Between word and silence is alert stillness.

Holiness is nothing other than the longing of wholeness to find and be itself.

Fearful of death, I walked in the mountains. 
By meditating on its uncertain hour, 
I conquered the immortal bastion 
Of the immutable. 
Now I am far beyond fearing death. 
- Milarepa

Movement within stillness; stillness within movement.

Alert stillness proceeds from this silence and this word.

Filioque of a Thursday morning.

A woman writes: "...how unlike the words in obits we really are."

I tell her I'd have written as inclusion to Gene's obit the following:

He walked daily, for hours and hours on end. He made people nervous
because of how he looked. He talked of death often, very often, over
the years. When he learned of his cancer the topic of illness and
death became his sole interest.
He worried so much. He was obsessive in his routes and conversation.
He was wary of crowds and physical contact. His mind was seldom at
peace. He was one of us -- we the odd and idiorhythmic.
He'd call a neighbor of his on another street daily. He liked to
talk and keep him appraised of medical matters. The neighbor
listened and suggested, time to time, some action. It was seldom
taken. Only the worry. And the emergency room visits. A long, long,
history of emergency room visits for many, many, years.
Gene walked his routine right up to a week before cancer took his
body. Now, I imagine, his ghost walks the roads of Camden and
Rockport, even in the rain. That's what he did. He walked. A
measured lumbering gate.
He had people who were fond of him. And some who weren't.
Those of us who were fond of Gene will miss him. Not the
compulsions and obsessions, not the graphic medical details or the
reminder how difficult it is to be patient with difficult characters
-- but the Gene in and through and surrounding and embedded within
the being right in front of us. They say the difficulty with being
human is the task of accepting the whole package of our being/human
without the mental scalpel cutting away what we disapprove of in
ourselves and others.
When we cease the playacting of surgical dissection of one another,
we are left with the person-as-a-whole. Such presencing sorely tries
our mettle.
Gene belonged and struggled with his own presentiation -- a word
which means to make something present through transparency.
An unusual man! An unusual presence!
So are we all.
On our way through.

It doesn't matter what we say. What matters is what shows.

Like the torrent that rushes to the sea,
Like the sun and the moon that glide towards
The western mountains,
Like the flight of days and nights,
Hours and seconds,
Human life passes inexorably
- Padmasambhava

There's no reason any more to be afraid. Not of anything.

Let this be included in my obit: He showed up, then left.

Gene dies. I stop in to room 21. Another name on the door. I miss him by 19 hours. 

A stick of incense

carries his memory

into mountain -

disappearance.

Clock ticks. Maher finishes trashing religion. Oatmeal cookies with chocolate are gone. Insanity sometimes wears God as disguise.

As a boy I studied literature,
But was too lazy to become a Confucian;
In my younger days I worked at Zen,
But got no Dharma worth handing down.
Now I've built a grass hut,
Act as custodian of a Shinto shrine,
Half a shrine, half a monk.
- Ryokan

The conflict is between certainty and doubt. It is difficult to deal with both. Of the two, I prefer doubt. It is an unloaded gun.

To what end?
To no end...
This life!

Reading The Haunted Bookshop on porch of cabin -- the corncob smoking Mifflin. From years ago in wood box on porch, Sail Regular from Holland. The Cavendish fills half a bowl, a match, the memory of pipe smoke mixes with afternoon rain. Then, drifts up mountain, back into box for another six years.

Threshold

When in still air and still in summertime
A leaf has had enough of this, it seems
To make up its mind to go; fine as a sage
Its drifting in detachment down the road.
(Poem by Howard Nemerov)

I think God left religion long ago. God returned to the space between word and silence.

No more to say; about to speak. A pleasant stillness bemused by explication.

Remaining as is.

Only this.

For current information about Meetingbrook: Update and events

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/Home/events-at-meetingbrook

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/hermitage-upate

.........

The book by Spanish philosopher Xavier Zubiri rises to the surface in my room after 20 years dialogue with dust.

For Zubiri, intellection and the entire process of intellective knowing is intimately linked to reality:

By virtue of its formal nature, intellection is apprehension of reality in and by itself. This intellection...is in a radical sense an apprehension of the real which has its own characteristics...Intellection is formally direct apprehension of the real—not via representations nor images. It is an immediate apprehension of the real, not founded in inferences, reasoning processes, or anything of that nature. It is a unitary apprehension. The unity of these three moments is what makes what is apprehended to be apprehended in and by itself.

(from, INTRODUCTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF XAVIER ZUBIRI (1898-1983), http://www.zubiri.org/intro.htm)

Thomas B. Fowler, President, Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, writes in his Informal Introduction to the Philosophy of Xavier Zubiri, the following:

Man's access to God

If traditional metaphysical proofs of the existence of God are out, are there any routes available? Before we answer this question, Zubiri feels that we must do something akin to what we did in the case of our perception of reality: we must step back and reexamine the whole explanatory paradigm and its assumptions. Traditionally, theologians have approached God in a conceptual fashion, in which He is what Zubiri terms a "reality-object" more or less like you and me and rocks and other things of our experience, albeit it of some higher degree. Given this approach, all effort is inexorably concentrated on establishing ways of "demonstrating" God's existence. The main problem with such a paradigm is that it produces proofs which (1) fail to convince because they rely upon abstract metaphysical arguments with premises that are themselves difficult to establish; and (2) the God whose existence they purportedly demonstrate is far removed from the personal God of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition and quite incapable of serving as the basis of a religion.

Zubiri thinks that this whole approach is too anthropomorphic. God is not a "reality-object", but what he terms a "reality-ground"-something to which we must be be "re-ligated", that is, re-connected. (This is much more in line with the approach of mystical thinkers). In contrast to the demonstrative ways of proving God's existence, which are purely idealistic (i.e, based on abstract reasoning), Zubiri proposes the way of religation, ultimately based on our experience of reality. Indeed, for Zubiri we are religated to reality since it imposes itself on us, and does so as something ultimate which both impels us and makes it possible for us to "create", so to speak, our lives. It is the experience of this imposition, of this power of the real, that is the experience of the ground of reality. And it is the fundamental experience which each man possesses whether a theist, an agnostic or an atheist. These latter three diverge with respect to intellectual discernment and volition when they confront this ground.

The theist finds in his experience of the ground an experience of God, a God not transcendent "to" things, but transcendent "in" things. Accordingly, to reach God one need not abandon the world (à la Buddhism), but to enter more into it, so as to reach its ground. This, of course, does not mean to live life in the fast lane, or become a hedonist, but to experience life deeply, in what may be termed the "spiritual" sense: reflection, love of other people and service to them, doing good, and so forth. God is ultimately the ground of things (including persons), and it is in his experience of them that man has the fundamental experience of God. Since man's life is a tapestry woven from his experience with and of things, and since this experience in turn is an experience of God, it follows that each man's life is in some respects a continuous experience of God. What does this mean? That no searching is necessary? That no spiritual life is required? That anyone's God is as good as anyone else's? No; those issues only arise at a subsequent stage, one which would be impossible without this one. What it does mean is that the real God of each person is not a concept or the outcome of some reasoning process, but something much deeper: the very life of man. In making or working out his own life, in configuring his own life, each man configures (or disfigures) God in himself, because the life of man, Zubiri concludes, is always and formally an "experience of God".

For the atheist, the power of the real is still there, and as an intellection, stands in need of some ground. The atheist does two things: he considers the power of the real only as a "fact", suppressing its other dimensions (etymologically 'a-theist' means 'not theist'). In this way he chooses to live a life which is sufficient unto itself; autosufficient, as Zubiri puts it, which means a life that is what it is, and how it is, and nothing else:

…the atheist formally surrenders to his own formal reality as unique and sufficient true personal reality. And it is in this surrender to himself as true that the faith of the atheist consists. The atheist understands himself as surrendered to himself and accepts himself as such. Therefore he makes a choice; atheism is no less a choice than theism.

The salient characteristic of atheism, then, is faith in oneself-or by extension, in a social class, human knowledge, mankind, or another similar surrogate.

This leaves agnosticism. Etymologically, the word means 'not knowing'; but as the experience of the power of the real is always present to the agnostic as well as to the theist and the atheist, its intellection still requires a ground-one which the agnostic searches for diligently but does not find. In Zubiri's own words:

…agnosticism is a frustrated intellective search. It is in this frustration where unknowability and ignorance of God take on their structure, where the suspension of faith occurs. But as ignorance, as unknowability, and as frustration, agnosticism is a strict form of intellective process which rests upon a real moment of reality known intellectively as such.

So the agnostic is someone who recognizes the need to find a ground for his experience of the power of the real, but has not accomplished his goal.
(from, Informal Introduction to the Philosophy of Xavier Zubiri, by Thomas B. Fowler, President, Xavier Zubiri Foundation of North America, http://www.zubiri.org/works/informalintro.htm

When I first studied the philosophical discipline of Metaphysics over forty years ago, there was less I knew then than what I now know I do not know. That "reality" is beyond "being" intrigues.

I listen to a congressional inquiry into the interrogation techniques used by US personnel with detainees. I listen to a supervisor with banking credit cards hold to his position that a written procedure trumps intelligent logic and reasoning. I listen to the mindless bigotry of partison political posturing. I try to hear any laughter well up through the absurdity and darkness of what passes as human discourse and information.

As for sitting in meditation, that is something which must include fits of ecstatic blissful laughter; brayings that will make you slump to the ground clutching your belly, and even after that passes and you struggle to your feet, will make you fall anew in further contortions of sidesplitting mirth.
(- Hakuin)

Tears accompany laughter.

Laughter follows tears.

With sober silence, finally, I wonder about the Buddha, I wonder about the Christ.

And sit.

Wondering.

Tommy says Gene is at his last. I'll stop in at his hospital room in the morning. I'll step into his room. Greet him passing. Then step out. May he be happy, safe, and come to dwell in his true home!

Weary, I yearn for the forest and hills;
Against my will, ten years have I spent
In the world of men.
Burning incense, I take leave of the assembly,
Shunning worldly affairs, I depart.
The mist invites me and
I know that it is time to rest.
Men of little talent are not
Guests fond of mountains.
Men of little virtue do not
Make companions for gathering leaves.
Should someone ask, "When will you come back?"
I would reply, "The white clouds and the green water
Are boundless and serene."
- Jiun (1718-1804)

Dalai Lama's nephew said some words at Amnesty International gathering at Congregational Church this afternoon. He walked from May 10 in Indiana to New York City. He spoke to people. He remembers Tibet. He asks others to remember.

Never forget:
we walk on hell,
gazing at flowers.
(Poem, Never forget, by Kobayashi Issa, 1763 - 1828)

This is flower practice.

In the midst of frustration, anger, and deprivation -- a light shines through.

Tibet goes to the Chinese.

Faith goes to the heart.

The bookmobile was 2300 lbs too heavy for us. We are too small for it. We need a gypsy wagon. We're mendicants.

Listen to me for a second about the effects
Of a certain medicine
The pill I'm talking about is called
Penetrating One's Nature and Becoming a Buddha
Chew it well, chew it well
Won't you take my pill?
- Hakuin (1685-1769)

We watch a favorite film, Julia. It reminds about the ugliness of fascism, the oddness of social privilege, and the attendant dangers of a necessary resistance.

Not here, some say. Not fascism, not resistance. I'm reluctant. The rumblings of some political heavyweights seem to sidle up close to autocratic and dictatorial right wing preference. This country is not immune.

Trinity, on the other hand, reminds us of another vision. Source, expression, and inspiration. Truth is holy. 

The bending and doubleness of lies in slander and distortion becomes the art-form of sneering opportunism. The notion that some sectors in this country insidiously look forward to terrorist attacks so as to justify disgruntled lust for control -- this is the real terror.

What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders e yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content -- all the great things in life are done by discontented people.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.
(p.119, an excerpt from Mr Mifflin's notebook full of little jottings, in Parnassus On Wheels, by Christopher Morley, 1917) 

I'd like to learn with truth.

I'd like to earn and share.

I yearn for the liberating completion of our nature with the nature of God and the nature of the cosmos.

We must change our mind. We must change our life.

With

What is.

Real.

A good day in prison is attending your graduation ceremony with an Associate of Arts degree.

It is being in a circle of praise and celebration, recognition and community.

In the autumn of my sixty sixth year,
I've already lived a long time
The intense moonlight
Is bright upon my face.
There's no need to discuss
The principles of koan study;
Just listen carefully to the wind
Outside the pines and cedars.
- Ryonen (1646-1711)

Here's a koan: 'A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Chao-chou said, "Mu."'

Here's another: If a man commits a crime and admits his mistake, how much money does a mechanic charge to change a flat?

Don't ask!

Next koan?

Lemon Poppy cake and no substitutes at conversation tonight. Lingering with guest for good words.

Words cannot express things;
Speech does not convey the spirit.
Swayed by words, one is lost;
Blocked by phrases, one is bewildered.
- Mumon

Visit Carpenter's Boatshop. Good people.

There's nothing wrong nor right with being good.

Luckily Rokpa left the chickens alone.

In prison today we read Mary Oliver, Theodore Roethke, Derek Walcott, David Wagoner, and Vaclav Havel. Spirituality, we decide, has to do with what we do with our breath.

Within the waters is the entire world;
There is nothing in its depths
But reflections of mountains and rivers.
A fish breaks the surface
And then disappears again
What need is there to borrow
The wind and thunder?
- Ingen (1592-1673)

Sure it's not easy to break habits and patterns. Instead, let them go whole.

 Be holy in all you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you, and scripture says: Be holy, for I am holy.
(1 Peter 1:15-16)

The powerful stranger is Here.

That's what poets do for us.

That's what poets are for.

Something in the night looks this way.

I look to see what is next. I see what is now -- and this is just fine: cataloguing books, conversations and meditation at hermitage, conversations weekly at the prison, a class on spirituality for the substance abuse lifetime recovery inmates, hospitality times at hermitage. Then there's the question of a bookmobile. I can't help to wonder what is next.

Searching for words, hunting for phrases,
When will it end?
Esteeming knowledge and gathering information,
Only maddens the spirit.
Just entrust yourself to your own nature,
Empty and illuminating
Beyond this, I have nothing to teach.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

I forgot to mention teaching college courses once or twice a year. Nothing but learning.

Tomorrow the woman who teaches violin has surgery. The man who used to walk the roads gets hospice visits. Another, the hiker, looks thinner after his bout with cancer.

A young man cycling Maine's Route 1 will stop and stay a day or two.

We decided to use the Greek word, "monos" -- meaning alone or solitary. We use "hito" -- Japanese for mankind, or, bandit, and Spanish for landmark or milestone. Our designation: "mono" = monastics of no other; "hito" = hermits in the open.

But to what end? How are we being used?

In his Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope said: "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

The time arrives when the singular is not the isolate, but rather the whole replete with diversity; the solitary is not the recluse, but rather completely isomorphic with the myriad others.

We think there is no other. We think to live in the open is to live alone together. And we think that what we have called God is the inner and outer harmony of everything that seems disconnected -- God is the inner and outer sound and silence from which and through which everything is heard in the stillness of solitude, alone with others.

Because You Asked about the Line Between Prose and Poetry
by Howard Nemerov

Sparrows were feeding in a freezing drizzle
That while you watched turned to pieces of snow
Riding a gradient invisible
From silver aslant to random, white, and slow.

There came a moment that you couldn’t tell.
And then they clearly flew instead of fell.
(From Sentences by Howard Nemerov, published by the University of Chicago Press. Copyright © 1980)

I have never been more alone in my life. A reverberation. Even with others. A participatory reverence.

I no longer know what most people mean when they talk of God. Nor why in the face of evil we remain obtuse and indifferent. Men and women are capable of so much suffering. Sex slave trafficking, slave labor trafficking, money enslavement, remaining slaves to harmful habit.

I look around. Looking for a place to connect with that which is not disconnected. A simple stepping with all my brothers and sisters suffering in this world. To clearly fly instead of being felled upon.  

Toaster bell sounds. Water is poured. Faucet, heating coils, bread, cheese, and Ginger Snaps all practice mindful presence in this kitchen zendo.

June bugs at screen window to right of desk.

What is old and new steps through this room, this mind, meeting here.

A French plane is missing and presumed lost at sea. We mourn their loss.

A man who was a doctor and who performed abortions was assassinated by a man who believed he was killing a mass killer who was doing what is legal in this country. We mourn the loss of life.

It is June.

And I wept. When the sun was down, I went and dug a grave and buried him. My neighbours laughed and said, ‘See! He is not afraid any more.’ (You must remember that a price had been set on my head earlier for this very thing.) ‘The time before this he had to flee, yet here he is, beginning to bury the dead again.’
(--from Tobit 2:1-8)

There is much good that wants to be begun. A new coming of the Holy Spirit would be timely.

We'd have to make and take the time.

Four Kinds of Lilacs
by Leo Dangel

"Why don't you turn at the next corner,"
she said, "and take another road home.
Let's go past that farm with all the
different colored lilacs."

"That's seven miles out of the way,"
he said. "I wanted to plant the rest
of the corn before evening. We
can look at lilacs some other time."

"It'll take only a few minutes"
she said. "You know that lilacs
aren't in bloom for long—if we
don't go now, it will be too late."

"We drove past there last year,"
he said. "They're like any other lilacs
except for the different colors. The rest
of the year, they're all just bushes."

"They're lilac, purple, white, and pink,"
she said. "And today, with no breeze,
the scent will hang in the air—no flowers
smell as good as lilacs in the spring."

"I thought of planting lilacs once,"
he said, "for a windbreak in the grove.
The good smell lasts only a few days.
I suppose we can go, if we hurry."

"Now slow up," she said.
"Last year, you drove by so fast
we couldn't even get a good look.
It wouldn't hurt to take it easy."

"Well, there they are," he said,
"and looking pretty scraggly—past
full bloom already. You should
have thought of doing this sooner."
(Poem, "Four Kinds of Lilacs" by Leo Dangel, from Home from the Field: Collected Poems. Spoon River Poetry Press, 1997.)

The time will come when we will want to allow the spirit of truth though. The time will come when we will want the spirit of love and unity to show itself through our lives.

When that time comes, we'll wonder why we didn't think of doing so sooner.

These things are our natural state -- truth, love, unity, and kindness.

Really, they are.

Then, let them be shown.

We pray for their transparency -- as we pray for the losses of those who barricade with terror or fear the way through.

Pentecost today. What were you expecting? The end of the world as you know it?

Unity.

That's the Holy Spirit.

Unity.

No one left out. No judgment. Radical acceptance and forgiveness.

As if what we hold is held and what we let go is let go. We are the community of beings in this existence deciding who belongs and who doesn't. The Holy Spirit brings something new to the table, namely -- Everyone belongs!.

Light from the moon of clear mind
Drinks up everything in the world.
When mind and light disappear,
What…is…this…?
- Kyong Ho (1849-1912)

A doctor is murdered in church. Canon lawyers talk about pedophilia. Politicians call a Puerto Rican judge nominee a racist. The distraction of professional sports occupies airwaves. Black cat counts bats returning to barn.

Theater. It's all so much theater. We play the play, say the words, pull the trigger, and shout the silly speeches while passing out campaign donation envelopes.

Whitney: You said in one interview that "One way to mark the progress of the poem is that we leave these known coordinates and move off into some terra incognita, a place that is attracting our desire to get disoriented, to get lost." So getting lost but avoiding confusion—is that the game?

Collins: That's a better way to put it than I can think of. Because by clarity I don't mean that we're always in kind of a simple area where everything is clear and comforting and understood. Clarity is certainly a way toward disorientation because if you don't start out—if the reader isn't grounded, if the reader is disoriented in the beginning of the poem, then the reader can't be led astray or disoriented later. So yes, I see the progress typical in some of my poems as starting with something simple and moving into something more demanding.
(--from "A Brisk Walk: Billy Collins in Conversation," by Joel Whitney and Billy Collins, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19796)

If this world is a poem, and existence a theater piece, then we want to know a little more about why we should care about the characters, and why those who harm and hurt do their harming and hurting. Who's writing the script?

Someone has to say it plainly.

For us.

To understand.

What...is...this...? That's our question.

Is the wind picking up?

It makes a good story. Suddenly, the wind blows. Who knows from where? Who knows where to?

It comes. It goes. Look and look and look -- ghostly arrival, ghostly departure -- you see nothing.

Some of those it touches in passing, wake up.

All of them look to you
to give them their food when they need it.
You give it to them, and they gather;
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
But turn away, and they are dismayed;
take away their breath, and they die,
once more they will turn into dust.
You will send forth your breath, they will come to life;
you will renew the face of the earth.
(--from Psalm 104)

The face of the earth is being created.

Take a look.

Do you see your face?

God help you!

There's nothing... now... you can do.

The poet Richard Hugo is right, "We're seldom better than weather."

None of the words have anything to say to him. He's losing his balance. That attracts his attention. He falls. No words stop that. He and his wife know something is happening. It doesn't make them happy.

You should not consider the mind to be that which reflects upon
visual forms, sounds, tastes, and tactile sensations. Many people think
that the mind is simply that which reflects upon what is seen and heard
and is able to distinguish between good, bad, and so forth. Thus they
regard the sixth sense, the intellect, to be the mind. But such views
are just delusive thinking. Before seeing, before feeling, and before
thinking: what is the mind? This alone is what you have to search for
and awaken to.
–Kusan Sunim, translated by Martine Batchelor, from The Way of Korean Zen (Weatherhill)

Sixteen of us sat in circle around wood burning stove this evening.

One dog and one cat makes eighteen.

We are more articulate when in community.

Holy, they say.

Spirit emerges.

Through word.

There's such a desperate desire to rid our world of mistakes. To eliminate disease. End suffering. Right wrongs.

Surely, we think, there's a pill. Or a program. Maybe torture. Or religion.

It is sometimes difficult to see and understand that changing conditions are not mistakes. They feel that way because we sometimes think that if we were only smart enough or careful enough, we could avoid all unpleasantness—that we wouldn’t fall ill or have misfortune. In fact, we usually haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just what happens. The Buddha talked of the eight great vicissitudes of life: pleasure and pain, gain and loss, praise and blame, and fame and disrepute. These changes happen to everyone. It’s just what happens. One of the great laws of the Dharma that I find myself often rediscovering is, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
–Joseph Goldstein, from "One Dharma", (HarperSanFrancisco)

When we come to the end of a story, thank the storyteller. When the film ends, leave your seat. When the meditation bell rings, enter the dharma space. Be silent. Stay present.

The world might never be rid of wrong.

But what's right will be recognized with love.

Do that.

Ryan's paper evokes the thought that no matter what we choose to be or do, we are merely creating our notion of God. God will be what God will be. And we are the creators of what will be for us.

We are in
the process
of what is
being created
as is
God
(--wfh)

These days of sitting through, of moving across this place, are the stuff of transition.

In prison, fear is norm. Mistrust is the only constant. How, when, and why to even consider trust is cloaked in wariness.

I don't go out to wander around
I stay at home here in Miura
While time flows on through
The unbounded world
In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers completely
Disappear.
The eye of delusion looks out upon
Deep fog and clouds.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

I read final papers slowly. It's not like regular end of semester grading. These papers reveal a more profound search and hide, reveal and watch cautiously the reply. Some of these men have another 10, 20, 30, 40 years behind prison walls. More than a grade is at issue here. So I read slowly and with care the words and thoughts and experiences they share.

A Tendency To Shine
by Adyashanti

If you prefer smoke over fire
then get up now and leave.
For I do not intend to perfume
your mind's clothing
with more sooty knowledge.

No, I have something else in mind.
Today I hold a flame in my left hand
and a sword in my right.
There will be no damage control today.

For God is in a mood
to plunder your riches and
fling you nakedly
into such breathtaking poverty
that all that will be left of you
will be a tendency to shine.

So don't just sit around this flame
choking on your mind.
For this is no campfire song
to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with.

Jump now into the space
between thoughts
and exit this dream
before I burn the damn place down.
(--Poem, A Tendency To Shine, by Adyashanti, b.1962-)

Sometimes in their papers there's more than I'd want to know; sometimes more I'd like to know. Mostly it is the Heideggerian revealing and concealing function of the same phrase in the same sentence. Language might speak, but words conceal as much as they reveal.

There's a way of praying that does not use words. Only ears. Only eyes.

This is my prayer with these my fellow learners.

We arrive at Mountain Street as the Lincolnville Town Band on flatbed truck played passing us. The Memorial Day parade was arriving at its end.

I think of sandlot schoolyard boyhood friend Vinnie today as Taps played at Mountain View Cemetery. He died in Vietnam in 1968. We cannot escape from the truth of impermanence.

We visit Tommy. He says Gene is doing poorly. We see Sam and Susan at Camden town landing as they install cleat beside ramp near new restaurant on wharf.

In Rockport we tie new seat to frame of ceder strip canoe at harbor. We'd come back from walking far side of harbor with Rokie. We are grateful for being alive in Maine by the water this beautiful day. We paddle into the swirling wind hugging the coast in gusting embrace.

Ananda wept saying he was only a beginner as the Buddha was dying. Separation is the law of life. "Keep trying," the Buddha said to Ananda.

We come back to the hermitage. Someone had been here and left us cut apple tree branches. We don't need a special teacher. We're given everything that we need. Joan Halifax is telling the story of the Buddha's death. I'm listening.

So many die in war. Some of these wars are waged in the quiet fields of our human hearts. So many die away from home. So many think it is not the right time to die. Still, everyone dies. Everybody is somebody. In my myth I am nobody. This myth is right and not right at the same time. In Buddhist emptiness I am part of the inseparate whole. (These are not Joan's words. They're the wind blowing through this hermitage window.) Rather, Roshi Joan Halifax reads a Milosz poem:

Late Ripeness

by Czeslaw Milosz

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing,
Like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.

I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying -- that we are all children of
the King.

For where we come from there is no division
Into Yes and No, into is, was, and it will be.

We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.

Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago --
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.

I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.

The earth is quiet underfoot. Ragged Mountain takes sun behind her to the west. So many birds!

In the silence, the wind. Gusts of sound. The gate is closed. The dog is safe from the speeding cars coming down long mountain pass from Hope.

When his young daughter died, the Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) wrote the following poem:

Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara

The world of dew --

A world of dew it is indeed,

And yet, and yet . . .

Remembering those dead and deadened, today by war...each of us on one of these days.

We grieve.

Some tears.

One by one disappearing.

And yet...

Until we are able to update our primary website, here's the Hermitage Update and Events at Meetingbrook placed on Google site: 

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/hermitage-upate

How can you see what is not there?

No one has ever seen God;
but as long as we love one another
God will live in us
and his love will be complete in us.
(--from 1John 4:11-16)

Be here.

God is not there.

God is where you are.

With God, nobody knows what they are talking about.

Be with God.