The permeability of inspired time.
Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn its many moons.
Summer has cool winds,
Winter its snow.
If useless thoughts do not
Cloud your mind,
Each day is the best of your life.
—Wu-Men-Hui-Kai (1183-1260) dz
All is well.
It’s the parts that you might at times find discouraging.
Something has changed.
Supreme Court makes ruling for republican next president.
Depend on it. The people will not allow him to become king.
Evening comes and morning follows on his non-creation.
The court made a mistake. Pray for correction(s).
Do you have a spiritual practice?
Yes.
What is it?
I practice returning to God.
What is it you do?
Nothing.
Why is that?
No departure is possible.
No return is necessary.
Reality is all there is.
We like the idea of freedom.
We celebrate freedom.
We will never be free until we know and practice kindness.
Jorge has returned to the woods.
Sparrow hops close to screen door.
All the yogurt pretzels are gone.
Hidden birds sing as cool and clear
As a bamboo forest.
Between swinging willows
Sun beams glimmer
Like golden threads.
Clouds return to this calm valley.
The winds carry the fragrance of almonds.
By sitting alone all day long
I clear my mind of a thousand thoughts.
To speak of this is beyond words;
Only by sitting in the quiet forest
Can we ever understand.
Fa Yen (885-958) dz
Solitude isn't hard.
It is sunshine on Yew bush.
Breeze carrying July fragrance.
The emptiness of soundless sound through warm afternoon.
Staccato reports of tree-bird wafting across dooryard.
"What's wrong will always be wrong." (Richard Hugo)
"But what's right is each time created new." (wfh)
There's nothing to being right until it is originated into existence.
While being wrong is something, something always underfoot.
"Why is there something rather than nothing?"
"Why is there anything at all?" or "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,[3] Ludwig Wittgenstein,[4] and Martin Heidegger,[5] who called it "the fundamental question of metaphysics".[6][7][8] (wikipedia)
Many hold the universe (or, that which is) was spoken into existence. By whom, and how, is the stuff of myth-ontology. From Moses to Wittgenstein the story is told about story being told.
Last night's Tuesday Evening Conversation heard Doris' question about the relationship between koan and poem. Poems do not mean, but are.
Ars Poetica
A poem should be palpable and muteAs a globed fruit,DumbAs old medallions to the thumb,Silent as the sleeve-worn stoneOf casement ledges where the moss has grown—A poem should be wordlessAs the flight of birds.*A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs,Leaving, as the moon releasesTwig by twig the night-entangled trees,Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,Memory by memory the mind—A poem should be motionless in timeAs the moon climbs.*A poem should be equal to:Not true.For all the history of griefAn empty doorway and a maple leaf.For loveThe leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—A poem should not meanBut be. (--Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica” from Collected Poems 1917-1982. © 1985)
Koans are the poems of Being.
Poems are Being written.
If you are a zen student
(God help you)
you don't know this.
You are this...
Aporia.
Write on!
Read yourself in!
What’s right is each time created new.
Because what’s wrong will always be wrong.
The right thing always arrives from the unknown.
We are tasked with unknowing the unknown yet still creating new what is right each time.
Go figure. Minus one plus minus one plus one plus one equals zero.
Wrong plus wrong does not equal right.
Right minus right does not equal wrong.
Nothing is the answer.
It is, after all, meetingbrook dogen & francis hermitage.
1.
In Fukanzazengi, his most famous set of instructions for zazen, Dogen wrote, “To practice the Way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life.” Here, we get a glimpse of how Dogen framed everything. Practice is enlightenment (it’s self-verifying); practice is also zazen; zazen is daily life. Therefore, everything we do, every action we undertake, can be practice. Enlightenment is built in.
(—from Dogen’s 4 Key Teachings, by SHINSHU ROBERTS)
2.
Some of my Franciscan sisters and brothers will not like what I’m about to write here. It can easily be misunderstood, so I will try my best to be clear: Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing particularly special about Franciscan beliefs and spirituality!
(—from Franciscan Beliefs, Spirituality, and Philosophy, by Daniel P. Horan ofm.)
squirrel's name's Jorge
persistent on feeder, must
admire his moxie
must calculate percentage
lost to him, (yes, he's hungry)
Everyone is speculating what "official acts" president Biden should engage in post today's Supreme Court decision.
I'm unsure the Court did former president Trump any favors with their ruling.
It appears they've made the man seemingly above the law, but more, the focus of intense displeasure and wits' end frustration.
I wish no man's life to end by violence. If I had an enemy, not even my enemy's.
But it becomes scarily an option, I'm afraid, many now consider an alternative to a dubious and contestable and deniable general election in November.
In prison this morning we spoke of ethics, reality, and choosing what is right. Spader, the Golden Retriever in training, was sweet and affectionate after initial low growls upon my entering.
I can only hope the electorate will assume the same sweetness. Even to such a bitter man who would like very much to reassume such protective immunity for his projected untoward fantasies.
We ended the round-table at the Farm with Naomi Shihab Nye:
KINDNESS
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
(Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1995)
twenty eight years gone
bookshop bakery began
went for thirteen years
at Camden harbor making
conversation nourishment
... ... ...
Invitation to the Thirsty
55 “Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.
2 Why spend money on what is not bread,
and your labor on what does not satisfy?
Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,
and you will delight in the richest of fare.
3 Give ear and come to me;
listen, that you may live.
I will make an everlasting covenant with you,
my faithful love promised to David.
4 See, I have made him a witness to the peoples,
a ruler and commander of the peoples.
5 Surely you will summon nations you know not,
and nations you do not know will come running to you,
because of the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel,
for he has endowed you with splendor.”6 Seek the Lord while he may be found;
call on him while he is near.
7 Let the wicked forsake their ways
and the unrighteous their thoughts.
Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercyon them,
and to our God, for he will freely pardon.8 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways,”
declares the Lord.
9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 As the rain and the snow
come down from heaven,
and do not return to it
without watering the earth
and making it bud and flourish,
so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater,
11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:
It will not return to me empty,
but will accomplish what I desire
and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
12 You will go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and hills
will burst into song before you,
and all the trees of the field
will clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,
and instead of briers the myrtle will grow.
This will be for the Lord’s renown,
for an everlasting sign,
that will endure forever.”
It's not a debate if one person machine guns falsity and criminal projection at another person.
Lies move fast. Truth takes time.
Don't be deceived.
Fools rush in.
Wisdom
waits.
Would you rather
Be Siddhartha Gautama
Or Jesus of Nazareth?
No no no no —
I would
Rather be
Here
As I am, but
Aware and
Present
There is a trend in the minds and acts of right-wing republican politicians, office holders, and candidate for the high office to veer toward repression, annihilation of rights, and collapse of any governance that seeks to uphold law and structures of protection for the whole population of America.
Asia Bibi blasphemy
In 2010, a Pakistani Christian woman, Aasiya Noreen (Urdu: آسیہ نورین, romanized: Āsiyāh Naurīn, [ˈɑːsiɑː nɔːˈriːn]; born c. 1971[1]), commonly known as Asia Bibi (آسیہ بی بی) or Aasia Bibi, was convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court and was sentenced to death by hanging.[2] In October 2018, the Supreme Court of Pakistan acquitted her based on insufficient evidence,[3] though she was not allowed to leave Pakistan until the verdict was reviewed.[4][5][6] She was held under armed guard and was not able to leave the country until 7 May 2019; she arrived in Canada the next day.[7]
In June 2009, Noreen was harvesting falsaberries with a group of other women farmhands in a field in Sheikhupura.[43] She was asked at one point to fetch water from a nearby well;[39] she complied but stopped to take a drink with an old metal cup she had found lying next to the well.[47] A neighbor of Noreen, Musarat, who had been involved in a running feud with Noreen's family about some property damage,[1] saw her and angrily told her that it was forbidden for a Christian to drink water from the same utensil from which Muslims drink, and that some of the other workers considered her to be unclean because she was a Christian, referring to the caste system in Pakistan.[8][9] Noreen recounts that when they made derogatory statements about Christianity and demanded that she convert to Islam, she responded, "I believe in my religion and in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Mohammed ever do to save mankind? And why should it be me that converts instead of you?"[47][48] An argument ensued.[49]
A mob came to her house, beating her and members of her family before she was taken away by the police.[39] The police initiated an investigation about her remarks, resulting in her arrest under Section 295 C of the Pakistan Penal Code.[38]. (—Wikipedia)
In the United States these days there is a fundamentalist-like creep among lawmakers, jurists, federal and state office holders to restrict, hogtie, and threaten any opinion or dissent to their preferred religious, cultural, or ideological positions.
It feels both immanent and dangerous. Women, minorities, and the economically hampered are in their law-creation, court decisions, and haranguing gunsights.
The air is becoming acrid, stagnant and oppressive. It is becoming hard to breathe.
We need a new and fresh atmosphere.
Something far from hate and fear.
A new breeze that fills us with fonder feeling.
We need poets.
rāt-bhar sard havā chaltī rahī
rāt-bhar ham ne alaao taapā
...
The air is full of sweets and the wind keeps moving
The air is full of sweets and the wind brings us together
(—from poem, alaw (melody) by Gulzar, Mumbai, India)
Some words, when read, stick around. Lin Yutang’s, for example.
Lin Yutang’s ideal is the ‘scamp’ – an amiable loafer who wanders through life, learning, loving, living. He is a good-natured Renaissance Man, dabbling here and there, connoisseur of nothing, dilettante extraordinaire. He is earthbound, a man of his biology and of his senses. (For Lin, happiness is “largely a matter of digestion.” He favorably quotes a college president who admonished his freshmen that “There are only two things I want you to keep in mind: read the Bible, and keep your bowels open.”) Lin’s loafing scamp is a profoundly embodied mind, not a brain on a stick. And most of all, he’s eminently ‘reasonable’ – a trait Lin mentions throughout, and points to as the very foundation of the Chinese character.
Who is this Lord? And the angel?
‘This, then, is what the Lord says about the king of Assyria:‘“He will not enter this city,he will let fly no arrow against it,confront it with no shield,throw up no earthwork against it.By the road that he came on he will return;he shall not enter this city. It is the Lord who speaks.I will protect this city and save itfor my own sake and for the sake of my servant David.”’That same night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. Sennacherib struck camp and left; he returned home and stayed in Nineveh.
—2Kings19
That’s a lot of men to be struck down.
I’d like to rethink Lord/God.
Call it human retaliation.
Call it ego warfare and military arrogance.
Is this what we once called God?
Is this why so many announced God’s funeral?
Is this why Israel-Gaza is so troubling?