silence speaks without; words

 Each thing speaks its name

But god, they say, has no name

Find both in silence

Silencio habla sin;

palabras — hearing oneself

seeking next birth

 Parachuting seeds

Float through dooryard this May day

Bouncing into ground

each thing

The world is made of things. William Carlos Williams wrote the words “No ideas but in things.”

If things go away, perhaps such disappearance will signal the obsolescent evanescence of ourselves as both sentient beings and existential entities.

Undinge proposes that the age of objects is over. The terrane order, the order of the Earth, consists of objects that take on a permanent form and provide a stable environment for human habitation. Today the terrane order has been replaced by the digital order. The digital order makes the world less tangible by informatising it. Nonobjects are currently entering our environment from all sides and displacing objects.

I call nonobjects information. Today we are in the transition from the age of objects to the age of nonobjects. Information, not objects, now defines our environment. We no longer occupy earth and sky but Google Earth and the Cloud. The world is becoming progressively less tangible, cloudier and ghostlier. Nothing is substantial. It makes me think of the novel The Memory Police [1994], by the Japanese writer Yoko Ogawa. The novel tells of a nameless island where objects – hair ties, hats, stamps, even roses and birds – disappear irretrievably. Together with the objects, memories also disappear. People live in an eternal winter of forgetting and loss. Everything is seized by a progressive disintegration. Even body parts disappear. In the end it’s just disembodied voices, floating around in the air.

Byung-Chul Han, https://artreview.com/byung-chul-han-i-practise-philosophy-as-art/ . 

Spirituality is not the dissolution of matter. Rather, spirituality is the revelation emerging from and into the center of each thing, each person, each being in communication with any and every other being, person, and thing sharing the phenomenal world.

We’re uncertain about a spiritual realm. Some call it heaven. Some a non-physical dimension. Plato had his world of ideas. Some dwell in abstraction.

What does it mean to speak of faith without object?

Is each thing a subject? 

First person singular?

No-thing without faith.

Faith is the thing-in-itself.

voir dire

Look at you. 

 A fool sees himself as another, but a wise man sees others as himself.             – Dogen Zenji

( from Old French voir ‘true’ + dire ‘say’.) 

where the fire was

There’s often an unsettling caesura between poetry and zen.

Still, we love poetry.

Still we love, zen. 

Taneda Santoka Biography

Taneda Santoka was a Japanese haiku poet who specialised in free verse haiku during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. He also translated works in French and Russian into Japanese.

His birth name was Taneda Shoichi and he was born on the 3^rd December 1882 in a small village on the southwestern tip of Honshu which is Japan’s main island. He had a comfortable upbringing as his family were well off landowners. Tragically though he lost his mother to suicide when only eleven years old. It was said that she threw herself into the family well as she could not cope with her philandering husband. Following this the boy was taken in by his grandmother who raised him.

At the age of 20 Taneda began studying literature at Waseda University in Tokyo. This was not a happy time as he frequently drank to excess and he soon dropped out of his studies. This coincided with the beginning of the Russo-Japanese war in 1904. Two years later his father sold some of the family’s land and used the proceeds to open a sake brewery and, wanting to see his son married, he arranged for Taneda to marry a girl from the next village. Memories of his dead mother’s body being recovered from the well had soured his relationships with women though.

His literary career took off when he published translations of the work of Guy de Maupassant and Ivan Turgenev in a literary journal called Seinen. He also had ambitions to write his own poetry and joined a local haiku group. His writing mostly took the form of the traditional syllabic format but occasionally he wrote in hypersyllabic, an example of this being:

In 1913 his efforts earned him a place studying under Ogiwara Seisensui who was the leading haiku reformist at the time, and was widely regarded as the originator of the free-form haiku movement. Within three years his family was facing financial ruin when his father went bankrupt due to the failure of his sake brewery. What had once been an affluent family was now in dire straits and Taneda found himself moving from location to location striving to secure paid employment connected with his writing. Tragic news followed him though with his grandmother dying, his younger brother committing suicide and then the death of his father.

His inability to settle to anything worthwhile led to another nervous breakdown to follow those from previous years. He suffered an earthquake while living in Tokyo and was also arrested under suspicion of being a communist. Perhaps he had stretched his fragile mental health right to the edge when, in 1924, he got blind drunk and jumped in front of a moving train. Perhaps someone was looking down on him with benign thoughts though; he survived this apparent suicide attempt and then found himself accepted into the Zen fraternity by the head priest of the Soto Zen temple Hoon-ji. Finally he found some peace and his life followed a smoother path from then on.

While on a number of walking trips, dressed in the typical priest’s robes, he wrote poetry and he begged at people’s houses for food and money, just to survive. He was not an ordained priest though so found this life very difficult and not really to his liking, and many people gave him nothing but scorn. He eventually gave up the wandering life and tried to concentrate on writing.

In all he produced seven collections of poetry in his lifetime. Here are a couple of examples of his free-style haiku, much of which had references to drinking in them:

Perhaps, having lived such a tempestuous life, it was ironic that Taneda Santoka died peacefully in his sleep on the 10^th October 1940. He was 57 years old.

 https://mypoeticside.com/poets/tanned-santoka-poems

Still, we appreciate the poet, the zen, the poetry.

Just as we look at our own life, look away, look back.

Finally remembering there’s huge chocolate donuts from Moody’s Diner in Waldoboro gotten after reading pagan philosophy at prison yesterday morning.

      At breakfast

     The sphinx riddle

      Sat all around us

                   (wfh)

the new epistemology the new ontology

 What if each human

being contained all knowledge

all infinite space

within one’s soul, in each mind

turning wisdom inside out

f’woo

 In prison today

talk about “know thyself” — f’woo —

faith without object

taking dog out at night

Staring up through sky

Some billions of light years shine

Through black emptiness

gut genug

The danger is found in trying to take a thought so far down the road that it turns into a belief that there is a natural or artificial conclusion that has to be hammered out, promulgated, philosophized, mechanized, and implemented to erase the conceived problems falling outside the train rail of inference and logical pathway moving along the fastened iron going forward with irrepressible clickety-clack progress.

Reading about 19th century:

The Völkisch movement (German: Völkische Bewegung; alternative English: Folkist Movement) was a German ethno-nationalist movement active from the late 19th century through to the Nazi era, with remnants in the Federal Republic of Germany afterwards. Erected on the idea of "blood and soil", inspired by the one-body-metaphor (Volkskörper, "ethnic body"; literally "body of the people"), and by the idea of naturally grown communities in unity, it was characterized by organicism, racialism, populism, agrarianism, romantic nationalism and – as a consequence of a growing exclusive and ethnic connotation – by antisemitism from the 1900s onward.^[1][2] Völkisch nationalists generally considered the Jews to be an "alien people" who belonged to a different Volk ("race" or "folk") from the Germans.^[3].      (Wikipedia)

I recall a book I read during college studies by Alexis Carrel. It was intriguing. I do not think I understood sixty years ago the conclusions and ideology that could have been (and were) implied by the material pondered and impulses racing toward resolution that the studies and thought could careen recklessly (even mindlessly) toward.

Man, the Unknown (L'Homme, cet inconnu) is a best-selling^[1]1935 book by Alexis Carrel in which he endeavours to outline a comprehensive account what is known and, more importantly, unknown of the human body and human life. The book elucidates problems of the modern world and possible routes to a better life for human beings. It is specifically known for its advocacy of eugenics and euthanasia.

For Carrel, the fundamental problem was that:

[M]en cannot follow modern civilization along its present course, because they are degenerating. They have been fascinated by the beauty of the sciences of inert matter. They have not understood that their body and consciousness are subjected to natural laws, more obscure than, but as inexorable as, the laws of the sidereal world. Neither have they understood that they cannot transgress these laws without being punished. They must, therefore, learn the necessary relations of the cosmic universe, of their fellow men, and of their inner selves, and also those of their tissues and their mind. Indeed, man stands above all things. Should he degenerate, the beauty of civilization, and even the grandeur of the physical universe, would vanish. ... Humanity's attention must turn from the machines of the world of inanimate matter to the body and the soul of man, to the organic and mental processes which have created the machines and the universe of Newton and Einstein.^{[2][3].  (Wikipedia)}

 I am led to consider the matter of concluding or conclusion.

I can’t remember who said it, and my trying to look it up meets no success, but here is what I recall: “Not to conclude is the sign of a creative mind.” Some French poet, I think, wrote it.

So much, it seems, depends upon an ability to draw conclusions, nail things down, wrap it up, submit report, file it away, move on to something else.

In doing so, I submit, there is a rush to put into action plans the conclusions reached, the outcomes concretized.

But, not to conclude . . . well . . . 

That’s a tricky proposition. That’s a a risky non-strategy. That’s where spirituality and poetics meet meditation and contemplation within the auspices of practice and no-mind attentitiveness and presencing awareness.

Surely there’s a name for such a way of being-in-the-world?

But let’s not give it a fixed name.

For now, let’s call it the mourning of morning for what has been and what will be.

Let’s, for now, acronymize this "mourning of morning" as “mom”.

Give whatever name you wish to this arising and falling, coming and going, constructing and deconstructing, materializing and dematerializing, appearing and disappearing, loving and letting go . . .

For now, “mom” is gut genug  — mom is good enough.

Good . . .

Enough!

(Happily)

what we conceive

Something haunting about Creeley’s words: 

 Would dying be here?

Never go anywhere you

can’t live.

(—Robert Creeley, in Pieces)

What dreams may follow, the evanescence and effervescence of place in what we conceive of as heaven. 

if there was a corner, would we turn

 “Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.” 

   ― James Joyce, Finnegans Wake

 

It seems that life is 

Unceasing emergence out

Into appearance 

Actuality felt and

Incomprehensibly seen 

as if we could

God is not known to us in His nature, but is made known to us from His operations. (Summa Theologiae, I.Q13.8)

He said it in film

“I didn’t see it coming”

Wondering why not

entsprungen *

At end of our three hours together, after Max Richter pieces and lovely compositions, we end our visit with Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (- Michael Praetorius / Jan Sandström.)

I bow to her quiet and seldom moving presence in the darkening room, and leave.

Thursday evening hospice at this end-of-life house.

   *    entspringen Verb (entspringe; entspringst; entspringt; entsprang; entsprangt; entsprungen; )

1. entspringen, (entstehenwachsen)
   
• originate, to Verb (originates; originated; originating)
• come into existance, to Verb
• come into being, to Verb (comes into being; came into being; coming into being)
• 
  
• (—Interglot)

negation or absence of non-presence

 Gebet ist

Wohnen-mit

eins, kein-anderes

prayer is

dwelling-with 

one, no other

 Gebet ist

Leben mit

einander

prayer is

to live with

each other

The word “another” (in German, einander) is correlational with “no-other” (kein anderes).

In English, to speak of another might mean to speak of someone else, or, equally, to reference no other, as the alpha-privitive in Greek serves as a negation of what follows it.

alpha privative (plural alpha privatives) (grammar) The prefix a- (or an- when prefixing a root which begins with a vowel) found in some English words of Greek derivation. It expresses negation or absence. The prefix has cognates in other Indo-European languages, including in- in Latin and un- in English. (Wiktionary)

To be alive is to be present.

To be present is to pray.

To pray 

Is dwelling-with

one an-other  

one no-other, with-dwelling, is prayer

 Η προσευχή είναι

κατοικία-με

ο ενας τον ΑΛΛΟΝ

Prayer is

Dwelling-With

One-Another

祈りは 同居 お互い

 The military chiefs and CIA wanted to assassinate Fidel Castro. JFK did not. 

When he was assassinated, and since, Kennedy's death remains an example of covert forces foisting their worldview on an unsuspecting populace.

The question "Who killed JFK?" is a sixty year koan. Each response given is part fact part political speculation part subterfuge and misdirection. 

What do you think? 

"KATZ!" shouts some imagined zen master serving both to intimidate and nullify whatever formulating response taking shape within you.

Whoever killed JFK has successfully escaped.

Nobody will assassinate DJT. There's no need to. He is no threat to the power he excoriates and mocks. No foreign power seeks his removal from world stage. He's a patsy for faux injustice.

No need for cynicism. No need to impugn the man's motives or character. He is exactly as he seems. Vacuous and completely self-absorbed. We know who he is and what he is and why he is at every moment.

This Wednesday morning, sitting in yurt listening to heavy flow of brook tumbling downward to meeting place joining itself after being split in two back up mountain, I consider what prayer might be.

* Prayer is     祈りは     (Inori wa)

Dwelling-With  同居    (Dōkyo)

One-Another.    お互い  (Otagai)

Waka

          (for all relations)

sitting with Enso

alongside cemetery

sight and sound -- water

seeking lowest place to pray

this -- mountainside hermitage 

गभीरा रात्रि मौनम् *

 What is

 that sound?

No sound —

*  Deep night

    Silence

light through eastern window grows

 Yes

Near-dawn breeze

Comes in 

From northeast

Momma Cardinal

Nests in yew

Outside kitchen

“All being

Is nuptial” wrote

Karl Stern

Our myths

About sin

Are wrong —

No separation

No sin

Just delusion

two is a lonely number

 Dualism is

Failure of

Imagination

To see

Itself

so that where I am you may be too.

There are days when a reading on a sunny morning in early May shines through the arena of consciousness and philosophy in a way transcending ordinary parochial or partisan religious separateness and suggests a vision of a world of inner cohesion and isomorphic inclusivity that no organized denominational boundaried system of belief is capable of revealing.

Here is the reading:

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled.

Trust in God still, and trust in me.

There are many rooms in my Father’s house;

if there were not, I should have told you.

I am going now to prepare a place for you,

and after I have gone and prepared you a place,

I shall return to take you with me;

so that where I am

you may be too.

You know the way to the place where I am going.’

Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus said:

‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

No one can come to the Father except through me.

If you know me, you know my Father too.

From this moment you know him and have seen him.’

Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.’ ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him ‘and you still do not know me?

‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father,

so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”?

Do you not believe

that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?

The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself:

it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work.

You must believe me when I say

that I am in the Father and the Father is in me;

believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason.

I tell you most solemnly,

whoever believes in me

will perform the same works as I do myself,

he will perform even greater works,

because I am going to the Father.’

(-John 14:1-12)

Is the “father” Being-Itself?

Is “Jesus” or the Christ-Reality the intimate and extended inclusion and interrelationality of being and beings with Being-Itself?

If we were to put aside historically extravagant ownership claims of empires and religions in order to return to and retrieve original intuitive and experiential emergence — would we find a revelatory manifestation of our true existential and ordinary breath by breath non-separate realization actualizing the core originary (and yes, goodness) of what it means to be-at-all, to be-in-the-world, to be, with and as, Being-Itself-as-Itself?

The non-complacency of Sunday in May!

Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis. (-from Goethe’s Foust, final words of Mystical Chorus)

The reflective non-separative.