Saskia's birthday. She goes to move sailboat put on wrong mooring. There will be string of balloons someone left for her on boat, barbecue, chocolate torte, and ice cream at shop this afternoon.

Her family celebrates birthdays with presence and presents.

Spring morning on the lake:
The wind merges with the rain,
Worldly matters are like flowers
That fall only to bloom again.
I retire to contemplate behind closed doors,
A place of true joy,
While the floating clouds come and go
The whole day long.
- Zhengue (12th cent)

Morning fog burns off.

We are grateful for this birth.

Tommy and I took garbage to the dump in his pickup. Going out to house he lets me out to give a woman with two heavy bags a ride home. Walking Mechanic street it occurs to me that picking up and dropping off and picking up and dropping off again is good enough learning.

The nature of the one Reality must be known by one's own clear spiritual perception; it cannot be known through a learned person. Similarly, the form of the moon can only be known through one's own eyes. How can it be known through others?
- Shankara

To be stranger in familiar places is to choose to acknowledge and allow each thing to be its own reality, nothing else. You cannot own strangers. We ought not try.

The hermit belongs where he is. The hermit is her own. Hermits are reminders we are not far from death. In the shop the woman with asthmatic condition said her doctor told her she could just drop dead at any time. I thought about that. The doctor should have asked her first if she thought death an illusion before he told her the odds she'd be dead in a flash.

A hermit slowly dies in this conditioned world. He says nearly nothing with a silence each must learn on their own.

This inclination to chatter on and on is a land far away from the close hermit.

It is a strange land.

Spirituality isn't about denying the world; it is about relying on truth and love to transform oneself in the world.

At conversation the other evening some spoke about ignoring the news about Iraq, the news about political mud, and the news about the various cultural wars flaring across the nation and the world. Some suggest a "higher" path. I don't know what that path is. "Higher" and "lower" are the products of dualistic thinking. Ecological insight might present a clearer perspective.

Sitting on top of a boulder
The gorge stream icy cold
Quiet fun holds a special charm
Fogged-in on deserted cliffs
A fine place to rest
The sun leans and tree shadows sprawl
While I view the ground of my mind
A lotus comes out of the mud.
- Han shan

I asked Joe today in prison how often he looked at the back of a mirror.

The whole truth and nothing but -- is the cry of both sides of the mirror.

The world is an odd place. We are many odd people.

I can say "yes" to the world and not be smothered by it.
I can see "wholeness" and not fear parts that intimidate.
I can feel "compassion" and not shrink from critical thinking.

These three ways of God do not frighten me.

What frightens me is refusal of God in the world.

We pray by entering the world as God is.

The Downing Street Memo is required reading. It points out that the war was begun as a lie.

Spirituality isn't a private relationship with God. From the beginning everything is in the open. It is when there are attempts to hide or to fool that everyone suffers.

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon (13th cent)

The face of God is not hidden. It is the open itself.

Be wary of disguise and deceit. Death and destruction are its fruits.

With eyes and heart open.

See Original Face.

The body begins to weaken.

An old man alone on a darkening ridge
retiring to my hut I accept white hair
but sigh that today and the years gone by
are mindless, like the rivers flowing east.
(--Han-shan)

The mind is lost.

The aperspectival unmaps and the intuitive remaps the terrain of consciousness. Old maps no longer tell where we are going.

Water finds low ground.

If we become water, ground absorbs our passage.

When I die -- water and ground remain water and ground.

Such kindness!

A woman from Europe sat and spoke about Americans. "They lie," she said. "They don't say what they really feel. And they seem always to be telling me to 'Go home'."

We spoke of an unlikely way of finding truth and staying at home.

I have always loved friends of the Way
friends of the Way I have always held dear
meeting a traveler with a silent spring
or greeting a guest talking Chan ...
(--Han-shan, hermit of Cold Mountain)

We spoke of the theological virtues -- faith, hope, and charity (or love).
Faith is yes. Hope is trusting integrity. Love is inclusive compassion

Saying yes means we allow the possibility of what is said to reside awhile in stillness. Yes cradles new arrivals with temporary respite.

Trusting integrity is holding wholeness as template for whatever is viewed or heard. Wholeness lets whatever withholds itself by saying "no" -- some breathing space so as to reconsider the chill of fragmentation.

Inclusive compassion lets in the suffering of the excluded. Compassion surpasses understanding by forgiveness of that which tries to elude -- yes, wholeness.

Born Thirty Years Ago
Thirty years ago I was born into the world.
A thousand, ten thousand miles I've roamed.
By rivers where the green grass grows thick,
Beyond the border where the red sands fly.
I brewed potions in a vain search for life everlasting,
I read books, I sang songs of history,
And today I've come home to Cold Mountain
To pillow my head on the stream and wash my ears.
(--poem by Han-shan, 8th Century poet, tr. from Chinese by Gary Snyder)

We wash our ears with conversation about -- yes, wholeness, compassion.

If we consider truth our home, our real dwelling place, then don't leave it.

She said goodnight.

On her way.

Back home.

Let us be what is where we are.

Soon, we might learn to say: "This is where I am."

While sitting on daybed in kitchen beside Sando, Saskia says: "We are where and who we are...fully."

"Grace" is that which is...given.

“I believe in a poetry determined by the language of which it is made. I look to words, and nothing else, for my own redemption… I mean the words as opposed to content.”
—Robert Creeley

No doubt about it, nor any external reference point, we are what is where we are.

If the words "Christ consciousness" are said, they are the thing itself flowering -- not imposed from without, not inhabited from within -- but, what is itself flowering, as it is, no other.

Do not speak of God. Reveal, instead, what is the manifestation of Itself. Word the wordless with becoming silence.

As you just might be doing right now.

Words pass in silence. They are heard more clearly in their passing away.

I have not heard of a single Buddha, past or present,
who has been enlightened by sacred prayers
and scriptures.
- Bassui

Sando just showed up at cabin door and was let in. Later came Cesco. They arrived in time for Heart Sutra. After the silence and the chanting they knew there would be dinner.

To destroy dualism means to have an attention that is on the border between presence and absence, between good and evil, between A and not-A. Attention directed solely to Presence, to the higher, is the inner equivalent of blind devotion to an external God. For the Higher or the Innermost is actually external to myself here and now. Those who say they are not seeking the external God of the West, but the Innermost self are in danger of a subtle deception. It is still in essence attachment to the world of holy words, images, visualizations. Attention directed solely to the lower is the inner equivalent of atheism and leads to "suicide" -- cynicism and loneliness.
(pp. 159-160, Fr Sylvan citing St. Simeon the New Theologian in Lost Christianity, A Journey of Rediscovery To The Center of Christian Experience, by Jacob Needleman, c.1980)

Around table at Sunday Evening Practice individuals spoke: of dark rooms while wearing dark glasses; of middle places without compass; of patience arising from suffering; of temporary awareness that "lets" and the "letting" necessary to pass through into extended watchfulness. These fragments of reflection -- the curious incursion through doubt, neurosis, and once fixed but now deteriorating belief about anything -- into what we say is another day.

This attention of the heart, this question within movement is actually another, intimate movement that spontaneously arises in the moment between life and death, when the ego is wounded and God is still distant; this attention is prayer in the sense of the Psalmist who asks, and asks and asks; it is that which watches and waits in the night.
(--Needleman, p.160)

We watch and wait in the night.

Asking again and often: "Let us?"

Occupy.

Our midst.

Sando rests on bed in kitchen after surgery for cancer. Cesco got most of the pizza crusts tonight.

In prison this morning man works on the alphabet. Keeps writing "n" for "s" in "basket." We have plenty of one-to-one time.

In regular Meetingbrook Conversation in afternoon we speak about Husserl and phenomenology. We wonder whether intersubjectivity leaves residue of consciousness on three styrofoam cups.

Twelve years and ten years along in prison for two of the men. One talks about his son, the other his daughter -- how it is time goes by without them.

Just because something is what it is, doesn't mean accepting it that way makes anything easier.

Radical empiricism, or immediate experience, is our life-world. Where we are is where life experiences itself in the world.

Today life tries an experience of awareness.

We must investigate.

It is a great misfortune for those
Engaged in learning to take the
Sayings of the sages as mere
Verbal exercises.
- Xue Xuan (1389-1464)

Investigate how the galaxies came to be. How up and down are relative terms. How fossils of fish are embedded along the top of the Himalayan mountain range.

We need to investigate why the Ten Commandments and the Four Noble Truths have nailed the ways we humans lose our way. Why con artists and fraud bilkers are so successful at separating us from our money. Why we would want to go anywhere when the cost of automobile and travel is so expensive.

And then we might wish to investigate the healing loveliness of stillness. The refreshing simplicity of silence. The lithe poetry of spring leaves in twilight breeze.

Sages say something worth hearing.

Wisdom.

Worth.

Hearing.

Where is truth?

Therefore, Ananda, be as a lamp unto yourselves, be as a refuge to yourselves. Take no external refuge. Hold fast to the Truth as a lamp; hold fast to the Truth as a refuge. Look not for a refuge in anyone besides yourselves.
- The Buddha

Truth is not outside. Truth is not inside. Truth is siding itself. It is the immediate next someone. It is the immediate next something.

Truth is relational.

If we ask -- Where is truth? -- we must be willing to face truth.

Truth is nothing other -- it is our engaged interrelating presence as, with, and through what is called -- Truth.

The Tobacconist's
I am nothing.
I shall always be nothing.
I can only want to be nothing.
Apart from this, I have in me all the dreams in the world.
(-- the first four lines of "The Tobacconist's", Ãlvaro de Campos, Lisbon, 15-1-1928, heteronym of Fernando Pessoa, 1888-1935)

Sometimes, nothing -- is all we can realize.

Between you and me. The immediate next. Interim. Betwixt. Thin Place. Itself "I AM."

Siding immediate -- our engaged interrelation with all that is -- a light unto itself.

Siding ourselves in siding itself -- the absolute nearside -- where truth is.

Shall we meet there?

Lamp unto itself all the world.

Blame is substitute for awareness.

Mostly when we blame someone or something we do so from the hiding place of fear or anger. Blame is duality's first line of attack. If we refuse the invitation to awaken, blame is the rejection notice we send out.

The Brahman Dona saw the Buddha sitting under a tree and was impressed by his peaceful air of alertness and his good demeanor. He asked the Buddha:
"Are you a god?"
"No, Brahman, I am not a god."
"Then an angel?"
"No indeed, Brahman."
"A spirit then?"
"No, I am not a spirit."
"Then what are you?"
"I am awake."
- Anguttara Nikaya

At Friday Evening Interreligious Dialogue Conversation we read footnotes by Sri Aurobindo. This Tuesday morning Saskia stirs dough for chocolate puffs. She remembers Aurobindo's words on quietude and simplicity. They are part of the balance from which action springs. The conversation spoke about egolessness. One person said that as long as we have a body we have an ego.

For a contrarian, the opposite of whatever is shown or said is also seen or heard. Perhaps it is inaccurate to say "egoless." Maybe the word "egoistic" applies. Or, "ego is tic" is a helpful breakout of the word.

A tic is -- "A habitual spasmodic muscular movement or contraction, usually of the face or extremities." Tic is also called habit spasm. (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=tic)

We have, and often are, a habit spasm. This habit spasm is in response to stimuli, conditions, or persons. This usually happens when we are unaware and separated from the well of our true being. We are parched and dry, frightened or anxious to please, desperate or blindly grasping at straw. Habit spasm is unawake reaction. Ego is tic twitching the extremities of our body, emotions, or thinking. Mindless action, defensive emotions, or blaming thinking usually follows.

The well of our being -- the wellness of being -- is ignored during egoistic episodes in our daily life. We exhaust ourselves in these episodes. We have fallen asleep.

Buddha said he was awake.

There is no substitute for being awake.

We are blameless.

In this, well.

We honor and pray for all dead and deadened by war.

Are we ready to go? Is it time to end suffering and craving? Do we yet see peace?

18. By the power of that Buddha's Original Vows,
All who hear his Name and desire birth,
Will, without exception, be born in his land
And effortlessly enter the Stage of Non-retrogression.

19. Bodhisattvas, if you make vows
That your lands will be like this,
While aspiring to save all beings everywhere,
Your name will be renowned throughout the ten quarters.

20. In order to serve millions of Tathagatas,
You can assume various forms and fly to those lands;
After worshipping them with joyful hearts,
You will return to the Land of Peace and Provision.'
(from THE LARGER SUTRA ON AMITAYUS: Part 2, Translated from Chinese by Hisao Inagaki}

("Tathagata" means "Thus gone one." It is a term the Buddha used about someone who has brought an end to suffering and has reached nibbana.
"Nibbana" is the highest goal in Buddhism, the third noble truth. It signifies the end of suffering and craving, the attainment of perfect peace. Ultimately, however, it defies description.)

We nearly approach a time when we see war for what it is -- mindless destruction.

We near awareness of an immaculate element wherein we'll see through every illusion -- when mind reveals clear peace, true heart.

Until then, we look into the eyes of the deadened and stand silent at the burial places of the dead -- and weep.

Silence is
Still
Unworded.
(wfh)

Maybe all we can do is learn how to see and say the world.

Like entrusting yourself
To a brave person
When greatly afraid,
By entrusting yourself
To the awakening mind,
You will be swiftly liberated,
Even if you have made appalling errors.
- Majjhima Nikaya

Maybe what some call forgiveness, and others call awareness, is a way worth considering.

Poem is
Being
Written.
(wfh)

Sitting with others during Poetry, Tea, and Literature yesterday, these four word glimpses ask to be spoken. One final one today.

Holiness is
Itself
Revealing
(wfh)

There are a thousand ways up a mountain. Some harder than others. A few, easy. None deny there is a mountain.

Subhuti, does it occur to you that I believe that through me living beings are led to liberation? Never think that way, Subhuti. Why? Because there is no separate being to lead to liberation. If I were to think there was, I would be caught in the notion of a self or person or a life span. Subhuti, what I call a self is essentially not a self in the way that an ordinary person thinks of it. But neither do I think of anyone as an ordinary person. However, knowing the essence, I can use the name, ordinary person.
- Diamond Sutra

I said tonight I am not egoless, but ecoless -- that is, homeless. We were disagreeing about something at conversation. I was cranky. I didn't enjoy hearing observations that excluded others -- either by dint of superiority, or dint of someone's way being the true way.

It seldom cheers me to hear an overt or insinuated inclination to impress or drive in forcibly the prevalence of one belief system over another, or dismissal of a point of view before all efforts to clarify are exhausted. I'm not fond of this when done by Christians or Muslims, Republicans or Democrats, Harvard grads or drug dealers.

The judgmental mind -- the mind constantly reinforcing hierarchical thinking -- is seldom satisfied short of belittling or patronizing a perceived underling.

I'm not fond of the current administration in Washington. Nobody asked, but I'm not fond of those in the shadows who own these politicians and power players. It distresses me that the truth of Pat Tillman's death was manipulated by them. That Terry Schiavo's agony was fodder for their trough. It pains me that family members of men and women killed daily in Iraq begin to feel through their tears a cold suspicion that their lost loved ones paid a steep price for lies and deception, for arrogance and ambition on the part of their command betters.

For those who brush off the tragedy of this belligerent folly by claiming a high road of rhetoric and spirituality, I say -- stop. Stop before the spirit of this nation is tarnished beyond repair by revenge and torture. Stop before the men following very uncertain tendencies lead us into a darkness too enclosed to allow escape.

In prison today some inmates say that they'd like to have a writing circle to hone skills of expression, clarity, and insight.

The crimes for which they serve time are serious. The crimes committed in my name in the Middle East, under orders of doubtful legitimacy claiming to serve my security, are far more serious. It gives me no joy to witness justice so unevenly distributed.

What joy I do experience is with a diverse loosely-knit association of a conversant community -- in prison, or, in town -- willing to face their lives in the open; to say so; to ransom integrity.

This Memorial Day weekend demands an integrity of recollection. The dead buried and the deadened living among us as a result of war deserve our integrity.

You, Lord, are in our midst, and we are called by your name; therefore do not abandon us, Lord, our God. (Jeremiah 14:9, Night Prayer)

On Memorial Day our attentive salute needs to be followed by careful introspection.

It's an old revelation. We've forgotten it. Or we've made it into one of those bridges we burn.

Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam meam in vitam aeternam. Amen. (May the body of our Lord Jesus Christ keep my soul unto life eternal.)

The Irish man said when he dies he wants his body taken to Tibet, hacked into pieces, and given air burial. He's not for cremation. He'll settle for being thrown in a trunk of a car, driven downeast, and dropped in a dug hole in the woods -- fully clothed, if you please, no bother.

The mighty ocean has but one taste,
The taste of salt.
Even so, the true way has
But one savor,
The savor of freedom.
- Majjhima Nikaya

Saying something about the Body of Christ without true faith is like trying to say something about air without breathing. That true faith is an intangible thing. It's not that you believe something -- that's just skin. It's that you affirm an experience incapable of any verification -- that's bone marrow. That experience is every breath we take and each thing seen or sound heard. It is the scent of rain rising from dirt before felt splashing on face.

This fabric of matter, the fact of existence itself, and the empty mind that follows the gaze of eyes falling gently on every passing thing -- this is sinew and willingness to move muscle and yawn with abandon.

I have said to the Lord "“You are my Lord, in you alone is all my good"”.
(From Psalm 16, Compline, Thursday)

Forget the hocus pocus. Remember Christ each time body is realized, each time blood flows through veins, or drips helpless to ground.

Some new understanding waits in empty barn for growing season to come. Fields are wet. Corn will get in late. Bees are scarce. Old grain is rationed. It will not satisfy new hunger.

Tonight I pray for the bodies of men and women, children and nature caught in the terror of war and deception of explanation of war. I pray for the Body of Christ unrecognized in person but adored in ideology. It is the feast of Corpus Christi.

All day I've looked at these hands.

They reveal something unimagined.

See them together, profound bow, greeting God.

When it rains, get wet. When you sleep, rest well. When it is time to awake, do not hesitate.

Every day Ruiyan would call to himself, "Master, Master!"
And every day he would respond, "Yes, yes."
Then he would say, "Be awake! Be alert!"
"Yes!"
"From now on, don't be fooled by anything."
"No, I won't be!"
(Mumonkan Case 12)

There are some who want to fool us. There are swindlers who want to take our money. There are feckless bullies who try to twist everything to their advantage. That's how things are at times. That's where we live in the world. What is to be done?

On That Side, beyond the clouds,
The mountain is blue-green as jade
The white clouds on the mountain
Are whiter than white
From the spring on the mountain,
Drop after drop
Who knows how to see the face
In the white clouds?
Clear skies and rain have their times,
They're like lightening
Who knows how to listen to the
Sound of this spring?
It flows on without stopping
Through thousands
And thousands of turns
The moment before thought is
Already wrong
To try to say anything further
Is embarrassing.
- T'aego (1301-1382)

The brook turns and tumbles down mountain these days of rain. It sings and dances with abandon and delight. It goes where it goes without thought of where it is going. Brook is simply every place it is.

We must be everywhere we are. As who we are. Wherever we find ourselves that is where we are. That's the practice. The practice is not to be fooled. Not to pretend we are what we are not. Not to try for what is not ours to attain. Not to hide what is already in the open.

There are those who live to deceive and be deceived. Don't do that.

There are those who live to love and be kind. Do that.

A time will come when whatever is authentically itself will be free to be authentically Itself.

I like the fact that to be enlightened is to be exactly what one is. Without and within; alone and with others; turning one to another and turning back with no effort, no fear, and no idea but the thing itself.

No fooling.

The woman didn't mean to ridicule it, nor did the retired minister mean to make fun of it, when they pointed out that the thought of bread becoming the Body of Christ was absurd and cannibalistic.

This morning at Eucharist the thought never occurred to me. It was, like any conversation, a moment allowing light to shine through the reality with which Spirit and Matter bowed one to the other, one as the other.

The rain has stopped,
The clouds have drifted away,
And the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure,
Then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world,
Abandon yourself,
Then the moon and flowers will guide you along the Way.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

It has stopped raining. For now. Days have followed days of rain.

Who knows what takes place when sacred reality interpenetrates what we call ordinary reality? Reality, I submit, is only and always reality, wherever it is.

Does God become human? Does God become word? Does God become bread?

God becomes whatever God is.

The metric theology and mathematical suppositions about the edge of spirit nearing the edge of matter are contemporary versions of angels and pinheads.

It is a matter of out of sight out of mind. We cannot see what we are not conscious of. With consciousness comes seeing. What we consider magical transubstantiation is, in contemporary thought, integral holistic interpenetration. When we come to see, nothing -- nothing -- is impossible to the seeing mind/heart.

And when we do come to see, we see nothing special. Bread is sacred food. Christ is sacred word. Word is sacred moment. Now is sacred Christ. And all of it is simply the reality of being-in-the-world through the manifest enlightenment of What Is Itself.

But, we don't see it. We are not conscious of the gift laid out before us every day. The gift of one another. The gift of bread. The gift of rain, flowers, sunshine, tall grass, panting dog, and complaining cat. Of sunflower seed stuffed in chipmunk mouth. The gift of seeing Itself.

We don't mean to ridicule life in all its glorious manifestation. But we do. We try to make our opinion rise from the corpse of another's opinion. Let's not try that trick. Let's listen to one another. Let's try to see through words and experience to the reality itself.

Be egregious egalitarians.

Honor thyself by forgetting thyself and remembering to wash the dishes, empty the garbage, and say goodnight kindly to all who momentarily leave your sight.

Hold each in your heart.

In your mind.

Lightly.

Wind bends trees. Rain drenches earth. Silence reveals nothing.

There is nothing in front of you;
Nothing, yet everything is as usual.
Do not belabor wisdom to examine it;
Substance itself is empty and obscure.
(--Niutou Farong, 594-657)

There are times words say pseudo-nothing with annoying insistence. Listen to presidential platitudes. Listen to senate monologues. Or corporate executives.

Thoughts arise and pass away,
The preceding no different from the succeeding.
If the succeeding thought does not arise,
The preceding thought cuts itself off.
(--Farong)

We talk too much. Stay too long. Try too hard.

In past, present, and future,
There is nothing;
No mind, no buddha.
Sentient beings are without mind;
Out of no-mind they manifest.
(--Farong)

I suspect learning to think is more valuable than forming opinions or accumulating knowledge.

To think is to see and act in authentic concert with what appears.

Thinking is not thought.

Thinking is ever-nascent presence.

Thinking, like silence, reveals nothing.

A ripe revelation!

Thich Nhat Hanh says Non-self is Interbeing.

A hundred thousand worlds
Are flowers in the sky
A single mind and body
Is moonlight on the water
Once the cunning ends
And information stops
At that moment there
Is no place for thought.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

When we sit, walk, move, or eat in harmony we need not worry about "self." There is only sitting, walking, moving, and eating -- there is no self.

Practice tonight was strong gift of five and three beings among, with, and between one another.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes that mystics and zen masters become more non-dual, less dogmatic or speculative in their talking and writing.

We stumble smoothly into seemless whole as we practice harmony, habitless, with more alertness.

Everyone must practice. Killing and consuming will decrease as screaching selves disappear.

And the Lord descended in the form of a cloud, and Moses stood with him there.
He called on the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, "the Lord, the Lord, a God of tenderness and compassion, slow to anger rich in kindness and faithfulness." And Moses bowed down to the ground at once and worshipped. (Exodus 34: 5ff)

We celebrate the Trinity. Compassion, kindness, and faithfulness!

By any name...possible.