I don't know the Name of the Most High. Some claim they do.

"What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so."(--Mark Train)

Some pronounce the Name of the Lord: "Death to infidels" Some, "War on Terror." Others say it is: "You're wrong! I'm right." There are some men in the United States who think the name of god is "I am the commander in chief. I do not have to obey any laws I wish not to obey." This last name is particularly repugnant.

I've wondered about this name for a long time. I've long wondered why so many have such odd pronunciation. I wonder what it is about religion that deafens many to the true and lovely sound which is The Name Itself.

First, it was more about mystery than about trying to get us to behave. Whichever, we're still in some lonely cave, not far from that moment a lightning storm or a sunset drove us to invent the upper reaches of the sky. Religion is proof that a good story, well-told, is a powerful thing. Proof, too, that terror makes fabulists of us all. We're pitiful, finally, and so oddly valiant. The dead god rising into ism after ism-that longing for coherence that keeps us, if not naive, historically challenged. To love Christ you must love the Buddha, to love Mohammed or Moses you must love Confucius and, say, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as well. They were all wise and unsponsored and insufficient, some of the best of us. I'm saying this to myself: the sacred cannot be found unless you give up some old version of it. And when you do, mon semblable, mon frere, I swear there'll be an emptiness it'll take a lifetime to fill. Indulge, become capacious, give up nothing, Jack my corner grocer said. He was pushing the portobellos, but I was listening with that other, my neediest ear.
("Religion," prose poem by Stephen Dunn, in American Poetry Review, Mar/Apr 1998)

This week I heard the Name. Here's how I pronounce what I heard:

"Father/Mother God" is "This Lovely One."

"Son/Christ" is "This Realization of Loveliness in All Beings, Places, and Things."

"Holy Spirit" is "This Inviting Creativity to Practice and Engage This Realization of Loveliness with the Lovely One."

Dunn nails it: “...the sacred cannot be found unless you give up some old version of it. And when you do,...I swear there’ll be an emptiness it’ll take a lifetime to fill."

Do you know how to fill emptiness?

Right.

You don't.

(Don't try to fill emptiness, that is.)

What is passing through has nothing to do with full or empty. What is passing through is the sound of the name everyone longs to hear.

Sweet, sweet listening to us all!

We see what the sun sees before we see the sun.

Bald Mountain is seen by sun and wakes to sunlight descending from its peak. It is said the sun rises. Living with mountains, we learn that sun sleeps at night in mountain cave hidden by trees. At sundown dusk sunlight climbs Bald trailing shadow of Ragged like child dragging blanket and disappears. At sunrise dawn sunlight stretches at top of Bald, looks about, shakes itself from reveries, and climbs down mountain to backyards and dooryards, kitchen windows and zendo floors where ceder incense (in its own oblation of praise remembrance) curls aloft with joy in its gifting intention honoring ancestors, loved ones (known and unknown), a prayer for those suffering, good journey to those transitioning from this life, imploration of forgiveness, acceptance, and understanding nascent in all beings, and (finally) -- with humility -- assenting presence (given and received) in the sacred name of the Lovely One in our midst, a not-knowing trust we shall come to serve and see what This Lovely One longs to have us serve and see.

One another.

In dark night live those for whom
The world without alone is real;
In night darker still, for who
The world within alone is real.
The first leads to a life of action,
The second to a life of meditation.
But those who combine action with
Meditation cross the sea of death
Through action and enter into
Immortality through the practice of
Meditation.
So we have heard from the wise.
- Isha Upanishad

White rope is tied between top-carriers on blue beetle VW by barn door. Sunflower seed pours from saucepan to mesh feeder up from meditation cabin. Old dog slips and sits on icy crusts up path to unmoving brook leaving droppings of good food gone through. Cabin is empty quiet with bare attention.

Parents

What it must be like to be an angel
or a squirrel, we can imagine sooner.

The last time we go to bed good,
they are there, lying about darkness.

They dandle us once too often,
these friends who become our enemies.

Suddenly one day, their juniors
are as old as we yearn to be.

They get wrinkles where it is better
smooth, odd coughs, and smells.

It is grotesque how they go on
loving us, we go on loving them.

The effrontery, barely imaginable,
of having caused us. And of how.

Their lives: surely
we can do better than that.

This goes on for a long time. Everything
they do is wrong, and the worst thing,

they all do it, is to die,
taking with them the last explanation,

how we came out of the wet sea
or wherever they got us from,

taking the last link
of that chain with them.

Father, mother, we cry, wrinkling,
to our uncomprehending children and grandchildren.
(Poem: "Parents" by William Meredith, from The Cheer.)

My parents have gone up mountain and decided to remain there, hidden, these many years. They found a place to slumber and awaken where sun goes at night, that fantastical middle ground heaven of transparent invisibility we, in our seeming solidity, pass through, unknowing, every breath and every step we take. This is, I suppose, as it should be -- our given task to make our way through everything so to arrive at the very place we now are.

So, too, with This Lovely One (once called "God"), and what we have called the "Son" -- (now, The Realization of Loveliness in All Beings, Things, and Places).

Namely: We see what the Lovely One sees before we see the Lovely One.

We see what the Son sees before we see the Son.

We are invited to look. We are encouraged to see. We are graced with the never-ending hospitality of the ever-arriving Realization of Loveliness in All Beings, Things, and Places.

Dandle us, O Lovely One -- move us (we small children) up and down on your knees and in your arms in a playful way!

No explanation. No last link. No comprehending need to wrap up the Mystery in yesterday's newspaper and toss it in the corner.

Rather, walk us up and down the mountain -- as we, each and every one of us, do -- one step at a time, one fall, one getting up, one smile of silent companioning through and with one another making way. We walk with mountain as we walk (or roll, or sit, or bed) through each breath, one inhalation one exhalation at a time, one face at a time, one bite of breakfast, one sip of awareness at this time.

(Cat rushes in from -1 below zero cold barn. Wood burns in black wood stove. Smoke glances every direction rising from chimney, dances shadow sunlit snow on shy hill outside kitchen window. Solitary Nuthatch on tree trunk converses with sunlight about this and that.)

This is the way to go.

So we have heard from the wise.

(Sound of drape being opened from front room after steps announce a friend.)

When still, beads in hand, disappearance. When moving, beads against fingers, appearance. This is noticed with breath. Nothing has changed.

In stillness comes emptiness. In movement, form. Yet, one is the other, one is another -- there is no other.

This is solitude. When alone or with others, there is only form and emptiness. Form might lead us to make distinctions. Emptiness might lead us to make no distinctions. In solitude no one is led. No one follows. Only this. Only that. Only beads telling themselves.

Only you, only me, telling what we are, what we see, what we think, what we feel -- what we are doing, exactly, where we are.

It is not difficult to be a solitary. Not easy. There is only solitude, awareness of solitude, and each
sound in silence.

Empty yet aware, the original light shines spontaneously; tranquil yet responsive, the great function manifests. A wooden horse neighing in the wind does not walk the steps of the present moment; a clay ox emerging from the sea plows the springtime of the eon of emptiness. Understand? Where a jade man beckons, even greater marvel is on the way back.
- Hung-chih

Blustery temperature of -2F just after sunrise. Dalai Lama chant from middle room. Flowing water splashes in bath. Dog asleep under knit sweater placed over him at 2:45am before bed. Cat out inspecting keel of boat on stands by stone wall. One more audit for this morning after eight days wrapping up winter worker's comp group. Shop re-opens in few hours. Wood needs transport in.

When the coating of dew lifted, there on the surface of the desert was a thing delicate, powdery, as fine as hoar-frost on the ground. When they saw this, the sons of Israel said to one another, ‘What is that?’ not knowing what it was. ‘That’ said Moses to them ‘is the bread the Lord gives you to eat. This is the Lord’s command: Everyone must gather enough of it for his needs, one omer a head, according to the number of persons in your families. Each of you will gather for those who share his tent.’
The sons of Israel did this. They gathered it, some more, some less. When they measured in an omer what they had gathered, the man who had gathered more had not too much, the man who had gathered less had not too little. Each found he had gathered what he needed. (-- from Exodus 16:1 - 35)

An "omer" is a unit of measure. It is keeping count. We count. It is this counting, this recounting, that situates us in place, and in time.

I think of some names and faces I've worked with over the years, and for a brief moment am surprised I've ever been anywhere other than this place, doing anything other than the little or nothing I now do. After days of adding numbers, matching salaries, work classes, and names in languid drop into bottom line where one number equals another number, where some get more, some less, where (according to the standards of this world) your worth is in the count of dollars attached to your name -- we arrive at morning and hot water for tea.

Greenback Dollar
Some people say I'm a no-count
others say I'm no good
But I'm just a natural born travellin' man
Doin' what I think I should, oh yeah
doin' what I think I should.
(--opening lyrics of song by Kingston Trio)

Charlotte's driftwood sculpture hangs above non-functioning Dutch wedding clock. Attached prayer-flag has these words inscribed on it: "Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Padme Siddhi Hung ." It is the Vajra Guru Mantra.

Guru Rinpoche Puja
Guru Rinpoche means the Precious Master in Tibetan. He is also known as Guru Padmasambhava, a manifestation of Amitabha Buddha. He was born in a Lotus Flower, in Oddiyana Lake amid wondrous signs. Due to His great realization and spiritual powers, He created the conditions for the propagation of Vajrayana teachings in this world.

He is particularly powerful when negative emotions are stronger and confusions are greater. It is said that the more confusions and difficulties, the more powerful Guru Rinpoche is. Even great masters when faced with crisis, they too call upon Him for help.

It is particularly important and auspicious to join the puja offered to Him on the tenth day of the month (Tibetan Calendar) as He once said, “I will come and remove sufferings of the people in the world on the tenth day of every moon.”
Mantra : Om Ah Hung Benza Guru Padme Siddhi Hung
(--from Palyul Nyingma Buddhist Association, http://www.palyulsg.org/Puja%20Explanation.htm)

Cream of Wheat with yogurt, blueberries, Trappist plum and rhubarb-orange mixed in, is ready. Chai tea to follow.

Cesco walks out from front room with night shroud draped from haunches. Goes through barn.

I love this appearing and disappearing existence, this phenomenal world. Though, sometimes, it seems, illusion -- like the illusion war floats before and behind our eyes -- is far too powerful to ever be penetrated by truth and compassion. Illusion is not beautiful. Illusion, like that of war, is perversion of what is beautiful.

2 Suicide Bombers Kill 93 in Iraq
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 6, 2007, Filed at 11:09 a.m. ET, NYT
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Tuesday in a crowd of Shiite pilgrims streaming toward the holy city of Karbala, killing 93 people in one of several attacks targeting the faithful ahead of a weekend holiday.

The attack came a day after U.S. forces suffered their deadliest day in nearly a month -- nine American soldiers were killed in explosions north of Baghdad, the military said Tuesday.

The coordinated attack Tuesday happened on a main street in Hillah, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, said Capt. Muthana Khalid. He said 93 people were killed and 164 wounded.

An Associated Press cameraman at the scene said the bombers struck a crowd of pilgrims filing into a pedestrian area. Ambulances and Iraqi police were swarming the area and there was no immediate sign of U.S. forces.

U.S. forces continued their push Tuesday into Sadr City, home to 2.5 million of the city's poorest residents as well as fighters loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Some 600 American soldiers searched the neighborhood's northwest quadrant, knocking on doors and searching homes, according to an Associated Press reporter traveling with them.

What makes illusion so attractive is the way it seduces us into thinking of it as truth.

Saskia says at counter: "Right now, the illusions suck...but the beauties are beauteous."

Mu-ge, the cat, climbs chair to nestle in slanting kitchen sunlight.

I feel my pockets for beads.

Looking for a telling true.

An account worth living.

Matthew Kelty said Thomas Merton was a monk and a monk's monk. Nobody took much notice of him. He knew how to hang up the phone. He heard the ending before you did. When things ended, he ended and moved to next thing.

Don’t seek fame or fortune,
Glory or prosperity.
Just pass this life as is,
According to circumstances.
When the breath is gone,
Who is in charge?
After the death of the body,
There is only an empty name.
When your clothes are worn,
Repair them over and over;
When you have no food,
Work to provide.
How long can a phantom-like
Body last?
Would you increase your ignorance
For the sake of its idle concerns?
- Tung-shan

Merton can still inspire. Not the words about him, but the person as word's disguise falling off.

" When we in the West speak of "basic facts of existence" we tend immediately to conceive these facts as reducible to certain austere and foolproof propositions--logical statements that are guaranteed to have meaning because they are empirically verifiable. These are what Bertrand Russel called "atomic facts." Now for Zen it is inconceivable that the basic facts of existence should be able to be stated in any proposition however atomic. For Zen, from the moment fact is transferred to a statement it is falsified. One ceases to grasp the naked reality of experience, and one grasps a form of words instead....
The whole aim of Zen is not to make foolproof statements about experience, but to come to direct grips with reality without the mediation of logical verbalizing. "
(- Thomas Merton, in the introduction to John C.H. Wu's -The Golden Age of Zen)

Wind chimes are quite convincing there are strong gusts trying to get by them. When wind climbs on, pipes give back sound.

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)

Not much too complicated about these words.

Let them stand.

Then, move on.

Sound.

Falling off.

I declare peace in the name of citizens of America and the whole world. I order all foreign troops out of countries they occupy. I grant amnesty to terrorists of all the ugly acts committed in the names of democracy, jihad, and the good Lord.

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you. We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, in your various activities, what do you lack? The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Ok. You are free. Go home. Come home. Live a real life, for heaven's sake, no -- for earth's sake.

You will not fear the terror of the night,
nor the arrow that flies by day;
nor the plague that walks in the shadows,
nor the death that lays waste at noon.
(--from Psalm 91)

Turn off the surveillance cameras. Take off the grenades and clips. Put down the listening devices.

Look at one another. Not with fear. Look at one another with twinkling humor and cheerful acceptance.

We love one another.

Remember?

Too wet the snow. Too heavy. Too frozen from after-rain temperature drop past midnight, the crust. Bruce is called to plow.

When you far transcend all patterns and assessments, and the arrow points meet, without ever having any objective other than Truth, then you receive the marvel of the Way, become a successor of the ancestral teachers, and continue the transmission of the Lamp. You cut off the path of ideation and go beyond thinking and escape from emotional consciousness, to reach a clear, open state of freedom that sweeps all before it.
- Yuanwu (1063-1135)

The pattern of day matches that of thought. I wake. Take clipper machine to head, letting fall excess hair from scalp and beard. Re-heat coffee. Try to remove snow. Return through barn. Make circle of lights for front window. Hang Nan Merrill's Friends of Silence from small bungee attached to toilet paper holder. Order business cards online. Eat farina Saskia makes. Walk to brook through deep snow with three walking meditation companions. Bring in Charlotte's footstool from barn. Stoke wood stove.

About thought -- I don't know what to think.

There are those who despair of finding any meaning in life: they commend the boldness of those who deny all significance to human existence in itself, and seek to impose a total meaning on it only from within themselves.
But in the face of the way the world is developing today, there is an ever increasing number of people who are asking the most fundamental questions or are seeing them with a keener awareness: What is man? What is the meaning of pain, of evil, of death, which still persist in spite of such great progress? What is the use of those successes, achieved at such a cost? What can man contribute to society, what can he expect from society? What will come after this life on earth?
(-- From the pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world of the Second Vatican Council; Man's deeper questionings)

The circle of colored lights in front window replaces triangle from extended Nativity season. This is the circle of emptiness. It is also round crown of thorns this Lenten season. Passersby (at 50 mph down hill) will hardly note the shift. We will -- at each passing, bending bow, enroute up or down stairs, each visit to Cesco in front room. And at morning or evening silence on zafu, the mere light symbolizing whatever mind arrives with, wherever stillness wishes to reside.

Snow
At every hand there are moments we
cannot quite grasp or understand. Free

to decide, to interpret, we watch rain
streaking down the window, the drain

emptying, leaves blown by a cold wind.
At least we sense a continuity in

such falling away. But not with snow.
It is forgetfulness, what does not know,

has nothing to remember in the first place.
Its purpose is to cover, to leave no trace

of anything. Whatever was there before—
the worn broom leaned against the door

and almost buried now, the pile of brick,
the bushel basket filling up with thick,

gathering whiteness, half sunk in a drift—
all these things are lost in the slow sift

of the snow's falling. Now someone asks
if you can remember—such a simple task—

the time before you were born. Of course
you cannot, nor can I. Snow is the horse

that would never dream of running away,
that plods on, pulling the empty sleigh

while the tracks behind it fill, and soon
everything is smooth again. No moon,

no stars, to guide your way. No light.
Climb up, get in. Be drawn into the night.
(Poem "Snow" by Jared Carter, from Poetry)

And for a brief while, no trace of anything save breath of cosmos exhaling swirls of forgetfulness against everything.

There will be an eclipse of full moon tonight.

Like us, when everything lines up, something disappears. Earth will block what celestial light gives itself to lunar surface. But only for a brief while. Light will resurface.

When thought goes dark, for however brief a time, rest easy.

Snow melts. Forgetfulness fades. Darkness gives way.

And light, reflecting off snow, will take our breath once more.

A monk is someone called to seek the Alone. For some the Alone is called God. For some, Awakened One. And for some, the Alone is another. It doesn't matter whether you think of yourself as a Christian, Buddhist, or Hindu monk -- or even a monk of Nature, or a monk of the Everyday Ordinary -- the commonality is being a monk. Everything is directed to, and follows from, the call.

Mountain Stones

Rough were the mountain stones,
And the path very narrow.
When I reached the temple,
Bats were in the dusk.
I climbed to the hall,
Sat on the steps,
And drank in the rain washed air

On the old wall were Buddhas
Finely painted.
The old priest brought a light to
Illumine them.
He spread the bed,
Dusted the mats, and made
My supper ready.

At midnight, while lying there
Not hearing even an insect,
The mountain moon entered the door.
At dawn I left the mountain,
And alone, I lost my way;
In and out, up and down,
While a heavy mist made brook
And mountain green and purple
Brightening everything.

I passed pines and oaks which ten
People could not circle.
I tread pebbles barefoot in swift moving
Water, its ripples purify the ear,
While a soft breeze blew.
What if I spent my old age here,
And never went back home?
(--Poem byHan Yu)

Raimundo Panikkar said in The Silence of God: The Answer of the Buddha: "Buddhism cannot really and truly be 'spoken of.' It must be prayed." (-p,150) His words stand, as well, for God in theistic monasticism.

Monks pray with breath, hands, and feet. The monastery is everyday reality. Mind listens, watches, and engages the revealing reality of the call. The call to attend is the call of the Alone to remember and heal what has become separated and broken.

There's nothing special about monks and the monastic life. No special hoods or sandals, tunic or liturgical vestment. No special hand gestures, bows, or posture. And no special formulas, prayers, or mantras to repeat.

The call to be alone with the Alone is the invitation to be the true reality only you can be in the circumstances of your life. No need to go to a special building or a special enclosure. God, or the Alone, or True Reality is everywhere.

Break

We put the puzzle together piece
by piece, loving how one curved
notch fits so sweetly with another.
A yellow smudge becomes
the brush of a broom, and two blue arms
fill in the last of the sky.
We patch together porch swings and autumn
trees, matching gold to gold. We hold
the eyes of deer in our palms, a pair
of brown shoes. We do this as the child
circles her room, impatient
with her blossoming, tired
of the neat house, the made bed,
the good food. We let her brood
as we shuffle through the pieces,
setting each one into place with a satisfied
tap, our backs turned for a few hours
to a world that is crumbling, a sky
that is falling, the pieces
we are required to return to.
(--Poem by Dorianne Laux)

In the dooryard, blue snow scoop leans against wet load where I left it for a cup of coffee. Which led, of course, to mulling the Alone. As it is, snow turns to rain and will freeze. Strawberry cereal bar and nut/fruit bar wrappers, like silver seed casings discarded, signal emptiness at brown pillow on white cushion by hibiscus tree in middle room.

Gusts rampage through tree limbs before rattling side of house.

I suppose it is useless to consider oneself a monk. But that is what one-self is, alone as the Alone is about this existence in this world of being.

This is our prayer.

To see, and love.

Who and what.

We are.

With.

We are quite far away. We try to comprehend nearness.

"The most distant galaxies we know of today are about ten billion light years away from us." (--(p.506, in Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder)

What speed is spiritual light compared to physical light?

Consciousness is an ice pond:
Though it is all water,
It needs the energy of the sun to melt.
When ordinary people are awakened,
They are Buddhas;
But they rely on the power of
Dharma for cultivation.
When ice melts,
Then water flows and moistens;
Only then can it perform its
Irrigating function.
When delusion is ended,
Then the mind is open and penetrating,
Responsively manifesting the function
Of the light of spiritual powers.
- Guifeng Zongmi (780-841)

It flummoxes the mind to try to apprehend the distance from almost any here to there: earth to sun is 93 million miles.

If you return to the Lord your God, if you obey his voice with all your heart and soul in everything I enjoin on you today, you and your children, then the Lord your God will bring back your captives and will have pity on you.
(--Deuteronomy 30:2 - 3)

The pity is our ignorance. It is daunting to try to imagine the Lord God of the universe, multiverse, cosmos, and all manner of size and distance combined to the sum of 10 to the 15th power -- having any interest in this planet, these times, our lives, today's difficulties, right now someone's prayer for God's intervention in their life. But it is that ignorance, that unknowing inclination to reach into sacred mystery -- both with its perversity and sweetness -- which singularly engages mind and imagination.

A New Lifestyle

People in this town drink too much
coffee. They're jumpy all the time. You
see them drinking out of their big plastic
mugs while they're driving. They cut in
front of you, they steal your parking places.
Teenagers in the cemeteries knocking over
tombstones are slurping café au lait.
Recycling men hanging onto their trucks are
sipping espresso. Dogcatchers running down
the street with their nets are savoring
their cups of mocha java. The holdup man
entering a convenience store first pours
himself a nice warm cup of coffee. Down
the funeral parlor driveway a boy on a
skateboard is spilling his. They're so
serious about their coffee, it's all they
can think about, nothing else matters.
Everyone's wide awake but looks incredibly
tired.
(Poem: "A New Lifestyle" by James Tate from Memoir of the Hawk.)

It's going to snow big tomorrow, they say. Thank God for Heather and Mark's gift of Oso Negro Coffee from Nelson, BC, Canada, which is 3153.4 miles from kitchen and barn door. That, and our blue sled-shovel for non-lifting snow moving.

We bought milk in Gardiner on the way home tonight. It will interpenetrate morning coffee.

Sun warms. Ice breaks from roof.

The triple world with its irritating vexations is like a house afire; who could bear to stay there long, willingly suffering perpetual torment? If you want to avoid going round and round in circles, nothing compares to seeking Buddhahood. If you want to seek Buddhahood, Buddha is mind. Need mind be sought afar?
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Writing to a man in prison out of state, I say:

I'm not of the opinion that we are going anyplace -- (as in destination determined by time and space) -- but rather that we are merely going (i.e. moving) in a way that is in and of itself.

My sense is that: we make other; we make two. We punish other for what we've made; we suffer the delusions of the "two's" we cultivate. We try to kill the other (physically and intellectually, even morally) because we know the distinction is illusory and we want to kill the illusion.

I think (if I might be so permitted) that wholeness is peace -- and we do wish for peace. But Gandhi was right -- we have to be the peace we want. If a man understands the terrible truth that he is both the question and the answer existence is asking and asking for -- then he is at the beginning of the spiritual life, the beginning of meditation and contemplation. He nears the origin.

Where am I? Wandering, nearly lost, but ok.

How are you?
(- wfh to TC, 27feb07)

We watch for one another. We watch out for one another. We watch as revelation itself watches.

I rely on you, Lord, my spirit relies on your promise;
my soul hopes in the Lord, more than the watchman for daybreak.
(--from Psalm 130)

These days, working at home, are quiet.

Morning walking meditation with Cesco and Mu-ge up to frozen brook, over to Sally's land, and climbing trunks of trees (Mu-ge's practice).

The damp freeze of dawn light. Crunch, crunch, slide, we ascend and descend. I pray at Sally's land we might be able to purchase it for hermitage guest space. Bald and Ragged Mountains listen to morning broken with words. At cabin door, open, I bow. All is well in stillness inside and out. I am grateful for morning, for unmoving iced brook, for two walking sangha brothers, for fallen trees, cold ears, legs that allow each step, Holy Spirit's listening prayer, ski-pole for balance, smoke coming from kitchen chimney, scattered seed-casings along path, and for single sneeze here on sofa telling I did not have warm jacket for the meditation. (I thought I was only letting dog out to pee.) Back in front room, two sea-jerky strips later, Cesco walks the arc of an old dog curling down-spiral to cream rug, exhaling, snout on tan and black mat, as furnace ignites below us assuring 61 degrees will be attempted one more time.

Q: Please point out true mind.

A: You need to have complete confidence and effective determination. Gently quiet your mind; make you own body and mind unfettered and serene, not entangled in any objects at all. Sit straight, accurately aware, and tune your breathing so that it is properly adjusted. Examine your mind to see it as not being inside, not being outside, and not being in between. Observe it calmly, carefully, and objectively; when you master this, you will clearly see that the mind’s consciousness moves in a flow, like a current of water, like heat waves rising endlessly.
- Hongren (602-675)

Mu-ge purrs on lap and chest. Faint bells chime beyond door and stairs. Footsteps sound from second floor. Window drapes scrape against rings along metal bar. Cars pass down and up Barnestown Road. Nose blows. Flushing water. Steps on carpeted steps.

Saskia enters in silence. She gives Cesco massage. He limps body and gazes at her with what seems loving trust. Afterwards she is reading from writings of Zen Master Seung Sahn, asking about Kuan Seum Bosal, also known as Avalokitesvara in Sanskrit, the bodhisattva of compassion.

Kwan Seum is known as the Goddess of Compassion & Healing which is highly reminiscent of what Catholics think of Mary. Kwan Seum roughly translates as "The One who Hears the Cries of the World" as is said of Mary in the Catholic tradition. Both traditions know that she is the Divine Mother we all long for: merciful, tender, compassionate, loving, protecting, caring, healing, and wise. She quietly comes to the aid of her children everywhere.
(-- from http://www.koreanbuddhism.net )

Cesco sleeps by curved couch on other side of room. Tea water boils. English muffins will split and toast in oven above bread box. There are just a few pieces of cut wood by barn door.

"Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts - but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. Myth tells you what the experience is."
(--Joseph Campbell, from The Power of Myth)

A sangha sister writes to say:

Sometimes it does hurt to ask. Lately there has been a lot of hurt for the asking. Sometimes without even asking. And people who say that we should accept things as they are rather than try to change things are probably pretty comfortable while they say that. Because it is horseshit when applied to actual life. AA has it better: Change what I can.

Experience is a fine teacher. Horseshit is also a fine teacher. Our education is unending.

I would like to learn how to meditate without meditating, serve without serving, love without loving, and listen without ever exhausting listening. (I left out two words in each of the prior three clauses.)

If water boils, it is best to steep tea. Not to let it, nor yourself, evaporate. (Rather: incarnate, incorporate, transcend-and-include.)

Change well.

Hear well.

Be current; rise endlessly!

Glance away to see straight. Sometimes, in the dark, it is easier to see something if you glance away from where you think it actually is. It is periphery that reveals what is at center.

This raises a question: Is the center also at periphery? And, are the words 'center' and 'periphery' only holding places for passing awareness until the nameless is seen as it is?

It is as though you have an eye
That sees all forms
But does not see itself.
This is how your mind is.
Its light penetrates everywhere
And engulfs everything,
So why does it not know itself?
- Foyan

'Itself' is unknowable, isn't it? We seem to be only able to acquaint ourselves with things surrounding the arteries of the 'itself', not the very heart of 'itself' as it is.

If, (and when), we come to see things-as-they-are, will what is seen be silence and stillness, graceful movement and slow rhythmic pace -- the melting February snow from rooftops lain upon by warming sun in late morning?

Tell me -- is what we call God anywhere else than wherever God is?

God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord. To Abraham and Isaac and Jacob I appeared as El Shaddai; I did not make myself known to them by my name THE LORD.
(--from Exodus 6:2 - 13)

There are times it seems that each one of us is perfectly placed where we are. Right here in this room. That window over there. The photograph standing in simple askew. The book wedged between six standing volumes of A Story of History, (three upside down, three right side up)-- it's title, God is No More , a wonderful, equivocal, and ambiguous title. Perfectly placed.

Let us show each other God's generosity
Recognise to whom you owe the fact that you exist, that you breathe, that you understand, that you are wise, and, above all, that you know God and hope for the kingdom of heaven and the vision of glory, now darkly as in a mirror but then with greater fullness and purity. You have been made a son [or daughter] of God, co-heir with Christ. Where did you get all this, and from whom?
Let me turn to what is of less importance: the visible world around us. What benefactor has enabled you to look out upon the beauty of the sky, the sun in its course, the circle of the moon, the countless number of stars, with the harmony and order that are theirs, like the music of a harp? Who has blessed you with rain, with the art of husbandry, with different kinds of food, with the arts, with houses, with laws, with states, with a life of humanity and culture, with friendship and the easy familiarity of kinship?
(--From a Sermon by Saint Gregory Nazianzen, Office of Readings, 1st Monday in Lent)

When love comes visiting -- when mind sits off in corner, and heart cracks window of stuffy room -- there is a quiet revelation that each one we know is the delightful manifestation of divine reality in this existence. When this happens, there is an immediate need to forgive ourselves our mundane ignorance, our failure to recognize and remember the origin and continuity of our sacred communion with The-One-We-Call-God.

There are times following that immediate need which seem to want to know why we so often forget to remember and blindly don't recognize the circumstances surrounding the miserable experience befuddling our heart and mind. Something, someone -- has gone missing, presumed (what? go ahead, say it) -- dead and gone. It feels at those times we are investigating our own dismal disappearance, our own disturbing demise.

The Investigation

There were some things I would never know —
I realized that, but I wanted to understand
as much as I could before I let it go.

I couldn't stop making phone calls to Chicago —
to his doctor, his insurance agent, his doorman;
the coroner, who told me more than I wanted to know;

to his psychiatrist, who made a show
of sympathy and dismissed out of hand
my speculations — but I wouldn't let them go.

The detective sounded weary, which was no
surprise: it was 2 a.m. He patiently explained
what he could, then sighed, "You'll never really know."

I weighed the possibilities, made lists, wrote memos
to myself: was it spontaneous or planned —
and for how long? I couldn't let it go.

I kept calling my brother and sister to let them know
what I had figured out. Each time they listened
but then told me what I had always known:
we would never understand. I had to let it go.
(Poem: "The Investigation" by Jeffrey Harrison, from Incomplete Knowledge: Poems.)

This life is filled with incomplete knowledge. Our memories easily fade. Faces become strangers. Feet and legs unsteady. Yesterday's confidant turns their back to divulge intimacies to another; last week's confidence falls through suddenly thin ice. Divorces carry balloons as well as mourning shawl. Delight at getting the position means day after day showing up at work with one heel dug into dirt.

Still, we go on.

Why?

Look over there.

See here.

Warm cabin zendo. Candles and incense. Moonlight on snow. Meditative sitting, walking, chanting. Bald and Ragged Mountains sit as strong as those in cabin.

Thought Into Action
Remember that your thoughts are transformed into speech and action in order to bring the expected result. Thought translated into action is capable of producing a tangible result. You should always speak and do things with mindfulness of loving kindness.... For all practical purposes, if all of your enemies are well, happy and peaceful, they would not be your enemies. If they are free from problems, pain, suffering, affliction, neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., they would not be your enemies. Your practical solution toward your enemies is to help them to overcome their problems, so you can live in peace and happiness. In fact, if you can, you should fill the minds of all your enemies with loving kindness and make all of them realize the true meaning of peace, so you can live in peace and happiness. The more they are in neurosis, psychosis, fear, tension, anxiety, etc., the more trouble, pain, and suffering they can bring to the world. If you could convert a vicious and wicked person into a holy and saintly individual you would perform a miracle. Let us cultivate adequate wisdom and loving kindness within ourselves to convert evil minds to saintly minds.
--Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English

O for a place to be real, to say what is on one's mind, to reveal one's heart, to feel one's body at home!

Where is that gemütliche place of natural acceptance? Where is our true home?

The world is fractured by criticism and denunciation.

Home is healing attentiveness and listening presence.

May all come to dwell in their true home!

If I happen to get lost, don't find me too quickly.

Yellow bags are lifted and tossed over railing into hopper at transfer station. It used to be called the dump. Everything is recycling. It used to be called garbage.

In Sara's story at Poetry, Tea, and Literature in the shop this afternoon, she wrote of someone who's insulted the character, "He was someone to be polite to." We used to say, "I'm going to knock his lights out." A lot has changed. There are people who you think you want to hurt. You might not. And for noble reasons. Still, the impulse is there.

If you have any desire to surpass others, or any thought of your own ability, this is egoism and possessiveness. These are sicknesses in the context of nirvana, so The Nirvana Sutra says, “Space can contain everything, but space does not entertain the thought that it can contain everything.” This is a metaphor for the disappearance of egoism and possessiveness, by which you proceed to indestructible concentration.
- Hongren (602-675)

Cesco walks into kitchen. Takes water. Turns, walks out. Saskia works at counter the makings of supper. Mu-ge is out in the barn. I am mulling about impulse and how many men I've known who've not mulled, but let rip into the fog of substances, anger, and immediate satisfaction.

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth–beware of heartless them
(given the scapel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.

All lose,whole find
(--Poem by E.E. Cummings)

What have you found?

Concentrate now.

One and zero. Something and nothing. Form and emptiness. Wholeness and partiality, fractionality.

It all belongs to all of us. It all belongs to God. We ought not accept what is not itself whole and entire. Don't be sold fear. Fear uses partiality and fractionality to lure us away from what is whole and undivided.

The Invention of Fractions

God himself made the whole numbers: everything else
is the work of man.
—Leopold Kronnecker

God created the whole numbers:
the first born, the seventh seal,
Ten Commandments etched in stone,
the Twelve Tribes of Israel —
Ten we've already lost —
forty days and forty nights,
Saul's ten thousand and David's ten thousand.
'Be of one heart and one mind' —
the whole numbers, the counting numbers.

It took humankind to need less than this;
to invent fractions, percentages, decimals.
Only humankind could need the concepts
of splintering and dividing,
of things lost or broken,
of settling for the part instead of the whole.

Only humankind could find the whole numbers,
infinite as they are, to be wanting;
though given a limitless supply,
we still had no way
to measure what we keep
in our many-chambered hearts
(--Poem: "The Invention of Fractions" by Jessica Goodfellow, from A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland.)

Let's clarify something important. We are not ignorant. Nor are we innocent. We are merely fearful of truth. Truth means nothing is disclosed. Are we ready to experience nothing? We have spent lifetimes loathing and fearing nothing. And now we are being asked to step away from fear.

Is it possible that we have managed to ignore God because we are unwilling to disclose the wholeness of our very nature, the frontside and backside, inside and outside, upside and downside of exactly what we are? Light and shadow? Help and hindrance? Good and bad? Is our hiddenness and incompleteness what keeps us back from experiencing God experiencing us? Do we actually think we are better than God?

By all accounts, it was Luther's early "theology of the cross" that most decisively influenced Heidegger. It was the "young Luther" whom Heidegger explicitly acknowledged as a tutor in these matters (G63 5/4).¹⁰ The "theology of the cross" is Luther's designation for any theological position, such as his own, that repudiates the classic tradition of philosophical monotheism, which he called the "theology of glory."¹¹ Luther worries, first of all, that philosophical monotheism actually misses the real message of Christianity. As he puts it in the "Heidelberg Disputation" from 1518, "The theologian of glory does not recognize, along with the Apostle, the crucified and hidden God alone (1 Corinthians 2:2)" (LW31 227). More than that, however, Luther worries that the "theology of glory" reflects the same drive for human self-aggrandizement that surfaces in the more familiar phenomenon of the "righteousness of works." More specifically, the "theology of glory" is the issue of a perverted desire to determine the nature of God independently of God's own free self-disclosure in the "foolishness" of the cross.¹² In the end, the "theology of glory" puts itself above God, dictating who and what God is and what God can do. Luther writes, "But alas, even now very many people think in an unworthy way about God and claim in bold and impudent treatises that God is this way or that way. ... They so raise their own opinion to the skies that they judge God with no more trouble or fear than a poor cobbler judges his leather" (LW25 167).

God's free self-disclosure is locked into the straitjacket of "human metaphysical rules" (LW29 111). The partisans of the "theology of glory," Luther tells us, "want to be like God, and they want their thoughts to be not beneath God but beside Him" (LW25 366).

The central concept that Luther uses to undermine the "theology of glory" is that of the "hidden God" (deus absconditus). By "hiddenness," Luther clearly does not mean "nonexistence." He tells us what he means quite clearly in the lectures on Romans: "[The work of God] is never hidden in any other way than under that which appears contrary to our conceptions and ideas" (LW25 366). The "hidden God" is contrasted with the "naked" God longed for by theologians of glory, that is, God as an object of immediate apprehension. For Luther, the "hidden God" reveals himself, paradoxically, in the suffering humanity of Christ.¹³
...
Footnote 13:
¹³ In order to remove the primary cause of alienation between humanity and God, that is, human pride, God reveals himself in "his human nature, weakness, foolishness" (LW31 52). God must be seen in the "humility and shame of the cross" (LW31 52–53). The God "hidden" in the humanity of Christ is elsewhere called "the God who is not seen" (LW29 111).
(--excerpt from "On the Track of the Fugitive Gods: Heidegger, Luther, Hölderlin," by Benjamin D. Crowe, University of Utah, in The Journal of Religion, Volume 87, Number 2, April 2007)

The hidden God isn't hidden from itself.

This is why we are so befuddled.

God's self-disclosure is the nearside of one's own true self.

Unafraid. And alone. We look through God as God looks through us.

Word must become body. Body must become word. When so, speech is act. When so, act is graceful silence. When so, graceful silence is eloquent articulation of what is longing to be revealed in the very next act, word, moment, and face.

We are -- foolishly -- one and zero in the presence of one another.

Is the presence of the Great Mystery, undisclosed -- not made known -- but only integral to, in, with and through us?

Is Christ suffering humanity?

Jack asked the circle tonight at Thursday Conversation, "What is it each one of us fears?

I mask my fear with anger. Fear, for me, is failure to question.

Few people believe their
Inherent mind is Buddha.
Most will not take this seriously,
And therefore are cramped.
They are wrapped up in illusions, cravings,
Resentments, and other afflictions,
All because they love the cave of ignorance.
- Fenyang

What I fear is ignorance -- mine and others'. I don't fear innocence. 'Not knowing' is devoutly to be wished. No, I fear ignorance.

Jack had said earlier, "We don't know what is experiencing what!" (Words have palpable reality.) For me "what is" is God...experiencing "what", that is, the question, or, the questioner.

As a hermit/monastic, I long to live my life as an open question. This entails calling things into question. (Hence my difficulty with ignorance and arrogance -- unquestioning, not wanting to know enough to warrant thought, feeling, or action.)

If fear is failure to question, then I fear "what is" not experiencing "what." If I am "what" I am, then without the "what" there is nothing there to experience. "What" is the question. I am the "what" in this moment in this place in this form.

Ignorance and arrogance -- my own, and that of others -- is my fear.

I cloak my fear in anger.

There is much to be angry about.

And a second time the voice spoke from heaven, “What God has made clean, you have no right to call profane”. This was repeated three times, before the whole of it was drawn up to heaven again.
(--from Acts 11:1 - 18)

Down from Lincoln, today in East Bangor, alongside Maple Grove Cemetery, Cesco and I walked out a broad field on snowmobile track, behind the Baptist Church. The enormous field was snow filled and ice crusted. The old dog is good company.

Each one of us is God's question.

Let God experience this question.

"Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust --
Thou art --
Remember..."

It's her own version. That's what Saskia says making a sign with her fingers on my forehead before leaving for Pittsfield, Newport, Bangor, and Gardiner Maine.

Remember what? The historical Jesus? Or something equally compelling? What is that something?

That 'something' is the ongoing interpenetration and interlocution that being-in-the-world necessitates in order for authentic revelation to take place.

In other words, we are. First and foremost -- we are. As is, (we hold) -- God. We posit an incomplete perfection wherein each one of us is absolutely necessary for the perfect incompletion to move with the vital grace of God toward wherever it is the perfect and incomplete move toward with imperfect and complete mutual intention and assistance. It doesn't end. Life is without end. Suffering will end (so we pray). The world might and might not end. It depends on our perception and conception of 'world.'

Here's what William McNamara says:

WIE: Could you explain exactly how you define "the world" on the spiritual path?

WM: I find it necessary to distinguish between the world and what I call the "Mpire"—the world of the three M's: mediocrity, mendacity, and manipulation. The world that is the earth, the gift God has given us—I would never renounce that. All I want to do is embrace that and love it and become more and more a part of it—that objective, wonderful world.

But the Mpire is that aspect of the world that has been used and twisted out of shape in order to provide the power, pleasure, and prestige of human beings. The net result of that, down through the centuries, has been an unreal world. The Mpire is an unreal world. It's made up of a network of mediocrity, manipulation, and mendacity.

The whole sociopolitical world we live in is dominated by mendacity—the big lie. The big lie is coming through television, through magazines (not enlightenment magazines but through many magazines) through propaganda, ideologies. There is some truth in it, but it's the big lie because it doesn't reveal the ultimate. And it doesn't evaluate contemporary situations in terms of the ultimate. Therefore it goes askew.

Then there's mediocrity. Everything is worked out into a system so that there are no surprises. And God is surprise. God is beyond our conceptions, our images, our big to-dos. If we are not being surprised constantly, it means we are out of touch with the real, and we've worked things out simply to be manageable, to provide us with more power, more convenience, more comfort.

The third aspect is manipulation. I think the biggest problem of society today is that we let too many things happen to us. We've allowed ourselves to become usable items for government, for church, for whatever the big power structures may be. That's manipulation. It happens in respectable, subtle ways. First we allow television into the home. Then we allow computers, and then because there is pornography on the Internet, we get used to pornography in the home. It just becomes absurd, but we've gotten used to it. We are shrinking humanly. We're not being divinized; we're not being transformed. It happens little by little as we let too many dehumanizing things happen to us, so that we can no longer take a stand against it.

The term I like to use to describe that whole phenomenon is "pretty poison." It's not a spectacular kind of evil. Pretty poison is the kind of evil that killed Christ. It was not the bad men of that age, not the state, not the church. It wasn't the notoriously evil men but the pretty poison that seeped into the best institutions and the best people. Pretty poison is that kind of evil that seeps unnoticeably, imperceptibly into our nicest people and our best institutions and just disorients them, derails them. It's a respectable kind of evil.
(--in What is Enlightenment magazine, "THE e'M'pire", An interview with Father William McNamara, by Carter Phipps) http://www.wie.org/j18/mcnam.asp?pf=1

It is clear many in our midst, many of our 'betters' have nearly perfected this respectable kind of evil. They have their version of 'world' -- they have their version of 'Christianity.' They call it "Don't think, don't feel, don't act." They call it "Terror and perpetual war on terror." They call it "It's for your own sake, for your security, for your protection," (as they take all three from us.) And they call it "We know better than you; trust us." These political strategies operate in both secular and religious minds.

If trust means relinquishing inquiry, action, and common sense, if someone's notion of mind means abandoning heartfelt thought and clear compassionate thinking -- then don't mind them. Mind yourself. Practice cultivating a sound, sane, and sensible mind.

Calm yourself, quiet yourself,
Master your senses.
Look right into the source of mind,
Always keep it shining bright,
Clear and pure.
Do not give rise to an indifferent mind.
- Hongren (602-675)

Mind sees this movement through and through.

It is Ash Wednesday. The story is being told. Our story is being told. Common here is 'being, told.'

For in our history I know redemption only in fragments which are experienced personally and collectively; in which, however, Jesus remains the critical and productive promise of an undefinable definitive future salvation. Nowhere do I see signs of an 'objectively completed' redemption. Yet I believe that our action in helping people, healing them and bringing them political liberation, fragmentary though it may seem, has definitive value in and of itself, even when it fails. It is precisely to this that the living God will grant an even greater future. 'He gives a new face to darkness and light, to all that we do.'
Even in his[ or her] Christian view of grace and redemption, the Christian will have to remain aware of his [or her] human condition.
--p.25, in Christ, The Experience of Jesus as Lord, by Edward Schillebeeckx, c.1977, trans by John Bowden, 1981)

This is our daily, ordinary, journey.

Being present is the way, there and here. Presence transcends mere physical attendance. Presence also transforms that which is beyond physical into a concretion of real and felt re-membering, one permeated with remembrance.

Correspondence is the conversation of contemplation.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
(--1st stanza of poem Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot)

The usual reign is conducting self-immolation by using other bodies at its pyre. This holy season of Lent must redesign the mind that destroys others to uplift self. It is a brutish and hellish pattern of deceit and dishonor. We must begin with the resemblance of such thinking and behavior within ourselves. This is mortification -- coming to the end of death-designs on living beings.

For this practice, we need help.

For this practice we listen to the conclusion of Eliot's poem:

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
(--final stanza of poem Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot)

We are.

Not to be...

Separated.

Remember!

The Tibetan Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche says that: "Empty cognizance is our nature."

If that is so, what would 'sinning against nature' be?

(Morning cool kitchen, looking out at green hanging bird-feeder, not a taker in sight.)

Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by
Those labels and slogans,
Both those used in
Ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your
Perception of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly.
- Linji (d.867)

At Meetingbrook we seem to fall between things and labels. Like perpetual inner ear imbalance, there's a dizzying awareness that soon the plunge will irretrieve itself. (Saskia tells of her fall on razor-slick second brook while assessing height of rising ice under plank footbridge, nearly going the unmoving cascading distance.)

A form of hermit-monastic life that wanders through the thin place between men/women, solitude/community, work/play, prayer/politics, monastery/marketplace, Buddhism/Catholic Christianity, hidden/open, conversation/silence, listening/engaging, and this/that. (Red squirrel runs down hill to splay of empty shells, foraging what has fallen from feeder. Climbs to source.)

Empty cognizance is our nature. We cannot separate one aspect of it from the other. Empty means “not made out of anything whatsoever”; our nature has always been this way. Yet, while being empty, it has the capacity to cognize, to experience, to perceive. It’s not so difficult to comprehend this; to get the theory that this empty cognizance is buddha nature, self-existing wakefulness. But to leave it at that is the same as looking at the buffet and not eating anything. Being told about buddha nature but never really making it our personal experience will not help anything. It’s like staying hungry. Once we put the food in out mouth, we discover what the food tastes like. This illustrates the dividing line between idea and experience.
(--from article, "As the Clouds Vanish, Training in the Dzogchen Approach to Enlightenment", by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920-1996). He was a master in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Issue September 29, 2006)

Looking beneath things, or beyond things, should come with a warning label: "Any sighting beneath or beyond things is likely to upset your balance. Do not tear off this label."

In the same way, if we have correct understanding, the moment we apply what our master teaches, we recognize our nature. That there is no entity whatsoever to be seen is called “emptiness.” The ability to know that mind essence is called “cognizance.” If it were only blank, bare space, what or who would know that it is “blank” or “empty” or “nothing”? There would be no knowing. These two aspects, empty and cognizant, are indivisible. This becomes obvious to us the very moment that we look; it is no longer hidden. Then it is not just an intellectual idea of how emptiness is; it becomes a part of our experience. At that moment, meditation training can truly begin.--Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

(Saskia washes dishes that camped out in sink last night. Water stretches to boil in tea pot on stove. Drip from faucet, warm air from floor register, trash can from under sink receives bits from drainer.)

We call this training "meditation," but it is not an act of meditating in the common sense of the word. There is no emptying the mind essence by trying to maintain an artificially imposed vacant state. Why? Because mind essence is already empty. Similarly, we do not need to make this empty essence cognizant. All you have to do is leave it as it is. In fact, there is nothing whatsoever to do, so we cannot even call this an act of meditating. There is an initial recognition, and from then on we do not have to be clever about it or try to improve it in any way whatsoever. Just let it be as it naturally is -— that is what is called meditation, or more accurately “nonmeditation.” What is crucial is not to be distracted for even a single instant. Once recognition has taken place, undistracted nonmeditation is the key point of practice.
--Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

It will be Oregon Chai Tea with toasted English muffins for today's travel to Ellsworth and Bar Harbour. Cesco will be at elbow between us in green car. Saskia will go to collect numbers; dog and I will wander collecting fragrances, sights, and sounds. Time will pass. Sky will be "Mostly cloudy with scattered flurries," (I thought it read scattered "flumes." A flume is "A narrow gorge, usually with a stream flowing through it.")

“Distracted” means that once the attention wavers and loses itself, thoughts and emotions can take place. Distraction is the return of all these kinds of thoughts, in which the continuity of nondual awareness is lost. The training is simply to recognize again. Once recognition takes place, there is nothing more to do; simply allow mind essence to be. That is how the cloud-covers gradually dissolve. --Tulku

If the slash between all the complementary arrivals begins to dissolve (this/that, cloistered/peripatetic, practicing monk/non-practicing monk) -- what would be seen, what would change? (Squirrel, the nervous one, finally makes it to roof of green feeder -- but issues his staccato high-pitch chattering declarations of his presence. It's a long ritual before taking seed. Much like us!)

The ultimate state is totally free from any obscuration, like the short moment of recognition. However, in the latter there is still the tendency for the obscurations to return. The state of realization, complete enlightenment, means that no cloud-cover can ever return; its causes are utterly and permanently eliminated. When the clouds vanish, what else can cover the sun? That is the final or ultimate realization — when there is only brilliant, pure sunshine throughout space without any cloud-cover whatsoever. In other words, everything that needed to be removed has been removed and everything that needed to be actualized is already present. The empty sky and the brilliant sunshine are not of our making. They have always been there and are fully actualized when the cloud-cover is eliminated.
-- Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Finally, red squirrel eats, perched on squirrel-proof wooden bar carefully distributing weight so as not to depress bar -- he gets to do what clever engineers say cannot be done. So it goes! It's a rare box that cannot be broken in to or out of.

We nibble around the edges of things, around the edges of boxes cleverly constructed and packaging what is trademarked and owned by executive, hierarchy, and lawyered pronouncements laced with 'no trespassing' and 'beyond here there be dragons' signs.

We long for something dissolved. Something like quiet simplicity.

Essential

She just wants to keep her essential
sorrow. Everyone wants her to
be happy all the time, but she doesn't
want that for them. There is value in
the thread of sadness in each person.
The sobbing child on an airplane, the
unhappy woman waiting by the phone,
a man staring out the window past his
wife. A violin plays through all of them,
one long note held at the beginning and
the end.

Employed

She just wants to be employed
for eight hours a day. She is not
interested in a career; she wants a job
with a paycheck and free parking. She
does not want to carry a briefcase filled
with important papers to read after
dinner; she does not want to return
phone calls. When she gets home, she
wants to kick off her shoes and waltz
around her kitchen singing, "I am a piece
of work."
Poems: "Essential" and "Employed" by Beverly Rollwagen, from She Just Wants. Nodin Press.)

We'll have to mull Tulku's words that, "Empty cognizance is our nature."

It is time to...

Go.

Her card was signed once "Merry Mary Christmas." Mary Christine was born on December 25. In dream before waking she visits, coming from where she sat across auditorium to where I stood looking for her after someone asked where she was. Hair shorter than long, in smart brown or rust suit, she arrives at wood high-back chair I have brought to the table.

The sound of a swollen
Mountain stream rapidly rushing
Makes one know
How very quickly life itself
Is pressed along its course.
--Saigyo (1118-1190)

Our mountain streams are swollen but not rapidly rushing. They are fast in their form waiting in slow frozen memory of what they once were and will be again. Hard wind blows. Land buoys sound swell waves whooshing through tubes, triangles, and tinkling wind chimes surrounding safe harbor of hermitage.

All wisdom is from the Lord,
and it is his own for ever.
The sand of the sea and the raindrops,
and the days of eternity, who can assess them?
The height of the sky and the breadth of the earth,
and the depth of the abyss, who can probe them?
Before all other things wisdom was created,
shrewd understanding is everlasting.
For whom has the root of wisdom ever been uncovered?
Her resourceful ways, who knows them?
One only is wise, terrible indeed,
seated on his throne, the Lord.
He himself has created her, looked on her and assessed her,
and poured her out on all his works
to be with all mankind as his gift,
and he conveyed her to those who love him.
Ecclesiasticus 1:1 - 10

Finch, momma and poppa Cardinal, Chickadee, Nuthatch, and Woodpecker take turns at back feeder before red squirrel zips down hill (then leaves without ascending) pole to green hanging dispensary.

Wood stove wakes from overnight doze. Water splashes shower wall behind kitchen bookshelves. Snowstorm left less through night than it might. We'll drive to Sabattus in a bit.

Mary died somewhere back. But she lives (this morning) in particular, real dream of a Monday before dawn alongside Ragged and Bald Mountains in a blowy gust, where now, quick and acrobatic squirrel balances and eats alone at feeder.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
(Poem by Mary Oliver)

In last night's reading William McNamara said no fuss, no lust, and no rust are the properties of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These vows are curiosities in our world. Mary would giggle.

Word hides in words. All we get to see of nature's brilliance is what appears along surface for the duration we look to it. Nature presides even when we are distracted. So too Word resides in nascent kindness and compassion at periphery of our eyes and ears, awareness and wakefulness.

Dreams reveal the sound and sight of what is beyond hearing and seeing.

What is beyond. Hearing. And, seeing.

Revelation. The form of dream.

Avowal of One's restorative wisdom, with our avowal, sets sight on road's uncertain turns.

One's. With ours.

A sudden breath of creation transcending and conveying one in one to each one.

Chuang-tzu said:
"Cherish that
which is
within you."

He sums up contemplative life.

If we live looking out for ourselves, we usually wind up watching out for anybody coming near us. Fear is like that. Everyone is threat because everyone is seen as wanting to take what we are looking out for.

If the candle of craving, lusting, and arrogating is extinguished, then we are left with two options: utter self-defeat, or, contemplative life. Two options but only one choice.

The essence of nirvana is tranquil, uncontrived bliss. Realize your own mind is the true mind, and errant imagining ceases. When errant imagining ceases, you are accurately aware. By virtue of accurate awareness, dispassionately perceptive knowledge arises and thus one finds the nature of reality.
- Hongren (602-675)

February is lovely teacher. Ice and snow, cold and emptiness -- the approach of penitential forty days. Cutting wood for warm cabin to practice in tonight. Walking to brook which is nearly up against both foot bridges with swelling ice. Prayer whose name is empty sound, visits.

WIE: Why do you think it is that there are now so few people interested in the kind of life that you have undertaken?

WM: I think that most people in this modern age are seduced by the workaday world. The average human being is being deceived by hyper-activity, feverish activity. It's dispersed human energy. It is not hitting the target. It is not uplifting the world. It's just a roundelay of repetitive mechanisms, over and over again, with no final end.
George Santyana, the great Harvard professor, said, "A fanatic is one who, having forgotten the end, multiplies the means." And that's what we're all doing. Where are we? We don't know. Who are we? We don't know. We're just busy. And that embarrasses us, and so we keep doing more things to cover over the embarrassment, the emptiness, the hollowness of our lives. So given the condition that we're in, we shy away from the contemplative life.
(from THE e'M'pire, An interview with Father William McNamara, by Carter Phipps, in What is Enlightenment Magazine, http://www.wie.org/j18/mcnam.asp?pf=1)

There's no real cover for emptiness. Emptiness is hollowness and embarrassment uncovered.

Without cover is seen hallowedness and humility -- a holy earthiness faced squarely.

Jesus said: "I am with you always, even until the end of the world." I think he meant that he is with us, all ways. We should even the earth, "un-till" the "end" -- there is no end -- of the world.

So many cultivate the end, ending, finish, Armageddon, Apocalypse, judgment, punishment, reward, just desserts, and vengeful payback. Jesus, in today's meditation, says "un-till" that world of mind. Find balance and equilibrium. Equanimity. Harmony. Be even-minded, even-hearted, even-handed.

In this, he is with us.

This is that which is.

Within us.