say at this point that the experience enabled me to see the truth, the forcefulness, the real reality of what Paul wanted to express in Galatians 2:20 - "It is no longer I that live, but Christ in me!" (Ruben Habito’s response to Koun Yamada’s Questions to Christians, "Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue" http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/cru1.htm)
When we get close to wisdom residing inward, we see the closeness of practice and faith from seemingly different views found in different religions.
"Hardly anyone today would question whether Zen enlightenment and similar experiences in other non-Christian religions are genuine experiences of the Absolute, even though they are impersonal in nature. Were they personal in nature, they would be the same as an experience of God in the Christian sense… Genuine mystical experience resists all attempts at conceptual expression. This means that anyone who attempts to do so will utilize the categories available, although this, by its very nature, can easily lead to misunderstandings.
"In enlightenment, the Buddhist experiences his deepest self as one with absolute existence, and is strengthened as a result in his faith in the nonduality of all existence. The Christian and anyone who believes in a personal God experiences the self not only in himself, but also in his relationship to an absolute personal reality."
(Hugo Enomiya Lassalle, Living in the New Consciousness. p. 121-122.)
We benefit from looking into the profound. Whether from a religious point of view, philosophy, poetry, nature, or ordinary open-hearted conversation -- we create the place where light begins to glow.
This is no time for short-sighted, bigoted, or petty statements that create fear, darkness, or loneliness.
Words must become lighted corridors through which we are heartened to search for the way home.
Do not accept sorry or cynical rhetoric.
Let's re-create a place of trust.
Let's come home.
Everyone.
Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.
- Lao-tzu
Buddhist Zen and Christian Contemplation work together to let authentic light through.
"… For me the mu-experience, triggered by my working on the koan of Joshu’s dog, literally shook me inside out, and kept me laughing and even crying for about three days, as I remember. People around me must have thought I was going crazy then. I can only say at this point that the experience enabled me to see the truth, the forcefulness, the real reality of what Paul wanted to express in Galatians 2:20 - "It is no longer I that live, but Christ in me!" (Ruben Habito’s response to Koun Yamada’s Questions to Christians, "Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue" http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/cru1.htm)
When we get close to wisdom residing inward, we see the closeness of practice and faith from seemingly different views found in different religions.
"Hardly anyone today would question whether Zen enlightenment and similar experiences in other non-Christian religions are genuine experiences of the Absolute, even though they are impersonal in nature. Were they personal in nature, they would be the same as an experience of God in the Christian sense… Genuine mystical experience resists all attempts at conceptual expression. This means that anyone who attempts to do so will utilize the categories available, although this, by its very nature, can easily lead to misunderstandings.
"In enlightenment, the Buddhist experiences his deepest self as one with absolute existence, and is strengthened as a result in his faith in the nonduality of all existence. The Christian and anyone who believes in a personal God experiences the self not only in himself, but also in his relationship to an absolute personal reality."
(Hugo Enomiya Lassalle, Living in the New Consciousness. p. 121-122.)
We benefit from looking into the profound. Whether from a religious point of view, philosophy, poetry, nature, or ordinary open-hearted conversation -- we create the place where light begins to glow.
This is no time for short-sighted, bigoted, or petty statements that create fear, darkness, or loneliness.
Words must become lighted corridors through which we are heartened to search for the way home.
Do not accept sorry or cynical rhetoric.
Let's re-create a place of trust.
Let's come home.
Everyone.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
What is truly creative must create itself.
In prison one Friday, Joe and I were talking about irony. Our context was an Independent Study on “Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self Discovery.”
“Irony,” from Greek, eironeia, is "feigned ignorance."
i·ro·ny n. pl. i·ro·nies 1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. 2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. 3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1. 4. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). 5. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic. 6. Dramatic irony. 7. Socratic irony. (From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony )
It is an ironic time in politics, baseball, and creative life. We pretend we do not know what is happening. Bush and Kerry will face off on November 2nd. The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals begin a World Series best of 7 on Oct 23rd. And contemplative creators continually have to decide to allow what is pulsing through them for presence in the world to come through and take “place” in the world.
What is our place in the world?
When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward. (- Huai-nan-tzu)
Perhaps the “inward” is the thin-place between the dualistic notions of inside and outside. Perhaps the inward is our place in the world.
God is the only creator ab initio The creation of works of art would therefore come under the head of the active life, as the enjoyment of works of art would come under that of the contemplative life. But the essential difference, as I have already pointed out, is this – that the writer of a poem or the composer of a symphony has as his end, neither possession nor contemplation, but the bringing of a new sort of thing in the world. The poet or painter may indeed give us recognizable likenesses of the forms of common experience; to this extent they use imitation as a means to their further ends. But the poem or the painting in itself is a thing in itself and not an imitation of anything already in the world. It is sui generis, a new creation, and belongs to a different order of being from anything it imitates. Y.B. Yeats speaks of the poets as people whose work exists not primarily to help or to inform us. When we read them, he says, we “have added to our being, not to our knowledge.” It is the impulse to “add to being” which is the distinctive mark of the creative way of life. (p.117 “The Three Faces of Love” by A.D. Hope, in The Poet’s Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry on the Origins and Practice of their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons, c.1979)
How do we add to what is? Is that where the inward takes place? The place of the inward is fully dwelling Being.
The essential thing about education for the creative life as distinct from education for the active or the contemplative life is this: that what is truly autonomous must be self-initiating, or it stops being autonomous. For the active life the ends in view are practical ends which depend for their formulation on the known facts about man and society. The form that education for the active life should take can therefore be determined in advance. Similarly, for the contemplative life of the world as it exists in its object and perhaps God insofar as he is knowable. The conditions of the contemplative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can only be surmised, and the great difference between its conditions and the other two modes of human existence is that what is truly creative must create itself. This is the axiom on which any view of education for the creative life must be based. (pp.119-120, A.D. Hope)
Creating itself (or, the Creative Itself) is perhaps God insofar as God is knowable.
Irony is feigned ignorance. We cultivate ignorance in the same way we miss facts until someone gathers them in a way and, when shown, we say, “Oh, I see.”
You've always painted the Bush administration as these macho poseurs, phony gunslinger tough guys. Is that the kind of daddy we're looking for?
Yeah. And that's probably why Bush didn't let his own daddy speak at the Republican National Convention -- which was unbelievable that a former president who went to war with Iraq wasn't given a speaking slot. But Bush didn't want the real daddy, because the real daddy has differences with him on the Iraq war. The ironies of that are beyond belief. The father went to war in Iraq to defend the principle that you can't invade another country unilaterally; the son goes to war with Iraq to establish the principle that you can invade another country unilaterally.
(“Ms. Bush-Bash,” Does anyone understand Dubya better than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd? By John Colapinto, Oct 6, 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine)
I’d not seen Dowd’s observation before.
Nor had Ron Suskind comprehended what he’d been told two years ago:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."
October 17, 2004, IN THE New York Times MAGAZINE, “Without a Doubt" By Ron Suskind
Perhaps the time for debate is over. We’ve listened to each other too long. It is time to allow those who know best to run things, run our lives, run the country and the world. Perhaps, as Aldous Huxley’s Mustapha Mond in Brave New World says:
"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Mustapha Mond (p.220)
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books [i.e. the Bible, the Imitation of Christ, Varieties of Religious Experience, Works of John Cardinal Newman] locked up in the safe. They're smut"-Mustapha Mond (p. 234)
Then, another voice is heard:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
-Mustapha Mond and John the Savage (p.240)
I claim the right to be unhappy. Right now Boston has the reality of playing in the World Series and the possibility of winning. Right now the election between Bush and Kerry is still open to a fair and deliberative choice. Right now we each have an opportunity in our lives not to have to feign ignorance in order to have voice in the world.
"Place" is "Creating Itself.”
Inwardly.
Free.
In prison one Friday, Joe and I were talking about irony. Our context was an Independent Study on “Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self Discovery.”
“Irony,” from Greek, eironeia, is "feigned ignorance."
i·ro·ny n. pl. i·ro·nies 1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. 2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. 3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1. 4. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). 5. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic. 6. Dramatic irony. 7. Socratic irony. (From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony )
It is an ironic time in politics, baseball, and creative life. We pretend we do not know what is happening. Bush and Kerry will face off on November 2nd. The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals begin a World Series best of 7 on Oct 23rd. And contemplative creators continually have to decide to allow what is pulsing through them for presence in the world to come through and take “place” in the world.
What is our place in the world?
When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward. (- Huai-nan-tzu)
Perhaps the “inward” is the thin-place between the dualistic notions of inside and outside. Perhaps the inward is our place in the world.
God is the only creator ab initio The creation of works of art would therefore come under the head of the active life, as the enjoyment of works of art would come under that of the contemplative life. But the essential difference, as I have already pointed out, is this – that the writer of a poem or the composer of a symphony has as his end, neither possession nor contemplation, but the bringing of a new sort of thing in the world. The poet or painter may indeed give us recognizable likenesses of the forms of common experience; to this extent they use imitation as a means to their further ends. But the poem or the painting in itself is a thing in itself and not an imitation of anything already in the world. It is sui generis, a new creation, and belongs to a different order of being from anything it imitates. Y.B. Yeats speaks of the poets as people whose work exists not primarily to help or to inform us. When we read them, he says, we “have added to our being, not to our knowledge.” It is the impulse to “add to being” which is the distinctive mark of the creative way of life. (p.117 “The Three Faces of Love” by A.D. Hope, in The Poet’s Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry on the Origins and Practice of their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons, c.1979)
How do we add to what is? Is that where the inward takes place? The place of the inward is fully dwelling Being.
The essential thing about education for the creative life as distinct from education for the active or the contemplative life is this: that what is truly autonomous must be self-initiating, or it stops being autonomous. For the active life the ends in view are practical ends which depend for their formulation on the known facts about man and society. The form that education for the active life should take can therefore be determined in advance. Similarly, for the contemplative life of the world as it exists in its object and perhaps God insofar as he is knowable. The conditions of the contemplative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can only be surmised, and the great difference between its conditions and the other two modes of human existence is that what is truly creative must create itself. This is the axiom on which any view of education for the creative life must be based. (pp.119-120, A.D. Hope)
Creating itself (or, the Creative Itself) is perhaps God insofar as God is knowable.
Irony is feigned ignorance. We cultivate ignorance in the same way we miss facts until someone gathers them in a way and, when shown, we say, “Oh, I see.”
You've always painted the Bush administration as these macho poseurs, phony gunslinger tough guys. Is that the kind of daddy we're looking for?
Yeah. And that's probably why Bush didn't let his own daddy speak at the Republican National Convention -- which was unbelievable that a former president who went to war with Iraq wasn't given a speaking slot. But Bush didn't want the real daddy, because the real daddy has differences with him on the Iraq war. The ironies of that are beyond belief. The father went to war in Iraq to defend the principle that you can't invade another country unilaterally; the son goes to war with Iraq to establish the principle that you can invade another country unilaterally.
(“Ms. Bush-Bash,” Does anyone understand Dubya better than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd? By John Colapinto, Oct 6, 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine)
I’d not seen Dowd’s observation before.
Nor had Ron Suskind comprehended what he’d been told two years ago:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."
October 17, 2004, IN THE New York Times MAGAZINE, “Without a Doubt" By Ron Suskind
Perhaps the time for debate is over. We’ve listened to each other too long. It is time to allow those who know best to run things, run our lives, run the country and the world. Perhaps, as Aldous Huxley’s Mustapha Mond in Brave New World says:
"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Mustapha Mond (p.220)
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books [i.e. the Bible, the Imitation of Christ, Varieties of Religious Experience, Works of John Cardinal Newman] locked up in the safe. They're smut"-Mustapha Mond (p. 234)
Then, another voice is heard:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
-Mustapha Mond and John the Savage (p.240)
I claim the right to be unhappy. Right now Boston has the reality of playing in the World Series and the possibility of winning. Right now the election between Bush and Kerry is still open to a fair and deliberative choice. Right now we each have an opportunity in our lives not to have to feign ignorance in order to have voice in the world.
"Place" is "Creating Itself.”
Inwardly.
Free.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Crisp cool evening.
In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)
In the empty silence of the night I recall five years ago my sister's final hours.
I write Lori Ann, Anthony, Frank, and Mark -- companions on that vigil.
Each going on.
With love.
In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)
In the empty silence of the night I recall five years ago my sister's final hours.
I write Lori Ann, Anthony, Frank, and Mark -- companions on that vigil.
Each going on.
With love.
Monday, October 18, 2004
To pretend to know, when there is only unknowing, is an unkind and selfish thing to do.
The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes
Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
In the New York Times (Published: October 12, 2004) there was a page one article entitled "Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry" By David D. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein. It quoted the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, about the upcoming election, the positions of the candidates, matters of abortion, along with moral considerations of conscience. I wrote the Archbishop and was sent a transcript of the complete interview. It was sent as a clarification of the reported conversation.
A section of the transcript reads:
NYT: Archbishop Burke in St. Louis caught my attention again on Friday [October 1]. he issued a statement basically stating that it's a sin if you vote for a pro-choice politician, I believe he was saying even if that wasn't the reason you voted for him, that you voted for a pro-abortion politician that is still something that you ought to confess. Is that...?
AB [Archbishop]: I don't believe that's where you should start. The place to start would be, does our voting for someone make us responsible for what that person does as a legislator or as a judge?...And the answer is yes, because we are in some ways materially -- we use the word "materially" -- cooperating in that person's activity because we've given [him or her] the platform to be elected. Now, if the person does something wrong, our participation is remote, but if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we approved of it, our responsibility would be really be close, even if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we voted for them for another reason, we would still be responsible in some ways.
The standing is if you know someone is going to do evil and you participate in that in some way, you are responsible. So it's not..."if you vote this way, should you go to confession?" The question is, "if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. There's a more sophisticated thing here...it's not so crude. The reason I want to stress that is because it is not like bishops are issuing edicts about who should vote for whom. It's issuing statements about how a Catholic forms her conscience, or his conscience...and remote material cooperation or proximate material cooperation is cooperation, and it's important for Catholics to know that, to be sophisticated in their judgments.
This argument is chewing gum on sole of shoe. It makes responsibility a combination of fortune-telling and pre-emptive challenge.
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
I wrote back.
Dear Archbishop Chaput –
I’ve read the complete transcript you sent. Thank you. I re-read the Times article.
I’ll mention one thought while doing this reading, namely: It is a difficult task to delineate public policy and personal morality.
My love for the Church is not diminished over five dozen years. My love for the people in and out of the Church seeks increase.
When the Church seeks to inform the conscience of individuals and general citizenry –she does right. But the difficulty of maintaining the razor’s edge of modeling/informing versus influencing/threatening is surely a sharp edge worth careful contemplation.
It seems to me that my opposition to abortion as a Catholic is and should be readily available for disclosure. The same is true for the issues of war, capital punishment, genocide, abuse of all sorts, and refusal to consider and reflect on the perspectives (in good faith) offered by those with whom I might differ.
And yet, the law of the land must be based on deliberations common to the values and judgment of the general populace as filtered through the good offices of legislative and judicial office holders. Fight, yes, for the candidate of your choice, and the values you choose as sacred – but avoid the dirty stick of ex-communication, non-reception of communion, and public condemnation of character based on legal and public deliberation of moral/religious matters. Pre-emptive elimination or character assassination based on suspected or speculative future wrong is a dangerous heuristic or haruspication – even for a Church so involved with a God we claim to be wise and loving as well as eternal and without limits.
My preference is to encourage individual and community via compassionate, open, and deliberate means – genuine dialogue -- to consider God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer. And to urge change of behavior based on those realities (God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer). Authentic change, as you know, comes from within. External incrimination is a blunt and numbing control – not worthy of Christ-mind seeking to gather safely those who long for the embodied presence of God-with-us.
Of course we are a little stupid. We generally can’t see the wholeness of life. We need examples of wholeness – or at least, mending broken individuals who have felt the pain of flaw and anguish. We are brother and sister in the family of God. Perhaps our only sanity is coming to see that inter-relatedness.
I will not burden you any further. Your task might be different than mine. You are a very visible man in a very big office as part of a very powerful organization.
I will pray for you and your work as part of my daily intention.
May all of us be happy, may all beings be safe, and may all beings come to dwell in our true home!
And may you, my brother, know and experience the peace and sanity you work so hard to convey to others!
Bill
p.s. I, too, will be taking my ballot to our chapel/zendo for silent prayer prior to casting my vote. Thank you for the prompt.
These men are trying hard to preserve the form of something whose core is empty. It is emptiness -- the impermanent and ephemeral, the diaphanous and unbounded openness -- that dwells at our core. Yet institutions spring up attempting to control what is not there. It seems to be the curious fate of men with power to try to capture the wind in a wire fence.
Fact is -- we're all just passing through.
Let the contest continue.
Unknowing.
And finding one’s way through.
The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes
Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
In the New York Times (Published: October 12, 2004) there was a page one article entitled "Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry" By David D. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein. It quoted the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, about the upcoming election, the positions of the candidates, matters of abortion, along with moral considerations of conscience. I wrote the Archbishop and was sent a transcript of the complete interview. It was sent as a clarification of the reported conversation.
A section of the transcript reads:
NYT: Archbishop Burke in St. Louis caught my attention again on Friday [October 1]. he issued a statement basically stating that it's a sin if you vote for a pro-choice politician, I believe he was saying even if that wasn't the reason you voted for him, that you voted for a pro-abortion politician that is still something that you ought to confess. Is that...?
AB [Archbishop]: I don't believe that's where you should start. The place to start would be, does our voting for someone make us responsible for what that person does as a legislator or as a judge?...And the answer is yes, because we are in some ways materially -- we use the word "materially" -- cooperating in that person's activity because we've given [him or her] the platform to be elected. Now, if the person does something wrong, our participation is remote, but if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we approved of it, our responsibility would be really be close, even if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we voted for them for another reason, we would still be responsible in some ways.
The standing is if you know someone is going to do evil and you participate in that in some way, you are responsible. So it's not..."if you vote this way, should you go to confession?" The question is, "if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. There's a more sophisticated thing here...it's not so crude. The reason I want to stress that is because it is not like bishops are issuing edicts about who should vote for whom. It's issuing statements about how a Catholic forms her conscience, or his conscience...and remote material cooperation or proximate material cooperation is cooperation, and it's important for Catholics to know that, to be sophisticated in their judgments.
This argument is chewing gum on sole of shoe. It makes responsibility a combination of fortune-telling and pre-emptive challenge.
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
I wrote back.
Dear Archbishop Chaput –
I’ve read the complete transcript you sent. Thank you. I re-read the Times article.
I’ll mention one thought while doing this reading, namely: It is a difficult task to delineate public policy and personal morality.
My love for the Church is not diminished over five dozen years. My love for the people in and out of the Church seeks increase.
When the Church seeks to inform the conscience of individuals and general citizenry –she does right. But the difficulty of maintaining the razor’s edge of modeling/informing versus influencing/threatening is surely a sharp edge worth careful contemplation.
It seems to me that my opposition to abortion as a Catholic is and should be readily available for disclosure. The same is true for the issues of war, capital punishment, genocide, abuse of all sorts, and refusal to consider and reflect on the perspectives (in good faith) offered by those with whom I might differ.
And yet, the law of the land must be based on deliberations common to the values and judgment of the general populace as filtered through the good offices of legislative and judicial office holders. Fight, yes, for the candidate of your choice, and the values you choose as sacred – but avoid the dirty stick of ex-communication, non-reception of communion, and public condemnation of character based on legal and public deliberation of moral/religious matters. Pre-emptive elimination or character assassination based on suspected or speculative future wrong is a dangerous heuristic or haruspication – even for a Church so involved with a God we claim to be wise and loving as well as eternal and without limits.
My preference is to encourage individual and community via compassionate, open, and deliberate means – genuine dialogue -- to consider God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer. And to urge change of behavior based on those realities (God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer). Authentic change, as you know, comes from within. External incrimination is a blunt and numbing control – not worthy of Christ-mind seeking to gather safely those who long for the embodied presence of God-with-us.
Of course we are a little stupid. We generally can’t see the wholeness of life. We need examples of wholeness – or at least, mending broken individuals who have felt the pain of flaw and anguish. We are brother and sister in the family of God. Perhaps our only sanity is coming to see that inter-relatedness.
I will not burden you any further. Your task might be different than mine. You are a very visible man in a very big office as part of a very powerful organization.
I will pray for you and your work as part of my daily intention.
May all of us be happy, may all beings be safe, and may all beings come to dwell in our true home!
And may you, my brother, know and experience the peace and sanity you work so hard to convey to others!
Bill
p.s. I, too, will be taking my ballot to our chapel/zendo for silent prayer prior to casting my vote. Thank you for the prompt.
These men are trying hard to preserve the form of something whose core is empty. It is emptiness -- the impermanent and ephemeral, the diaphanous and unbounded openness -- that dwells at our core. Yet institutions spring up attempting to control what is not there. It seems to be the curious fate of men with power to try to capture the wind in a wire fence.
Fact is -- we're all just passing through.
Let the contest continue.
Unknowing.
And finding one’s way through.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
When religious people think of God, God is usually a dualistic, external, and anthropomorphic construct.
As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal
Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Christians hardly admit that God became human. Willing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and allow the belief that God became man, there is still a hesitation to give up the notion that God is really above all this creation, humanity, and existence.
But wholeness is wholeness.
It would be useful if Christians actually believed what is one of the core beliefs of Christianity: Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; "The Word became flesh, and dwells between (among) us..." (from John 1: 1-14)
Either God became one of us, or Christianity merely has had a good spin for two thousand years.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
"Sin," division and separation, will be forgiven, gone, and forgotten.
It is wholeness that puts to rest the strain and illusion of a divided reality.
Going beyond, or having gone beyond the numbing sleep of separation and fragmentation of half-knowledge, we vow to live what is here with courage, compassion, and wisdom.
It is not just a one day Christmas celebration, but a vital need, to embody the reality of wholeness. Hodie Christus Natus Est Pro Nobis -- "Today Christ is born with us."(Antiphon to Magnificat – Vespers of the Christmas day)
It is a lot to meditate on.
A contemplation beyond us.
This is where we must go.
Are we willing?
As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal
Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Christians hardly admit that God became human. Willing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and allow the belief that God became man, there is still a hesitation to give up the notion that God is really above all this creation, humanity, and existence.
But wholeness is wholeness.
It would be useful if Christians actually believed what is one of the core beliefs of Christianity: Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; "The Word became flesh, and dwells between (among) us..." (from John 1: 1-14)
Either God became one of us, or Christianity merely has had a good spin for two thousand years.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
"Sin," division and separation, will be forgiven, gone, and forgotten.
It is wholeness that puts to rest the strain and illusion of a divided reality.
Going beyond, or having gone beyond the numbing sleep of separation and fragmentation of half-knowledge, we vow to live what is here with courage, compassion, and wisdom.
It is not just a one day Christmas celebration, but a vital need, to embody the reality of wholeness. Hodie Christus Natus Est Pro Nobis -- "Today Christ is born with us."(Antiphon to Magnificat – Vespers of the Christmas day)
It is a lot to meditate on.
A contemplation beyond us.
This is where we must go.
Are we willing?
Friday, October 15, 2004
What's wrong will always be wrong. That's what poet Richard Hugo wrote as the first line of his poem "Villager."
Iraq is no-place to us. That's because we've lost our way. Our way, we like to think, used to be the modeling of freedom and justice. Now, losing our way at home, we try to impose on others a facsimile of what we've stopped believing in.
If that sounds harsh, listen to the words of a writeup about Seymour Hersh interviewed recently in Berkeley, California:
There was more -- rumors of atrocities around Iraq that to Hersh brought back memories of My Lai. In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.
"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'
"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."
The story seemed to leave Hersh sincerely, deeply saddened. While his critics may call him a "muckraker" and unpatriotic, on Friday night it was obvious that Hersh takes the crumbling of America's image, very, very personally.
(On Friday evening, Oct. 8, Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist extraordinaire, was interviewed on the campus of UC Berkeley by KQED host Michael Krasny.)http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
War is personal. It must be taken thus.
We're frightened by the mind of the men who cheerlead us during the war.
Hugo was right -- What's wrong will always be wrong.
Today is the feast of Teresa.
If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.
(--St Teresa of Avila)
Until we learn love.
A far cry away.
Iraq is no-place to us. That's because we've lost our way. Our way, we like to think, used to be the modeling of freedom and justice. Now, losing our way at home, we try to impose on others a facsimile of what we've stopped believing in.
If that sounds harsh, listen to the words of a writeup about Seymour Hersh interviewed recently in Berkeley, California:
There was more -- rumors of atrocities around Iraq that to Hersh brought back memories of My Lai. In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.
"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'
"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."
The story seemed to leave Hersh sincerely, deeply saddened. While his critics may call him a "muckraker" and unpatriotic, on Friday night it was obvious that Hersh takes the crumbling of America's image, very, very personally.
(On Friday evening, Oct. 8, Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist extraordinaire, was interviewed on the campus of UC Berkeley by KQED host Michael Krasny.)http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/
War is personal. It must be taken thus.
We're frightened by the mind of the men who cheerlead us during the war.
Hugo was right -- What's wrong will always be wrong.
Today is the feast of Teresa.
If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.
(--St Teresa of Avila)
Until we learn love.
A far cry away.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Let's not forget who we are.
Suzanne, John, Joanie, Su Sane, Robert, Erika, Saskia, Sylvia, Dirk, Will, Sandra, and I read and conversed about "True self or No self?" by Jack Kornfield at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation.
Is the cause of hostilities in war and elsewhere our failure to recognize our true self? In and through one another?
All so vague:
The reasons why in autumn
All fade away
And there’s just this
Inexplicable sadness.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
There will be two men debating tonight. They each want to win the presidential election.
Leaves fall. Creative imagination is on hold. The sadness we feel is partially caused by the way these men split us in two.
We are not two. We cannot trust any man who tries to divide us.
Is there anyone who understands the true self?
We have to be something to comprehend it.
If we remember who we are, those who divide will be forgotten.
Suzanne, John, Joanie, Su Sane, Robert, Erika, Saskia, Sylvia, Dirk, Will, Sandra, and I read and conversed about "True self or No self?" by Jack Kornfield at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation.
Is the cause of hostilities in war and elsewhere our failure to recognize our true self? In and through one another?
All so vague:
The reasons why in autumn
All fade away
And there’s just this
Inexplicable sadness.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
There will be two men debating tonight. They each want to win the presidential election.
Leaves fall. Creative imagination is on hold. The sadness we feel is partially caused by the way these men split us in two.
We are not two. We cannot trust any man who tries to divide us.
Is there anyone who understands the true self?
We have to be something to comprehend it.
If we remember who we are, those who divide will be forgotten.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
The Boston Red Sox open against the New York Yankees tonight in the American League Championship Series. Schilling will face Mussina. They'll throw whatever they have at one another.
Scaling the crags
Where azalea bloom, not for plucking
But for hanging on!
The saving feature of this rugged
Mountain face I’m climbing.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
The baseball battle will be a welcome alternative to the bloodier battles taking place in Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq.
Also Tuesday, the military resumed air strikes in nearby Fallujah, said to be the hideout of the terrorist network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
The military said it hit a center for Zarqawi "terrorist meetings" in one strike and a "known terrorist safe house" in another. The safe house was being used by Zarqawi associates at the time of the strike, a statement said.
Wire service reports said at least one of the buildings hit was a restaurant. The Associated Press reported that five people died in the strike on the restaurant.
("U.S., Iraqi Forces Raid Ramadi Mosques, Air Strikes Resume in Fallujah," By Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 13, 2004; 7:30 AM, in Washington Post, Tuesday, October 12, 2004) [Note: Tomorrow's date is on this news posting. It evokes magical thinking -- that we might be able to forestall tomorrow's pain by diverting it from its temporal course. It is today here, it says, might we change tomorrow today?]
I'd rather we stole a base than set up bases, hit a triple than cripple bodies, throw a 2-hitter than split two countries in two with the cruelty of war and foolishness of want, power, and false security.
What is it we fail to comprehend about the mystery of life we call God?
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloriae tuae."Heaven and earth are full of your glory." (in Te Deum)
This war of ideology, bombs, and bullets is a shame. Baseball playoffs with runs, hits, and errors -- with full counts, pitching changes, and stretching for extra bases -- are better expressions of skill, strategy, and human excellence than the ugly (though some say, necessary) behavior of warfare.
Let the championships begin!
Let warfare end!
Let us play!
Scaling the crags
Where azalea bloom, not for plucking
But for hanging on!
The saving feature of this rugged
Mountain face I’m climbing.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
The baseball battle will be a welcome alternative to the bloodier battles taking place in Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq.
Also Tuesday, the military resumed air strikes in nearby Fallujah, said to be the hideout of the terrorist network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
The military said it hit a center for Zarqawi "terrorist meetings" in one strike and a "known terrorist safe house" in another. The safe house was being used by Zarqawi associates at the time of the strike, a statement said.
Wire service reports said at least one of the buildings hit was a restaurant. The Associated Press reported that five people died in the strike on the restaurant.
("U.S., Iraqi Forces Raid Ramadi Mosques, Air Strikes Resume in Fallujah," By Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 13, 2004; 7:30 AM, in Washington Post, Tuesday, October 12, 2004) [Note: Tomorrow's date is on this news posting. It evokes magical thinking -- that we might be able to forestall tomorrow's pain by diverting it from its temporal course. It is today here, it says, might we change tomorrow today?]
I'd rather we stole a base than set up bases, hit a triple than cripple bodies, throw a 2-hitter than split two countries in two with the cruelty of war and foolishness of want, power, and false security.
What is it we fail to comprehend about the mystery of life we call God?
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloriae tuae."Heaven and earth are full of your glory." (in Te Deum)
This war of ideology, bombs, and bullets is a shame. Baseball playoffs with runs, hits, and errors -- with full counts, pitching changes, and stretching for extra bases -- are better expressions of skill, strategy, and human excellence than the ugly (though some say, necessary) behavior of warfare.
Let the championships begin!
Let warfare end!
Let us play!
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Maybe we can fake it. At least for a while until, with practice faking it, we might ease into the thing itself.
And what is this thing? It's in the bag.
If you want to catch a rat
You don’t need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don’t study fine bound books
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te
If we could shut up, be still, sit down, and look at the sack awhile...maybe we'll see there's nothing to say.
Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.
(~ Thomas Merton)
We don't see God because we are in God as God is in us. This dualistic language is the way we normally describe something whose explanation might satisfy the intellect. It never does.
Let's fake it.
Let's say nothing.
Without dualistic language we wouldn't know what to say.
Let's open the sack, and say nothing.
And what is this thing? It's in the bag.
If you want to catch a rat
You don’t need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don’t study fine bound books
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te
If we could shut up, be still, sit down, and look at the sack awhile...maybe we'll see there's nothing to say.
Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.
(~ Thomas Merton)
We don't see God because we are in God as God is in us. This dualistic language is the way we normally describe something whose explanation might satisfy the intellect. It never does.
Let's fake it.
Let's say nothing.
Without dualistic language we wouldn't know what to say.
Let's open the sack, and say nothing.
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