Mu-ge (the cat) paws ball under kitchen bed.

Things are produced around us,
But no one knows the whence.
They issue forth,
But no one sees the portal.
People value that part of knowledge which is known.
They do not know how to avail themselves
Of the Unknown in order to reach knowledge.
Is this not misguided?
- Chuang-tzu

Cat steals dog's food.

Some Pharisees approached him and asked, "Is it against the law for a man to divorce his wife?" They were testing him. He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" "Moses allowed us," they said, "to draw up a writ of dismissal and so to divorce." Then Jesus said to them, "It was because you were so unteachable that he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother, and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore, but one body. So then, what God has united, man must not divide."
(from Mark 10:1 - 12)

The sacrament of marriage is the outward sign of the inner reality of all things -- one body, not divided.

At Friday Evening Conversation a realization that source, sound, and suffusion are contemporary metaphors side by side with father, son, and holy spirit.

What is the sound of one hand?

Don't ask.

Be it.

Cat exits room.

It is as grey a February day in Maine as you might ever find. Wet, raw, a tinge of despondency rubbing against the edges.

The conduct of the administration of Messrs Bush and Cheney, in the eyes of many if not most, is an embarrassment and a scandal. It is tedious to broach the topic, what with watchdogs waiting to slobber fealty and a divided nation distraught as to how put a fallen humpty government back into repair for our constitutional republic with democratic aspirations to carry on once the current crowd vacates office.

In my house there is a cave
And in the cave is nothing at all
Pure and wonderfully empty
Resplendent, with a light like the sun.
- Han shan

From that cave's emptiness only a curious glance toward what is actually occurring around us. We allow the kidnapping and torture of Canadians. We arrest and torture Afghani and Iraqi men. We steal money from our own and foreign government(s). We go so deeply in debt that we sell off parts of our country and security to foreign creditors. We allow corporations and conglomerates the freedom to use slave-like labor in foreign lands so as to maximize profits here at home. We claim our president and vice president can do anything they wish to do anywhere and anytime as long as they perseverate the phrases "9/11" and "war on terror." And we allow any and every elected representative to remain cowed and silent in an odd obsequiousness to appropriated power.

It is, indeed, curious that things have fallen so far below once revered standards and expectations. It appears the fall is too subtle and overwhelming at the same time for most of us to comprehend. We want our own lives, our own favorite biases, and our own cheerleading section rather than having to think, reason, and recognize the sheer inanity of the rants and skewed discourse.

On March 25, 2003, President Bush signed Executive Order 13292, a hitherto little known document that grants the greatest expansion of the power of the vice president in American history. The order gives the vice president the same ability to classify intelligence as the president. By controlling classification, the vice president can in effect control intelligence and, through that, foreign policy.
(Published on Thursday, February 23, 2006 by Salon, "Cheney's Coup," A 3-Year-Old Executive Order That Vastly Expanded His Powers Illuminates How the Vice President and His Minions Led Us Into War. By Sidney Blumenthal)

It seems ironic that it took the shooting of a fellow hunter for Mr. Cheney to reveal to the world that he has had the power of deciding what is and is not classified, what is and is not lawful in the country. For many it is the other shoe hitting floor -- namely, for all who've believed it has been Cheney, not Bush, behind the erstwhile disastrous decisions of dishonest use of intelligence, ill-advised invasion of Iraq, and decisions to imprison without recourse, torture with impunity, and shroud with fear the so-called innocent populace of a benevolent United States for purposes and gains it is still unfathomable to discern. Something is emphatically wrong. But who can name it, much less fashion a meaningful and rehabilitive response?

The more words, the greater the vanity of it all; and what does man get from it? Who knows what is good for man in his lifetime, in those few days he lives so vainly, days that like a shadow he spends? Who can tell a man what will happen under the sun after his time?
Better a good name than costly oil, the day of death than the day of birth. (Ecclesiastes 6:11 -)

Will a day come, and possibly soon, when we will long for the simple excuse of vanity? Vanity seems a kinder judgment than villainy. We are uncomfortable with malevolent intentions as the explanation of executive actions. And we should be uncomfortable at such consideration.

I choose not cynicism. Nor mere carping. Fatalism and apocalypticism are too detached from human responsibility for my interest. And blanket conspiratorial shenanigans do not absolve us from intelligent conversation along more classical lines -- namely cause and effect, reason and intuition, oversight and co-equal branches of government.

As I said at the top, it is a grey February day. Not much looks cheery. There are pouts and sneers, snarls and smirks, glares and sniggers -- glowering warnings -- infesting the atmosphere where I would prefer loving glance, tender understanding, and deep listening.

I much prefer to love this country and respect its leaders. I look forward to the return of such delightful emotions. For now, skeptical thinking has earned its place in the forefront of my attention.

I await the resplendence of the wonderfully empty.

Where true trust and authentic respect require no effort.

Education is constant departure. There is no end to learning. Nor any staying where once you were. The body might seem to be the same body as before, even as mind and spirit traverse terrain and sky newly illuminated -- but body itself is transmuted inside out with an intelligent radiance not easily observed at a distance.

The secret principle of all disciplines
is that by training, training falls away.
By forgetting about training and
sloughing off your own mind,
you will be all the more unaware of your self,
and the place you thus come to
is the perfection of the Way.
- Yagyu

In Belfast Catholic church a man presiding communion service offered the Body of Christ. I said (amen) yes, thank you, I shall so be what you offer. So, too, accepts the others in that small space beyond kitchen. Now I am (with many others) what some call body of Christ -- one who receives the reality mostly shrouded from ordinary view.

It is ordinary view we long for. The ordinary is where resides the reality of Christ. Here in this foyer of higher education. In the Co-op where two cheese danish cost $1.50. On route 3 not turning into the credit card driveway. Along route 1 watching morning sun rising over Penobscot Bay. Driving route 52 beside Megunticook Lake hard with new ice so late in winter. Turning from dooryard driveway where woman from New York does morning practice in meditation cabin, where woman doing audits descends stairs from sleep. Letting pedals slow and stop on Tunturi as frost fastened to kitchen roof lets lay dawn light on it.

'I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven: whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.' (Matthew 16:19)

Heaven is where the reality of the revelation of Christ coincides with the awareness of Buddha, the sound of Adonai, the submission surrounding Allah, the dance entwirling Brahman, and the urge emitting manifestation through earthen ground of all that moves to fruition.

We leave where we are only to arrive where we have never left nor yet fully realize.

We're always here -- yet seldom arrive where we are.

As body of Christ becomes incarnated awareness within every atom of sensory existence, we practice in place the offering and reception of one another.

We are being led out of and into, around and through, what is itself whole.

Enjoy the ride.

Eleven bells.

Away!

Malcolm X was assassinated 41 years ago today, in 1965. Two years earlier, in 1963, President John Kennedy was assassinated. Three years later, in 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Two months later in 1968 Senator Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

There are men who see assassination as a tactic to eliminate those whose ideas and strategies are troublesome to them. It is a tactic that traumatizes with sorrow and fear. The men who assassinate are choosing a deficient tactic. They bring sorrow and anger, fear and cynicism. They know nothing of hope. They know nothing of love. They know nothing but the terrible seduction of murder, pain, torture, and death.

What to do?

Let's take some time in silence
.
.
.
It is all pervading, spotless beauty;
It is the self-existence and uncreated
Absolute
Then how can it even be a matter
Of discussion that the real Buddha
Has no mouth and preaches no dharma,
Or that real hearing requires no ears,
For who could hear it?
Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 850)
.
.
.
Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Isn't it precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves? You want something and you haven't got it; so you are prepared to kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. Why you don't have what you want is because you don't pray for it; when you do pray and don't get it, it is because you have not prayed properly, you have prayed for something to indulge your own desires. (James 4:1 - 10)
.
.
.
They came to Capernaum, and when he was in the house he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" They said nothing because they had been arguing which of them was the greatest. So he sat down, called the Twelve to him and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all and servant of all." He then took a little child, set him in front of them, put his arms round him, and said to them, "Anyone who welcomes one of these little children in my name, welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." (Mark 9:34 - 37)
.
.
.
Others have been assassinated, and more will be.

But not by me.

Not by you.

So, we pray for those assassinated, and those who assassinate, and who will again. They are caught in a narrative of terror too overwhelming to escape from. They think troubles can be assassinated. They believe their brand of terror is a useful terror. They live their lives as normally as you and I live ours -- but for one important difference.

That difference is forgiveness. They do not forgive -- not the victims of assassination, not themselves as assassins. They, many suspect, glory and gloat their accomplishment of death. Maybe. But more likely, something shrivels in the soul of these men. The light goes out in their eyes. They cannot help but remember what they have done. Bitterly.

These assassins have not heard Isaiah sounding a profound revelation:

Thus says the LORD:
Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the desert I make a way,
in the wasteland, rivers.
The people I formed for myself,
that they might announce my praise.
Yet you did not call upon me, O Jacob,
for you grew weary of me, O Israel.
You burdened me with your sins,
and wearied me with your crimes.
It is I, I, who wipe out,
for my own sake, your offenses;
your sins I remember no more.
(Is 43:18-19, 21-22, 24b-25)

What we do remember is John, Malcolm, Martin, Robert, Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador in 1980, the Jesuits of El Salvador in 1989, the four churchwomen in El Salvador in 1980, and the hundreds of thousands of others murdered by assassins throughout the world. For those who send planes into foreign buildings, for those who die there. For those who send planes to bomb foreign countries, for those who die there. For those who send arms and munitions to places worldwide, for those who die there. For all who are mutilated, deformed, and deranged because of these violent men, violent intent, and violent acts. And the more recent assassinations, as yet not revealed, in this our country, and this our world.

We remember -- without bitterness -- their deaths. We pray for them. We pray for their assassins.

Something new has got to be done.

After prayerful silence...

...Authentic conversation.

Originate now.

The Trappist monk preached himself into tears. I watched him as the "Credo" was intoned and slowly begun. He blew his nose. He wiped his eyes. He looked at eyeglasses as if there was something they did to bring strong emotion.

I am reminded of power of word. His were good words. He quoted a conversant saying that forgiveness is remembering without bitterness.

This moment's thought sees through eternal time;
Eternal time is just this moment.
If you see through this moment's thought,
You see through the person
Who sees through this moment.
- Mumon

Isaac the monk sounding Isaiah the prophet opened several words and, falling through, came silence.

There's not much revelation greater than stillness. Not much truth larger than silence. The monk brought both Sunday morning.

(When I got home from away, two days writings had fallen mysteriously from Today at Meetingbrook. A first. No worry. They couldn't stand next to what I'd fallen through with the sound of monastic emptiness.)

In two places.

Very sound!

A new thing is being...done.

We carry silence within.

Do not sit with a mind fixed on emptiness.
If you do, you will fall into a neutral kind of emptiness.
Emptiness includes the sun, moon, stars and planets,
The great earth, mountains and rivers,
All trees and grasses,
Bad people and good people,
Bad things and good things,
Heaven and hell;
They are all in the midst of emptiness.
- Hui-neng (638-713)

When we are completely within what we are saying or doing, we carry silence.

Jesus and his disciples left for the villages round Caesarea Philippi. On the way he put this question to his disciples, "Who do people say I am?" And they told him. (Mark 8:27 - 28)

They told him, and he heard silence.

Being
The woman walks up the mountain
and then down. She wades into the sea
and out. Walks to the well,
pulls up a bucket of water
and goes back into the house.
She hangs wet clothes.
Takes clothes back to fold them.
Every evening she crochets
from six until dark.
Birds, flowers, stars. Her rabbit lives
in an empty donkey pen. The sea is out
there are far as the stars.
Always quiet.
No one there. She may not believe
in anything. Not know
what she is doing. Every morning
she waters the geranium plant.
And the leaves smell like lemons.
(Poem: "Being" by Linda Gregg from In the Middle Distance. Graywolf Press. From http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/programs/2006/02/13/index.html)

Always quiet. No one there.

Silence itself.

Truth is complicated. "This" is the truth. Then, what is this?

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom. (Confucius)

This is constantly changing. But we hold fast to patterns we consider to be unchanging.

...[H]e asked, "Can you see anything?" The man, who was beginning to see, replied,"I can see people; they look like trees to me, but they are walking about". Then he laid his hands on the man's eyes again and he saw clearly; he was cured, and he could see everything plainly and distinctly. And Jesus sent him home, saying, "Do not even go into the village". (--Mark 8:22 - 26)

Stay out of the village?

Everything plain and distinct.

It is a simple formula: if you do this, this will follow.

Cause and effect are complicated.

Without this, nothing exists.

Well, here we are!

I've got a new haversack. Mostly red, grey, and black.

By chance I knocked at his Zen hut,
Sat among the slopes
And knew that these monastery dusty dreams
Are all unreal.
Water flowing mindfully; what trace does it leave?
Idle clouds pursuing their whim; they lean on nothing.
The novice hoes the garden, greens at their best now;
Monkeys wail in the ravine where chestnuts
Have grown plump.
Reluctantly I start down the path among the pines;
The white moon in its beauty comes to see me home.
- Ichkawa Kanasai (1749-1820)

Moon on winter sea tonight.

Start off now, but remember, I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Carry no purse, no haversack, no sandals. Salute no one on the road. Whatever house you go into, let your first words be, "Peace to this house!" (Luke 10:1-4)

Perhaps a wish; certainly a prayer. Peace!

Do not trust those in love with war.

See yourself home.

The opposite shore. If not a sign, then what?

The dharmas taught by buddhas
Hinge on two truths:
Partial truths of the world
And truths which are sublime.
Without knowing how they differ,
You cannot know the deep;
Without relying on conventions,
You cannot disclose the sublime;
Without intuiting the sublime,
You cannot experience freedom.
- Nagarjuna

Freedom is the sign. It is not the opposite shore. It is right here in the world of birth and death.

The Pharisees came up and started a discussion with Jesus; they demanded of him a sign from heaven, to test him. And with a sigh that came straight from the heart he said, "Why does this generation demand a sign? I tell you solemnly, no sign shall be given to this generation." And leaving them again and re-embarking he went away to the opposite shore.
(Mark 8:11 - 13)

We are urged, in zen, to experience and not to talk a lot. (Saskia reads aloud from Thay as I write. His words seep in.)

To say nothing about God is what a good theologian says.

No opposite shore. No notions of God.

Only birth and death. Only ultimate reality.

No birth. No death. Only two words written in snow at end of forest clearing. Only here. Only now.

Please stop supplying guns to the troubled world.

Snow, enough.

Steep is the Mountain of Yun-men,
Rising straight and upward,
Leaving the white clouds down below!
Its streams, dashing and eddying about,
Allow no fish to linger around.
The moment you step into my door, I already know
What kind of ideas you've brought with you.
What's the use of raising again the dust
Long settled in an old track?
- Yun-men Wen-yen (d.949)

Walking incipient snow around waters edge in Rockport, Saskia, Jon, (Cesco), and I speak of rhetoric and conversation as experienced in political sphere. I enjoy the lad's fair thoughts -- his Lockean preference (he says). The words are more nourishing than the black/white, red/blue, christian/muslim, blather/brouhaha we're meant to accept as passing for civilized discourse in today's markets.

A thirsty man is happy when he is drinking, and he is not depressed because he cannot exhaust the spring. So let this spring quench your thirst, and not your thirst the spring. For if you can satisfy your thirst without exhausting the spring, then when you thirst again you can drink from it once more; but if when your thirst is sated the spring is also dried up, then your victory would turn to harm.
Be thankful then for what you have received, and do not be saddened at all that such an abundance still remains. What you have received and attained is your present share, while what is left will be your heritage. For what you could not take at one time because of your weakness, you will be able to grasp at another if you only persevere. So do not foolishly try to drain in one draught what cannot be consumed all at once, and do not cease out of faintheartedness from what you will be able to absorb as time goes on. (From a commentary on the Diatessaron by Saint Ephrem, deacon; Office of Readings)

We are thirsty. Parched for integrity. Fasting for want of offerings encouraging life and love in any public square. Life isn't an unsuccessful abortion. Love isn't the fault you find in someone considered false to your true.

Martha Stewart Living

A man at the Dominion was looking long and hard
at chicken breasts, first at economy trays
then at smaller portions, finally hefting the smaller
and saying to the woman nudging his rear, 'Do you suppose
these are free-range chickens?' The woman shouldered
him aside. She was in a hurry, she said, and in no mood
for asinine chit-chat. 'But no,' she said, scurrying away,
'I don't suppose those are free-range. I suppose those
are dead chickens.' At which point, or actually about thirty
seconds later, the man said to me, 'Some days I am happy
I never married.'
(Poem: "Martha Stewart Living" by Leon Rooke from Hot Poppies.)

If you come across dead chickens, for heaven's sake -- honor them with your body. Cook, eat, incarnate them within you. They are resurrected through you. You are chicken. They are human. Now try to find the balance.

All day, snow.

Enough?

For now.

Winter.

"To reconnect the world with what is real." That's what Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee is saying on the tape this Saturday afternoon. There's a storm coming. Maine waits to see whether snow shovel or plow will be used. It has been a curious winter.

It seems everybody has an opinion about everyone else in the shop today. Must be the storm. I have no opinion. I have ears. And eyes. What comes in falls into an empty place. Beyond that, no opinion can reach.

Where is that?

The real way circulates everywhere;
how could it require
practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
how could effort be necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is
free of dust; why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this
very place; why journey away?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

I don't know where to go. So I opt to stay where I am...is.

Your storm raged, and the waters were piled high,
the flowing waters were a rampart, the sea-bed was exposed.

The enemy said: "I will follow and surround them;
I will divide their spoils,
have my fill of booty,
draw my sword and kill them all". (from Exodus 15)

There is so much concern about being recognized, about one's opinion, about being heard. Being heard is important.

Sonnet

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!

There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
(Poem: "Sonnet" by Elizabeth Bishop from The Complete Poems: 1937-1971.)

What is real is being heard. Not any isolated separate self pretending their sound is the one sound, but sound itself, being, heard.

Bailey, the black poodle, wanders around shop. The fire has been uplifted on cinder blocks. Readers of poetry gather. Words encroach.

Punctuation looks for places to land, breath to find place to rest.

I, it would seem, would disappear. Recluses fade into what is taking place, longing to disappear into what is being said, wondering what becomes of us when, being heard, nothing remains but simple, profound stillness bordering on no opinion.

Truth, a zen master said, is easy to arrive at -- just drop all opinions.

In the Tao te Ching [chapter 20] there is a suggestion Lao Tsu was not always happy with his reclusive way of life and personality:

I alone am inert, showing no sign of desires,
like an infant that has not yet smiled.
Wearied, indeed, I seem to be without a home.
The multitude all possess more than enough,
I alone seem to have lost all . . .
Common folks are indeed brilliant;
I alone seem to be in the dark.

Like light, dark is a lovely place to be.

Between them, in the middle thin place we call awareness, we get to see what is, and no longer there.

The Irish fella rewires the junction box. We hold lanterns. Electricity finds way into walls. Heat comes back. Near zero tonite.

To detach oneself from the dust of the world,
This is no ordinary task.
Hold firmly to the end of the rope and go at it
With all your might.
Without undergoing a whole spell of cold
That bites into your bones,
How can you have the plum blossoms regale you
With their piercing fragrance?
- Huang-po

Cat gets treat at bedtime. We watch Spike Lee's "25th Hour," love letter to New York.

Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness? (from Psalm 88)

Monty's father at film's end is saying: "This life came so close to never happening."

And there he is, in the car, badly beaten.

And here we are, each in our place.

Going on.

It is difficult for the certain folks to comprehend the chaotic folks.

To detach oneself from the dust of the world,
This is no ordinary task.
Hold firmly to the end of the rope and go at it
With all your might.
Without undergoing a whole spell of cold
That bites into your bones,
How can you have the plum blossoms regale you
With their piercing fragrance?
- Huang-po

Chaos ask us to keep the conversation going. Inconclusivity, along with being the sign of creative minds, is the playground of dialogue. We need more play.

Jesus left that place and set out for the territory of Tyre. There he went into a house and did not want anyone to know he was there, but he could not pass unrecognised
( Mark 7:24 - 26)

He would not pass unrecognized today. He was a Semite. He would be seen as a suspected Islamic terrorist or Israeli provocateur. Everyone would be watching him.

It is too difficult to entertain for long the cynicism and pessimism on one side and the defeatism and psychosis of the other. People have gone mad with their certainty.

I prefer the chaos of a snowstorm.

I can understand the open ended wonder of intelligent uncertainty.

I welcome where dialogic inquiry leads us.

Don't tell anyone where you are.

Let them want to see.

Thich Nhat Hanh thinks there should be a Council of Sages in this country. They would listen. To suffering.

Mountain air is different from the world of people,
Mysteriously full of ancient times:
Cloudy trees put on a hue for each of the four seasons,
But the voice of the valley spring has only one tune.
Rain makes the warbler's robe heavy with dampness;
Warm breezes lighten the butterfly's sleeve.
Though we've written poetry till I'm an old man,
I have yet to astonish the spirits and gods.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

These days everyone seems to fall into being victim or accuser. Rare is the soul able to merely listen with compassion and understanding.

Jesus called the people to him again and said, "Listen to me, all of you, and understand. Nothing that goes into a man from outside can make him unclean; it is the things that come out of a man that make him unclean. If anyone has ears to hear, let him listen to this." (Mark 7:14 - 16)

No matter how duplicitous the rhetoric spoken at her, the listening sage would not hear the lies. The sage would hear the suffering and help ready the one suffering for liberation.

So much is false.

Ours is to hear.

What is true.

Long for what is. Observe what is. Become what is.

What if "what is" is what is called God?

The name "Three Teachings"
Was empty right from the start
Miss even one word and all goes wrong.
Looking inward or outward,
See there is no fixed self.
Break the front door,
If you want to enter your home.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings come to dwell in their true home.

No fixed self? Nothing to fix.

Longing to see all I am, dropping names and opinions, enters dawn with chimes, voicing wind.

Praise itself!

No front door.

Openness.

Intelligence is this moment revealing itself. No pattern, no ideology, no belief substitutes for intelligence. It is clarity of mind. It sees what is there to see.

When two blades cross points,
There's no need to withdraw.
The master swordsman
Is like the lotus blooming in the fire.
Such a person has inside of them
A heaven soaring spirit.
- Tozan Ryokan's 4th verse on the 5 ranks

Cabin woodstove warm tonight. We sat with a couple this afternoon listening to them. Just listening. They asked we listen as they spoke to one another about difficult things.

Is not man's life on earth nothing more than pressed service,
his time no better than hired drudgery?
Like the slave, sighing for the shade,
or the workman with no thought but his wages,
months of delusion I have assigned to me,
nothing for my own but nights of grief.
Lying in bed I wonder, "When will it be day?"
Risen I think, "How slowly evening comes!"
Restlessly I fret till twilight falls.
Swifter than a weaver's shuttle my days have passed,
and vanished, leaving no hope behind.
Remember that my life is but a breath,
and that my eyes will never again see joy.
-- Job 7:1 - 7

For J. Krishnamurti, "the observer is the observed."
The listener, then, is what is listened to.

We are what is looking for, listening for, itself.

A lovely integrity.

Six read from Peter Anderson's First Church of the Higher Elevations. Five watched Richard Russo's Empire Falls. Three pieces of pizza remain.

Rujing said: "Studying Zen is dropping off body and mind. Without depending on the burning of incense, bowing, chanting Buddha's names, repentance, or sutra reading, devote yourself to just sitting."
Dogen: "What is dropping off body and mind?"
Rujing said: "Dropping of body and mind is zazen. When you just sit, you are free from the five sense desires and the five hindrances."
- Dogen (1200-1253)

It seems too warm with fog for toboggan nationals in the morning. Hosmer pond is soft with slush after a day of downpour. Tonight the sky is clear with stars. Mild.

The Lord is near to those who call on him,
to all those who call on him in truth.
For those that honour him,
he does what they ask,
he hears all their prayers,
and he keeps them safe. (From Psalm 145)

We pray for the safety, happiness, and homecoming of all around. Jon arrives from Chicago. No electrical outage this evening.

We love what we love, is what a character said in the film.

Yes, we do.

In prison this morning, we spoke of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

We love the conversation.

The circle of consideration and responsibility widens. The lives of animals must be considered. Our awareness now wonders: they too are alive; they too share this earth; they too bring forth new life and care for it.

So, neighbor Bob and I, standing around old cedar tree on which climbed Central Maine Power troubleshooter, talked about penguins caring for their egg as Robert (up tree) spliced power line and moved it between wide branches from trunk.

Meditating deeply upon Dharma
Reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence
Even though the heavens turn and the earth is upset,
You will not even wink.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290-1368)

Mu-ge purrs on my stomach, tail flicking as these words wrap around him. Cesco and his companion have gone to Ellsworth for other work. Something scratches in ceiling. Water drips in sink. Wood in stove gives itself to fire. Blowing air from registers up from furnace sounds into kitchen now that Robert found corrosive connection at power pole on Barnestown Road.

Why are the nations in a ferment? Why do the people make their vain plans? (From Psalm 2)

In Catholic calendar today used to be the Purification of Mary, Mother. Now it is the Presentation of the Lord. So too, it is Groundhog Day. There will be a funeral mass for Mary Sullivan at Our Lady of Good Hope in a half hour. I'll be with a student doing critical thinking.

The ferment is a battle -- not for land, nor oil. It is not a battle for democracy nor for tyranny -- (these are only means to something else). The battle, I submit, is the struggle into consciousness, into an evolving consciousness that widens the circle of compassion and responsibility, of consideration and inclusion.

Vain plans try to make this and this mine, that and that (of little value)-- yours.

When awareness is purified, when light and revelation of truth is presented -- we are blessed and bothered by new awareness that begs for our attention, for our right action.

We will include animals when we include humans. We will include humans into our circle of consideration and compassion when we include ourselves. We will include ourselves when we see and include the source and origin of life, of being.

Finally, we will cease our turmoil when we open to the realization there is no further inclusion necessary because nothing has been excluded or categorized into inferiority by the mind.

No inclusion, no exclusion -- only things and beings as they are -- and we, we attend each and every -- one -- with lovingkindness.

We will come to practice deep listening and loving speech. And we will no longer know from which direction the sound comes from.

We will be centered in the circumference of original sound.

Until then, and as we encircle openly, six more weeks of winter.

I'd rather think about the birth of Thomas Merton this date in 1915. I'd rather not think about the dress-up in Washington DC tonight.

No dependence upon letters or words,
But direct pointing to the source of human mind!
No stepping up any ladders,
But mounting straight to the Buddha-land.
- Bodhidharma (d. 534 )

Words in Washington are straw in wind. They are dollar signs looking for a wallet.

I am lonely as a pelican in the wilderness,
as an owl in the ruins,
as a sparrow alone on a rooftop:
I do not sleep.
All day long my enemies taunt me,
they burn with anger and use my name as a curse.
I make ashes my bread,
I mix tears with my drink,
because of your anger and reproach –
you, who raised me up, have dashed me to the ground.
My days fade away like a shadow:
I wither like grass.
(from Psalm 102)

The psalmist laments the kiss of God. The poet laments the squalor of words used to pretend something noble is happening what what is happening is power rutting penury.

Although tyranny...may successfully rule over foreign peoples, it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.
~Hannah Arendt

The man doing dishes said he'd rather bamboo inserted under finger nails than hear the voice of the man delivering the State of the Union.

Only fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force.
~Lao Tsu

I don't think the man delivering the speech is a fool. It is far more serious than that. Some say the fools are them that hear his words but do not comprehend where they lead. He knows where he goes. Most have no sense where they're led.

Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war.
~Thomas Merton

There's no sense we're being led to peace. War, for these leaders in Washington, is a permanent platform. There's something eerie about the grin and gleam when posturing with war-words and war-bucks.

Heroic labor is what we need.

Difficult sacrifice is what is called for.

We will not go shopping; we will not buy more gasoline and oil from Exxon-Mobil. And we will not pretend any longer these men in Washington speak for the rest of the country.

We need a greater heroism.

We need real saints. Someones to lead us out of the dark and endless deception of war and plans for war.

"The only tragedy," the novelist Léon Bloy wrote a century ago, "is not to have become a saint."

Is there still time?

e.e. cummings, in "six non-lectures" wrote: Better Worlds are born, not made, and their birthdays are the birthdays of individuals. Let us pray always for individuals; never for worlds.

So, we pray!

God within.

Being born.

Tommy called. Mary S. died this morning.

Two days ago, walking by her house, stopping to bow to her. She sat in front room. I was in dark street. Bowing goodbye.

What is of all things most yielding
Can overcome that which is most hard,
Being substanceless, it can enter in
Even where there is no crevice.
That is how I know the value
Of action which is actionless.
But that there can be teaching without words,
Value in action which is actionless
Few indeed can understand.
- Lao Tzu (5th century BC)

Death is substanceless. The inner energy invigorating outer form lets go and goes on.

I don't know what happens when people die.

But for the prayer.

Being said now.

Once said, silent.