She said her name was Sarah. She said she'd had a rough year. I said we'd keep her in our prayers. She said she was grateful. She went back out to the patio.

Walking to close gate to hermitage I remember to pray for her.

Lu-men moonlight spills through misty trees
and I come again to the old hermitage.
The path leads through pines,
to the brushwork door
back again to solitude and silence.
Where a hermit lives,
there’s no need for companions.
--Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

Maybe there's only one teaching -- to remember one another in prayer -- in words, in silence, in stillness, and in act.

Prayer is the turning of heart and mind to that which creates and sustains us in this existence. "That which" is sometimes spelled "G-o-d", and at other times it is spelled "c-l-e-a-r l-i-g-h-t" There are times when those who prefer it be spelled "A-l-l-a-h" or "J-e-s-u-s" cannot help themselves when the spelling and pronunciation do not fit their preferences, and become angry or dismissive. Not always. Just sometimes.

The time is sure to come when, far from being content with sound teaching, people will be avid for the latest novelty and collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes; and then, instead of listening to the truth, they will turn to myths. Be careful always to choose the right course; be brave under trials; make the preaching of the Good News your life’s work, in thoroughgoing service.
(--from 2 Timothy 4:1 - 8)

Timothy doesn't want us to stop thinking new ways of understanding primordial verities, but he is interested in not substituting neologisms for sound action that physically and concretely helps people who are in need of help. Explanation of belief takes backseat to loving and compassionate action. This engaged service is the essence of the spiritual path.

There are two rules on the spiritual path - begin and continue.
(--Sufi saying)

Someone once said it and it applies to me: Up until now I have done nothing.

Let's begin.

And continue.

Alone together.

This path.

The men in prison spoke about neutrinos, God, belief, and science.

When body and soul are rid of the dust of this world of dreams our understanding is awakened and Truth perceived.
(- Wall poem at North Peak Temple)

Like God, neutrinos permeate and penetrate all of matter and form.

Neutrinos are elementary particles that travel close to the speed of light, lack an electric charge, are able to pass through ordinary matter almost undisturbed and are thus extremely difficult to detect. As of 1999, it is believed neutrinos have a minuscule, but nonzero mass. They are usually denoted by the Greek letter nu.
(--Wikipedia)

It's an old question: Is God out there or in here? The mind you have that looks at this is the mind that formulates the response circumscribed by the ability of that mind to see.

Most neutrinos passing through the Earth emanate from the sun, and more than 50 trillion solar electron neutrinos pass through the human body every second. (--Wikipedia)

And if someone embodied the creative natural vitality of God, would they also be Christ?

Our visit to prison passes through what passes through us.

We thank each other for the visit through and through..

Thursday Evening Conversation for the past year plus has been an ongoing study of the Course in Miracles. Jack and Cathy lead. The group fluctuates from six to sixteen. Tonight, because Megan was lecturing in Rockland about her new book on Clare of Assisi, there was the lower end of the fluctuation.

You cannot walk the world apart from God, because you could not be without Him. He is what your life is. Where you are He is. There is one life. That life you share with Him. Nothing can be apart from Him and live.
Yet where He is, there must be holiness as well as life No attribute of His remains unshared by everything that lives. What lives is holy as Himself, because what shares His life is part of Holiness, and could no more be sinful than the sun could choose to be of ice; the sea elect to be apart from water, or the grass to grow with roots suspended in the air.
There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.
The light in you is what the universe longs to behold All living things are still before you, for they recognize Who walks with you. The light you carry is their own. And thus they see in you their holiness, saluting you as savior and as God. Accept their reverence, for it is due to Holiness Itself, Which walks with you, transforming in Its gentle Light all things unto Its likeness and Its purity.
(--from Lesson 156, I walk with God in perfect holiness, The Course in Miracles)

I remember 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. Robert Kennedy. Over the years it has seemed their deaths were less and less explainable, their killers less and less likely. Staying just this side of complete disbelief, I wonder what it is the world holds as truth.

Lesson 157 begins: "This is a day of silence and of trust"

Silence and trust are necessary.

Hard to apply to 40 year old stories.

Still, in themselves, despite fluctuations, worthwhile.

I am this not that. I am this and that. I am beyond this and that.

Beyond this and that, yet including this and that, is I Am consciousness. It sees and knows in stillness. It is not afraid. It loves all and each as itself.

Human behavior needs to reflect on itself.

Taking refuge in the Buddha implies no personal guarantee that the Buddha himself will effect the arrival at the Goal of any of his followers. To the contrary, he says: "Surely by oneself is evil done, by oneself one becomes pure. Purity and impurity are of the individual. No one purifies another." ...According to the doctrine of karma, future happiness is a direct result or continuation of the maintaining of a satisfactory standard of conduct in the present.
(--from Buddhist Ethics, by Hammalawa Saddhatissa)

And:

The keynote in the life and teaching of Jesus with regard to man’s moral duty is found in "obedient love." This means that with faith in God as the energizing center of one’s being, one is required to seek to do the will of God by loving God supremely and one’s neighbor as one’s self. However, as the total impact of Jesus’ teaching makes evident, to love one’s neighbor as one’s self is not to be understood as any precise balancing and equating of love for others with self-love. Still less does it mean loving others for the sake of receiving love or other benefits in return. Agape love means, rather, an uncalculating, outgoing spirit of loving concern which finds expression in deeds of service without limit.
(--from Christian Ethics, by Georgia Harkness)

We need community. Community is our teacher. The teaching is not easy to discern.

Forty years ago Robert Kennedy was shot and killed. He'd be in his eighties today.

We have much to learn.

THE MAPLE TREE

The maple tree that night
Without a wind or rain
Let go its leaves
Because its time had come.
Brown veined, spotted,
Like old hands, fluttering in blessing,
They fell upon my head
And shoulders, and then
Down to the quiet at my feet.
I stood, and stood
Until the tree was bare
And have told no one
But you that I was there.
(--Poem by Eugene McCarthy)

We are all there.

Do not be fooled. There is much to learn. Look to it.

Perhaps there is a way to undo that wrong.

Drop, drop—in our sleep, upon the heart
sorrow falls, memory’s pain,
and to us, though against our very will,
even in our own despite,
comes wisdom
by the awful grace of God.
(--words by AESCHYLUS, Agamemnon. Edith Hamilton, trans., Three Greek Plays, p. 170, 1937).

Perhaps by being this right here.

Democratic primaries end tonight. In the next 90 minutes or so the pundits will exclaim, the candidates will proclaim, and rhetoric will declaim.

Holding his stick,
He points directly to humanity,
Yet as he was originally without form,
This portrait is not true.
His form cannot be seen
As form,
His benevolence is merely his
Natural benevolence.
If, all of a sudden,
You can understand this law,
Then your spirit can roam
Beyond the world.
- Ingen (1592-1673)

I pause to pray. For all of them. For all of us. For decency, authenticity, and wisdom.

Tonight, before the theater of the final six months towards a new president begins, I turn to a Maine poet.

A Quiet Life

by Baron Wormser

What a person desires in life
is a properly boiled egg.
This isn't as easy as it seems.
There must be gas and a stove,
the gas requires pipelines, mastodon drills,
banks that dispense the lozenge of capital.
There must be a pot, the product of mines
and furnaces and factories,
of dim early mornings and night-owl shifts,
of women in kerchiefs and men with
sweat-soaked hair.
Then water, the stuff of clouds and skies
and God knows what causes it to happen.
There seems always too much or too little
of it and more pipelines, meters, pumping
stations, towers, tanks.
And salt-a miracle of the first order,
the ace in any argument for God.
Only God could have imagined from
nothingness the pang of salt.
Political peace too. It should be quiet
when one eats an egg. No political hoodlums
knocking down doors, no lieutenants who are
ticked off at their scheming girlfriends and
take it out on you, no dictators
posing as tribunes.
It should be quiet, so quiet you can hear
the chicken, a creature usually mocked as a type
of fool, a cluck chained to the chore of her body.
Listen, she is there, pecking at a bit of grain
that came from nowhere.
(-- Poem, "A Quiet Life" by Baron Wormser, from Scattered Chapters. Sarabande Books, 2008.)

Imagine from nothingness a dwelling place of reverence.

Arrive from nowhere. Bring invisible love. The community is teacher.

Nancy said tonight about authenticity: "He is what he says. She is what she says."

Integrity.

Sitting zazen at 5:20AM in cabin, incense and candle, Rokpa and bird call. A mantra arrives:
"Francis, Buddha, Dogen, Christ -- see us through this loving life!"

Carrying wooden stepladder to bird feeder, pouring wild seed into green metal holder, the words change into "lead us through this loving life." White dog has become good meditation companion in cabin, on trail, in yard. Three months with us, eight months old.

The great way of the buddhas is profound, wondrous, inconceivable; how could its practice be easy? Have you not seen how the ancients gave up their bodies and lives, abandoned their countries, cities, and families, looking upon them as shards of tile? After that they passed eons living alone in the mountains and forests, bodies and minds like dead trees; only then did they unite with the way. Then they could use the mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void, turning the incomparable wheel.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Practice is not easy, not hard. It is beyond easy and hard. Without practice we are the playthings of others.

How to Become a Buddhist

If one desires to become a Buddhist, there is no initiation ceremony (or baptism) which one has to undergo....If one understands the Buddha's teaching, and if one is convinced that this teaching is the right Path and if one tries to follow it, then one is a Buddhist.

But according to the unbroken age-old tradition in Buddhist countries, one is considered a Buddhist if one takes the Buddha, the Dhamma (the Teaching) and the Sangha (the community of Buddhists)--generally called "the Triple-Gem"--as one's refuges, and undertakes to observe the Five Precepts--the minimum moral obligations of a lay Buddhist:

(1) not to destroy life, (2) not to steal, (3) not to commit adultery, (4) not to tell lies, (5) not to take intoxicating drinks....

There are no external rites or ceremonies which a Buddhist has to perform. Buddhism is a way of life, and what is essential is following the Noble Eightfold Path.
(--Walpola Rahula in What the Buddha Taught, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book)

To be Buddhist is to practice awareness. Everyone will be Buddhist soon. Christians need not worry. Awareness is the essence of Jesus Christ. There's no choice to be made here.
All religions are cultural overlays whose undergrowth is awareness. Meet at awareness and inter-religious dialogue sits in loving silence together.

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you
(Poem: "Lost," by David Wagoner from Collected Poems 1956-1976, Indiana University Press.)

Standing or sitting in stillness we allow awareness to move freely within and around us. We drop our selfish desires to have the world the way we would construct it with our thought and ideology. God practices awareness. God looks for clearing to take place so that we begin dwelling in the open. No more secrets. No more unquestioning arrogance. No more dropping weapons on innocent victims.

Taking Refuge

To take refuge in the Buddha means acknowledging the seed of enlightenment that is within ourselves, the possibility of freedom. It also means taking refuge in those qualities which the Buddha embodies; qualities like fearlessness, wisdom, love and compassion.

Taking refuge in the Dharma means taking refuge in the law, in the way things are; it is acknowledging our surrender to the truth, allowing the Dharma to unfold within us.

Taking refuge in the Sangha means taking support in the community, in all of us helping one another towards enlightenment and freedom.
(--Joseph Goldstein, in The Experience of Insight, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book)

The community is finally rubbing sleep out of its eyes. It didn't want to believe, not entirely, that dad was a bit altered in his thinking by (some say, substances), insubstantial thought and inexplicable belief that he was the man, the one and only, without peer or opposition. Dad, or our disturbed brother, tired his arms swinging punches at our laws and the men and women holding fast to them practicing a modern Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope submission that rounded these seven years of administration pugs cynical pounding and punditry. There is, one can only hope, a turn towards enlightenment and freedom. It's been a long and very difficult detour from good will and legal decency.

Among the anecdotes in "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story" is an arresting portrait of Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president.

During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a "confused" pep talk:

"Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal."

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

A White House spokesman had no comment.
( from: General Ricardo Sanchez's Book Slams Bush, Iraq Handling, Washington Post, June 2, 2008 10:51 AM)

Last Friday was the feast of The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Authentic compassion is hard to find. I'm looking for it in myself. If my compassion is authentic it must work backwards from the innocent deaths and pain in Iraq, to the men and women who carried out orders to bomb, shoot, and kill, to the families of warriors who mourn their dead and stitch up their traumatized returnees. It should also stretch to the perpetrators of this ill-begotten carnage. It must include Mr. Bush and his band of confidants, the inept congress, and puffed up supporters of something known to be a lie and a travesty.

This consideration and practice of authentic compassion has to be my daily practice. I'm glad to see the backs of these people, and I long for some justice to grab them from their lucrative future -- but they are clever and mostly immune from prosecution for their crimes. For perpetrators of war it is a blip on their resume. For the rest of the victims of war it is lifelong pain and suffering.

If we are going to practice religion we are going to have to admit God into the practice. Belief and personal testimony are insufficient. We must allow God, as God is, into moment to moment practice.

God help us.

No, really.

God help us.

See us through.

This.

Loving life.

Sometimes Sunday is merely Sunday.

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Possessed marvelously
Subtle powers of penetration;
They were so deep that
None could plumb their mind,
And, on this account, if forced
To describe them we can only
Say that they moved cautiously
Like people fording a river;

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Were retiring as though shy

Their conduct to all was
Respectful as though to
Honored guests;
They could adapt themselves
Like ice melting before a fire;
They were artless
As blocks of uncarved wood.
- Lao tzu

A dog by a gate is only a dog by a gate.

It is for this kind of revelation we live and breathe.

May goes. Comes June. Rains today.

Wonderful! Wonderful!
The sermon of the inanimate is inconceivable.
If you try to hear it with your ears,
You’ll hardly understand
Only when you hear it in your eyes
Will you be able to know.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)

It's one thing to know deception has been the leadership of this country. It's another thing to have that knowing verified by one of the inner circle. It makes the chilling truth that much colder.

Mr. McClellan’s book landed like a bombshell on Washington not because of any startling revelations or staggering new insights, but because he was an insider who wrote unflatteringly about his boss.

Forget that this is supposed to be a government of, by and for the people, and that the truth is supposed to matter. Mr. McClellan is being denounced as a traitor by those who readily accept the culture of deception, and who believe that a government official’s primary loyalty is not to the people, but to power itself — in this case, to the president.

It’s exactly that kind of thinking that begets unnecessary wars.
(-- Bob Herbert, New York Times, 31May08, Op Ed: Coming Late To The Table)

Four thousand troops die. Well over one hundred thousand Iraqis die. The president and his people lie, cheat, steal, and defy the ethos and laws of the country. They are above the law. No one can touch them. How frightening is that?

The Babes in the Wood
by Anonymous

My dear, do you know,
How a long time ago,
Two poor little children,
Whose names I don't know,
Were stolen away
On a fine summer's day,
And left in a wood,
As I've heard people say.

Among the trees high
Beneath the blue sky
They plucked the bright flowers
And watched the birds fly;
Then on blackberries fed,
And strawberries red,
And when they were weary
'We'll go home,' they said.

And when it was night
So sad was their plight,
The sun it went down,
And the moon gave no light.
They sobbed and they sighed
And they bitterly cried,
And long before morning
They lay down and died.

And when they were dead
The robins so red
Brought strawberry leaves
And over them spread;
And all the day long,
The green branches among,
They'd prettily whistle
And this was their song-
'Poor babes in the wood!
Sweet babes in the wood!
Oh the sad fate of
The babes in the wood!

(--Poem "The Babes in the Wood," Anonymous. Public domain.)

It has been, and is, a terrifying time for this country. The threat is as internal as it is external. We don't know if there is anyone to trust in the government.

It is the stuff of science fiction.

The people might awaken.

I do not wish to see their faces when they do.

Who are we without memory? The answer might be: We are right here, right now. How difficult, or even intolerable, would it be for most of us if we had no memory? Or worse, if what we recall is actually false memory? Our identity is a fragile thing. It is not non-negotiable.

There's no one place in the brain you can point to and say 'There's a memory.' You can't go into the brain and point a finger and say 'There's a memory.' It turns out that memories are more distributed than that, distributed in different parts of the brain. This is especially so for episodic memories. So a memory is a network of brain regions and all those brain regions have to come together in order for us to retrieve a memory. So I think this helps us understand that there's a sense in which all memories are constructed; they're not just literal replays of events that have happened to us.
(-- Professor Daniel L. Schacter, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, as over-voiced in film Unknown White Male, by filmmaker Robert Murray, about Doug Bruce, a man who woke up on a New York subway with no clues as to who he was, other than a random phone number and a British accent. 2005)

There's a conversation between science and philosophy that meets in the between place, that place just off the edges of scientific verification and philosophic speculation. If I do not know the thing I am, am I lost to myself? The Course in Miracles states:

I do not know the thing I am, and therefore do not know what I am doing, where I am, or how to look upon the world or on myself. Yet in this learning is salvation born. And What you are will tell you of Itself.
(--from text, p. 614; T-31.V.17:7-9 )

Sometimes I seem to be a worded episode engaged in procedural liturgies of ritual repetition. We talk a lot about the same things over and over while sitting in the same spot.

I often refer to memory as a "fragile power." Memory is fragile because we are subject to forgetting and memory is not always as accurate as we would like to believe. Memory is powerful because most of the time it serves us well, forming the foundation of our knowledge of the world and of ourselves. In the case of emotionally experiences, memory is a source of tremendous power in our lives.

One of the key lessons we have learned is that memory is not unitary: there is no one area or structure in the brain that we would identify as memory. Moreover, there are multiple forms of memory. We make a major distinction between explicit memory and implicit memory. (Some researchers refer to these two forms of memory as declarative and non-declarative.)

Explicit memory involves the conscious, intentional recollection of previous experiences, what we tend to think of as memory in our everyday lives. It may involve reliving or reexperiencing past events. Implicit memory refers to nonconscious, unintentional influences of past experiences on current behavior and performance.

(-- from Project on the Decade of the Brain, Library of Congress, May 5 and 6, 1998. Discovering Our Selves: The Science of Emotion, Executive Summary, Panel: The Science of Memory and Emotion: "Memory: The Fragile Power"; Daniel L. Schacter, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is the author of Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past.)

I remember my Aunt Marge and Uncle Mickey greeting me as I woke up in the back seat of the white DeSoto on Foster Avenue downstairs from Aunt Ronnie and Uncle Tom's apartment in Brooklyn. The memory is as real to me today as it was five or six decades ago. But did it happen? What was I doing alone in the family car on a busy street, and why did they not go upstairs and cement the apparition?

I feel that way at times about religious rituals. Before prison today (a ritual I've come to respect with religious devotion) we attended the express mass at Rockland church. Its the feast of the Sacred Heart. Afterwards, as often occurs, the coffee and donut seemed as equal an experience of Eucharist as the sacrament just received in quick distribution. (The priest at this 7am celebration is nothing if not rapid and methodical.)

I ask myself if the re-enactment and recollection involved in the highly ritualized gestures and words is more a consequence or a cause of memory.

Episodic memory refers to the memory of events, times, places, associated emotions, and other conception-based knowledge in relation to an experience. Semantic and episodic memory together make up the category of declarative memory, which is one of the two major divisions in memory. The counterpart to declarative, or explicit memory, is procedural memory, or implicit memory.
(-- from Wikipedia, Tulving, E. (1984). Precis of Elements of Episodic Memory. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 7, 223 – 268.)

Is Jesus, (that oft-quoted and multi-referenced figure from Middle Eastern religious scripture), being re-enacted in the ritual, or are we creating a reference point from which to establish a procedural template for our lives? It's a question that is more than asking if the actions are historical or mythological -- more whether we are the reference point here and now of this creative theater.

Do we remember the one we call God? Or, do we create a memory of that which we long to remember? And if God is completely out-of-time itself, completely present in itself, and the complete gaze of what is itself -- then are we the action of God originally creating the event and the memory, the words and the retrieval of the activity of God-self-in-creation, ever-present, always at origin, and wholly aware of this as it is here and now?

I like the phrase: And What you are will tell you of Itself.

This learning is beyond culture. It is beyond intellect. It is cellular. It is neural. Perhaps it is consciousness itself, (distinct from the conscious subject), urging an awareness that transcends location and occasion. It is the explication -- the unfolding and making clear of what-is-in-itself.

I'm fond of the phrasing: "What Is In Itself."

It is the nexus.

The connective.

The center.

Of something.

Which is.

Itself.

O'a, at conversation last evening, spoke about the sanctuary surrounding each of us. She gestured with arms a semicircle, hands finishing in mudra of outstretched offering prayer before face. This sanctuary is a cloister of solitude that does not require physical separation. We are there in one another's midst, but retain a space, both psychologically and spiritually, not determined by the actions, words, or presence of any other being.

We'd been reading Anne Lamott, from Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, the final essay, "Kookaburra. " This morning I find an interview Lamott did with Tavis Smiley:

Tavis: Great title. Let me give you a chance to explain it. "Grace (Eventually)."

Lamott: Well, I think - I have written a lot about grace. I believe that there is a force of goodness or sweetness or sanity, and it does meet us where we are, and it doesn’t leave us where it finds us. And it sometimes feels like water wings if you're a kid who feels like she's going under the waves, or sometimes it feels like a thin ribbon of fresh air when you can't breathe or you feel claustrophobic.

Sometimes it looks like all of a sudden being kinder to yourself. But I do not believe that God has a magic wand, which doesn’t work for me because when I pray, my main prayers are help me, help me, help me and thank you, thank you, thank you. When I pray I would like God to tap me on the head with a magic wand so that I could understand that my prayer was answered. But it comes eventually. The answer and the grace come eventually.

Tavis: I’m fascinated - and there's so much I want to get to in the time we have about this wonderful book - I'm fascinated first though by your prayer. Everyone has his or her own prayer. Yours is, to your point, help me, help me, help me; thank you, thank you, thank you.

Lamott: That's my two prayers.

Tavis: Your two prayers. Tell me more about why those are your two prayers.

Lamott: Well, I think help most easily when we have given up on having any more good ideas (laughs). And I've always heard that our problems aren't the problem; it's our solutions that are the problem. And so usually - and I've also come to believe that the willingness comes from the pain, so as long as I'm kind of getting things to work, I don't give up and just let a higher power of some sort take over the controls.

And so you finally give up and you just say, "I'm so done. Just please help me." You know what it's like a little bit? I had a friend named Paul who used to say that he would feel like a kid in one of the backseat kid seats, where they have a plastic steering wheel attached to the car seat. And he'd be sure, that little kid, that if you turn the car to the right it's going right, 'cause you're making, and then you make it go to the left.

And when you finally realize you're not in charge of much, then help arrives, solutions arrive, serenity.

(--from Tavis Smiley interview with Anne Lamott, original airdate March 28, 2007)

"Who's in charge?" is a good question. As the days of the Bush presidency (mercifully) wind down, many more hithertofore devotees will feel unbound and finally tell what it felt like working in an environment of fear, arrogance, abuse, and distortions of every stripe. It will be a moot revelation. Many in the country knew we were living under perverse distortions. It has been the curious paralysis and numb impotency that held the country frozen in disbelief that remains notable.

Who's in charge, indeed? I am reluctant to say we are puppets to either political martinets or to spiritualist guides-and-dolls, but there are times (unfortunately) when no better explanation trumps.

And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
(from poem Ars Poetica?, by Czeslaw Milosz)

Milosz might not have had his poetic tongue-in-cheek. We might not be one person. The psychological scalpel that tries to unconjoin the loopy personality figure 8 ride of multiples crowding our inner amusement park rail platform might not have been sterilized properly and caused an infection in all of us crowded inside my name.

I am everyone I've ever seen, touched, heard, or thought. Mulder was right -- We're not alone! Scully was also right -- there's something very odd about both Mulder and the shadowy obsessions never quite provable nor deniable.

Milosz did use the word "hope" in penultimate line. We can hope. It might help.

In Lamott's essay she wrote something to the effect that just because the monkey is off your back it doesn't mean the circus has left town. As we continue to erect a fence to create a sanctuary of safety for our dear rescue Border Collie -- just because we know the whereabouts of wild rose thorns near our arms it doesn't mean that the bushes won't reach out and cut our hands as they work the wire.

Still in all, it is a lovely morning. Short mountain walk followed by Lauds in chapel/zendo, then to the perimeter with wire cutters and sledge hammer. It is all we can do in our small geography of intimacy with the sane holiness we wish to cultivate.

We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
(--from poem Epilogue, by Robert Lowell, in his book Day by Day

O'a and I grew up in multi-generational households. It's what contributes to the willingness and ability to attend diverse personalities and characters with a tempered equanimity that allows wide-ranging differences of type and sensibility while retaining a keen sense of humor useful for prying loose the stuck places that fix us fast with no seeming escape.

We cry, "Sanctuary!" and are delighted when something opens and we turn, unstuck for a bit, to see what is around us on all sides.

Neither by words nor by the patriarch;
Neither by colors nor by sound was I enlightened.
But, at midnight, when I blew out
The candle and went to bed,
Suddenly, I reached the dawn.
Profound quietude delivered me
To the transparent moonlight.
After enlightenment one understands
That the Six Classics contain not even a word.
- Wang Yang-ming (1472-1529)

Enlightenment isn't what it used to be.

Enlightenment's not the cat or the dog at barn door wanting in for now, then wanting out.

Rather, enlightenment is the barn door itself, seeing each way through.

I've always liked what Ron H. said stepping out of the shop in 1996: "Solitude is not being left alone; Solitude is leaving alone."

Present-time Awareness
Mindfulness is present-time awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present moment. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.

If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize that process and say to yourself, "Oh, I am remembering," that is thinking.
--Henepola Gunaratana, from Mindfulness in Plain English

We've come to think of the phrase "hermits in the open" as applicable. Not recluses in physical space; rather, mendicants seeking kindness and grace for all in open and intermediate solitude.

The term mendicant (Latin mendicans, begging) refers to begging or relying on charitable donations, and is most widely used for religious followers or ascetics who rely exclusively on charity to survive.
(--Wikipedia)

We beg. Not often and not loudly. Even not with much passion. Everything we earn at other jobs goes into maintaining the bookshop and bakery, paying bills, and shoring up our leaky life-skiff. And yet -- we are happy. And if the public marketplace face of Meetingbrook ends, we'll regroup at the hermitage.

Right now we're heading up Ragged Mountain with Rokpa. What a gift to be able to do this.

Solitude

Discipline of solitude (Christianity)

The truest solitude is not something outside and not the absence of people or sound; it is an abyss opening up at the centre of the soul. The abyss of interior solitude is created by a hunger that cannot be satisfied. It is found by hunger, sorrow, thirst, poverty and desire. The soul which has found this solitude is empty, as if emptied by death. This solitude is everywhere but there are mechanisms for finding it

All Christian religious communities have recourse to use means for finding solitude within their systems, possibly through retreat and/or periods of silence. This deliberate separation from the company of other people can help lead to deep inner silence and aid recollection and prayer without distractions. Solitude and silence are closely related states, the former giving the spiritual stillness to maintain the latter, and to speak only when words are really required. In many traditions a life of solitude as a hermit, whether totally alone or grouped around a common place of worship, has been used to achieve solitude of the soul. Frequently such retreat is to a place of harsh physical conditions (desert, mountain, forest); nevertheless, simply taking periods of solitude during the day whenever they may be experienced may be very efficacious

The retreat is not to escape for its own sake or from others or the world because it is unpleasant. Peace will not be found nor will solitude. To seek solitude because it is what one prefers will never result in escape from the world and its selfishness. The interior freedom required to be truly alone is not present. Solitude is to be alone in the healing silence of recollection and the untroubled presence of God. The state of solitude results in a deeper understanding and love for one's fellows

Thomas Merton says that solitude is not separation. If one goes into the desert it must not be to escape from others but to find them in God. There is a real need for solitude at a time when love and conformity are equated. True solitude is that of a person constituted by a uniquely subsisting capacity to love, it is not the refuge of an individualist. Physical solitude is contrasted with the escape into a crowd. Lost in a crowd, the person does not know he is alone but neither does he function as a person in a community. Not facing the risks or responsibilities of true solitude, his other responsibilities removed from his shoulders by the multitude, he is burdened by diffuse anxiety, nameless fears, the petty lusts and pervading hostilities which fill mass society. To remain human one must have true communion and dialogue with others - not simply living with others and sharing only the common noise and general distraction. True solitude is interior solitude, which is possible only for those accepting their right place in relation to others.
(--from Union of International Associations, http://www.diversitas.org/db/x.php?dbcode=hu&go=e&id=11803330)

Contemplation. Conversation. Correspondence.

Looking with attentive presence. Listening with root silence. Loving with transparent service.

It is morning.

Mountain green with sunlight prays.

If someone wants to show you their mind, look into it.

Song of Meditation

Sentient beings are primarily all Buddhas:
it is like ice and water,
apart from water no ice can exist;
outside sentient beings,
where do we find the Buddhas?
Not knowing how near the Truth is,
people seek it far away, what a pity!
- Hakuin (1685–1768)

Near, nearer, absolutely near.

You ain't going no-w-here.

At Vespers in the cabin we pray for all those dead and deadened by war. The dead are easy to trace. They reside away from sight. The deadened are less easy to find. They walk down streets, work beside us, drive the same roads, and do everything done by everyone else. Those of us deadened by war become fearful and angry. Trust is hard to come by. We feel that the world belongs to others. We are unwanted annoyances.

Among us, the winter soldiers.

"Winter Soldier’ is a term that turns from the opening of a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine in 1776:

“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

A contingent of winter soldiers testified today on Capital Hill. They actually know the disgrace of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The families of the killed are left with the ambivalence of rhetoric in a time hardly any words are believed,

A man whose son died in the war walks in the street
like a woman with a dead embryo in her womb.
"Behind all this some great happiness is hiding."
(--From Amen by Yehuda Amichai, published by Harper & Row. 1977)

Surely, some great happiness beckons. Surely there is some redeeming spin that is not blatant untruth!

There's nothing romantic about war.

War is failure.

Still, even in failure, we honor the fallen.

A good soldier, it is said, will trust his commanders: they will salute, say 'Yes sir!', and die.

They do it for the rest of us.

We say, in prayer, 'Thank you; rest well!'

What lovely people met this weekend.

Lu-men moonlight spills through misty trees
and I come again to the old hermitage.
The path leads through pines,
to the brushwork door
back again to solitude and silence.
Where a hermit lives,
there’s no need for companions.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

There's an aspect of community that bypasses usual configuration. Jacques Ellul says it is orientation and signification.

At the level of personal life, I am convinced that every event, adventure, and encounter has its own meaning. Nothing in human relationships lacks meaning: neither a chance meeting nor an illness that attacks us. Everything makes sense because everything concerns these strange beings that we call human and that are significant in themselves. Each word and glance has meaning (in the twofold sense of the term). Some things orient me to life and some to death. Some have for me a signification that I must integrate into my life if I deserve to be called human.
(--p.16, in What I Believe, by Jacques Ellul, c.1989)

It is what is taking place between each and each that evokes meaning to become manifest.

We make history each time we act.

Today, meaning and history were manifestly made.

His father has a goat ranch. His wife writes an impressive spontaneous poem. They naturally join the conversation.

The mountain lives in perpetual harmony with the Spirit of the Universe. It rose out of the Nameless, without resisting and suffering, and passes back into the Nameless. Man strives to overcome Nature and replace it with things of his devising. The wise know only one Universal Harmony exists and attune their mind and body to it. The monk does not go to the Mountain to rival it but to dwell in the eternal Oneness of Nature.
- Western Taoist

Solitude builds gate by road.

Solitude returns to itself.

With no fanfare.

Nor discourse

Dog gives paw.

A stupid remark by a desperate candidate raises the specter of 1968 assassination as coded anticipation of her chance in 2008.

Green waters and verdant mountains
are the places to walk in meditation;
by the streams or under the trees
are places to clear the mind.
Observe impermanence,
never forget it;
this urges on the will to seek enlightenment.
- Keizan Jokin (1264-1325)

It might have been a stupid mistake. But I fear the opposite.

Stupidity no longer has any right to remain on a stage that demands decency.

And yet stupidity does continue to infect the presidential milieu.

It is more that any one person can bear!

A bird in high branch sang strong and clear at dusk.

Flowery Mountain is a treasure trove of marvels and esoteric lore as none other. Here fresh flowers bloom and the trees are ever green. Rocks are of all colors and spring waters of various hues. The wine decoctions of its genii clear the mind and the herbs culled by sages procure longevity. At night in the Hall of Shining Stars come whispering sounds from where the wisterias quiver. Unable to sleep I burn incense and read Taoist books.
- Hua-shan chih

I'm glad vespers was so easy.

Here is what I know. This is the truth. Between one thing and another is wisdom in the open.

We need saints.

Can you think of a word that describes a person who devoted much of her life to being with people many of us cross the street to avoid? Who for half a century did her best to make sure they didn’t go hungry or freeze on winter nights? Who went to Mass every day until her legs couldn’t take her that far, at which point Communion was brought to her? Who prayed every day for friend and enemy alike and whose prayers, some are convinced, had miraculous results? Who went to confession every week? Who was devoted to the rosary? Who wore hand-me-down clothes and lived in cold-water flats? Whose main goal in life was to follow Christ and to see him in the people around her?

A saint.

Can you think of a word that describes a person who refused to pay taxes, didn’t salute the flag, never voted, went to prison every now and then for protests against war and social injustice? Who spoke in a plain and often rude way about our way of life? Who complained that the Church wasn’t paying enough attention to its own teaching and compared some of its bishops to sharks?

A troublemaker.

Dorothy Day, saint and troublemaker.
(--from Dorothy Day — A Saint for Our Age? By Jim Forest; Presented at the Dorothy Day Centenary Conference, Marquette University, October 10, 1997.)

This world is not what it seems to be.

We need troublemakers.

When body and soul are rid of the dust of this world of dreams our understanding is awakened and Truth perceived.
(- Wall poem at North Peak Temple)

Let's pray for saints and troublemakers.

Dream truth.

Awaken dreams.

Boards are drilled, bolts set, then unset, stain brushed on boards stood upright against barn overnight. In the morning we'll fit the double gate, pick up a couple of bolt-throughs for sag prevention wire, finally, mount at bottom of drive.

Something about a gate. Even without livestock, everyone needs a farm gate.

Clouds bury the mountains behind the house,
Grass blocks the road to the gate.
Tattered books on the shelf,
A closed door to the outside world.
- Li Yu (10th century)

The world seems brighter tonight. A man who inspires steps closer to nomination for presidency. The old and disheveled despair will end -- if we are lucky. Luck is vital. It is precipice time.

Marching

At dawn I heard among bird calls
the billions of marching feet in the churn
and squeak of gravel, even tiny feet
still wet from the mother's amniotic fluid,
and very old halting feet, the feet
of the very light and very heavy, all marching
but not together, criss-crossing at every angle
with sincere attempts not to touch, not to bump
into each other, walking in the doors of houses
and out the back door forty years later, finally
knowing that time collapses on a single
plateau where they were all their lives,
knowing that time stops when the heart stops
as they walk off the earth into the night air.
--Poem, "Marching," from Jim Harrison's "Saving Daylight" (2006)

Harrison, in introductory notes to After Ikkyu (1996), a collection of Zen-inspired poetry, wrote: "I'm a poet and we tend to err on the side that life is more than it appears rather than less."

We're going to fall. That's where precipice leads. But it is unknown yet whether we will fall into our true nature or away from decency far from any recognizable facsimile of kindness or compassion. I vote for true nature.

There is so much more than many want us to see.

Our gate will remind us.

To pass through, you have to open.

Moon just shy of full. Jon Lester throws a no-hitter for Boston against Kansas City. No one is quite sure why the dollar has been allowed to de-value, nor why no one in government wants the troops in Iraq either to win or to come home.

The perfect person has many different aspects, but at heart he changes not. To understand the world he assumes its appearances, but his heart remains centered on the One. Within he is stable; outwardly he bends and straightens like a bow.
- Wen-tzu

Someone puts out a film taking on Christianity, the 9-11 official story, and the banking coup-d'etat in America and the world. Luckily they left Italian pizza alone.

Mother Night

When you wake at three AM you don't think
of your age or sex and rarely your name
or the plot of your life which has never
broken itself down into logical pieces.
At three AM you have the gift of incomprehension
wherein the galaxies make more sense
than your job or the government. Jesus at the well
with Mary Magdalene is much more vivid
than your car. You can clearly see the bear
climb to heaven on a golden rope in the children's
story no one ever wrote. Your childhood horse
named June still stomps the ground for an apple.
What is morning and what if it doesn't arrive?
One morning Mother dropped an egg and asked
me if God was the same species as we are?
Smear of light at five AM. Sound of Webber's
sheep flock and sandhill cranes across the road,
burble of irrigation ditch beneath my window.
She said, "Only lunatics save newspapers
and magazines," fried me two eggs, then said,
"If you want to understand mortality look at birds."
Blue moon, two full moons this month,
which I conclude are two full moons. In what
direction do the dead fly off the earth? Rising sun. A thousand blackbirds pronounce day.
(Poem: "Mother Night" by Jim Harrison from Saving Daylight. Copper Canyon Press, 2007.)

At 6AM bird flew into kitchen window. It lay stunned on grass. I watched it from second floor window, wishing it well, sending strength. Then I worried. Had the cat gone out earlier with the dog. I watched the stretch of grass. No cat. Good.

The bird, a rosy breasted grosbeak, rolled from it's side, still dazed. From under the bush came the cat. In a second both were gone. I had my screen out and ready to toss it -- but it happened so fast. When I got downstairs and out into yesterday's cut grass, only green clippings on my wet feet.

Religion is not, at the outset, a refuge of grace and mercy for the despondent and desperate, an enchanted stream for crushed spirits, but a raging, clamorous torrent of man's consciousness, with all its crises, pangs, and torments.
(- Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, 1903-1993)

At end of day we build one of two gates for end of driveway.

The impulse is to protect life.

Sometimes, more often than we'd like to think, life says: No, thank you!