Broken open; gathering with-us

Two names arrive at table Sunday Evening Practice: Dirk and Kali.

The word hospice accompanies.

Gathering us into prayer.

With them.

Gott mit uns; Dasein mit uns.

Univocally holy; week

No one is doing something to us or for us. 

What is being done is being done with us.

Realization

If it is trust, you know it's not ego.

It might be you

"Many arrivals make us live," wrote Theodore Roethke.

No one thinks we are who we are.

Doing nothing is essential for thinking to occur. Many of the most important thoughts are unintentional—they can be neither solicited nor cajoled but have a rhythm of their own, creeping up, arriving, and leaving when we least expect them. It is important to cultivate the lassitude of mind that clears a place for the arrival of what cannot be anticipated. Idleness allows time for the mind to wander to places never before imagined and to return transformed. 

(—Mark C. Taylor, "Idleness Waiting Grace")

We become who we are by stepping into the unknown new and next moment as it presents itself. So, too, we are itself presented in the world.

There is no place to go. No place we have to get to. 

Arrive, that's it.

Wait for the question to arise. Someone will ask the question; it might be you, yourself, asking.

"Where are you?" 

And when you hear that question, do not attempt to answer it.

Wait a while.

Arrive without answer.

Look around.

keeping up with crazy

It might just be a creation by imagination.

Maybe a hologram projected into dark space manifesting this apparent reality.

I don’t know.

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.                                   —Sherlock Holmes

We don’t have a story. The narrative is unconvincing. The yearly rituals of death and resurrection are again staged. 

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark. The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.   —Plato 

The hands of time seem out of touch.

If you’re not dying you’re not living.

Altering our stupidity into lucrative payday is the new crack the new heroin the new

methamphetamine the new radio and right wing cable tv.

It’s hard to keep up with crazy.

1st century to 21st century.

The crime of deterring

Trust.

It is what prison takes away.

Sentencing life to missing it.

Two Cat Story

(haiku)

Middle night growling --
Don’t let mouse
come between you

returning to earth

I picked the squirrel up by the tail. No blood. Just there in road on back. Balancing bicycle heavy with groceries, I walked to side of road, placed it on spate of earth, vigiled a brief while, then rolled bicycle up rest of hill,  

Even the smallest glimpse of freedom heightens our awareness of the pain we have created by our ego-fixation. Seeing the contrast is what inspires us to go forward on the path. In particular, each time we sit on the cushion and meditate, we relax and let go a little bit more. The notion we’ve held onto—that if we don’t keep up our ego-momentum something bad is going to happen—dissolves bit by bit. (—from Judy Lief, “Letting Go,” in Tricycle Magazine)

We are cor-respondence. We are com-munion. We are con-versation. Hence, equality is what belongs to us.

She asked us to engage in several exercises -”keep going in a straight line until you have to turn” – each an invitation to spontaneous interaction, each with a natural lifespan, 5 minutes, 15 minutes, then the energy turned formulaic or repetitive and died away.  She said that’s how it is with all energy, all relationships, that the energy comes and goes and comes and goes like the tide.  She implied that we’re happier when we recognize this pattern, stop fighting it, and just let it happen.  (--from Peter Cunningham blog; dancer Martha Myers words) http://petercunninghamphotography.com 

We’ve had it wrong. We thought it was objects. Others as objects. It’s not. 

What it is, if we can say anything at all, is coming to the clearing where significance is shared by all who find their way there. 

SZ: Would you say that your father was the most important person in your life?       ED: No. (Laughs) Right now I’m talking to you, so you are. Congratulations! (--Michel Engu Dobbs interview, Sweeping Zen, Feb. 21, 2012) http://sweepingzen.com/michel-engu-dobbs-interview/

Unearthing.

Re-earthing.

Discovering one-self there.

Nothing but

Rain 

All over

And into

April

opening windows and doors

At practice last evening, which dream do we consider more real -- the one while we sleep? or, the one when awake?

Chaos and doubt? Or, order and certainty?

Peter Matthiessen’s death drew our observations. So too did the words of the Inner Chapters by Chuang Tzu.

This morning I open doors and windows of yurt, zendo, and book shed/retreat. I burn incense and light candle in memory of Cynthia in zendo at altar cabinet and Pacific coast shell in memory of her son Danny she gave to us. Gassho!

I light candle and burn incense in book shed for Jonathan’s mother on her birthday. 
L’chaim.

Moon this April 7 

is the same age today 

as she was 

the same age yesterday -- 

each a Good day 

birth! Hello                            (--wfh)

What we call “self” is not clenched double-fist solid entity. Rather, self is open-fingered falling through exchange of sensations, memories, thoughts, and awareness engaging a flowing grace and sweet dignity in communion with circumstance and surroundings.

To know yourself is to let yourself go into the unconcealing present situation with integrity and humility.

Free passion is radiation without a radiator, a fluid, pervasive warmth that flows effortlessly. It is not destructive because it is a balanced state of being and highly intelligent. Self-consciousness inhibits this intelligent, balanced state of being. By opening, by dropping our self-conscious grasping, we see not only the surface of an object, but we see the whole way through. We appreciate not in terms of sensational qualities alone, but we see in terms of whole qualities, which are pure gold.  

(—Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, “Love Story” http://www.tricycle.com/insights/love-story)

Balancing, yes.

Pure soil.

April sunshine.

Monday morning.

odd magic

They are laughing at the fact they are old and growing infirm. Someone else’s name arises. “She’s not the center of the universe,” he says to woman reading Parkinson’s material. Climbing stairs he hopes she is still taking the amusement of their banter. 

He only means the interpretation someone gives for something is merely the interpretative opinion their mind fashions out of the patterns and habits accumulated over long stretch of time. 

He means the guess anyone has about the world they visit is as good as the 10,000 guesses they could have made.

He is speaking about anyone who seems to present themselves with the calling card that they are the center of the universe. (Which, in a different context, they actually are.)

He means he knows he’s full of baloney. He’s unsure the reading woman has the same opinion about herself. And leaves it there.

Mountains on all sides 

Rivers looped around it 

There's no trail to my hut. 

When the dragon elephant approaches 

A path opens all by itself 

In the hour of soaring talk 

Neither has to think of meeting 

The other half way 

Though all of you keep 

Wandering into yes and no.  

(-- Muso Soseki (1275-1351))

The physicist claims she has no particular interest in the cultural conditioning the vast majority of us cling to -- what to wear, what not to wear in the tidy expectations of societal norms. The universe, the multi-verse is so enormous, complicated, and diverse -- and we are so small, odd, and narrow. What, I wonder, does it matter if we wear a jacket to dinner, hat to church, shoes to business meeting, use salad fork with lasagna, believe in Jesus or tree-spirits, vote republican, stifle cuss words in mixed company, or even spend our life listening to spondee and dactyl of afternoon trees dancing with sunny breeze during casual walk?

It, the implication resounds, doesn’t matter. Still, there are realities we have to observe.

A MADMAN DREAMS OF TURING MACHINES  

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines bridges fiction and nonfiction to tell a strange if true story of coded secrets, psychotic delusions, mathematical truth, and lies. This story of greatness and weakness, of genius and hallucination, is based on the parallel lives of Kurt Gödel, the greatest logician of many centuries, and Alan Turing, the extraordinary code breaker during World War II. Taken together their work proved that truth is elusive, that knowledge has limits, that machines could think. Yet Gödel believed in transmigration of the soul and Turing concluded that we were soulless biological machines. And their suicides were complementary: Gödel, delusional and paranoid, starved himself to death fearing his food was poisoned. Turing ate a poison apple, driven to suicide after being arrested and convicted of homosexual activities. These two men were devoted to truth of the highest abstract nature, yet were unable to grasp the mundane truths of their own lives. Through it all, the narrator wonders, along with these two odd heroes, if any of us can ever really grasp the truth. 

(-- from description of her novel by Janna Levin on her website)  http://www.jannalevin.com/science.html

If we are working with “nothing” -- how is the mind to remain sane?

If we are working with “everything” -- how are we able to accomplish anything?

If we are interested in “thinking/acting” -- is there any better way aside from stillness and silence?

A Way of Working  

Once, Chuang Tzu tells us, there was a master craftsman who made such beautiful things out of wood the the King himself demanded to know the secret of his art.  

“Your Highness,” said the carpenter, “there is no secret; but there is something.  This is how I begin.  When I am about to make a table, I first collect my energies and bring my mind to absolute quietness.  I become oblivious of any reward to be gained or any fame to be acquired.  When I am free from the influences of all such outer considerations, I can listen to the inner voice which tells me clearly what I have to do.  When my skill is thus concentrated, I take up my ax; I make sure that it is perfectly sharp, that it fits my hand and swings with my arm.  Then I enter the forest.  I look for the right tree:  the tree that is waiting to become my table.  And when I find it, I ask: ‘what have I for you, what have you for me?’  Then I cut down the tree and set to work.  I remember how my masters taught me to bring my skill and my thought into relation with the natural qualities of the wood.”  

The King said, “When the table is finished, it has a magical effect upon me.  I cannot treat it as I would any other table.  What is the nature of this magic?”  

“Your Majesty,” said the carpenter, “what you call magic comes only from what I have already told you.” 

(--from Chang Tsu: Inner Chapters – Translated by Gia-Gu Feng, Illustrated by Jane English.)

 Behind stack of books, white dog sleeps with cedar tree and Bald Mountain drenched in April sunlight -- behind him -- glare, the Buddha, crucified Christ, piece of split wood leaning against window.

The universe might be unfathomable -- but in my room and backyard -- it is there for my unfathoming eyes.

Odd magic!

Sound of bells in afternoon wind.

uncoverable

The thing about spies is they use truth like they use people.

Both are malleable and disposable.

It does not seem to be worth the trouble tell the truth or keep in touch.

We are killed for reasons we don’t understand and are told lies for no good reason at all.

a funny sentence happened on the way to word

When young, I wanted to live a life of prayer.

Listening, says James Hillman, is akin to prayer: “Prayer has been described as an active silence in which one listens acutely for the still small voice, as if prayer were not asking and getting through to God, but becoming so composed that [God] might come through to me.” 
(Insearch, p.16) (cf. The Word’s Body: An Incarnational Aesthetic of Interpretation, by Alla Bozarth-Campbell, p.85)

Permanently  

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence. 

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark
   rainy day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure
   and sweet expression on her face until the day I perish from the
   green, effective earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window
   sill has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from
   the boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge. 

As the adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat--
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone                                                                                                     Until the destruction of language.

(Poem, Permanently,  by Kenneth Koch)

Now much older, I prefer to live a life of prayer.

Funny, eh?

The good don't die young. The word you're looking for is 'murder.'

"Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?" -- asked the song.

I thought not.

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em.

And thanks for looking.

Is the deed ever really done

Serial killers and mass killers disturb us. Profilers and psychologists get busy explaining things. Soon we tire. We look around wondering: What’s next?

I take some time to review and think about O.J. Simpson, the crime, the case, the characters in courtroom. Then I watch the curious Discovery documentary about a man, Glen Rogers, on death row who his brother claims killed Ms Brown-Simpson and Mr Goldman in 1994.

People who study Buddhism   

Should seek real, true  

Perception and understanding for now.  

If you attain real, true  

Perception and understanding,  

Birth and death don't affect you;  

You are free to go or stay.  

You needn't seek wonders,  

For wonders come of themselves.                                          

                - Linji (d. 867?)

I come across a piece written by someone who knew a fellow I studied with in the early sixties in Callicoon NY. It reminded me of what happened to Dennis in 1997. 

Two Troopers, Judge, Editor Killed In Spree  

Police Slay New Hampshire Suspect 

 August 20, 1997|  By The Boston Globe 

.COLEBROOK, N.H. — A man enraged over property disputes went on a killing spree Tuesday in this town near the Canadian border, killing two law officers, a part-time judge and a newspaper editor before he was slain by police after fleeing into Vermont, according to witnesses. Carl C. Drega, 67, of Columbia, N.H., shot another police officer before confronting 20 officers from four law enforcement agencies in Bloomfield, Vt.  ...  

There, police said, he shot lawyer Vickie Bunnell, 44, a part-time judge whose office was in the building, and the paper’s co-editor, Dennis Joos, 50. 

...  

Joos, who once had studied to be a priest, tackled Drega and, in the ensuing struggle, was shot in the spine, witnesses said. "He dragged Dennis for about 15 feet. I think Dennis had already been shot and was just clutching on to him," reporter Claire Knapper said. “Drega told him to mind his own (expletive) business." 

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1997-08-20/news/9708200087_1_police-cruiser-police-car-dennis-joos

Also cf. http://www.theppsc.org/Archives/DF_Articles/Files/NewHampshire/Colebrook/Drega_Shooting.htm 

The writer included an image from probably 1964 in his blog: 

Here’s what’s interesting about the yearbook entry and the newspaper article -- the oddity of coincidence. The man who shot and killed Dennis was named Drega. In Dennis’ yearbook some 33 years earlier, under ‘Aspiration’ -- the words: “To work with the dregs of Society.”

Yeats words help put this in context: 

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere 

The ceremony of innocence is drowned; 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst 

Are full of passionate intensity.  

Surely some revelation is at hand; 

                            (--from The Second Coming, poem by William Butler Yeats) 

Drega; dregs -- surely something is at hand here!

I liked Dennis. He had a Salinger-like quality to him. 

Words are more mysterious than soft snow in mud time.

Out of the wood two hulking tramps  

(From sleeping God knows where last night,  

But not long since in the lumber camps). 

They thought all chopping was theirs of right.  

Men of the woods and lumberjacks,  

They judged me by their appropriate tool.  

Except as a fellow handled an ax  

They had no way of knowing a fool.  

Nothing on either side was said.  

They knew they had but to their stay  

And all their logic would fill my head:  

As that I had no right to play  

With what was another man’s work for gain.  

My right might be love but theirs was need.  

And where the two exist in twain  

Theirs was the better right--agreed.  

But yield who will to their separation,  

My object in living is to unite  

My avocation and my vocation  

As my two eyes make one in sight.  

Only where love and need are one,  

And the work is play for mortal stakes, 

 Is the deed ever really done  

For Heaven and the future’s sakes. 

           (--from Two Tramps in Mud Time, poem by Robert Frost) 

I think of Dennis. I’m glad to remember.

Something, no doubt, about New Hampshire.

Sentiment and sediment.

Window finally open

Maine morning.

Gathering a crowd.

National peanut butter and jelly day.

If still possible

Who's foolin'?

I'll tip my hat to the new constitution 

Take a bow for the new revolution 

Smile and grin at the change all around me 

Pick up my guitar and play 

Just like yesterday 

Then I'll get on my knees and pray 

We don't get fooled again 

Don't get fooled again 

No, no! 

(Excerpt from Wont Get Fooled Again, lyrics by Peter Townshend, The Who)

Maybe not.

CIA Misled Public About Interrogation Program: Report
Reuters

04/01/2014

April 1 (Reuters) - The Central Intelligence Agency misled the U.S. government and public for years about aspects of its brutal interrogation program, concealing details about harsh treatment of detainees and other issues, according to a report in the Washington Post.
U.S. officials who have seen a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA interrogation program described damning new information about a network of secret detention facilities, also called "black sites", the Washington Post said.
The Intelligence Committee is responsible for oversight of the CIA. It completed the 6,300-page draft report on the interrogation program more than a year ago but it remains classified.
At the "black sites", prisoners were sometimes subjected to harsh interrogation techniques even when analysts were sure they had no more information to give, said the report, which the Post said was based on interviews with current and former U.S. officials.
The files reviewed by committee investigators describe previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan. The method bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques, the Washington Post said.
Officials also said that millions of records show that the CIA's ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence information, including tips that led to the locating and killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, had little, if anything, to do with "enhanced interrogation techniques", the newspaper said.
A spokesman for the CIA said the agency had not yet seen a final version of the report and was not able to comment, the Washington Post said.
Some current and former agency officials have privately described the study as marred by factual errors and misguided conclusions, the newspaper added.
In March, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of searching computers used by committee staffers compiling the report and she questioned whether the agency had broken the law in doing so.
(Reporting by Carey Gillam; Editing by Gareth Jones)

...................

Torture cares nothing for truth.

Torture shows only disdain of human beings. 

Torture cripples the torturer, his country, the people in whose name it is done.

No need to look further for cause of illness plaguing psyche and spirit of this land. 

Look, rather, for healing antidote.

If still possible.

Mu

Japan: Man Freed From Death Row Faces New Effort to Block a Retrial, By MARTIN FACKLER 

Prosecutors filed an appeal on Monday to block a court from granting a retrial to a former boxer convicted of murder whose release last week after 48 years on death row exposed problems in Japan’s justice system. Prosecutors in the central city of Shizuoka challenged the decision by a district court, which said the police might have fabricated some of the evidence used to convict the former boxer, Iwao Hakamada, now 78, of killing a family of four in 1966. While the appeal will not affect the court’s decision to release Mr. Hakamada, it is seen as a face-saving move by prosecutors to prevent further scrutiny of their reliance on forced confessions and possibly shoddy police work to obtain Mr. Hakamada’s conviction and possible others.(--NYTimes, 1Apr14, online)

see through me

At end of Sunday Evening Practice one of the practitioners leaned against kitchen sink and said that only when someone is completely intimate with suffering is there no longer suffering.

No looking at suffering; rather, looking through suffering. To see what is as what is seeing.

Questions such as: Why was I born? What is my life for? What will happen to me when I die? are based on the premise of a solid, permanent entity living in a body and moving through time from day to day and year to year. With this ‘self’ in mind we then inquire into its past, its future and its purpose. It is in relation to this premise of ‘self’ that many of us need guidance. It is imperative, if we want to understand Buddhism, to investigate this particular premise. 

When we investigate this concept of a solid self, our questions will alter from: Why was I born? etc, to: What is the ‘I’? What is the foundation of this idea of self? Is there an ‘I’ that has been born? Is there a ‘me’ that lives life? Is there a ‘me’ that will die? We begin to question right down to our very roots, as it were, with a mind that is fresh, open, and willing to look. We just want to know! 

The unborn does not come within the realm of time, so ‘forever’ is meaningless in relation to the unborn. 

(--from Karma and Rebirth A Buddhist Perspective by Diana St Ruth)

These days, contemporary culture seems overly interested in the undead.

I’m more interested in the unborn nature that precedes, pervades, and follows our born nature. 

How does it feel?

Mazel Tov! 

It is Sunday. And raining. Early spring.

The word mazel literally means “a drip from above.” Mazel can have different connotations depending on its context, but they are all connected to this basic definition—something trickling down from above. 

The signs of the zodiac are called mazalot. Jewish tradition sees the constellations on high as directing the destiny of individuals and nations down below. Thus mazel is the influence dripping down from the stars. (Over the years, bad or good mazel came to mean luck more than destiny.) When the Talmud says that we are not subject to mazel, it means that we are not limited to our destiny; rather our own actions determine our fate. 

There is another meaning of the word mazel that is more relevant to the phrase Mazel Tov. Mazel is the term used in Jewish mysticism to describe the root of the soul. The mystics say that only a ray of our soul actually inhabits our body. The main part of the soul, our mazel, remains above, shining down on us from a distance. Have you ever experienced a sense of spontaneous intuition, where out of the blue you suddenly feel at peace with yourself and the universe? Or a sudden flash of inspiration that makes you see life in a new light? 

Occasionally we may receive an extra flux of energy from our soul above. It can happen at any time, but is most common at a time of celebration—a birth, birthday, brit, bar/bat mitzvah or wedding. It is especially at these times of joy that we are able to see beyond the mundane and the petty and to sense the deeper truths of life. 

When we tell someone Mazel Tov, we are giving them a blessing: May this drip of inspiration from your soul above not dissipate, but rather have a positive and lasting effect, that from this event onwards you should live your life with higher consciousness. You should be aware of the blessings in your life and be ready to receive more and more.

(--from, What Does “Mazel Tov” mean? by Aron Moss)      http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/160965/jewish/What-Does-Mazel-Tov-Mean.htm

It feels right.