being one

 Dormition,

Death resembling

Falling asleep

The heart

Of contemplation

Doing

What

You are

Doing —

What is

Called 

Integration

Doing, being

Nothing other

Than

What

You 

Are —

If you 

want 

To be

A contemplative

Be

One

democracy does die in a dark political fear

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none are so blind

 The MAGA 

Absurdity:

“Give me death

Or we‘ll take

Your liberty.”

No one dares

Believe the 

Dangerous hatred

They spew —

Just good clean fun

(They do not

Listen

They

Do not

See)

fascists in madison penn square station garden

 a desperate 

philosophy

loading gun

sighting target

firing

we no 

longer care

for ideas

but for 

blood seeping

no ideas

but in slings

no poetry

but in-

valid words

when ideas

are run

out of, all

you have left

is bullets

ugly rhetoric

shoots from

hate-filled

mouths barreling 

lethal dumbdumbs

as if no

decency could

remain — they

choose to

eliminate all 

of US

the footsteps of the recluse

 Which room is he speaking about?

This room is so wide and empty

Every thought vanishes in it.

A narrow lane carved in rock,

A well sprung from a hole in a stone.

The bright moon hangs at the

End of the eaves,

And a cold gust shakes the valley.

Who can follow in the footsteps of the recluse

And, sitting quietly, learn true happiness?

--Deagam Tanyon (1070-1179) dailyzen

My room is a splay of too many shirts and jackets, shoes, books, and empty containers of medicines and matches. An unmade bed, tossed pillows, meditation beads, and scattered papers that once meant something I now forget. 

Candle holders and incense holders, reminders on wall of what my attention once wanted me to remember.

We the elderly, about to forget everything, salute you!

Oh friendly space where sleep and wisdom wander in and out, and a snoring dog keeps suspicious vigil over near door by bookcase!

procedamus

 I understand why trump is so popular. He is the shadow side of our contemporary cultural personality and character manifested in full for those reluctant to expose that jungian identification.

The sexism, racism, derogatory hostility, the “I don’t give a sh#t about you…I’m all and only about me and me alone.” The bragging, the lying, the threats, the insulting, the demand for unthinking loyalty, the mocking, the inability to feel, sympathize, empathize or commiserate.

He’s a genius of shadow recividism.

And he will win the election.

The American people want this raw obsessive self shadow disclosure full of resentment and mockery to be their masthead of unrepressed f*#k you, I’m the man, get over here babe, I’m the one, the one and only, fantasy man, fantastical cardboard poster, huckster salesman, no one can near to my unstoppable revelation of underside sea-slime magnificence.

And he will be out next president.

Of this I’m . . . resigned.

For Jung:

Shadow: The shadow archetype is the darker aspects of a person, the part that embraces what we view as frightening, hateful and even evil about ourselves.

https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/carl-jung-introduction-jungian-psychology.htm#:~:text=The%20self%20provides%20the%20balance,and%20even%20evil%20about%20ourselves.

And,

Complementary to Jung’s idea of the persona, which is “what oneself as well as others thinks one is” [CW9 para 221], the “shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors…If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is his shadow does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses etc “ [CW9 paras 422 & 423].

 https://www.thesap.org.uk/articles-on-jungian-psychology-2/about-analysis-and-therapy/the-shadow/

To recognize and come to know the shadow self is beneficial to understanding the whole of our psychological character and to moderate our presentation to the world. 

Not to know it is to be enslaved to its dark influence on our personality and to remain ignorant as to the mask we present to the world.

Wholeness or halfness.

These days this country loves the halfness that trump irradiates.

We smile and snarl allegiance to the unsuppressed arrogance and calculated insouciance of his demi-morbid proclamations of festering sores and cynical projections of his personality onto perceived enemies and critics.

He is gold ornamentation to a cardboard half-self.

We learn to live with our shadow self, to incorporate it and to utilize its necessary aspects completing our psychological health in the face of a radiant yet troubling world.

Without this integration we remain a halfness and a macabre presentation of charicatured noncompleteness — a proverbial sliced personality staggering forward with no understanding of the creature we present to those who see us.

This problem is reciprocal. Those looking on and experiencing such a half-human are themselves masking their wholeness and responding with diminished comprehension to the diminished halfness urging their halfness to merge with his halfness effectuating a diminishing vision of the nonwhole into figments and fragments of a newly splintered perception and view of this country as garbage and carnage and everyone being sh*ts.

And this will become our half-life going forward.

As halloween approaches, we divert from the sacred “holy eve” before the celebration of All Saints’ Day and we retreat to the ghoulish half-dead caricatures of terrifying incompleteness and half-life.

(For a deeper reflection on shadow, see  Spiritual Life and Our Shadow, by Anne Solomon.)

The old saw that “elections have consequences” is true as ever.

John Fowles’ opening line of his novel Daniel Martin remains my favorite:

“Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation.”

Andiamo! 

And—

(Oremus sum iniuriam!)

two brushwood doors

If I drop my beliefs, what remains? 

A nice old temple against a green mountain;

A white cloud opens and closes

Its two brushwood doors.

All I have is a water bottle and a staff

And don’t care if time passes or not.

--Daegak Euchon (1055-1101) dailyzen

 

Water bottle and walking stick. 

Thank you, Daegak.

I don't care either.

giving way to no future

 Singularity,

Some say, inevitable—

Caution raises hand

In the end, just vote

 I no longer think

About the election — I

Give up — I will vote

absolvens absoluta

 Once I was encouraged to ask for absolution.

Now I ask of the absolute resolute encouragement.

Soon, I pray, I will have nothing but courage to absolve the absolute.

10 24 20 24

According to the sudden teaching,

all things are nothing

but the one mind of suchness,

wherein all discriminations have utterly ceased.

-- Treatise on the Five Teachings. (dailyzen)

all of you

 I consulted with God. God said "Look at those lovely leaves, red and gold. And look at the millions and millions of chestnuts dropping to mountain ground. And look up at the billions of stars in pre-moon sky."

The small waves pushed by breeze at slipway on pond. The happy dog greeting Rivian driver. The darkness of the evening walk after dropping off borrowed car.

And God said, "Do you think I would encourage those who love me in these things to choose a man such as is running to become president to actually become president?"

And God once again became silent.

And God was disappointed to think that those who claim to love God would think that such a man actually cared for them and actually cared for God.

But God knows that the ways of humans, their deceit and their foolish followings, must be allowed slack reins for the ride they choose.

Why?

God is no controller. Despite what social media posters two thousand years ago posted in their book of books. Despite what contemporary social media and main street media post and pontificate about during this theater of the absurd prelude to civilization's singularity postlude of artificial intelligence and political artifice of self-aggrandizing conclave of "Habemus Sapum." 

My cat looks up at me. October leaves smother the ground outside screen door. They know it is time to fall.

And fall they do.

Letting go. 

Arriving at ground-earth.

As the story tells it, so did Adam, so did Eve.

Adam -- A well-known Hebrew name, Adam means "son of the red Earth." Its meaning comes from the Hebrew word adamah meaning "earth," from which Adam is said to be formed.  

 

Eve -- Eve /iːv/ is an English given name for a female, derived from the Latin name Eva, in turn originating with the Hebrew חַוָּה‎ (Chavah/Havah – chavah, to breathe, and chayah, to live, or to give life).

There's so much of which we are unaware.

And the unaware continue to want power to promulgate their unawareness.

We say, parenthetically, we wish to live a life of prayer.

What is prayer but a plea that what-is reveal itself again and again before our eyes, within our minds, through our hearts.  

Between these parentheses we dwell for a time in a place with an accompanying group of individuals with whom we are recommended to love and respect -- each one of them.

Each one of us is a parenthesis within a greater parenthesis.

We are included.

Set in a dwelling place necessary for our thriving and nurturance.

My prayer today -- let us not forget where we are, who we are, why we are. This!

And of those who have forgotten?

Let's remember "this."

As in: "Do this in memory of me."

Just as we have forgotten "Being" -- we are forgetting "word" and "God."

In my religious tradition there has been a struggle to come to terms with the distinction between "many" and "all."

Is it "all of you"? Or is it "many of you"?

I prefer to think "all of you". I prefer to think "the many that are you."

From a 2011 article about "Eucharistic Prayer I":

Current Translation

The day before he suffered he took bread in his sacred hands and looking up to heaven, to you, his almighty Father, he gave you thanks and praise. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples, and said:

TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT IT; THIS IS MY BODY WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.

When supper was ended, he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples, and said: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT; THIS IS THE CUP OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT. IT WILL BE SHED FOR YOU AND FOR ALL SO THAT SINS MAY BE FORGIVEN. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME. 

 

Latin Original

Qui, pridie quam paterétur, accépit panem in sanctas ac venerábiles manus suas, et elevates óculis in caelum ad te Deum Patrem suum omnipoténtem, tibi grátias agens benedíxit, fregit, dedítgue discípulis suis, dicens: ACCÍPITE ET MANDUCÁTE EX HOC OMNES: HOC EST ENIM CORPUS MEUM, QUOD PRO VOBIS TRADÉTUR.

Símili modo, postquam cenátum est, accípiens et hunc praeclárum cálicem in sanctas ac venerábiles manus suas, item tibi grátias agens benedíxit, dedítque discípulis suis, dicens: ACCÍPITE ET BÍBITE EX EO OMNES: HIC EST ENIM CALIX SÁNGUINIS MEI, NOVI ET AETÉRNI TESTAMÉNTI, QUI PRO VOBIS ET PRO MULTIS EFFUNDÉTUR IN REMISSIÓNEM PECCATÓRUM. HOC FÁCITE IN MEAN COMMEMORATIÓNEM. 

New Translation

On the day before he was to suffer he took bread in his holy and venerable hands, and with eyes raised to heaven to you, O God, his almighty Father, giving you thanks he said the blessing, broke the bread and gave it to his disciples, saying: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND EAT OF IT: FOR THIS IS MY BODY WHICH WILL BE GIVEN UP FOR YOU.

In a similar way, when supper was ended, he took this precious chalice in his holy and venerable hands, and once more giving you thanks, he said the blessing and gave the chalice to his disciples, saying: TAKE THIS, ALL OF YOU, AND DRINK FROM IT: FOR THIS IS THE CHALICE OF MY BLOOD, THE BLOOD OF THE NEW AND ETERNAL COVENANT, WHICH WILL BE POURED OUT FOR YOU AND FOR MANY FOR THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS. DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.

http://wcucatholic.org/eucharistic-prayer-i/ 

 It has been a while since I have attended in person a Catholic mass. But when I did, many years ago, from altar boy years at St A's on Bay Parkway, through following times of Franciscan studies, and years of retreats at Trappist monastery -- I listened to the words. (These days I listen to the Offices de chaque jour, from Abbaye Sainte Madeleine du Barroux in France)

Words.

That originary place where original energy resides and emerges through into an outer flow of movement and manifestation.

Words are not meant to be co-opted into lies and deceit. Not by politicians. Not by those who would constrict and contract meaning into narrow spaces to be used by narrow minds to influence an unattending and unrealizing following uninterested in a fuller consciousness.

Words are the passing wind that whispers into all hearing receptors willing to listen.

 Like memory, longing to be incorporated.

A dwelling in the open with all.

As it is.

As-is wholly-possible.

With verition.

Verition 

—from Jean Gebser's Ever-Present Origin 

• 

Aperspectivity is the "veriition," the "awaring in truth" of 

the whole and consequently of its spiritual 

manifestation, the diaphainon, inasmuch as the whole is 

perceptible only as transparency wherein origin, also 

containing the entire future, is time-free present. 

• 

To attain this consciously, without abandoning the 

"earlier" consciousness structures, is to overcome 

rationality in favor of arationality, and to break forth 

from mentality into diaphaneity (EPO 412).  

 

https://www.academia.edu/17563075/Gebser_Verition_and_Metaphysics_The_Integral_Skeptic

circum-locution

 Too many words, thoughts

With no reason to exist —

Filling useless time

soon an election

 It’s curious this

Time — absurd uncertainty

So many cowards

two buddhists walk into a dinero

When Doris and Chris 

Arrive at Tuesday evening

Something good happens

the (under)ground of being

 Thought occurred during Tuesday Evening Conversation that the common denominator to each of the Ten Commandments is the phrase “there is no other.”

real dwelling place

There's something comforting about this. 

Not a single soul
Knows why he is born
Or his real dwelling place;
We go back to our origin,
And become earth again.

Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Not much else to say. 

don’t look after me

 One day I died, thanks 

For your assistance — the ground

Will take over now

hoc solum —

 Simplicité

Nostra Ens

Hinc

(This Alone —

Simplicity

Our Being

Here)

word matters, words matter

When I heard it, when I picked up my beads this morning, it mattered. 

…et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Jesus.

 “...and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus”

(—fragment of prayer Ave Maria, Hail Mary) 

The womb is named “Jesus.”

And if the womb is named Jesus, then what begins in the womb and comes through the womb is called “Christ.”

Makes you wonder — how does a Christ come to be?

By being born.

Being, born.

Have we forgotten this? Or simply never noticed it before?

The womb is named Jesus. What is carried through the womb is Christ itself.

To be christian is to be born.

Again, 

To be, born, is Christ-reality, mattering.

If this is true, if this is what-is, it is given to us to become what we are.

Now…

And at the hour of our death —

Amen!