If love is all there is...

That the self advances
And confirms ten thousand things
Is called delusion;
That the ten thousand things
Advance and confirm the self
Is called enlightenment.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

...what is it we think we are doing?

Sie sagt fur dich: Ich bin!
(She says for you: I am)
(from Rilke poem)

In this case, let me say it for you:

You are...

Love.

Final meeting of Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self-Discovery at University College at Thomaston this evening.

No opposite means no need to cross over. Of course, the raft is not the shore -- but when love is all there is: the shore, the water, the raft, the person, and the other shore are not five things.

If love has no opposite it is no wonder there's so much trouble finding words for love. "Who needs more words," a student asks. We need more leaders -- more of a community of shared counsel. With opposition politics there are rigid laws with specific agendas banging against a dyadic solution.

We need more leaders who can see us through.

We grow accustomed to the Dark --
When light is put away --
As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp
To witness her Goodbye --

A Moment -- We uncertain step
For newness of the night --
Then -- fit our Vision to the Dark --
And meet the Road -- erect --

And so of larger -- Darkness --
Those Evenings of the Brain --
When not a Moon disclose a sign --
Or Star -- come out -- within --

The Bravest -- grope a little --
And sometimes hit a Tree
Directly in the Forehead --
But as they learn to see --

Either the Darkness alters --
Or something in the sight
Adjusts itself to Midnight --
And Life steps almost straight.
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

Maybe we'll only come through if we see community as self-discovery; when we experience connectivity as our natural way of being.

Let's find no opposite to love.

No need to word what is not there.

Present ourselves to our open extended family.

Arriving at the movement taking us through each and every expression of what we are building together -- community itself -- our mythopoetic story and new form of self.

Each leaves final class with common gratitude.

One in all.

Fog sat off Curtis Island most the day.

Fog is visible courtship between sun and sea. Sun is sun; sea is sea. When they become entwined as sunsea there is fog. Droplets of water vapor suspended in the air near surface; fog reveals itself for brief intervals. Then dissipates.

The vagaries of life
Though painful,
Teach us
Not to cling
To this fleeting world.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Water, they say, carries code. Essence and intention take form in water's memory. Water seeks lowest place. Water conforms to any shape. Water is life. It is arche, primary principle of life, according to Thales of Miletus.

In Camden boats are lowered into harbor. Floats are set in place. Visitors stop by. Roads are torn up and repairs snarl northern end of town. Sandals appear. Tracey prepares soil and begins flower work for owners. Fog is sculpted testimony to passing nuptial.

The Sailor

In my movie the boat goes under
And he alone survives the night in the cold ocean,
Swimming he hopes in a shoreward direction.
Daylight and he's still afloat, pawing the water
And doesn't yet know he's only fifty feet from shore.
He goes under for what will be the last time
But only a few feet down scrapes bottom.
He's suddenly a changed man and half hops, half swims
The remaining distance, hauls himself waterlogged
Partway up the beach before collapsing into sleep.
As he dreams the tide comes in
And rolls him back to sea.
(Poem by Geof Hewitt)

Fog clarifies what at bottom is invisible. Fog shapes what is passing.

We come to see by seeing what is coming.

The only mystery left is why we treat each other poorly.

Or, why we refuse God becoming with us.

Ecology of consciousness is nuptial. Ethics is the study and practice of who we are, and who we are with one another; the common impulse for interdependence.

I confess that there is nothing to teach: no religion, no science, no body of information which will lead your mind back to the Tao. Today I speak in this fashion, tomorrow in another, but always the Integral Way is beyond words and beyond mind. Simply be aware of the oneness of things. (Eight, in Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu, Translated by Brian Walker)

We go to prison to converse, to practice writing and math, to be part of healing the broken minds and spirits of ourselves and our times.

What percentage of the U.S. jail and prison population is mentally ill?

Of the nearly 2 million inmates being held in prisons and jails across the country, experts believe nearly 500,000 are mentally ill. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), 16 percent of the prison population can be classified as severely mentally ill, meaning that they fit the psychiatric classification for illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, and bipolar disorder. According to staff at city and community jails, 25 percent of the jail population is severely mentally ill. However, when other mental illnesses, such as anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and depression, are included, the numbers are much higher, and NAMI puts the number of inmates suffering from both mental illness and substance abuse the percentage at well over 50 percent.
(from Frontline Documentary "The New Asylums", aired 10May05) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/asylums/etc/faqs.html

At Tuesday Evening Conversation at the shop tonight Genevieve said she comes, not for the ideas, but for the spirit. We read Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven. The author speaks of experiencing "no inside, no outside." That intuition changes things. It's part of our going in and out of prison. The distinctions drop. Who is inside and who outside, who is mentally ill and who not -- these borders dissolve and fade. We are left with this person, that person; these words, those observations. Each is itself. We're there to verify that intuition.

Each moment is fragile and fleeting. The moment of the past cannot be kept, however beautiful. The moment of the present cannot be held, however enjoyable. The moment of the future cannot be caught, however desirable. But the mind is desperate to fix the river in place: Possessed by ideas of the past, preoccupied with images of the future, it overlooks the plain truth of the moment. The one who can dissolve her mind will suddenly discover the Tao at her feet, and clarity at hand. (Twenty-One, Hua Hu Ching)

The plain truth of the moment is the ecological ethics of person to person interdependence.

We might not be able to name God, but we can greet and speak with one another.

The intuition is not to name or own; just be with.

Everywhere at ease?

This month brings Meetingbrook to the cusp of beginning its 10th year at the harbor. The raw rain and blowing swells out of the northeast these last few days remind that spring in Maine is a variable notion. So is Meetingbrook – a variable notion.

In blue-ephemeral haze,
You come and go
Through your Zen gate.
On Yen Mountain,
The view’s ten thousand li,
A thousand peaks.
When will we arrive
And be with the floating clouds
Everywhere at ease?
- Liu Chang-ch’ing (710-787)

The notion is a good one. It holds that we are all connected. That wherever gathers, however briefly, more than one person, begins the practice of changing and deepening one’s view of life. That even in solitude the practice of community continues. That even in communion with or in the presence of others the practice of solitude is ongoing.

Meetingbrook is nothing other than a loosely knit association of individuals walking along the path moving from dependence through independence to interdependence --and arriving home each step of the way.

The practice is to be everywhere at ease. With one another. Or alone. No one, no other – just dwelling at home at ease with the ways form changes and time empties – completely in one’s own place: the place of faith, hope, and love. These perennial virtues of faith (saying yes), hope (asking please), and love (wordlessly praying as openness itself) – are variable hermit pathway trails into assertions of affirmation, invitation, and recognition.

Thomas Merton writes about a conversation with the Dalai Lama who asks Merton: “Well, to be precise, what do your vows oblige you to do? Do they simply constitute an agreement to stick around for life in the monastery? Or do they imply a commitment to a life of progress up certain mystical stages?” I sort of hemmed and hawed a bit, and said: “Well, no, that’s not quite what the vows are all about.” But it was interesting to see that this is what he thought the vows ‘should’ be about.” When you stop and think a little bit about St. Benedict’s concepts of ‘conversio morum’, that most mysterious of our vows, which is actually the most essential, I believe, it can be interpreted as a commitment to total inner transformation of one sort or another -- a commitment to become a completely new man. It seems to me that that could be regarded as the end of monastic life, and that no matter where one attempts to do this, that remains the essential thing. (p.337, from “Marxism and Monastic Perspectives,” by Father Louis, O.C.S.O. {Thomas Merton} Talk delivered at Bangkok on December 10, 1968, Appendix VII in The Asian Journal of Thomas Merton, c.1973)

Later, recalling a conversation with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Merton writes:
He sent a message to a nearby abbot friend of his saying: What are we to do?” The abbot sent back a strange message, which I think is very significant: “From now on, Brother, everybody stands on his own feet.”

To my mind, that is an extremely important monastic statement. If you forget everything else that has been said, I would suggest you remember this for the future: “From now on, everybody stands on his own feet.”

This, I think, is what Buddhism is about, what Christianity is about, what monasticism is about – if you understand it in terms of grace. It is not a Pelagian statement, by any means, but a statement to the effect that we can no longer rely on being supported by structures that may be destroyed at any moment by a political power or a political force. You cannot rely on structures. The time for relying on structures has disappeared. They are good and they should help us, and we should do the best we can with them. But they may be taken away, and if everything is taken away, what do you do next? (p.338, Merton)

Living life dedicated to inner transformation is a variable notion and moveable feast.

What is essential in the monastic life is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in a rule. It is somewhere along the line of something deeper than a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner transformation. All other things serve that end. I am just saying, in other words, what Cassian said in the first lecture on ‘puritas cordis’, purity of heart, that every monastic observance tends toward that. (p.340, Merton)

Meetingbrook has often wondered whether it would find itself elsewhere. Those loosely associated with the place – regularly or irregularly – catalogue their opinions and feelings about our wonderings and inquiries according to the seasons. Hearts are restless until they realize there is no permanent home with fixed street address; realizing this, hearts rest in the open, their true home.

Let us affirm, invite, and recognize one another in this hospitable dwelling place.

As always, we’re here for now.

It's time to change tactics concerning Iraq.

I expected to see only pink blossoms,
But a gentle spring snow has fallen
And the cherry trees are wearing a white coat.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Naomi Klein writes:
The administration says the war was about fighting for democracy. That was the big lie they resorted to when they were caught in the other lies. But it's a different kind of a lie in the sense that it's a useful lie. The lie that the United States invaded Iraq to bring freedom and democracy not just to Iraq but, as it turns out, to the whole world, is tremendously useful -- because we can first expose it as a lie and then we can join with Iraqis to try to make it true. So it disturbs me that a lot of progressives are afraid to use the language of democracy now that George W. Bush is using it. We are somehow giving up on the most powerful emancipatory ideas ever created, of self-determination, liberation and democracy.

And it's absolutely crucial not to let Bush get away with stealing and defaming these ideas -- they are too important.

Then:
So what is our role here? We need to support the people of Iraq and their clear demands for an end to both military and corporate occupation. That means being the resistance ourselves in our country, demanding that the troops come home, that U.S. corporations come home, that Iraqis be free of Saddam's debt and the IMF and World Bank agreements signed under occupation. It doesn't mean blindly cheerleading for "the resistance." Because there isn't just one resistance in Iraq. Some elements of the armed resistance are targeting Iraqi civilians as they pray in Shia mosques -- barbaric acts that serve the interests of the Bush administration by feeding the perception that the country is on the brink of civil war and therefore U.S. forces must remain in Iraq. Not everyone fighting the U.S. occupation is fighting for the freedom of all Iraqis; some are fighting for their own elite power. That's why we need to stay focused on supporting the demands for self-determination, not cheering any setback for U.S. empire.
(in "How to End the War" by Naomi Klein, published May 5, 2005, by In These Times ) http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0505-23.htm

Her words suggest we must now truthfully do what the Bush administration has winked and nodded it was doing -- we must work for democracy in Iraq. Not the substitution of Saddam's tyranny for the United State's imperial puppetry. Just because the invasion wore the mask of "for democracy" after the disguise of WMD fell off, doesn't mean the deception used couldn't become the real thing in honest hands.

Same with spirituality. People give up spirituality because they see its abuse and control by those for whom religion and institution are goals substituting for authentic experience.. Spirituality is practice. It is the grace of transparency, presence, and transcendence come home to everyday interaction.

The people of Iraq deserve, finally, their own country. It is a longing to be ordinary, free from both tyrant and usurper.

Tyrant is gone, but we cannot be sure if usurper will let Iraq belong to itself. That will take time and courage. Iraqis need to be confident Americans are not behind the pillaging of their country and resources. We must find again and retrieve our soul -- the one that recognizes and distinguishes fairness, justice, and purity of heart. It might not be too late.

It is a good idea that government must serve the people. There's been enough of the opposite. It is time to take the war away from the administration and work -- Americans and Iraqis -- for transparence, more authentic presence, and the grace to transcend.

Dan Berrigan wrote: "Bodies belong where words are."

It is time to embody authentic democracy and peace.

What do you say?

What do I say?

Are we free to?

Some stayed late after poetry this evening. It is courageous to attempt wording one's life.

To this place of retreat,
The world does not follow;
But many old ailments heal here.
I polish words of old poems;
View mountains, and sleep
Outside my hut.
Colored clouds
Cross the setting sun;
Cicadas ring in the leaves
Of trees.
With this my heart again
Knows happiness;
And who would have thought it,
Without wine or money?
- Yao Ho (831)

It's what makes Saturdays rich. Poetry, Tea, and Literature is really about Berrigan's "Bodies belong where words are." Some poems we write are prelude to the poem writing itself.

Every poem is a good poem. Some think they're good. One or two are goodness itself. It is these we listen for; these we can't hold back when their time comes.

Are you willing?

Write yourself.

We go into prison for conversation. We come out with something harder to comprehend.

Pat, Saskia, Bernard, Steve and I talked about V.I. Lenin's article "What is to Be Done?" about professional revolutionaries; Raymond Carver's poem "At Least"; and the final lines of Salinger's Catcher in the Rye spoken by Holden Caulfield -- "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do you start missing everybody.".

So taken with
The faultless face and radiance
Of an alluring moon,
My mind goes farther, farther
To reach remote regions of the sky.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

At Interreligious Dialogue this evening Sri Aurobindo's translation and commentary of the Bhagavad Gita. It might be true that by their fruits you may know them, but Sri Krishna says it's unimportant to know the fruits, just to perform each act with pure mind and open heart unattached to the results. We have a right to the act but not to the fruits.

Aurobindo says: "With devotion, without desire."

All existence is a manifestation of God because He is the only existence and nothing can be except as either a real figuring or else a figment of that one reality. Therefore every conscious being is in part or in some way a descent of the Infinite into the apparent finiteness of name and form. But it is a veiled manifestation and there is a gradation between the supreme being of the Divine and the consciousness shrouded partly or wholly by ignorance of self in the finite.
The inner Divinity is the eternal Avatar in man; the human manifestation is its sign and development in the external world.
(Sri Aurobindo)

The ordinary -- there's something ordinary about conversation. Even in prison.

I want to spend the day watching this happen
and reach my own conclusions.
I hate to seem greedy -- I have so much
to be thankful for already.
But I want to get up early one more morning, at least.
And go to my place with some coffee and wait.
Just wait, to see what's going to happen.
(from poem "At Least" by Raymond Carver)

You see -- something takes place. What follows is anybodies guess. You open your ears and listen; you open your mouth and speak. Whatever takes place is...gift.

We don't bother to wait -- we can't. We leave. The saluting corrections guards honoring their brothers and sisters as they entered and left are gone from front door. The room we occupied with inmates is empty and dark. The visitors' desk vacated. The wind has shifted northeast.

Like the question asked on Ascension Day, we ask: Where does conversation go when nothing but silence remains?

Each is left to reach their own conclusion.

We have so much to be thankful for.

We try to comprehend.

Without desire.

With devotion.

Gone where?

This Ascension Thursday I sit on porch of cabin reading student's papers. They are mythic writings on experiences and engagements with life. We wrestle with the ordinary each attempt to place the ordinary into words.

Pure seeing, or mere seeing, is itself the ambiguous gift of being in the world. Where did Jesus go during that event scripture and tradition calls his Ascension?

Are we willing to merely look? Are we capable of seeing in and of itself?

And from this, it appears that pure meditation without thought or object -- practiced in order to achieve pure mind or "purity of heart" and thereby enter the Kingdom of Heaven -- is the one authentic strand of Christian spiritual practice that can be traced through at least fourteen centuries back to Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. (p. 121 in Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven, Reflections on the Tradition of Meditation in Christianity and Zen Buddhism, by Tom Chetwynd, Wisdom Publications, 2001)

Where'd he go? Today is the anniversary of my mother's death. Where'd she go?

"Only by purifying the heart -- the depths of the feeling-mind and the seat of passion -- can we free ourselves from our particular egoistic reactions to which we are tethered by long conditioning. The storm of the ego is always on the surface, but in the depths of the mind there is unlimited peace." (Tom Chetwynd)

Theological and historical speculation aside, there is an opportunity to see through the Ascension.

The heart-mind is what is seeing itself.

In this case, Jesus and Katherine. Purity of heart and depth of mind assist their see through and our seeing through.

They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, "Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there."
(Acts 1:10 - 11)

Calm the storm of ego which always wants things its way. No need to look for reflection when looking for someone. What is looking is what is seeing through the looking.

The same way as you have seen.

Him.

Her.

Today.

We do; we run after illusions.

Sons of men, how long will your hearts be heavy?
Why do you seek for vain things?
Why do you run after illusions?
(from Psalm 4)

The day was odd in the shop. Some talked of NAACP involvement. Some, of dislike of conspiracy theories. Later, reading from book someone left for us, a scatter of opinions that were contentious. The range of opinion fluctuated wildly all day.

Walking along a little path,
I find a footprint on the moss,
A white cloud low on the quiet lake,
Grasses that sweeten an open door,
A pine greener with the rain,
A brook tumbling from a mountain source,
And, mingling with Truth among flowers,
I have forgotten what to say.
- Liu Chang-ch’ing

Four of us -- two dogs, two humans -- walked between streams of divided brook this morning. The flow has cut deeply the ground. It is the way of nature to expose elements to change.

It is good that prisoners find commonality for learning. It is awful to think some in government would use tragedy to manipulate their agenda. It is curious that fidgety reaction would follow the words of someone whose sincerity is surrounded in suspicion.

Even if someone is questionable in our minds, we must first ask ourselves the selfsame question formed for the other.

We must investigate.

No doubt it is the sliver moon.

Practicing respect tries patience.

We suffer seeing only by looking.

Consciousness is changing. That's news to many of us.

Old standards used for thinking about the world have rotted like barn sill with north-west exposure tired from too many storms. New ways of thinking are kidnapped and held for ransom. Until a dollar worth can be affixed, new mind is held captive. Once amortized, new consciousness is parceled like real estate to new entrepreneurs for distribution after signature on loyalty oath.

Everywhere you look
The mountains are covered
With mist and blooming cherry trees.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Dawn rain gives way to sun as Cesco and I climb path along Ragged Mountain. Water sits on every grass blade. Underground springs cannot be contained; they gurgle through soaked surface and run in mime of skiers.

Two planes go down in Iraq. Who will be blamed? Who attacked? Which way war's expansion? In this country we are regaled with news of pedophiles and politicians -- both who use their power to grab what they want.

On the mountain, soft with wet, spring growth burrows through and out. Meditation cabin becomes Wallace Stevens' jar in Tennessee

Anecdote of the Jar

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.
(poem by Wallace Stevens)

It's only, some say, a poem. The first time I heard it (from visiting English teacher Geoffrey the beat poet/singer in New Hampshire in early sixties) I had the old awareness. Now, nearly none. Do I understand? Not much. Nary a clue.


Wallace Stevens is, at times, the exemplary figure of the austere Modernist, shorn of Transcendental excess, wary of its expansionist programme for consciousness: 'Anecdote of the Jar' has been mined by generations of students teasing out its seemingly endless self-referentiality to demonstrate that 'less is more'. The poem is, of course, an ironic critique of the Romantic yearning for the creative interfusion of consciousness and nature as the basis of art. Its circular self-enclosing form seems an austere rebuke to Emerson's more expansive solipsism. Emerson wrote, "The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end', but Steven's circling is a demarcation line, an exclusion zone. Similarly the poem cheats the reader's desire for narrative lift-off; this is an anecdote which leads nowhere, which fends off chatty familiarity, and in which there is no significant joining that transcends its constitutive elements.
(On "Anecdote of the Jar" by Pat Righelato)

In the executive, legislature, and judiciary -- in the media, including news, celebrity, and sports -- there is powerful pressure for each to become what someone thinks they should be.

In the cabin nothing becomes itself.

Chatty ceases; transcending unties.

No identity.

Clueless.

As if as is.

"We'll just have to spend some time silent," said man to woman after she noted him coming in and asked him why there was nobody in church at 8:03am. She went up front. Empty churches are inspiring. On back bench he read yesterday's readings. He's a day late for everything.

Simply reverence the Lord Christ in your hearts, and always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. (1 Peter 3:15)

Got 4.9 gallons of gas for $11.00 at McDucks at corner of Elm and John. Coffee and donut came to $1.20. A classical version of "Knocking on Heaven's Door" was playing on WERU driving Hosmer Pond Road home.

Last night leaving shop Tommy asked what I thought about the conversation that afternoon where somebody was talking about the five Israeli men filming from New Jersey the lower Manhattan crash, burn, and collapse in September 2001 attack. I told him I didn't know what to think. Most times I don't know what to think. If there's evidence, look at it. If there's opinion, listen to it. If there's something to research and investigate, do so.

Form one's own point of view, after investigation and meditation, and continue an open mind. My hope is that there is truth, love, service, and hospitality to be found and shared. I'm willing to opt for attentive presence and compassionate relationality.

21. Flowers Don't Return
A monk asked Kegon, "How about when an enlightened man returns to illusion?" Kegon said, "A broken mirror does not reflect; fallen flowers do not go back to the branch."

[Commentary] This does not mean that an enlightened man is infallible and cannot make mistakes or do bad or foolish things. It means that he partakes of the inevitability of things. Just as flowers make no effort to return to the branch or the broken mirror to be whole again, so the enlightened man does what he does without regret or self-pity.
(from p.89, in Games Zen Masters Play, Writings of R.H. Blyth, ed by Robert Sohl and Audrey Carr)

For now, I'm staying with Blyth's words about partaking of the inevitability of things.

On 61st street and Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn there is a church named after St Athanasius. Today, in another, empty, church, I pray with and for all known at that time in that place and from there to here.

Spending time silent.

Hope, if that's what it is, spings from silence.

Workers untie!

In a short time the world will no longer see me;
but you will see me,
because I live and you will live.
On that day you will understand that I am in my Father
and you in me and I in you.
(John 14:19-20)

Sitting in silence, stove hot, walking three times round, chanting Compline.

There are no half measures but in mind. Everything done, wholeheartedly, is practice. Dogen says, that's enlightenment. And enlightenment?

Dogen said, that's practice.

Each way is whole way.

Sitting at table, sipping soup, words of Hua Hu Ching precede bread.

Cesco barks. It is May.

Untie, untie, untie!

Sometimes a review is necessary.

Back from sitting, lectio with Hua Hu Ching, walk at Snow Bowl along swelled Hosmer Pond, and back from chores picking up food for cat and provisions for hermitage -- I ask Saskia as she begins baking in kitchen whether she considers herself Buddhist. "Yes," she says. I ask if she considers herself Christian. "Yes," she says. Then she asks, "And you?" I answer, "Certainly."

A Buddhist Retreat Behind Broken Mountain Temple

In the pure morning, near the old temple
Where early sunlight lights the tree tops,
My path has wound, through a sheltered hollow
Of boughs and flowers, to a Buddhist retreat.
Here birds are alive with mountain light,
And the mind touches peace in a pool,
A thousand sounds are quieted
By the breathing of a temple bell.
- Ch'ang Chien

Sando and Cesco join us for silent sitting. Mu-ge went across Sally's land to the Spencer's to see if they, at least, had cat food out for their cat. The half-stick of Tibetan incense lasted 38 minutes. My knee thought the incense was malingering.

A superior person cares for the well-being of all things. She does this by accepting responsibility for the energy she manifests, both actively and in the subtle realm. Looking at a tree, she sees not an isolated event but root, leaves, trunk, water, soil and sun: each event related to the others, and "tree" arising out of their relatedness. Looking at herself or another, she sees the same thing. Trees and animals, humans and insects, flowers and birds: These are active images of the subtle energies that flow from the stars throughout the universe. Meeting and combining with each other and the elements of the earth, they give rise to all living things. The superior person understands this, and understands that her own energies play a part in it. Understanding these things, she respects the earth as her mother, the heavens as her father, and all living things as her brothers and sisters. Caring for them, she knows that she cares for herself. Giving to them, she knows that she gives to herself. At peace with them, she is always at peace with herself.
(# Thirty-Seven, in Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu)

Woodchips are rippled on path to cabin from torrential rain. Tumbling brook's joyous sound fills inside of cabin with moving stillness.

"Guess what?" says Saskia as oven beeper tells end of baking time for croissants. "Ok, Ok I'm here, relax," says Saskia to oven.

The Unmanifest manifests.

There is a simplicity to practice.

Awareness transfoms each presentation. Each vibration is filtered and transformed by the presence of each one of us. That's what Rodney, KJ, Everett, and Greg thought about as we worked (ostensibly) in prison yesterday on punctuation by reading Rilke's "The Archaic Torso of Apollo."

In that practice, we must change our lives.

Rilke knew we must change our life. He knew there was no place that didn't see us. He was an artist. He was a poet. They know such things.

There is nothing that can be attained,
no form that can be sought.
Even good things are dispensed with,
so birth and death must be left far behind.
- Records of the Lanka

"Sez who?" asks the woman who peeled an orange during break in class. The woman who quoted that woman was outside. When everyone returned we read interview between Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle:
The enlightened consciousness is rooted in the unmanifested, and ultimately is one with it. It knows itself to be that. One could almost say it is the unmanifested looking out. Even with a simple thing like visually perceiving a form -- a flower or a tree -- if you are perceiving it in a state of great alertness and deep stillness, free of past and future, then at that moment already it is the unmanifested. You are not a person anymore at that moment. The unmanifested is perceiving itself in form. And there is always a sense of goodness in that perception. So then all action arises out of that, and has a completely different quality from action that arises out of the unenlightened consciousness, which needs something and seeks to protect itself. That is really where those intangible and precious qualities come in that we call love, joy, and peace. They are all one with the unmanifested. They arise out of that. A human being who lives in connectedness with that and then acts and interacts becomes a blessing on the planet, whereas the unenlightened human is very heavy on the planet. There is a heaviness to the unenlightened. And the planet is suffering from millions of unenlightened humans. The burden on the planet is almost too much to bear. I can sometimes feel it as the planet saying, "Oh, no more, please."
(from "Ripples on the surface of Being" an interview with Eckhart Tolle by Andrew Cohen, in What Is Enlightenment? Magazine Fall/Winter 2000)

Living in connectedness is not bothered by the distinction made between life and death. It is a false distinction. Talk, if you will, about birth and death as a contrast; life surrounds birth and death. When we surrender to life, we surrender to surroundings.

She was deep within herself, like a woman heavy with child, and did not see the man in front or the path ascending steeply into life. Deep within herself. Being dead filled her beyond fulfillment. Like a fruit suffused with its own mystery and sweetness, she was filled with her vast death, which was so new, she could not understand that it had happened.

She had come into a new virginity and was untouchable; her sex had closed
like a young flower at nightfall, and her hands had grown so unused to marriage
that the god's infinitely gentle touch of guidance hurt her, like an undesired kiss.
(from "Orpheus, Eurydice, Hermes" -- Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Stephen Mitchell)

The exquisite tenderness of the procession.

"Who?" asked Euridice when Hermes told her Orpheus had turned around.

Far away, dark before the shining exit-gates, someone or other stood, whose
features were unrecognizable. He stood and saw how, on the strip of road among
the meadows, with a mournful look, the god of messages silently turned to follow
the small figure already walking back along the path, her steps constricted by the
trailing graveclothes, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.
(Rilke, final lines to poem)

This is a good way to end today -- uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

It is good practice.

After sitting still for a long time, any sane meditator will come to the question, "What the hell am I doing sitting still?"

When suddenly awakened, although you are the same as Buddha, the energy of many lifetimes of habits is deep seated. Though the wind stops, the waves still billow; though noumenon is manifest, thoughts still invade. How can we neglect subsequent cultivation because of a single awakening?
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

That question is a heads-up to the mind that something is going to change. What will change? The mind is put on notice that stupid behavior like sitting still for long periods must be pointing to something, and painful knees, back, and psyche are damn interested in discovering just what it is.


Getting the Machine

It was good to hear
my own voice again
when I called, after
being gone for weeks.
I sounded the same.
I hadn't changed my name;
didn't have a foreign accent.
I just said I couldn't
come to the phone right then,
exactly the way I'd been
saying it for years,
and so I left myself
a little message
saying how sorry
I was I wasn't there,
and that I'd be
home soon. I tried to
think of what I'd want
to hear myself saying
and say it right.
(Poem: "Getting the Machine" by Joyce Sutphen from Naming the Stars. © Holy Cow! Press, 2004.)

Imagine a grand jury. They are attentively waiting for you to wade into the silence of the ripples following the echoes of the question just asked. "Why," asked the prosecutor, "did you and do you sit so long?"

Every inch of you, every joint and extra pound, every belief that sinew and dna have been foolishly hoodwinked into behaving like a stone perched atop a boulder -- all wait for you to open mouth to answer.

Yes, it is stupid, isn't it?

You might even say so.

Except for one thing.

You're not sure why you do it.

You don't know why, do you?

Why do you?

Say it right.

People wait for the unsaid to be finally said. Then, they think, it will all come clear.

No it won't.

Overcome your uncertainties
And free yourself
From dwelling on sorrow.
If you delight in existence,
You will become a guide
To those who need you,
Revealing the path to many.
- Sutta Nipata

What we have in common is the unsaid. The common language is not explanation, apology, or enunciation of some secret teaching. There is no secret teaching.

Be calm and keep watch. The Devil, your enemy, is circling you like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, strong in faith. (1 Peter 5:8-9)

Our common language is deeper than circling and roaring. Our common language is silence; it is stillness.

Silence and stillness is where we go when called into intimacy with what is most real.

Sit a while. Breath naturally. Keep watch. Carefully.

Word is in conversation with the unsaid.

Rain falls through silence splashing roof and earth.

The skies tell the story of the glory of God,
the firmament proclaims the work of his hands;
day pours out the news to day,
night passes to night the knowledge.

Not a speech, not a word,
not a voice goes unheard.
Their sound is spread throughout the earth,
their message to all the corners of the world.
(from Psalm 19)

Mere loveliness of Sunday Evening Practice. Cabin under rain. Deceased elder Janet's table in middle room during rain. Trungpa's story of Buddha's (as Delia called it) Christmas story. There are times when hermitage feels like what it is.

Song of T'aego Hermitage

I've lived in this hermitage
How long I don't know
Deep and secret and
Without obstructions
Heaven and earth meet
Like box and cover:
There's no turning toward
Or turning away.
I do not stay in the east, west,
South or north
The jewel tower and the jade palace
Do not stand opposite me.
I do not take guidelines from
Bodhidharma as a model
As the light shines freely through
Eighty four thousand gates
- T'aego (1301-1382)

Rain is guideline. In middle-night, at least, it is teacher. You see -- community is teacher, teacher is learning, and learning is community. It rains now. I recall other 3:30am's in Trappist guest chapel under rain-chant roof just before entoning voice began night office -- "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise." Invitation joining rain in plain-chant.


Atavistic

I wanted to walk without clothing
in the woods beside the creek,
and to come to the barn at night.

and sleep beside the horses, curled
in the smell and scratch of hay
with the bitch and pups.

The life of the house was flat,
filled with monotonous talking,
passing to and fro among the rooms,

and for what. My mother hated
animals, the way they ate the
food and dirtied the floor.

They were her enemies; she fought
their right to be there and
would have wiped them off the earth

if she could have. If a cat or a dog
came too close to the back door she
threw scalding water on it, and

was righteous in her anger, shouting
that they were not human and
didn't feel real pain.

If we must choose sides, I said
as a child, I take
the side of the animals.
(Poem: "Atavistic" by Irene McKinney from Vivid Companion. © Vandalia Press. )

at·a·vism n.
1. The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence, usually caused by the chance recombination of genes.
2. An individual or a part that exhibits atavism. Also called throwback.
3. The return of a trait or recurrence of previous behavior after a period of absence.
[French atavisme, from Latin atavus, ancestor : atta, father + avus, grandfather; see awo- in Indo-European Roots.]

Mother Church sometimes sides with scalding water and not gentle healing rain. Thomas Cahill said on Meet the Press Sunday morning that Jesus communed with the divorced woman by the well in Gospel story, and did so with clarity and kindness. Why, he wondered, won't the Catholic Church do the same? It does not allow divorced people to receive communion -- to commune with Jesus.

Andrew Sullivan elsewhere warns that all this presentation of softer, kinder image of new pope will wear away and the former Joseph Ratzinger will throwback.

U.S. Prison Population Keeps Growing (From Times Wire Services)

Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week starting in mid-2003, by mid-2004 the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported.

By June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3%, more than the year before, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the last few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.

While the crime rate has fallen over the last decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, the report said. (latimes.com)

During his five years in the SuperMax, Steve said, he wrote some children's books and his life story. The children's books are for his own kids. The cleaned up autobiography -- he's not sure who that's for. K.J. took his social studies test Friday. He said his brain hurt. Joe will get a rest for 30 days away from ordinary duties. He said he did something stupid. We thought it might be a good chance to do some writing for the course. Chris, Greg, and I reviewed material that said comma is called for before conjunction.

We take pause as we connect. The act of joining, of binding together -- One resulting from or embodying a union -- this is the invitation to commune. Communion curls in the smell and scratch of hay; encounters the purrs and yelps as they spontaneously occur.

The Rain

All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.

What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it

that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me

something other than this,
something not so insistent --
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.

Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be, for me, like rain,
the getting out

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
(Poem by Robert Creeley)

The rain remembers me. It falls. Cat stretches on my lap as words fall under rain -- as in dream where I am dancing with (who is it?) Nicole Kidman or my cousin Janet on gymnasium balcony of old grammar school. Diffidence surprised by grace.

Ah! Sound of first Mourning Dove!

Time has fallen to 5:07am.

The grace of it!

Faint light.

Thirty years ago Marge inscribed Fowles' The Magus, "Is anything ever what it seems to be?"

Blessed the one who does not follow the counsels of the wicked... (Psalm 1)

With all the banter and bravado surrounding moral and political issues -- such as America's invasion of Iraq -- there is a remarkable inability on the part of the vast majority of us to accurately and insightfully "read" what is taking place. The current president of the United States, the current pope of the Catholic Church, and the newest "individual" in power, namely, the chief executive officers, the hollywood celebrities, the athletic superstars -- all combine to preach a unified gospel. That gospel is that power, wealth, control, and privilege are what really count in this world -- my will, my belief, my talent, my influence, and my exposure.

The gospel teaching of Jesus is scarcely followed by the church founded in his name. Nor are the words "created equal" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people -- followed faithfully by those entrusted with their care. Add other wise and insightful views such as those by thinkers, mystics, and creative artists and poets throughout history -- these, too, scarcely attended to. We witness a pattern of dull inattentiveness and claim it to be our special freedom -- not seeing it as our sorry fate.

It's the anniversary of the Easter Uprising, in Dublin (1916). A band of Irish nationalists, led by poet Patrick Pearse, occupied the General Post Office and declared Irish independence from Great Britain. The English executed 15 rebels, including Pearse, who promptly became a great Irish martyr.(in The Writer's Almanac, 24April)

Tara Is Grass
The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway:
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low --
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!
(Poem by Padraic Pearse)

Pretender greats and overbearing weighty celebrants of special election or remittance package -- all go to grass and will be given sod as their paycheck. As will we all. It's just that it is difficult to ignore the element of waste and suffering that follows upon false gospel.

Today I long for something more original. I'd rather we saw something worth sharing life and body.

Tara, Goddess of Peace and Protection

The goddess Tara is worshipped in many forms, but the best known are the peaceful, compassionate White Tara, the goddess Tara who protects and brings health, long life and peace, and the more dynamic Green Tara, who is the goddess Tara that brings fertility to the earth, overcomes obstacles, and saves us from physical and spiritual danger.

In Buddhist tradition, Tara is much greater than a goddess -- she is a female Buddha, an enlightened one was has attained the highest wisdom, capability and compassion. The goddess Tara is "one who can take human form and remain in oneness with the universe".

Best known in her Chinese and Hindu incarnations, a version of the Goddess Tara exists in virtually every culture. Indeed, it is said that the Goddess Tara will assume as many forms on earth as there are needs for by the people.

The Celts called their "Great Goddess" Tara. Her name is thought to be the root of the word Tor, which is a mound of earth or hillock imbued with spiritual energy or connection to the spirit world. In Native American legends, the Tara goddess is known by the "Star Woman".

The ancient goddess Tara in her many incarnations has many gifts to share with contemporary women.

Tara embodies the feminine strengths of great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
(http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess_tara.htm)

Maybe it's the full moon, or the damp raw rain in the middle of a depressing news cycle, but I'm ready to declare independence from the idea of nation and country, the idea of race and class, the idea of anyone telling how to become great and secure power and defeat enemies and eliminate threats to your way of acquisitional life.

Socrates, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Gandhi, Krishnamurti, and Robert Lax help with perspective.

And in the beginning was love.
Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it;
the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings,
beginning and end.
Love had a compass
whose whirling dance
traced out a sphere of love
in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.
from Circus of the Sun, by Robert Lax)

When I forget sphere, compass, and center -- I forget love. It is a desolate forgetting.

It is during this desolation I attend words reminding what needs to be embodied, great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.

If these words are grass and earth, I miss the counsel of the old sod.

Return home.

"The brothers usurped." That's what Will said after chapter one of Aurobindo's translation of the Bhagavad Gita begun tonight at the shop. Those that usurp are particularly odious.

Mind is the root of the myriad phenomena. All phenomena are born from mind. If you can completely comprehend mind, the myriad practices are complete. It is like a great tree: all the branches and flowers and fruits grow based on the root. The tree grows only if the root survives. If the root is cut, the tree is sure to die. If you cultivate the Path by comprehending mind, you save effort and success is easy. If you cultivate the Path without comprehending mind, then you waste effort and there is no benefit. Thus we know that all good and evil come from one's own mind. If you seek outside of mind, it is impossible.
- Bodhidharma

Morning teaching. Then conversation in afternoon. It was a long day at prison. In his article a man named Sparrow said that only when he is writing is he a writer. We are reminded that it is not a state of being in which we remain fixed; it is an engaged activity of participation that whiles our existence moment to moment changing.

Nostos

There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
(Poem: "Nostos," by Louise Glück, from Meadowlands (Harper Collins).

Arjuna fights because his home and resources have been usurped by those without regard.

The seduction is not to look. Or, if we happen to look, to explain away what we see.

I think David's complaint in his psalm is the complaint of someone ready to turn and smile at his adversity and its source.

Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?
Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?
Will your wonders be known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
(from Psalm 88)

The final frame is fresh in our minds. We watch the character as he watches those questioning him, those waiting for a response.

"Yes," he answers.

"Yes they will."

Return home.