Thread: I’ll start. I wrote this after a Friday morning conversation with several inmates at maine state prison, and a final conversation with a co-monastic (with gratitude to them and to the student who sparked the conversation)

After a student said “there will always be evil”

Perhaps we’d have to ask “What is evil?”

Without objectifying evil into a demonic being, or relying on ancient mythological stories, what can we say about evil that describes evil in our experience?

Let’s try this:

Evil is the cold, fearful, separation of oneself from others, from the authentic reality of interrelationality, and opting for objectifying, reactive, angry, harmful, and unfeeling behavior toward the other or others.

If evil were to be countered and possibly overcome, it would be by means of compassionate, involved, relational, intersubjective, kind and caring response to each person and persons within the circumstance and surround of immediate and distant experience.

If, at root, every sentient being longs to avoid suffering and experience aware happiness (in whatever form within which it comes) then, no one consciously would seek to harm or hurt another in ways that we would call evil.

This would entail becoming conscious, deepening and expanding that consciousness, until nothing is left out of our identifying surround, that which we might call kin, family, neighbor, community, divinity, cosmos, humanity — the  circumincessional interpenetration* and the dancing interconnectivity of cosmotheandric** reality.

We are exploring here a new ethic and spirituality of being present in existence — and beyond — with one-another.

With this awareness and ongoing intelligent inquiry, we very likely could arrive at a condition of heart and mind which would be happy to help one-another to experience happiness and dwell compassionately in the midst of others, or no-others, surrounding.

What we call evil begins to disappear when any individual chooses to enter a compassionate and thoughtful interaction with any one individual within the sphere of their presence.

...

*  http://www.purifymind.com/Circuminsessional.htm

**  http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-cosmotheandric.html

interrogatory

Q: If you had the opportunity, would you join the current administration in the White House?

A: No!

Q: I have no further questions.

there, there

Where

is yesterday

Today

is here

shema

Χριστός-Μεσσίας is the nature of the universe.

No church, no temple, no mosque, no scripture contains this nature.

Each breath is the liturgy of the cosmos.

first thing this morning, Richard Rohr’s daily meditation

https://cac.org/category/daily-meditations/

Evolution

An Unfolding Future
Tuesday, February 27, 2018

To fight the concept of evolution is to fight the core meaning of biblical faith, which is a generous balancing act between knowing and not knowing. Unbelief is to insist on total knowing now—by myself! As people of faith, we believe that God is guiding this mysterious universe, although much is hidden from us, both in the past and the future. “Eye has not seen, and ear has not heard, and the human heart has not conceived, what God has prepared for those who love God” (1 Corinthians 2:9). Judeo-Christian believers, in particular, should have been the first to understand and promote a philosophy of progress because they had an Absolute Source and Goal to ground the trajectory.

In 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble (1889-1953) published his findings that revealed the universe was expanding. Many began to imagine that if the biggest frame of reference—the cosmos—was still unfolding, then maybe that is the pattern of everything. The latest evidence shows that this expansion is even happening at an ever-increasing rate! It seems to mirror the increasing rate of change with each new technological and scientific breakthrough. This rapid change is scary and unsettling. I can see why people are panicking and trying to find some solid ground, a fixed point to the turning world. 

Fundamentalist religion and identity politics seem to be running the show now, and I can even understand that. But God has never “circled the wagons” to regain control and stability. God only moves in every larger spheres and orbits, which is what we mean by calling God infinite, eternal, or almighty.

I have no knowledge of where the universe story might be fully or finally heading, but I can see what it has already revealed with great clarity—that knowledge builds on itself, is cumulative, and is always moving outward toward ever-greater discovery. People who cling to the past and resist change have a hard time participating in God’s and their own future. Perhaps this is an appropriate application of Jesus’ somewhat problematic words, “Anyone who has will be given more . . . but anyone who has not, will lose what little he has” (see Matthew 25:29). This is only true in the realm of spirit and wisdom which increase and evolve with use. Material reality decreases with usage, which is why our consumer worldview is unsustainable.

In the words of Thomas Keating,

There seems to be an intent or a plan in creation to bring into manifestations revelations of the Unknowable One that awaken in us the greater and greater capacity to love. . . . Evolutionary consciousness is extremely important . . . and science has vastly increased the understanding of how the immensity of the universe continues to expand and how its infinitesimal quality continues to unfold.God is more and more trying to move the human race to the next stage of consciousness beyond the rational, technological, dominating worldview . . . recognizing the truth that there is only one self ultimately and this is God manifesting in us. [1]

Gateway to Presence:

If you want to go deeper with today’s meditation, take note of what word or phrase stands out to you. Come back to that word or phrase throughout the day, being present to its impact and invitation.

[1] Thomas Keating with Carl J. Arico, God Is Love: The Heart of All Creation Guidebook (Contemplative Outreach: 2016), 22, https://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/product/god-love-%E2%80%93-heart-all-creation-guidebook.

Adapted from Richard Rohr, “Evolution Is Another Name for Growth,” “Evolutionary Thinking,” Oneing, vol. 4, no. 2 (Center for Action and Contemplation: 2016), 111-112.

god skips church

The dream and fantasy

called life in this world carries on.

Things feel less and less solid.

A disappearing night.

Everything is prayer.

Earth as zafu, zabuton.

Hands poised

together

asperges

The video asked whether Jesus was a Buddhist.

Where was he from age 14 to 30?

And did he go to Kashmir after the crucifixion event and subsequent recovery?

Plausible? Or mere fancy?

Last night I sat with someone’s grandmother for an hour in a hospice room. A vase of flowers and two small carafes of water and juice on table traversing bed.

She was there. I was there. Granddaughter and friend arrived and stayed a while.

From adjacent room guitar and voices played and sang.

Listening in letting inside.

Grandmother and I had our quiet listen to the brief concert. A bass voice, some harmony, then laughter, returning to silence.

Who was it once spoke about the “real realization of reality”? A new 3r’s for pedagogy.

A rooting and recollecting responsivity.

Where rest and return to restorative emptiness is the sole scripture capable of being read with no sound, no interruption, no-other awareness.

Mere mother, grandmother, there, going no-where, the unborn and undying, here.

Our unarticulated, nameless movement, through and through.

Water brothers, water sisters, wending way, together.

Asperges me, Domine, Hyssopo, et mundabor: Lavabis me, Et super nivem dealbabor. Miserere mei, Deus, Secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.

Cleanse me, O Lord, With hyssop, and I shall be made clean: Wash me, and I shall be made whiter than snow. Have mercy on me, O God, According to Your great mercy.

mostly, I don’t get what people mean by prayer

So, the asking: What is prayer?

Prayer is what is.

(Watching and listening.)

Seen and heard.

With feeling and thought.

Inside and inside and inside.

Everything.

no, doesn’t make anyone proud to know them

Crabby people against compassion

I see that cpac is meeting again and flaunting their brand.

salute smartly, and leave

There’s a suggested plan to arm teachers to carry guns in classrooms.

Ok, sir.

Next?

disappearing

don’t
mind
me

spirit deepens as

Body de-
teriorates

eh? ayuh!

Fort Kent freezing rain —

mile zero, bridge to Canada

drenched with forgotten passport

so too with the one we call god

Those that judge you don’t love you.

Those that love you don’t judge you.

Compassion neither judges nor loves —

Only cries with the sorrowful

Only delights with the pure hearted

forgive me brothers and sisters

For I have not practiced root intimate interconnection.

we observe presidents' day

But we have no president.

companeros com flores

Our children in Florida -- May they rest in peace!

nothing is like it

Root intimate interrelationality.

That’s what pregnancy is.

What abortion is — is not so much what conservatives want to call murder — is the interruption of root intimate interrelationality.

It is this rupture that causes grief and unaccountable loneliness afterward.

We are meant to embody root intimate interrelationality — all of us, male or female, animal or human, divinity or species of plant, insect, mineral, proton or neutron.

It is what we are made of and made for.

We long for it.

It is true.

a dialogue

RE: Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord in vain

COLLAPSE

“A life depended on what the doctors answer was. Maybe he really didn't know whether his patient would live or die. But in any case, he could not have been one hundred percent positive. Which meant that he chose to play God. Was he right to do so?”(JB)

...

Your words make me think of words and the power they have. 

If the 2nd commandment, as you point out in the Catholic tradition, is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” ... then, how does that apply to Dekalog 2?

A rabbi who studies Semitic languages pointed out that, in the Hebrew Scriptures  when the name of the giver of the 10 commandments was asked for, the response was recorded and reduced to four consonants “YHWH”. Vowels were to be added by those who knew what to add. He said that the pronunciation of the letters, which were simply an inbreath and outbreath, required no movement of either lips or tongue, and sounded like mere breath coming in and going out.

What could this mean? Is the name of God the practice and sound of breath? And does the vibration of sound, the pronunciation of words, have something to do with the vibration of God in the world?

When the doctor spoke, finally, in response to Dorota, and said not to have the abortion, that her husband surely would not live — was he “playing God” by attempting to persuade her to have the child? We’re unsure if he knew whether or not the husband would die — nor do we know whether his prime motivation was to attempt to retrieve in some way the lives of his own children killed in the war some 40 years earlier.

Such considerations revive, for me, the question of the name of God as it might apply to our ethical understanding of the world. Are we to consider that the name of God is the breathing of life? That we should not waste our breath on that which is not in the service of life, that is, anything that diminishes or denigrates life, that diminishes or denigrates people or other beings in life, any words or actions that are contrary to the caring compassion needed to assist life to thrive in the world? 

Is Kieslowski pushing us to think in a new way? And what of the feeling we might have that any interference into our ordinary (either/or) thinking is undesirable?

In other words, we ought not to take the name of (that which is) life in vain.

On another level, breath and words can and do bring things into being, and breath and words can and do remove things from being.

Do you think it is possible we do not (yet) comprehend and appreciate what the real value and function of words are?

(And perhaps the fact that the above words are being written as I sit in the parlor area of a hospice house on Saturday evening is influencing what I am writing.)

Thanks, JB, for the prompt!

—bh

meetingbrook described -- cosmotheandric campers

At morning practice, this arose, should anyone ask:

 Q: How do you describe meetingbrook hermitage?

A: We are Cosmotheandric Campers

Q: How's that?

A: Cosmotheandric* is a Raimon Panikkar term combining Cosmos, Theos, and Andros (universe/nature, divinity/God, beings/humanity). By an unseparated combining Panikkar is pointing to the new template of thought that must take into consideration all three aspects of the one reality permeating this existence. Undo focus on any one to the diminishment of either of the remaining two will result in continuation of fragmented, divided, deficient perpetuation of separation and discord.

Q: How does this apply to meetingbrook?

A: We wish to focus on visible cosmos, invisible divinity, and coming-to-see humankind.

Q: And "Campers"?

A: Campers stands for

contemplative 

and 

meditative 

practitioners -- 

engaging, 

recollecting, 

silenting.   

Q: Silenting?

A: As in quieting, stilling, and cultivating silence. (Not in the sense of silencing anyone -- but in the sense of creating an environment for listening and hearing the sound of what is, being, said.)

Q: Anything else?

 A: As cosmotheandric campers we wish to free, transform, perceive, and embody all that we find in creation, illusion, reality, and awakening (essentially the Bodhisattva Vows) and the two Great Commandments (inviting into love of God, wholeness, and neighbor).

We also note the character of such a worded designation as pointing to movement, impermanence, practice, ephemerality, diaphaneity, and peaceful presence -- qualities that allow a way through time and place encountered by everyone sharing this existence.

Q: Thanks...?

A: Yes, gratefulness, appreciation, and acceptance -- thanks, indeed!

...

* Cosmotheandric or theo-anthropo-cosmic (dimension)

“The cosmotheandric intuition is the totally integrated vision of the seamless fabric of the entire reality… the undivided consciousness of the totality” (The Cosmotheandric Experoence). 

“There are not three realities: God, Man, and the World; but neither is there one, whether God, Man or World. Reality is cosmotheandric. It is our way of looking that makes reality appear to us at times under one aspect, at times under another. God, Man, and World are, so to speak, in an intimate and constitutive collaboration to construct Reality, to make history advance, to continue creation: (The Triniity and the Religious Experience of man, London and New York 1975).  

 The cosmotheandric intuition expresses the all embracing indissoluble union, that constitutes all of Reality: the triple dimension of reality as a whole: cosmic-divine-human. The cosmotheandric intuition is the undivided awareness of the totality." What Panikkar proposes is to live so open to this triple dimension of reality, open to others, to the world, and to God that we might achieve harmonious communion with the all: the cosmotheandric reconciliation. It is a matter of an experience more mystical and ineffable than philosophic in the traditional sense, but it breaks the customary philosophico-theological molds. 

http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-cosmotheandric.html