What is truly creative must create itself.
In prison one Friday, Joe and I were talking about irony. Our context was an Independent Study on “Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self Discovery.”
“Irony,” from Greek, eironeia, is "feigned ignorance."
i·ro·ny n. pl. i·ro·nies 1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. 2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. 3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1. 4. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). 5. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic. 6. Dramatic irony. 7. Socratic irony. (From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony )
It is an ironic time in politics, baseball, and creative life. We pretend we do not know what is happening. Bush and Kerry will face off on November 2nd. The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals begin a World Series best of 7 on Oct 23rd. And contemplative creators continually have to decide to allow what is pulsing through them for presence in the world to come through and take “place” in the world.
What is our place in the world?
When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward. (- Huai-nan-tzu)
Perhaps the “inward” is the thin-place between the dualistic notions of inside and outside. Perhaps the inward is our place in the world.
God is the only creator ab initio The creation of works of art would therefore come under the head of the active life, as the enjoyment of works of art would come under that of the contemplative life. But the essential difference, as I have already pointed out, is this – that the writer of a poem or the composer of a symphony has as his end, neither possession nor contemplation, but the bringing of a new sort of thing in the world. The poet or painter may indeed give us recognizable likenesses of the forms of common experience; to this extent they use imitation as a means to their further ends. But the poem or the painting in itself is a thing in itself and not an imitation of anything already in the world. It is sui generis, a new creation, and belongs to a different order of being from anything it imitates. Y.B. Yeats speaks of the poets as people whose work exists not primarily to help or to inform us. When we read them, he says, we “have added to our being, not to our knowledge.” It is the impulse to “add to being” which is the distinctive mark of the creative way of life. (p.117 “The Three Faces of Love” by A.D. Hope, in The Poet’s Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry on the Origins and Practice of their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons, c.1979)
How do we add to what is? Is that where the inward takes place? The place of the inward is fully dwelling Being.
The essential thing about education for the creative life as distinct from education for the active or the contemplative life is this: that what is truly autonomous must be self-initiating, or it stops being autonomous. For the active life the ends in view are practical ends which depend for their formulation on the known facts about man and society. The form that education for the active life should take can therefore be determined in advance. Similarly, for the contemplative life of the world as it exists in its object and perhaps God insofar as he is knowable. The conditions of the contemplative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can only be surmised, and the great difference between its conditions and the other two modes of human existence is that what is truly creative must create itself. This is the axiom on which any view of education for the creative life must be based. (pp.119-120, A.D. Hope)
Creating itself (or, the Creative Itself) is perhaps God insofar as God is knowable.
Irony is feigned ignorance. We cultivate ignorance in the same way we miss facts until someone gathers them in a way and, when shown, we say, “Oh, I see.”
You've always painted the Bush administration as these macho poseurs, phony gunslinger tough guys. Is that the kind of daddy we're looking for?
Yeah. And that's probably why Bush didn't let his own daddy speak at the Republican National Convention -- which was unbelievable that a former president who went to war with Iraq wasn't given a speaking slot. But Bush didn't want the real daddy, because the real daddy has differences with him on the Iraq war. The ironies of that are beyond belief. The father went to war in Iraq to defend the principle that you can't invade another country unilaterally; the son goes to war with Iraq to establish the principle that you can invade another country unilaterally.
(“Ms. Bush-Bash,” Does anyone understand Dubya better than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd? By John Colapinto, Oct 6, 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine)
I’d not seen Dowd’s observation before.
Nor had Ron Suskind comprehended what he’d been told two years ago:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."
October 17, 2004, IN THE New York Times MAGAZINE, “Without a Doubt" By Ron Suskind
Perhaps the time for debate is over. We’ve listened to each other too long. It is time to allow those who know best to run things, run our lives, run the country and the world. Perhaps, as Aldous Huxley’s Mustapha Mond in Brave New World says:
"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Mustapha Mond (p.220)
"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books [i.e. the Bible, the Imitation of Christ, Varieties of Religious Experience, Works of John Cardinal Newman] locked up in the safe. They're smut"-Mustapha Mond (p. 234)
Then, another voice is heard:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
-Mustapha Mond and John the Savage (p.240)
I claim the right to be unhappy. Right now Boston has the reality of playing in the World Series and the possibility of winning. Right now the election between Bush and Kerry is still open to a fair and deliberative choice. Right now we each have an opportunity in our lives not to have to feign ignorance in order to have voice in the world.
"Place" is "Creating Itself.”
Inwardly.
Free.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Crisp cool evening.
In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)
In the empty silence of the night I recall five years ago my sister's final hours.
I write Lori Ann, Anthony, Frank, and Mark -- companions on that vigil.
Each going on.
With love.
In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)
In the empty silence of the night I recall five years ago my sister's final hours.
I write Lori Ann, Anthony, Frank, and Mark -- companions on that vigil.
Each going on.
With love.
Monday, October 18, 2004
To pretend to know, when there is only unknowing, is an unkind and selfish thing to do.
The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes
Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
In the New York Times (Published: October 12, 2004) there was a page one article entitled "Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry" By David D. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein. It quoted the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, about the upcoming election, the positions of the candidates, matters of abortion, along with moral considerations of conscience. I wrote the Archbishop and was sent a transcript of the complete interview. It was sent as a clarification of the reported conversation.
A section of the transcript reads:
NYT: Archbishop Burke in St. Louis caught my attention again on Friday [October 1]. he issued a statement basically stating that it's a sin if you vote for a pro-choice politician, I believe he was saying even if that wasn't the reason you voted for him, that you voted for a pro-abortion politician that is still something that you ought to confess. Is that...?
AB [Archbishop]: I don't believe that's where you should start. The place to start would be, does our voting for someone make us responsible for what that person does as a legislator or as a judge?...And the answer is yes, because we are in some ways materially -- we use the word "materially" -- cooperating in that person's activity because we've given [him or her] the platform to be elected. Now, if the person does something wrong, our participation is remote, but if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we approved of it, our responsibility would be really be close, even if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we voted for them for another reason, we would still be responsible in some ways.
The standing is if you know someone is going to do evil and you participate in that in some way, you are responsible. So it's not..."if you vote this way, should you go to confession?" The question is, "if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. There's a more sophisticated thing here...it's not so crude. The reason I want to stress that is because it is not like bishops are issuing edicts about who should vote for whom. It's issuing statements about how a Catholic forms her conscience, or his conscience...and remote material cooperation or proximate material cooperation is cooperation, and it's important for Catholics to know that, to be sophisticated in their judgments.
This argument is chewing gum on sole of shoe. It makes responsibility a combination of fortune-telling and pre-emptive challenge.
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
I wrote back.
Dear Archbishop Chaput –
I’ve read the complete transcript you sent. Thank you. I re-read the Times article.
I’ll mention one thought while doing this reading, namely: It is a difficult task to delineate public policy and personal morality.
My love for the Church is not diminished over five dozen years. My love for the people in and out of the Church seeks increase.
When the Church seeks to inform the conscience of individuals and general citizenry –she does right. But the difficulty of maintaining the razor’s edge of modeling/informing versus influencing/threatening is surely a sharp edge worth careful contemplation.
It seems to me that my opposition to abortion as a Catholic is and should be readily available for disclosure. The same is true for the issues of war, capital punishment, genocide, abuse of all sorts, and refusal to consider and reflect on the perspectives (in good faith) offered by those with whom I might differ.
And yet, the law of the land must be based on deliberations common to the values and judgment of the general populace as filtered through the good offices of legislative and judicial office holders. Fight, yes, for the candidate of your choice, and the values you choose as sacred – but avoid the dirty stick of ex-communication, non-reception of communion, and public condemnation of character based on legal and public deliberation of moral/religious matters. Pre-emptive elimination or character assassination based on suspected or speculative future wrong is a dangerous heuristic or haruspication – even for a Church so involved with a God we claim to be wise and loving as well as eternal and without limits.
My preference is to encourage individual and community via compassionate, open, and deliberate means – genuine dialogue -- to consider God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer. And to urge change of behavior based on those realities (God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer). Authentic change, as you know, comes from within. External incrimination is a blunt and numbing control – not worthy of Christ-mind seeking to gather safely those who long for the embodied presence of God-with-us.
Of course we are a little stupid. We generally can’t see the wholeness of life. We need examples of wholeness – or at least, mending broken individuals who have felt the pain of flaw and anguish. We are brother and sister in the family of God. Perhaps our only sanity is coming to see that inter-relatedness.
I will not burden you any further. Your task might be different than mine. You are a very visible man in a very big office as part of a very powerful organization.
I will pray for you and your work as part of my daily intention.
May all of us be happy, may all beings be safe, and may all beings come to dwell in our true home!
And may you, my brother, know and experience the peace and sanity you work so hard to convey to others!
Bill
p.s. I, too, will be taking my ballot to our chapel/zendo for silent prayer prior to casting my vote. Thank you for the prompt.
These men are trying hard to preserve the form of something whose core is empty. It is emptiness -- the impermanent and ephemeral, the diaphanous and unbounded openness -- that dwells at our core. Yet institutions spring up attempting to control what is not there. It seems to be the curious fate of men with power to try to capture the wind in a wire fence.
Fact is -- we're all just passing through.
Let the contest continue.
Unknowing.
And finding one’s way through.
The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes
Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
In the New York Times (Published: October 12, 2004) there was a page one article entitled "Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry" By David D. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein. It quoted the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, about the upcoming election, the positions of the candidates, matters of abortion, along with moral considerations of conscience. I wrote the Archbishop and was sent a transcript of the complete interview. It was sent as a clarification of the reported conversation.
A section of the transcript reads:
NYT: Archbishop Burke in St. Louis caught my attention again on Friday [October 1]. he issued a statement basically stating that it's a sin if you vote for a pro-choice politician, I believe he was saying even if that wasn't the reason you voted for him, that you voted for a pro-abortion politician that is still something that you ought to confess. Is that...?
AB [Archbishop]: I don't believe that's where you should start. The place to start would be, does our voting for someone make us responsible for what that person does as a legislator or as a judge?...And the answer is yes, because we are in some ways materially -- we use the word "materially" -- cooperating in that person's activity because we've given [him or her] the platform to be elected. Now, if the person does something wrong, our participation is remote, but if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we approved of it, our responsibility would be really be close, even if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we voted for them for another reason, we would still be responsible in some ways.
The standing is if you know someone is going to do evil and you participate in that in some way, you are responsible. So it's not..."if you vote this way, should you go to confession?" The question is, "if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. There's a more sophisticated thing here...it's not so crude. The reason I want to stress that is because it is not like bishops are issuing edicts about who should vote for whom. It's issuing statements about how a Catholic forms her conscience, or his conscience...and remote material cooperation or proximate material cooperation is cooperation, and it's important for Catholics to know that, to be sophisticated in their judgments.
This argument is chewing gum on sole of shoe. It makes responsibility a combination of fortune-telling and pre-emptive challenge.
"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell
I wrote back.
Dear Archbishop Chaput –
I’ve read the complete transcript you sent. Thank you. I re-read the Times article.
I’ll mention one thought while doing this reading, namely: It is a difficult task to delineate public policy and personal morality.
My love for the Church is not diminished over five dozen years. My love for the people in and out of the Church seeks increase.
When the Church seeks to inform the conscience of individuals and general citizenry –she does right. But the difficulty of maintaining the razor’s edge of modeling/informing versus influencing/threatening is surely a sharp edge worth careful contemplation.
It seems to me that my opposition to abortion as a Catholic is and should be readily available for disclosure. The same is true for the issues of war, capital punishment, genocide, abuse of all sorts, and refusal to consider and reflect on the perspectives (in good faith) offered by those with whom I might differ.
And yet, the law of the land must be based on deliberations common to the values and judgment of the general populace as filtered through the good offices of legislative and judicial office holders. Fight, yes, for the candidate of your choice, and the values you choose as sacred – but avoid the dirty stick of ex-communication, non-reception of communion, and public condemnation of character based on legal and public deliberation of moral/religious matters. Pre-emptive elimination or character assassination based on suspected or speculative future wrong is a dangerous heuristic or haruspication – even for a Church so involved with a God we claim to be wise and loving as well as eternal and without limits.
My preference is to encourage individual and community via compassionate, open, and deliberate means – genuine dialogue -- to consider God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer. And to urge change of behavior based on those realities (God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer). Authentic change, as you know, comes from within. External incrimination is a blunt and numbing control – not worthy of Christ-mind seeking to gather safely those who long for the embodied presence of God-with-us.
Of course we are a little stupid. We generally can’t see the wholeness of life. We need examples of wholeness – or at least, mending broken individuals who have felt the pain of flaw and anguish. We are brother and sister in the family of God. Perhaps our only sanity is coming to see that inter-relatedness.
I will not burden you any further. Your task might be different than mine. You are a very visible man in a very big office as part of a very powerful organization.
I will pray for you and your work as part of my daily intention.
May all of us be happy, may all beings be safe, and may all beings come to dwell in our true home!
And may you, my brother, know and experience the peace and sanity you work so hard to convey to others!
Bill
p.s. I, too, will be taking my ballot to our chapel/zendo for silent prayer prior to casting my vote. Thank you for the prompt.
These men are trying hard to preserve the form of something whose core is empty. It is emptiness -- the impermanent and ephemeral, the diaphanous and unbounded openness -- that dwells at our core. Yet institutions spring up attempting to control what is not there. It seems to be the curious fate of men with power to try to capture the wind in a wire fence.
Fact is -- we're all just passing through.
Let the contest continue.
Unknowing.
And finding one’s way through.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
When religious people think of God, God is usually a dualistic, external, and anthropomorphic construct.
As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal
Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Christians hardly admit that God became human. Willing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and allow the belief that God became man, there is still a hesitation to give up the notion that God is really above all this creation, humanity, and existence.
But wholeness is wholeness.
It would be useful if Christians actually believed what is one of the core beliefs of Christianity: Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; "The Word became flesh, and dwells between (among) us..." (from John 1: 1-14)
Either God became one of us, or Christianity merely has had a good spin for two thousand years.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
"Sin," division and separation, will be forgiven, gone, and forgotten.
It is wholeness that puts to rest the strain and illusion of a divided reality.
Going beyond, or having gone beyond the numbing sleep of separation and fragmentation of half-knowledge, we vow to live what is here with courage, compassion, and wisdom.
It is not just a one day Christmas celebration, but a vital need, to embody the reality of wholeness. Hodie Christus Natus Est Pro Nobis -- "Today Christ is born with us."(Antiphon to Magnificat – Vespers of the Christmas day)
It is a lot to meditate on.
A contemplation beyond us.
This is where we must go.
Are we willing?
As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal
Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Christians hardly admit that God became human. Willing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and allow the belief that God became man, there is still a hesitation to give up the notion that God is really above all this creation, humanity, and existence.
But wholeness is wholeness.
It would be useful if Christians actually believed what is one of the core beliefs of Christianity: Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; "The Word became flesh, and dwells between (among) us..." (from John 1: 1-14)
Either God became one of us, or Christianity merely has had a good spin for two thousand years.
The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)
"Sin," division and separation, will be forgiven, gone, and forgotten.
It is wholeness that puts to rest the strain and illusion of a divided reality.
Going beyond, or having gone beyond the numbing sleep of separation and fragmentation of half-knowledge, we vow to live what is here with courage, compassion, and wisdom.
It is not just a one day Christmas celebration, but a vital need, to embody the reality of wholeness. Hodie Christus Natus Est Pro Nobis -- "Today Christ is born with us."(Antiphon to Magnificat – Vespers of the Christmas day)
It is a lot to meditate on.
A contemplation beyond us.
This is where we must go.
Are we willing?
Friday, October 15, 2004
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
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!
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!
Sunday, October 10, 2004
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.
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.
Friday, October 08, 2004
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 06, 2004
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 05, 2004
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.
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.
Monday, October 04, 2004
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..."
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..."
Sunday, October 03, 2004
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.
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.
Saturday, October 02, 2004
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.
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.
Friday, October 01, 2004
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 29, 2004
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.
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.
Monday, September 27, 2004
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.
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.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
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.
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.
Saturday, September 25, 2004
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.
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.
Friday, September 24, 2004
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.
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.
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