The people are being played for fools. One man not the right color has right wing ideologues slashing and spitting at phantoms and fantasies they call government. What they want is a government of their own kind with the power to subjugate and sequester.

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch'ing (1546-1623)

The right wing is in it's ascendancy. No one can stop them from their appointed disquisition and diatribe against those they consider other.

A hard time is upon us. Haughty times and heightened inequality loom.

Jesus has been appropriated and compromised by hacks and heinous intent. Where will the ordinary and simple take refuge?

A wasteland encroaches on civil sensibilities.

It is time to move deeper into a hidden geography.

Into the true desert of the heart. Into the vast emptiness of the mind.

Do not allow them the slightest inkling of false fealty. They must come to know they dwell in a desolate deception.

It is possible I am wrong.

That said, do not suffer fools gladly. We are in a hard and trying time.

In prison class on the philosophy of friendship today we read the final pages of Mark Vernon's book The Meaning of Friendship. There is an intimate relationality between philosophy, friendship, wisdom, and moral value. As, too, in the sound of the two words "adios" and "amigos."

There' a journey to make.

What You Have to Get Over

Stumps. Railroad tracks. Early sicknesses,
the blue one, especially.
Your first love rounding a corner,
that snowy minefield.

Whether you step lightly or heavily,
you have to get over to that tree line a hundred yards in the distance
before evening falls,
letting no one see you wend your way,

that wonderful, old-fashioned word, wend,
meaning “to proceed, to journey,
to travel from one place to another,”
as from bed to breakfast, breakfast to imbecile work.

You have to get over your resentments,
the sun in the morning and the moon at night,
all those shadows of yourself you left behind
on odd little tables.

Tote that barge! Lift that bale! You have to
cross that river, jump that hedge, surmount that slogan,
crawl over this ego or that eros,
then hoist yourself up onto that yonder mountain.

Another old-fashioned word, yonder, meaning
“that indicated place, somewhere generally seen
or just beyond sight.” If you would recover,
you have to get over the shattered autos in the backwoods lot

to that bridge in the darkness
where the sentinels stand
guarding the border with their half-slung rifles,
warned of the likes of you. 

(Poem by Dick Allen, "What You Have to Get Over" from Best American Poetry 2010, Scribner, 2010)

Most of what is important is just beyond sight in the open-hearted possibilities a reserved optimism allows.

These men are friends.

Over twenty two years visiting and conversing has warned and revealed the likes of me.

The night is quiet. For the moment, that is enough.

It is as if our heart and mind learned something only night teaches.

Everywhere -- in prison, on an island in Norway, in kitchens and street corners and quiet residential lanes away from cities -- actions are taken to rectify or irradiate some impedance, some perceived injustice or blind insult rendered and needing remedy.

Is some shabby variation of underground faux-justice playing out? Are we leaning toward something more immediate than our stated system of justice can pronounce?

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn't appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.
- Hui-hai (8th cent)

What's the difference between truth and illusion?

Not much. Except, neither of them are to be feared.

Only seen through.

With clear intent not to get stuck in either.

As Donne said, every man's death diminishes me.

I am much diminished by events near to home and around the world these days.

Maybe someone wishes to talk about gunning down youth on an island in Norway. Others might wish to talk about a woman who sang and drank and died in London. And still others might find themselves alone in a chair on a screened-in porch in the woods at the foot of a mountain.

It's an odd, funny, and disturbing world. Who knows the punch line?

Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations, worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egotism, and competitiveness; become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization. After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, keeping the mind pure and free from adulteration at all times. If there is the slightest fluctuation, there is no hope of transcending the world. Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful. When you cannot be included in any stage, whether of sages or of ordinary people, then you are like a bird freed from its cage.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

The world is not a stage. We don't know our parts. We stand slack-jawed staring out at a series of stories that make no sense.

I don't expect to pass this way again. While here, might I be of some help?

A few seconds ago it was 7/22, 22:22:22 on the 24hr time piece. Just that

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon (13th cent)

It is time to end the Kabuki theater on the debt ceiling.

End ideology; begin reasoning together.

It is too hot for nonsense.

Let’s face it.

Mourn the sorrow in Norway.

Pray for sanity.

It's not a choice.

Solitude is the way the solitary retains sanity.

Yes, of course, there are other people. But 'society' is optional.

It is the memory of God that informs solitude.

What if there were no black men? What if there were no white men? No red men? No brown men? No yellow men?
Nor any hues depicting various women?

What would we do then? How would we refer to one another without referencing color?

Misty trees hide in crinkled hills' blue green.
The man of the Way's stayed long
At this cottage in the bamboo grove.
White clouds too know the flavor
Of this mountain life;
They haven't waited for the Vesper Bell
To come on home again.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

I tire of the facile referencing and quantifying, qualifying, categorizing and compartmentalizing.

What would we do without our modifiers and descriptors?

Everyone is Buddha. Everyone Christ. All free. No one owned by or owning of another.

A tree is a tree. A dog a dog. God god. You you. Me me. A passing car a passing car.

We have not all been here before; we've been here all along. Where anything is there we are and have been and will be until there is no until.

Well then -- what's this all about, this packaging and selling and opining and attempting to conjure, consecrate, conjoin, and conjugate?

Don't ask me.

I have nothing to add. Or subtract.

I find myself numberless. As all beings, are.

We are countless. We don't count. We're way beyond that.

Way beyond!

When an itinerant zen practitioner stops by to visit, everyone is better for it.

I ask him to bless our zendo. He sits a while. In the silence, unmuffled sounds from direction of his sitting. He rises, bows, invites bell three times, bows three times, and exits.

The place is blessed.

The hermit doesn't sleep at night:
In love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
That rustles the trees
Rustles him too.
- Ching An (1841–1920)

Once we are born, there is nothing we can do but live. Once we realize we are dying, there is nothing we can do but visit a zendo and bless it with our presence.

Each step along this path is the journey of enlightenment.

Whether sudden or gradual. An ordinary Joe. At end, ordinariness is our common embrace -- a transmission of gratefulness, a ceremony reminder at walkway edge to hold dear and let go what is passing through.

It is joyful! It is good!

Thank you, Kozan, ancient mountain!

What is in a name?

Yes -- what is is in a name.

When the mind is properly adjusted
And quietly applied
The Way is attainable;
But when you are too fervently bent
On it, your body grows tired;
When your body is tired, your spirit
Becomes weary.
When you spirit is weary, your discipline
Will relax, and with relaxation of
Discipline, there follows many distractions.
Be calm and pure, and the Way will be gained.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Only allow what is to sound itself through your name and you and I will be exactly what we are in this world.

In this way all is accomplished. In this way everything minds itself.

Nothing's wrong. There are no mistakes.

Follow, if you wish, this way of being.

What about not following nor having a following? Can we just be part of the journey?

What if there were nowhere to go and nothing to accomplish? Whence the journey then?

There's a stream, and there's bamboo,
There's mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hidden, clouded hamlet,
A mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
Have to live, to get that simple.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

Hot summer day in Maine. Sitting in shade in front of book shed, reading. Morning practice and Evening practice. We are so fortunate!

Without opinions what would I be?

Probably, free.

What is the Christ? Those who say it is the creative and creating energy which brings into being that which is -- these interest me.

Something brings into being that which is. "Christ" is as reasonable a nomenclature as any other symbolizing sound formed into a word.

From the treatise On the Mysteries by Saint Ambrose, bishop
(The sacrament that you receive is effected by the words of Christ)
We see that grace can accomplish more than nature, yet so far we have been considering instances of what grace can do through a prophet’s blessing. If the blessing of a human being had power even to change nature, what do we say of God’s action in the consecration itself, in which the very words of the Lord and Saviour are effective? If the words of Elijah had power even to bring down fire from heaven, will not the words of Christ have power to change the natures of the elements? You have read that in the creation of the whole world he spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created. If Christ could by speaking create out of nothing what did not yet exist, can we say that his words are unable to change existing things into something they previously were not? It is no lesser feat to create new natures for things than to change their existing natures (-- from Office of Readings, Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel).

I like reasonable words.

They're much in demand for lack of them today.

May this feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel be a phrase contributing to a sentence of peace and prayer for peace in this desperate time.

Less depletion of creative energy would be nice.

Maggie spoke the simplest poetry at Quarry Hill, saying: "I'm only here to listen."

A temple, hidden, treasured
In the mountain's cleft.
Pines, bamboo such a subtle flavor:
An ancient Buddha sits there, wordless
The welling source speaks for him.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)

At prison, Charlie came to see what the character in Genesis saw of creation: "It's all good!"

We don't judge someone to be good, rather, they are good, and by seeing so we are sane.

Tommy and I talk baseball.

It was Podres pitching to Berra in 1955 who sliced it to left where Amoros made the grab.

Two years later Brooklyn was abandoned.

Birdsong in Bangor. Outside, on shaded asphalt near portable water dish, Rokpa hunkers in leaf-light.

We' taken first of 4 walks during 4 worker's comp audits driving Miss Saskia.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
Every heart is its own Buddha;
To become a saint, do nothing.
Enlightenment: the world is a mote of dust,
You can look right through heaven's round mirror
Slip past all form, all shape
And sit side by side with nothing save Tao.
- Shih Shu (c. 1703)

I imagine someone asking: Have you been saved in the nothing of Tao?

I wonder if it would be useful to suggest I carry some particular adult onset peculiar syndrome rather than the equally odd narrative suggesting I carry a propensity toward being a hermit, an anchorite, or a lay monastic cosmotheandric solitary.

The leaves have nothing to say. Nor do clouds and breeze passing do anything but invite gaze. Grass and weeds, wildflowers and white birch move in synchronized laze.

"Friendship is trust your friend will reveal you." (17Feb2011). That's what I wrote then. Today I add: "At the same time a friend is someone respecting the undisclosed. The undisclosed is not something dark or sinister. It is the deep and hidden wholeness. I prefer to look at the undisclosed as that which is hidden from sight, in the same way the eye is hidden from sight but serves as that through which we see.

In Orono we walk past Shaw & Tenney by river construction of hydro project. Old yellow building and barns where fine oars and paddles are made. The car has been moved when I return from walk. Later I learn Saskia moved it to allow tractor trailer a wide turn.

In Lincoln Rokie swims in river. After a bit, I sit in Catholic Church for a spell. The smell of wood pulp plant and closed windows makes stuffy the small interior. One woman sits on opposite side, side window open. I open window next to where I sit. I like that some churches keep doors unlocked.

At lake in Lincoln we park in shade. A few months ago we walked on ice for an hour where now kids swim and play in water. I love the seasons in Maine!

In Milo we read. Two more hours on the road.

At root it is nature -- (what some refer to as 'creation') -- that intrigues. The other narrative, the religious stories that condense history and cosmos into discursive theologies and cosmogonies, that, too, is interesting.

We have to learn about metaphor.

Wind picks up.

The gods breathe hard. Lows and highs converge.

It is a lovely summer day on the road!

At tonight's sitting thoughts arise.

Three sets of words:

• Everything is as it is.
• God is what is God.
• I am as I am.

Later Gerard asks if I can simplify.
I say:

• As it is
• Is what is
• As I am.

One hundred eighty miles today. Milbridge and back.

Hot day followed by three sets of three words.

Three soundings of bell end our sitting,

Thanks, Benedict!
Hermit monastic contemplative.
The monk in me bows in silent appreciation.

"I thought it belonged to a puzzle. But, it's just a piece -- there's nothing else to put it into." That's what Tom said at evening practice.

Thomas Merton suggests silence.

No words, nothing, between you and things.

As dawn is.

A new intimacy of presence.

In creative silence the world presenting itself beyond analysis, revealing what is wholely seen and holy heard.

No barriers.

No separation,

Merely with.

There is today. And breath to live it.

Why worry about anything.

There is no tomorrow.

Lose the idea you are special.

You're not. I'm not. 'Special' is not the accolade we think it is.

Those who are following the Way should behave like a piece of timber which is drifting along a stream. If the log is neither held by the banks, nor seized by people, nor obstructed by gods, nor kept in the whirlpool, nor itself goes to decay, I assure you that this log will finally reach the ocean. If monks walking on the Way are neither tempted by the passions, nor led astray by some evil influences, but steadily pursue their course for Nirvana, I assure you that these monks will finally attain enlightenment.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters, (dailyzen.com)

In prison today we sat with Atwood's poem:

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see the beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who has heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

(Poem by Margaret Atwood, “Siren Song” from Selected Poems 1965-1975. Copyright © 1974, 1976 )

Stick with being ordinary.

It confounds the paranoid and the powerful.

Life, they say, goes on.

Millay, in Lament, can't imagine why.

LAMENT
by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

LISTEN, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.
-- "Lament" is reprinted from Second April. New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1921.

There is no why. And I don't know why this is.