What's wrong will always be wrong. That's what poet Richard Hugo wrote as the first line of his poem "Villager."

Iraq is no-place to us. That's because we've lost our way. Our way, we like to think, used to be the modeling of freedom and justice. Now, losing our way at home, we try to impose on others a facsimile of what we've stopped believing in.

If that sounds harsh, listen to the words of a writeup about Seymour Hersh interviewed recently in Berkeley, California:
There was more -- rumors of atrocities around Iraq that to Hersh brought back memories of My Lai. In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'

"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."

The story seemed to leave Hersh sincerely, deeply saddened. While his critics may call him a "muckraker" and unpatriotic, on Friday night it was obvious that Hersh takes the crumbling of America's image, very, very personally.
(On Friday evening, Oct. 8, Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist extraordinaire, was interviewed on the campus of UC Berkeley by KQED host Michael Krasny.)http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/

War is personal. It must be taken thus.

We're frightened by the mind of the men who cheerlead us during the war.

Hugo was right -- What's wrong will always be wrong.

Today is the feast of Teresa.
If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.
(--St Teresa of Avila)

Until we learn love.

A far cry away.

Let's not forget who we are.

Suzanne, John, Joanie, Su Sane, Robert, Erika, Saskia, Sylvia, Dirk, Will, Sandra, and I read and conversed about "True self or No self?" by Jack Kornfield at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation.

Is the cause of hostilities in war and elsewhere our failure to recognize our true self? In and through one another?

All so vague:
The reasons why in autumn
All fade away
And there’s just this
Inexplicable sadness.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

There will be two men debating tonight. They each want to win the presidential election.

Leaves fall. Creative imagination is on hold. The sadness we feel is partially caused by the way these men split us in two.

We are not two. We cannot trust any man who tries to divide us.

Is there anyone who understands the true self?

We have to be something to comprehend it.

If we remember who we are, those who divide will be forgotten.

The Boston Red Sox open against the New York Yankees tonight in the American League Championship Series. Schilling will face Mussina. They'll throw whatever they have at one another.

Scaling the crags
Where azalea bloom, not for plucking
But for hanging on!
The saving feature of this rugged
Mountain face I’m climbing.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

The baseball battle will be a welcome alternative to the bloodier battles taking place in Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the military resumed air strikes in nearby Fallujah, said to be the hideout of the terrorist network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The military said it hit a center for Zarqawi "terrorist meetings" in one strike and a "known terrorist safe house" in another. The safe house was being used by Zarqawi associates at the time of the strike, a statement said.

Wire service reports said at least one of the buildings hit was a restaurant. The Associated Press reported that five people died in the strike on the restaurant.
("U.S., Iraqi Forces Raid Ramadi Mosques, Air Strikes Resume in Fallujah," By Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 13, 2004; 7:30 AM, in Washington Post, Tuesday, October 12, 2004) [Note: Tomorrow's date is on this news posting. It evokes magical thinking -- that we might be able to forestall tomorrow's pain by diverting it from its temporal course. It is today here, it says, might we change tomorrow today?]

I'd rather we stole a base than set up bases, hit a triple than cripple bodies, throw a 2-hitter than split two countries in two with the cruelty of war and foolishness of want, power, and false security.

What is it we fail to comprehend about the mystery of life we call God?
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloriae tuae."Heaven and earth are full of your glory." (in Te Deum)

This war of ideology, bombs, and bullets is a shame. Baseball playoffs with runs, hits, and errors -- with full counts, pitching changes, and stretching for extra bases -- are better expressions of skill, strategy, and human excellence than the ugly (though some say, necessary) behavior of warfare.

Let the championships begin!

Let warfare end!

Let us play!

Maybe we can fake it. At least for a while until, with practice faking it, we might ease into the thing itself.

And what is this thing? It's in the bag.

If you want to catch a rat
You don’t need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don’t study fine bound books
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te

If we could shut up, be still, sit down, and look at the sack awhile...maybe we'll see there's nothing to say.

Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.
(~ Thomas Merton)

We don't see God because we are in God as God is in us. This dualistic language is the way we normally describe something whose explanation might satisfy the intellect. It never does.

Let's fake it.

Let's say nothing.

Without dualistic language we wouldn't know what to say.

Let's open the sack, and say nothing.

Another debate. Are we better informed?

I no longer think any explanation satisfies. We know the truth not by analytic assessment but by embodied resonance. It is a sensory experience that conveys truth and recognizes falsity.

The Buddhas left their Sutras
Because people are hard to change
It’s not just a matter of saintly or stupid
Each and every heart throws up its barricade
Each piles up his own mountain of karma
How could they guess that what they clasp so close
Is sorrow
Unwilling to ponder, as day and night
They do embrace the falsehood of the flesh
- Shih-te

We recognize truth when we hear it. We feel the false in the pit of our stomach.

The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. (from An instruction by St Vincent of Lerins)

Spirituality embodies.

The way we sit, walk, and move through being itself.

No convincing the mind. Surrendering body.

Feeling surely all.

All hermits dwell in the hidden presence of others.

If you are not put off
By the voice of the valley
And the starry peaks,
Why not walk through the shady cedars
And come see me?
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

Actually, each of us lives amid curious personnae rarely seen mute and naked of mask.

October 6. St. Bruno [1032-1101]
Bruno was brought up at Reims in Eastern France and, as a priest, later taught at the Cathedral school there. He decided to become a hermit (possibly as a result of witnessing the deplorable personal behaviour of the Archbishop, who had to be deposed), and after an unsuccessful start near Cologne moved down to the French Alps near Grenoble where the Bishop gave him, and six followers, a plot of land which was to be the origin of the first Charterhouse (Chartreuse), and of the Carthusian Order named after it. The Carthusians developed a life of extreme simplicity, based on the early models of hermit life in Egypt rather than on the Rule of St. Benedict, then dominant in Europe. The design of their buildings, with individual cells built around a Church, rather than within a large communal building emphasises the character of their spiritual life. Bruno later made another foundation in Southern Italy where he died in 1101. Given the strict nature of their rule, there have never been many Carthusians; there is only one house in England at Parkminster in West Sussex.
(http://www.hullp.demon.co.uk/SacredHeart/saint/StBruno.htm)

So many of us are Carthusian in soul.

We wander about, exclaustrated outsiders, in the middle of chaos masquerading as sanity.

Bruno gave the vision.

We give long gaze.

The shepherd monk who sells Trappist jams told us to maintain the balance between hermitage and marketplace.

Once I lived in community. Now, as near-hermit, the Laura-footpath between town and mountain is worn deep.

Torn and tattered is this life.
Food? Wild vegetables from the roadside.
The shrubs and bushes advance toward my hut.
Often the moon and I sit together all night,
And more than once I have lost myself among
The wild flowers,
Forgetting to return home.
No wonder I left the community life:
How could such a crazy monk live in a temple?
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

We wondered at university class today what metaphor carries us through the difficulties of everyday life. William, Este, Dennis, Laura, Bethany, Jessica, Bonnie, Denise, and Robert read their poems with their particular metaphor. We read David Whyte's poem "Revelation Must Be Terrible" as we contemplated what it feels like to resonate the bitter and the beautiful.

My metaphor is hermit solitude.

It helps me through the sometimes crowded opinions that press in from all sides.

We go apart and we return.

The mystic soul sets out to see what is difficult to see, and comes back to say what is difficult to say.

With or without sound.

Silence throughout.

Feast of Francis. Three walks in woods today.

At night, deep in the mountains,
I sit in meditation
The affairs of men never reach here;
Everything is quiet and empty,
All the incense has been swallowed up
By the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.
Unable to sleep I walk out into the woods—
Suddenly, above the highest peak,
The full moon appears.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

Over twig, root, and stone -- the silent visit to mountain family -- a coming to earth, a return home.

Back at cabin Mu-ge carries lifeless bird. Its warm light body is laid at foot of garden statue of Francis.

“And who is my neighbour?” (from Luke 10)

The quiet joy of looking around at the answer.

"Tota pulchra est..."

When Francis died the earth didn't care. The earth was happy to receive its loopy son back into its arms.

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind all vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

We covered the statue of Francis with white cloth at Transitus ceremony in cabin tonight. Lit incense. Blew out candle. And left.

As we, the human beings, form part of the divine body (sarira), we are strictly related to every animate and inanimate beings of this universe, constituting one "organic whole. Consequently, we are responsible for the well being or suffering of the body, viz, of this universe with all its varieties of beings. The Buddhists thus believe that there is nothing that we do that affects only ourselves: "The entire Universe is helped by our acts of compassion but is harmed by our acts of violence and unkindness."
(Kurian Kachappilly, in paper, "'Holocoenotic' Nature Of Ecology: An Indian Perspective Of Ecotheology and Process Thought")

The solitude that Thomas Merton longed for burned him until there was nothing left of him. He knew it was coming twenty years before it arrived. The final pages of his Seven Storey Mountain, speaking as God, laid it out in searing brand.

Still, we, like Francis, have to learn we've never been other than earth. Our ambivalence echoes like the characters in Samuel Beckett's play:
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
(Estragon to Vladimir, in Waiting For Godot)

I don't mind living on the outside of everything. I forget that sometimes. I complain. I try to pretend it matters. That I am nowhere to be found.

Living within God is enough.

There's nowhere to go.

Staying at home.

Alone together.

Earthen.

It is not religion causing this war. It is men who choose retribution rather than reason.

Those thinking of giving up their faith because fundamentalists have kidnapped the forms of expression and names of belief should think further. Forms are empty. Emptiness is form.

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
(--Graham Greene)

The forms of belief and faith can be stolen, misused, and made to seem apparently real. This is being done with Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Islam is not terrorism. Christianity is not imperial might. Judaism is not a militaristic state.

Emptiness is a more profound religion. It is the core of each religion. There is nothing there -- and what is to be here is created each time new.

IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
(From poem, "Sunday Morning," by Wallace Stevens)

The forms of religion are collapsing. They are being looted by political greed and private gain. Compassion and love are tools in the hands of advertisers and propagandists. As the forms cave in on themselves -- like the images of twin towers brought down because they could be brought down -- religions shudder in the bare light of naked revelation.

VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
(Stevens)

If emptiness is the heart of what was once religion, it can only be embodied by men and women willing to become awake and human.

From now on Mullah, Priest, and Rabbi will divest their clerical clothing and redress the wrongs done in the name of religion. From now on each man and woman will allow the animals and elements to consecrate hands and feet with the very gloriousness of creation.

What once we called God -- out there and supreme commander -- will reassert as itself the Word of Creation. That empty breath will find its way through no-where, no-place, and no-thing -- emerging as it is, as it was, and as it will be in the very instant of revelation expressing each now, and now, and now.

What now we call God -- in each here, and grace itself -- is humility of presence coming to be in and as each unfolding moment.

We've never really accepted creation. We've never surrendered to the Word of Life made language. We've never allowed the Most High to become human. In these three prohibitions unawake men have stolen religion and made of it a lifeless, wordless, inhuman institution.

But what do I know? I can only walk with dogs on early morning mountain path through sun-slant mist and wet green grass -- a loveliness of solitude emerging with itself.

I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings

Guardian angels brighten the way.

Lighting and guarding.

Ruling and guiding.

To God's love.

Committing.

Here.

Is there any help for a life in danger of devastation?

Azriel, an old wanderer is the sole survivor of a pogrom which destroys his small Carpathian community. Its people are sworn, should any of them survive, never to speak of the town's last days and nights of wait and terror. And so for decades he roams the earth searching for someone with the authority to release him from his vow. At last, fifty years after the event, Azriel encounters a young stranger who wishes to die. What arguments can he invoke to dissuade him? He decides to tell the story of the death of his town, breaking his vow in hopes his story will save a life. (An Annotated Bibliography, The Oath, by Elie Wiesel. http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/bibliography/)

No telling. No place. No matter when. It is an attempt to break a paradigm, no longer to story what shouldn’t be told.

Moshe the madman was taking an oath of silence when out in the gym someone took a barbell weight across his head. The book closed on Moshe in Kolvillag staying alone on the abandoned table as we were spirited out men-lined corridor, out guarded door, down end of season fading flowers, as sound of ambulance siren floats over razor-sharp rolled cutting wire into nether silence.

I climb the tower for a look,
Gradually feeling
Their serene effect.
In smoke-blue haze,
Massed peaks
Appear as if joined.
When will I climb
And set foot there,
And gaze on all
Creation below?
- Chia Tao (779-843)

The Hospice Memorial Service around corner past library was called out and done. Candles stood vigil in empty chapel as silent plants newly set down languished near abandoned lectern. A man down and red with his own life not far away and nearly extinguished could easily be named on list for next service. But for now the drill: secure and search, inquire and tighten. But first, evacuate civilians procedure is priority number one.

Life is fragile. It spins on a dime. Prison is no place to find yourself.

Keep us safe, Lord, while we are awake, and guard us as we sleep, so that we can keep watch with Christ and rest in peace. (Nunc Dimittis, Compline)

And yet, no place is where we find ourselves.

We pass through what is taking place with awareness and compassion.

The name Azriel means ‘God is my aid.’

Humility of presence.

Archangels are the mirrors of our consciousness. That's what Stephen Mitchell wrote in his Meetings with the Archangel, A Comedy of the Spirit, c.1998

Today is the feast of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael -- likeness, might, and healing -- Archangels.

Is consciousness the space within which every possibility dwells in the open?

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch’ing (1546-1623)

Clusters of galaxies of thought amid endless empty space of transparent consciousness.

To be between is to be interested...(L. inter {between} + esse {to be} = to be between)...and ready to leap from one truth into the next truth.

Without fear.

Mirroring.

What is.

Rising from the dead. How is that?

You need not seek the real,
Mind originally is Buddha.
The familiar becomes remote,
The strange seems familiar.

Day and night,
Everything is wonderful.
Nothing you encounter confuses you.
These are the essentials of mind.
- Han Shan Te Ch’ing (1546-1623)

It is often said that we do not stay dead. Death is an instantaneous transition from one form of life to no form. What seems odder to consider is that we have not been born.

When some Christian believers claim to be born again, does their position compound the problem -- namely, if never born to begin with, what does it mean to say someone is born again?

The Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately is unborn, so it has no beginning and no end. There is not even a hair's breadth of anything you can call delusion. So get it squarely in your minds that there is nothing arising from inside. The main thing is simply not getting involved with the world of externals. That which is not involved with the world of externals is the Buddha Mind, and since the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, when you abide in this marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind just as it is, there is no delusion, no enlightenment. . . . In the innate Buddha Mind, there is neither joy, sorrow nor anger – nothing but the Buddha Mind itself, marvelously illuminating and seeing clearly.
(from Sermons, by Bankei)

Zen Master Bankei refers to the unborn as true reality. Apostle Paul says that life is not ended, merely changed.

No birth, no death -- only life.

These two days in the Harbor Room, hermiting. Full moon rises behind birch bark. Fog bank under orange moon over Penobscot Bay islands. Mosquitoes dusking along low tide docks. Man in condo window eats pretzels and nuts. I had banana with peanut butter ending two day fast.

Student papers read one day early. Plastic chairs scrape wooden deck at waterfront restaurant next door, orders for drinks taken, menus handed out. Man in small pram rows past boat named Economy tied to finger float. Woman with digital camera take picture of moon with flash. Man inhales cigarette, coughs.

New fog bank takes moon away.

What we call full moon is uninhibited sunlight on moon. When the earth does not impose shadow on moon, it is fully reflective of origin light in this solar system.

On earth oil prices hit unprecedented $50 dollars a barrel.

There's this feeling it is time to go within.

When death comes, will there even be a desire to continue through resurrection to some clarity of life in the dwelling place we call God? If reality is non-dual, how occupy any place considered outside the mythic consciousness of unification?

In any case, none of the Buddha’s extant sermons states that a transcendental Being does not exist. Rather, this great master’s emphasis was on the pragmatics of the spiritual path, which he understood as a way out of the maze of the world. His indifference to metaphysical guesswork not only left ample scope for practical experimentation, but also reduced the danger lurking in non-dualist schools of thought -- namely, that of false idealism and self-delusion.
(p.36, in Wholeness or Transcendence? Ancient Lessons For The Emerging Global Civilization, by Georg Feuerstein, c.1992)

White sparkling trail across water from transformed moon risen from fog bank to ongoing journey across its sphere of this part of the galaxy.

For now, how we go on.

We need stillness.

While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He’s been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it’s a bowl of rice.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Walking town in emptiness with sound.

You are in our midst, Lord, your name we bear; therefore do not abandon us, Lord, our God. (Jeremiah 14:9)

That name is each glance, step, and sound.

Stillness.

Alone.

We are afraid of death because we believe we have been born.

The Mountains’ Friend

The broad arms of this dusty world
Hold few true friends.
One feels the pangs of loneliness, and see
How cold the autumn air becomes!
But no, behold your search is ended here,
For countless mountains,
Blue afar, and green ones near,
Remain your friends eternally.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)

Countless eternity.

But while they were all marvelling at everything he did, he said to his disciples, “Let these words sink into your ears; for the Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men”. But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.
(Luke 9:43 - 45)

No understanding. Concealed from us. Unperceiving. Don't ask. Don't hear.

Georgiana said the doctor once gave her 8 years until death. Another doctor told her she was born. Jean, Pia, and Saskia spoke about death, near death, and nearing death just before they went for a sail. They returned alive.

Every utterance is a translation of the phrase, "I am alive."

Michael, reading W.B. Yeats without his glasses, read the line. "Surely some revolution is at hand!"

The dead surely are all about us. They sell death. They encourage death. They deny death. They ignore the deaths of others. And, they cultivate coma prelude to death by hypnotized posturing and posing, marketing a facsimile of life without breath, without spirit.

We are invited to attend these wakes.

Surely, some resurrection yawns!

By being awake.

If I see myself through -- atonement is near.

Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by those labels and slogans,
Both those used in ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your perception
Of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly.
- Linji (d. 867)

It all depends on where the mind puts God. If "out there," then there's all the measuring, contrasting, judging, and favoring with which to contend. If "within it all" then issues like motivation, intent, common vision, and self-realization come to the fore.

I have seen the trouble, which God has given the sons of men to be exercised in it. He has made all things good in their time, and has delivered the world to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which God has made from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-11)

It is hidden from us. No "there" there? Is "God" not all there? This is not easy to say.

And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Luke 9:19)

Jesus asks. Peter hazards a guess. Who knows? Where does the mind put the "what" it thinks about?

It turns within me. You. Us.

Yom Kippur.

One at a turn.

More authentic words are needed.

This war strangles and chokes with moribund explanation.

It is not enough to repeat over and over "Saddam," "Hates freedom," Evil doers."

We have to look closer to home, and ask why Americans are so disconnected from war and so lulled by rhetoric.

What I call perfection of seeing
Is not seeing others
But oneself
- Chuang-tzu (3rd cent BC)

Is that it? Do we not see ourselves? Not see our indifference to death in Iraq and Afghanistan? Ours and theirs? Not feel the awfulness of the carnage and chaos there. How can this be? Are we missing something? Is war merely a matter of words and distance to us?

Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?

In this political season, the momentous issue of American-sponsored death is an inch below the surface, not quite hidden -- making the election a matter of transcendent importance. George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy. John Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of his character -- and no wonder it puts people off. Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.
(Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 by the Boston Globe, from
Why Americans Back the War , by James Carroll) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0921-01.htm

We will not hear the truth of the absurd and awful death-fest in Iraq until something turns in our psyche and soul.

These are days to turn around.

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
(Poem by Anna Akhmatova)

By becoming salt will we return to earth to preserve a flickering remnant of nameless Name and groundless Ground?

By choosing to turn, not seeing others, but oneself.

Words like "decency," "truthfulness," and "humility."

Maybe, even...

"Atonement."

Word!

War is terrible. Worse.

War is all that we believe God is not. War is hateful, destructive, and cruel.

This war against Iraq is deadly reminder we as a people might have no sense of what God is or that God is.

Why are Iraqis, Americans, and others dying in warfare? We are confused.

Why are the nations in a ferment? Why do the people make their vain plans?
The kings of the earth have risen up; the leaders have united against the Lord, against his anointed.
Let us break their chains, that bind us; let us throw off their yoke from our shoulders!
The Lord laughs at them, he who lives in the heavens derides them.
Then he speaks to them in his anger; in his fury he throws them into confusion:
(Psalm 2)

The reasons for invasion, insurgency, and mutilating suffering have been given again and again, neither satisfying nor instilling confidence. The rhetoric, like the terrible destruction to life and limb, is disturbing and ugly. Something uncertain is happening in and to this country

Both the cynic and fundamentalist alike await a catastrophe that will either put America in its place or prove Armageddon. To both, God is fiction. To both, truth is fabrication.

It is tiresome to listen to mistruth. Still we continue to listen for forthright words. It is equally unpleasant to hear "lies" levied against opposing views. Worst of all is the suspicion that a "game" is being played -- a game of 'message, attack, deny and destroy messenger.' This game is so finely hewn in playbooks of professional dissemblers that so-called 'ordinary citizens' are baffled pawns of traceless deceptions that they, in turn, take up with hearty endorsement, without awareness they are doing so.

Not Moving Even One Step

The rain falling too lightly to shape
an audible house, an audible tree,
blind, soaking, the old horse waits in his pasture.

He knows the field for exactly what it is:
his limitless mare, his beloved.
Even the mallards sleep in her red body maned
in thistles, hooved in the new green shallows of spring.

Slow rain streams from the fetlocks, hips, the lowered head,
while she stands in the place beside him that no one sees.

The muzzles almost touch.
How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.
(Poem: "Not Moving Even One Step" by Jane Hirshfield, from The Lives of the Heart , 1997.)

Standing near those who suffer this blind war is an old God weary with human anger, heart opening to cries of pain and anguish. On this field each comes close without touching, listens for faint sound, looks through memory of obscure forms for any recognizable, reassuring movement.

Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
(- Ramana Maharshi, 1879-1950)

I cannot tell you how odd it feels to be in that field.

With what is.

Called.

God!

Hear?

If Hashem, (what is called 'God'), is Reality, what are we waiting for?

Step back on your own to look into reality long enough to attain an unequivocally true and real experience of enlightenment. Then with every thought you are consulting infinite teachers.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

We spoke of martyrs at Friday Evening Conversation. Not those committing suicide, nor those committing murder -- but those who give up their life for their faith in God. Put in other words -- those who are willing to relinquish their current form so as not to deny Reality, which is that within which, for which, and as which we live our lives.

Jesus Christ, although he shared God’s nature [though he was in the form of God], did not try to seize equality with God for himself; but emptied himself, took on the form of a slave, and became like a man – not in appearance only, for he humbled himself by accepting death – even death on a cross.
For this, God has raised him high, and given him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue will proclaim “Jesus Christ is Lord”, to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2)

As with most things in this existence, we are not well informed.

Martyrs are the ones who witness Infinite Wholeness and surrender their lives to authentic and compassionate relationship with all formed therein. (We must not confuse murderers and destructive suicides with the term 'martyr.')

It is a task to encounter one's being in Being.

...If man "is" anything at all, he is Nietzsche's "undefined animal," whose infinite scope and possibility consist precisely in the knowledge of his own temporal limitation, in the knowledge that he will die, and in his power to endure and transcend such knowledge...
(in Commentary, Vol. 7 • April 1949 • No. 4, Simon, Ernst, What Price Israel's "Normalcy"?translated from the German by Ralph Manheim)

We are not who and what we think we are. We are, rather, who and what we are. To see with the light of Reality is to witness Reality Itself, or Sacred Being, or, What Is -- called Enlightenment.

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.
(from Chapter 1, "You are not your mind," in The Power of Now, By Eckhart Tolle)

Jesus didn't try to grasp with the mind what he was. Nor should we, what we are.

Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.
(Tolle)

Being what we are is a place to dwell in peace. It is only there we dwell in compassionate relationship with everyone and everything,.

No waiting. No invading other lands and nations. No destroying real or perceived enemies. No reducing one another to laughing-stock or lifeless-corpse.

Say...

No more.

One's own name is no name.

Listen!

Say

No

More.