attentive presence, root silence, transparent service

Gaudete. -- the word means rejoice.

There must be something to rejoice about this December. 

Happy to be alive? Yes. Glad to have a practice of learning, meditating, working, and conversing? Yes. And that mysterious practice of prayer? Yes, that too.

Yesterday, on the 48th year since Thomas Merton’s death, we renewed our promises, the 18th time since first saying them in 1998.

Three promises:  Contemplation,  Conversation,  Correspondence. ...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage“m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other). Contemplation  is the promise of simplicity.It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With. It is attentive presence. Conversation  is the promise of integrity. It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.  It is root silence.  Correspondence  is the promise of faithful engagement.  It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope. It is transparent service.  ………………………………………………………………… Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one.  ……………………………………………………………….. Quotes:  1.  We are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968) 2.   When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise.   (Anonymous) 3.   I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint) 4.   It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)      5.   He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion.  (Sokei-an)

We say “yes” when asked if we wish to continue living these promises.

We are happy to do so.

Thomas Merton died 48 years ago today

Contemplative silence isn't some sweet sensitive respect for an almighty power shown reverence.

Rather, contemplative silence is the agonizing realization no one could possible understand the loneliness of inability to communicate to anyone the unknown inarticulate presence of something beyond human comprehension that gnaws at our desire to speak and name the aphasic and apophatic unnameable emptiness surrounding us with no expectation or possibility of being identified or understood.

Contemplative silence is the gaze into nothingness that returns gaze with intimate inquiry into who it is dwelling between gaze and gaze.

callous cynicism

It's like a circus.

I'm not sure the election results will not collapse under the weight of Russia's hacking intent to swing the results toward Trump. 

Nor the business monetizing of political,decisions for the coffers of mr Trump.

The normal skepticism mutates into callous cynicism.

What will it be? 

I think it will be ugly.

No Friday evening conversation tonite

we are two hours away

sorry for late notice

one more thing

Oh yes

Happy enlightenment day, Siddhartha Gautama

Happy no-barrier birth, Mary

Happy disappearance day, John Lennon 

here on out

In a post-fact, post-truth time there are those who wander aimless amid the false and fake while blinded by braggadocio balderdash..

The rules have changed.

We do not know what to believe or who to trust.

Eat when hungry? Sleep when tired?

We’re on our own from here on out. 

to catch the falling pieces

Re. The Opinion Pages  | WHAT’S AT STAKE  

An Enemy of the E.P.A. to Head It,  By THE EDITORIAL BOARD, DEC. 7, 2016, NYTimes 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/07/opinion/an-enemy-of-the-epa-to-head-it.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-left-region&region=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region

It’s Thursday morning, and there’s a little less than a cord remaining to stack.

A friend who was a farmer who also worked for a defense contractor used to warn me off saying anything political.  He was right, of course. He loved the Fox brand of blow-harding that claimed ’no spin.’ 

He’ll forgive me a small lapse.

Here’s what I’m wondering:

Is Mr. Trump following the Republican goal to prove the Federal Government is unnecessary and incompetent?

Programming failure into the administration will self-fulfill the prophecy and ensure that private sector takeover is the only route to travel.

Luckily Mr Trump has his private infrastructure to catch the falling pieces of monetized contracts to help run the business formerly known as the United States Government.

It seems the smart plan to follow.

so very glad

Sent by fellow practitioner to our dog, Rokie: 

       I'm So Glad

Start seeing everything as God

       But keep it a secret.

Become like a man who is Awestruck

        and Nourished

Listening to a single Nightingale

Sing in a beautiful foreign language   

     While God invisibly nests

           Upon its tongue.

               Hafiz

Who can tell in this world

That when a dog runs up to you

   wagging its esctatic tale

You lean down and whisper in its ear,

          " Beloved

I am so glad You are happy to see me

            Beloved

       I am so glad,

So very glad You have come".

--I Am So Glad - Poem by Hafiz from book, "I Heard God Laughing" by Translator Daniel Ladinsky)

"Are you going to tell that to the cats?" Rokie asks.

on hearing childhood cousin has entered hospice

From letter: 

And should you have plans for travels to other unspecified and unexplored destinations — well — I wish you safe journey and good arrivals. 

I know how these planned and unplanned vacations go. The idea arises in someone’s mind, you just jump in, place foot on accelerator, wave out the window, say “See y’all later” and head for the curve in the road. 

No accounting for anyone’s goings and comings. I seem to just wave and wave again. It’s always a bittersweet experience.

 We travel, often, not knowing that we are -- or where we are -- going.

speak and be heard

Philosophy isn't difficult. It's dangerous. How so?

To be “philosophically adjusted” is to belie what I see as one major aim of philosophy — to speak to the multiple ways in which we suffer, to be a voice through which suffering might speak and be heard, and to offer a gift to my students that will leave them maladjusted and profoundly unhappy with the world as it is. Bringing them to that state is what I call doing “high stakes philosophy.” It is a form of practicing philosophy that refuses to ignore the horrible realities of people who suffer and that rejects ideal theory, which functions to obfuscate such realities. It is a form of philosophizing that refuses to be seduced by what Friedrich Nietzsche called “conceptual mummies.” Nietzsche notes that for many philosophers, “nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive.”   

(--from, I Am a Dangerous Professor, by George Yancy, 30Nov16, in The Stone, New York Times) http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/11/30/opinion/i-am-a-dangerous-professor.html

 It's time to be maladjusted.

Always wanted to be what I am.

it's me

Watched Citizen Four yesterday after helping crew cover boat, then stacking cordwood for hours.

Come away impressed by Edward Snowden and Glen Greenwald -- realizing what a controversial decision they made about a controversial system of information gathering practiced by US intelligence agency on US citizens and pretty much everyone else on the planet.

Information is power. Power is control. Control is invitation to abuse. Abuse is how subjugation and power marry. Their children are subterfuge and disinformation.

In prison Friday morning at Buddhist group and Meetingbrook conversation one of the men who was reading the Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukov for the 6th time (he said) spoke about the contrasting world views emananating from focus on law or focus on love. 

Law, he observed, engendered order and control. Love, chaos and compassion.

The forces focusing on security focus on order and control. Mussolini made the trains run on time. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Hitler each tidied up their population based on their disembodied opinion of tidiness and uniformity.

The legacy of Jesus (called 'the Christ') , Gandhi, Lao Tzu, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa, Kuan Yin, Dan and Phil Berrigan, and Martin Luther King attended the poor and disenfranchised with chaos and compassion exemplifying an embodied practice of presence and acceptance.

Law and control are general and unforgiving.

Chaos and compassion are particular and forgiving.

Perhaps we've arrived at another juncture of history wherein those with power really do disdain those who are under their power. If so, it is, again, a very dangerous time of history.

Power requires secrecy and unquestioning loyalty.

Compassion invites openness and questioning. It also requires a benevolent but skeptical eye toward the huckster, con-man, sweet-talker, or bully.

Things feel uneasy. Uneasy in the sense of anxious, troubled, and uncomfortable. 

We're unsure which way the trains are heading. Toward camps to entomb in permanent certainty? Or toward the sea to listen to the perennial splash of waves on shore signifying the arrival and departure of time and communion in an impermanent celebration of uncertainty and (what has been called) faith?

I liked Snowden and Greenwald in the documentary. They seemed like thoughtful and courageous men.

Whatever happened heretofore or happens hence, let's reconfigure consciousness to alight on an ever changing shore of allowing and forgiving, splashing us with arrivals and departures, welcoming and bidding adieu to all our family -- our holy family -- rapscallion or rhapsodic, as each enters and takes leave of this theatre piece we call earthly life.

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

(Matthew 19:14, New International Version)

Ad-vent! (coming to), or, c'mon!

(i.e. "C'mon!" -- which, as all bastardized truncated French interpretations have it, actually means, "it's me!) 

want truth? drop opinions

Nothing wrong with having an opinion.

Just, don't bother having any.

Feel, sense, prefer or don't. No need to formulate into an opinion.

Stay clear.

Opinions are a cultivation too precious to afford.

not yet human

I like Pierre Hadot's book Philosophy as a Way of Life, Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault. Reading Arnold I. Davidson's introduction, this on p.20:

For ancient philosophy, at least beginning from the sophists and Socrates, intended, in the first instance, to form people and to transform souls. That is why, in Antiquity, philosophical teaching is given above all in oral form, because only the living word, in dialogues, in conversations pursued for a long time, can accomplish such an action. The written work, considerable as it is, is therefore most of the time only an echo or a complement of this oral teaching.
(--Pierre Hadot, "Preface," in L'Enseignement oral de Platon, p.11.)

The forming aspect of philosophy suggests arriving at a shape of being human that is recognizable and responsible to surrounding environment and emerging humanity into this appearing world.

We are not yet human.

We seek form.

It is an exercise and practice of becoming and

Being

Human

what about being here

"You can't experience not being there forever," said Alan Watts.

a formula for meditation

As it was

in the beginning

is now

and will be

forever

there’s a new precedent

It feels that nothing has preceded this

Nothing has

And this is the result

Grok this nothing

One who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so

Advent.

Something’s coming.

Could be Christ child.

Could be another hysterical tetrarch -- an executive leader of one of the four seats of power who will attempt to gobble up, privatize, and cannibalize the other three -- legislative, judicial, and remnants of free press -- for his benefit and favor.

Watch out!

Reading        2 ROM 13:11-14  

Brothers and sisters:You know the time;
it is the hour now for you to awake from sleep.
For our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed;
the night is advanced, the day is at hand.
Let us then throw off the works of darkness
and put on the armor of light;
let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day,
not in orgies and drunkenness,
not in promiscuity and lust,
not in rivalry and jealousy.
But put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provision of the flesh.  

(--First Advent, 2nd reading, readings of the day)

We think desires of the flesh means sex and intoxicants. Well, yes. But, more so, usurpation of  private choice, private thought, private act.

If Christ means communion (not correction), then this tetrarch means punishment (not democracy).

America has for a long time pretended not to favor tyranny and treachery. That pretense fades. Overt strongman control rolls into town. Swooning adherence to the bullying puppets and bully pulpit becomes job one for both the affirmers and deniers of such rise-up controlling interests in personal charism and cauterized closing of wounds on slashed bodies who disagree with rule by one/few master/pure know-betters/shut-your-mouth insinuators instead of the represented many and different, struggling to survive plurality who wait and wonder.

This is not a time of servile yes or obsequious pandering to faux-fascist demagoguery. This is the time for awakening.

The writer of Romans gives a new and uncredited point of view and course of action: "and make no provision of the flesh."

It is time to gather provisions for the long and difficult upcoming winter. 

"No"

We must enter mu and embody mu.

Works of darkness whisper 'yesss' as they strut toward Washington to be sworn. So, too, sheep are herded into delusion to be shorn and sacrificed.

Something strange this way comes.

I'd rather Christ.

Or Buddha.

Some authentic Bodhisattva:

bo·dhi·satt·vaˌbōdiˈsätvə,-ˈsət-/noun(in Mahayana Buddhism) a person who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings.

The suffering, so unseen in plain sight for so long, is about to burgeon and overwhelm.

Our response to the koan of this arriving anomaly will be:

no --

unsay that portentous predictive; embody awakened caring action!

Let no become now until we have won the simple yes of co-relational and common communion.

Balsekar is fine but Orwell is spot on

Sunday Evening Practice reading on volition and the totality.

Oh dear, Animal Farm's Napoleon has squealed a mistruth and his dogs are in a frenzy to ensure it is heard as truth. Gotta love fiction...

saturday morning in meditation cabin

Zazen practices this...

fact friday

I tell them i know i will die

Nothing startling

Just a fact

Like coffee and toast

And kindling for morning fire