Incarnational spirituality is to be embodied and respectful of such embodiment. It's how we dwell in this world.
As long as you are subject
To a life bound by force of habit,
You are not free from the
Burden of the body.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)
In prison this morning Sonny said he wasn't going to surrender his spirituality to anybody, "not even to God, because he don't need it."
Charlie and Les talked to each other attempting to get to the bottom of whether 'respect' was there even if you didn't agree with the opinion of another. (We decided 'respect' really meant 'to look again' at what was being said. In that 'looking again,' respect means not discarding out of hand, but taking another look at it.)
If you took notice of our transgressions, Lord – Lord, who would be left?
But with you is forgiveness, and for this we revere you.
- Psalm 129 (130)
Charlie, wondering about the one universal thing that everybody participates in said, when asked what is is, "I don't know; it's whatever it is."
Andre ends his poem/song entitled "Tough" with the couplet:
it's so much less exhausting not to want,
and not be lost in the emotions I was taught.
The Lord doesn't see our transgressions. The Lord sees us.
Charlie would suggest the fact might be "we believe we believe,” but don't.
We look again. We respect each other. All these bodies around a table, speaking each to each.
Wednesday, March 12, 2003
"Prayer is the sense of the source within our beings." That's what Tom R. said at Thursday Evening Conversation. When it was repeated to him what he had said he asked with a laugh, "Did I say that?"
Prayer is the sense of the source within our beings.
Coming to word is relational travel. Often in conversation we are graced with words, not initiated by separate self or small 'I,' but originating within the whole self, or relational 'we.'
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice,
"This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.
As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what
they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.
(cf. Mark 9:2-10)
Jesus alone, with them.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices,
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)
Perhaps mossy crevices are the routes we travel with each other. The gift of conversation is stepping into the flowing water with no idea of stopping up or damming the movement. If we hear each other out we emerge from the burden of hiding, a hiding that weights and clouds our being.
The little stream, quietly, turns clear and transparent. It returns to itself, to its source, with simple surprise.
Prayer is the sense of the source within our beings.
Is this a response to the conversation Jesus, Peter, James, and John were having on a high mountain apart by themselves?
Is the sense of the source within our beings a response to the question about what rising from the dead meant?
Tom, surprised by prayer in conversation, smiled his way out the door to the icy parking lot.
Prayer is the sense of the source within our beings.
Coming to word is relational travel. Often in conversation we are graced with words, not initiated by separate self or small 'I,' but originating within the whole self, or relational 'we.'
Then a cloud came, casting a shadow over them; from the cloud came a voice,
"This is my beloved Son. Listen to him."
Suddenly, looking around, they no longer saw anyone but Jesus alone with them.
As they were coming down from the mountain, he charged them not to relate what
they had seen to anyone, except when the Son of Man had risen from the dead.
So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant.
(cf. Mark 9:2-10)
Jesus alone, with them.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices,
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)
Perhaps mossy crevices are the routes we travel with each other. The gift of conversation is stepping into the flowing water with no idea of stopping up or damming the movement. If we hear each other out we emerge from the burden of hiding, a hiding that weights and clouds our being.
The little stream, quietly, turns clear and transparent. It returns to itself, to its source, with simple surprise.
Prayer is the sense of the source within our beings.
Is this a response to the conversation Jesus, Peter, James, and John were having on a high mountain apart by themselves?
Is the sense of the source within our beings a response to the question about what rising from the dead meant?
Tom, surprised by prayer in conversation, smiled his way out the door to the icy parking lot.
Tuesday, March 11, 2003
The fear is that our words have no power.
When there is no communication between us, there is no power in our words. When we are angry and lash out at others, words are razors. When we promise something and fail to intend what is promised, words are spoiled and rotten food. When we decide to say something is when that something is not, when we presume to deceive and distort what we are saying, words are broken mirrors holding no recognizable images of us, nor semblance of truth.
So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
(Is 55:11)
This is why we long for the word of God. We long for words to replicate and embody what they say. We hunger for the Body of Christ (or, the Thusness of Being) to be what it is, to be the self-same reality with the One pronouncing it.
Just don’t seek from another
Or you’ll be far estranged from self.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am not it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)
So it is we long for Incarnation, Embodiment, Thusness, Things As They Really Are -- this is our pilgrimage alone to the Alone. We long to awaken to and realize mergence.
To emerge from unconsciousness is to merge with consciousness. There we finally see with the mind that sees what is there.
On wooden bench this morning with Cesco stretching himself across my knee on carpet, the position of silent watchfulness is our rite of prayer. Mu-ge watched birds outside front window. Cesco watched Mu-ge from carpet. I watched Cesco from bench. We are all watched by non-void word encircling us in silence. Saskia and Sando visit southern Maine watching cars and numbers pass by.
What is the end of Isaiah's word?
Completing what is -- this is Isaiah's word.
How do we complete what is?
We complete what is as no other, by no othering, by whole sighting what is there.
You ask me, "What does that mean?" I respond, That means when we pray we are the prayer we open to with full heart and mind. The one we call God is the one calling us.
The word of God is one calling one. It cannot be other than it is. The word in prayer wills, wants, what is God. Between you and me, when in prayer, no other longing exists but God as what is, the dwelling place of you and me. We long to be what we already are. We are what we are. But we forget. And forgetting, we hear no calling.
We only exist when words have power. Words only exist when we have the power of now. It is root silence that nourishes words, nourishes us, nourishes now.
Silence is the dwelling place of word. Sacred word dwells in sacred silence. The resonance of now is the power of each within God, God within each, within each now, God.
We go forth in the power of this resonance.
Thusness, merging longing, unafraid.
We are our word.
When there is no communication between us, there is no power in our words. When we are angry and lash out at others, words are razors. When we promise something and fail to intend what is promised, words are spoiled and rotten food. When we decide to say something is when that something is not, when we presume to deceive and distort what we are saying, words are broken mirrors holding no recognizable images of us, nor semblance of truth.
So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
(Is 55:11)
This is why we long for the word of God. We long for words to replicate and embody what they say. We hunger for the Body of Christ (or, the Thusness of Being) to be what it is, to be the self-same reality with the One pronouncing it.
Just don’t seek from another
Or you’ll be far estranged from self.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am not it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)
So it is we long for Incarnation, Embodiment, Thusness, Things As They Really Are -- this is our pilgrimage alone to the Alone. We long to awaken to and realize mergence.
To emerge from unconsciousness is to merge with consciousness. There we finally see with the mind that sees what is there.
On wooden bench this morning with Cesco stretching himself across my knee on carpet, the position of silent watchfulness is our rite of prayer. Mu-ge watched birds outside front window. Cesco watched Mu-ge from carpet. I watched Cesco from bench. We are all watched by non-void word encircling us in silence. Saskia and Sando visit southern Maine watching cars and numbers pass by.
What is the end of Isaiah's word?
Completing what is -- this is Isaiah's word.
How do we complete what is?
We complete what is as no other, by no othering, by whole sighting what is there.
You ask me, "What does that mean?" I respond, That means when we pray we are the prayer we open to with full heart and mind. The one we call God is the one calling us.
The word of God is one calling one. It cannot be other than it is. The word in prayer wills, wants, what is God. Between you and me, when in prayer, no other longing exists but God as what is, the dwelling place of you and me. We long to be what we already are. We are what we are. But we forget. And forgetting, we hear no calling.
We only exist when words have power. Words only exist when we have the power of now. It is root silence that nourishes words, nourishes us, nourishes now.
Silence is the dwelling place of word. Sacred word dwells in sacred silence. The resonance of now is the power of each within God, God within each, within each now, God.
We go forth in the power of this resonance.
Thusness, merging longing, unafraid.
We are our word.
Monday, March 10, 2003
When do we see the face of God? And how do we live with what we are seeing?
Mu-ge purrs on stomach and chest as sun comes through opaque iced window. He is well tuned. His young exhalation and inhalation the smoothness of morning sun melting crystal patterns formed by winter night's frozen artistry.
Zazen with sunrise melting drip!
Chanting melody of black & white coon cat-eared sage!
You will see then that
both your body and mind,
together with the mountains,
rivers, space, and earth
of the outward world,
are all within the
wonderful, illumined, and true Mind.
(- Surangama Sutra, dailyzen)
The whole outward world awaits the command to begin invasion of Arabic country by American military. There is, I suspect, room in the true Mind for one more war.
The ‘what is’ of all there is might find itself under screaming bombs and lamenting mothers wailing for their children.
It is equally possible the ‘what is of all there is’ could find itself in earnest deliberations, diplomatically resolving the interests of two nations to satisfaction without disturbing the prepared ennui of men and women with loaded guns and bombs.
At breakfast tables in both desert and city individual minds take toast and cereal in distracted wonder.
When do we see the face of God? And how do we live with what we are seeing?
‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me’. Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’. (Matthew 25)
The mind, like the world, is a dangerous place. More accommodating is tea and toast, or coffee and soymilk alongside banana slices.
If we placed our minds on breakfast with the same unswerving attention of a self-licking cat or the single concentration of warriors readying pre-dawn attack – perhaps breakfast with true Mind would throw everyone and everything into original creation. Once there, in a complete realization of “do to one, do to me,” dangerous mind might just yield to awakened heart, and all would return to dwell within their true home.
At my window, night cold chiseled patterns of ice disappear and clear light moves through grime of accumulated dust and wind soil. Cat has run to other room sound of drapes pulled back.
Bells take wind’s passing and turn it to tolling sound. Mountain sits still. Pond makes thick ice its unmoving meditation. Broken open shells on frozen snow under birdfeeder hold emptiness as their new exclosure.
No one knows the mind of God. There are only faces. Billions of faces! And we are those faces. We look from those faces. We look at those faces. We face what we are seeing.
This is our prayer: May we see what we are looking at!
As such, our life is prayer.
And so, when we see the face of God, we live with what we are, seeing.
Mu-ge purrs on stomach and chest as sun comes through opaque iced window. He is well tuned. His young exhalation and inhalation the smoothness of morning sun melting crystal patterns formed by winter night's frozen artistry.
Zazen with sunrise melting drip!
Chanting melody of black & white coon cat-eared sage!
You will see then that
both your body and mind,
together with the mountains,
rivers, space, and earth
of the outward world,
are all within the
wonderful, illumined, and true Mind.
(- Surangama Sutra, dailyzen)
The whole outward world awaits the command to begin invasion of Arabic country by American military. There is, I suspect, room in the true Mind for one more war.
The ‘what is’ of all there is might find itself under screaming bombs and lamenting mothers wailing for their children.
It is equally possible the ‘what is of all there is’ could find itself in earnest deliberations, diplomatically resolving the interests of two nations to satisfaction without disturbing the prepared ennui of men and women with loaded guns and bombs.
At breakfast tables in both desert and city individual minds take toast and cereal in distracted wonder.
When do we see the face of God? And how do we live with what we are seeing?
‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me’. Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see thee hungry and feed thee, or thirsty and give thee drink? And when did we see thee a stranger and welcome thee, or naked and clothe thee? And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’. (Matthew 25)
The mind, like the world, is a dangerous place. More accommodating is tea and toast, or coffee and soymilk alongside banana slices.
If we placed our minds on breakfast with the same unswerving attention of a self-licking cat or the single concentration of warriors readying pre-dawn attack – perhaps breakfast with true Mind would throw everyone and everything into original creation. Once there, in a complete realization of “do to one, do to me,” dangerous mind might just yield to awakened heart, and all would return to dwell within their true home.
At my window, night cold chiseled patterns of ice disappear and clear light moves through grime of accumulated dust and wind soil. Cat has run to other room sound of drapes pulled back.
Bells take wind’s passing and turn it to tolling sound. Mountain sits still. Pond makes thick ice its unmoving meditation. Broken open shells on frozen snow under birdfeeder hold emptiness as their new exclosure.
No one knows the mind of God. There are only faces. Billions of faces! And we are those faces. We look from those faces. We look at those faces. We face what we are seeing.
This is our prayer: May we see what we are looking at!
As such, our life is prayer.
And so, when we see the face of God, we live with what we are, seeing.
Saturday, March 08, 2003
Saturday morning sun. Room tidied after years of debris. Dust motes laze about cleared spaces. Floating in beams of sunlight through dormer window.
Settling into breath. A change of heart? The exchange of the dust we are with each other. Dust to dust. Breath to breath. Heart to heart.
Is Christ the intersection, the thin place, the connection?
Dust motes float this morning. This desk. This silence. This looking.
Settling into breath. A change of heart? The exchange of the dust we are with each other. Dust to dust. Breath to breath. Heart to heart.
Is Christ the intersection, the thin place, the connection?
Dust motes float this morning. This desk. This silence. This looking.
Friday, March 07, 2003
Lent.
40 days of intentional stillness (whether at rest or in motion), intentional prayer (whether listening or speaking), and intentional service (with one’s self or with Oneself Itself).
The Hermitage attempts to settle into itself and move through itself with stillness, prayer, and service. Meetingbrook intends to look into and through these 40 days. We meet each and all who visit one another in God’s dwelling place.
It is now time to tie together earth and heaven. We, each of us in prayer, enter into the connection, and move through the inseparable sacred reality of earth/heaven.
May all dwell in peace during these days! May we overcome war, which divides, and surrender into the connection with prayer and lives of prayer!
40 days of intentional stillness (whether at rest or in motion), intentional prayer (whether listening or speaking), and intentional service (with one’s self or with Oneself Itself).
The Hermitage attempts to settle into itself and move through itself with stillness, prayer, and service. Meetingbrook intends to look into and through these 40 days. We meet each and all who visit one another in God’s dwelling place.
It is now time to tie together earth and heaven. We, each of us in prayer, enter into the connection, and move through the inseparable sacred reality of earth/heaven.
May all dwell in peace during these days! May we overcome war, which divides, and surrender into the connection with prayer and lives of prayer!
Monday, February 24, 2003
Letter to Esther from Ragged Mountain:
You write about family members dying, that all would be grateful for prayer.
This Monday I am trying to remember something. I am trying to remember who I am.
Prayer, now, is looking.
How amazing, how amazing!
Hard to comprehend that
Nonsentient beings expound Dharma.
It simply cannot be heard with the ear,
But when sound is heard with the eye,
Then it is understood.
- Tung-shan (807-869)
It is the thin place that crosses between fear and love.
Visiting that thin place is a journey through disbelief, uncertainty, and unknowing. The journey to that thin place is both unnerving and uncharted. While there are some rough maps others have drawn to help us approach that place, it remains an individual and idiosyncratic journey for each one of us. Prayer is dwelling at home. Hence prayer, for many of us, is never really entered.
Perhaps we can only hope for, or actually experience, arrival at that thin place. It is in this crossing/touching place we approach home. It is not dwelling in the clutch of fear, and not yet dwelling in the full embrace of love.
Prayer, now, is looking.
In this time of the world, this time of my life, it all seems dim and distressing. Perhaps, as someone suggested to me, it is better I look, but keep silence. The temptation, even here, is to attempt what many find absurd in theological/spiritual study/practice -- namely, to allow silence become word, and word flesh -- to embody silence in all its expression.
To look, to glimpse, to see – these designations do not necessarily mean to understand, to forgive, and to actually love. To look is to merely look, there and intimate, with another.
The thin place of prayer is open eyes, open ears -- to, and with, all taking place. And when does ‘all’ take place? This is our question. Is ‘all’ taking place right now?
What is "all?”
In the thin place our journey wavers between holding onto what is and letting go what is not mere presence. There are no dreams, hopes, fears, and distress dwelling there. No completed anything there. Only stark presence. Also stark absence. This starkness is bare and unadorned wholeness. Can we comprehend joy without images? Can we begin to understand the wholeness and integrity of true reality -- of God -- devoid of thought, full of clear light?
Existentialists might call this the absurd. This incongruous, not conforming clear light. In that place we are neither this form nor that form. We merely are in that place between. Buddhists might call this the formless.
Prayer.
Is prayer the presence of no other? (How absurd does that sound?) If there is no presence is there any prayer? (Yes, we can 'say' prayers, and even find comfort from feelings associated with those prayers. We can sit in silence and find meaning there.) And yet it occurs to me this Monday morning that we might not have yet entered prayer. We might not have entered the thin place where there are no sides, no other to suppose or oppose. If prayer is the thin place where all meets, or, where each meets each in all, then have I ever entered prayer? Have I ever been (within) the heart beating? The heart that beats the whole of creation, the very pulse of life itself?
The sentence of an inmate in Maine State Prison goes, "We are not God, but God is us." That is, in an ambiguous way, his sentence in prison. It is the comma between "God" "but" that interests me. Else it reads, "We are not God but God is us." There is a subtle but interesting change in the sentence. I hear the sound of the Moslem, "There is no God but God." Perhaps our thin place is in the comma. In that pause, in that interval, in what grammarians would call the 'separation.'
Is this the first time I am willing to consider anew that I dwell in separation? I have often quoted (someone's) words that 'Sin is separation.' Is the thin place that interval and pause that brooks no separation, practices no-barrier, sees no-boundaries?
Is 'sin' the conscious choice to encourage separation? And is prayer simple dwelling in the midst, in the thin place between what some call 'both sides,' but which is actually a wholeness that has no sides? (Our calculative, dimensional thinking is perhaps not yet capable of receiving what is whole without fragmenting and dividing it.)
Prayer is now looking.
Not looking at. Not looking from. Not looking to.
Rather, looking as.
Looking as is a looking that merely looks. In times past we have described looking as in words specifically attributing a God at some distance from us
Has our view of God neared? How near?.
· 'God is all-seeing.'
· 'God sees all'
· 'God is all seeing all.'
Many of the descriptions thinkers have attempted of God include the prefix ‘omni,’ (i.e. 'all'). We've said God is all present, all knowing, all holy, all mighty, all-powerful, and all loving. I take nothing away from our thought of God. (I can’t.) Those who think of God have already said whatever can be said of God. My question has to do with looking ourselves as all.
What can be said of ourselves? Are we able to look as all? And if we did, would we conceive ourselves between all? Behind all? Beneath all? Within all? Beyond all?
Is that which has been attributed to God an attribution, a potentiality and capability, or even a current capacity of humankind?
Dying is prayer realizing itself. The capacity to be 'itself' involves letting go of what is not itself. (The "Itself," capitalized, in Keiji Nishitani's philosophy, is not other than what we in the west call "God.")
The ‘itself,’ the undivided and true reality of Being, is the dwelling place of all of us. It is the thin place where nothing is left out.
Prayer is nothing left out. Nothing is prayer but as itself. Looking is prayer as nothing other.
To live a life of prayer is to live journeying to the thin place where all is as all in all.
As we live, and as we die, everything and we look to look as each looks. Thus:
· This person is dying. We look.
· This address is changing. We look.
· This means of earning a living is ending. We look.
· This friend is no longer friend. We look.
· This war is coming. We look.
· This feeling is arising. We look.
· This day is arriving. We look.
· This color is appearing. We look.
· This love is flowering. We look.
· This moment is all. We look.
· This person is smiling. We look.
To look is to enter, engage, and intimately be what we are seeing, who we are looking. There is no distance, no separation, and no boundary. There is no other. We are merely and wonderfully (even if disturbingly) in the thin place of prayer with and as the one there.
There are so many ways to forget prayer.
There is only one-way – (it has been called a narrow way, but is actually the broadest possible way) – to remember prayer. That way is the unceasing inquiry, “Who am I?” “What am I?” “Where am I?” In this inquiry, (for those who worry), God is not left out.
In that inquiry, in that journey, we are already in prayer. We are already in the thin place. We are already in all there is to be within.
Cry if we wish to. Laugh if we wish to. Despair if we wish to. Dance if we wish to. But, remember. Remember. It is no surprise Jesus asks us to remember him and remember love. It is no surprise Buddha asks us to remember enlightenment and remember compassion.
And we must remember. Prayer is remembrance.
May we look and see family members living! May we look and see family members dying! May we be the family we look as and see!
And, with love and compassion, may we realize that all would be grateful for prayer. May we realize that all is grateful in prayer!
Therefore, friend, we visit you and yours in the thin place of prayer. May ours be yours, and yours ours, now in this space and time.
We wish each well -- here, home.
You write about family members dying, that all would be grateful for prayer.
This Monday I am trying to remember something. I am trying to remember who I am.
Prayer, now, is looking.
How amazing, how amazing!
Hard to comprehend that
Nonsentient beings expound Dharma.
It simply cannot be heard with the ear,
But when sound is heard with the eye,
Then it is understood.
- Tung-shan (807-869)
It is the thin place that crosses between fear and love.
Visiting that thin place is a journey through disbelief, uncertainty, and unknowing. The journey to that thin place is both unnerving and uncharted. While there are some rough maps others have drawn to help us approach that place, it remains an individual and idiosyncratic journey for each one of us. Prayer is dwelling at home. Hence prayer, for many of us, is never really entered.
Perhaps we can only hope for, or actually experience, arrival at that thin place. It is in this crossing/touching place we approach home. It is not dwelling in the clutch of fear, and not yet dwelling in the full embrace of love.
Prayer, now, is looking.
In this time of the world, this time of my life, it all seems dim and distressing. Perhaps, as someone suggested to me, it is better I look, but keep silence. The temptation, even here, is to attempt what many find absurd in theological/spiritual study/practice -- namely, to allow silence become word, and word flesh -- to embody silence in all its expression.
To look, to glimpse, to see – these designations do not necessarily mean to understand, to forgive, and to actually love. To look is to merely look, there and intimate, with another.
The thin place of prayer is open eyes, open ears -- to, and with, all taking place. And when does ‘all’ take place? This is our question. Is ‘all’ taking place right now?
What is "all?”
In the thin place our journey wavers between holding onto what is and letting go what is not mere presence. There are no dreams, hopes, fears, and distress dwelling there. No completed anything there. Only stark presence. Also stark absence. This starkness is bare and unadorned wholeness. Can we comprehend joy without images? Can we begin to understand the wholeness and integrity of true reality -- of God -- devoid of thought, full of clear light?
Existentialists might call this the absurd. This incongruous, not conforming clear light. In that place we are neither this form nor that form. We merely are in that place between. Buddhists might call this the formless.
Prayer.
Is prayer the presence of no other? (How absurd does that sound?) If there is no presence is there any prayer? (Yes, we can 'say' prayers, and even find comfort from feelings associated with those prayers. We can sit in silence and find meaning there.) And yet it occurs to me this Monday morning that we might not have yet entered prayer. We might not have entered the thin place where there are no sides, no other to suppose or oppose. If prayer is the thin place where all meets, or, where each meets each in all, then have I ever entered prayer? Have I ever been (within) the heart beating? The heart that beats the whole of creation, the very pulse of life itself?
The sentence of an inmate in Maine State Prison goes, "We are not God, but God is us." That is, in an ambiguous way, his sentence in prison. It is the comma between "God" "but" that interests me. Else it reads, "We are not God but God is us." There is a subtle but interesting change in the sentence. I hear the sound of the Moslem, "There is no God but God." Perhaps our thin place is in the comma. In that pause, in that interval, in what grammarians would call the 'separation.'
Is this the first time I am willing to consider anew that I dwell in separation? I have often quoted (someone's) words that 'Sin is separation.' Is the thin place that interval and pause that brooks no separation, practices no-barrier, sees no-boundaries?
Is 'sin' the conscious choice to encourage separation? And is prayer simple dwelling in the midst, in the thin place between what some call 'both sides,' but which is actually a wholeness that has no sides? (Our calculative, dimensional thinking is perhaps not yet capable of receiving what is whole without fragmenting and dividing it.)
Prayer is now looking.
Not looking at. Not looking from. Not looking to.
Rather, looking as.
Looking as is a looking that merely looks. In times past we have described looking as in words specifically attributing a God at some distance from us
Has our view of God neared? How near?.
· 'God is all-seeing.'
· 'God sees all'
· 'God is all seeing all.'
Many of the descriptions thinkers have attempted of God include the prefix ‘omni,’ (i.e. 'all'). We've said God is all present, all knowing, all holy, all mighty, all-powerful, and all loving. I take nothing away from our thought of God. (I can’t.) Those who think of God have already said whatever can be said of God. My question has to do with looking ourselves as all.
What can be said of ourselves? Are we able to look as all? And if we did, would we conceive ourselves between all? Behind all? Beneath all? Within all? Beyond all?
Is that which has been attributed to God an attribution, a potentiality and capability, or even a current capacity of humankind?
Dying is prayer realizing itself. The capacity to be 'itself' involves letting go of what is not itself. (The "Itself," capitalized, in Keiji Nishitani's philosophy, is not other than what we in the west call "God.")
The ‘itself,’ the undivided and true reality of Being, is the dwelling place of all of us. It is the thin place where nothing is left out.
Prayer is nothing left out. Nothing is prayer but as itself. Looking is prayer as nothing other.
To live a life of prayer is to live journeying to the thin place where all is as all in all.
As we live, and as we die, everything and we look to look as each looks. Thus:
· This person is dying. We look.
· This address is changing. We look.
· This means of earning a living is ending. We look.
· This friend is no longer friend. We look.
· This war is coming. We look.
· This feeling is arising. We look.
· This day is arriving. We look.
· This color is appearing. We look.
· This love is flowering. We look.
· This moment is all. We look.
· This person is smiling. We look.
To look is to enter, engage, and intimately be what we are seeing, who we are looking. There is no distance, no separation, and no boundary. There is no other. We are merely and wonderfully (even if disturbingly) in the thin place of prayer with and as the one there.
There are so many ways to forget prayer.
There is only one-way – (it has been called a narrow way, but is actually the broadest possible way) – to remember prayer. That way is the unceasing inquiry, “Who am I?” “What am I?” “Where am I?” In this inquiry, (for those who worry), God is not left out.
In that inquiry, in that journey, we are already in prayer. We are already in the thin place. We are already in all there is to be within.
Cry if we wish to. Laugh if we wish to. Despair if we wish to. Dance if we wish to. But, remember. Remember. It is no surprise Jesus asks us to remember him and remember love. It is no surprise Buddha asks us to remember enlightenment and remember compassion.
And we must remember. Prayer is remembrance.
May we look and see family members living! May we look and see family members dying! May we be the family we look as and see!
And, with love and compassion, may we realize that all would be grateful for prayer. May we realize that all is grateful in prayer!
Therefore, friend, we visit you and yours in the thin place of prayer. May ours be yours, and yours ours, now in this space and time.
We wish each well -- here, home.
Friday, February 21, 2003
Learning is now with uncertainty.
The day is warm. Skiers slap turns on trails beyond brook. Cabin woodstove finally expands breath, reaching loft. Squirrels leap from branch to branch, so tells their snow shadow below. Birds have feeder back, chirp, crack seed, and fly off.
Solitude in cabin. "Schola vacation," we say. In Meetingbrook terms, "schola vacation" means the empty conversation. Silence looks at itself, finds itself looking as well, and listens to what is unsaid there.
Neighbor’s dogs penned up hill bark at what they hear. Cars scurry Barnestown like busy mice enroute elsewhere. Planks of rough wood lay across ribs fastened to ridgepole. In spring two windows will follow sawsall cuts into Bald-side and brook-side gables.
February gives respite. Nearly three weeks of zero degree temperatures, wind chill to 30 below. Harbors ice over. Furnaces groan, puff, and pant reminding houses there is a thin membrane between being chilly and freezing to death. Automobile engines, like hoboes in refrigerator cars rousted by train yard cops, are shocked into complaining when hit with ignition sticks and told it is time to go.
The thought of enlightenment has many names but they all refer to one and the same mind. Nagarjuna said, “The mind that fully sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment.” Thus if we maintain this mind, this mind can become the thought of enlightenment.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
Prayer is awkward these days. War is afoot. There is little trust in proclamations of governments that urge war or delay war. Politics take off kid gloves and puts on gauntlet. So great is the longing to believe and trust in what seems to be taking place that ordinary people are beside themselves stuttering in anger or pontificating with secret intelligence. The gut says no one can be trusted. We know that. Its realization desolates. Apocalyptic voices sound like embezzling executives locking up their pronouncements in secret and secure deposit boxes guaranteed by federal insurance.
So much of the world is beyond our comprehension. So much of the noise of justification and analysis is fingernail on slate board. We are a population of guess and hunch, fear and paranoia. We lay bets on opinions like bookies at racetracks. The horse we back takes on patriotic significance as we defend our pick with fervor and blind conviction.
Things feel dark, even as daylight lengthens. So, prayer. What is seen there?
They shall see the Lord face to face and bear his name on their foreheads. The night shall be no more. They will need no light from lamps or the sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever. (Revelation 22: 4-5)
On the mountain beyond the brook squeals of delight and play echo through trees. It is winter vacation. Tubes, toboggans, skis, snowboards, fresh deep snow and warm sun brighten the afternoon. We are a people at work and play, needing to make enough money to pay for necessities, needing to engage in enough play to relieve the strain of being human.
Prayer is the thin place between work and play.
What is necessary is balance. The willingness to hold uncertainty in the thin place of prayer. This is a chance to see what cannot be seen elsewhere. Not by those certain of their opinions. Not by those certain they will win. Nor by those certain they are right and on a mission to call God back for judgment.
Has God ever gone? What are they calling back? And if we look as they call, what is it we think we will see?
What is our prayer?
Birth and death are reasonable bets. But they only get you to starting lines. Everything appears equal at the sound of the bell and the first lunge forward. Maintaining balance is the only readiness we can afford.
One thing is certain.
What is this one thing?
What is this one thing!
The words, "What is this one thing" -- are both question and exhortation.
Are we certain we know the difference?
Are we willing to learn now with uncertainty?
The day is warm. Skiers slap turns on trails beyond brook. Cabin woodstove finally expands breath, reaching loft. Squirrels leap from branch to branch, so tells their snow shadow below. Birds have feeder back, chirp, crack seed, and fly off.
Solitude in cabin. "Schola vacation," we say. In Meetingbrook terms, "schola vacation" means the empty conversation. Silence looks at itself, finds itself looking as well, and listens to what is unsaid there.
Neighbor’s dogs penned up hill bark at what they hear. Cars scurry Barnestown like busy mice enroute elsewhere. Planks of rough wood lay across ribs fastened to ridgepole. In spring two windows will follow sawsall cuts into Bald-side and brook-side gables.
February gives respite. Nearly three weeks of zero degree temperatures, wind chill to 30 below. Harbors ice over. Furnaces groan, puff, and pant reminding houses there is a thin membrane between being chilly and freezing to death. Automobile engines, like hoboes in refrigerator cars rousted by train yard cops, are shocked into complaining when hit with ignition sticks and told it is time to go.
The thought of enlightenment has many names but they all refer to one and the same mind. Nagarjuna said, “The mind that fully sees into the uncertain world of birth and death is called the thought of enlightenment.” Thus if we maintain this mind, this mind can become the thought of enlightenment.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
Prayer is awkward these days. War is afoot. There is little trust in proclamations of governments that urge war or delay war. Politics take off kid gloves and puts on gauntlet. So great is the longing to believe and trust in what seems to be taking place that ordinary people are beside themselves stuttering in anger or pontificating with secret intelligence. The gut says no one can be trusted. We know that. Its realization desolates. Apocalyptic voices sound like embezzling executives locking up their pronouncements in secret and secure deposit boxes guaranteed by federal insurance.
So much of the world is beyond our comprehension. So much of the noise of justification and analysis is fingernail on slate board. We are a population of guess and hunch, fear and paranoia. We lay bets on opinions like bookies at racetracks. The horse we back takes on patriotic significance as we defend our pick with fervor and blind conviction.
Things feel dark, even as daylight lengthens. So, prayer. What is seen there?
They shall see the Lord face to face and bear his name on their foreheads. The night shall be no more. They will need no light from lamps or the sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever. (Revelation 22: 4-5)
On the mountain beyond the brook squeals of delight and play echo through trees. It is winter vacation. Tubes, toboggans, skis, snowboards, fresh deep snow and warm sun brighten the afternoon. We are a people at work and play, needing to make enough money to pay for necessities, needing to engage in enough play to relieve the strain of being human.
Prayer is the thin place between work and play.
What is necessary is balance. The willingness to hold uncertainty in the thin place of prayer. This is a chance to see what cannot be seen elsewhere. Not by those certain of their opinions. Not by those certain they will win. Nor by those certain they are right and on a mission to call God back for judgment.
Has God ever gone? What are they calling back? And if we look as they call, what is it we think we will see?
What is our prayer?
Birth and death are reasonable bets. But they only get you to starting lines. Everything appears equal at the sound of the bell and the first lunge forward. Maintaining balance is the only readiness we can afford.
One thing is certain.
What is this one thing?
What is this one thing!
The words, "What is this one thing" -- are both question and exhortation.
Are we certain we know the difference?
Are we willing to learn now with uncertainty?
Thursday, February 20, 2003
What is the sign and instrument of the unity of humankind?
Night holds no terrors for me sleeping under God’s wings. (Antiphon, Sunday Compline)
This is a farewell for all who'll die in the war between America and Iraq. All men and women of every nationality, all youthful boys and girls, all children and infants, all living beings caught in the fire and noise of war and destruction.
I find myself anticipating grief. War will rage, massacre will bloody the sands, and power will temporarily shift. Lives will be taken. Yours. Mine. And time will go on.
The universal body of reality
Is so subtle that you do not
Hear it when you deliberately listen for it,
And you do not see it when you look at it.
As for the pure knowledge
That has no teacher,
How can it be attained by thought or study?
- Huanglong
I greet you on our way to death. We are caught in a time when government officials in Iraq and America are riveted in a stalemate of intransigence. One controls his desert subjects with stranglehold singularity. The other paralyzes elected representatives and the people who did not elect him with laser-focused certainty and disconcertion stemming from 9/11 terrorist attacks. Both these men are arrogant. They are unwilling or unable to ask or answer questions about our lives. They are about themselves.
I'm not sure what the reason is we will die. The drawing room response given is to uphold the dignity of the United Nations resolution to disarm Iraq. The dirty cellar suspicion is to loot oil and begin to colonize Arab Middle East. Perhaps our deaths will be seen as further revenge for three thousand dead in New York's World Trade Towers collapse. Iraqis are easy targets. You and I have as little chance of escaping missiles and bombs as those who died on September 11th.
We will be killed because human beings are fools and sinners. Fools because we don't yet know better than murder and killing to resolve differences. Sinners because we do know better, yet refuse to follow the dictates and teachings of the God we try to leash to our standards.
Some say we'll live beyond death because being a fool and sinner isn't enough to permanently delete life in all its dimensions. Some say God's life does not exclude fools and sinners. Profound life, they say, changes, but it doesn't end. Dictators and fundamentalists, some suggest, can only make natural human life miserable and terrible.
Still...
We die because those who believe in peace, compassion, and love lack power. We might not lack courage and conviction, but we remain bystanders and observers, hoping that molecular atomic matter is changed by our participant-observer attentiveness. We have words to give but withhold our bodies. Dan Berrigan once wrote, "Bodies belong where words are." Our bodies should be in front of the insane leaders lighting the fuse of war, and under falling bombs next to the suffering innocent.
We organize protests in safe places but do not travel to harm's way to protest with our valuable lives. We aver, saying we are only human. If someone must die to illustrate the dark danger of war, it will be some of us who need no illustration. Does God die? Does the unillustrated God disappear in the klieg lights of horrible intention to maim, torture, harm, and disable one another in war?
We know God is dying with us. We know it is no beneficent ideal kills us. It is not freedom they fight for, not motherland, not our children, not democracy or liberation or justice, nor is it for a religious faith they so easily tout as our bedrock. No, it is none of these.
What kills us is lies and deceit, maleficent motivation that deludes their minds into thinking God and our way of life are synonymous. This kind of thinking has used, and will continue to use, people and power to fashion an illusory proprietary and self-serving model of ideology that values nothing but "this is mine," and "you can't have it."
What kills us is stupidity and ignorance, false ideals and selfish will, perversion of truth and failure to comprehend love.
The one we call Christ enters and attempts to transfigure our reality. The one we call Bodhisattva emerges and attempts to enlighten our reality. The angel of the Great One stands at dusk and dawn in constant prayer for those living in these times. Each of them dedicates their lives to relieving suffering and presencing love with compassion. They are wandering near the targets where the killing will begin, they are near our whispers of war, they stay with us who are about to die, they cannot stop the wrong and evil we propose and do.
I ready for war. I dress my body for battle. I look down at my wounds. I open my body to let blood seep. I have a mouthful of sand sopped with spittle. I have a leg blown off. I scream in pain at a bullet through my face. I cannot hear anything. I remember a minute of childhood. I release my stomach in retching. My bladder and bowels explode. I receive no last rites. I have no sound on my tongue. My eyes are blind. The din of dismay pervades the land. I think of an angel who, surely, will reach me. Now...
Now, Lord, you may dismiss your servant, in peace, according to your word. (Canticle, Compline)
May the Almighty and Merciful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death!
Sign? Instrument? Unity?
How live, together?
Water! Holy, water, please?
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Reading Don DeLillo's Libra and listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation during snowfall. Fictional assassination by default and factual dissidence by popular anti-war gathering. Over it all white flakes that mute and cover the middle ground.
It is not easy listening to the president's unwavering belief that the United States is going ahead into Iraq. Also not easy is the staunch optimism of Win Without War and Move On in their efforts to slow the roaring train of bellicosity.
Troops and wartime munitions gather at Iraq's border. E-mails, faxes, and phone call messages gather on desks of elected representatives of the people. The storm of power darkens both Iraq's future and the future of America. Death and terrorism are feared consequences of actions -- whether to be taken or not taken.
The teaching of the mind ground
Is the basis of Zen study.
The mind ground is the
Great awareness of being as is.
- Fayan
Debate finds no middle ground. Sides are seen migrating to extreme edges away from middle ground. When did we forget middle ground? Who was it painted middle ground the color gray? Who spun the place where all things meet into epithets like wishy-washy, compromise, and appeasement?
Middle ground is where all things meet. It is the Middle Way of Buddha. It is "In medio stat virtus" (In the middle stands strength/truth) of philosophical wisdom. It is the Celtic notion of the "Thin Place" where dwells authentic conversation and exchange of dimensions.
Middle ground is where earth and sea touch. It is where all opposites are nearest to each other. It is where hell and heaven negotiate a path to walk along without falling away from our human nature.
We need to re-find middle ground.
Bush and company are far out in front of themselves having in their minds fought the war in Iraq, eliminated Saddam Hussein, secured the weapons of mass destruction the West feels they alone should have, and taken administration of oil reserves that, along with a democratic prop in the Arab world, will secure the world for the foreseeable future.
And what vision does the anti-war people espouse? Do they see a time of rearranged priorities in America? Equitable distribution of our substantial comfort as compared with deprivation throughout the world? A dismantling of a system of rule that purchases power and influence and calls it Republic and Participatory Democracy? The resurrection of community, common sense, and shared reverence as hallmarks of our human interaction throughout the world?
Deep in the night monks sit in darkness holding still with silence the prayer that all might be surrendered to God.
Eventually, this is the only prayer -- that all might be surrendered to God.
Leaving us.
Humbled.
It is not easy listening to the president's unwavering belief that the United States is going ahead into Iraq. Also not easy is the staunch optimism of Win Without War and Move On in their efforts to slow the roaring train of bellicosity.
Troops and wartime munitions gather at Iraq's border. E-mails, faxes, and phone call messages gather on desks of elected representatives of the people. The storm of power darkens both Iraq's future and the future of America. Death and terrorism are feared consequences of actions -- whether to be taken or not taken.
The teaching of the mind ground
Is the basis of Zen study.
The mind ground is the
Great awareness of being as is.
- Fayan
Debate finds no middle ground. Sides are seen migrating to extreme edges away from middle ground. When did we forget middle ground? Who was it painted middle ground the color gray? Who spun the place where all things meet into epithets like wishy-washy, compromise, and appeasement?
Middle ground is where all things meet. It is the Middle Way of Buddha. It is "In medio stat virtus" (In the middle stands strength/truth) of philosophical wisdom. It is the Celtic notion of the "Thin Place" where dwells authentic conversation and exchange of dimensions.
Middle ground is where earth and sea touch. It is where all opposites are nearest to each other. It is where hell and heaven negotiate a path to walk along without falling away from our human nature.
We need to re-find middle ground.
Bush and company are far out in front of themselves having in their minds fought the war in Iraq, eliminated Saddam Hussein, secured the weapons of mass destruction the West feels they alone should have, and taken administration of oil reserves that, along with a democratic prop in the Arab world, will secure the world for the foreseeable future.
And what vision does the anti-war people espouse? Do they see a time of rearranged priorities in America? Equitable distribution of our substantial comfort as compared with deprivation throughout the world? A dismantling of a system of rule that purchases power and influence and calls it Republic and Participatory Democracy? The resurrection of community, common sense, and shared reverence as hallmarks of our human interaction throughout the world?
Deep in the night monks sit in darkness holding still with silence the prayer that all might be surrendered to God.
Eventually, this is the only prayer -- that all might be surrendered to God.
Leaving us.
Humbled.
Monday, February 17, 2003
Tom suggested the horizontal extension of what we call the cross is infinite. Therefore at any place transcendent awareness penetrates the extension, it serves as vertical dimension of the cross. Wayne Teasdale's words inform Sunday Evening Practice.
Like the cosmos whose age is 13.7 billion years and whose expansion is unending, the vertical/horizontal axis is the reflection of divine-in-matter co-operative wholeness.
If awareness is soul, and if deepening awareness makes sacred dwelling place of attentive presence, then the work of Christic love suffuses and deifies awakening of soul within each being.
I explain to you matters
Pertaining to enlightenment,
But don’t try to keep
Your mind on them.
Just turn to the ocean
Of your own essence
And develop practical accord with its nature.
- Yangshan
Comes the question: Is it possible that war is in any way the path of God in this existence?
The name of God is the presence of God.
God’s name and the name of each being might be pronounced differently, but call the same reality.
When we say, “Not in my name!” – We are saying the presence of God cannot hear the call for death and destruction of beings, not for any purpose reasoned by the minds of men.
But we are mere moments on the extension of infinite being. We can barely recognize our passing faces in the morning mirror.
God watches there. Our passing. Naming us. God’s own.
Calling, “This is my child. This one is not forsaken. This one dwelling the cross.”
God voices silence, asking, “And your name?”
And you hear, and you respond, “My name is…”
And you pronounce your name.
And no war sounds in your name.
Like the cosmos whose age is 13.7 billion years and whose expansion is unending, the vertical/horizontal axis is the reflection of divine-in-matter co-operative wholeness.
If awareness is soul, and if deepening awareness makes sacred dwelling place of attentive presence, then the work of Christic love suffuses and deifies awakening of soul within each being.
I explain to you matters
Pertaining to enlightenment,
But don’t try to keep
Your mind on them.
Just turn to the ocean
Of your own essence
And develop practical accord with its nature.
- Yangshan
Comes the question: Is it possible that war is in any way the path of God in this existence?
The name of God is the presence of God.
God’s name and the name of each being might be pronounced differently, but call the same reality.
When we say, “Not in my name!” – We are saying the presence of God cannot hear the call for death and destruction of beings, not for any purpose reasoned by the minds of men.
But we are mere moments on the extension of infinite being. We can barely recognize our passing faces in the morning mirror.
God watches there. Our passing. Naming us. God’s own.
Calling, “This is my child. This one is not forsaken. This one dwelling the cross.”
God voices silence, asking, “And your name?”
And you hear, and you respond, “My name is…”
And you pronounce your name.
And no war sounds in your name.
Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Forgetfulness is the face of war.
Who sees we are each one? Who comprehends sin as the ignorant will to make other and attack with mind to destroy the other as cause of our own unhappiness?
Who is capable of accepting the truth of God -- not Gott mit uns as if God were a cheerleader in international scrums marching downfield to goal line uprights -- but the truth of God as the mystery of peace at center of each and every person and thing.
At center, where each is itself. Itself, where God breathes within one and all.
God's breath, where you and I dwell as no other.
There is a new axis of dualistic foolishness. From George Bush to Osama bin Laden, from Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong Il, from Tony Blair to Ariel Sharon -- the dos e dos of war rhetoric and foolishness of mired dualistic thinking continues.
"All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive....What is, does not become; what becomes, is not." (-- Friedrich Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ.)
Acquisition, greed, and illusory-self love are clues to mummified concepts paraded in public wrapped in nationalistic and corporate flags for mass consumption & patriotic fervor. It is terrifying to think our leaders are aware they shill the dead and mummified knowingly for some benefit only they and a few with them accrue.
Nietzsche asks us to consider that we will not become a peaceful people after this or that evil is eliminated. Rather, we are a peaceful people that refuse to be what we are. That is our sin. There is no evil that takes away our good. We refuse the good we are. We cannot become what we are -- we can, though, desist denying what we are. If we deny what we are, we don't become something else -- we are not.
The sin of war-makers, if we can still make sense of the word 'sin', that Nietzsche might wish us to consider, is convincing us to deny who we are, forget what we are, and become murderers and plunderers. Then, these war-makers would have us believe, we would then strive to be what we are really becoming, namely, peaceful, loving, good citizens of our communities.
There are those who wish to claim we are good and evil, an amalgam of opposites battling to emerge authentically as shadows with light or light with shadows. Even here are seeds of understanding longing to flower.
We are not one or the other.
We are not one and the other.
We are one another.
There is no other.
Heidegger, after Kierkegaard, spoke of repetition. The German "Wiederholung" (retrieval, repetition).
By virtue of repetition the individual is able to press forward, not toward a sheer novelty which is discontinuous with the past, but into the being which he himself is. By repetition the individual becomes himself, circling back on the being which he has been all along. Repeating the Aristotelian ' to ti en einai' (that which a thing was to be), repetition is that by which the existing individual becomes what he was to be, that by which he returns to himself. (p.12, Radical Hermeneutics -- Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, by John D. Caputo, c.1987)
War is forgetfulness. It is the acting out of a primal mythology pitting one against the other. This mythology hurts, but has, in Richard Hugo's phrase, "compensations too lovely to leave."
The compensations of forgetfulness are power, wealth, and deceitful use of the other for benefit of the one. War is the delivery system of spoils to the spoilers.
War is the lie forgetfulness fails to recognize.
How do we return to "what a thing was to be?" How return to ones' self?
Try, try, and try to remember.
Look deeply into the face right there in front of us.
Gaze, long and carefully.
This, this, is our prayer.
Who sees we are each one? Who comprehends sin as the ignorant will to make other and attack with mind to destroy the other as cause of our own unhappiness?
Who is capable of accepting the truth of God -- not Gott mit uns as if God were a cheerleader in international scrums marching downfield to goal line uprights -- but the truth of God as the mystery of peace at center of each and every person and thing.
At center, where each is itself. Itself, where God breathes within one and all.
God's breath, where you and I dwell as no other.
There is a new axis of dualistic foolishness. From George Bush to Osama bin Laden, from Saddam Hussein to Kim Jong Il, from Tony Blair to Ariel Sharon -- the dos e dos of war rhetoric and foolishness of mired dualistic thinking continues.
"All that philosophers have handled for millennia has been conceptual mummies; nothing actual has escaped from their hands alive....What is, does not become; what becomes, is not." (-- Friedrich Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ.)
Acquisition, greed, and illusory-self love are clues to mummified concepts paraded in public wrapped in nationalistic and corporate flags for mass consumption & patriotic fervor. It is terrifying to think our leaders are aware they shill the dead and mummified knowingly for some benefit only they and a few with them accrue.
Nietzsche asks us to consider that we will not become a peaceful people after this or that evil is eliminated. Rather, we are a peaceful people that refuse to be what we are. That is our sin. There is no evil that takes away our good. We refuse the good we are. We cannot become what we are -- we can, though, desist denying what we are. If we deny what we are, we don't become something else -- we are not.
The sin of war-makers, if we can still make sense of the word 'sin', that Nietzsche might wish us to consider, is convincing us to deny who we are, forget what we are, and become murderers and plunderers. Then, these war-makers would have us believe, we would then strive to be what we are really becoming, namely, peaceful, loving, good citizens of our communities.
There are those who wish to claim we are good and evil, an amalgam of opposites battling to emerge authentically as shadows with light or light with shadows. Even here are seeds of understanding longing to flower.
We are not one or the other.
We are not one and the other.
We are one another.
There is no other.
Heidegger, after Kierkegaard, spoke of repetition. The German "Wiederholung" (retrieval, repetition).
By virtue of repetition the individual is able to press forward, not toward a sheer novelty which is discontinuous with the past, but into the being which he himself is. By repetition the individual becomes himself, circling back on the being which he has been all along. Repeating the Aristotelian ' to ti en einai' (that which a thing was to be), repetition is that by which the existing individual becomes what he was to be, that by which he returns to himself. (p.12, Radical Hermeneutics -- Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, by John D. Caputo, c.1987)
War is forgetfulness. It is the acting out of a primal mythology pitting one against the other. This mythology hurts, but has, in Richard Hugo's phrase, "compensations too lovely to leave."
The compensations of forgetfulness are power, wealth, and deceitful use of the other for benefit of the one. War is the delivery system of spoils to the spoilers.
War is the lie forgetfulness fails to recognize.
How do we return to "what a thing was to be?" How return to ones' self?
Try, try, and try to remember.
Look deeply into the face right there in front of us.
Gaze, long and carefully.
This, this, is our prayer.
Monday, February 10, 2003
In the shop around the fire of a Sunday morning, Pat, an older woman, tells of her sister dying. A young man, Jonathan, listens. One other makes three.
Perfect and clear by nature
Is the Bodhi ocean;
Pure and faultless,
Bodhi is in essence wonderful.
Its fundamental brightness shone,
So by chance creating
An object which then
Obscured its radiant nature.
Thus in delusion there
Appeared one-sided emptiness
In which an imaginary world
Arbitrarily was built.
Steadying itself,
The thinking process made the continents
While the illusory knower
Became a living being.
- Manjusri’s Gatha
In their conversation, illusion, grandiosity, and separate selves dissolve. Remaining in their midst was a living being. That living being found its soul between them.
February 10 remembers Scholastica. Scholastica was Benedict's sister. They visited. She was, it seems, in her final days, dying. She wanted to talk for the duration.
Their spiritual conversation went on and the hour grew late. The holy nun said to her brother: “Please do not leave me tonight; let us go on until morning talking about the delights of the spiritual life”. “Sister”, he replied, “what are you saying? I simply cannot stay outside my cell”.
When she heard her brother refuse her request, the holy woman joined her hands on the table, laid her head on them and began to pray. As she raised her head from the table, there were such brilliant flashes of lightning, such great peals of thunder and such a heavy downpour of rain that neither Benedict nor his brethren could stir across the threshold of the place where they had been seated. Sadly he began to complain: “May God forgive you, sister. What have you done?” “Well”, she answered, “I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery”. (--From the books of Dialogues by Saint Gregory the Great, pope)
Benedict stayed despite worrying he'd broken his will to return to his cell. They spoke. Then he went back to his cell. Three days later, she died. "Looking up to the sky, he saw his sister’s soul leave her body in the form of a dove, and fly up to the secret places of heaven."
Pat said she'd died once after an operation in the recovery room. Her mother bringing flowers found her unbreathing and flatline. When the medical people called her back, she lived to tell the story. Jonathan asked, "So you actually died and came back?" Pat looked at him, smiled, and said, "Look at this face; can't you tell?" All laughed.
We visit each other to visit the "between." It is there, in that "thin place," we engage each other while still remaining free of attachment and grasping. Engaged yet free -- a lovely phrase read from Wayne Teasdale's book A Monk in the World.
Benedict and Scholastica experienced "...such brilliant flashes of lightning, such great peals of thunder and such a heavy downpour of rain that neither Benedict nor his brethren could stir across the threshold of the place where they had been seated." Jonathan and Pat experienced intergenerational warmth from each other and fireplace telling their stories -- she of her brother dead and dying sister -- he of playing his synthesizer piano for his grandmother when he arrived just after she had died. "She heard you," says Pat. And Jonathan’s face is bright.
Staying a while with each other, letting fall the walls of our will and imagined separate egos, moving beyond barriers into the shared spaciousness of the between -- we dissolve into each other, into the between, for the duration.
No longer obscuring our radiant nature, we are of service to one-another. We are -- simply, silently, transparently -- there.
As Pat visits her sister today, we pray for that presence -- with each and all of us everywhere.
Friday, February 07, 2003
To war, these words: No, not now!
To peace, these words: Yes, now!
War is illusion with clenched bloody hand and closed mind.
Peace is reality with tender touching hand and open heart.
Those who have seen and known war understand No to war.
Those who see and feel peace innerstand Yes to peace.
Calm and contemplation
has in itself a
clarity and tranquility
beyond anything known to
earlier generations.
- Kuan-ting
God has learned from war. God weeps with this knowledge.
God is now here. God is now peace.
What are we learning? Where are we now?
To peace, these words: Yes, now!
War is illusion with clenched bloody hand and closed mind.
Peace is reality with tender touching hand and open heart.
Those who have seen and known war understand No to war.
Those who see and feel peace innerstand Yes to peace.
Calm and contemplation
has in itself a
clarity and tranquility
beyond anything known to
earlier generations.
- Kuan-ting
God has learned from war. God weeps with this knowledge.
God is now here. God is now peace.
What are we learning? Where are we now?
Thursday, February 06, 2003
Do we ask? Where?
What choice do we have in the face of contemporary world events?
"The choice in the midst of suffering is either bitterness or compassion." (--said to radio host 6Feb03 by Monsignor Thomas Hartman, co-author with Rabbi Marc Gellman of Religion For Dummies®)
Suffering these days entails a long list. You can hear it almost anywhere. It is heard in the bookshop. For some it almost seems too much. Their suffering goes far beyond their singular self. It stretches to the prospect of war, the failure of technology, the corruption of corporations, the deceits of governments, the harm done to trust in secular and church institutions, and the perpetuation of beliefs willing to amputate whole groups of people from the embrace of common support and economic safety.
Individuals reach for understanding. In last night’s conversation, after reading from The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain, it happens that someone suggests that stone matter was less substantial during placement of ancient stones or construction of pyramids, that sound assisted the moving of massive objects, that there were technologies used far beyond our imagination that would seem very odd to our linear, left-brain computations.
These ideas seem eccentric.
Eccentric also the ideas of those suggesting conspiracy in deaths of notable people like Paul Wellstone, Ron Brown, and countless others. The initial response might be to wince and move mentally to dismissal of insubstantial evidence. Questions of the space shuttle disintegration might lay side by side with questions of JFK, MLK, and RFK assassinations in the 60’s.
Since 9/11 our certitude and trust are sounding shaky and insubstantial. Voices attempting to sound strong and sternly resolute with arguments for decisive action against evil and foes, on the contrary, have a tin-like whine of suspect bravado not unlike bullying commands anywhere.
Where turn for certainty? The options diminish. Pema Chodron’s book suggests in its title we might consider becoming Comfortable With Uncertainty. Can we?
As a people, we seek either evidence or faith following death or significant events of destruction and suffering. Evidence is sometimes not forthcoming or is easily manipulated. So too, faith. What do we do when external voices and established structures no longer speak truth to the suffering?
While the ignorant only talk,
The wise apply their minds to practice.
There are also ignorant people
Who sit in meditation
With an empty mind and
Without thinking of anything
And who call themselves great.
It is useless to talk to them
Because of their views.
- Altar Sutra
Part of the practice of conversation is paying attention to ideas that, on first hearing, seem unlikely or absurd. Another practice of conversation is paying attention to the feelings and intuitions that arise within you listening to what is being said. The attention we devote to what is taking place has value when it is an attentive presence allowing transformation to take place. This transformation includes the one speaking, the one listening, the matter spoken about, and all the possible ramifications and consequences towards which attentive presence extends.
If we learned anything from Sept. 11, surely it is that there is a reason to worry when politicians hijack religion — just as we've learned from the church's scandal of the dangers that abound when religious leaders value political self-preservation over protecting the defenseless in their flock. ( NYT, Religion for Dummies, op ed piece by Frank Rich, 27Apr02)
The proper response these times might not be religion. What then? Ideologies not yet tried or semi-abandoned?
The practice of conversation is the practice of silence. We must begin again to listen to the sound of what is being said, within and without us.
If the true sound of what is being said is attended to, might the heaviness of our world become lighter? Might the oppressive weight of the false and untrustworthy become the insubstantial illusion it is? And might we return to a trust and confidence, faith and compassion the world so desperately needs in our time?
Real practice is to do what is true. Real presence is to be no opposite -- to be what is here.
When we are absent, when we are unwilling to pay attention, we have forgotten wonder. No wonder -- (and) we have forgotten God.
Do we ask? Where?
Do we dare?
What choice do we have in the face of contemporary world events?
"The choice in the midst of suffering is either bitterness or compassion." (--said to radio host 6Feb03 by Monsignor Thomas Hartman, co-author with Rabbi Marc Gellman of Religion For Dummies®)
Suffering these days entails a long list. You can hear it almost anywhere. It is heard in the bookshop. For some it almost seems too much. Their suffering goes far beyond their singular self. It stretches to the prospect of war, the failure of technology, the corruption of corporations, the deceits of governments, the harm done to trust in secular and church institutions, and the perpetuation of beliefs willing to amputate whole groups of people from the embrace of common support and economic safety.
Individuals reach for understanding. In last night’s conversation, after reading from The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image, by Leonard Shlain, it happens that someone suggests that stone matter was less substantial during placement of ancient stones or construction of pyramids, that sound assisted the moving of massive objects, that there were technologies used far beyond our imagination that would seem very odd to our linear, left-brain computations.
These ideas seem eccentric.
Eccentric also the ideas of those suggesting conspiracy in deaths of notable people like Paul Wellstone, Ron Brown, and countless others. The initial response might be to wince and move mentally to dismissal of insubstantial evidence. Questions of the space shuttle disintegration might lay side by side with questions of JFK, MLK, and RFK assassinations in the 60’s.
Since 9/11 our certitude and trust are sounding shaky and insubstantial. Voices attempting to sound strong and sternly resolute with arguments for decisive action against evil and foes, on the contrary, have a tin-like whine of suspect bravado not unlike bullying commands anywhere.
Where turn for certainty? The options diminish. Pema Chodron’s book suggests in its title we might consider becoming Comfortable With Uncertainty. Can we?
As a people, we seek either evidence or faith following death or significant events of destruction and suffering. Evidence is sometimes not forthcoming or is easily manipulated. So too, faith. What do we do when external voices and established structures no longer speak truth to the suffering?
While the ignorant only talk,
The wise apply their minds to practice.
There are also ignorant people
Who sit in meditation
With an empty mind and
Without thinking of anything
And who call themselves great.
It is useless to talk to them
Because of their views.
- Altar Sutra
Part of the practice of conversation is paying attention to ideas that, on first hearing, seem unlikely or absurd. Another practice of conversation is paying attention to the feelings and intuitions that arise within you listening to what is being said. The attention we devote to what is taking place has value when it is an attentive presence allowing transformation to take place. This transformation includes the one speaking, the one listening, the matter spoken about, and all the possible ramifications and consequences towards which attentive presence extends.
If we learned anything from Sept. 11, surely it is that there is a reason to worry when politicians hijack religion — just as we've learned from the church's scandal of the dangers that abound when religious leaders value political self-preservation over protecting the defenseless in their flock. ( NYT, Religion for Dummies, op ed piece by Frank Rich, 27Apr02)
The proper response these times might not be religion. What then? Ideologies not yet tried or semi-abandoned?
The practice of conversation is the practice of silence. We must begin again to listen to the sound of what is being said, within and without us.
If the true sound of what is being said is attended to, might the heaviness of our world become lighter? Might the oppressive weight of the false and untrustworthy become the insubstantial illusion it is? And might we return to a trust and confidence, faith and compassion the world so desperately needs in our time?
Real practice is to do what is true. Real presence is to be no opposite -- to be what is here.
When we are absent, when we are unwilling to pay attention, we have forgotten wonder. No wonder -- (and) we have forgotten God.
Do we ask? Where?
Do we dare?
Wednesday, February 05, 2003
Time changes hands. Before to after midnight. Yet, it is still Now.
Standing alone beneath a solitary pine
Quickly the time passes.
Overhead the endless sky
Who can I call to join me on this path?
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
Reading articles about deaths that trouble credulity and justice takes hours away.
Not-knowing is the conclusion and beginning of thinking.
I think of political figures that die and disappear. It is a theater of farce and fantasy too frightening to stage.
Returning to earth, leaving the sub-soil of political night crawling, bell outside window laments in wind.
Cesco's former mistress, Ky, left us license plates. The Volkswagen van wears them as of February first. They are question, prayer, name of God, and statement of faith in what matters --- NOW.
With Ryokan I ask: "Who can I call to join me on this path?"
Standing alone beneath a solitary pine
Quickly the time passes.
Overhead the endless sky
Who can I call to join me on this path?
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
Reading articles about deaths that trouble credulity and justice takes hours away.
Not-knowing is the conclusion and beginning of thinking.
I think of political figures that die and disappear. It is a theater of farce and fantasy too frightening to stage.
Returning to earth, leaving the sub-soil of political night crawling, bell outside window laments in wind.
Cesco's former mistress, Ky, left us license plates. The Volkswagen van wears them as of February first. They are question, prayer, name of God, and statement of faith in what matters --- NOW.
With Ryokan I ask: "Who can I call to join me on this path?"
Sunday, February 02, 2003
Blizzard.
Earlier, Tom, Barbara, and David spoke of omens and location. Why over Texas? Is Columbia, the ancient appellation of America, warned by this microcosmic sign?
The three stand in front of counter as Sam and Saskia play harmonica and flute. The talk of the country's leaders, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, is filled with wary worry. The music seems to get louder as voices increase in passion. I am looking up books on psalms and reverence.
The perfect Way’s like boundless space
Nothing lacking, nothing extra
It is because of choice
That its absolute truth is lost.
Don’t pursue externals;
Don’t dally in the interior void.
When the spirit remains serene
In the unity of things
Dualism vanishes by itself;
When that unity is not clear
There is loss in both directions.
- Seng-ts'an (d.606)
Tom leaves with soups and Mabinogian Tetralogy by Evangeline Walton. Barbara goes afterwards with soup. David sits with musicians.
It seems a sin to forget the agreement between all things, all peoples, the All-God and All-God's no opposite. The agreement, like water in glass with glass around water, is to be for each other a place of integrity. As places of integrity we allow the other to be no other, rather, to dwell as neighbor each to each holding in reverence the agreement.
Unity is clear. No murdering, no stealing, no dishonoring.
Remember this -- agree to be this with each and all.
Hanging on bakery counter lamp is cross-made one evening conversation by David's son Forrest with two sticks and piece of string. All three items have kept their agreement with each other these six years. So have we with them. It is the way of the cross that remembers for us the agreement holding us together that we so easily forget.
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyaev in his "The Part of Imagination in the Moral Life" wrote,
The Ethics of creativeness presupposes that the task which confronts man is infinite and that the world is not completed.
May we be delivered from men intent on destroying another's face!
May we learn, forgetting self, to open to boundless space!
May we agree to dwell with all upholding grace!
Earlier, Tom, Barbara, and David spoke of omens and location. Why over Texas? Is Columbia, the ancient appellation of America, warned by this microcosmic sign?
The three stand in front of counter as Sam and Saskia play harmonica and flute. The talk of the country's leaders, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, is filled with wary worry. The music seems to get louder as voices increase in passion. I am looking up books on psalms and reverence.
The perfect Way’s like boundless space
Nothing lacking, nothing extra
It is because of choice
That its absolute truth is lost.
Don’t pursue externals;
Don’t dally in the interior void.
When the spirit remains serene
In the unity of things
Dualism vanishes by itself;
When that unity is not clear
There is loss in both directions.
- Seng-ts'an (d.606)
Tom leaves with soups and Mabinogian Tetralogy by Evangeline Walton. Barbara goes afterwards with soup. David sits with musicians.
It seems a sin to forget the agreement between all things, all peoples, the All-God and All-God's no opposite. The agreement, like water in glass with glass around water, is to be for each other a place of integrity. As places of integrity we allow the other to be no other, rather, to dwell as neighbor each to each holding in reverence the agreement.
Unity is clear. No murdering, no stealing, no dishonoring.
Remember this -- agree to be this with each and all.
Hanging on bakery counter lamp is cross-made one evening conversation by David's son Forrest with two sticks and piece of string. All three items have kept their agreement with each other these six years. So have we with them. It is the way of the cross that remembers for us the agreement holding us together that we so easily forget.
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Berdyaev in his "The Part of Imagination in the Moral Life" wrote,
The Ethics of creativeness presupposes that the task which confronts man is infinite and that the world is not completed.
May we be delivered from men intent on destroying another's face!
May we learn, forgetting self, to open to boundless space!
May we agree to dwell with all upholding grace!
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Cold rain.
Because there are no words to say, conversation doesn't cease.
Because there is death, life is living itself.
Enlightenment is like the
moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet,
nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
the moon is reflected even
in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
are reflected in dewdrops on the grass,
or even in one drop of water.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
When we finally hear ourselves beneath words in silence, we let fall all unnecessary noise.
No one has ever failed to be listened to who listens to themselves. We are the ones unhearing ourselves. When we listen and hear who we are and what we are saying, no one is abandoned, no one homeless.
In the sight of, in the presence of all the peoples, said Simeon:
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” (Luke 2)
When we see who is there within listening and watching, we are alone.
With the Alone.
Unbroken, reflected, whole, and entire – even in one drop of water.
Because there are no words to say, conversation doesn't cease.
Because there is death, life is living itself.
Enlightenment is like the
moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet,
nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
the moon is reflected even
in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
are reflected in dewdrops on the grass,
or even in one drop of water.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
When we finally hear ourselves beneath words in silence, we let fall all unnecessary noise.
No one has ever failed to be listened to who listens to themselves. We are the ones unhearing ourselves. When we listen and hear who we are and what we are saying, no one is abandoned, no one homeless.
In the sight of, in the presence of all the peoples, said Simeon:
It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Christ of the Lord. He came in the Spirit into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus to perform the custom of the law in regard to him, he took him into his arms and blessed God, saying: “Now, Master, you may let your servant go in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples: a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and glory for your people Israel.” (Luke 2)
When we see who is there within listening and watching, we are alone.
With the Alone.
Unbroken, reflected, whole, and entire – even in one drop of water.
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