There was conversation at the Bhagavad Gita reading tonight about simple and complex.

The simple is not involved or complicated; easy.

There is much complexity in being human.

CHAPTER XIV

THE THREE GUNAS

1. The Blessed Lord said: I will again declare the supreme Knowledge, the highest of all knowings, which having known, all the sages have gone hence to the highest perfection.
2. Having taken refuge in this knowledge and become of like nature and law of being with Me, they are not born in the creation, nor troubled by the anguish of the universal dissolution.
3. My womb is the Mahat Brahman; into that I cast the seed; thence spring all beings, O Bharata.
4. Whatever forms are produced in whatsoever wombs, O Kaunteya, the Mahat Brahman is their womb, and I am the Father who casts the seed.
5. The three gunas born of Prakriti, Sattwa, Rajas and Tamas bind in the body, O great-armed one, the imperishable dweller in the body.
6. Of these Sattwa is by the purity of its quality a cause of light and illumination, and by virtue of that purity produces no disease or morbidity or suffering in the nature: it binds by attachment to knowledge and attachment to happiness, O sinless one.
7. Rajas, know thou, has for its essence attraction of liking and longing; it is a child of the attachment of the soul to the desire of objects; O Kaunteya, it binds the embodied spirit by attachment to works.
8. But Tamas, know thou, born of ignorance, is the deluded of all embodied beings; it binds by negligence, indolence and sleep, O Bharata.
9. Sattwa attaches to happiness, rajas to action, O Bharata; tamas covers up the knowledge and attaches to negligence of error and inaction.
10. Now sattwa leads, having overpowered rajas and tamas, O Bharata; now rajas, having overpowered sattwa and tamas; and now tamas, having overpowered sattwa and rajas.
11. When into all the doors in the body there comes a flooding of light, a light of understanding, perception and knowledge, one should understand that there has been a great increase and uprising of the sattwic guna in the nature.
12. Greed, seeking impulsions, initiative of actions, unrest, desire - all this mounts in us when rajas increases.
13. Nescience, inertia, negligence and delusion - these are born when tamas predominates, O joy of the Kurus.
14. If sattwa prevails when the embodied goes to dissolution, then he attains to the spotless worlds of the knowers of the highest principles.
15. Going to dissolution when rajas prevails, he is born among those attached to action; if dissolved during the increase of tamas, he is born in the wombs of beings involved in nescience.
16. It is said the fruit of works rightly done is pure and sattwic; pain is the consequence of rajasic works, ignorance is the result of tamasic action.
17. From sattwa knowledge is born, and greed from rajas; negligence and delusion are of tamas, and also ignorance.
18. They rise upwards who are in sattwa; those in rajas remain in the middle; the tamasic, those enveloped in ignorance and inertia, the effect of the lowest quality, go downwards.
19. When the seer perceives that the modes of Nature are the whole agency and cause of works and knows and turns to That which is supreme above the gunas, he attains to mad-bhava (the movement and status of the Divine).
20. When the soul thus rises above the three gunas born of the embodiment in Nature, he is freed from subjection to birth and death and their concomitants, decay, old age and suffering, and enjoys in the end the Immortality of its self-existence.
21. Arjuna said: What are the signs of the man who has risen above the three gunas, O Lord? What is his action and how does he surmount the gunas?
22. The Blessed Lord said: He, O Pandava, who does not abhor or shrink from the operation of enlightenment (the result of rising sattwa) or impulsion to works (the result of rising rajas) or the clouding over of the mental and nervous being (the result of rising tamas), nor longs after them, when they cease.
23. He who, established in a position as of one seated high above, is unshaken by the gunas; who seeing that it is the gunas that are in process of action stands apart immovable.
24-25. He who regards happiness and suffering alike, gold and mud and stone as of equal value, to whom the pleasant and the unpleasant, praise and blame, honour and insult, the faction of his friends and the faction of his enemies are equal things; who is steadfast in a wise imperturbable and immutable inner calm and quietude; who initiates no action (but leaves all works to be done by the gunas of Nature) - he is said to be above the gunas.
26. He also who loves and strives after Me with an undeviating love and adoration, passes beyond the three gunas and he too is prepared for becoming the Brahman.
27. I (the Purushottama) am the foundation of the silent Brahman and of Immortality and imperishable spiritual existence and of the eternal dharma and of an utter bliss of happiness.
( -- From The Bhagavad Gita, as translated by Sri Aurobindo)

I agree with Pierre Teilhard de Chardin -- the more complexity the more consciousness.

If anything is simple, it is that complexity is the field within which we live, and move, and have our being.

Even with flooding of light it is all far beyond me.

Things are not what we say they are. Things are always and only what they are.

Calming the Mind

Too much knowledge
Leads to overactivity;
Better to calm the mind.
The more you consider,
The greater the loss;
Better to unify the mind.
- Shih Wang Ming (6th century)

To inquire, to ask into something, is to investigate things as they are.

But you have spurned and rejected him;
you are enraged against your anointed.
You have repudiated the covenant of your servant,
you have trampled his crown in the dust.
You have demolished his walls
and laid his fortifications in ruins.
Anyone who passes can despoil him;
he is a mockery among his neighbours.
( from Psalm 88 (89))

We have got to face something as it is. Not as we wish it to be.

We'll ask this in prison in the morning: how does something being what it is transform the whole world?

Don't give a psychological answer to this, rather, give an essential answer.

No explanation.

Just be it.

At times you are simply tired.

When the mind is properly adjusted
And quietly applied
The Way is attainable;
But when you are too fervently bent
On it, your body grows tired;
When your body is tired, your spirit
Becomes weary.
When you spirit is weary, your discipline
Will relax, and with relaxation of
Discipline, there follows many distractions
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

When that happens, rest.

Walking trail up Bald Rock Mountain in Lincolnville Monday afternoon. It begins to rain. Cool rain on hot dry mountain. One step after another. Dogs apace. Two Canadian women ahead. Just roots and rocks with rain soaking relief through climb. Just that.

And when That is seen in its
immanence and transcendence
Then the ties that have bound the
Heart are loosened, the doubts
Of the mind vanish, and the law
Of karma works no more.
- Mundaka Upanishad

Later Saskia takes friends from Ontario for early evening sail. Windless drift off bell buoy 2 and Curtis Island, they catch up with downpour again rowing back to dock. Their swordfish and salad, I'm told, was placed on plate downstairs just after 11pm.

Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
(--Julius Caesar, born in Rome around 100 B.C.)

In America, slash and burn arrogance begins to fray at edges. For the president, the shadows of second term scandal creep from behind curtain. July slows nearing fulcrum mid-month pause -- a baseball all-star game today, a deputy chief-of-staff finally revealed as source for CIA agent name-leak, Jane in a novel dies as Rose and Son are given her family's land surrounding home for unwed mothers in Kentucky. The days quietly stretch alongside reading material and silent watchfulness.

The Writer's Almanac tells that today is the birthday of Henry David Thoreau.
He was 27 years old when he built that little cabin on the edge of Walden Pond and moved in, in an attempt, he said, to "Simplify, simplify, simplify ... to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach."

When Jesus said: "This is my body...This is the cup of the new and eternal covenant," he was teaching essential facts of life. We are -- each and all of us -- the bread and wine, yogurt and strawberry muffins of existence. The very "stuff" of the universe and creation is the very "stuff" of religious symbolism. "Tat tvam asi" -- we are that, "That" is what we are. Jesus was a profound teacher. He refused to make God other, nor did he claim equality with God something to be grasped at.

It is Tuesday. A bumble bee surveys screen at window. Birds ask about sunflower seed. Sun slants across paper in milk crate. Truck climbs Barnestown Road.

Gratitude at being alive types these words. Even as I am being killed in London, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Mid-west, in Cuba, Haiti, and along the Florida panhandle -- I sit in the pause of gratitude for...

Being,

Alive.

"Listen!"

The first word of Benedict's Rule is "Ausculta" -- Listen -- carefully, with the ear of the heart!

When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of the sun and moon. When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe. Then you have the same function as the sun and moon.
- Liu I-Ming

We must continue to listen. Listening incorporates, incarnates, and we embody what is embraced.

St Benedict (480 - 547)
Benedict was born at Nursia, in Umbria, and studied in Rome; but he was unable to stomach the dissolute life of the city, and he became a solitary hermit at Subiaco. His reputation spread, and some monks asked him to be their abbot, but they did not like the discipline he imposed and tried to poison him.
(http://www.universalis.com/)

He didn't die, not then. He went on to be an inspiration for monastics, male and female. (But what is it about us that the inclination to kill what we do not like or understand is so strong?)

Just as there exists an evil fervour, a bitter spirit, which divides us from God and leads us to hell, so there is a good fervour which sets us apart from evil inclinations and leads us toward God and eternal life. Monks should put this fervour into practice with an overflowing love: that is, they should surpass each other in mutual esteem, accept their weaknesses, either of body or of behaviour, with the utmost patience; and vie with each other in acceding to requests. No one should follow what he considers to be good for himself, but rather what seems good for another. They should display brotherly [and sisterly] love in a chaste manner; fear God in a spirit of love; revere their abbot with a genuine and submissive affection. Let them put Christ before all else; and may he lead us all to everlasting life. (From the Rule of Benedict, abbot; Put Christ before everything)

"All else" might be diversion of mind that cannot accept the wholeness of what is as-it-is and thereby creates "elseness" to inaugurate the process of mental differentiation leading to exclusion and fragmentation. "All else" is what stands between us and the ever-present wholeness we call "God."

To put Christ before all else is to avoid dissembling by entering directly the monastic embrace of the Christ Reality.

There is much sadness in the world. From bombings and bullets to bombast and bullying -- so many have so much difficulty finding a clear and safe path upon which to walk.

Poem

The unspoiled colors of a late summer night,

The wind howling through the loft pines --

The feel of autumn approaching;

The swaying bamboos keep resonating,

And shedding tears of dew at dawn;

Only those who exert themselves fully

Will attain the Way,

But even if you abandon all for the ancient path

of meditation,

You can never forget the meaning of sadness.
(from The Zen Poetry of Dogen, Steven Heine)

Exert ourselves, yes. But more -- Exhort, that is, encourage ourselves fully! This exhortation to listen is powerful practice. And not to shrink from what is heard.

This listening is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive.

Thank you, Benedict!

A friend argues portioned information, portioned revelation. (Something portioned is a part separated from a whole.) He believes Jesus gave secret teaching to some, and befuddling stories to others. He holds to the many and the elect template.

I don't.

If you desire to attain enlightenment, you should steadily walk the Way with a resolute heart, with courage, and be fearless in whatever environment you may happen to be. Destroy every evil influence that you may come across; for thus you shall reach the goal.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

The philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) spoke of "bracketing" in a way that puts the word "destroy" in perspective.
Phenomenological reduction is also a method of bracketing empirical intuitions away from philosophical inquiry, by refraining from making judgments upon them. Husserl uses the term "epoche" (Greek, for "a cessation") to refer to this suspension of judgment regarding the true nature of reality. Bracketed judgment is an epoche or suspension of inquiry, which places in brackets whatever facts belong to essential Being.

Husserl argues that bracketing is a neutralization of belief. Doxic positing (i.e. the positing of belief) may be actual or potential. Doxic positing may occur in every kind of consciousness, because every consciousness may actually or potentially posit something about Being.
(--from "Husserl'’s Ideas on a Pure Phenomenology and on a Phenomenological Philosophy" at http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/husserl.html)

To destroy literally means to pile up. Do we destroy -- that is, pile up to the side -- so that a new passageway might be found? Is this destroying also applicable to any of, or all, our beliefs?

What is Jesus saying? What does it mean to say that the mysteries of heaven are revealed to you?
"Listen, anyone who has ears!"
Then the disciples went up to him and asked, "Why do you talk to them in parables?" "Because" he replied "the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven are revealed to you, but they are not revealed to them. For anyone who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough; but from anyone who has not, even what he has will be taken away. The reason I talk to them in parables is that they look without seeing and listen without hearing or understanding. So in their case this prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled:
You will listen and listen again, but not understand,
see and see again, but not perceive.
For the heart of this nation has grown coarse,
their ears are dull of hearing, and they have shut their eyes,
for fear they should see with their eyes,
hear with their ears,
understand with their heart,
and be converted
and be healed by me.
(from Matthew 13)

The reality of the kingdom of heaven is revealed. Some say, and I'd agree, it is revealed here and now. The mysteries are revealed.

We see it by listening.

We hear it by looking.

This seeming paradox is cross-learning.

By listening and listening we see more. By looking and looking we hear more. Many and some do not listen nor do they look. We grow course in our closed passageways. We remain insulated and detached when we refuse to break through ossified and separative walls.

These walls, in heart and mind, restrain us from experiencing the pain of compassion and integration. We are -- all of us -- of the whole. We are not parts to be distributed and dispersed into geographies and categories of separateness.

The evil influence to deny what-is, to ignore the ground reality of existence itself -- must be put aside, piled off to the side -- so that we might pass through to what-is, to the ground reality of existence itself.

Peter Russell says, "We don't create reality; we create our experience of reality." (Russell is author of From Science To God: The Mystery of Consciousness and the Meaning of Light.)

Meher Baba said: "Don't worry; Be happy." Genuine Reality is not something to worry about. Genuine Reality is something in and with which to be happy. We might not be able to see God because God is not some thing to see. But in our looking and in our listening we might become aware of the permeating presence of looking-Itself, of listening-Itself -- within and as our looking and listening.

The secret teaching of Jesus is that there is no secret teaching.

Christ-Reality is revealed. It is whole.

It is revealed as referred to in the "Our Father" where the words say: "On earth (as it is) in heaven."

"As it is." This is the revelation of wholeness. We are not other than "as it is."

In the open.

As love is.

On/in.

Earth/heaven.

Another way of seeing things.

I was wondering during Lauds at Saturday Morning Practice what it would be like to be Christian. Not in name. But in fact. To become the Way of Christ?

By a green jade lake,
What a wonderful sight:
An old hermit fathoming Tao.
Aren't they the lucky ones,
Humble and still,
Quietly humming the
Melodies of heaven?
- Loy Ching-Yuen

I was wondering what it would be like to follow the Tao, the Way.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly [and sisterly] love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with God's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay,"says the Lord. On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
(Romans 12:9-21 New International Version)

I was wondering why so many people call themselves Christian. Paul, and Jesus before him, attempted to be Christian. They arrived at words that are seldom, if ever, contemplated and enacted.

Let's not call ourselves what we are unwilling to enact.

Let's first step onto the Way. Then, embody the Way. Where, in silence and in active word, we do what we are.

To be what we are we must become what we are.

For this, love must be sincere.

I watched five women sit in a circle on the deck. They were smoking cigarettes.

Passions grow from the will
The will grows from thought and imagination:
When both are calmed,
There is neither sensualism nor transmigration.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

It's hard to comprehend that the smoking of cigarettes continues.

That's only one thing I don't comprehend.

Another has to do with blowing up people with bombs.

That's two.

Too many.

The answer: conversation.

This is work that is alive,
Effervescent, free, liberated,
Gloriously enlightened, true,
And great.
Do you think it can be attained
By people who shut the door
And sit quietly with blank minds?
- Liu I-Ming

The question: What creates hope when bombs and bullets destroy faith?

For the suffering of those innocently hurt and killed in London -- and for the suffering of those who knowingly set off explosives -- our prayers.

Even in silence conversation is sacred.

Let's begin one.

Kindness. That's his religion. So says the Dalai Lama. It's his birthday.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
(-- Dalai Lama)

His religion -- and, his philosophy.

Kindness isn't for saps or doormats. Sometimes kindness is harsh and cracks the shell that covers who we really are. We say at those times, "Thank you for the kindness."

Of course we're grateful. Only when we are who we really are can we be grateful.

Be kind to yourself.

Freedom is good. Independence is good. Where these two good things wish to go is toward a loving and just interdependence.

Heaven and heart
Remain peacefully unmoved,
Yet their life breath is
Unceasing, and is seldom
Known to rest.
The sun and moon continue on
Their courses day and night,
Yet their light has not changed
Through the ages.
Late at night when others rest,
Sitting alone I look deep into my heart.
Distractions cease, truth alone becomes
Manifest as dew appears at dawn.
The mind is then free and responsive.
- Hung Ying-ming (~1596)

It was quite radical to declare freedom toward self-reliance and equality of each with all. We must remember the revolutionary roots of this step. We are inclined to forget what we in the United States were throwing off -- namely: fear, no or false representation, unresponsive authority, being controlled by an established and privileged order ruled by out-of-touch arrogance. It is time to remember -- and to pray for our country, again.

How To Be a Poet
(to remind myself)

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill -- more of each
than you have -- inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your work,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
There are only sacred places
And desecrated places.
(Poem: "How To Be a Poet" by Wendell Berry from Given New Poems, Shoemaker, Hoard, Washington, D.C.)

Let us be a sacred place...

Again.

Enjoy freedom!

At table tonight a guest says she undertakes an adventure. Quite without choice she is given change -- husband dies, material possessions gone, new direction begun.

The curious gift of independence.

Today she is Buddhist Nun Ru,
Yesterday she was Teacher Wang.
Although born to wear silken gauze,
She now wears only the roughest hemp.
Mouths that open and spew out lofty talk
Have no interest in becoming buddhas.
Leap out of the cauldron of right and wrong,
Cut off completely the road of life and death,
Then enter tiger's lair and demon's palace
With a heart that feels not the slightest fear.
- Zhenru

Fear constricts. No one is meant to fear God. Love expands. This is how God sees.

At the shop, hanging from balcony, American flag alongside Canadian flag. No country stands alone. We stand together, side by side.

Nunc Dimittis *

Little time now
and so much hasn't
been put down as I
should have done it.
But does it matter?
It's all been written
so well by my betters,
and what they wrote
has been my joy.

*"Nunc dimittis" are words from the Vulgate Latin
translation of the New Testament,
Luke 2:29, Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine . . .
-- "Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord."
(by James Laughlin)

Once we fought for freedom. We have to find it again.

It is time to word justice without gunpowder.

Say it better. Say love. A curious gift.

That which is form.

Is emptiness.

Obverse.

Converse.

Too.

What is Laura Common?

Take up a pencil. Draw a circle. Write the words "What Is" inside the circle. Then write the names of a dozen people you know. Write the names of a dozen countries, a dozen animals, plants, birds, bodies of water, asylums, hospitals, prisons, cemeteries, and situations that have occurred in your life to date.

Look at the circle. Familiarize yourself with what is written there. This is your mind. This is mind itself. This is also your life. This actually is life itself. Everything encompassed by your gaze, everything included (as well as the hundreds of thousands of not yet included names) within your watchfulness -- is you. Everything is me. Everything -- all that is -- is of one another.

I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
You return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
You accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all beings in the world.
- Lao Tzu

Now, in order to transcend the inclination to believe there is an inside of the circle and an outside of the circle, erase the circle line. The template form that helped us at the beginning has evaporated. There is no inside. There is no outside.

There is only each and every one of us, each and every thing, place, name, being.

Each of us is what is. Side by side. Each in all. All in each. Each self in all being. Each being in all self. An unbroken wholeness. Without exclusion. Nothing unexcluded. Each, and all, seeing. Each, all, seen.

This is what is -- looking and seeing we watch out for one another. We look into one another. We see Itself -- Itself being what is carefully embracing each and all as it is.

With simplicity, patience, compassion.

This is a Laura Common. A Laura Common is where each finds each. A Laura Common is when each sees all. It is how all looks at each. It is why all is all and each is each -- in, with, through, and as one another.

A Laura Common is a practice of wholeness. It is practiced by individuals longing to be what they are -- namely, undivided. It is a simple, patient, and compassionate being in the world with eyes open, heart open, and mind open.

Tell one another what you see. Share what your listening receives. Embrace the silence and stillness you find in the presence of one and all.

Then do the next thing there to do. Mindfully, with care, and with no special effort. Merely act with what is inviting your action; come to something without knowing why.

Support a Laura Common. Grow your own. Visit one another. With deep listening and loving speech recognize what is present in our midst.

Reconcile all beings.

July/August 2005 Meetingbrook Hermitage Bookshop/Bakery Update
An Invitation for Subscriptions
To Support Meetingbrook Harbour Retreat Dedicated to Interreligious & Interdependent Dialogue -— Unveiling and Practicing Peace Between Ways.

Dear Community and Ever-present Friends of Meetingbrook,

We begin our 10th year. We love being here. Our goal is to stay at the harbour. We are asking the larger Meetingbrook community for additional support in order to keep Meetingbrook’s Harbour Retreat on Bayview Street open. We’re beginning a Laura Subscription to Meetingbrook.

A “Laura” is a footpath or trails that individuals, (historically, hermits or solitaries), walk to connect with others. Meetingbrook’s Laura embraces any individual interested in the convergence of their inner and outer life. We see the Harbour Retreat as a central connecting place, a Laura Common, for individuals to come to for refreshment and sustenance on their particular spiritual, meditative, active, contemplative, or intellectual life of prayer and learning. Our koan with us since 1996 is: Embodying the dwelling place of the Alone; Stepping aside to make room for Another!

Ostensibly a bookshop and bakery, the real purpose of Meetingbrook Harbour Retreat is to be a center for conversation, contemplation, and community in the heart of Camden. It is a place where anyone can drop in for conversations that range from the serious to the silly, from spiritual inquiry to practical exchange of skills and knowledge. Primarily, it is hospitality.

Our time, and the time of the people who staff and support the harbour shop, is all given voluntarily. We are only secondarily a place that offers books, music, baked goods, and assorted items for sale. Hence our request for support. For the first nine years of the shop we supported the harbour location (happily) with our other employment -- workers comp audits and teaching. We now need to share the costs of rent, oil, wood, and utilities with those interested in preserving the space at the harbour. The donations will be used to cover the $18,500 yearly cost to run the harbour site.

Both visitors and locals genuinely enjoy the shop and its location. These friends from near and far grace our doors. As the public face of Meetingbrook Hermitage, we emphasize community, learning, and sharing. Living a contemplative and meditative life in the open is our practice and invitation. Here is an opportunity to cultivate such a space.

He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)

Subscriptions: When you make a donation to Meetingbrook, this is what we have to offer you:
1. A place on the harbour to gather daily for conversation, coffee, tea, and the practice of
community – all on the house. All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal.
2. Use of the Harbour Room. Free borrowing of any used/or Laura Library books, tapes.
3. Sails with Saskia in summer. Use of rowboat at shop.
4. Use of patio anytime, of gas barbeque grill, of food offered in hospitality.
5. A forum for structured conversations and a place for personal expression of growth.
6. A loosely-knit association and membership in a community that is open, interested, and
engaged in active practice of hospitality and compassion with one another.
7. A place of intellectual and spiritual practice of deep listening and loving speech.
8. A chance to be yourself. To be heard. And to listen.
9. The opportunity to be part of a Laura Common -- an unusual expression of an evolving
consciousness rooted in everyday individual solitude and shared community life.
10. Computor and wireless internet access for all to use at the harbour location.
11. Note – Any and all donations are welcome. We’ll show our appreciation by giving
• A 10% yearlong discount on books and music for donations of $50.00 or more.
• For donations of $500.00 or more -- a 20% yearlong discount, as well as two overnights in the Harbour Room based on availability.

We will ask for donations each year. If there is an interest and a willingness to give to the continuation of Meetingbrook at the harbour, we will gratefully continue to cultivate the practice of presence. If we do not near the amount needed to pay the expenses of the place, we will quietly return the donations made and resume the life of Meetingbrook at Ragged Mountain. Let’s see how it goes.

Thank you for the opportunity to deepen the practice of community with you. We would like to receive any donation, or pledge of one, by the first week of September, 2005.

Sincerely, in the Way and the Dharma,
Bill, Saskia, Sando, Cesco, Mu-ge, and all who grace Meetingbrook

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is a Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis, i.e., a School of Gratefulness and Contemplation. Bookshop and Bakery opened 29 June1996. Hermitage was formed as a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization in 1998 for the purpose of serving as a place of collation and recollection for the side-by-side practice and study of Buddhist Zen Meditation, Christian Contemplative Prayer, and the Engaged Service flowing from each. Central to Meetingbrook is its Laura Common – dedicated to a forum for individuals sharing practice with others, and its Schola -- dedicated to Interreligious & Interdependent Dialogue —Unveiling and Practicing Peace Between Ways. Donations are always gratefully accepted for the continuance and deepening of Meetingbrook. Visit www.meetingbrook.org 207-236-6808 Please send your donations to Meetingbrook, 50 Bayview St., Camden, Maine 04843 -- Thank you!

Tomorrow begins our tenth year at the harbor hermitage location in the form of bookshop and bakery.

Today the State of Maine said we are recognized as a house of religious worship.

At Tuesday Evening Conversation, after reading from Zen and the Kingdom of Heaven, we spoke about the importance of the mind remaining in the body. It is there that we can come to see and understand all there is to see and understand.

Consider worship as devotedly and intentionally holding another or others in high esteem. Consider religious as that which holds us connected.

To be a house of religious worship, then, is the practice attempting to embrace what-is, and hold what-is whole by means of devoted and intentional interest in one another. This form is a sign of life lived in simplicity, integrity, and faithful engagement -- life lived in study, practice, and service -- in the name of what is holy.

Stripped of reason my mind is blank
Emptied of being my nature is bare
At night my windows often breathe white
The moon and stream come right to the door.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

Wherever men and women encounter each other with deep listening and loving speech, where yes, wholeness, and compassion take precedence over their lack -- it is there that religious and spiritual life is grounded in What-Is-Real.

There's a red Ford used econoline van in the dooryard. It has a hydraulic lift for wheelchair or any other necessary uplift. The brown caravan ends its good service by relinquishing its gears and shifting. It sits in a back field traded in Belfast with a daisy tucked under windshield wiper.

We love our hermitage life. The sacrament of encounter with the one who shows up in our midst on any given day is what Meetingbrook quietly longs for and attends.

We don't pray for holiness; holiness comes as prayer for one another. And prayer is holding one another in light and understanding.

From the rising of the sun to its setting, What-Is-Holiness is to be praised!

It comes to us to do the right thing. Always, it is up to each one of us.

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you're lured to watch,
Are a wall before the truth.
- Sogyo (18th century)

The film must fall. Wax melt. Veil lift. Masks removed. It is time to allow truth to return. Let hope be permitted.

This is prayer -- to bring again to the open what has fallen into closed rooms and darkened motivations.

It comes to you, and us -- truly we are the ones it comes to.

Who are we? We are any one of us willing to enter, and be entered by, truth.

We are where light seeks to finds its way through.

Choose light. Be shone through. Please. See for yourself. Come through!

No lure. No watching.

Simply Itself.

You, seeing Itself.

Lightning and thunder roll over Bald Mountain. Sando crawls under desk. She doesn't like thunder and lightning.

Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had mourned him and buried him at Ramah, his own town. Saul had expelled the necromancers and wizards from the country.(1 Samuel 28:3-4)

Watching Donald Rumsfeld on three different Sunday news programs -- he skillfully buries any thought he might be mistaken about what the Pentagon has loosed in Iraq.

Sando wraps herself around chair leg and computer wires -- knocking to floor the odd unattached whatnot.

She hides from what terrifies her.

I wonder what terrifies the Secretary of Defense.

I'd like to think kindly of him.
Not be terrified.
As rain begins.

Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations -- there you'll find the essence of true art, religion, and science.
- Santoka Taneda - tr. John Stevens

Rumsfeld offers war. Santoka, poems.

We move silently
In the cold rain
Carrying the white boxes in front

Will the town
Throw a festival
For those brought back as bones
(Santoka Taneda, last of the wandering beggar-monks, wrote these haiku in 1937 protesting against the savage Sino-Japanese war.)

The poet speaks and I accept his words.

I reject the war-maker's offer.

Poetry is insight pointing things out.

Wherever and whenever
The mind is found
Attached to anything,
Make haste to detach
Yourself from it.
When you tarry for
Any length of time
It will turn again into
Your old home town.
- Daito Kokushi (1282-1334)

Everything is gift. There is nothing to hold on to. We are asked to enjoy the ride.

Let go.

I sent an email to my internet provider. They've tried twice to break through the telephone company's own koan, "If you'd like to make a call, please hang up and try again."
Hello Patrick,
I left a message on your voice mail Thursday asking a third attempt to get DSL hooked up to my number at 50 Bayview Street in Camden.
If this attempt meets with success I'll have solved the Zen koan, "What does the third thing have to do with one and two?" (This is a very profound riddle. It solves the previously unsolved koan, "Not one, not two.")
Please dismiss my previous email that said I'll not be trying number three. Or, find me a Zen Master with only two arms, two legs, two eyes, and two ears who nods yes to three without dismissing one and two.
Best,
Bill

Let's go.
(Please visit http://meetingbrook.org/update.htm)

Here's the question: If you see something from every point of view, are you only looking at yourself?

Utter emptiness has no image,
Upright independence does not rely on anything.
Just expand and illuminate the original truth
Unconcerned by external conditions.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091 -- 1157)

There's a tricky issue around seeing only yourself: you're either an egoistic narcissist, or you're simply enlightened.

When John first felt Jesus' approach, then finally saw him, he was encountering the one reality that is distributed everywhere, yet not anywhere else but where it is.

John the Baptist is the only saint in the calendar who has two feasts to himself: one, in August, to celebrate his death, and one, in June, to celebrate his birth. And this is as it should be, for as Christ himself said, John was the greatest of the sons of men.
The greatest, but also the most tragic. A prophet from before his birth, leaping in the womb to announce the coming of the incarnate God, his task was to proclaim the fulfilment of all prophecies -- and thus his own obsolescence. And he did it: with unequalled courage he spread the news that he, the greatest of all men, was the least in the kingdom of heaven. His disciples, and the devil, would have preferred him to fight, to build his sect, to defeat this upstart whom he himself had baptized, to seize his place in history. But he did not -- and so, rightly, he has his place, and he has glory in heaven.
We envy the great and the talented, and sometimes we think that they themselves are beyond envy. But when they come across someone with greater gifts, as one day most of them will, they will see for the first time what it means to feel like us. Let us pray that they, like John the Baptist, may pass that test.
http://www.universalis.com/-400/today.htm

Saskia shows me some pictures from New Brunswick. "I found this roll of film in the car. I thought it was something else -- but it's not."

She's right. Something is never something else. It is always and only itself.

That's something to appreciate.

This is what we come to see after long last.

Each is always and only itself.

In emptiness; utterly so.

In the small room off dining room thirty years ago today my father died. He wasn't going to walk down the back stoop another time. Heart, they said. It broke.

Though night after night
The moon is stream-reflected,
Try to find where it has touched,
Point even to a shadow.
- Takuan (1573 - 1645)

The monk Raub's words were read at conversation tonight. Idols are what the false self is never good enough to please. The true Father says it's all right. We are accepted as the Father Itself is accepted.

My father always said "OK" those times of my life when meaning and heartbreak vied for the upper hand. His subtle acceptance accompanied me through.

Right where we are -- that's where we begin, always -- right where we are.

And if someone should erroneously say you're not good enough, do not believe them.

Say, "So what?"

Innocently.