without blinking -- (a Saturday haiku)

WITHOUT BLINKING

solitude begins --

morning practice done -- drip, drip,

melting overhead

(wfh, nunc ipsum)

(What a wise attitude, this sweet Border Collie!)

what’s actually going on

Rain.

The work of Buddhism is to awaken, to come out of the sleepy dreams and notions of reality that we hold to be true and replace them with a direct experience of what is more accurately occurring. To awaken in this way, we need to become conscious of what’s actually going on at the very depths of our experience.
(-- Will Johnson, "Full Body, Empty Mind")

In prison today sitting zazen.

Tonight, off one cushion, on another pillow.

Awake to sleep.

feelers of earth, peripatetic and paraphasiac

Dinner was pistachios, tangerine,  banana, carrots and celery dipped into spinach and artichoke hummus between Bangor and Searsport on 1A coming down from Millenocket on 95 where the speed limit is an unfamiliar 75 after some 600 miles in three days. We are listening to the book on cd Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup.

To those who ask the Warden Service Chaplain where God is in all the difficult gone-missings, drownings, suicides, broke through the ice calls to which the Fish and Game Wardens are called out to the woods, Braestrup says, "...if you want to know where God is in this or in anything, look for love."

Many people want a God of church pew, or one found between covers of Bible, Koran, or some other scripture, or maybe the God of proclamations made that you have found God and are either born again in Jesus or will die a glorious blazing martyrs' death for Allah. Between 'Have you accepted Jesus into your heart?' and 'God is Great!' is a very wide and spacious open space where most of us in the world live without the worrisome proclamations or chapters and verses some feel are the only membership cards recognized for their club or clubs. Someone is either checking your ID at club door or preparing to bash your head with God-issued clubs for not belonging to the club.

Within the Way there are no obstacles at all, not even a pinpoint of obstruction. There are, however, obstacles in training. These are all self-created and due to the grasping nature of our practice. The coarse obstacles we create are doubt, fear, and taking the Way to exist objectively. The more subtle are the concepts of attainment and various levels. The Way avoids nothing at all, so we may be grateful even for obstacles. Apart from obstacles, there is no training.
(- Anon, DailyZen)

Snowshoeing in the woods outside Millenocket with faithful walking companion Border Collie I follow a narrow stretch of cross-country ski tracks around turns on tired snow on an abandoned narrow bed of road through the woods. Looking down I notice that it seems whoever was skiing stepped off their skis and walked with large footprint in the moderately deep snow for a stretch, a perception that was at odds with the fact that the ski ruts were uninterrupted. Then the footprints turned off to the right and down the embankment into the brush. Of a sudden the realization that an enormous moose had tracked the route I travelled brought me up cautiously as we walked on deeper into the woods. I soon decided I was tired from yesterday's treks, consulted my iPhone as to what to do if I met a moose, and concluded it would be a good plan to return to car, grab a snooze, and ready myself for the drive south.

Imaginary Number

The mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
is not big and is not small.
Big and small are

comparative categories, and to what
could the mountain that remains when the universe is destroyed
be compared?

Consciousness observes and is appeased.
The soul scrambles across the screes.
The soul,

like the square root of minus 1,
is an impossibility that has its uses.

(-Poem by Vijay Seshadri, in, Poetry, February 2012).

When Kate Braestrup tells the stories of little girl, ice fisherman, hiker, destraught woman, wardens that search and find, and herself, also searching and finding -- we are recipients of the use of soul to glance on souls coming and going on this mountainside of deep feeling.

We are nobler, in a morning store-bought coffee in plastic lined cardboard cup sort of way.

The earth is our witness. Our task is to see what the earth sees, unflinching, ready to respond to the language of earth with the heart and soul of what we are -- feelers of earth, peripatetic and paraphasiac, attempting to walk with and pronounce accurately what we see, what we are, seeing.

The Crossing

The snail at the edge of the road
inches forward, a trim gray finger
of a fellow in pinstripe suit.
He’s burdened by his house
that has to follow
where he goes. Every inch,
he pulls together
all he is,
all he owns,
all he was given.

The road is wide
but he is called
by something
that knows him
on the other side.

(Poem by Ruth Moose, 2004)

Empty church; remnant ashes; lovely earth

Presque Isle is quiet. The library at UMPI is quiet. The windmill unturning. My mind/body weary after long snowshoeing twice yesterday.

Whenever I weary of the perceptions of my fellow residents on this earth I take solace in silence. Simple silence, not the kind betokening displeasure or exasperation. Just surcease.

Meiho sounds cranky. Then again, he did get bounced around in the Daijoji's Abbotship following Gikai's death.

Zen-sitting has nothing to do with the doctrine of "teaching, practice, and elucidation" or with the exercise of "commandments, contemplation, and wisdom." You are like a fish with no particular design of remaining in the sea. Nor do you bother with sutras or ideas. To control and pacify the mind is the concern of lessor men. Still less can you hold an idea of Buddha and Dharma. If you attempt to do so, if you train improperly, you are like one who, intending to voyage west, moves east. You must not stray.

- Meiho (1277–1350)

I spend my life in the stray. Meiho would look at me askance. I'm hardly ever in the right place. I email someone whose perceptions about something that occurred in their life seem to stray from the actual cause that preceded it. A presidential candidate expresses views about the current president that appear to stray from any semblance to what we used to call 'truth.' Catholic politician doesn't believe that earth itself is included in sanctification and redemption and salvific sight of God. The church wants to remind him today that we are earth and to earth we shall return.

2. We have forgotten that the revelation found in the natural world and in the wider universe around us is the primary divine revelation.
Revelation is the awakening in us of a sense of divine mystery and power; it is the way the divine communicates. God's revelation to us lies in the scriptures, but also primarily in the story of how our universe began, evolved and brought us humans forth. Berry's namesake, Thomas Aquinas, wrote: "A mistake about creation means a mistake about God."
Since we have learned so much in the past two centuries about the universe and how it unfolded life, then it follows that we have new insight into that primary revelation, an increased understanding of God. We must take this new story of the universe seriously in order to fully understand both God and ourselves.
Spirituality, for Berry, was about enchantment. Awe and wonder are the primary spiritual qualities, the cure for our spiritual autism. Seeing the universe and the earth that gave us birth as sacred mysteries is key to turning the world around.
"If this fascination, this entrancement with life isn't evoked," Berry said, "then our children won't have the energies needed to sustain the sorrows inherent in our condition. They might never discover their true place in the vast world of time and space."
(-- from, Thomas Berry 101, National Catholic Reporter, Some key ideas from the work of Fr. Thomas Berry, Jun.1, 2009, by Rich Heffern) http://ncronline.org/news/ecology/thomas-berry-101

Religious faith and politics corrupt each other. Greed and ambition often baptize each other and preach crusades to honor their newfound purse.

I feel cranky too. Hardly anything seems to be what it really is. Besotted illusion wanders into our living rooms and disheveled imagination crying out, "I am the awaited one! Listen to me!"

I prefer silence. Simple silence. Muted gesture. Soundless kindness with no expectation of in-kind response. Apophatic glance wanting nothing. Benevolent gaze, Kieslowski's character in Dekalog, there, wordless, willing to witness with good will.

I stray.

I am willing to ponder that the only reality is love present quiet and unadorned.

If I wander away I do so knowing full well there is nowhere else to go, and I will return to where love present quiet and unadorned, like earth itself come to God as God itself come to earth, embraces us all wherever we are as we are aware of itself.

Itself alone.

Earth's origination, heaven's destination.

Here and now!

not-two; itself

If Buddha, then you.

I'd rather walk three miles on frozen Mattanawcook Pond in Lincoln Maine, sharp wind slicing through brown scarf, and listen to commentary on Mumonkan, white dog ranging far and wide over ridged surface carved by undercarriage of snowmobiles.

If Christ, then you.

After dark walking shoveled stretches of UMFK campus with bundled workerscomp auditor and ever-willing Border Collie, the vacated buildings and unlighted dorms granting solitude  and exodus this week of winter closedown, top of Maine with unthick snow scarf around its neck.

If you, then all of us

Nameless
Creative Energy --
Spirit Intimate Relational Interdependence
(nunc ipsum; wfh)

In the name of the Father (the Nameless) and of the Son (Creative Energy) and of the Holy Ghost (Spirit Intimate Relational Interdependence)!

It is foolish to think that anything lasts forever. It does, but not the way we think. Nothing doesn't go anywhere else. Nothing stays right here. Just don't expect 40 days of something special,

One breath at a time.

There is no difference between
The mind,
The Buddha,
And all sentient beings.
- Lotus Sutra

One glance.

We are not one; we are not-two.

Crisp, cold morning in Fort Kent.

Vive la difference!

return home, laughing

This is all I need. This is all that is. This, our being-with one another, each of us with each of us, with no other notion, is home even without a home, radically reliant trust, in what is, found here.

We'll stand on the tippy top of Maine at Fort Kent in a few hours and try not to fall off. If we were to fall, Canada would catch us.

To train in the fullest sense of the word, one needs an awareness of the impermanence of all phenomena, including our own lives, and an eye that isn't blind to cause and effect; emotionally speaking, great compassion and courage on behalf of all beings; practically speaking, a firm faith in the Way and a firm resolve to actualize the Way through practice. If there is even a speck of any one of these present when beginning to train, that is enough. All will then become manifest through practice.
(- Anon)

I'm not looking for anything else. Not any more.

Closing poem

Early summer morning,
gentle rain falling.
Zen Temple locked, waiting,
friendly dog inside barking,
welcoming,
no practitioner appearing,
nothing to do but return home,
laughing.
(-- closing poem of LIGHT CAN BE POURED ONLY INTO LIGHT, Transmission Thirty-Two, Tao-Hsin to Hung-Jen, in Living Buddha Zen, by Lex Hixon, c.1995)

Zen is what is happening while we're busy making 'other' -- so much flimflam nonsense! We could, instead, laugh at our radical homelessness, such loving living dwelling as wonderful silence.

Morning light has given shape to window.

Time to load ice grippers and snowshoes, walking poles and readiness to change. Itineracy and mendicancy with reheated coffee and chocolate chip peanut butter muffin.

Is there anything else?

Luckily Hixon prepared us last night at practice when he wrote: "Freedom from something else, not absence of thought or sound, is what constitutes the wonderful silence of zen."

Nothing to do.

Than this.

See this is new; no remembrance

Rowing winter dusk. Northwest wind. Left arm pulling hard to keep line, drop keel off cleat. Nothing in outer harbor, winter mooring buoys at ease -- I need not look back over bow as 15.5 foot Matinicus Peapod labors to lee of Curtis island, no boats to watch for, just the traditional wave to empty porch where Connie used to sit and wave as I rounded southeast corner before he died two summers ago.

Knowing that sentient beings
All have a thousand desires
Gripping the depths of their minds, 
The Buddha teaches them
In accordance with their characters
And conditions. 
With stories, words, and skillful means
He teaches them the truth.
- Lotus Sutra

What is missing will not be supplied. 

At Saturday Morning practice we read from Robert Kennedy SJ's Zen Spirit, Christian Spirit: The Place of Zen in Christian Life. Something he wrote, about being saved by what ignores us, that God is indifferent, that this indifference is a good thing.

This is what he actually says:

 I suggest that nature is teaching us that we are saved by that which ignores us, and that nature's indifference to our designs can be a source of our joy. Nature's disinterest in us mirrors God's disinterest in us that frees us from all our precious prayers and pieties. Nature's silence mirrors God's silence, and awakens silence in us. Nature's indifference to us brings us to awareness of God's indifference and refreshes our courage with the purity of his detachment. Does not our own experience of life suggest the truth that God is indifferent to our plans? How could we worship a God who paid any attention to all our everlasting whining? It is not the purpose of God to glorify us. Is it not rather that we are made to glorify God, to pour ourselves out in darkness and silence, until the heart breaks? Is it not true that we are saved by that which ignores us?
(--p.97, Kennedy)

I'll sit with this awhile.

The words of Qoheleth son of David, king in Jerusalem. Vanity of vanities, Qoheleth says. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity! For all his toil, his toil under the sun, what does man gain by it?
A generation goes, a generation comes, yet the earth stands firm for ever. The sun rises, the sun sets; then to its place it speeds and there it rises. Southward goes the wind, then turns to the north; it turns and turns again; back then to its circling goes the wind. Into the sea all the rivers go, and yet the sea is never filled, and still to their goal the rivers go. All things are wearisome. No man can say that eyes have not had enough of seeing, ears their fill of hearing. What was will be again; what has been done will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun. Take anything of which it may be said, ‘Look now, this is new.’ Already, long before our time, it existed. Only no memory remains of earlier times, just as in times to come next year itself will not be remembered.
I, Qoheleth, have reigned in Jerusalem over Israel. With the help of wisdom I have been at pains to study all that is done under heaven; oh, what a weary task God has given mankind to labour at! I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and what vanity it all is, what chasing of the wind!
What is twisted cannot be straightened,
what is not there cannot be counted.
I thought to myself, ‘I have acquired a greater stock of wisdom than any of my predecessors in Jerusalem. I have great experience of wisdom and learning. Wisdom has been my careful study; stupidity, too, and folly. And now I have come to recognise that even this is chasing of the wind.
Much wisdom, much grief,
the more knowledge, the more sorrow.
(--from Office of Readings, Sunday, Ecclesiastes 1:1-18)

Not much out there on the water. But what is there is enough. 

The rounding sweep of vulnerability.

So comes to us at times

At old age home. Friday "Poetry, Tea, and Thee." Walt brings "Autumn" by Amy Lowell. He's puzzled over it, he says, and has some thoughts, but just isn't sure. He reads the poem aloud. Then we ask him to read it again, then again, for a total of three times. Maggie, his wife, whose health has been a challenge this past year, hospice designation, macula degeneration, she can't read any more, has her own thoughts about Ms. Lowell. As do Sheilah, Joy, Betty, Lydia, Lee, Bird, and I.

Autumn

They brought me a quilled, yellow dahlia,
Opulent, flaunting.
Round gold
Flung out of a pale green stalk.
Round, ripe gold
Of maturity,
Meticulously frilled and flaming,
A fire-ball of proclamation:
Fecundity decked in staring yellow
For all the world to see.
They brought a quilled, yellow dahlia,
To me who am barren
Shall I send it to you,
You who have taken with you
All I once possessed?

(Poem by Amy Lowell)

We sit around for almost a half hour talking about poetry once the formal hour is over. We like each other's company. I tell my notion about poetry. I say, "Poetry is Being written" -- as if that says anything at all. Betty says poetry is discovery -- she remembers its first bite.

We each steal, to take away with us, two or more cookies with sweet swirling topping from cellophane covered platter brought from kitchen for the gathering, like the children we are -- these eighty and ninety-somethings conspiring to reward ourselves later with bites of forbidden fruit -- like stealthy phrases from unwitting poem by Amy Lowell no one is sure has been written.

We send it to you, Ms. Lowell, for we are fecund and happy to be together of a Friday afternoon.

Earlier Sheilah brought Longfellow. We were pleased to have him start us in the right direction, his gift reminding us.

The Sound of the Sea

THE sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,
And round the pebbly beaches far and wide
I heard the first wave of the rising tide
Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep;

A voice out of the silence of the deep,
A sound mysteriously multiplied
As of a cataract from the mountain's side,
Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.

So comes to us at times, from the unknown
And inaccessible solitudes of being,
The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;
And inspirations, that we deem our own,
Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing
Of things beyond our reason or control.

(Poem By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

A simple afternoon, being created, our time together!

Are you seeing someone else

One of the men at the prison is going to be married.

He wanted to ask me something, about God, and God being a jealous God, because this guy -- a Buddhist, wants to, but can't, pray as a Christian, and feels ...well, unfaithful.

I tell him God's jealousy isn't like ours. God wants each for himself, herself, itself. Not how we think. God wants you to be you, me to be me, that person to be that person. When each is itself, God is good with that. But when you try to live according to someone else's life, when I am not myself but an imitation of another, God becomes jealous and sad and even a bit angry.

God wants nothing other than you to be faithfully you.

Contemplate the body until you see its true form.
Then you will cease your grasping.
These contemplations will extinguish the fires of desire
In the same way that torrential rains
Extinguish wild fires.
- Perfection of Wisdom

God is all of it in particular.

Can we ever imagine what it means to observe the law of God? The law of God is that you are the law of God. Don't break it. Love it. Share it with others. Be happy in it. Now.

And, forever.

Hold peace as a flower for a holy union.

See everyone as belonging to the One they are.

Practice "Mu."

Nothing special, no exception.

You don't have to say a prayer. You are prayer.

Only be that, what you are, Amen!

Old roads

I don't know. Never have. Still don't. Have no expectations to.

Summa, for String Orchestra, by Arvo Part (b. 1935) plays followed by Koyaanisquatsi by Philip Glass. They are formations of cloud in a damp sky on a Thursday morning. Coming and going like everything else in this ephemeral world. Like this moment of bare awareness called my name and soon to be a forgotten memory in a sudden silence.

I am glad to know this.

Come to say goodbye,
We sit for a while
By the sandy creek.
On far roads,
You hold out an empty bowl;
Deep in mountains,
Walk on fallen flowers.
Having no master, you
Puzzle out Zen on your own;
Observing strict prosody,
Your poems merit praise.
This going-away
Has no circumstantial cause;
A solitary cloud
Has no fixed home.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

In class last night we talked to each other about 'ahimsa' (non-harm) and defenselessness

My brothers, you were called, as you know, to liberty; but be careful, or this liberty will provide an opening for self-indulgence. Serve one another, rather, in works of love, since the whole of the Law is summarised in a single command: Love your neighbour as yourself.
(-- Mid-morning reading (Terce), Galatians 5:13-14)

When I finish watching the film Alamar (directed by Pedro Gonzolez-Rubio, 2009) the silence goes deeper as sun now shines into dooryard. Two dogs snooze, one on sofa, one on rug. I am taken by mere noticing. In extra but deleted scene a hermit crab on sandy ground in portable shell decides to move as young boy discovers with father's words the notion of finding home and carrying home with you. It is, for me, the theme of movie, left out.

Then a dialogue between Jorge and his father figure Matraca:

Jorge: Me neither, I drink my coffee every night before going to bed
Matraca: Me too, when I'm with my buddies we always have coffee. But we drink it during daytime
Jorge: With the old guys
Matraca: With my buddies, the young guys
Jorge: What do you mean by young guys. Are they your age. If they are your age than that's not young anymore. You have lived many spring times, you're not that young any more
Matraca: Well, I'm still young at heart. I don't feel old...
Jorge: One thing is to feel and another is to be old
Matraca: - like some guys who feel old. Not me. The only thing that's old are the roads... and we're still on them
(from film, Alamar)

Yes.

It's true.

We're still on the road.

delicious / so sweet

The white Border Collie loves his red geodesic ball, running from front room to dining room with green tennis ball in mouth to pursue and return by fancy footwork like a reincarnated soccer star doing time in Maine for being red carded in a World Cup second half run on goal.

The sage sees how to stop clinging
While all others find this very hard.
If you can see through joy and sorrow,
Then you too will glimpse the great peace.
- Perfection of Wisdom

Perhaps one of our endearing qualities is the way we respond to heartfelt occasions of ordinary activity. Like the way I imagine the dog marvels at my ability to pick up the red ball, lift arm over shoulder, and toss it. He must be thinking I am a reincarnated goalie surveying the field from crease ready to feed midfielder a new opportunity to dance his way through obstacles to find someone downfield to pass to.

Like the note of the New Jersey doctor to his wife of a morning containing all we need to know of love:

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

(--Poem by Wm Carlos Williams)

The red ball rolls under the rocking chair with a heart carved into it bought for the elderly European woman who knew the value of apology and missing fruit.

don't wish; do

What do I wish for?

"What you don't wish for yourself, don't do to others."
(--Confucius, in The Analects)

Well wishes, all around!

Nothing; but...

We do not "meet" God.

We attain nothing but God.

Love it! Dontcha?

helping one another cross

If not for joy with joy, then, what?

Natural Curiosity

Take time to be with something you love in nature that brings out your natural curiosity and delight, It may be a wild iris, the shimmering luminescence of water in a stream, the patterns and colors of a butterfly's wing. Let yourself be drawn to it. Engage your senses. Are you touched by the sense of wonder?
(- Mark Coleman, "A Breath of Fresh Air")

Six of us gathered for Friday Evening Conversation, a surprising number all of a sudden, to consider the language of David Abram. Eleven of us gathered that morning in prison to pronounce a new alphabet of spirituality for those of us who feel their old one moribund. The night before twenty of us gathered in Rockland Public Library to watch and reflect on the film "Welcome" directed by Phillippe Lioret. The film touches.

RP: You used the phrase “strange world order,” could you elaborate?
PL: It’s strange and so wrong that government’s can simply dictate where and when people can travel. Governments talk about illegals and aliens but weren’t the English aliens when they took over Australia?
If you’re walking down the street and it’s raining on that side and sunny on the other, naturally you’d want to cross over to get from the rain. It’s obvious. Why can’t people escaping war and looking for a better life be allowed to do so? The division of the world is too straight, too closed in. Maybe it’s a romantic vision that people should be able travel and live where they like, but it is a vision we should have.
(--from An interview with Philippe Lioret, director of Welcome, By Richard Phillips 17 April 2010) http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/lior-a17.shtml

Awareness crosses the street as it gazes on light crossing the street. I am a street person longing for where I am crossing.

On the Sunny Side of the Street

Walked with no one and talked with no one
And I had nothing but shadows
Then one morning you passed
And I brightened at last
Now I greet the day and complete the day
With the sun in my heart
All my worry blew away
When you taught me how to say

Grab your coat and get your hat
Leave your worry on the doorstep
Just direct your feet
To the sunny side of the street
Can't you hear a pitter-pat?
And that happy tune is your step
Life can be so sweet
On the sunny side of the street

I used to walk in the shade
With those blues on parade
But I'm not afraid
This Rover crossed over

If I never have a cent
I'd be rich as Rockefeller
Gold dust at my feet
On the sunny side of the street
(Lyrics by: MC HUGH, JIMMY/FIELDS, DOROTHY)

The traffic in our thoughts can inhibit us from stepping off the curb. Often what is underfoot eludes us even as we are stepping along it. Our words are often blinders over our eyes and we've forgotten the feeling cane for our walking.

Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it's all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle to both mortals and sages. Seeing your nature is zen. Unless you see your nature, it's not zen.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

Joy is stumbling alongside us as we make our way through streets of dim awareness. It offers it's arm. Cobblestones uneven and roughshod unbalance us. Take joy's arm. Steady your rolling gate with loving assistance. Long for early release or sensible solutions to puzzling journeys.

All I have is the conversation.

Turning with another or several anothers to look within, to look across, to look through what is here or there.

We are merely individuals with arms and feet. We are not dangerous.

We help one another cross. It is an often difficult passage from here to here, from sightless wandering to sighted wondering to insightful blundering where fools trip over crazy wisdom and skim their needs.

Safely.

A morning colloquia

Maine State Prison, Lifetime Portfolio Project, A facilitated conversation, Friday 10Feb2012

Theme: QUESTIONING SPIRITUALITY -- LEARNING TO LISTEN TO WHAT WE ARE...ASKING

(or: A SPIRITUALITY IN AND OUT OF PRISON 

 A New Alphabet & Outline for Our Consideration)

Quote: "Once you have learned how to ask relevant and appropriate questions, you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know." (--Neil Postman and Charles Weingartner, in, Teaching as a Subversive Activity)

We have questions. Always. For example: What is spirituality? Or more directly: What is spirituality for me, at this moment of my life, in this place -- What do I think? What am I practicing?

Spirituality is the one thing that is ours. It is our creation. It is our choice. It is our experience. No one can give it to you, nor take it from you. No one can do it for you. Your spirituality is unique to you. How you see the world is your sight. What you think of the world is your thoughts. And how you engage the world is your practice.

1. Questioning. When a question comes to mind for you when you think of spirituality or religion,  write it down.
2. Sit with it a while. Let it form itself within you. Listen to what is taking place. When the time is right we can share our question(s) with each other, and see what emerges.
3. Conversation is what we, as a group, would  be willing to look at with regard to our questions or ideas about spirituality or anything related to it.

~  ~  ~ MiniLecture: An Alphabet of Spirituality ~  ~  ~

A: Aleph or Alpha

 The first letters of the Hebrew and Greek alphabet. Hebrew Aleph א, Greek, Alpha; and Arabic ʾAlif ا.” (Wikipedia)

“A” stands for beginning, first things, source, origin. We have to start somewhere. Anytime we consider spirituality we might begin again to look at what we think is the source of the cosmos, all of what we see, our lives, our bodies, our minds, our being here. We ask: Where am I coming from? What am I doing here? Where do I want to be? How can I occupy this very space in a way that will serve as the beginning of everything that will follow?

B: Breathing.

“B” stands for breath. “Pneuma” in Greek; “Ruah” in Hebrew; “Spiritus” in Latin; “Prana” in Sanskrit (“vital life”). 

“B” for us today, breathing, is the great teacher. We have been breathing since the moment we were born, and every second, minute, hour, day, and year since. It is the life energy that connects us to everything and everybody. It helps regulate our heartbeat, our thinking, our every action. The breath is the silent invisible teacher that has been trying to get our attention for a very long time. It has something to tell us about our spirituality.

C: Contemplative

The Latin word contemplatio was used to translate the Greek word θεωρία (theoria). In a religious sense, contemplation is usually a type of prayer or meditation. Theoria (θεωρία) is Greek for contemplation.[1] It corresponds to the Latin word contemplatio, "looking at", "gazing at", "being aware of" (cf, Wikipedia)

“C” is contemplative, or “long aware looking.” Some say “long loving looking” which means to simply, merely, watch and become aware of what is right there in front of you, or what is taking place within you. There’s a quality of “rest” in the contemplative experience, meaning that we temporarily put aside or let fall our ordinary way of distrustful looking at things, our constant judging, formulating opinions and measuring people and situations against or by those opinions and judgments. We seldom see anything fresh or new or innocently. Contemplative practice invites us to free ourselves from the burden of wariness and fear for a brief while.

D: Death

Death is the opposite and necessary parallel to birth. Some think death is the end of life. It is. But not how we normally think of it. It occurs to me that one of the reasons we are frightened by death is because we are frightened by this present moment, this present reality, this-the-present. To dwell in the only thing there is, in the present moment, is to be alive. Not to dwell in the only thing there is, the present moment, is to be dead. 

“D,” death, is ‘not this.’  What we call the spiritual life is meditation on this, meditation in this, the present moment, here and now. The struggle of spirituality is not to believe that life is always elsewhere. We think it is in the past, in their thinking, in an imagined future, and we are unwilling to stay present. This unwillingness to stay present takes the form of substituting belief, opinion, rationalization, regret, hope, fear, or aversion for the mere presence of being-in-the-moment.

In the present moment everything arrives and everything departs. Nothing remains. What is this 'nothing?' This nothing is what is itself happening. To be alive, some say, is to be in God -- God being this present moment itself within us and surrounding us. Others feel that the word “God” is too loaded, and don’t use it.

E: Ever-present

The ever-present origin of life and being itself is our very home and dwelling-place, wherever we are, whatever time it is, no matter what we think, however chaotic or difficult things might appear. 

“E”  is ‘ever’ (meaning ‘always’). We long for ‘home.’ We long to belong. We wish for a time and a place when there is no trouble, where we are without fear, and we comfortably and carefully allow ourselves to love what we love. 

This ever-present origin is called by some “God.” Others see it as “Being,” or “Truth,” “Love,” or even “Now.” Whatever you call it, you are safe there, you are safe here. Nothing can harm you -- not the real you. When we allow what is true to be our residence, there is nothing to fear. 

Postscript:

We begin again; we breathe; we contemplate; we die to absence, not this; we dwell within the ever-present origin of what-is-here.

A new spirituality is being born in our lives right now right here. By practicing awareness and allowing ourselves to learn the language of the present moment, we start all over with this beginning, this breath, this caring gaze, this death of falseness and resurrection of who we really are, this entering the present and presence of Being-Itself.  

.   .   .   .   .

~ ~  Let’s find ourselves answering poems with questions, listening to what and who we are...asking  ~ ~ 

As God is

Innocence doesn't know.

Be innocent.

Anything; at all

What, if anything, remains?

Vipassana, or Insight meditation, is a way of training the mind to see things in a very special way as they happen. Seeing without using eyes is a special way of seeing. We train the mind to use our innate wisdom without using words, concepts, logic, or interpretation. In this training, concentration and mindfulness are united. Then wisdom arises and disintegrates what appears to be integrated. Our wisdom eye registers the constant flux of events that is taking place in every moment in our lives. Although this unbroken flux of events is what life is, one cannot be fully aware of this truth without paying attention to what is happening to one’s mind and body every waking moment. With developed insight, our mind can be fully aware of the evolving, processing, and dissolving of everything that happens to us.

So we train the mind to see things as they happen, neither before nor after. And we don’t cling to the past, the future, or even to the present. We participate in what is happening and at the same time observe it without clinging to the events of the past, the future, or the present. We experience our ego or self arising, dissolving, and evaporating without leaving a trace of it. We see how our greed, anger, and ignorance vanish as we see the reality in life. Mindfully we watch the body, feelings, sensations, perceptions, and consciousness and experience their dynamic nature.
(--from, Wisdom Arising, by Sri Lankan monk Bhante Henepola Gunaratana on training the mind’s eye with Vipassana meditation, Tricycle Magazine)

Nothing remains. Just this. And this. And this.

And this is nothing other than what this is. So, we ask: What is this? So, too, we answer: This is what is.

Nothing remains. Is this why we bury or burn what remains of the body at death? Earth and fire receive and consume our "remains," that which held and carried our movements memories and mental calculations when (we say) 'we were alive' those years of 'our life.'

NOTHING BUT DEATH

There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul.

And there are corpses,
feet made of cold and sticky clay,
death is inside the bones,
like a barking where there are no dogs,
coming out from bells somewhere, from graves somewhere,
growing in the damp air like tears of rain.

Sometimes I see alone
coffins under sail,
embarking with the pale dead, with women that have dead hair,
with bakers who are as white as angels,
and pensive young girls married to notary publics,
caskets sailing up the vertical river of the dead,
the river of dark purple,
moving upstream with sails filled out by the sound of death,
filled by the sound of death which is silence.

Death arrives among all that sound
like a shoe with no foot in it, like a suit with no man in it,
comes and knocks, using a ring with no stone in it, with no
finger in it,
comes and shouts with no mouth, with no tongue, with no
throat.
Nevertheless its steps can be heard
and its clothing makes a hushed sound, like a tree.

I'm not sure, I understand only a little, I can hardly see,
but it seems to me that its singing has the color of damp violets,
of violets that are at home in the earth,
because the face of death is green,
and the look death gives is green,
with the penetrating dampness of a violet leaf
and the somber color of embittered winter.

But death also goes through the world dressed as a broom,
lapping the floor, looking for dead bodies,
death is inside the broom,
the broom is the tongue of death looking for corpses,
it is the needle of death looking for thread.

Death is inside the folding cots:
it spends its life sleeping on the slow mattresses,
in the black blankets, and suddenly breathes out:
it blows out a mournful sound that swells the sheets,
and the beds go sailing toward a port
where death is waiting, dressed like an admiral.

(Poem by Pablo Neruda, Translated by Robert Bly)

It occurs to me that one of the reasons we are frightened by death is because we are frightened by this present moment, this present reality, this-the-present.

What we call the spiritual life is meditation on this, meditation in this, present moment. Those with no spiritual life are always elsewhere. In the past, in their thinking, in an imagined future, indisposed and unwilling to stay present. This unwillingness to stay present takes the form of substituting belief, opinion, rationalization, regret, hope, fear, or aversion for the mere presence of being-in-the-moment.

In the present moment everything arrives and everything departs. Nothing remains.

What is this 'nothing?'

This nothing is what is itself happening.

It is white dog staring at green tennis ball by rocking chair, a red octopus resting on his legs, ready to pounce. It is big brown/black German Shepherd dog lumbering into dining room interrupting the trajectory of scurrying Border Collie. It is opening door for two dogs to leap off new deck over cellar bulkhead. It is barking from dooryard, squeaky ceiling floor, blowing hot air, engine noise from passing cars out on road.

To practice meditation or the spiritual life is to practice presence, is to die to what is not this, is to dwell for the time-being here, is to receive and respond to what is here, is to be free from worrying about, trying to fix, attempting to change, or eliminate what is here as it is here.

This radical relationship to what is real and present is, curiously, nothing; is, paradoxically, death; is, remarkably, what remains of us when we have disappeared into the mere moment of our whole attention, our complete union with (what shall we call it?) Reality? God? Truth? Breakfast?

Anything.

"Stirb und Werde!" ( Die and Become!) Goethe's phrase doesn't phase us.

Partake of the great banquet.

Where we are. At all.

(fearless; earth) "Ite: ecce ego mitto vos sicut agnos inter lupos."

Bill Moyers and Jonathan Haidt hold our attention last night. Five of us gather to watch and listen, then sit around table with soup and bread speaking about what we saw and heard.

Our country is more politically polarized than ever. Is it possible to agree to disagree and still move on to solve our massive problems?  Or are the blind leading the blind — over the cliff?Bill and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries. “When it gets so that your opponents are not just people you disagree with, but… the mental state in which I am fighting for good, and you are fighting for evil, it’s very difficult to compromise,” Haidt tells Moyers. “Compromise becomes a dirty word.” 

http://www.truth-out.org/jonathan-haidt-explains-our-contentious-culture/1328368654

Morning light reveals dull grey and tired brown of Bald Mountain out front room window across Barnestown Road.

The absence of snow and residue hard remnant of ground ice is notable.

Meditation is what we conclude will help. (The culture, not the winter mountain.)

Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.  

 (Lao-tzu)

To look into what is looking into, us. To look through what is looking through, God.

We might have to drop all silly notions about ourselves ... and about God.

Holderlin writes in "The Poet's Vocation":

Fearless yet, if he must, man stands, and lonely
Before God, simplicity protects him,
No weapon does he need nor subterfuge
Until God's being "not there" helps him.
(--Friedrich Holderlin, in his Hyperion and Selected Poems)

Or , in another context:

In “On the Process of the Poetic Mind,” Hölderlin wrote:
“Man seeks to articulate his purpose both in an overly subjective and an overly objective state … Yet this purpose can be attained only in a sacred, divine feeling, one that is beautiful because it is neither simply agreeable and fortunate, neither simply sublime and strong, nor simply unified and tranquil, but which is all of these simultaneously – a feeling which is transcendental and where a pure, formal mood has been distilled from it that encompasses life in its entirety.”
He tells us what poetry is by telling us what it isn’t, neither simply this nor that, but a more inclusive “purpose.” It is “beautiful” but not merely agreeable, strong, peaceful. It is also beautiful for its trouble, passivity, turbulence. These are the final stanzas of the ode “Vulcan”:

Man is more pious than all other living
Things; yet, angry with the world outside,
He becomes more himself, free-born,
And, safe in his cottage, rests and wonders.
And there’s always at least one friendly spirit
Who gladly blesses him, and even when
The fierce, uneducated spirit-powers
Are angry, love still loves.

Paul Hoover’s penetrating introduction to the translations points out the importance of Hölderlin’s concept of “coming-to-be through a going away (ein Entstehen durch ein Vergehen) – a way of seeing, I think, in which the poet “becomes more himself.” Hoover says, “Dissolution and union are continual and universal, in Hölderlin’s view, at all levels of experience … It is not a world empty of meaning that speaks in Hölderlin but rather the precariousness of consciousness.” The deity withdraws and leaves the man at the crossroads – but the poet’s embrace of dissolution (in the world, in his mind) empowers his freedom. No wonder Hölderlin was Nietzsche’s favorite poet. From “The Poet’s Vocation”:

But if he must, the man remains fearless.
Alone before god, simplicity keeps him safe.
He needs no weapons and no cunning,
As long as God’s absence comes to his aid.

(From Ron Slate's website, On The Seawall, http://www.ronslate.com/selected_poems_friederich_h_lderlin_translated_maxine_chernoff_and_paul_hoover_omnidawn)

Disappear and re-appear from center of earth. The gods, withdrawing behind the clouds will re-appear from the center of the earth.

Where did you say that, Holderlin? Or was it Heidegger?

I'll watch.

Around; about

The words are true: What you see is what you get.

As we think so we live.

We mind reality.

Our thoughts create the world we live in.

This morning, for a brief awareness, I am, in surround, love.

Holy Now

When I was a boy, each week
On Sunday, we would go to church
And pay attention to the priest
He would read the holy word
And consecrate the holy bread
And everyone would kneel and bow
Today the only difference is
Everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

When I was in Sunday school
We would learn about the time
Moses split the sea in two
Jesus made the water wine
And I remember feeling sad
That miracles don’t happen still
But now I can’t keep track
‘Cause everything’s a miracle
Everything, Everything
Everything’s a miracle

Wine from water is not so small
But an even better magic trick
Is that anything is here at all
So the challenging thing becomes
Not to look for miracles
But finding where there isn’t one

When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I’m swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now

Read a questioning child’s face
And say it’s not a testament
That’d be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it’s not a sacrament
I tell you that it can’t be done

This morning, outside I stood
And saw a little red-winged bird
Shining like a burning bush
Singing like a scripture verse
It made me want to bow my head
I remember when church let out
How things have changed since then
Everything is holy now
It used to be a world half-there
Heaven’s second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
‘Cause everything is holy now

(Lyrics to Holy Now, by Peter Mayer)
(See video featuring song augmented by images by Christine Valters Paintner at http://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2011/06/06/everything-is-holy-now/?utm_source=Abbey+of+the+Arts+List&utm_campaign=4b7594de2d-The+Sacred+Art+of+Living&utm_medium=email

Seeing without judging is the beginning of seeing things as they are.

Ease up on yourself, do simply and humbly what is there for us to do, and we will ease up on all our fellow beings, animate and inanimate, allowing each to be as they are for the duration as they, too, reflect, change, and grow.

Cutting Through Anger

Mental noting takes us in a very different direction from getting lost in a story: “Oh, this anger is so miserable; I am such a terrible person because I’m always angry; this is just how I will always be,” and so on. Instead, we simply say to ourselves, “anger, anger”—and cut through all of that elaboration, the story, the judgment, the interpretation.
- Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, "Emotions and Hindrances"

This front room is chapel temple zendo mosque and oratory. It is every place I have been. It is what is outside the windows -- cedar tree chickadee squirrel and ice.

The Course in Miracles, always edging us to see things differently, offers today:

Lesson 037

My holiness blesses the world

This idea contains the first glimmerings of your true function in the world, or why you are here Your purpose is to see the world through your own holiness. Thus are you and the world blessed together. No one loses; nothing is taken away from anyone; everyone gains through your holy vision. It signifies the end of sacrifice because it offers everyone his full due. And he is entitled to everything because it is his birthright as a Son of God.
There is no other way in which the idea of sacrifice can be removed from the world's thinking Any other way of seeing will inevitably demand payment of someone or something. As a result, the perceiver will lose. Nor will he have any idea why he is losing. Yet is his wholeness restored to his awareness through your vision. Your holiness blesses him by asking nothing of him. Those who see themselves as whole make no demands.
Your holiness is the salvation of the world It lets you teach the world that it is one with you, not by preaching to it, not by telling it anything, but merely by your quiet recognition that in your holiness are all things blessed along with you.
Today's four longer exercise periods, each to involve three to five minutes of practice, begin with the repetition of the idea for today, followed by a minute or so of looking about you as you apply the idea to whatever you see:
My holiness blesses this chair
My holiness blesses that window
My holiness blesses this body
Then close your eyes and apply the idea to any person who occurs to you, using his name and saying:
My holiness blesses you, [name]
You may continue the practice period with your eyes closed; you may open your eyes again and apply the idea for today to your outer world if you so desire; you may alternate between applying the idea to what you see around you and to those who are in your thoughts; or you may use any combination of these two phases of application that you prefer The practice period should conclude with a repetition of the idea with your eyes closed, and another, following immediately, with your eyes open.
The shorter exercises consist of repeating the idea as often as you can It is particularly helpful to apply it silently to anyone you meet, using his name as you do so. It is essential to use the idea if anyone seems to cause an adverse reaction in you. Offer him the blessing of your holiness immediately, that you may learn to keep it in your own awareness.
http://www.themiracletimes.com/acim/lesson_text.php?l=37

Once we grow more comfortable with dissolving dualism and begin to see things non-dualistically, holiness is neither inside nor outside but holiness is itself what is. Inside and outside are only words attempting to locate. Holiness is homeless. It is what is.

Mendicants wander this homelessness and are correspondingly at home wherever they alight.

We are often called to leave the familiar mental home we've secured ourselves within to wander afield in trust and acceptance of holiness leading surrounding and deepening the reality we are, have been, and will come to be, world-without-end, amen!

And while that is happening, some hot oat bran, yesterday's reheated coffee, and cinnamon raisin English muffin will fortify the meander around who and what and where and how I am.

Sanctus! Shantih! See you around;about!

"bonae voluntatis" -- "of good will."

The exhortation is for peace on earth, for men and women of good will.

The Tabernacle

Hope fills me this morning as I fashion letters
into a tree that sighs, that stays put yet moves,
reaching to its limits, swaying and settling,
a compass pointing to its place on earth
where every morning it blocks the sun
for me, at work in my studio,
where I scratch and scrawl and loop
letters into shapes so I can enter the Tabernacle
of their bodies and hear each foot, each syllable
sending its roots to a depth as great as that tree’s,
which has been standing and rooting and swaying
long before I came to memorize its plain mystery,
its wide-bodied hull open to stars at night,
each a point that I lengthen into a letter
and each letter into a word, and with the words
build a Tabernacle for the ten most broken
and the ten most resonant words. I will place them
in an inner sanctum enclosed by hanging carpets,
and outside it, another space enclosed by carpets,
and outside it, another, so that those who wish
to read the words, to say them out loud,
must first pull one curtain back and step inside,
and then another, and another until they arrive
in a hushed space, a soundproofed, heavy quiet
where they come to know that which makes all things
                                     day after day,
and out of which the earth was made.
Stepping behind each curtain they learn
that the mystery of making is not a secret hidden within
but a series of moves, a sequence of steps,
outlined on a blueprint with notes and call-outs,
white on black, constellations in the night sky,
the primordial living Torah, circulating in the letters
as trees circulate light, capturing it with their leaves,
caching it within the soil, then drawing it back up,
watering the tallest branches with the radiant dark.

(Poem by Emily Warn, “The Tabernacle” from Shadow Architect. © 2008 by Emily Warn)

Is "good will" God's, or is it that of men and women?

Yes, it is!

The most secret, sacred wish that lies deep down at the bottom of your heart, the wonderful thing that you hardly dare to look at, or to think about —the thing that you would rather die than have anyone else know of, because it seems to be so far beyond anything that you are, or have at the present time, that you fear that you would be cruelly ridiculed if the mere thought of it were known — that is just the very thing, that God is wishing you to do or to be for Him.
And the birth of that marvelous wish in your soul —the dawning, of that secret dream— was the Voice of God Himself telling, you to arise and come up higher because He had need of you.
God is Infinite Mind, and that Mind is ever seeking for more and for new expression. "For such the Father seeketh to worship Him." Now, because you are a human being, you are intended to be a new point of expression for God —a focal point infinite Mind, in fact, somewhat as an electric lamp may be regarded as a focal point for the manifestation of the electric current in the circuit.
(--from, Your Heart’s Desire, by Emmet Fox) http://www.mysoulslippers.com/resources/Your%20Hearts%20Desire%20by%20Emmet%20Fox.pdf

If we practice good will, to friend and foe alike, are we happier, better off, than ill will?

Sir Thomas More: I do none harm, I say none harm, I think none harm. And if this be not enough to keep a man alive, in good faith I long not to live.
(--from, A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt)

There's a different realm, a different world, to be lived in no matter whether dead or breathing. It is, as they say, a choice.

When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward.
- Huai-nan-tzu

There is only one way to peace on earth.

In terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

So,

We

Pray!