Andre will soon move from maximum-security razor wire fence to minimum-security farm fenced pastures. At end of conversation he wondered whether soul was what connected mind and heart. It set us thinking.
If you place your body in the realm
Of equanimity and noncontention,
And let your mind roam in the
Territory of evenness and nondisturbance,
And water them every day with
Fair words and fine deeds of sage worthies,
Then you are sure to progress.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)
We lose our soul when the connection is broken. It's not possible to dwell soulfully only in mind or only in heart. For we humans, soul moves through heart and mind as breath moves through space between you and me.
Connects, not as clasps hold two things together, but as light illumines what is there for another's appreciation to move through.
Diane says breath and light works well for her. Spirit breathing light in, through, and with what is there, whoever is there.
Andre leaves his poem and this conversation with us.
CONSTRUCTION
I could run as fast as Olympic track stars,
and still my back would be facing the wall,
cornered, I'm a goner,
surrounded by voices warning me to stop annoying them,
they're not the ones who scorn,
and the further I get from them,
the more I hear the talk of politicians,
more trees and land gets destroyed,
then they join me, with the cars and trucks they convoy,
making loud noises with bright spot lights on them
as they perform,
and I'm called awkward, because I don't see anything glorious,
I'm bored by what they call modern,
It's like a segment from the land of the lost,
complete regression,
It's hard to teach people to respect and cherish
the mud they step in,
especially if they believe they're the best thing
to happen to this planet,
and they've got all the weapons and answers,
so who am I to question.
(poem by Andre H)
Perhaps question is soul making its way between heart and mind.
Who am I? What is this? Where are you?
We move through all needing connection with question. Asked out loud or pondered silently within, question contacts one and one, moving through this contact, this connection, on its way beyond and through, going on.
Andre's final line might be asking --- "so who am I to soul?"
Move well through. Dwell still in peace.
Construct.
Soul.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Think through. See through.
When I look into my life there is much not intelligible. Often what is not understandable is that which is a lie. If it is not true, it is not there. Lies are like that. They disappear what is there.
On Going to see a Taoist Master
A dog barking and the sound of water;
Peach blossoms heavy with dew.
In these deep woods, deer can be seen;
At noon along the stream, I hear no bell.
Wild bamboo divides gray clouds;
Waterfalls hang from blue peaks.
No one knows where you’ve gone;
Disheartened, I lean against a second,
Now a third pine. ( - Li Po)
A Zen Master said when you change your mind now you change the past. Things are seen as what they are, not as the lie told or lived. Seeing though allows things their original shape. Lies distort. Seeing original shape sets clear.
It is sobering to see the lies in one’s life.
David, Lola, Silvia, Lloyd, Susan, Saskia and I thought about what it meant being knots in a fishing web net –- an image used by Raimon Panikkar. To refuse to be that knot, or to appropriate (inappropriately) the knot of another, is to be the lie in the net of relationship. Without perfect (moving through) relationality between one knot and another, there are gaps through which much is lost.
When I lie, I let others fall through where I’d been into a lost space from which only attentive presence might restore and reshape them. I have let many fall through into lost space by my lies, by my not being there, or knot being where it was not called for.
The net of perfect inter-connective inter-relationship is determined by attentive, truthful presence.
If we impose our false self, or withdraw our true self, then the whole net is affected.
Contemplative and meditative practice invites us to look through our lives. When we see absence, presence is called for. When we see lies, truth is called for. And when we see tangled, inappropriate, and misappropriated blockages, patient and compassionate unraveling is called for.
Mostly, a contrite spirit. And a pure heart. This is the sacrifice that is called for.
To make whole again is making holy what has been lost to sight.
I’ve leaned against the second, the third pine. I’ve heard the sound of no bell. I have not known where you’ve gone.
I ask now to look at where I’ve been.
I long to see through who I really am.
When I look into my life there is much not intelligible. Often what is not understandable is that which is a lie. If it is not true, it is not there. Lies are like that. They disappear what is there.
On Going to see a Taoist Master
A dog barking and the sound of water;
Peach blossoms heavy with dew.
In these deep woods, deer can be seen;
At noon along the stream, I hear no bell.
Wild bamboo divides gray clouds;
Waterfalls hang from blue peaks.
No one knows where you’ve gone;
Disheartened, I lean against a second,
Now a third pine. ( - Li Po)
A Zen Master said when you change your mind now you change the past. Things are seen as what they are, not as the lie told or lived. Seeing though allows things their original shape. Lies distort. Seeing original shape sets clear.
It is sobering to see the lies in one’s life.
David, Lola, Silvia, Lloyd, Susan, Saskia and I thought about what it meant being knots in a fishing web net –- an image used by Raimon Panikkar. To refuse to be that knot, or to appropriate (inappropriately) the knot of another, is to be the lie in the net of relationship. Without perfect (moving through) relationality between one knot and another, there are gaps through which much is lost.
When I lie, I let others fall through where I’d been into a lost space from which only attentive presence might restore and reshape them. I have let many fall through into lost space by my lies, by my not being there, or knot being where it was not called for.
The net of perfect inter-connective inter-relationship is determined by attentive, truthful presence.
If we impose our false self, or withdraw our true self, then the whole net is affected.
Contemplative and meditative practice invites us to look through our lives. When we see absence, presence is called for. When we see lies, truth is called for. And when we see tangled, inappropriate, and misappropriated blockages, patient and compassionate unraveling is called for.
Mostly, a contrite spirit. And a pure heart. This is the sacrifice that is called for.
To make whole again is making holy what has been lost to sight.
I’ve leaned against the second, the third pine. I’ve heard the sound of no bell. I have not known where you’ve gone.
I ask now to look at where I’ve been.
I long to see through who I really am.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Seeping from myself. Weather coming in.
Silent sitting sunshine in cabin earlier. Tea and yogurt, english muffin and rhubarb, peanut butter and banana on porch. Man, woman, two dogs keep eye on path going up to brook.
Seeking But Not Finding the Recluse
Under the pine
I ask the boy;
He says: “My Mistress is gone
To gather herbs.
I only know
She’s in those mountains,
In those deep clouds,
But I don’t know where.”
- Chia Tao(dalyzen)
Flowers in boxes outside cabin windows. Color peaks bee interest.
Here at the shop John and Bob speak of the way people identify themselves racially and ethnically, their own perceptions and society's perceptions, none of which satisfies
Such green full leaf branching over rough wood stillness.
CF: I would like to proceed with one of your quotes: "When man breaks his connection with Earth, wanting to fulfill himself, he becomes a monster who destroys himself. When man breaks his connection with heaven, wanting to lead himself on his own, he becomes an automaton that destroys others."
You have said both an external and internal peace are indispensable. Which do you sense is our correct relationship with the earth and ‘heavens’?
RP: It would be both horizontal and vertical at the same time. The individual separate from the others, or from the earth or the divine, does not exist. We, by our very nature, belong both to earth and to the divine. We are conscious and free parts of a whole, but not as puppets that can be easily directed by threads, but rather we find ourselves within a cosmic interweaving or network. The human being is a person, not an individual. I understand a person as ‘a knot in a net’ of relationships. These threads connect us with our fellow men, the earth and divinity. The more conscious the person is, the more he realizes that his person reaches out to the confines of the world. That is the realized man.
CF: Within this network, how do we learn to move the right threads? Traditionally, religions have served to provide us with points of reference. Nowadays, however, there are many people who reject these religious systems because they no longer fulfill them, realizing at the same time that there is another dimension of reality which we are still not aware of. What’s changing in us?
RP: The realization that no separation exists between ourselves and our reality, and from that emerges a new consciousness, what I call a new innocence. In broad terms, it emerges from the knowledge of our ‘ignorance’, of knowing that our knowledge does not exhaust knowledge, not because we know ignorance, but because we understand our limitations: it is a consciousness born from a conflict of knowledge. Then we overcome knowledge through a leap of faith, confidence, sensitivity, intuition.
Underlying this there would be what I call the Cosmotheandric Principle, in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole.
(in The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar, by Carmen Font. Interview with the author and President of the Center for Intercultural Studies, Raimon Panikkar, calling for a new awareness of the limitations of human knowledge in order to make room for the Divine.) (From the October 1996 issue of Share International)
Holly rounds rim of Tibetan bowl. Sounds it. Sam and Susan leave. Tonight is Erika's art opening in Rockland.
Yellow bags are readied for dump.
Tide levels.
Silent sitting sunshine in cabin earlier. Tea and yogurt, english muffin and rhubarb, peanut butter and banana on porch. Man, woman, two dogs keep eye on path going up to brook.
Seeking But Not Finding the Recluse
Under the pine
I ask the boy;
He says: “My Mistress is gone
To gather herbs.
I only know
She’s in those mountains,
In those deep clouds,
But I don’t know where.”
- Chia Tao(dalyzen)
Flowers in boxes outside cabin windows. Color peaks bee interest.
Here at the shop John and Bob speak of the way people identify themselves racially and ethnically, their own perceptions and society's perceptions, none of which satisfies
Such green full leaf branching over rough wood stillness.
CF: I would like to proceed with one of your quotes: "When man breaks his connection with Earth, wanting to fulfill himself, he becomes a monster who destroys himself. When man breaks his connection with heaven, wanting to lead himself on his own, he becomes an automaton that destroys others."
You have said both an external and internal peace are indispensable. Which do you sense is our correct relationship with the earth and ‘heavens’?
RP: It would be both horizontal and vertical at the same time. The individual separate from the others, or from the earth or the divine, does not exist. We, by our very nature, belong both to earth and to the divine. We are conscious and free parts of a whole, but not as puppets that can be easily directed by threads, but rather we find ourselves within a cosmic interweaving or network. The human being is a person, not an individual. I understand a person as ‘a knot in a net’ of relationships. These threads connect us with our fellow men, the earth and divinity. The more conscious the person is, the more he realizes that his person reaches out to the confines of the world. That is the realized man.
CF: Within this network, how do we learn to move the right threads? Traditionally, religions have served to provide us with points of reference. Nowadays, however, there are many people who reject these religious systems because they no longer fulfill them, realizing at the same time that there is another dimension of reality which we are still not aware of. What’s changing in us?
RP: The realization that no separation exists between ourselves and our reality, and from that emerges a new consciousness, what I call a new innocence. In broad terms, it emerges from the knowledge of our ‘ignorance’, of knowing that our knowledge does not exhaust knowledge, not because we know ignorance, but because we understand our limitations: it is a consciousness born from a conflict of knowledge. Then we overcome knowledge through a leap of faith, confidence, sensitivity, intuition.
Underlying this there would be what I call the Cosmotheandric Principle, in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole.
(in The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar, by Carmen Font. Interview with the author and President of the Center for Intercultural Studies, Raimon Panikkar, calling for a new awareness of the limitations of human knowledge in order to make room for the Divine.) (From the October 1996 issue of Share International)
Holly rounds rim of Tibetan bowl. Sounds it. Sam and Susan leave. Tonight is Erika's art opening in Rockland.
Yellow bags are readied for dump.
Tide levels.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
We touch.
Then go on.
The effect of Father Zossima's death on Alyosha, and the latter's ecstasy when he dashes out of the hermit's cell, probably better express Dostoevsky's own sense of the divinity of all creation. Alyosha falls face downwards on the earth, swearing to love it until the end of the ages, as though threads from all these countless of God's worlds had all coincided within his soul at once, and it trembled all over, in "the contiguity with other worlds"'.
((Pp.33-34 in A Pelican in the Wilderness, Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses, c. 2002, by Isabel Colegate)
At shop a man says his mother is not dissolving but being chopped up at the nearing end of her life. She tells him she doesn’t know what will happen. She asks him to pray for her.
A woman's father is dying. She will go to visit at end of week. Out on sea wind blows in gusts tonight. Saskia tells her we'll pray for him and for her. She says she doesn't know much about prayer.
No one knows. This is what we hear. To pray is to open heart and mind to God. To invite one another into same place. However unknown.
Cherry blossoms filling the ground,
Sunset filling my eyes:
Blossoms vanished, spring old,
I feel the passing years.
When blossoms were at their finest
I neglected to call.
The blossoms did not betray me.
I betrayed the blossoms.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)
Everything tells us to call.
That all might be well.
We go on.
Touched.
Then go on.
The effect of Father Zossima's death on Alyosha, and the latter's ecstasy when he dashes out of the hermit's cell, probably better express Dostoevsky's own sense of the divinity of all creation. Alyosha falls face downwards on the earth, swearing to love it until the end of the ages, as though threads from all these countless of God's worlds had all coincided within his soul at once, and it trembled all over, in "the contiguity with other worlds"'.
((Pp.33-34 in A Pelican in the Wilderness, Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses, c. 2002, by Isabel Colegate)
At shop a man says his mother is not dissolving but being chopped up at the nearing end of her life. She tells him she doesn’t know what will happen. She asks him to pray for her.
A woman's father is dying. She will go to visit at end of week. Out on sea wind blows in gusts tonight. Saskia tells her we'll pray for him and for her. She says she doesn't know much about prayer.
No one knows. This is what we hear. To pray is to open heart and mind to God. To invite one another into same place. However unknown.
Cherry blossoms filling the ground,
Sunset filling my eyes:
Blossoms vanished, spring old,
I feel the passing years.
When blossoms were at their finest
I neglected to call.
The blossoms did not betray me.
I betrayed the blossoms.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)
Everything tells us to call.
That all might be well.
We go on.
Touched.
Sunday, June 15, 2003
Cosmotheandric?
Ask Now -- Facing One Another.
Creation. Creator. Creating.
Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days as they pass
The wisteria has grown thick
Over the eaves of my hut
The subtle Way of Bodhidharma
I never give it a thought
Does anyone know the truth of Zen
Or what to ask about it?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
Moses said to the people: "Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man [woman, and all sentient beings] upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
(Deut.4:32-34)
Sitting circle, we surround surrender. Who will give in first?
And behold I am with you always until the end of the age. (Mt.28:29)
The abstract concept of the Trinity is moving from triangle to circle. No longer tripodal image of three. Now, with you and me, we are a-round.
We pray for each moving through all. We pray for the inspiration with which each permeates each in everyday life. We pray all will be one as one is itself.
The mystery of the Trinity as portrayed by the church seems to leave woman out of the picture. This will change. It will change because awareness asks it to change. Woman-mother and man-father are gendered approximations of the reality of creativity.
Creativity itself, creative-being itself, and intuitive-inspiring-creating itself!
These relating, undifferentiating, and unfolding aspects of sacred reality surround us in our ordinary day-to-day living cosmotheandric experience in the world.
Church need not fret. It is confirmation. New names are taken. Spirit creates something new.
Come, we say, Holy Spirit.
Bless, we say, all unceasing surrounding interpenetrating movement of the Sacred Itself.
Today it rains.
Glistening green festive beloved solemnity!
Ask Now -- Facing One Another.
Creation. Creator. Creating.
Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days as they pass
The wisteria has grown thick
Over the eaves of my hut
The subtle Way of Bodhidharma
I never give it a thought
Does anyone know the truth of Zen
Or what to ask about it?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
Moses said to the people: "Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man [woman, and all sentient beings] upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
(Deut.4:32-34)
Sitting circle, we surround surrender. Who will give in first?
And behold I am with you always until the end of the age. (Mt.28:29)
The abstract concept of the Trinity is moving from triangle to circle. No longer tripodal image of three. Now, with you and me, we are a-round.
We pray for each moving through all. We pray for the inspiration with which each permeates each in everyday life. We pray all will be one as one is itself.
The mystery of the Trinity as portrayed by the church seems to leave woman out of the picture. This will change. It will change because awareness asks it to change. Woman-mother and man-father are gendered approximations of the reality of creativity.
Creativity itself, creative-being itself, and intuitive-inspiring-creating itself!
These relating, undifferentiating, and unfolding aspects of sacred reality surround us in our ordinary day-to-day living cosmotheandric experience in the world.
Church need not fret. It is confirmation. New names are taken. Spirit creates something new.
Come, we say, Holy Spirit.
Bless, we say, all unceasing surrounding interpenetrating movement of the Sacred Itself.
Today it rains.
Glistening green festive beloved solemnity!
Friday, June 13, 2003
At Thursday Evening Conversation for second week we speak about homelessness.
We are particles. We live particular lives. A particle remains itself. While not separate from congregates forming a distinct and visible collection within the whole, a particle of itself goes on by itself nearly invisible and hidden .
There was a famous female hermit, Machig Labdron, in eleventh-century Tibet. Her story parallels those of Western Christian female hermits in the Middle Ages. Her family opposed her desire to devote herself to the spiritual life because she was seen as a useful domestic worker, whose economic role was a marriage object. When she went to live alone in a cave the abbot of the local monastery perceived her as a threat, because she was an outsider. Even when he met her and was convinced of her authenticity, he wanted her to move into a monastery and become part of the system. The yogin, male or female, like the hermit, remains an outsider, detached, to some extent mysterious, and possessed of a particular kind of authority. (pp.10-11, in A Pelican in the Wilderness, Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses, by Isabel Colegate c.2002)
"A particular kind of authority" -- the phrase suggests that of itself, in itself, and by itself this individual is undivided and thereby in union with the whole.
There are those who judge and categorize, thereby making "others" in contrast to the system the individual is being measured for or against. This is how we "other" people. We create systems, calculate who is in and who is out, and qualify our own belonging in contradistinction to their non-belonging status.
Those not "in" are "out." Benefits accrue to those in. Recognition and achievement apply to those in. Welcome is afforded to members who visit from kindred "in" systems.
Homelessness is about not belonging. Who is homeless? Dens, nests, bank mortgages, credit, and personal income determine who has a home and who -- in the eyes of determining makers of systems -- are worthy to be included in the rolls of the included.
Some of us are homeless and do not belong in the eyes of membership list keepers.
I belong to life itself. No membership need apply. Breathe in, breathe out. And when breathing in and out ceases, when breath finds itself neither in nor out, when there is no longer any question of in or out, then -- there will be no question of belonging.
Today is the feast of St. Anthony of Padua.
He joined the Franciscan order at San Antonio in Coimbra and took the name Antonio after the great abbot of the desert, who was patron of the friary. He went to Morocco to preach the Gospel, but he became so seriously ill that he had to return.
His boat went off course and he landed in Sicily, and from there went on to Assisi. After the General Chapter he was assigned to the hermitage of San Paoli. The date of his ordination is uncertain, but his ability as a preacher became widely known when he was told at an ordination in Forli, to give the homily, because no one had prepared one for the occasion. His astounding knowledge of Scripture, his eloquence, and his deep love and adoration of God became very apparent. He was recalled from the hermitage and commissioned as a preacher.
In the U.S. Anthony is the patron invoked to help find lost articles, but he is also patron of the poor. In Portugal and elsewhere "St. Anthony's bread" referred to a practice started in about 1890 of distributing bread to the poor. Today however any alms given to those in need is often called "St. Anthony's bread". St. Anthony was canonized about one year after his death.
(from Martyrology, The Monastery of Christ in the Desert)
Lost articles; lost particles. Lost and found. We have lost our understanding of what home is and where home is. Home must be found where it is.
Each particle belongs in its own home.
Life is home. Birth gives a beginning and death gives a change. But life lost and found gives insight into life itself.
Life is itself.
Home.
Breathe!
We are particles. We live particular lives. A particle remains itself. While not separate from congregates forming a distinct and visible collection within the whole, a particle of itself goes on by itself nearly invisible and hidden .
There was a famous female hermit, Machig Labdron, in eleventh-century Tibet. Her story parallels those of Western Christian female hermits in the Middle Ages. Her family opposed her desire to devote herself to the spiritual life because she was seen as a useful domestic worker, whose economic role was a marriage object. When she went to live alone in a cave the abbot of the local monastery perceived her as a threat, because she was an outsider. Even when he met her and was convinced of her authenticity, he wanted her to move into a monastery and become part of the system. The yogin, male or female, like the hermit, remains an outsider, detached, to some extent mysterious, and possessed of a particular kind of authority. (pp.10-11, in A Pelican in the Wilderness, Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses, by Isabel Colegate c.2002)
"A particular kind of authority" -- the phrase suggests that of itself, in itself, and by itself this individual is undivided and thereby in union with the whole.
There are those who judge and categorize, thereby making "others" in contrast to the system the individual is being measured for or against. This is how we "other" people. We create systems, calculate who is in and who is out, and qualify our own belonging in contradistinction to their non-belonging status.
Those not "in" are "out." Benefits accrue to those in. Recognition and achievement apply to those in. Welcome is afforded to members who visit from kindred "in" systems.
Homelessness is about not belonging. Who is homeless? Dens, nests, bank mortgages, credit, and personal income determine who has a home and who -- in the eyes of determining makers of systems -- are worthy to be included in the rolls of the included.
Some of us are homeless and do not belong in the eyes of membership list keepers.
I belong to life itself. No membership need apply. Breathe in, breathe out. And when breathing in and out ceases, when breath finds itself neither in nor out, when there is no longer any question of in or out, then -- there will be no question of belonging.
Today is the feast of St. Anthony of Padua.
He joined the Franciscan order at San Antonio in Coimbra and took the name Antonio after the great abbot of the desert, who was patron of the friary. He went to Morocco to preach the Gospel, but he became so seriously ill that he had to return.
His boat went off course and he landed in Sicily, and from there went on to Assisi. After the General Chapter he was assigned to the hermitage of San Paoli. The date of his ordination is uncertain, but his ability as a preacher became widely known when he was told at an ordination in Forli, to give the homily, because no one had prepared one for the occasion. His astounding knowledge of Scripture, his eloquence, and his deep love and adoration of God became very apparent. He was recalled from the hermitage and commissioned as a preacher.
In the U.S. Anthony is the patron invoked to help find lost articles, but he is also patron of the poor. In Portugal and elsewhere "St. Anthony's bread" referred to a practice started in about 1890 of distributing bread to the poor. Today however any alms given to those in need is often called "St. Anthony's bread". St. Anthony was canonized about one year after his death.
(from Martyrology, The Monastery of Christ in the Desert)
Lost articles; lost particles. Lost and found. We have lost our understanding of what home is and where home is. Home must be found where it is.
Each particle belongs in its own home.
Life is home. Birth gives a beginning and death gives a change. But life lost and found gives insight into life itself.
Life is itself.
Home.
Breathe!
Thursday, June 12, 2003
Silence reveals the birth of what is now taking place.
Silence is the sound of each thing as it is. No adding. No subtracting. We practice silence by allowing each person, each and every thing in existence, to be who and what they are.
Silence is moving into, through, and from itself. Silence is the presence of God with no interference of mind. Silence is brook and breeze at dawn opening the place of prayer we are.
Silence is what is holding us together. It is green of leaf. It is light blue of sky. It is deep brown of earth. Silence is caw of blackbird, squeak of squirrel, and trill of chickadee. It is sunlight leaning on rough wood beam at zendo porch. It is stillness sitting within meditation chapel.
Silence is itself.
Silence greets Saskia with simple bow on this anniversary of her birth .
Silence is the sound of each thing as it is. No adding. No subtracting. We practice silence by allowing each person, each and every thing in existence, to be who and what they are.
Silence is moving into, through, and from itself. Silence is the presence of God with no interference of mind. Silence is brook and breeze at dawn opening the place of prayer we are.
Silence is what is holding us together. It is green of leaf. It is light blue of sky. It is deep brown of earth. Silence is caw of blackbird, squeak of squirrel, and trill of chickadee. It is sunlight leaning on rough wood beam at zendo porch. It is stillness sitting within meditation chapel.
Silence is itself.
Silence greets Saskia with simple bow on this anniversary of her birth .
Tuesday, June 10, 2003
I say out loud, "Mr. Bush and friends are not greedy." Eyes watch to see if there is a punch line. There isn't.
The Zen Master in poem says,
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
(in "Please Call Me By My True Names," by Thich Nhat Hanh)
The monks’ nightly meditation quiets the peaks.
Here even shepherd boys know the Tao.
Woodcutters bring in world news.
They sleep at night in the woods
with incense, on mats clean as jade.
Their robes are steeped in valley fragrances;
the stone cliffs shine under a mountain moon.
I fear I will lose this refuge forever
so at daybreak I fix it in my mind.
People of Peach Tree Spring, goodbye.
I’ll be back when flowers turn red.
- Wang Wei (699-759)
I do not agree with those who say the current leadership in the United States is dangerously inching toward fascism and domestic repression of opposition. I think something else is happening.
Last night a car hit a deer on the road outside the hermitage. The woman driving immediately joined by two men in following cars talked about her car, collision insurance, annoyance of sudden appearance of hazards to free movement, and delay in appointed schedule for evening.
The deer lay on its side gasping breath, drops of blood dripping to road. Alone. Dying. Legs slowly attempting to take her somewhere else.
Someone called police.
Someone else came out; knelt at deer's side, hand on neck, in silence.
Two men in pickup stopped, one took out knife to slit throat, to, he said, put her out of her misery.
One last touch along neck, the person kneeling gets up, returns to hermitage leaving deer and others to do what they have to do.
In the United States right now each does what they have to do. Some drive. Some hit and injure. Some call for help. Some discuss their practical matters of economic cost and recouping losses. Some attend prayerfully the hurt and dying. Some take action to finish matters. Some arrive as official representative of legitimate authority to direct traffic, write report, commiserate, and distribute the spoils of carcass to hands that will benefit from its meat. .
Each has role.
Monks and nuns pray in monasteries and convents as politicians and military personnel plan and carry out geopolitical strategy and warfare in domestic and foreign matters.
People die. Some from cancer. There's a funeral for Ernie today. Others die from bullets, bombs, and hostile enemies. It happens today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Liberia, Africa, and towns and cities throughout Europe and America. We kill when we choose to eliminate what stands in our way or when we refuse to understand root connections.
It is not sufficient to say greed and power are the sources of inattentive and unkind behavior causing injury and death.
What is sufficient?
I must learn my true names, all of them. Until then, my heart is not yet capable of seeing and loving.
This is my prayer for Mr. Bush, myself, and all who wander this earth wishing to find peace and, ultimately, surrender within God.
May the car be repaired. May the flesh be enjoyed. May hostilities come to an end. May men and women, birds and deer, dogs and insects, fish and forests -- may each and all experiencing death be filled with grace and freedom returning to infinite, eternal source.
We will not lose our refuge.
We will be back – steeped in valley fragrances.
May life itself see to it!
The Zen Master in poem says,
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
(in "Please Call Me By My True Names," by Thich Nhat Hanh)
The monks’ nightly meditation quiets the peaks.
Here even shepherd boys know the Tao.
Woodcutters bring in world news.
They sleep at night in the woods
with incense, on mats clean as jade.
Their robes are steeped in valley fragrances;
the stone cliffs shine under a mountain moon.
I fear I will lose this refuge forever
so at daybreak I fix it in my mind.
People of Peach Tree Spring, goodbye.
I’ll be back when flowers turn red.
- Wang Wei (699-759)
I do not agree with those who say the current leadership in the United States is dangerously inching toward fascism and domestic repression of opposition. I think something else is happening.
Last night a car hit a deer on the road outside the hermitage. The woman driving immediately joined by two men in following cars talked about her car, collision insurance, annoyance of sudden appearance of hazards to free movement, and delay in appointed schedule for evening.
The deer lay on its side gasping breath, drops of blood dripping to road. Alone. Dying. Legs slowly attempting to take her somewhere else.
Someone called police.
Someone else came out; knelt at deer's side, hand on neck, in silence.
Two men in pickup stopped, one took out knife to slit throat, to, he said, put her out of her misery.
One last touch along neck, the person kneeling gets up, returns to hermitage leaving deer and others to do what they have to do.
In the United States right now each does what they have to do. Some drive. Some hit and injure. Some call for help. Some discuss their practical matters of economic cost and recouping losses. Some attend prayerfully the hurt and dying. Some take action to finish matters. Some arrive as official representative of legitimate authority to direct traffic, write report, commiserate, and distribute the spoils of carcass to hands that will benefit from its meat. .
Each has role.
Monks and nuns pray in monasteries and convents as politicians and military personnel plan and carry out geopolitical strategy and warfare in domestic and foreign matters.
People die. Some from cancer. There's a funeral for Ernie today. Others die from bullets, bombs, and hostile enemies. It happens today in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Liberia, Africa, and towns and cities throughout Europe and America. We kill when we choose to eliminate what stands in our way or when we refuse to understand root connections.
It is not sufficient to say greed and power are the sources of inattentive and unkind behavior causing injury and death.
What is sufficient?
I must learn my true names, all of them. Until then, my heart is not yet capable of seeing and loving.
This is my prayer for Mr. Bush, myself, and all who wander this earth wishing to find peace and, ultimately, surrender within God.
May the car be repaired. May the flesh be enjoyed. May hostilities come to an end. May men and women, birds and deer, dogs and insects, fish and forests -- may each and all experiencing death be filled with grace and freedom returning to infinite, eternal source.
We will not lose our refuge.
We will be back – steeped in valley fragrances.
May life itself see to it!
Monday, June 09, 2003
Roethke wrote, "Many arrivals make us live."
Maybe departures make us empty.
A teacher once said we have to let go of everything -- even the bow from which we are rising and straightening.
Creeks and summits are brilliant at sunset.
I laze in a boat, my way in the wind’s hands.
Watching wild landscapes I forget distance
and come to the water’s edge.
Gazing at lovely far woods and clouds
I guess I’ve lost my way.
How could I know this lucid stream
would turn, leading me into mountains?
I abandon my boat, pick up a light staff
and come upon something wonderful,
four or five old monks in contemplation,
enjoying the shade of pines and cypresses.
Before the forest dawns they read Sanskrit.
- Wang Wei (699-759)(dailyzen)
I try not to hold onto the bows I make. Acknowledging with reverence another's presence by bowing is just that. Not bowing to be seen bowing. Not bowing to be respected for bowing. Not bowing to stay in the bow.
Just bowing. Then off with you!
Hugh C. sends yearly greetings in form of words about Ireland's Columba.
Fox and dove
Columba was born of royal stock around 521, in northwestern Ireland's Gartan, Donegal. Although destined for the church by an early age, his noble birth gave him insight and influence in the political world.
Legend tells us that his original name was Crimthann ("fox") and that when he was trained as a priest he changed it to Columb, ("dove"), later known to all as Colum Cille: "dove of the church." It has become something of a tradition in modern times to view the saint through the twin lenses of these names: the astute fox on the make, and the peacemaking and peaceable dove.
He apparently took part in a battle in 561 between his near and more distant cousins; this led to his exile and even excommunication for a time. Yet his biographer and successor, Adomnon[Eunan, also from Donegal and an abbot at Iorna], saw it differently, glossing over his excommunication, and telling us only that: "In the second year following the battle of Cul Drebene, when he was 41, Columba sailed away from Ireland to Britain, choosing to be a pilgrim for Christ."
Despite the skeletons in Columba's closet, his efforts in Scotland reveal a man who had learned much in his 41 years, enough to establish a string of monasteries in the Inner Hebridean islands off the west coast of Scotland. This monastic system anticipated later orders such as the Cistercians and Carthusians.
Iona, a small island off the larger Hebridean island of Mull, was the fertile centre of this system. Remote to modern eyes, Iona was at the hub of early medieval sea lanes that brought pottery and perishable goods north from France and the Mediterranean. Still, Iona was intended as a true monastery, a place set apart for Columba and his brethren.
Other island monasteries, such as one on Tiree, housed lay-folk serving out penances for their sins. Another island housed older, more experienced monks living as holy anchorites.
Iona, however, trained priests and bishops, and Columba's reputation for scholarship was great when he died (though we have little of his own work).From Iona, priests and monks ranged far and wide, founding churches in Scotland and [other foundations such as Lindisfarne] seeking "deserts in the ocean" (lonely, distant islands such as the Faroes and Iceland).
( Thomas Owen Clancy, from The Tough Dove, © 1998 in Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine. Issue 60, Fall 1998, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Page 22)
The heart is a desert in the ocean. Each heart is a monastery and a hermitage longing to be in solidarity and solitarity. Alone together, with others as oneself, (solitaire et solidaire), we crisscross oceans and continents in search of the Holy Breath of God.
When the heart begins to see, then, perhaps only then, we take our first breath
This is the sight of God -- to see all in creation breathing within the body of Christ. We are found with the sight of God when we see what is there with compassion and truthfulness. The heart waters eyes looking at and listening to the sweet reality of God in the world. Similarly, when the world turns against the sight of God, the cries and grief of those hurt by cruelty and indifference rise up arriving at our attention -- bringing us to bow in their presence, in the presence of God -- taking up where the sight of God is being forgotten.
Much abandonment makes us move. We move through what is no longer there to what is now emerging.
There is no need to renounce the world. There is need to pronounce what is creating the world before our eyes. There is the sight of God inviting hearts to dwell in the aloneness/wholeness that resides in every bow, in every eye and ear open to the sacred spirit infusing each and every one of us.
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is only one body and one Spirit -- just as you were called to one hope when you were called -- one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:3-6)
Bow.
Let go.
Rise.
Arrive.
Make us.
Live.
Monastic surrender sees one through.
Maybe departures make us empty.
A teacher once said we have to let go of everything -- even the bow from which we are rising and straightening.
Creeks and summits are brilliant at sunset.
I laze in a boat, my way in the wind’s hands.
Watching wild landscapes I forget distance
and come to the water’s edge.
Gazing at lovely far woods and clouds
I guess I’ve lost my way.
How could I know this lucid stream
would turn, leading me into mountains?
I abandon my boat, pick up a light staff
and come upon something wonderful,
four or five old monks in contemplation,
enjoying the shade of pines and cypresses.
Before the forest dawns they read Sanskrit.
- Wang Wei (699-759)(dailyzen)
I try not to hold onto the bows I make. Acknowledging with reverence another's presence by bowing is just that. Not bowing to be seen bowing. Not bowing to be respected for bowing. Not bowing to stay in the bow.
Just bowing. Then off with you!
Hugh C. sends yearly greetings in form of words about Ireland's Columba.
Fox and dove
Columba was born of royal stock around 521, in northwestern Ireland's Gartan, Donegal. Although destined for the church by an early age, his noble birth gave him insight and influence in the political world.
Legend tells us that his original name was Crimthann ("fox") and that when he was trained as a priest he changed it to Columb, ("dove"), later known to all as Colum Cille: "dove of the church." It has become something of a tradition in modern times to view the saint through the twin lenses of these names: the astute fox on the make, and the peacemaking and peaceable dove.
He apparently took part in a battle in 561 between his near and more distant cousins; this led to his exile and even excommunication for a time. Yet his biographer and successor, Adomnon[Eunan, also from Donegal and an abbot at Iorna], saw it differently, glossing over his excommunication, and telling us only that: "In the second year following the battle of Cul Drebene, when he was 41, Columba sailed away from Ireland to Britain, choosing to be a pilgrim for Christ."
Despite the skeletons in Columba's closet, his efforts in Scotland reveal a man who had learned much in his 41 years, enough to establish a string of monasteries in the Inner Hebridean islands off the west coast of Scotland. This monastic system anticipated later orders such as the Cistercians and Carthusians.
Iona, a small island off the larger Hebridean island of Mull, was the fertile centre of this system. Remote to modern eyes, Iona was at the hub of early medieval sea lanes that brought pottery and perishable goods north from France and the Mediterranean. Still, Iona was intended as a true monastery, a place set apart for Columba and his brethren.
Other island monasteries, such as one on Tiree, housed lay-folk serving out penances for their sins. Another island housed older, more experienced monks living as holy anchorites.
Iona, however, trained priests and bishops, and Columba's reputation for scholarship was great when he died (though we have little of his own work).From Iona, priests and monks ranged far and wide, founding churches in Scotland and [other foundations such as Lindisfarne] seeking "deserts in the ocean" (lonely, distant islands such as the Faroes and Iceland).
( Thomas Owen Clancy, from The Tough Dove, © 1998 in Christianity Today International/Christian History magazine. Issue 60, Fall 1998, Vol. XVII, No. 3, Page 22)
The heart is a desert in the ocean. Each heart is a monastery and a hermitage longing to be in solidarity and solitarity. Alone together, with others as oneself, (solitaire et solidaire), we crisscross oceans and continents in search of the Holy Breath of God.
When the heart begins to see, then, perhaps only then, we take our first breath
This is the sight of God -- to see all in creation breathing within the body of Christ. We are found with the sight of God when we see what is there with compassion and truthfulness. The heart waters eyes looking at and listening to the sweet reality of God in the world. Similarly, when the world turns against the sight of God, the cries and grief of those hurt by cruelty and indifference rise up arriving at our attention -- bringing us to bow in their presence, in the presence of God -- taking up where the sight of God is being forgotten.
Much abandonment makes us move. We move through what is no longer there to what is now emerging.
There is no need to renounce the world. There is need to pronounce what is creating the world before our eyes. There is the sight of God inviting hearts to dwell in the aloneness/wholeness that resides in every bow, in every eye and ear open to the sacred spirit infusing each and every one of us.
Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. There is only one body and one Spirit -- just as you were called to one hope when you were called -- one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. (Ephesians 4:3-6)
Bow.
Let go.
Rise.
Arrive.
Make us.
Live.
Monastic surrender sees one through.
Sunday, June 08, 2003
A solitary is someone only willing to be there if another is there.
Nothing more to say? Nothing left unsaid?
One doesn't have to be secluded from others to be solitary.
When truthfully and compassionately with another, there is solitude.
...scripture scholars generally agree that Jesus' admonition to not blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is a warning against sustained dishonesty and rationalization. Luther's one-line commentary, "sin boldly," captures the heart of that warning.(Ronald Rolheiser, in The Holy Longing, p.227)
It is Pentecost.
With the open, Spirit comes, and we go on, alone together.
Say nothing more.
Nothing more to say? Nothing left unsaid?
One doesn't have to be secluded from others to be solitary.
When truthfully and compassionately with another, there is solitude.
...scripture scholars generally agree that Jesus' admonition to not blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is a warning against sustained dishonesty and rationalization. Luther's one-line commentary, "sin boldly," captures the heart of that warning.(Ronald Rolheiser, in The Holy Longing, p.227)
It is Pentecost.
With the open, Spirit comes, and we go on, alone together.
Say nothing more.
Saturday, June 07, 2003
June 2003 Update, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage
Theme: Returning Silence, Broken Empty
What ever-present resource cannot be devoured?
Light green leaves waver in breeze this June morning. Squirrel chatter berates presumption black charcoal stove lid will dissuade ascent or descent to green bird feeder near chapel/zendo. His diatribe is not praising my efforts to reserve feeder for birds. There is no resource without theft and misappropriation. Squirrels have to be factored. Hence we have payoff, pork, and protection rackets from back alleys of Mott Street to corporation lobbyists in halls of congress.
Meetingbrook settles into itself. Late spring drives to Cape Breton and Lincolnville Beach Duck Trap River gave looks at properties imagined for Retreat/Laura/Schola. Is it just another attempt to see if seed-place might be an attractive potential within our grasp? Are we squirrel or bird? For whom is seed?
Cape Breton is lovely. Canada continues to beckon. In these uncertain and disturbing times Canada remains a refuge from new arrogance and messianic impulse descending on Middle East territories. Occupiers or liberators? A shell game question. Jargon replaces discourse. The language of economics and shareholder benefit threatens to turn all rhetoric into profit and loss bottom line bank statements.
In Lincolnville along Duck trap River a Retreat Estate part of credit card bank's vast holdings is on the market. It would make a lovely lay monastic hermitage retreat. Would the CEO and bank donate it to Meetingbrook? Would it be a place of silence and sanctuary? Or does other noise arrive to counter dream? Squirrel comes chattering back for another attempt. I move the resource. Squirrel scampers off.
For Meetingbrook the dream moves outside to inside. Saskia "saw" the retreat property in dream, a slumbering watchfulness the night before we happened upon the place. Her dream was vivid, specific, and invitatory. A man at building and water beckons. She wades in. Welcoming. It is wondrous how prolepsis anticipation arrives at unknowing awareness.
In Laura Soul Friend Conversation Nan speaks of her practice and how Meher Baba used the phrase something to the effect, “ unknowing awareness, hollowing out.”
Squirrel maneuvers, scouts, plots and scampers to feeding trough. I clap hands. Twice he exits. I am not applauding. I am discouraging. He is maddened. Nuthatch returns. Female cardinal comes and goes without seed. Squirrel falls three times, four times.
We fall a lot. We madden friends with our approach, assessment, and failures. What is this call we respond to? And why are we so dense? Squirrel will not be dissuaded. If the seed is there, it is there for him. Despite his unrelenting passion to hoard resource for himself, he probably has a reasonable right to share the seeds.
It is June. This June begins Meetingbrook Hermitage's eighth year in town with its bookshop/bakery. Conversations, hospitality, ordinary prayer and reflective meditation -- without nametag or fanfare -- in marketplace by the harbor. It is a lovely anniversary. Sitting on porch of cabin with sound of brook and birdsong after silent sitting and chant this Tuesday morning is seed, is gift.
Canon lawyer visited Meetingbrook from Catholic diocese. She said she is confident the Bishop wishes to write approval and encourage what Meetingbrook has become and continues to be. It is always a matter of not interfering with the Spirit drawing all into itself. Inclusion. Seed draws songbird and chattering squirrel at same time to itself.
God is itself.
We become what and who we are in the presence of itself. For anyone to dwell in the presence of itself is to live a life of prayerful meditative association nearing God.
If Meetingbrook were capable of articulating its goal it would be this -- to near God.
Where is God?
Near. And nearing.
No one can say with certainty where God is not. God is not either side of the myriad dualisms. The myriad dualisms serve our current mental state of consciousness. They serve the mental ego’s function making distinctions, cultivating notions of ‘other,’ and protecting the ego’s construct of a separate, isolated self. They form a context of thought suggesting God might be in a "place" somewhere we can recognize. The construct placing God calls that place ‘good,’ and those at that place ‘good.’
Yet, can we say anything of God that nears God? Or is the apophatic* tradition one we might look to? Does nearing God require an unsaying, a silence that does not feed the clamoring mind with discursive squirrel frenetic racing to ‘there’ from ‘here’ and the good/bad, right/wrong, mine/yours chattering of everyday mental activity and commerce?
* While Christianity and Hellenic thought have quite different conceptions of the nature and function of God, they are fully in agreement about His ineffability. As Raoul Mortley said, "the via negativa... is the most remarkable feature of the philosophical life of late antiquity, Greek and Christian." (quoted in Pelikan 197) The use of this so-called negative, or apophatic, (from Greek "to deny," or "to say no") theology tends to take two forms. One form is a philosophical ana-lysis, the "breaking apart" (from Greek "to undo" (Am. Heritage Dic.)) of all qualities seemingly attributable to the divine to arrive at an understanding of His underlying nonqualified nature by knowing what that nature isn't. St. Macrina explained this method in this manner: "In the very act of saying that a thing is `not so and so,' we by implication interpret the very nature of the thing in question." (Pelikan 205) This form of apophaticism is more pervasive than might be realized. Words such as "infinite" and "ineffable" are obviously negative. Less apparent is the negation hidden in words like "individual" or "immense" (not measurable). Finally there is apophaticism hidden even in positive terms. For example, one defines God as "free" in order to show that He lacks the contrarieties found in finite creatures, and one calls Him "alive" merely to discriminate His nature from that of the lifeless. (James 431)
The other form of apophaticism is a more contemplative awareness of ineffability, a perception of just how transcendent and thus incomprehensible God's nature is. Armstrong says that, by this perception, "we mean that, however dimly, we are aware in all things which we apprehend of the presence of something or someone which exceeds them, and on which their total existence depends, so that there is nothing in them which is not there because of that presence, which... makes them exist." (Armstrong 1979, essay XXIV, 177) This perception affirms the incomprehensibility of God, who "exceeds" all things. Contemplation of the created world points to its underlying essence which is unattainable, for that which proceeds from the Principle does not necessarily provide any clue as to the essence of that Principle. An example is that a machine is produced by, or proceeds from, a human maker, but an examination of the machine would not necessarily provide any clues as to the essence of the human. It may provide clues about the function of the maker, as, for example, an umbrella handle implies the shape of the human hand. Functionally, then, one could say that God's act of creating, for example, which is self-evident, evidences His function as a Creator. Such knowledge is indirect; it is not the same as "quidditative," or essential, knowledge. Even scripture can not provide a real description of God's nature. "Who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord?" asks the Psalmist. (Ps 89:6)
It must be pointed out at the beginning of this discussion that negative theology is not "negative" in that word's usual sense. Part of the reason that the term `apophatic' is pressed into service, says historian of Christianity Jaroslav Pelikan, is because "speaking about a negative theology sounds--how should one put it?--too negative." (Pelikan 1988, 6) Apophatic theology is not to be understood as a form of skepticism or, far less, atheism. Atheism is an active disbelief in or denial of divinity. (Am. Heritage Dic.) As such, it is not so much the opposite of belief as it is its dialectical component. That is, atheism shares the same concerns as religion, i.e. the search for an absolute, but differs only in that it arrives at a diametrically opposed answer. While (most) religions emphatically posit an Absolute, atheism wholly denies it; "There is no God," the atheist avows. (Pelikan 1993, 8) The antithesis of religious belief, then, would be skepticism, a state of agnosticism or active doubt. Skepticism is to be distinguished from apophaticism because it often takes the form of refraining from making any statements and taking any stance, positive or negative.[3] The via negativa, however, is quite active; it is a way, or via, of philosophizing. The genuine pursuer of the way of negation, writes Armstrong, "spends his time destroying his God-concepts and perhaps (if he is as radical as his principles require) undermining his whole system of thought till it falls in ruins. Then he picks himself up quite cheerfully and begins again." (Armstrong 1979, essay XXIV, 178)(in Saying Nothing about No-Thing: Apophatic Theology in the Classical World, by Jonah Winters) http://bahai-library.org/personal/jw/my.papers/apophatic.html
This “place,” (if that which is between everything and among everyone can be designated as a “place”) is an integrative, contiguous, interpenetrative, and undifferentiating suchness. It is when, how, and where each is, and continually becomes, itself. Mental formulations are not God. God is God.
The Celtic designation of "The Thin Place" tries to help. It offers a view beyond the either/or dichotomy. George MacLeod, founder of The Iona Community called The Thin Place …“between prayer & politics, work & worship, secular & sacred” … where we seek the “rebuilding of the common life.”
What is common is what all shares. What is common is what is shared by each and all. It is neither yours nor mine, but ours. This “common life” is much misunderstood and often feared. It is seldom tried and, with few exceptions, unsuccessful.
The "neither/nor" template of inquiry has helped loosen the dualistic grip with which we inventory most things. To wit, God is -- neither close nor far, neither in nor out, neither full nor empty, male nor female, good nor evil, Christian nor Jew, Muslim nor Hindu, Taoist nor Pagan, Orthodox nor Liberal, Buddhist nor Unitarian, American nor Iraqi.
Dwelling near or nearing The Thin Place is akin to removing the divisions and finding oneself at center of contradiction. There, at center of contradiction, in the still place where all contrary ways of saying what-is-there have enfolded themselves into simple silence. At center of contradiction is unknowing peace, or, as some have said, peace that surpasses understanding.
Bright red Cardinal arrives with sharp chirp at feeder. Squirrel forages ground.
Is it time to remove the resource? The aggressive bickering on the part of many squirrels keep far away those for whom the seed is intended.
Is God near? Is God nearing?
Nearing God is not different from nearing life or nearing death. Touch one, touch all three. And touch what is at center of all three.
After seven years in town at the harbor and eleven years at the foot of the mountain we approach silence. We near seed. Like squirrel clamoring for what is near we try and fall, leap and miss, speak and are wrong, seek and do not find. Nor do we not find, nor are we wrong, nor do we remain fallen, nor will we cease from inquiring into the now nearness of what is our ground of being.
Ours is no other place, no other God, and no other life. We are asked to empty our minds of distracting dichotomies and center our hearts within empty openness. This Thin Place, this between, this centering openness -- this is the practice of no other. Neither mind nor heart knows what to make of the practice. So, don't "make." Just visit, stay a while, dwell a moment in this unmade place.
Squirrel looks at me on porch. We've exhausted early morning. What do we do with our mind's frantic search, our heart's clinging desire?
Come and go.
Come eat seed. Then go away. Stay near. Don’t cling.
We do not have here, nor anywhere, any permanent abode. We are visitors. Wanderers. Passing pilgrims. Transients in a transitory time.
We look in on each other. We inquire after each other. We share details and data about our efforts in the world. We take to each other. We enter into, sometimes kindly sometimes unkindly, one another’s lives. We counter kindness with kindness, hurt with hurt, -- and sometimes -- hurt with kindness and kindness with hurt. We do the best we can most the time. It might not always the best thing that can be done for the situation -- but, well, there we are. Perhaps we’ll learn.
Red squirrel scares off chipmunk and in turn has to move over for grey squirrel. Morning doves fly off. Finch and chickadee, nuthatch and sparrow find feeder I moved to distant temporary placement nearer barn. The ongoing competition for resources!
The seed of nearness, the dwelling reality of absolute nearside, unsaying devotional silence in the presence of each being – are these an ever-present resource that cannot be devoured?
Is this what we refer to as God? Is this what we refer to as Original Oneness? True Reality? The face we had before our mothers and fathers were born? Buddha-nature? Christ-nature? Holy Spirit? Now?
The green canopy of late spring leaf sways in soft breeze shading chapel/zendo near washing brook sounding down Ragged Mountain.
Rhythmic chant song of squirrel and bird fill morning with God's praising liturgy.
Meetingbrook returns to silence.
Seed resource. Broken empty.
Come. Gone.
Listen!
Gratefully,
Bill, Saskia, Sando , Cesco , Mu-ge , and all who grace Meetingbrook
Theme: Returning Silence, Broken Empty
What ever-present resource cannot be devoured?
Light green leaves waver in breeze this June morning. Squirrel chatter berates presumption black charcoal stove lid will dissuade ascent or descent to green bird feeder near chapel/zendo. His diatribe is not praising my efforts to reserve feeder for birds. There is no resource without theft and misappropriation. Squirrels have to be factored. Hence we have payoff, pork, and protection rackets from back alleys of Mott Street to corporation lobbyists in halls of congress.
Meetingbrook settles into itself. Late spring drives to Cape Breton and Lincolnville Beach Duck Trap River gave looks at properties imagined for Retreat/Laura/Schola. Is it just another attempt to see if seed-place might be an attractive potential within our grasp? Are we squirrel or bird? For whom is seed?
Cape Breton is lovely. Canada continues to beckon. In these uncertain and disturbing times Canada remains a refuge from new arrogance and messianic impulse descending on Middle East territories. Occupiers or liberators? A shell game question. Jargon replaces discourse. The language of economics and shareholder benefit threatens to turn all rhetoric into profit and loss bottom line bank statements.
In Lincolnville along Duck trap River a Retreat Estate part of credit card bank's vast holdings is on the market. It would make a lovely lay monastic hermitage retreat. Would the CEO and bank donate it to Meetingbrook? Would it be a place of silence and sanctuary? Or does other noise arrive to counter dream? Squirrel comes chattering back for another attempt. I move the resource. Squirrel scampers off.
For Meetingbrook the dream moves outside to inside. Saskia "saw" the retreat property in dream, a slumbering watchfulness the night before we happened upon the place. Her dream was vivid, specific, and invitatory. A man at building and water beckons. She wades in. Welcoming. It is wondrous how prolepsis anticipation arrives at unknowing awareness.
In Laura Soul Friend Conversation Nan speaks of her practice and how Meher Baba used the phrase something to the effect, “ unknowing awareness, hollowing out.”
Squirrel maneuvers, scouts, plots and scampers to feeding trough. I clap hands. Twice he exits. I am not applauding. I am discouraging. He is maddened. Nuthatch returns. Female cardinal comes and goes without seed. Squirrel falls three times, four times.
We fall a lot. We madden friends with our approach, assessment, and failures. What is this call we respond to? And why are we so dense? Squirrel will not be dissuaded. If the seed is there, it is there for him. Despite his unrelenting passion to hoard resource for himself, he probably has a reasonable right to share the seeds.
It is June. This June begins Meetingbrook Hermitage's eighth year in town with its bookshop/bakery. Conversations, hospitality, ordinary prayer and reflective meditation -- without nametag or fanfare -- in marketplace by the harbor. It is a lovely anniversary. Sitting on porch of cabin with sound of brook and birdsong after silent sitting and chant this Tuesday morning is seed, is gift.
Canon lawyer visited Meetingbrook from Catholic diocese. She said she is confident the Bishop wishes to write approval and encourage what Meetingbrook has become and continues to be. It is always a matter of not interfering with the Spirit drawing all into itself. Inclusion. Seed draws songbird and chattering squirrel at same time to itself.
God is itself.
We become what and who we are in the presence of itself. For anyone to dwell in the presence of itself is to live a life of prayerful meditative association nearing God.
If Meetingbrook were capable of articulating its goal it would be this -- to near God.
Where is God?
Near. And nearing.
No one can say with certainty where God is not. God is not either side of the myriad dualisms. The myriad dualisms serve our current mental state of consciousness. They serve the mental ego’s function making distinctions, cultivating notions of ‘other,’ and protecting the ego’s construct of a separate, isolated self. They form a context of thought suggesting God might be in a "place" somewhere we can recognize. The construct placing God calls that place ‘good,’ and those at that place ‘good.’
Yet, can we say anything of God that nears God? Or is the apophatic* tradition one we might look to? Does nearing God require an unsaying, a silence that does not feed the clamoring mind with discursive squirrel frenetic racing to ‘there’ from ‘here’ and the good/bad, right/wrong, mine/yours chattering of everyday mental activity and commerce?
* While Christianity and Hellenic thought have quite different conceptions of the nature and function of God, they are fully in agreement about His ineffability. As Raoul Mortley said, "the via negativa... is the most remarkable feature of the philosophical life of late antiquity, Greek and Christian." (quoted in Pelikan 197) The use of this so-called negative, or apophatic, (from Greek "to deny," or "to say no") theology tends to take two forms. One form is a philosophical ana-lysis, the "breaking apart" (from Greek "to undo" (Am. Heritage Dic.)) of all qualities seemingly attributable to the divine to arrive at an understanding of His underlying nonqualified nature by knowing what that nature isn't. St. Macrina explained this method in this manner: "In the very act of saying that a thing is `not so and so,' we by implication interpret the very nature of the thing in question." (Pelikan 205) This form of apophaticism is more pervasive than might be realized. Words such as "infinite" and "ineffable" are obviously negative. Less apparent is the negation hidden in words like "individual" or "immense" (not measurable). Finally there is apophaticism hidden even in positive terms. For example, one defines God as "free" in order to show that He lacks the contrarieties found in finite creatures, and one calls Him "alive" merely to discriminate His nature from that of the lifeless. (James 431)
The other form of apophaticism is a more contemplative awareness of ineffability, a perception of just how transcendent and thus incomprehensible God's nature is. Armstrong says that, by this perception, "we mean that, however dimly, we are aware in all things which we apprehend of the presence of something or someone which exceeds them, and on which their total existence depends, so that there is nothing in them which is not there because of that presence, which... makes them exist." (Armstrong 1979, essay XXIV, 177) This perception affirms the incomprehensibility of God, who "exceeds" all things. Contemplation of the created world points to its underlying essence which is unattainable, for that which proceeds from the Principle does not necessarily provide any clue as to the essence of that Principle. An example is that a machine is produced by, or proceeds from, a human maker, but an examination of the machine would not necessarily provide any clues as to the essence of the human. It may provide clues about the function of the maker, as, for example, an umbrella handle implies the shape of the human hand. Functionally, then, one could say that God's act of creating, for example, which is self-evident, evidences His function as a Creator. Such knowledge is indirect; it is not the same as "quidditative," or essential, knowledge. Even scripture can not provide a real description of God's nature. "Who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord?" asks the Psalmist. (Ps 89:6)
It must be pointed out at the beginning of this discussion that negative theology is not "negative" in that word's usual sense. Part of the reason that the term `apophatic' is pressed into service, says historian of Christianity Jaroslav Pelikan, is because "speaking about a negative theology sounds--how should one put it?--too negative." (Pelikan 1988, 6) Apophatic theology is not to be understood as a form of skepticism or, far less, atheism. Atheism is an active disbelief in or denial of divinity. (Am. Heritage Dic.) As such, it is not so much the opposite of belief as it is its dialectical component. That is, atheism shares the same concerns as religion, i.e. the search for an absolute, but differs only in that it arrives at a diametrically opposed answer. While (most) religions emphatically posit an Absolute, atheism wholly denies it; "There is no God," the atheist avows. (Pelikan 1993, 8) The antithesis of religious belief, then, would be skepticism, a state of agnosticism or active doubt. Skepticism is to be distinguished from apophaticism because it often takes the form of refraining from making any statements and taking any stance, positive or negative.[3] The via negativa, however, is quite active; it is a way, or via, of philosophizing. The genuine pursuer of the way of negation, writes Armstrong, "spends his time destroying his God-concepts and perhaps (if he is as radical as his principles require) undermining his whole system of thought till it falls in ruins. Then he picks himself up quite cheerfully and begins again." (Armstrong 1979, essay XXIV, 178)(in Saying Nothing about No-Thing: Apophatic Theology in the Classical World, by Jonah Winters) http://bahai-library.org/personal/jw/my.papers/apophatic.html
This “place,” (if that which is between everything and among everyone can be designated as a “place”) is an integrative, contiguous, interpenetrative, and undifferentiating suchness. It is when, how, and where each is, and continually becomes, itself. Mental formulations are not God. God is God.
The Celtic designation of "The Thin Place" tries to help. It offers a view beyond the either/or dichotomy. George MacLeod, founder of The Iona Community called The Thin Place …“between prayer & politics, work & worship, secular & sacred” … where we seek the “rebuilding of the common life.”
What is common is what all shares. What is common is what is shared by each and all. It is neither yours nor mine, but ours. This “common life” is much misunderstood and often feared. It is seldom tried and, with few exceptions, unsuccessful.
The "neither/nor" template of inquiry has helped loosen the dualistic grip with which we inventory most things. To wit, God is -- neither close nor far, neither in nor out, neither full nor empty, male nor female, good nor evil, Christian nor Jew, Muslim nor Hindu, Taoist nor Pagan, Orthodox nor Liberal, Buddhist nor Unitarian, American nor Iraqi.
Dwelling near or nearing The Thin Place is akin to removing the divisions and finding oneself at center of contradiction. There, at center of contradiction, in the still place where all contrary ways of saying what-is-there have enfolded themselves into simple silence. At center of contradiction is unknowing peace, or, as some have said, peace that surpasses understanding.
Bright red Cardinal arrives with sharp chirp at feeder. Squirrel forages ground.
Is it time to remove the resource? The aggressive bickering on the part of many squirrels keep far away those for whom the seed is intended.
Is God near? Is God nearing?
Nearing God is not different from nearing life or nearing death. Touch one, touch all three. And touch what is at center of all three.
After seven years in town at the harbor and eleven years at the foot of the mountain we approach silence. We near seed. Like squirrel clamoring for what is near we try and fall, leap and miss, speak and are wrong, seek and do not find. Nor do we not find, nor are we wrong, nor do we remain fallen, nor will we cease from inquiring into the now nearness of what is our ground of being.
Ours is no other place, no other God, and no other life. We are asked to empty our minds of distracting dichotomies and center our hearts within empty openness. This Thin Place, this between, this centering openness -- this is the practice of no other. Neither mind nor heart knows what to make of the practice. So, don't "make." Just visit, stay a while, dwell a moment in this unmade place.
Squirrel looks at me on porch. We've exhausted early morning. What do we do with our mind's frantic search, our heart's clinging desire?
Come and go.
Come eat seed. Then go away. Stay near. Don’t cling.
We do not have here, nor anywhere, any permanent abode. We are visitors. Wanderers. Passing pilgrims. Transients in a transitory time.
We look in on each other. We inquire after each other. We share details and data about our efforts in the world. We take to each other. We enter into, sometimes kindly sometimes unkindly, one another’s lives. We counter kindness with kindness, hurt with hurt, -- and sometimes -- hurt with kindness and kindness with hurt. We do the best we can most the time. It might not always the best thing that can be done for the situation -- but, well, there we are. Perhaps we’ll learn.
Red squirrel scares off chipmunk and in turn has to move over for grey squirrel. Morning doves fly off. Finch and chickadee, nuthatch and sparrow find feeder I moved to distant temporary placement nearer barn. The ongoing competition for resources!
The seed of nearness, the dwelling reality of absolute nearside, unsaying devotional silence in the presence of each being – are these an ever-present resource that cannot be devoured?
Is this what we refer to as God? Is this what we refer to as Original Oneness? True Reality? The face we had before our mothers and fathers were born? Buddha-nature? Christ-nature? Holy Spirit? Now?
The green canopy of late spring leaf sways in soft breeze shading chapel/zendo near washing brook sounding down Ragged Mountain.
Rhythmic chant song of squirrel and bird fill morning with God's praising liturgy.
Meetingbrook returns to silence.
Seed resource. Broken empty.
Come. Gone.
Listen!
Gratefully,
Bill, Saskia, Sando , Cesco , Mu-ge , and all who grace Meetingbrook
Friday, June 06, 2003
June 2003 Events
All Events at MEETINGBROOK are free, open & informal
Note:
1. Tuesday Evening Conversation returns with Buddhist Meditative Studies
2. Wednesday Evening Conversations now focus on Personal Practice & Laura Soul Friend topics. (“Laura,” various paths.) What, who, & how of one’s spirituality.
3. Friday Evening Conversation returns to 5:30-6:30pm and to poetry/journal focus.
Consult “Today at Meetingbrook” For any changes in schedule.
MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE. (6:05am-6: 35am) Silent Sitting - 30 minutes, daily. Then follows (6:40am-7:00am) Chanting/Mindfulness Walking (MWF Christian; TTh Buddhist). Whatever your tradition or practice come sit together. Simply enter, sit, & leave in silence. Note: Cabin is always open and available for silence, meditation, or prayer.
SATURDAY MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE – Weekly Lectio Divina: Sat, 6:45am-8:00am; Monthly Retreat 3rd Saturday 21June. Retreat this month Christian focus.
SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE Each Sunday evening, 6:00-8:00pm. Practice includes Silent Sitting, Walking, Listening, Eating, Conversing, Chanting. (1,15,29June Buddhist focus; 8,22June. Christian focus) All welcome.A Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection at Camden HarborCome anytime, each conversation stands alone.
TUESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm. Maybe Zen, Maybe Not. A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhist Meditative Tradition. Currently beginning After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path by Jack Kornfield
WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm Laura Soul-Friend Conversations. Wednesday Evening Conversations focus on Personal Practice & Laura Soul Friend topics. (“Laura,” various paths.) What, who, & how of one’s spirituality. Topics will reflect an individual’s personal, spiritual, psychological, intellectual practice, interest, or concern. Each Wednesday some person, or some aspect of practice, will begin the conversation.
THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm. Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christian Contemplative Tradition. Currently reading A Monk in the World, Cultivating a Spiritual Life, by Wayne Teasdale
FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm - 6:30pm Poetry & Journal Readings. An open gathering inviting anyone to join in the practice. Bring or find poems or journal writing.
SATURDAY MORNING & EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP 9:00am-10:00am: The Many Faces of Death. We are reading the book, The Grace in Dying – How We Are Transformed Spiritually As We Die, by Kathleen Dowling Singh. Come by any week. 4:30pm-5:30pm: Tea and Literature. For one hour we’ll read and converse about a prose piece, essay, or short story. Currently reading stories from Island, by Alistair MacLeod
MUSIC REHEARSAL AT THE BOOKSHOP 1:00pm-3:00pm (approx) Every Wednesday and Sunday Afternoon. A group playing effort. Join in. Also, any other days for individuals. An opportunity to rehearse with ease in a public place, anytime.
Closed Mondays. Open by 10:30am to 7:30pm Tuesday-Sunday (Sunday 'til 5:30pm). Let us order your books and music! Thanks!Bookshop/Bakery, 50 Bayview Street, Camden, ME Dogen & Francis Hermitage 64 Barnestown Rd, Camden, ME mono@meetingbrook.org (207) 236-6808
All Events at MEETINGBROOK are free, open & informal
Note:
1. Tuesday Evening Conversation returns with Buddhist Meditative Studies
2. Wednesday Evening Conversations now focus on Personal Practice & Laura Soul Friend topics. (“Laura,” various paths.) What, who, & how of one’s spirituality.
3. Friday Evening Conversation returns to 5:30-6:30pm and to poetry/journal focus.
Consult “Today at Meetingbrook” For any changes in schedule.
MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE. (6:05am-6: 35am) Silent Sitting - 30 minutes, daily. Then follows (6:40am-7:00am) Chanting/Mindfulness Walking (MWF Christian; TTh Buddhist). Whatever your tradition or practice come sit together. Simply enter, sit, & leave in silence. Note: Cabin is always open and available for silence, meditation, or prayer.
SATURDAY MORNING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE – Weekly Lectio Divina: Sat, 6:45am-8:00am; Monthly Retreat 3rd Saturday 21June. Retreat this month Christian focus.
SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE Each Sunday evening, 6:00-8:00pm. Practice includes Silent Sitting, Walking, Listening, Eating, Conversing, Chanting. (1,15,29June Buddhist focus; 8,22June. Christian focus) All welcome.A Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection at Camden HarborCome anytime, each conversation stands alone.
TUESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm. Maybe Zen, Maybe Not. A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhist Meditative Tradition. Currently beginning After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path by Jack Kornfield
WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm Laura Soul-Friend Conversations. Wednesday Evening Conversations focus on Personal Practice & Laura Soul Friend topics. (“Laura,” various paths.) What, who, & how of one’s spirituality. Topics will reflect an individual’s personal, spiritual, psychological, intellectual practice, interest, or concern. Each Wednesday some person, or some aspect of practice, will begin the conversation.
THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm. Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christian Contemplative Tradition. Currently reading A Monk in the World, Cultivating a Spiritual Life, by Wayne Teasdale
FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP 5:30pm - 6:30pm Poetry & Journal Readings. An open gathering inviting anyone to join in the practice. Bring or find poems or journal writing.
SATURDAY MORNING & EVENING CONVERSATIONS AT THE BOOKSHOP 9:00am-10:00am: The Many Faces of Death. We are reading the book, The Grace in Dying – How We Are Transformed Spiritually As We Die, by Kathleen Dowling Singh. Come by any week. 4:30pm-5:30pm: Tea and Literature. For one hour we’ll read and converse about a prose piece, essay, or short story. Currently reading stories from Island, by Alistair MacLeod
MUSIC REHEARSAL AT THE BOOKSHOP 1:00pm-3:00pm (approx) Every Wednesday and Sunday Afternoon. A group playing effort. Join in. Also, any other days for individuals. An opportunity to rehearse with ease in a public place, anytime.
Closed Mondays. Open by 10:30am to 7:30pm Tuesday-Sunday (Sunday 'til 5:30pm). Let us order your books and music! Thanks!Bookshop/Bakery, 50 Bayview Street, Camden, ME Dogen & Francis Hermitage 64 Barnestown Rd, Camden, ME mono@meetingbrook.org (207) 236-6808
Thursday, June 05, 2003
Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
If you memorize slogans, you are unable to make subtle adaptations according to the situation. It is not that there is no way to teach insight to learners, but once you have learned a way, it is essential that you get it to work completely. If you just stick to your teacher’s school and memorize slogans, this is not enlightenment, it is a part of intellectual knowledge. ( Fayan, dailyzen)
Marriage. The lovely woman who sang and spoke last evening has been looking toward marriage for many years. Reciprocity evades.
If we don't speak now we are not saying anything. Even if many words issue forth they are fluttering filler stuffing noise into open spaces.
What is marriage but now engaged within itself? No one left out.
Another woman buys three South American hand woven bookmarks. She says, "I wish I had a dog. And that it would take care of itself."
Now, what do you say for yourself?
Sunday, June 01, 2003
"Our boy looks tired," says Carol to Kevin. John Joseph holds miniature cement truck in one hand, thumb in mouth, eyes drooping.
It rains. Birch logs burn in fire place. Hugh and Virginia play harmonica and guitar. Dogs lay wet between benches.
Saskia sorts cheese sticks.
Rain rolls down glass.
Sunday afternoon.
Puddles pop.
It rains. Birch logs burn in fire place. Hugh and Virginia play harmonica and guitar. Dogs lay wet between benches.
Saskia sorts cheese sticks.
Rain rolls down glass.
Sunday afternoon.
Puddles pop.
Saturday, May 31, 2003
Peter spoke.
Judas was gone. Mathias was chosen. He'd been with them. Joseph Justus was not chosen. Joseph Justus led a life afterwards no words describe. This telling ends. Where did he go? What life is known outside its story told by another? Unchosen. Left to unnamed disappearence.
Woman at well wondered where the stranger would get a bucket. She had hers. The stranger said he had living water. She was asked about her husband. The conversation, as does the reading, stops. Isn't she enough? Why the husband? Sure, sure -- she'd had several. Make the point. Are you finished? Fine.
Revealing the name.
· "They have kept your word."
· "Now I am coming to you."
· "Keep them in your name that you have given me."
He'd given them the word but they no longer belong to the world. He prayed they be consecrated in truth.
"Your word is truth."
(John 17)
Then he shut up. His prayer finished.
He didn't want them to be taken out of the world. He wanted them to be protected from the evil one.
The realm of non-thinking
Can hardly be fathomed by cognition;
In the sphere of genuine suchness
There is neither “I” nor “other.”
- Yunmen (864-949)
A good prayer.
A good prayer is spoken of itself. Just that. Nothing else. Of itself.
God is of itself.
We pray to be of itself revealed in name, that is, in complete presence.
Let us forget absence. Absence is full of men's words manufacturing names that carry noise into the world making of absence deluded wealth. Man's idea of this world.
Pray, rather, with holy presence. Consecrated.
Holy presence of itself.
Arrive at no idea of oneness itself.
Judas was gone. Mathias was chosen. He'd been with them. Joseph Justus was not chosen. Joseph Justus led a life afterwards no words describe. This telling ends. Where did he go? What life is known outside its story told by another? Unchosen. Left to unnamed disappearence.
Woman at well wondered where the stranger would get a bucket. She had hers. The stranger said he had living water. She was asked about her husband. The conversation, as does the reading, stops. Isn't she enough? Why the husband? Sure, sure -- she'd had several. Make the point. Are you finished? Fine.
Revealing the name.
· "They have kept your word."
· "Now I am coming to you."
· "Keep them in your name that you have given me."
He'd given them the word but they no longer belong to the world. He prayed they be consecrated in truth.
"Your word is truth."
(John 17)
Then he shut up. His prayer finished.
He didn't want them to be taken out of the world. He wanted them to be protected from the evil one.
The realm of non-thinking
Can hardly be fathomed by cognition;
In the sphere of genuine suchness
There is neither “I” nor “other.”
- Yunmen (864-949)
A good prayer.
A good prayer is spoken of itself. Just that. Nothing else. Of itself.
God is of itself.
We pray to be of itself revealed in name, that is, in complete presence.
Let us forget absence. Absence is full of men's words manufacturing names that carry noise into the world making of absence deluded wealth. Man's idea of this world.
Pray, rather, with holy presence. Consecrated.
Holy presence of itself.
Arrive at no idea of oneness itself.
Friday, May 30, 2003
Return. Our koan.
Forty days and gone.
Ascension Thursday disappears into Friday. Birds at dawn convey their song. Monastics of morning chant laud into new light permeated with return.
The Main Case
A monk asked Zhaozhou, "The myriad things return to one. Where does the one return to?" Zhaozhou said "When I was in Jing Zhao, I made a cloth shirt. It weighed seven pounds."
In both Wednesday and Thursday Evening Conversation Ascension made its way into words. The Zen Buddhist deliberation questioning if ten thousand things returning to one, then, where does the one return to? This helps look into the Christian mystery of the Ascension.
The monk in this koan is asking a very important question. "When the myriad things return to one, where does the one return to?" When everything, all beings, creatures, actions, thoughts, memories, experiences, desires, objects — when every single thing has returned to its origin, its essence — where does that origin return to? (from Dharma Talk by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei)
Does the one return to the 10,000 things? To feed, nourish, guide, and share in their communion each with each. Does Jesus the Christ do the same? Is this Eucharist?
Beatrice Bruteau, in her essay Eucharistic Ecology and Ecological Spirituality writes:
A sense of the Eucharistic Planet, of the Real Presence of the Divine in the world, is something we need now for the protection of the planet. It may be that biblical religion has encouraged Western civilization to take unfair advantage of the natural environment under the belief that it was given to humanity by God for purposes of human exploitation and has no rights of its own. It may be that we need to tell ourselves a new story about how we fit into the general scene and what it's all about. I don't dispute that. But I would like to emphasize that on the basis of the Gospel we can say something quite constructive and very exciting that will give us the new story and a vision of the wholeness of the planet.
The core of the story, as I see it, is the communitarian life taught by and instituted by Jesus. It is based on a vision of being that differs from the one we usually assume. Instead of taking as the norm of Reality those things that are outside one another, he takes as standard and paradigm those who are in one another. His prayer, his vision, is "that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us . . . that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one" (John 17:21-22). This is the heart of what Jesus is about, I believe. And I don't think that we should regard it as something on an always receding horizon, a merely guiding ideal, something unreal to be striven for but never actually achieved. On the contrary, I think he meant that this is how Reality is fundamentally constructed: this is how it is, and we are to wake up and know it, realize it.
This basic insight, vision, revelation, was developed in the church in terms of two great dogmas, which, however, haven't perhaps been sufficiently appreciated as the structural models that they are. The two great dogmas, from which probably everything can be derived, are the Trinity and the Incarnation. And they are encapsulated in the single sacrament of Holy Communion, the Incarnation of the Trinity. I mean, of course, the mutually feeding, mutually indwelling, community, in which all members give themselves to one another as food, for the sake of life, abundant life.
It only remains to be said explicitly that this community is not limited to human beings but includes all life and the entire cosmos, and we have a religious view that not only enables but demands an ecological morality with regard to both the human community and the total cosmic community. The whole universe is structured and organized in such a way that all members depend on one another; they are all, in fact, dynamic processes constituted precisely by their relations to one another. It is exactly the Trinity that the universe images, which it, in fact, incarnates, embodies, phenomenalizes, shows forth, reveals, glorifies. The universe puts into flesh, into matter, the Trinitarian perichoretic Life--with its differentiation by relation, its self-sharing, its mutual indwelling--by which the nature of God is expressed.
(Bruteau, in Cross Currents)
Perichoretic (from the Greek perichoresis; translates as "reciprocal inter-penetration; being-in-one-another"). It is a different world if we see, honor, and behave according to we-are-in-one-another. The cycle of the story of creation, Christ, and circumincessional interpenetration
. . . the standpoint from which one sees oneself in others and loves one's neighbor as oneself means that the self is at the home-ground of every other in the "nothingness" of the self, and that every other is at the home-ground of the self in that same nothingness. Only when these two are one--in a relationship of circuminsessional interpenetration-does this standpoint come about. (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 279.)
One bird sings outside window. In my ears and heart this singing is my dawning.
Wells and alleys lead me to the rocky hills.
From a traveler’s pavilion up in clouds and haze
I watch the sun full, far from the city
Up in the blue mountains mirrored by distant water.
On the shore a lonely boat is anchored.
Fishermen and evening birds go home.
Dusk comes to the silent expanse of heaven and earth,
And my heart is calm like this wide river.
- Wang Wei (699-759)
When not conditioned and overwhelmed by dualistic thinking and separative behavior, we experience unisonal resonance. Unisonal/resonance, this harmonious agreement or union of sound/continuing to sound, invites us to hear sparrow song and morning dove coo fresh and new. It is our own sound.
Arrival is departure, departure is return, and return is arrival. This appreciation allows us to hear Theodore Roethke’s first line of poem “The Manifestation” fresh and new, “Many arrivals make us live.”
I like the phrasing in Mark, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
When they had gathered together they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” (Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11)
With, in, through, and as each other, we arrive where we’ve always unknowing been, and know it for the first time. Poets and mystics sense this and glimpse it in words for us. Until comes time, or, until dissolves time into now, where, and when, the word becomes flesh, becomes us, returning home through the movement with, in, through, and as each other – the very love of God. Nor is God other than the unisonal/resonance flowing through each and every being we dwell with in this creation and dimensions of being/heaven as yet unimagined by us.
Is this good news?
For some, perhaps many, it is frightening news, signaling the dissolution of everything we’ve believed or claimed to believe. We are now being invited to see for ourselves. “Don’t think; look” said Wittgenstein. “From now on you’re on your own,” said the Buddha.
"Jesus said to his disciples: 'Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel (the good news) to every creature'." (Mark 16:15-20)
To be “on your own” is not alienation and secluded loneliness. Rather with unisonal/resonance to be on your own is to see we are now one, we are alone with the Alone, none other than God within and through us, within and through each and every expression of love’s very being-in-the-world.
For Francis of Assisi all of nature was God’s breath forming and unforming, entering, leaving, and returning in a joyful song/dance of life. Like the Hindu stories of Brahma, Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva – a joyous and perplexing dance of creation, flourishing, destruction, re-creation on and on toward recognition of our common life, communal relational responsibility to everything that is – we arrive at every moment, now, now, and now.
And what of the seven pound cloth shirt and the ten thousand things?
Dogen is talking about the same issue we’re exploring here, what is the relationship between the one and the many, between unity and difference? Between you as an individual and the sangha? Dogen says the Buddhas always train themselves in the Way alone. Which is absolutely true, and isn’t it interesting that in training alone in sesshin, we’re never by ourselves. We’re always in the midst of sangha; sitting, eating, resting, sleeping, working, chanting. Every moment of the day. Yet, we train ourselves in the Way alone. But Dogen goes on to say that the Way is always identified with all things, in other words, the Way is all things. So we train in complete solitude, and in that solitude, everything is present, each and every thing, the whole sangha, the whole universe.
This aloneness is very different from loneliness. In this aloneness there is complete identification. In loneliness, there is no identification; there is separation and alienation. Where does that alienation originate? Within ourselves. What we feel inside is exactly what we find in the world. When we feel distant from other people, if we look closely, we’ll find that we’re distant from ourselves. How else could it be that we could be in an intimate relationship and be lonely, in the midst of family and be lonely, or in the midst of sangha and be lonely, all the while surrounded by people who care about us, and who love us? But we can’t feel it — something is in the way.
Dogen goes on to say that we must act in accord with each other. The thing we don’t realize is that when we’re not acting in harmony with each other, in that moment, we’re not in harmony with ourselves. That’s why it doesn’t feel good. It’s pretty simple. That’s why, even when we feel terrible, and we’re able to do something for someone else, suddenly we feel better. Something shifts. How could that be? It doesn’t make sense. Could it be the power of being in accord with the truth, with ourselves? How could it not have an affect that’s confirming?
(Zhaozhou’s Seven Pound Cloth Shirt, Dharma Talk by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei, M.R.O. Blue Cliff Record, Case 45)
Ascension, Christ’s and our, is an affirming affect of the power of being in accord with the truth. This affect, this influence, this touch – frees. It frees into the necessity of seeing and hearing things clearly, engaging things faithfully, and touching one another in passing with affirming confidence we are in this together.
Return? Our koan.
What a lovely shirt!
Forty days and gone.
Ascension Thursday disappears into Friday. Birds at dawn convey their song. Monastics of morning chant laud into new light permeated with return.
The Main Case
A monk asked Zhaozhou, "The myriad things return to one. Where does the one return to?" Zhaozhou said "When I was in Jing Zhao, I made a cloth shirt. It weighed seven pounds."
In both Wednesday and Thursday Evening Conversation Ascension made its way into words. The Zen Buddhist deliberation questioning if ten thousand things returning to one, then, where does the one return to? This helps look into the Christian mystery of the Ascension.
The monk in this koan is asking a very important question. "When the myriad things return to one, where does the one return to?" When everything, all beings, creatures, actions, thoughts, memories, experiences, desires, objects — when every single thing has returned to its origin, its essence — where does that origin return to? (from Dharma Talk by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei)
Does the one return to the 10,000 things? To feed, nourish, guide, and share in their communion each with each. Does Jesus the Christ do the same? Is this Eucharist?
Beatrice Bruteau, in her essay Eucharistic Ecology and Ecological Spirituality writes:
A sense of the Eucharistic Planet, of the Real Presence of the Divine in the world, is something we need now for the protection of the planet. It may be that biblical religion has encouraged Western civilization to take unfair advantage of the natural environment under the belief that it was given to humanity by God for purposes of human exploitation and has no rights of its own. It may be that we need to tell ourselves a new story about how we fit into the general scene and what it's all about. I don't dispute that. But I would like to emphasize that on the basis of the Gospel we can say something quite constructive and very exciting that will give us the new story and a vision of the wholeness of the planet.
The core of the story, as I see it, is the communitarian life taught by and instituted by Jesus. It is based on a vision of being that differs from the one we usually assume. Instead of taking as the norm of Reality those things that are outside one another, he takes as standard and paradigm those who are in one another. His prayer, his vision, is "that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us . . . that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become perfectly one" (John 17:21-22). This is the heart of what Jesus is about, I believe. And I don't think that we should regard it as something on an always receding horizon, a merely guiding ideal, something unreal to be striven for but never actually achieved. On the contrary, I think he meant that this is how Reality is fundamentally constructed: this is how it is, and we are to wake up and know it, realize it.
This basic insight, vision, revelation, was developed in the church in terms of two great dogmas, which, however, haven't perhaps been sufficiently appreciated as the structural models that they are. The two great dogmas, from which probably everything can be derived, are the Trinity and the Incarnation. And they are encapsulated in the single sacrament of Holy Communion, the Incarnation of the Trinity. I mean, of course, the mutually feeding, mutually indwelling, community, in which all members give themselves to one another as food, for the sake of life, abundant life.
It only remains to be said explicitly that this community is not limited to human beings but includes all life and the entire cosmos, and we have a religious view that not only enables but demands an ecological morality with regard to both the human community and the total cosmic community. The whole universe is structured and organized in such a way that all members depend on one another; they are all, in fact, dynamic processes constituted precisely by their relations to one another. It is exactly the Trinity that the universe images, which it, in fact, incarnates, embodies, phenomenalizes, shows forth, reveals, glorifies. The universe puts into flesh, into matter, the Trinitarian perichoretic Life--with its differentiation by relation, its self-sharing, its mutual indwelling--by which the nature of God is expressed.
(Bruteau, in Cross Currents)
Perichoretic (from the Greek perichoresis; translates as "reciprocal inter-penetration; being-in-one-another"). It is a different world if we see, honor, and behave according to we-are-in-one-another. The cycle of the story of creation, Christ, and circumincessional interpenetration
. . . the standpoint from which one sees oneself in others and loves one's neighbor as oneself means that the self is at the home-ground of every other in the "nothingness" of the self, and that every other is at the home-ground of the self in that same nothingness. Only when these two are one--in a relationship of circuminsessional interpenetration-does this standpoint come about. (Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), p. 279.)
One bird sings outside window. In my ears and heart this singing is my dawning.
Wells and alleys lead me to the rocky hills.
From a traveler’s pavilion up in clouds and haze
I watch the sun full, far from the city
Up in the blue mountains mirrored by distant water.
On the shore a lonely boat is anchored.
Fishermen and evening birds go home.
Dusk comes to the silent expanse of heaven and earth,
And my heart is calm like this wide river.
- Wang Wei (699-759)
When not conditioned and overwhelmed by dualistic thinking and separative behavior, we experience unisonal resonance. Unisonal/resonance, this harmonious agreement or union of sound/continuing to sound, invites us to hear sparrow song and morning dove coo fresh and new. It is our own sound.
Arrival is departure, departure is return, and return is arrival. This appreciation allows us to hear Theodore Roethke’s first line of poem “The Manifestation” fresh and new, “Many arrivals make us live.”
I like the phrasing in Mark, “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.”
When they had gathered together they asked him, “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” He answered them, “It is not for you to know the times or seasons that the Father has established by his own authority. But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” (Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11)
With, in, through, and as each other, we arrive where we’ve always unknowing been, and know it for the first time. Poets and mystics sense this and glimpse it in words for us. Until comes time, or, until dissolves time into now, where, and when, the word becomes flesh, becomes us, returning home through the movement with, in, through, and as each other – the very love of God. Nor is God other than the unisonal/resonance flowing through each and every being we dwell with in this creation and dimensions of being/heaven as yet unimagined by us.
Is this good news?
For some, perhaps many, it is frightening news, signaling the dissolution of everything we’ve believed or claimed to believe. We are now being invited to see for ourselves. “Don’t think; look” said Wittgenstein. “From now on you’re on your own,” said the Buddha.
"Jesus said to his disciples: 'Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel (the good news) to every creature'." (Mark 16:15-20)
To be “on your own” is not alienation and secluded loneliness. Rather with unisonal/resonance to be on your own is to see we are now one, we are alone with the Alone, none other than God within and through us, within and through each and every expression of love’s very being-in-the-world.
For Francis of Assisi all of nature was God’s breath forming and unforming, entering, leaving, and returning in a joyful song/dance of life. Like the Hindu stories of Brahma, Krishna, Vishnu, Shiva – a joyous and perplexing dance of creation, flourishing, destruction, re-creation on and on toward recognition of our common life, communal relational responsibility to everything that is – we arrive at every moment, now, now, and now.
And what of the seven pound cloth shirt and the ten thousand things?
Dogen is talking about the same issue we’re exploring here, what is the relationship between the one and the many, between unity and difference? Between you as an individual and the sangha? Dogen says the Buddhas always train themselves in the Way alone. Which is absolutely true, and isn’t it interesting that in training alone in sesshin, we’re never by ourselves. We’re always in the midst of sangha; sitting, eating, resting, sleeping, working, chanting. Every moment of the day. Yet, we train ourselves in the Way alone. But Dogen goes on to say that the Way is always identified with all things, in other words, the Way is all things. So we train in complete solitude, and in that solitude, everything is present, each and every thing, the whole sangha, the whole universe.
This aloneness is very different from loneliness. In this aloneness there is complete identification. In loneliness, there is no identification; there is separation and alienation. Where does that alienation originate? Within ourselves. What we feel inside is exactly what we find in the world. When we feel distant from other people, if we look closely, we’ll find that we’re distant from ourselves. How else could it be that we could be in an intimate relationship and be lonely, in the midst of family and be lonely, or in the midst of sangha and be lonely, all the while surrounded by people who care about us, and who love us? But we can’t feel it — something is in the way.
Dogen goes on to say that we must act in accord with each other. The thing we don’t realize is that when we’re not acting in harmony with each other, in that moment, we’re not in harmony with ourselves. That’s why it doesn’t feel good. It’s pretty simple. That’s why, even when we feel terrible, and we’re able to do something for someone else, suddenly we feel better. Something shifts. How could that be? It doesn’t make sense. Could it be the power of being in accord with the truth, with ourselves? How could it not have an affect that’s confirming?
(Zhaozhou’s Seven Pound Cloth Shirt, Dharma Talk by Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei, M.R.O. Blue Cliff Record, Case 45)
Ascension, Christ’s and our, is an affirming affect of the power of being in accord with the truth. This affect, this influence, this touch – frees. It frees into the necessity of seeing and hearing things clearly, engaging things faithfully, and touching one another in passing with affirming confidence we are in this together.
Return? Our koan.
What a lovely shirt!
Wednesday, May 28, 2003
The banner on lectern at church this morning was a collage with scattered words "Come" "Holy Spirit" and "Jesus."
Wanting nothing,
With all your heart stop the stream.
When the world dissolves,
Everything becomes clear.
Go beyond this way or that way
To the farther shore where the world dissolves,
And everything becomes clear.
Beyond this shore and the farther shore,
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning, no end,
Without fear, go.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada
We decided "Come" was surrogate word for "Father" or "Origin."
What is God but invitation?
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning, no end,
Without fear, go
Like lyrics of song from years ago -- "Come go with me."
This eve of Ascension.
Come.
Go.
Wanting nothing,
With all your heart stop the stream.
When the world dissolves,
Everything becomes clear.
Go beyond this way or that way
To the farther shore where the world dissolves,
And everything becomes clear.
Beyond this shore and the farther shore,
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning, no end,
Without fear, go.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada
We decided "Come" was surrogate word for "Father" or "Origin."
What is God but invitation?
Beyond the beyond,
Where there is no beginning, no end,
Without fear, go
Like lyrics of song from years ago -- "Come go with me."
This eve of Ascension.
Come.
Go.
Tuesday, May 27, 2003
Three day rain pauses.
Perfumed springs ripple over skeletal outcrops
In the distance a hint of smoke rising
I hear perpetual stillness in these hills
Sense the rush of swirling waters
White plum blossoms blanket a dozen miles
Save for this single, tiny hut
Tigers, half-tame, loiter near the door
Chattering monkeys guard my gate
A wild mountain-man, white hair streaming
Tops the slate summit with a bamboo staff
Caught unawares, I laugh at the distant bell
Follow the twist and turn of an ancient stream.
Zen hearted, washed free of all desire
Never again will I wander the noisy dust.
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Perhaps there are two worlds -- noisy dust and zen hearted. The noisy dust of the world covers so much. Perhaps the 'so much' is the Zen hearted.
We are one. We are interconnected. And yet we are also divided. We are fragmented.
Two worlds.
The resurrection of the body means that the Real Presence of the Absolute is realized in the world in all its ordinariness. The world of mountains and rivers, of bread and wine, of friends and enemies, is all held and displayed in the universal monstrance, the Showing, the phenomenalization of the Absolute. This is, as far as I can see, what the Mysteries, in their various mythic forms and traditions, are trying to tell us.
Can we recognize the presence of the Absolute in the ordinariness of the world? Do we know what is going on when bread is broken for supper? I want to see all our interconnectedness as expressions of the agape, the karuna, the hesed, the jen--of the Absolute. I want to perceive Earth as a Eucharistic Planet, a Good Gift planet, which is structured as mutual feeding, as intimate self-sharing. It is a great Process, a circulation of living energies, in which the Real Presence of the Absolute is descerned. Never holding still, continually passing away from moment to moment, it is the shining face of the Eternal. It is living as an integral Body, as the Glory Body of the Real. (in EUCHARISTIC ECOLOGY AND ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY, By Beatrice Bruteau, Cross Currents, Winter 90-91)
Walking Ragged with Sando and Cesco, fingering beads, one foot then the other, no words but fingers and beads as prayer.
So much noisy dust, clamoring soot of power and politics.
Zen heart and shining face of eternal, a stream bounding after rainfall.
Incense rises.
Perfumed springs ripple over skeletal outcrops
In the distance a hint of smoke rising
I hear perpetual stillness in these hills
Sense the rush of swirling waters
White plum blossoms blanket a dozen miles
Save for this single, tiny hut
Tigers, half-tame, loiter near the door
Chattering monkeys guard my gate
A wild mountain-man, white hair streaming
Tops the slate summit with a bamboo staff
Caught unawares, I laugh at the distant bell
Follow the twist and turn of an ancient stream.
Zen hearted, washed free of all desire
Never again will I wander the noisy dust.
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Perhaps there are two worlds -- noisy dust and zen hearted. The noisy dust of the world covers so much. Perhaps the 'so much' is the Zen hearted.
We are one. We are interconnected. And yet we are also divided. We are fragmented.
Two worlds.
The resurrection of the body means that the Real Presence of the Absolute is realized in the world in all its ordinariness. The world of mountains and rivers, of bread and wine, of friends and enemies, is all held and displayed in the universal monstrance, the Showing, the phenomenalization of the Absolute. This is, as far as I can see, what the Mysteries, in their various mythic forms and traditions, are trying to tell us.
Can we recognize the presence of the Absolute in the ordinariness of the world? Do we know what is going on when bread is broken for supper? I want to see all our interconnectedness as expressions of the agape, the karuna, the hesed, the jen--of the Absolute. I want to perceive Earth as a Eucharistic Planet, a Good Gift planet, which is structured as mutual feeding, as intimate self-sharing. It is a great Process, a circulation of living energies, in which the Real Presence of the Absolute is descerned. Never holding still, continually passing away from moment to moment, it is the shining face of the Eternal. It is living as an integral Body, as the Glory Body of the Real. (in EUCHARISTIC ECOLOGY AND ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY, By Beatrice Bruteau, Cross Currents, Winter 90-91)
Walking Ragged with Sando and Cesco, fingering beads, one foot then the other, no words but fingers and beads as prayer.
So much noisy dust, clamoring soot of power and politics.
Zen heart and shining face of eternal, a stream bounding after rainfall.
Incense rises.
Sunday, May 25, 2003
We honor and pray for all dead and deadened by war.
Clouds release the hillsides
And wake the scene of spring
Where is the plum tree
That wafts that subtle scent
I grab my staff intending
To search secluded valleys
Then find a single branch
Against my eastern wall.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)
Even in absence of full field of blossoming peace and understanding, a single branch will do.
If we find ourselves a single expression of peace, then one other person might find us. We might find them. Each might find each.
In the aftermath of war it still applies that to the victor belong the spoils. It seems to be the truest statement about war. Further below that truism is another truth -- someone has to die, no, many have to die in war. War demands sacrifice only death satisfies.
In this vein it can be said that the victors and vanquished inherit the spoils of dead from wars. These dead linger watching those who’ve sent them to die. They wait to see if their deaths are honored, worthwhile, and beacon truth. Not with flags and flowers. Not with parades and scripted rhetoric. But deeper.
The dead from war wait for justice, truth, fairness, and in the case of the United States, proof that genuine democracy is the benefit of their sacrifice.
Memorial Day asks that we remember life as sacred. Life is not a poker chip in a game of chance played only by wealthy, powerful men. Life is our shared existence in this realm, on this planet, and in dimensions undetected but within which we all are interconnected. This is the surprise waiting those counting up the spoils of war. It doesn't belong to the counters. It belongs to everyone, living and dead.
Life is seamless. Right living, right action, and right intention are intimately integrated with wrong living, wrong action, and wrong intention. Wholeness is wholeness. No exclusion.
God is that integration. The dead are in God. We, the living, must face this. And those who order death will have a more profound awakening to face before them. Only God sees simultaneously within and without, those in form of living biology and those in emptiness of beyond this existence.
The so-called judgment of God at end will not be an accounting. It will be a recounting of each life’s story. We will tell our story in the face of God’s loving attention, and we will see everything we might not have seen before. It will astonish us. We will joy and sorrow simultaneously. The question is – will we be able to enter the wholeness after facing the parts of the story spoiled by our ignorance and deluded thinking?
We pray for those facing death. We pray for those in God. We pray for those seeking peace.
Be neither victor nor vanquished. Be unspoiling.
At Memorial Day we pray for all dead and deadened by war.
Life continues healing in all its forms and emptiness.
Be life. Be a single branch.
Clouds release the hillsides
And wake the scene of spring
Where is the plum tree
That wafts that subtle scent
I grab my staff intending
To search secluded valleys
Then find a single branch
Against my eastern wall.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)
Even in absence of full field of blossoming peace and understanding, a single branch will do.
If we find ourselves a single expression of peace, then one other person might find us. We might find them. Each might find each.
In the aftermath of war it still applies that to the victor belong the spoils. It seems to be the truest statement about war. Further below that truism is another truth -- someone has to die, no, many have to die in war. War demands sacrifice only death satisfies.
In this vein it can be said that the victors and vanquished inherit the spoils of dead from wars. These dead linger watching those who’ve sent them to die. They wait to see if their deaths are honored, worthwhile, and beacon truth. Not with flags and flowers. Not with parades and scripted rhetoric. But deeper.
The dead from war wait for justice, truth, fairness, and in the case of the United States, proof that genuine democracy is the benefit of their sacrifice.
Memorial Day asks that we remember life as sacred. Life is not a poker chip in a game of chance played only by wealthy, powerful men. Life is our shared existence in this realm, on this planet, and in dimensions undetected but within which we all are interconnected. This is the surprise waiting those counting up the spoils of war. It doesn't belong to the counters. It belongs to everyone, living and dead.
Life is seamless. Right living, right action, and right intention are intimately integrated with wrong living, wrong action, and wrong intention. Wholeness is wholeness. No exclusion.
God is that integration. The dead are in God. We, the living, must face this. And those who order death will have a more profound awakening to face before them. Only God sees simultaneously within and without, those in form of living biology and those in emptiness of beyond this existence.
The so-called judgment of God at end will not be an accounting. It will be a recounting of each life’s story. We will tell our story in the face of God’s loving attention, and we will see everything we might not have seen before. It will astonish us. We will joy and sorrow simultaneously. The question is – will we be able to enter the wholeness after facing the parts of the story spoiled by our ignorance and deluded thinking?
We pray for those facing death. We pray for those in God. We pray for those seeking peace.
Be neither victor nor vanquished. Be unspoiling.
At Memorial Day we pray for all dead and deadened by war.
Life continues healing in all its forms and emptiness.
Be life. Be a single branch.
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