The waiting comes to an end.
Fraud and deception wear suits and seem untouchable. Watching Kenneth Lay, Andrew Fastow, and Jeffrey Skillings in the documentary, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," prepares us for the sequel to star George Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld which might be called, "How Long Did They Think People Would Wait?"
People are beginning to stop believing in illusions. Illusions are costly. Many are willing to pay. Truth is free. Lies are expensive. It is time to pare down and embrace poverty.
Living in the world,
Yet not clinging to or forming
Attachments for the dust of the world,
Is the way of a true Zen student.
Witnessing the good actions of another person,
Encourage yourself to follow their example.
Hearing of the mistaken action of another person,
Advise yourself not to emulate it.
Even though you are alone in a dark room
Conduct yourself as though you were facing a noble guest.
- Zen-Getsu
The room has grown dark. Charades are enacted. Bravos sound hollow. Actors seem seedy. Curtain falls. Their names are fodder of jokes. Worse, derision. The false disintegrates as it is pronounced. Mouthfuls of dirt are spit out.
We listen, but don't hear, the name of integrity. It is the one name we long to hear. Except, it is a soundless name. There's nothing preceding it, nothing following it.
His name is holy, (From the Magnificat, Vespers)
If we hear a name that fills us with silence and reverence, we will be silent and reverent.
So far, the names have been disappointing -- noisy and deceptive.
Don't settle for hurried willful shame.
Wait for what is holy.
It is truly you.
Unsnookered.
Laying open.
Thursday, March 16, 2006
Eternal life is now.
Every act , every thought, done or made now, touches every time, everybody, everywhere.
One who sees his body as unreal is a Buddha;
One who comprehends his mind as illusory is a Buddha;
One who realizes both body and mind as empty,
What difference from the Buddhas has this person?
- Krakucchanda Buddha
The empty is formed here and now. We radically retrieve origin conversation when we profoundly, mindfully converse wholly now.
Awake, Lord, why do you sleep?
Rise up, do not always reject us.
Why do you turn away your face?
How can you forget our poverty and our tribulation?
Our souls are crushed into the dust,
our bodies dragged down to the earth.
Rise up, Lord, and help us.
In your mercy, redeem us.
(from Psalm 44)
The Lord is eternal. When we are not here, we are no-where. When we do not wholly act, no one benefits. When we do not hold all in our heart and mind, there is absence everywhere.
No us anywhere, no Lord anywhere to be found.
No wonder we cannot encounter the Lord. We are nowhere to be found.
If we are present, the Lord is present.
What is unreal is unpresence,
Real is radical origin.
Retrieve this conversation.
Every act , every thought, done or made now, touches every time, everybody, everywhere.
One who sees his body as unreal is a Buddha;
One who comprehends his mind as illusory is a Buddha;
One who realizes both body and mind as empty,
What difference from the Buddhas has this person?
- Krakucchanda Buddha
The empty is formed here and now. We radically retrieve origin conversation when we profoundly, mindfully converse wholly now.
Awake, Lord, why do you sleep?
Rise up, do not always reject us.
Why do you turn away your face?
How can you forget our poverty and our tribulation?
Our souls are crushed into the dust,
our bodies dragged down to the earth.
Rise up, Lord, and help us.
In your mercy, redeem us.
(from Psalm 44)
The Lord is eternal. When we are not here, we are no-where. When we do not wholly act, no one benefits. When we do not hold all in our heart and mind, there is absence everywhere.
No us anywhere, no Lord anywhere to be found.
No wonder we cannot encounter the Lord. We are nowhere to be found.
If we are present, the Lord is present.
What is unreal is unpresence,
Real is radical origin.
Retrieve this conversation.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Lincolnville church will keep all-night vigil the 19th into the 20th. Three years later the war remains a shame. Rev. Susan holds open her church.
If you wish to see the Buddha,
You must look into your own inner-nature;
This nature is the Buddha himself.
If you have not seen your own nature,
What is the use of thinking of Buddha,
Or reciting sutras, or fasting, or keeping precepts?
By thinking of Buddha, your meritorious deed will bear fruit;
By reciting sutras, you may attain a bright intellect;
By keeping the precepts, you may be born into heavens;
By practicing charity, you may be rewarded abundantly;
But as to seeking Buddha, you are far away.
- Bodhi-Dharma (d.533)
No vengeance or revenge is worth the depletion of soul. We have become a nation afraid of our enemies and our leaders.
Put no trust in violence,
do not be seduced into robbery;
and if riches come, do not count upon them.
God has spoken once and for all.
Two things have I heard him say:
that strength belongs to God,
and that mercy, Lord, belongs to you.
For to each of us you give
whatever our actions have deserved.
(from Psalm 62)
It is time to empty our fear.
Give it back to mongerers.
Slough the discreditable.
Pray all night.
If you wish to see the Buddha,
You must look into your own inner-nature;
This nature is the Buddha himself.
If you have not seen your own nature,
What is the use of thinking of Buddha,
Or reciting sutras, or fasting, or keeping precepts?
By thinking of Buddha, your meritorious deed will bear fruit;
By reciting sutras, you may attain a bright intellect;
By keeping the precepts, you may be born into heavens;
By practicing charity, you may be rewarded abundantly;
But as to seeking Buddha, you are far away.
- Bodhi-Dharma (d.533)
No vengeance or revenge is worth the depletion of soul. We have become a nation afraid of our enemies and our leaders.
Put no trust in violence,
do not be seduced into robbery;
and if riches come, do not count upon them.
God has spoken once and for all.
Two things have I heard him say:
that strength belongs to God,
and that mercy, Lord, belongs to you.
For to each of us you give
whatever our actions have deserved.
(from Psalm 62)
It is time to empty our fear.
Give it back to mongerers.
Slough the discreditable.
Pray all night.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
With no notice, out back door. Mud leaps up from wet earth. Cut branches hold wake for one another alongside pre-budding forsythia yellow petals. No stopping coming of spring.
Borrowing from the four great elements,
I assumed my body.
My mind, originally birthless,
Functions according to circumstances.
When circumstances do not exist,
My mind does not exist either.
Woe and weal are like illusions:
They arise, they also fall.
- Visvabhu Buddha
A surfeit of words in shop this noon. Not dependent on content, continuous commentary. I remember my lies. We lie when we cover authentic open with cloaking shrubbery. My lies thought dressing in many words would make them lovely. It didn't. Only made suffering not see itself in mirror.
Two friends are suffering the first steps of separation. One is resolved; one wishing otherwise. Listening. Suffering sound.
In wider circumference, there's a tin ear continuing about Iraq. I wonder where intelligent listening has gone. We seem to only hear frippery and foppery. Someone must emerge capable of hearing what men in power are really saying about this country and the world. They pronounce the right words, (freedom, democracy, hopeful), but there is no action following with slightest resemblance; there is no content below their pronunciation.
You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they! Everything they do is done to attract attention... (Matthew 23:1-)
No longer seeking attention is no longer speaking without the soundless. No longer dressing up lies in lovely arrayed words.
We must close doors quietly, and move on, leaving nothing behind.
But, husks of holiness, broken open, fallen to earth, mud-born.
Borrowing from the four great elements,
I assumed my body.
My mind, originally birthless,
Functions according to circumstances.
When circumstances do not exist,
My mind does not exist either.
Woe and weal are like illusions:
They arise, they also fall.
- Visvabhu Buddha
A surfeit of words in shop this noon. Not dependent on content, continuous commentary. I remember my lies. We lie when we cover authentic open with cloaking shrubbery. My lies thought dressing in many words would make them lovely. It didn't. Only made suffering not see itself in mirror.
Two friends are suffering the first steps of separation. One is resolved; one wishing otherwise. Listening. Suffering sound.
In wider circumference, there's a tin ear continuing about Iraq. I wonder where intelligent listening has gone. We seem to only hear frippery and foppery. Someone must emerge capable of hearing what men in power are really saying about this country and the world. They pronounce the right words, (freedom, democracy, hopeful), but there is no action following with slightest resemblance; there is no content below their pronunciation.
You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they! Everything they do is done to attract attention... (Matthew 23:1-)
No longer seeking attention is no longer speaking without the soundless. No longer dressing up lies in lovely arrayed words.
We must close doors quietly, and move on, leaving nothing behind.
But, husks of holiness, broken open, fallen to earth, mud-born.
Monday, March 13, 2006
Our white DeSoto with hooded headlights in Brooklyn backyard on 69th street comes to mind. We remember the past. Even if it does not exist, there is memory of it.
By illusion the various good karmas are caused;
By illusion the various evil karmas are committed.
My body is like a bubble, and my mind is like the wind;
This illusory creation has no root and no reality.
- Sikhin Buddha
Remembering reality is tricky affair. What we call reality usually fits within the template of space and time, cause and effect. This is good. It gives us something to agree about. Yes, we did sit at table Sunday night, seven-ish, after 40 minute zazen, walking, then chanting the Prajna Paramita Sutra, reading Shunryu Suzuki on dualism. We ate turkey soup, then, because and when the bell sounded, we four spoke, talked about the smell of engine oil or bleach on hands apparent to our noses when we place hands together to bow.
Jesus said: "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back."
(Luke 6:36 - 38)
There's an equation with judgment: you judge = you are judged. Buddhists call it dependent co-origination. This is because that is. Jesus, almost off-handedly, lets the equation be known. You cannot do anything to neighbor without doing it to yourself. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Brother Charles (with his single wooden drumstick of terror) was preaching the gospel during algebra class in high school. (Albeit, a punishment/pain preaching for those of us careless or lazy with our calculations.) Still, Jesus taught the wisdom: We will be given back as we give.
Then there is the event of the resurrection. ["event, from Latin eventus, from past participle of evenire, to happen : -, ex-, ex- + venire, to come; see gw- in Indo-European roots.]
What comes out of the fact of resurrection? What comes from the belief in resurrection?
Reading Rowan Williams on Resurrection.
Even in the Gospels, one thing is never described. There is a central silence, not broken until the second century, about the event of resurrection. Even Matthew, with his elaborate mythological scenery, leaves us with the strange impression that the stone is rolled away from a tomb that is already empty. Jesus is not raised by an angel (like Luke's Peter, in Acts 12), but raised by the Father. It is an event which is not describable, because it is precisely there that there occurs the transfiguring expansion of Jesus' humanity which is the heart of resurrection encounters. It is an event on the frontier of any possible language because it is the moment in which our speech is both left behind and opened to new possibilities. It is as indescribable as the process of imaginative fusion which produces any metaphor; and the evangelists withdrew as well they might. Jesus' life is historical, describable; the encounters with Jesus risen are historical and (after a fashion) describable, with whatever ambiguities and unclarities. But there is a sense in which the raising of Jesus, the hinge between the two histories, the act that brings the latter out of the former: it is not an event, with a before and after, occupying a determinate bit of time between Friday and Sunday. God's act in uniting Jesus' life with his eludes us; we can speak of it only as the necessary condition for our living as we live. And as a divine act it cannot be tied to place and time in any simple way. It is, indeed, an 'eternal' act; it is an aspect of the eternal will by which God determines how he shall be, his will to be the Father of the Son. These are abstract words, they describe nothing. They can only point to the truth that God's being and will are always and necessarily prior to ours. The event of resurrection, then, cannot but be hidden in God's eternal act, his eternal 'being himself'; however early we run to the tomb, God has been there ahead of us. Once again, he decisively evades our grasp, our definition and our projection.
(from Resurrection, Interpreting the Easter Gospel, pp.96-97, by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, c.1982)
I was still a boy when that DeSoto no longer parked to the side of the garage. It disappeared into someone else's narrative. Then, probably, to a junkyard. There is nobody in my family alive today who would remember that car. I'll mention it to my son -- who doesn't drive -- but who lands in Chicago today. The space he occupied while here three weeks is vacated.
There's a refreshing clarity about emptiness.
Peter Steinfels, writing in the New York Times about a Williams essay, "Between the Cherubim: The Empty Tomb and the Empty Throne," concludes:
In his essay, Archbishop Williams recognized a need for scholars of Christian origins to explore the historical basis for the empty-tomb narratives and other Resurrection stories. But he insisted that theology, as ''a disciplined mode of reflection'' on the ''grammar'' of Christian faith, had something to say about the matter as well.
For him, the empty-tomb tradition, with all its untidiness, is an essential element of that faith. As an "image of absence, an image of the failure of images," the emptiness of the tomb, like the space between the cherubim of the ark, safeguards the liberty of God.
( from "Beliefs; The empty-tomb narratives, untidy in variety, nonetheless prove grist for theological reflection." By Peter Steinfels (NYT) Published: April 19, 2003)
Suzuki, in last evening's reading, wanted us to consider the shift in the statements -- from: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form"; to, " form is form, emptiness is emptiness."
One, at table, was delighted with the shift. Another, considering resurrection, remained imagelessly befuddled.
There's no end to it.
Maybe that's good enough for now.
Or maybe that's all there is: for now.
By illusion the various good karmas are caused;
By illusion the various evil karmas are committed.
My body is like a bubble, and my mind is like the wind;
This illusory creation has no root and no reality.
- Sikhin Buddha
Remembering reality is tricky affair. What we call reality usually fits within the template of space and time, cause and effect. This is good. It gives us something to agree about. Yes, we did sit at table Sunday night, seven-ish, after 40 minute zazen, walking, then chanting the Prajna Paramita Sutra, reading Shunryu Suzuki on dualism. We ate turkey soup, then, because and when the bell sounded, we four spoke, talked about the smell of engine oil or bleach on hands apparent to our noses when we place hands together to bow.
Jesus said: "Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. Do not judge, and you will not be judged yourselves; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned yourselves; grant pardon, and you will be pardoned. Give, and there will be gifts for you: a full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, will be poured into your lap; because the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back."
(Luke 6:36 - 38)
There's an equation with judgment: you judge = you are judged. Buddhists call it dependent co-origination. This is because that is. Jesus, almost off-handedly, lets the equation be known. You cannot do anything to neighbor without doing it to yourself. Things equal to the same thing are equal to each other. Brother Charles (with his single wooden drumstick of terror) was preaching the gospel during algebra class in high school. (Albeit, a punishment/pain preaching for those of us careless or lazy with our calculations.) Still, Jesus taught the wisdom: We will be given back as we give.
Then there is the event of the resurrection. ["event, from Latin eventus, from past participle of evenire, to happen : -, ex-, ex- + venire, to come; see gw- in Indo-European roots.]
What comes out of the fact of resurrection? What comes from the belief in resurrection?
Reading Rowan Williams on Resurrection.
Even in the Gospels, one thing is never described. There is a central silence, not broken until the second century, about the event of resurrection. Even Matthew, with his elaborate mythological scenery, leaves us with the strange impression that the stone is rolled away from a tomb that is already empty. Jesus is not raised by an angel (like Luke's Peter, in Acts 12), but raised by the Father. It is an event which is not describable, because it is precisely there that there occurs the transfiguring expansion of Jesus' humanity which is the heart of resurrection encounters. It is an event on the frontier of any possible language because it is the moment in which our speech is both left behind and opened to new possibilities. It is as indescribable as the process of imaginative fusion which produces any metaphor; and the evangelists withdrew as well they might. Jesus' life is historical, describable; the encounters with Jesus risen are historical and (after a fashion) describable, with whatever ambiguities and unclarities. But there is a sense in which the raising of Jesus, the hinge between the two histories, the act that brings the latter out of the former: it is not an event, with a before and after, occupying a determinate bit of time between Friday and Sunday. God's act in uniting Jesus' life with his eludes us; we can speak of it only as the necessary condition for our living as we live. And as a divine act it cannot be tied to place and time in any simple way. It is, indeed, an 'eternal' act; it is an aspect of the eternal will by which God determines how he shall be, his will to be the Father of the Son. These are abstract words, they describe nothing. They can only point to the truth that God's being and will are always and necessarily prior to ours. The event of resurrection, then, cannot but be hidden in God's eternal act, his eternal 'being himself'; however early we run to the tomb, God has been there ahead of us. Once again, he decisively evades our grasp, our definition and our projection.
(from Resurrection, Interpreting the Easter Gospel, pp.96-97, by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, c.1982)
I was still a boy when that DeSoto no longer parked to the side of the garage. It disappeared into someone else's narrative. Then, probably, to a junkyard. There is nobody in my family alive today who would remember that car. I'll mention it to my son -- who doesn't drive -- but who lands in Chicago today. The space he occupied while here three weeks is vacated.
There's a refreshing clarity about emptiness.
Peter Steinfels, writing in the New York Times about a Williams essay, "Between the Cherubim: The Empty Tomb and the Empty Throne," concludes:
In his essay, Archbishop Williams recognized a need for scholars of Christian origins to explore the historical basis for the empty-tomb narratives and other Resurrection stories. But he insisted that theology, as ''a disciplined mode of reflection'' on the ''grammar'' of Christian faith, had something to say about the matter as well.
For him, the empty-tomb tradition, with all its untidiness, is an essential element of that faith. As an "image of absence, an image of the failure of images," the emptiness of the tomb, like the space between the cherubim of the ark, safeguards the liberty of God.
( from "Beliefs; The empty-tomb narratives, untidy in variety, nonetheless prove grist for theological reflection." By Peter Steinfels (NYT) Published: April 19, 2003)
Suzuki, in last evening's reading, wanted us to consider the shift in the statements -- from: "form is emptiness, emptiness is form"; to, " form is form, emptiness is emptiness."
One, at table, was delighted with the shift. Another, considering resurrection, remained imagelessly befuddled.
There's no end to it.
Maybe that's good enough for now.
Or maybe that's all there is: for now.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
When it comes down to it, only the gaze suffices.
Abraham had a long time to mull what he almost did. Murdering your young for God is madness. Abraham realized suddenly he was insane, his wife broken and crazed, his boy terribly confused.
Having fathomed Tao, you went to dwell
Among simple villages
Where bamboo grows thick,
Opening and closing your gate alone.
This isn't a mission or pilgrimage.
I've come for no real reason:
Just to sit out on your south terrace
And gaze at those mountains.
- Po Chu-I (772 -- 846)
What are we...looking at?
Will no one stay our hand?
Do not kill your children. Free them. Go home.
We are what sacred scripture has come to.
Abraham had a long time to mull what he almost did. Murdering your young for God is madness. Abraham realized suddenly he was insane, his wife broken and crazed, his boy terribly confused.
Having fathomed Tao, you went to dwell
Among simple villages
Where bamboo grows thick,
Opening and closing your gate alone.
This isn't a mission or pilgrimage.
I've come for no real reason:
Just to sit out on your south terrace
And gaze at those mountains.
- Po Chu-I (772 -- 846)
What are we...looking at?
Will no one stay our hand?
Do not kill your children. Free them. Go home.
We are what sacred scripture has come to.
Saturday, March 11, 2006
Inmates and outmates experience intimate conversation with one another.
Blending with the wind,
Snow falls;
Blending with the snow,
The wind blows.
By the hearth
I stretch out my legs,
Idling my time away
Confined in this hut.
Counting the days,
I find that February, too,
Has come and gone
Like a dream.
- Ryokan
To you, I cry, in this hut, incense lighted, Sally's land brown with sunrise, creaking roof under wind, fire yawning in woodstove.
I recall yesterday's conversation in prison with Chris, Darcy, Pat, Saskia, and Jeremy. Whatever words we used we were crying out to reality. Reality was worded on green chalkboard as "Radical Retrieval of Origin Conversation."
We posited a platform of RRoOC, or, Radical Retrieval of Origin Conversation, as a potential counter-argument to the point of view expressed that once we have missed early imprinting experiences of trust, love, healthy patterns of adult interactions, and other matters of life affirmation -- they are gone, there's an irretrievable hole in both experience and neurological physiology. In short, there's no "there" there to bring forward to assist or correct current behavior.
But what if "there" was "here"? What if wholeness itself is that which surrounds and informs us? Wholeness-Itself, what Heidegger and other philosophers call "Being" -- what Pantanjali and others call "Brahman," what Isaiah and other prophets call "Lord," what Buddha calls "Shunyata" (or, Emptiness), "what Jesus calls "Father," what Mohammad calls "Allah," what Chief Seattle and others call "Great Spirit," and what Robert Frost and others have called "All the Difference."
Crying out to the source of all Being, we long for origin conversation. Origin, or source, is ever-present. Conversation means to turn with one another.
converso -are [to turn round often]; pass. , in middle sense, [to live, consort, have dealings].
We long to converse with one another. We long to live with one another. We long to experience the Alone in Communion with One-Another.
I call on you with all my heart -- answer me, Lord. I will obey your laws.
I call on you, save me so that I can keep your decrees.
At dawn I cry to you, I put all my hope in your word.
In the night I keep watch, pondering your sayings.
In your mercy, Lord, hear my voice; in your justice, give me life.
My persecutors come to do me harm: they are far from your law.
But you, Lord, are near to me, and you are trustworthy in all your precepts.
From the beginning I have known your decrees, how you have made them to last for ever.
--Psalm 118 (119): 145-152
Mu-ge wants out of cabin. Saskia gets up from her cushion and opens door. I look out diamond shaped window here in loft. It is time to chant psalm and sutra.
In collation and recollection we turn with inmates and outmates in intimate conversation.
"I am," says source.
"RRoOC," we say.
One solid source.
Ever-flowing.
Here.
Blending with the wind,
Snow falls;
Blending with the snow,
The wind blows.
By the hearth
I stretch out my legs,
Idling my time away
Confined in this hut.
Counting the days,
I find that February, too,
Has come and gone
Like a dream.
- Ryokan
To you, I cry, in this hut, incense lighted, Sally's land brown with sunrise, creaking roof under wind, fire yawning in woodstove.
I recall yesterday's conversation in prison with Chris, Darcy, Pat, Saskia, and Jeremy. Whatever words we used we were crying out to reality. Reality was worded on green chalkboard as "Radical Retrieval of Origin Conversation."
We posited a platform of RRoOC, or, Radical Retrieval of Origin Conversation, as a potential counter-argument to the point of view expressed that once we have missed early imprinting experiences of trust, love, healthy patterns of adult interactions, and other matters of life affirmation -- they are gone, there's an irretrievable hole in both experience and neurological physiology. In short, there's no "there" there to bring forward to assist or correct current behavior.
But what if "there" was "here"? What if wholeness itself is that which surrounds and informs us? Wholeness-Itself, what Heidegger and other philosophers call "Being" -- what Pantanjali and others call "Brahman," what Isaiah and other prophets call "Lord," what Buddha calls "Shunyata" (or, Emptiness), "what Jesus calls "Father," what Mohammad calls "Allah," what Chief Seattle and others call "Great Spirit," and what Robert Frost and others have called "All the Difference."
Crying out to the source of all Being, we long for origin conversation. Origin, or source, is ever-present. Conversation means to turn with one another.
converso -are [to turn round often]; pass. , in middle sense, [to live, consort, have dealings].
We long to converse with one another. We long to live with one another. We long to experience the Alone in Communion with One-Another.
I call on you with all my heart -- answer me, Lord. I will obey your laws.
I call on you, save me so that I can keep your decrees.
At dawn I cry to you, I put all my hope in your word.
In the night I keep watch, pondering your sayings.
In your mercy, Lord, hear my voice; in your justice, give me life.
My persecutors come to do me harm: they are far from your law.
But you, Lord, are near to me, and you are trustworthy in all your precepts.
From the beginning I have known your decrees, how you have made them to last for ever.
--Psalm 118 (119): 145-152
Mu-ge wants out of cabin. Saskia gets up from her cushion and opens door. I look out diamond shaped window here in loft. It is time to chant psalm and sutra.
In collation and recollection we turn with inmates and outmates in intimate conversation.
"I am," says source.
"RRoOC," we say.
One solid source.
Ever-flowing.
Here.
Thursday, March 09, 2006
Allowing one's light, midwifing birth and death is a brave, attentive process.
The dying Buddha, in Mary Oliver's poem "The Buddha's Last Instruction," says, "Make of yourself a light." The thought of standing on our own feet, living one's own life, is terrifying to many of us. Oliver ends poem with,
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
We are frightened. We fear someone else should, or does, control the switch.
I mean, the essence of life and the essence of theater is to communicate about lives, either lives that have ended or lives that are still alive, beliefs, what is in those beliefs, and this was an extraordinary young girl. It wasn't -- she didn't take sides, although she went to defend Palestinians. It isn't about taking sides. It's about defending human life. That's the basis of all human rights. That's the basis of what every country proclaims it stands for. (Vanessa Redgrave, from "Democracy Now" interview with Amy Goodman, Wednesday, March 8th, 2006, "Legendary Actor Vanessa Redgrave Calls Cancellation of Rachel Corrie Play an 'Act of Catastrophic Cowardice.'")
Reading Terry Tempest Williams at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation, from Refuge, her mother's final hours -- the geese, the feelings, the moon. Then at home, "21 Grams" film, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's gritty non-linear study of three sets of lives. How we intertwine. How we unwind.
Light isn't outside. Light isn't inside. Light is between. Light suffuses when each arrives at the point of authentic engagement. Any other contact -- hitting on, knocking over, swiping at, claiming ownership -- these are short circuits draining energy into darkening hopes and beliefs.
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 create the world we live in.
Say less. Or else, speak from source.
Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him."
(Matthew 7:7 -)
I wouldn't know what to ask for. George Berkeley said, "to be is to be perceived."
I'm not asking. I'm looking.
For an opening.
A point.
Allowing light.
One's mother.
The dying Buddha, in Mary Oliver's poem "The Buddha's Last Instruction," says, "Make of yourself a light." The thought of standing on our own feet, living one's own life, is terrifying to many of us. Oliver ends poem with,
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
We are frightened. We fear someone else should, or does, control the switch.
I mean, the essence of life and the essence of theater is to communicate about lives, either lives that have ended or lives that are still alive, beliefs, what is in those beliefs, and this was an extraordinary young girl. It wasn't -- she didn't take sides, although she went to defend Palestinians. It isn't about taking sides. It's about defending human life. That's the basis of all human rights. That's the basis of what every country proclaims it stands for. (Vanessa Redgrave, from "Democracy Now" interview with Amy Goodman, Wednesday, March 8th, 2006, "Legendary Actor Vanessa Redgrave Calls Cancellation of Rachel Corrie Play an 'Act of Catastrophic Cowardice.'")
Reading Terry Tempest Williams at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation, from Refuge, her mother's final hours -- the geese, the feelings, the moon. Then at home, "21 Grams" film, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's gritty non-linear study of three sets of lives. How we intertwine. How we unwind.
Light isn't outside. Light isn't inside. Light is between. Light suffuses when each arrives at the point of authentic engagement. Any other contact -- hitting on, knocking over, swiping at, claiming ownership -- these are short circuits draining energy into darkening hopes and beliefs.
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 create the world we live in.
Say less. Or else, speak from source.
Jesus said, "Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always receives; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him."
(Matthew 7:7 -)
I wouldn't know what to ask for. George Berkeley said, "to be is to be perceived."
I'm not asking. I'm looking.
For an opening.
A point.
Allowing light.
One's mother.
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Non-interference is such as the kingdom of heaven.
Not fixed anywhere,
The mind is everywhere.
The Original Mind is like water
Which flows freely.
The deluded mind is like ice.
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says,
"The mind should operate without abiding anywhere."
- Takuan
Let flow freely that which longs to flow freely toward true home.
13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
(Mark 10)
Don't stop them. Do not interfere. Provide no resistance.
Those who allow through -- to such as these.
Is belonging.
Where God is.
Let through.
Not fixed anywhere,
The mind is everywhere.
The Original Mind is like water
Which flows freely.
The deluded mind is like ice.
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says,
"The mind should operate without abiding anywhere."
- Takuan
Let flow freely that which longs to flow freely toward true home.
13 People were bringing little children to him in order that he might touch them; and the disciples spoke sternly to them. 14 But when Jesus saw this, he was indignant and said to them, "Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.
(Mark 10)
Don't stop them. Do not interfere. Provide no resistance.
Those who allow through -- to such as these.
Is belonging.
Where God is.
Let through.
Tuesday, March 07, 2006
Encircling one another.
Leaving conversation just as horn was about to sound in prison last week, Greg asked about the circle of beads I'd been fingering throughout the morning. "You're Buddhist," he said, "but you're using Christian beads," (a medal in the circle of Sacred Heart one side, Mary and child Jesus on other), "how come?" I nod and say, That's because I'm Catholic Buddhist." "Of course," he says, and turns corner to walk back to pod and cell.
I give these words to the open. I leave for Mass in few minutes. There, as word made me, I will listen to word made language, then witness word made sacrament, side by side with brothers and sisters attending one another, attending word made flesh.
As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do. Isaiah 55:10 - 11
What is word sent to do?
Do not be an embodier of fame;
do not be a storehouse of schemes;
do not be a proprietor of wisdom.
Embody to the fullest what has no end
and wander where there is no trail.
Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven
but do not think you have gotten anything.
Be empty, that is all.
- Chuang Tzu
Word is sent to empty itself.
Become itself.
Embodying.
What is here.
With love.
Leaving conversation just as horn was about to sound in prison last week, Greg asked about the circle of beads I'd been fingering throughout the morning. "You're Buddhist," he said, "but you're using Christian beads," (a medal in the circle of Sacred Heart one side, Mary and child Jesus on other), "how come?" I nod and say, That's because I'm Catholic Buddhist." "Of course," he says, and turns corner to walk back to pod and cell.
I give these words to the open. I leave for Mass in few minutes. There, as word made me, I will listen to word made language, then witness word made sacrament, side by side with brothers and sisters attending one another, attending word made flesh.
As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do. Isaiah 55:10 - 11
What is word sent to do?
Do not be an embodier of fame;
do not be a storehouse of schemes;
do not be a proprietor of wisdom.
Embody to the fullest what has no end
and wander where there is no trail.
Hold on to all that you have received from Heaven
but do not think you have gotten anything.
Be empty, that is all.
- Chuang Tzu
Word is sent to empty itself.
Become itself.
Embodying.
What is here.
With love.
Monday, March 06, 2006
Who and what are we in one-another's life?
Nothing is in-itself what it is. It is relationality that manifests authentic wholeness. Contemplative and mystical life longs for holiness. Holiness is wholeness. Nothing and wholeness are not two things. Nor are they one thing. Our need is to look through what is third.
What is third, the trinitarian, is middle ground, is meeting place. It is shape and form of relationality that always involves another. Not "other" -- rather, another.
Mr. Glusenkamp
His gray face was a trapezoid, his voice
droned on like an ellipse.
He hated students and their noise
and loved the full eclipse
of their faces at the end of the day.
No one could have been squarer,
and nothing could have been plainer
than his geometry.
He didn't go for newfangled
stuff -- new math, the open classroom.
And yet he taught us angles
and how lines intersect and bloom,
and how infinity was no escape,
and how to give abstractions shape.
(Poem: "Mr. Glusenkamp" by Ron Wallace from Teachers: A Primer.)
Like a koan, our life seeks answer to the confusing circumstances of present day matters. War is not only in Iraq; it is in you and me. We, too, are imprisoned in Guantanimo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram. We are homeless in New Orleans. We are on a cross in Jerusalem. We cannot understand what is happening in the minds of those who are in power. We do not know how to believe in God; God who is said to be Love Itself in the current world.
My gate overgrown in this desolate land,
Greetings and farewells rare,
I loosen my robe and sit in idleness,
Nurturing the mystery of solitude.
This autumn courtyard's never swept.
Finding myself a walking-stick,
I just amble and stroll, all idleness here
Among yellow we-t'ung leaves.
- Po Chu-I (772-846)
If I could see what I am looking at...I would greet God with no great surprise. I would look at you, at each person passing, at the deep and suddenly quiet mind watching -- and...pause.
The Lord spoke to Moses; he said:
'Speak to the whole community of the sons of Israel and say to them:
"Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
"You must not steal nor deal deceitfully or fraudulently with your neighbour. You must not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God. I am the Lord. You must not exploit or rob your neighbour. You must not keep back the labourer's wage until next morning. You must not curse the dumb, nor put an obstacle in the blind man's way, but you must fear your God. I am the Lord.
"You must not be guilty of unjust verdicts. You must neither be partial to the little man nor overawed by the great; you must pass judgement on your neighbour according to justice. You must not slander your own people, and you must not jeopardise your neighbour's life. I am the Lord. You must not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. You must openly tell him, your neighbour, of his offence; this way you will not take a sin upon yourself. You must not exact vengeance, nor must you bear a grudge against the children of your people. You must love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord."'
(Leviticus 19:1 - 18)
Maybe God is irrelevant to today's world, not because God is so beyond this world and rejected by unbelievers, but because God is so impossibly embedded within this world that God has been played and manipulated by those who know the vulnerability of God. They do this in order to fashion a God that the real God refuses to be. Those who've enslaved God think they know better than God how the world should come to look. They will exercise control using freedom, they will be generous by taking away from those who have little, they will praise God by imprisoning those whose questions and opinions differ from received ideology.
God is irrelevant to those who own God.
This is a shame to some.
Yet those who own God would offer substitutes for the real shame.
There is , however, another explanation of feelings of shame. One could say with great plausibility that the homosexual and the person who has yielded to torture feel ashamed not because they have a prereflective awareness of being the authors of their behavior, but rather because they are aware that others do or may despise them for it. And the fact of their being an object of contempt for others may very well be something for which they are in no way responsible. Sartre himself offers this alternative explanation of shame. "It is," he writes, "before the Other that I am guilty.... But this guilt is accompanied by helplessness without this helplessness ever succeeding in cleansing me of my guilt." (pg.131, in an introduction to existentialism, by Robert G. Olson, c.1962)
The men who own God have become what they want God to be, namely, "Other." Other is superior, powerful, controlling, above any law or restriction. Other limits freedom, demands obeisance, punishes differing opinion, calls things the opposite of what they are, and instills fear as prototype interaction.
A whole generation of people is caught staring into oncoming headlights of motorcade racing from one worship service pronouncing power to the next, where smiling believers don't seem to recognize the absence of some essential presence. Other doesn't need an essential presence which has become redundant. Other believes facsimile suffices.
Is authentic God retrievable, resurrectable?
The one true God is no-other. The source of being is diaphaneity, is confluent with one-another.
Quietly and quickly.
Choose no-other.
One-another.
Help God.
Help us.
Nothing is in-itself what it is. It is relationality that manifests authentic wholeness. Contemplative and mystical life longs for holiness. Holiness is wholeness. Nothing and wholeness are not two things. Nor are they one thing. Our need is to look through what is third.
What is third, the trinitarian, is middle ground, is meeting place. It is shape and form of relationality that always involves another. Not "other" -- rather, another.
Mr. Glusenkamp
His gray face was a trapezoid, his voice
droned on like an ellipse.
He hated students and their noise
and loved the full eclipse
of their faces at the end of the day.
No one could have been squarer,
and nothing could have been plainer
than his geometry.
He didn't go for newfangled
stuff -- new math, the open classroom.
And yet he taught us angles
and how lines intersect and bloom,
and how infinity was no escape,
and how to give abstractions shape.
(Poem: "Mr. Glusenkamp" by Ron Wallace from Teachers: A Primer.)
Like a koan, our life seeks answer to the confusing circumstances of present day matters. War is not only in Iraq; it is in you and me. We, too, are imprisoned in Guantanimo, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram. We are homeless in New Orleans. We are on a cross in Jerusalem. We cannot understand what is happening in the minds of those who are in power. We do not know how to believe in God; God who is said to be Love Itself in the current world.
My gate overgrown in this desolate land,
Greetings and farewells rare,
I loosen my robe and sit in idleness,
Nurturing the mystery of solitude.
This autumn courtyard's never swept.
Finding myself a walking-stick,
I just amble and stroll, all idleness here
Among yellow we-t'ung leaves.
- Po Chu-I (772-846)
If I could see what I am looking at...I would greet God with no great surprise. I would look at you, at each person passing, at the deep and suddenly quiet mind watching -- and...pause.
The Lord spoke to Moses; he said:
'Speak to the whole community of the sons of Israel and say to them:
"Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
"You must not steal nor deal deceitfully or fraudulently with your neighbour. You must not swear falsely by my name, profaning the name of your God. I am the Lord. You must not exploit or rob your neighbour. You must not keep back the labourer's wage until next morning. You must not curse the dumb, nor put an obstacle in the blind man's way, but you must fear your God. I am the Lord.
"You must not be guilty of unjust verdicts. You must neither be partial to the little man nor overawed by the great; you must pass judgement on your neighbour according to justice. You must not slander your own people, and you must not jeopardise your neighbour's life. I am the Lord. You must not bear hatred for your brother in your heart. You must openly tell him, your neighbour, of his offence; this way you will not take a sin upon yourself. You must not exact vengeance, nor must you bear a grudge against the children of your people. You must love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord."'
(Leviticus 19:1 - 18)
Maybe God is irrelevant to today's world, not because God is so beyond this world and rejected by unbelievers, but because God is so impossibly embedded within this world that God has been played and manipulated by those who know the vulnerability of God. They do this in order to fashion a God that the real God refuses to be. Those who've enslaved God think they know better than God how the world should come to look. They will exercise control using freedom, they will be generous by taking away from those who have little, they will praise God by imprisoning those whose questions and opinions differ from received ideology.
God is irrelevant to those who own God.
This is a shame to some.
Yet those who own God would offer substitutes for the real shame.
There is , however, another explanation of feelings of shame. One could say with great plausibility that the homosexual and the person who has yielded to torture feel ashamed not because they have a prereflective awareness of being the authors of their behavior, but rather because they are aware that others do or may despise them for it. And the fact of their being an object of contempt for others may very well be something for which they are in no way responsible. Sartre himself offers this alternative explanation of shame. "It is," he writes, "before the Other that I am guilty.... But this guilt is accompanied by helplessness without this helplessness ever succeeding in cleansing me of my guilt." (pg.131, in an introduction to existentialism, by Robert G. Olson, c.1962)
The men who own God have become what they want God to be, namely, "Other." Other is superior, powerful, controlling, above any law or restriction. Other limits freedom, demands obeisance, punishes differing opinion, calls things the opposite of what they are, and instills fear as prototype interaction.
A whole generation of people is caught staring into oncoming headlights of motorcade racing from one worship service pronouncing power to the next, where smiling believers don't seem to recognize the absence of some essential presence. Other doesn't need an essential presence which has become redundant. Other believes facsimile suffices.
Is authentic God retrievable, resurrectable?
The one true God is no-other. The source of being is diaphaneity, is confluent with one-another.
Quietly and quickly.
Choose no-other.
One-another.
Help God.
Help us.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
On all sides is heard the cry of Christ. From monk cell to prison cell, from sick woman's lonely house to void silence silhouetting cedar shadows with morning cold comes rising sun, light. We are the passageway through which the sound is magnified. Listening as prayer has no place to go. Only...itself...is gazing loveliness we listen for, and embody for one/another.
People are afraid to forget their own minds, fearing to fall through the void with nothing onto which they can cling. They do not know that the void is not really the void but the real realm of the Dharma. It cannot be looked for or sought, comprehended by wisdom or knowledge, explained in words, contacted materially or reached by meritorious achievement.
- Huang-po
She weakens in her house across from ridge, waiting for time hospice will apply. Down the road across flowing under St George river ice, a family waits body of their son from Iraq. Her sadness and their sorrow and his service coincide and converge in Appleton valley sluice this season pondering (again) what this sound is echoing from the ends of the earth. How inquire, how inhabit, the real realm?
What I said before: 'Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer; I cried out to you from the ends of the earth.' That is, I made this cry to you from the ends of the earth; that is, on all sides.
Why did I make this cry? While my heart was in anguish. The speaker shows that he is present among all the nations of the earth in a condition, not of exalted glory but of severe trial.
Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives except against an enemy or temptations.
The one who cries from the ends of the earth is in anguish, but is not left on his own. Christ chose to foreshadow us, who are his body, by means of his body, in which he has died, risen and ascended into heaven, so that the members of his body may hope to follow where their head has gone before.
(From a commentary on the psalms by Saint Augustine, bishop; in Office of Readings, Sunday)
As men and women dance the seductive pas de deux of what to do with their bodies, and with whom, for what duration, at what cost -- northwest winds through snow-dry skies with muted sounds where bodies blow from far and wide to our sides. From ends of earth. What is the "end" of the earth?
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
and hermits are contented with their cells;
and students with their pensive citadels;
maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
high as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
in truth the prison, into which we doom
ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
in sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
should find brief solace there, as I have found
(Poem: "Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room" by William Wordsworth. Public Domain.)
The intention (of ground, of earth, of woman's eyes, of man's feet) and the reality (that health will fail, soldiers die, ice soon thaw, and hearts awake) connect in prayer and emptiness. Coincide in communion between one and one with you and me. Converge with tumbling appearance and glance across what mind divides.
We have here no lasting separation.
Instead, eu-cha-rist-ia (thanks, giving) is what (it) is.
Is no prison.
Is our confluence
Is fretless continuity.
Is this, our body,offered, one to each.
Not sought, comprehended, explained, contacted, or reached.
But...
Is, itself, gift.
As we, do, find.
People are afraid to forget their own minds, fearing to fall through the void with nothing onto which they can cling. They do not know that the void is not really the void but the real realm of the Dharma. It cannot be looked for or sought, comprehended by wisdom or knowledge, explained in words, contacted materially or reached by meritorious achievement.
- Huang-po
She weakens in her house across from ridge, waiting for time hospice will apply. Down the road across flowing under St George river ice, a family waits body of their son from Iraq. Her sadness and their sorrow and his service coincide and converge in Appleton valley sluice this season pondering (again) what this sound is echoing from the ends of the earth. How inquire, how inhabit, the real realm?
What I said before: 'Hear, O God, my petition, listen to my prayer; I cried out to you from the ends of the earth.' That is, I made this cry to you from the ends of the earth; that is, on all sides.
Why did I make this cry? While my heart was in anguish. The speaker shows that he is present among all the nations of the earth in a condition, not of exalted glory but of severe trial.
Our pilgrimage on earth cannot be exempt from trial. We progress by means of trial. No one knows himself except through trial, or receives a crown except after victory, or strives except against an enemy or temptations.
The one who cries from the ends of the earth is in anguish, but is not left on his own. Christ chose to foreshadow us, who are his body, by means of his body, in which he has died, risen and ascended into heaven, so that the members of his body may hope to follow where their head has gone before.
(From a commentary on the psalms by Saint Augustine, bishop; in Office of Readings, Sunday)
As men and women dance the seductive pas de deux of what to do with their bodies, and with whom, for what duration, at what cost -- northwest winds through snow-dry skies with muted sounds where bodies blow from far and wide to our sides. From ends of earth. What is the "end" of the earth?
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
and hermits are contented with their cells;
and students with their pensive citadels;
maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
high as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
in truth the prison, into which we doom
ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
in sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
should find brief solace there, as I have found
(Poem: "Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room" by William Wordsworth. Public Domain.)
The intention (of ground, of earth, of woman's eyes, of man's feet) and the reality (that health will fail, soldiers die, ice soon thaw, and hearts awake) connect in prayer and emptiness. Coincide in communion between one and one with you and me. Converge with tumbling appearance and glance across what mind divides.
We have here no lasting separation.
Instead, eu-cha-rist-ia (thanks, giving) is what (it) is.
Is no prison.
Is our confluence
Is fretless continuity.
Is this, our body,offered, one to each.
Not sought, comprehended, explained, contacted, or reached.
But...
Is, itself, gift.
As we, do, find.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
What is this? What is happening?
Is the question "Where am I?" helped by the words "Where I Am is!"?
Finding oneself gazing within the profound and open -- is originating. What happens next is anybody's guess. But, the gaze, this...is originary.
Having fathomed Tao, you went to dwell
Among simple villages
Where bamboo grows thick,
Opening and closing your gate alone.
This isn't a mission or pilgrimage.
I've come for no real reason:
Just to sit out on your south terrace
And gaze at those mountains.
- Po Chu-I (772 -- 846)
There's no wiping out the past. There's no plotting accurately the future. We are continually asked to dwell in the present -- in the timeless, spaceless instantiating "This." What is this place? This? What is there we can do?
If you do away with the yoke,
the clenched fist, the wicked word,
if you give your bread to the hungry,
and relief to the oppressed,
your light will rise in the darkness,
and your shadows become like noon.
The Lord will always guide you,
giving you relief in desert places.
He will give strength to your bones
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never run dry.
You will rebuild the ancient ruins,
build up on the old foundations.
You will be called "Breach-mender",
"Restorer of ruined houses".
(Isaiah 58:9 - 14)
The prospect of light rising in the darkness -- rising through darkness -- can only be preceded by the open gaze. Open gaze is willing act of presence, stillness, and silence in the face of what is taking place. What has taken place invites us to look. What will take place is beyond us, beyond our ability to presage or fathom.
Actually -- it is all beyond us. And yet, we are invited to pause, to gaze, and to pass through.
The power and mystery of sin remain occluded, as do the "satanic" machinations of conventional culture, until the seductive power that keeps them so is broken. It was at the very moment of his conversion, therefore, that Paul was first able to see the power of Satan. On the road to Damascus he is commissioned to be an instrument of the very conversion he himself experienced there, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins . . . (Acts 26:18).
(from, "The Mystery of Sin: Rene Girard's insights into Christianity - Part 2," {what exactly Christ did by dying on the Cross.} By Gil Bailie) http://www.aislingmagazine.com/AislingMagazine/articles/TAM27/Mystery.html
A haunting song ends a haunting film. The film is "Crash," and the song is "In the Deep: --
Thought you had
all the answers
to rest your heart upon.
But something happens,
don't see it coming, now
you can't stop yourself.
Now you're out there swimming...
In the deep.
In the deep.
Life keeps tumbling your heart in circles
till you... Let go.
Till you shed your pride, and you climb to heaven,
and you throw yourself off.
Now you're out there spinning...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
And now you're out there spinning...
And now you're out there swimming...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the silence,
all your secrets will
raise their weary heads.
Well, you can't pin yourself
back together, with who
you thought you were.
Now you're out there livin'...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep...
Now you're out there spinning...
Now you're out there swimming...
Now you're out there spinning...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep...
(Song: "In The Deep", by Bird York, from film "Crash")
It is there we find ourselves, or perhaps, it is there we find oneself beyond what we could ever imagine. It is daunting passage. There's fear and disillusionment. But it is a passage we are traveling through every day. We just don't recognize what is happening, where we are, or what we are going through.
We break apart and pass through the broken all the time. But now, something else is being asked for, something else is available to us. The invitation is to make the journey with open gaze -- with loving, unknowing, watchfulness. With this, this attentive watchfulness -- we become breach-mender. Without understanding how or why, there is mending action through which we are active agent restoring origin.
Loving, forgiving, awareness -- surrendering and remembering without bitterness -- participates in the healing, invites return to originary presence.
Respecting (i.e. looking again, at and as) --without end -- the mystery of wholeness.
It is Lent. We die to live. It is March.
We long to dwell together. Restoring.
House, home, deepest self.
Originary.
Is the question "Where am I?" helped by the words "Where I Am is!"?
Finding oneself gazing within the profound and open -- is originating. What happens next is anybody's guess. But, the gaze, this...is originary.
Having fathomed Tao, you went to dwell
Among simple villages
Where bamboo grows thick,
Opening and closing your gate alone.
This isn't a mission or pilgrimage.
I've come for no real reason:
Just to sit out on your south terrace
And gaze at those mountains.
- Po Chu-I (772 -- 846)
There's no wiping out the past. There's no plotting accurately the future. We are continually asked to dwell in the present -- in the timeless, spaceless instantiating "This." What is this place? This? What is there we can do?
If you do away with the yoke,
the clenched fist, the wicked word,
if you give your bread to the hungry,
and relief to the oppressed,
your light will rise in the darkness,
and your shadows become like noon.
The Lord will always guide you,
giving you relief in desert places.
He will give strength to your bones
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never run dry.
You will rebuild the ancient ruins,
build up on the old foundations.
You will be called "Breach-mender",
"Restorer of ruined houses".
(Isaiah 58:9 - 14)
The prospect of light rising in the darkness -- rising through darkness -- can only be preceded by the open gaze. Open gaze is willing act of presence, stillness, and silence in the face of what is taking place. What has taken place invites us to look. What will take place is beyond us, beyond our ability to presage or fathom.
Actually -- it is all beyond us. And yet, we are invited to pause, to gaze, and to pass through.
The power and mystery of sin remain occluded, as do the "satanic" machinations of conventional culture, until the seductive power that keeps them so is broken. It was at the very moment of his conversion, therefore, that Paul was first able to see the power of Satan. On the road to Damascus he is commissioned to be an instrument of the very conversion he himself experienced there, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins . . . (Acts 26:18).
(from, "The Mystery of Sin: Rene Girard's insights into Christianity - Part 2," {what exactly Christ did by dying on the Cross.} By Gil Bailie) http://www.aislingmagazine.com/AislingMagazine/articles/TAM27/Mystery.html
A haunting song ends a haunting film. The film is "Crash," and the song is "In the Deep: --
Thought you had
all the answers
to rest your heart upon.
But something happens,
don't see it coming, now
you can't stop yourself.
Now you're out there swimming...
In the deep.
In the deep.
Life keeps tumbling your heart in circles
till you... Let go.
Till you shed your pride, and you climb to heaven,
and you throw yourself off.
Now you're out there spinning...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
And now you're out there spinning...
And now you're out there swimming...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the silence,
all your secrets will
raise their weary heads.
Well, you can't pin yourself
back together, with who
you thought you were.
Now you're out there livin'...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep...
Now you're out there spinning...
Now you're out there swimming...
Now you're out there spinning...
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep.
In the deep...
(Song: "In The Deep", by Bird York, from film "Crash")
It is there we find ourselves, or perhaps, it is there we find oneself beyond what we could ever imagine. It is daunting passage. There's fear and disillusionment. But it is a passage we are traveling through every day. We just don't recognize what is happening, where we are, or what we are going through.
We break apart and pass through the broken all the time. But now, something else is being asked for, something else is available to us. The invitation is to make the journey with open gaze -- with loving, unknowing, watchfulness. With this, this attentive watchfulness -- we become breach-mender. Without understanding how or why, there is mending action through which we are active agent restoring origin.
Loving, forgiving, awareness -- surrendering and remembering without bitterness -- participates in the healing, invites return to originary presence.
Respecting (i.e. looking again, at and as) --without end -- the mystery of wholeness.
It is Lent. We die to live. It is March.
We long to dwell together. Restoring.
House, home, deepest self.
Originary.
Friday, March 03, 2006
The universe invests in each one of us in order to find out what it is it needs to know. That's what Pat said to Greg and I in prison today.
There is no such person as Buddha.
Buddha is simply a Sanskrit word meaning "initiate."
The Absolute is immanent in everyone's heart.
This "treasure of the heart" is the only
Buddha that exists.
It is no use seeking Buddha outside your own nature.
Contemplate the Absolute which is at the root
Of one's own nature.
- Bodhi-Dharma
We long to know, to be known. I like the phrase "ama nesciri," that is, love to be unknown.
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 are safe when we give up trying to be safe. When there is nothing left but what is taking place in the moment unveiling and unconcealing.
Visiting prisons for conversation is like visiting monastery for solitude.
What universe needs to know is what we ask it to find out.
We are as we find out we are. No place else exists.
Like the hotdog joke: making one with everything.
If Pat is right, Jean said at Friday Evening Conversation, we are the eyes and ears of God.
There is no such person as Buddha.
Buddha is simply a Sanskrit word meaning "initiate."
The Absolute is immanent in everyone's heart.
This "treasure of the heart" is the only
Buddha that exists.
It is no use seeking Buddha outside your own nature.
Contemplate the Absolute which is at the root
Of one's own nature.
- Bodhi-Dharma
We long to know, to be known. I like the phrase "ama nesciri," that is, love to be unknown.
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 are safe when we give up trying to be safe. When there is nothing left but what is taking place in the moment unveiling and unconcealing.
Visiting prisons for conversation is like visiting monastery for solitude.
What universe needs to know is what we ask it to find out.
We are as we find out we are. No place else exists.
Like the hotdog joke: making one with everything.
If Pat is right, Jean said at Friday Evening Conversation, we are the eyes and ears of God.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
She tells me her father died last week outside Cape Town in a car crash after a heart attack on a roadway en route to pick up passport to get visa to visit her in Maine after a very long time since they'd not had the talk they might have been ready for when he would make the trip.
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 )
We word being home. Being, the very facticity of what is, comes to word, seeking home.
The king of Egypt then spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah, and the other Puah. "When you midwives attend Hebrew women," he said "watch the two stones carefully. If it is a boy, kill him; if a girl, let her live." But the midwives were God-fearing: they disobeyed the command of the king of Egypt and let the boys live.
--Exodus 1:1 -
It is a struggle to let live. Killing and dying seem easier than living through the difficult.
We think we know the truth; we don't know anything. We think we're nearly there; we are nowhere and going in the opposite direction. The absurdity of chaotic fact staggers and humbles. We are left to stare from empty understanding at joyful nescient reality shining through truth.
Comeback
My father loved first light.
He would sit alone
at the yellow formica table
in the kitchen with his coffee cup
and sip and look out
over the strait. Now,
in what could be
the end of my life, or worse,
the life of someone I love, I too
am addicted to slow sweet beginnings.
First bird call. Wings
in silhouette. How the steeples
of the evergreens make a selvage
for the gaunt emerging sky.
My three loves are far away
in other countries,
and one is even under
this dew-bright ground
where the little herds
of jittery quail peck
and scurry for their lives.
My father picks up his
cup. Light is sifting in
like a gloam of certainty
over the water. He knows
something there in the half light
he can't know any other way.
And now I know it with him: so much
is joining us in the dawn
that no one can ever be parted.
It steals over us because we left
the warm beds of our dreams
to sit beside what rises.
I think he wants to stay there
forever, my captain, gazing but not
expecting, while the world
begins, and, in a stark silent calling,
won't tell anyone what it's for.
(Poem: "Comeback" by Tess Gallagher from Dear Ghosts, Graywolf Press.)
When my father died I imagined he'd gone deeply, profoundly, and irretrievable within, falling through radical core of what we consider center of all that is, and emerging no place -- but as, and in, itself.
It is a view of death which, for me, nearly approaches the mystery of the dissolution of duality, and an almost transcendence of here into now -- no other, with nothing behind nor ahead.
"What it's for" is beyond knowing, and way beyond telling.
Death is unusual tutorial.
There's no lesson to speak of.
We don't know...what it is -- we do; we are.
Let live.
And live.
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 )
We word being home. Being, the very facticity of what is, comes to word, seeking home.
The king of Egypt then spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah, and the other Puah. "When you midwives attend Hebrew women," he said "watch the two stones carefully. If it is a boy, kill him; if a girl, let her live." But the midwives were God-fearing: they disobeyed the command of the king of Egypt and let the boys live.
--Exodus 1:1 -
It is a struggle to let live. Killing and dying seem easier than living through the difficult.
We think we know the truth; we don't know anything. We think we're nearly there; we are nowhere and going in the opposite direction. The absurdity of chaotic fact staggers and humbles. We are left to stare from empty understanding at joyful nescient reality shining through truth.
Comeback
My father loved first light.
He would sit alone
at the yellow formica table
in the kitchen with his coffee cup
and sip and look out
over the strait. Now,
in what could be
the end of my life, or worse,
the life of someone I love, I too
am addicted to slow sweet beginnings.
First bird call. Wings
in silhouette. How the steeples
of the evergreens make a selvage
for the gaunt emerging sky.
My three loves are far away
in other countries,
and one is even under
this dew-bright ground
where the little herds
of jittery quail peck
and scurry for their lives.
My father picks up his
cup. Light is sifting in
like a gloam of certainty
over the water. He knows
something there in the half light
he can't know any other way.
And now I know it with him: so much
is joining us in the dawn
that no one can ever be parted.
It steals over us because we left
the warm beds of our dreams
to sit beside what rises.
I think he wants to stay there
forever, my captain, gazing but not
expecting, while the world
begins, and, in a stark silent calling,
won't tell anyone what it's for.
(Poem: "Comeback" by Tess Gallagher from Dear Ghosts, Graywolf Press.)
When my father died I imagined he'd gone deeply, profoundly, and irretrievable within, falling through radical core of what we consider center of all that is, and emerging no place -- but as, and in, itself.
It is a view of death which, for me, nearly approaches the mystery of the dissolution of duality, and an almost transcendence of here into now -- no other, with nothing behind nor ahead.
"What it's for" is beyond knowing, and way beyond telling.
Death is unusual tutorial.
There's no lesson to speak of.
We don't know...what it is -- we do; we are.
Let live.
And live.
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Come, today, and listen to his voice: do not harden your hearts. (Antiphon to Invitatory Psalm, Ash Wednesday)
In the morning I walk into kitchen. Saskia puts ashes from woodstove on my forehead saying, "Remember man you are dust and to dust you shall return." I went, put finger in ashes, signed her, saying, "Remember you are the earth. Love the earth, and love yourself."
If you start concentrating the mind on stillness,
You will merely produce an unreal stillness.
What does the word "meditation" mean?
In this school it means no barriers, no obstacles;
It is beyond all objective situations whether good or bad.
The word "sitting" means not to stir up thoughts in the mind.
- Hui-neng, (d.713)
Because we have forgotten the earth, we have forgotten being. Because we have forgotten being, we have forgotten God.
Because we have forgotten God, we have forgotten what it means to be unborn.
The unborn is to be remembered. God is unborn.
Remember being. Remember earth. Remember yourself.
It is Lent.
Listen to the voice of today.
In the morning I walk into kitchen. Saskia puts ashes from woodstove on my forehead saying, "Remember man you are dust and to dust you shall return." I went, put finger in ashes, signed her, saying, "Remember you are the earth. Love the earth, and love yourself."
If you start concentrating the mind on stillness,
You will merely produce an unreal stillness.
What does the word "meditation" mean?
In this school it means no barriers, no obstacles;
It is beyond all objective situations whether good or bad.
The word "sitting" means not to stir up thoughts in the mind.
- Hui-neng, (d.713)
Because we have forgotten the earth, we have forgotten being. Because we have forgotten being, we have forgotten God.
Because we have forgotten God, we have forgotten what it means to be unborn.
The unborn is to be remembered. God is unborn.
Remember being. Remember earth. Remember yourself.
It is Lent.
Listen to the voice of today.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Where is home?
The response to this question indicates who we think we are, why we think we are in the place we are, and how we go about living our lives in the midst of others.
When the person of highest capacities hears Tao
He does his best to put it into practice.
When the person of middling capacity hears Tao
He is in two minds about it.
When the man of low capacity hears Tao
He laughs loudly at it.
If he did not laugh, it would not be worth the name of Tao
- Lao tzu
Woke this morning after falling asleep last night reading A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, thinking about ethics and "home" -- how we've not yet come to see, or worse, just care not to know where it is we coincide with all-that-is. "Oikos" in Greek is "home." It's where comes "eco" as in "ecology" -- the study of home, the study of the relationships between humans, animals, plants and their physical environment. In addition, the study and practice of deep listening, loving speech, attentive presence, and graceful engagement with what is there -- what might be called eco-spirituality.
Is there a proper relationship to earth and sky, to land and environment, and to each person dwelling about us?
There is something keen in the words of Robert Frost, in his poem "The Death of the Hired Man" --
"Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger! [75]
Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late. [80]
Harold's associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it -- that an argument!
He said he couldn't make the boy believe [85]
He could find water with a hazel prong --
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay--" [90]
"I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well. [95]
He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself."
"He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world. [100]
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different."
(from poem, "The Death of the Hired Man," by Robert Frost, 1874-1963, North of Boston. 1915.)
I think we are at home when we come to experience what is near and far as who and what we are. The wind teasing windchimes, smoke from kitchen chimney, cat purring, dog sleeping, detainee in Abu Ghraib, chickadee on branch, ice coating brook, donut on tray, consecrated host in tabernacle, partners hand in yours, cabin open flag rolled on pole, broken open sunflower casing in rain gutter, zafu tilted on gray sock, former student in casket, his friend in jailcell, the day itself, stillness undergirding, the fact of every object scattered throughout, and the edges of each and every thing beckoning us enter, fall through, do not hold on, let journey take us home, home where we simply are (joyfully) what we are, doing (with awareness) what we do, included and engaged in lovely movement one with another, "now and never any different."
I submit we are at our threshold, our liminal space, portal -- our very (metaphoric) doorstep. What seems to be the problem is we fashion ourselves strangers at our own front doors.
We become strangers in a strange land. We hang fiddles on our doorposts. We seclude and segregate ourselves in a mental fabrication that concludes "my" and "mine" "we" and "us" does not include "they" and "them," "evildoers" and "sinners." No matter our ethnic, racial, religious, economic, or social jobsite-of-self, we make sure property boundaries and protective covenants are securely in place. We manipulate plywood and sawhorse in our minds believing we are walling out those not worthy of our artificial belief in what and who we are. It is a fool's construct. We are building awayness, otherness, and not-as-good-as-ness.
That is, until we come to understand we have wandered desperately far from home, comprehended the utter folly of the misery we've constructed in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in our country, and in our world. It is at that point we realize -- it is time to come home. Drop the stranger-making. Forget the grievances. Put aside the analysis and negative mental activities that alienate, foisting fraudulent and deceitful schemes dressed as good ideas and helpful intentions. The difficulty we face is that we have created powerful industries and wealthy institutions whose sole purpose is to lure us away from home by misdirected cooing that they are leading us home. We go far afield. We wage war against every threat to our interests, however insubstantial or inauthentic. We wander vast deserts and seas raping and plundering until we no longer remember why we are there. The Homeric odyssey of rerun or return is a scorching and parched time of assessment. "Come away," "follow me," "one more battle," "a final pillage," "one last stand" -- is what the voices of illusion call to us. We're uncertain what to do, where else to go.
Don't go.
We are already home. We need only open our eyes. Open our minds. Open our hearts.
We are all here -- waiting to enter where we are.
Pray for this. Sit and watch for this. Engage one another before this hearth.
No one can take you home, no matter how convincing their travelogue.
You are home.
Welcome yourself.
Where you are.
As you are.
Step in.
The response to this question indicates who we think we are, why we think we are in the place we are, and how we go about living our lives in the midst of others.
When the person of highest capacities hears Tao
He does his best to put it into practice.
When the person of middling capacity hears Tao
He is in two minds about it.
When the man of low capacity hears Tao
He laughs loudly at it.
If he did not laugh, it would not be worth the name of Tao
- Lao tzu
Woke this morning after falling asleep last night reading A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold, thinking about ethics and "home" -- how we've not yet come to see, or worse, just care not to know where it is we coincide with all-that-is. "Oikos" in Greek is "home." It's where comes "eco" as in "ecology" -- the study of home, the study of the relationships between humans, animals, plants and their physical environment. In addition, the study and practice of deep listening, loving speech, attentive presence, and graceful engagement with what is there -- what might be called eco-spirituality.
Is there a proper relationship to earth and sky, to land and environment, and to each person dwelling about us?
There is something keen in the words of Robert Frost, in his poem "The Death of the Hired Man" --
"Well, those days trouble Silas like a dream.
You wouldn't think they would. How some things linger! [75]
Harold's young college boy's assurance piqued him.
After so many years he still keeps finding
Good arguments he sees he might have used.
I sympathise. I know just how it feels
To think of the right thing to say too late. [80]
Harold's associated in his mind with Latin.
He asked me what I thought of Harold's saying
He studied Latin like the violin
Because he liked it -- that an argument!
He said he couldn't make the boy believe [85]
He could find water with a hazel prong --
Which showed how much good school had ever done him.
He wanted to go over that. But most of all
He thinks if he could have another chance
To teach him how to build a load of hay--" [90]
"I know, that's Silas' one accomplishment.
He bundles every forkful in its place,
And tags and numbers it for future reference,
So he can find and easily dislodge it
In the unloading. Silas does that well. [95]
He takes it out in bunches like big birds' nests.
You never see him standing on the hay
He's trying to lift, straining to lift himself."
"He thinks if he could teach him that, he'd be
Some good perhaps to someone in the world. [100]
He hates to see a boy the fool of books.
Poor Silas, so concerned for other folk,
And nothing to look backward to with pride,
And nothing to look forward to with hope,
So now and never any different."
(from poem, "The Death of the Hired Man," by Robert Frost, 1874-1963, North of Boston. 1915.)
I think we are at home when we come to experience what is near and far as who and what we are. The wind teasing windchimes, smoke from kitchen chimney, cat purring, dog sleeping, detainee in Abu Ghraib, chickadee on branch, ice coating brook, donut on tray, consecrated host in tabernacle, partners hand in yours, cabin open flag rolled on pole, broken open sunflower casing in rain gutter, zafu tilted on gray sock, former student in casket, his friend in jailcell, the day itself, stillness undergirding, the fact of every object scattered throughout, and the edges of each and every thing beckoning us enter, fall through, do not hold on, let journey take us home, home where we simply are (joyfully) what we are, doing (with awareness) what we do, included and engaged in lovely movement one with another, "now and never any different."
I submit we are at our threshold, our liminal space, portal -- our very (metaphoric) doorstep. What seems to be the problem is we fashion ourselves strangers at our own front doors.
We become strangers in a strange land. We hang fiddles on our doorposts. We seclude and segregate ourselves in a mental fabrication that concludes "my" and "mine" "we" and "us" does not include "they" and "them," "evildoers" and "sinners." No matter our ethnic, racial, religious, economic, or social jobsite-of-self, we make sure property boundaries and protective covenants are securely in place. We manipulate plywood and sawhorse in our minds believing we are walling out those not worthy of our artificial belief in what and who we are. It is a fool's construct. We are building awayness, otherness, and not-as-good-as-ness.
That is, until we come to understand we have wandered desperately far from home, comprehended the utter folly of the misery we've constructed in our lives, in our neighborhoods, in our country, and in our world. It is at that point we realize -- it is time to come home. Drop the stranger-making. Forget the grievances. Put aside the analysis and negative mental activities that alienate, foisting fraudulent and deceitful schemes dressed as good ideas and helpful intentions. The difficulty we face is that we have created powerful industries and wealthy institutions whose sole purpose is to lure us away from home by misdirected cooing that they are leading us home. We go far afield. We wage war against every threat to our interests, however insubstantial or inauthentic. We wander vast deserts and seas raping and plundering until we no longer remember why we are there. The Homeric odyssey of rerun or return is a scorching and parched time of assessment. "Come away," "follow me," "one more battle," "a final pillage," "one last stand" -- is what the voices of illusion call to us. We're uncertain what to do, where else to go.
Don't go.
We are already home. We need only open our eyes. Open our minds. Open our hearts.
We are all here -- waiting to enter where we are.
Pray for this. Sit and watch for this. Engage one another before this hearth.
No one can take you home, no matter how convincing their travelogue.
You are home.
Welcome yourself.
Where you are.
As you are.
Step in.
Monday, February 27, 2006
We must find God...alone.
Consider the example of Buddha Shakyamuni of the Jeta Grove, who practiced sitting up straight for six years even though he was gifted with intrinsic wisdom. Still celebrated is Master Bodhidharma of the Shaolin Temple, who sat facing the wall for nine years although he had already received the mind seal. Ancient sages were like this; who nowadays does not need to practice as they did?
- Dogen (1200-1253)
That the United States condones and encourages torture is disheartening. That prisons (known as black-op sites, "we're keeping them secret" places) are spread around the world, where military personnel, CIA and private contractors, hurt, humiliate, cause madness and death to people suspected of antipathy to the United States, is troubling.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Published: February 26, 2006
Filed at 10:58 p.m. ET-- The U.S. military on Sunday defended its detention of about 500 inmates at its main base in Afghanistan, saying they are treated humanely and provided the ''best possible living conditions.''
Published: February 26, 2006
While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.
As at Guantánamo, the military has instituted procedures at Bagram intended to ensure that the detainees are in fact enemy combatants. Yet the review boards at Bagram give fewer rights to the prisoners than those used in Cuba, which have been criticized by human rights officials as kangaroo courts.
The two sets of panels that review the status of detainees at Guantánamo assign military advocates to work with detainees in preparing cases. Detainees are allowed to hear and respond to the allegations against them, call witnesses and request evidence. Only a small fraction of the hundreds of panels have concluded that the accused should be released.
The Bagram panels, called Enemy Combatant Review Boards, offer no such guarantees. Reviews are conducted after 90 days and at least annually thereafter, but detainees are not informed of the accusations against them, have no advocate and cannot appear before the board, officials said. "The detainee is not involved at all," one official familiar with the process said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/26bagram.html
I propose an exchange program. I propose two thousand ordinary Americans volunteer to take the places of two thousand prisoners held incommunicado in foreign lands by our government. Call it respite, or recess. These prisoners would get some relief while their replacements would merely observe or serve as test subjects for physical and psychological experiments in torture for a period of three months.
Jesus was setting out on a journey when a man ran up, knelt before him and put this question to him, "Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." (from Mark 10:17 -- 27)
Jesus protested his being called good.
Our government doesn't qualify.
Nor do I.
You?
Given our "see, hear, speak no evil" pantomime -- I'd say we've exhausted our recess time from human decency.
Let's agree to do something about this lack of interest in God, or humanity, (much less) our true inner reality.
Let's sit a while. Have a think. Maybe even feel. Take a look. Try to see.
Jesus went on:
You know the commandments: You must not kill; You must not commit adultery; You must not steal; You must not bring false witness; You must not defraud; Honour your father and mother." And he said to him, "Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days." Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, "There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.
Jesus looked round and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" (Mark 10)
It is a luxury for us to remain unaware and disengaged from the life of the world in our lives.
Never mind the distracting arguments, the posturing propaganda, the religious justifications of unspeakable behavior, and the calm reasonable and reassuring tone that attempts to make commonplace the horrible acts of torture and punishment.
It is time to go inside, deep beyond the mean, petty, anger and revenge that coats our psyches like oil-spill on fresh water. Down deeper through all exterior presentation into that unvisited interior emptiness wherein dwells (profoundly itself) the very core of grace and light for which we so desperately long.
Something at our source -- something whose sound is almost indiscernible -- something so diaphanous it suffuses everything, undetected. This -- this is to be our practice!
The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted, "My children," he said to them "how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." They were more astonished than ever. "In that case" they said to one another "who can be saved?" Jesus gazed at them. "For men" he said "it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God."
(Mark 10)
Let's sit in silence facing the wall of truth. Look in so as to look out, unashamed, and ready to emerge. It is salvific emergence. We become safely present among newly realized family. There is no separation, nothing excluded, in communion. (The powerful and excessively rich among us prefer artificially segregated communities rather that the authentic diversity of communion.)
That inner dwelling place we might find ourselves visiting -- is empty. It is what some call a place of luminescent openness, a sacred poverty. It is where nothing substitutes for the love-without-barriers found there.
Let's find God.
Alone.
All.
Consider the example of Buddha Shakyamuni of the Jeta Grove, who practiced sitting up straight for six years even though he was gifted with intrinsic wisdom. Still celebrated is Master Bodhidharma of the Shaolin Temple, who sat facing the wall for nine years although he had already received the mind seal. Ancient sages were like this; who nowadays does not need to practice as they did?
- Dogen (1200-1253)
That the United States condones and encourages torture is disheartening. That prisons (known as black-op sites, "we're keeping them secret" places) are spread around the world, where military personnel, CIA and private contractors, hurt, humiliate, cause madness and death to people suspected of antipathy to the United States, is troubling.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Published: February 26, 2006
Filed at 10:58 p.m. ET-- The U.S. military on Sunday defended its detention of about 500 inmates at its main base in Afghanistan, saying they are treated humanely and provided the ''best possible living conditions.''
Published: February 26, 2006
While an international debate rages over the future of the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the military has quietly expanded another, less-visible prison in Afghanistan, where it now holds some 500 terror suspects in more primitive conditions, indefinitely and without charges.
As at Guantánamo, the military has instituted procedures at Bagram intended to ensure that the detainees are in fact enemy combatants. Yet the review boards at Bagram give fewer rights to the prisoners than those used in Cuba, which have been criticized by human rights officials as kangaroo courts.
The two sets of panels that review the status of detainees at Guantánamo assign military advocates to work with detainees in preparing cases. Detainees are allowed to hear and respond to the allegations against them, call witnesses and request evidence. Only a small fraction of the hundreds of panels have concluded that the accused should be released.
The Bagram panels, called Enemy Combatant Review Boards, offer no such guarantees. Reviews are conducted after 90 days and at least annually thereafter, but detainees are not informed of the accusations against them, have no advocate and cannot appear before the board, officials said. "The detainee is not involved at all," one official familiar with the process said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/26bagram.html
I propose an exchange program. I propose two thousand ordinary Americans volunteer to take the places of two thousand prisoners held incommunicado in foreign lands by our government. Call it respite, or recess. These prisoners would get some relief while their replacements would merely observe or serve as test subjects for physical and psychological experiments in torture for a period of three months.
Jesus was setting out on a journey when a man ran up, knelt before him and put this question to him, "Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone." (from Mark 10:17 -- 27)
Jesus protested his being called good.
Our government doesn't qualify.
Nor do I.
You?
Given our "see, hear, speak no evil" pantomime -- I'd say we've exhausted our recess time from human decency.
Let's agree to do something about this lack of interest in God, or humanity, (much less) our true inner reality.
Let's sit a while. Have a think. Maybe even feel. Take a look. Try to see.
Jesus went on:
You know the commandments: You must not kill; You must not commit adultery; You must not steal; You must not bring false witness; You must not defraud; Honour your father and mother." And he said to him, "Master, I have kept all these from my earliest days." Jesus looked steadily at him and loved him, and he said, "There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." But his face fell at these words and he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.
Jesus looked round and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!" (Mark 10)
It is a luxury for us to remain unaware and disengaged from the life of the world in our lives.
Never mind the distracting arguments, the posturing propaganda, the religious justifications of unspeakable behavior, and the calm reasonable and reassuring tone that attempts to make commonplace the horrible acts of torture and punishment.
It is time to go inside, deep beyond the mean, petty, anger and revenge that coats our psyches like oil-spill on fresh water. Down deeper through all exterior presentation into that unvisited interior emptiness wherein dwells (profoundly itself) the very core of grace and light for which we so desperately long.
Something at our source -- something whose sound is almost indiscernible -- something so diaphanous it suffuses everything, undetected. This -- this is to be our practice!
The disciples were astounded by these words, but Jesus insisted, "My children," he said to them "how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." They were more astonished than ever. "In that case" they said to one another "who can be saved?" Jesus gazed at them. "For men" he said "it is impossible, but not for God: because everything is possible for God."
(Mark 10)
Let's sit in silence facing the wall of truth. Look in so as to look out, unashamed, and ready to emerge. It is salvific emergence. We become safely present among newly realized family. There is no separation, nothing excluded, in communion. (The powerful and excessively rich among us prefer artificially segregated communities rather that the authentic diversity of communion.)
That inner dwelling place we might find ourselves visiting -- is empty. It is what some call a place of luminescent openness, a sacred poverty. It is where nothing substitutes for the love-without-barriers found there.
Let's find God.
Alone.
All.
Sunday, February 26, 2006
Sunday morning senses.
Sunlight does seem to be coming through window. The mountain does seem to be across the way. Bird song does seem to be heard in these ears.
Of course these things are seen and heard. What, then, is it to say that form is formless, emptiness is form, and form is emptiness?
Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)
Notes of chant wander through quiet room. Fragrence of chicken soup. Car passing house on Barnestown Road.
1.
I will betroth you to myself for ever,
betroth you with integrity and justice,
with tenderness and love;
I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness,
and you will come to know the Lord.
Hosea 2: 20 --)
The marriage has been fact. The acknowledgement is slow. What is it the One-Called-God and the Ones-We-Are have been engaged with and involved in for so long a spell of existence?
We cannot help look at the absolute (the whole) and the relative (the related) and wonder about both theology and politics. Theology looks to see God. Politics is a different view. How settle the views?
2.
The philosophy discussion on BBC mentioned that the current usage of the term "relativism" is an offputting word attempting to denigrate a position that actually is extremely respectable -- skepticism -- namely the consideration that whatever you think, you might be wrong. Skepticism is needed. To mask skepticism as relativism invites discarding underlying intellectual inquiry.
We might have to look again at what is whole and what is related. We have to think again.
There's a need for acuity in looking at contemporary political and cultural matters. Absent skepticism, blind belief becomes too easily soporific paralysis.
It is a time of doubt. As we go about personal responsibilities in our lives, some, who watch more carefully than most of us, are arriving at stark conclusions. Here's one:
Lewis Lapham has been the Editor of "Harper's" magazine for 30 years (retiring as Editor Emeritus this spring). In the March issue (not available online), Lapham calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush in that venerable publication. Have we got your attention yet?
Lapham concludes his impeachment call with these trenchant words: "It is the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more damage than he's already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name, and reputation of the United States--to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity and blood."
"Gag Rule is a rousing and necessary call to action in defense of one of our most important liberties, the right to raise our voices in dissent and have those voices heard."
A review awhile back in "The Nation" notes of "Gag Rule": "One hundred years ago, in the wake of England's ruinous victory in the Boer War, a young Liberal politician excoriated the ruling Conservative Party and its imperial scam: 'A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad ... sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer, the open door at the public house, dear food for the millions, cheap labor for the millionaire.' As Lewis Lapham points out in Gag Rule, where this and a great many other nuggets of historically apposite and rhetorically scintillating prose are marshaled, these words of Winston Churchill fairly describe the Bush II Administration as well. (Substitute "church" for 'public house,' of course.) If only a few Democratic voices could find the young Churchill's register.
"...the Congress have joined the attack on democratic accountability and popular sovereignty. Executive-branch decision-making is increasingly insulated from public scrutiny and comment; more and more important documents are unavailable or unaffordable; the prerogatives of law-enforcement agencies are steadily expanded in the national-security area, though narrowed in respect of tax and securities fraud, air and water pollution, violations of labor law and occupational safety rules, and other constraints on profitability. Harper's has done stellar work in showing how the claims of the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions to "get government off the backs of the American people" merely camouflaged their sustained effort to keep the American people off the backs of the government and its corporate principals."
February 21, 2006, from review of "Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy, by Lewis Lapham; from BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
3.
It is time for coffee. There is sausage in freezer. We'll have eggs. A cold wind blows cedar trees.
We are whole only with one, another. There is no isolated union. Presence is the mystery we move through, without grasping.
We are related with each and every being. There is no other. There is only acknowledgement and incorporation, or, denial and division.
4.
Let's consider a theology of whole existence as it is.
Let's consider a politics of related beings as we are.
Of course we sorrow over the chaos in the Middle East. I am skeptical.
Of course we sorrow the unseeing of the One-Called-God in our midst. I am blind.
Of course we sorrow the cruelty we inflict on our spouses, mates, brothers, sisters, all sentient beings, all who watch us with wonder. I am often unkind.
5.
For now, this sorrow is prayer. This prayer is formless joy. This joy is in the form of someone about to transport soup to shop, carry wood for fireplace, pour cup of coffee for return trip.
This Sunday liturgy is performed in the faith of lovingkindness. Do we know what it is?
When you really want to know who you are or what the real significance of human life, human suffering is, very naturally you come back to silence, even though you don't want to, you return to an area of no-sound. It cannot be explained, but in this silence you can realize, even if only dimly, what the real point is that you want to know. Whatever kind of question you ask or whatever you think, finally you have to return to silence. This silence is vast; you don't know what it is. (from "Returning to Silence" by Katagiri Roshi)
6.
Mo chao -- is Chinese for "serene reflection."
7.
"Serene reflection is clear awareness in the tranquility of no-thought. This is what the Diamond Sutra meant by 'not dwelling on any object, yet the mind arises.'" (from "Practicing Zen Through Observing One's Mind in Tranquillity -- The Non-Koan Way in Zen," by Chang Chen-Chi, 1959)
8.
Good sense.
Sunlight does seem to be coming through window. The mountain does seem to be across the way. Bird song does seem to be heard in these ears.
Of course these things are seen and heard. What, then, is it to say that form is formless, emptiness is form, and form is emptiness?
Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)
Notes of chant wander through quiet room. Fragrence of chicken soup. Car passing house on Barnestown Road.
1.
I will betroth you to myself for ever,
betroth you with integrity and justice,
with tenderness and love;
I will betroth you to myself with faithfulness,
and you will come to know the Lord.
Hosea 2: 20 --)
The marriage has been fact. The acknowledgement is slow. What is it the One-Called-God and the Ones-We-Are have been engaged with and involved in for so long a spell of existence?
We cannot help look at the absolute (the whole) and the relative (the related) and wonder about both theology and politics. Theology looks to see God. Politics is a different view. How settle the views?
2.
The philosophy discussion on BBC mentioned that the current usage of the term "relativism" is an offputting word attempting to denigrate a position that actually is extremely respectable -- skepticism -- namely the consideration that whatever you think, you might be wrong. Skepticism is needed. To mask skepticism as relativism invites discarding underlying intellectual inquiry.
We might have to look again at what is whole and what is related. We have to think again.
There's a need for acuity in looking at contemporary political and cultural matters. Absent skepticism, blind belief becomes too easily soporific paralysis.
It is a time of doubt. As we go about personal responsibilities in our lives, some, who watch more carefully than most of us, are arriving at stark conclusions. Here's one:
Lewis Lapham has been the Editor of "Harper's" magazine for 30 years (retiring as Editor Emeritus this spring). In the March issue (not available online), Lapham calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush in that venerable publication. Have we got your attention yet?
Lapham concludes his impeachment call with these trenchant words: "It is the business of the Congress to prevent the President from doing more damage than he's already done to the people, interests, health, well-being, safety, good name, and reputation of the United States--to cauterize the wound and stem the flows of money, stupidity and blood."
"Gag Rule is a rousing and necessary call to action in defense of one of our most important liberties, the right to raise our voices in dissent and have those voices heard."
A review awhile back in "The Nation" notes of "Gag Rule": "One hundred years ago, in the wake of England's ruinous victory in the Boer War, a young Liberal politician excoriated the ruling Conservative Party and its imperial scam: 'A party of great vested interests, banded together in a formidable confederation, corruption at home, aggression to cover it up abroad ... sentiment by the bucketful, patriotism by the imperial pint, the open hand at the public exchequer, the open door at the public house, dear food for the millions, cheap labor for the millionaire.' As Lewis Lapham points out in Gag Rule, where this and a great many other nuggets of historically apposite and rhetorically scintillating prose are marshaled, these words of Winston Churchill fairly describe the Bush II Administration as well. (Substitute "church" for 'public house,' of course.) If only a few Democratic voices could find the young Churchill's register.
"...the Congress have joined the attack on democratic accountability and popular sovereignty. Executive-branch decision-making is increasingly insulated from public scrutiny and comment; more and more important documents are unavailable or unaffordable; the prerogatives of law-enforcement agencies are steadily expanded in the national-security area, though narrowed in respect of tax and securities fraud, air and water pollution, violations of labor law and occupational safety rules, and other constraints on profitability. Harper's has done stellar work in showing how the claims of the Reagan and Gingrich revolutions to "get government off the backs of the American people" merely camouflaged their sustained effort to keep the American people off the backs of the government and its corporate principals."
February 21, 2006, from review of "Gag Rule: On the Suppression of Dissent and Stifling of Democracy, by Lewis Lapham; from BUZZFLASH REVIEWS
3.
It is time for coffee. There is sausage in freezer. We'll have eggs. A cold wind blows cedar trees.
We are whole only with one, another. There is no isolated union. Presence is the mystery we move through, without grasping.
We are related with each and every being. There is no other. There is only acknowledgement and incorporation, or, denial and division.
4.
Let's consider a theology of whole existence as it is.
Let's consider a politics of related beings as we are.
Of course we sorrow over the chaos in the Middle East. I am skeptical.
Of course we sorrow the unseeing of the One-Called-God in our midst. I am blind.
Of course we sorrow the cruelty we inflict on our spouses, mates, brothers, sisters, all sentient beings, all who watch us with wonder. I am often unkind.
5.
For now, this sorrow is prayer. This prayer is formless joy. This joy is in the form of someone about to transport soup to shop, carry wood for fireplace, pour cup of coffee for return trip.
This Sunday liturgy is performed in the faith of lovingkindness. Do we know what it is?
When you really want to know who you are or what the real significance of human life, human suffering is, very naturally you come back to silence, even though you don't want to, you return to an area of no-sound. It cannot be explained, but in this silence you can realize, even if only dimly, what the real point is that you want to know. Whatever kind of question you ask or whatever you think, finally you have to return to silence. This silence is vast; you don't know what it is. (from "Returning to Silence" by Katagiri Roshi)
6.
Mo chao -- is Chinese for "serene reflection."
7.
"Serene reflection is clear awareness in the tranquility of no-thought. This is what the Diamond Sutra meant by 'not dwelling on any object, yet the mind arises.'" (from "Practicing Zen Through Observing One's Mind in Tranquillity -- The Non-Koan Way in Zen," by Chang Chen-Chi, 1959)
8.
Good sense.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
I knew him from boatbuilding school. He was an apprentice. I taught him in college program on neighboring harbor.
Later he'd come visit. I find the necklace Rob left here at bookshop years ago. I take it upstairs. It hangs on bronze cross. Incense burns. Gregorian chant streams from Spain. Some solitude remembering Rob. They found his body in a shallow grave. He'd been shot, by his friend, the news says.
The consistent conduct of people of the Way
Is like the flowing clouds
With no grasping mind,
Like the full moon reflecting
Universally, not confined anywhere.
- Hung-Chih
Bufflehead swim harbor. Dan plays guitar downstairs. Laughter from women's voices. Door opens. Seagulls on fingerfloat near dredging barge.
He was 28. That's all I know. It is a bit cold today. At home the chain has fallen off the electric saw.
This morning, cat failed to snare chickadee after jumping up to feeder. He came in front door and went to kibble bowl under table. Dog lay long in front room before going out to pee. These are things to look at. Things that unfold. Like Saskia's marbled gugelhupf. Like piece of raisin toast Susan brought to counter as I read news on computer.
Feet are wiped inside door at bottom of stairs.
In paradisum deducant te angeli, (from Faure's requiem) "May the angels lead you into paradise."
The day moves through.
This is how we go on.
Just like this.
Later he'd come visit. I find the necklace Rob left here at bookshop years ago. I take it upstairs. It hangs on bronze cross. Incense burns. Gregorian chant streams from Spain. Some solitude remembering Rob. They found his body in a shallow grave. He'd been shot, by his friend, the news says.
The consistent conduct of people of the Way
Is like the flowing clouds
With no grasping mind,
Like the full moon reflecting
Universally, not confined anywhere.
- Hung-Chih
Bufflehead swim harbor. Dan plays guitar downstairs. Laughter from women's voices. Door opens. Seagulls on fingerfloat near dredging barge.
He was 28. That's all I know. It is a bit cold today. At home the chain has fallen off the electric saw.
This morning, cat failed to snare chickadee after jumping up to feeder. He came in front door and went to kibble bowl under table. Dog lay long in front room before going out to pee. These are things to look at. Things that unfold. Like Saskia's marbled gugelhupf. Like piece of raisin toast Susan brought to counter as I read news on computer.
Feet are wiped inside door at bottom of stairs.
In paradisum deducant te angeli, (from Faure's requiem) "May the angels lead you into paradise."
The day moves through.
This is how we go on.
Just like this.
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