In the Stigmata, it is said, Francis of Assisi received into his body imprints of the wounds experienced by Jesus. Often, since, much is made of blood and pain -- suggesting a miraculous mirroring of inflicted torture that serves to illustrate closeness of recipient to Christ.

In a culture that holds as sacred and patriotic the infliction of torture, there might be a need to break free of such a particular interpretation. Torture is only torture. Jesus was not sacred because he was tortured -- he was holy despite it. Governments are not noble or peace-loving because they torture non-believers of their creed and constitution, they are simply torturers seeking to punish, protect, and convert. Torture inflicts pain and is used by those willing and able to torture in order to justify a belief in a way of life that, in itself, is contradicted and opposed by means of the very torture inflicted.

Those who awaken never rest in one place.
Like swans, they rise and leave the lake.
On the air they rise and fly an invisible course.
Their food is knowledge.
They live on emptiness.
They have seen how to break free.
Who can follow them?
(- Buddha in the Dhammapada)

Under rain on roof of cabin during Saturday Morning Practice we end chanting Lauds with added words acknowledging Francis' stigmata. We prayed that we, too, might come to appreciate and love the body of Christ as we encounter it in ourselves and in others. We asked that we might love, respect, extend, and receive -- in the company of one another -- the radiance of the body of Christ in this existence.

It would be a limitation to equate love with torture and pain. Buddha said there is suffering in life, and there is. Jesus said there is love in life, and there is. Buddha and Jesus both embodied their correct relationship with the whole of the world and thus experienced both suffering and love. The marks of Jesus are as much in the green wet leaf this rainy morning as in his once and forever hands and eyes. The marks of Buddha are as much in the fallen-numb legs sitting in silence as they are in the apricot jam and chocolate donut on plate at hermitage table.

The art of embodiment is the practice of open, acknowledging, embrace of the world as it presents itself to us. "Itself" might mean "God" to one person, and "The Real" to another. However we choose or are able to conceive or see what-is-itself, there is an enormity of the yet-unknown ahead of us to be revealed.

Arts Councils
(for Jacques Barzaghi)

Because there is no art
There are artists

Because there are no artists
We need money

Because there is no money
We give

Because there is no we
There is art
(Poem "Arts Councils" by Gary Snyder, from Axe Handles.)

Art is how we see and what we make of what we see.

Suddenly, outside my window, steady crescendoing rain!

One dog barks across the street. Britta (a visiting German Shepherd) climbs stairs after Saskia. Sando (rife with cancer) rests in front room, Cesco stretches in middle room as cat steps gingerly past.

The body of Christ, the mind of Buddha, and the splashing sounds of heaven/nirvana occur on road and eaves.

Peace flows through the art of instrumentality -- the art of forgiveness, interdependence, and humble engagement of what we do not yet understand.

There are far too many methods and instruments of torture.

May we, on this remembrance of Francis' embodiment of the whole Christ, be instruments of peace!

A woman is frightened. Her mind tells her that her body is dying. She is divided into mental and physical. They are not speaking with one another. They are unwilling to stand together, or sit together, as one form. She is being torn apart.

How do we consist? [Latin consistere, to stand still, to be composed of : com-, intensive pref.; see com- + sistere, to cause to stand; see st- in Indo-European Roots.]

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. Ralph Waldo Emerson

We stand with -- or sit with -- one another as each makes their journey through this place we call here and now. "Consistency" -- n 1: the property of holding together and retaining its shape; "when the dough has enough consistency it is ready to bake" [syn: consistence, body] 2: a harmonious uniformity or agreement among things or parts [syn: consistence] [ant: inconsistency] 3: logical coherence and accordance with the facts; "a rambling argument that lacked any consistency" 4: (logic) an attribute of a logical system that is so constituted that none of the propositions deducible from the axioms contradict one another

Down to the stream
to watch the jade flow
or back to the cliff
to sit on a boulder.
Mind like a lone cloud
clinging to nothing;
what do I need in the faraway world?
- Cold Mountain

The faraway world is not faraway. What we need as it nears to us is a wise consistency. We are faced all the time with a foolish consistency (holding on to ideas that make no sense, that are loud repetitions of deadening fears) -- and are uncertain how to stand still and be still with a subtle wisdom that whispers: "All is well, as you are well, and will be well." Julian of Norwich notes this quiet assuring voice and shares it with us.

Porch Swing in September

The porch swing hangs fixed in a morning sun
that bleaches its gray slats, its flowered cushion
whose flowers have faded, like those of summer,
and a small brown spider has hung out her web
on a line between porch post and chain
so that no one may swing without breaking it.
She is saying it's time that the swinging were done with,
time that the creaking and pinging and popping
that sang through the ceiling were past,
time now for the soft vibrations of moths,
the wasp tapping each board for an entrance,
the cool dewdrops to brush from her work
every morning, one world at a time.
(Poem: "Porch Swing in September" by Ted Kooser, from Flying at Night. University of Pittsburgh Press.)

The fragile web holds fast and gently the swing.

This fragile web is authentic community. It holds together on dew-fog mornings our beings in one form. The day might make us move and tear the web from its moorings. But then, with consistency in September, the weaver of the tender web ties all of everything together through the night of our resting.

As we stand, or sit, still with one another, repair and healing -- however temporary -- takes place.

We, each of us, are that place.

Rest well.

The holy crossing is cebebrated in our midst.

If we are affixed to light, what else is there?

There is nothing else.

All the objects of the senses
Interact and yet do not.
Interacting brings involvement.
Otherwise, each keeps its place.
Eye and sights, ear and sounds,
Nose and smells, tongue and tastes;
Thus with each and every thing,
Depending on these roots,
The leaves spread forth.
- Shitou Xiqian (700--790)

The tree of life spreads forth in both light and dark. We do not fear the terrors of the night. Night gives way to day; day lays down at night. We do not fear the terrors of the day.

We come to place ourselves in the midst of one another. Just as every line has a middle, and each moment a core that holds true no matter how a thing expands or contracts, we remain still and quiet at center of one another.

It is this presence, this no-elsewhere, that light crosses itself with what is called love.

You are in our midst, O Lord, your name we bear -- do not forsake us. (Jeremiah 14:9). Do not leave us. It is the celebration of the Holy Cross. The holy crossing. Where. in our core, in our very middle, what is holy -- the One-of-God -- is passing through.

At that time Jesus said to the multitudes of the Jews: Now is the judgment of the world; now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all things to Myself. (Now this He said, signifying what death He should die.) The multitude answered Him: We have heard out of the law, that Christ abideth forever; and how sayest Thou: The Son of man must be lifted up? Who is this Son of man? Jesus therefore said to them: Yet a little while the light is among you. Walk whilst you have the light, that the darkness overtake you not. And he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. Whilst you have the light, believe in the light that you may be the children of light.
(Gospel: John 12:31-36)

Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani wrote: "True emptiness is nothing less than what reaches awareness in all of us as our own absolute self-nature." (Keiji Nishitani, p.106 in Religion and Nothingness)

Now, it is written, is the judgment of the world. The world, with all its promises for the future, and all its explanations of the past, cannot abide the searing scrutiny of now. The world experiences the delusion and denial it has become in the light of loving gaze that silently presents it with the question: "What are you doing to each and any of these my children?"

It is now we die. It is now we are born. Between birth and death -- there is only, and always, now. Now is the question that waits, with fierce kindness, our response.
We must respond. We have to. And we might be terrified of our response.

But stay a while -- right there -- ponder a moment, let go of fear, open your mouth, and, give your response. Now. Then close your mouth, close your fear, close your future and your past. For, something very odd and unusual is taking place. Something startling and unnerving is about to occur. Whatever your response, whatever you say or do not say, and whatever you reveal in this moment -- in this now -- is suddenly, completely, and uncompromisingly -- forgiven. Right here, in the midst of your very journey, your very life -- you find yourself -- forgiven, everything.

This judgment of now leaves you light.

Now is the holy crossing.

Midsting Light.

Nothing else.

In the United States there is a crisis of heart.

The heart, it has been suggested, is a lonely hunter. We live in the details of our lives. We also live in surrounding quirky environs. The heart hunts its way through details and environs -- personal and cultural -- seeking to awaken to an awakened world, and escape the darkness of ignorance and delusion.

What we look for is oftentimes right where we are -- unrecognized, unaccepted, brushed over in our pursuit to find some other explanation we think more satisfactory. The heart asks: Am I alone? Or, beyond thought and opinion, are we one-another?

All the holy ones have turned within and sought the self, and by this went beyond all doubt. To turn within means all the 24 hours and in every situation, to pierce one by one through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place that cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth, when without being sought the true action and the true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know the truth of the heart.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

In the United States there is a crisis of heart. Using painfully distorted language backed by deceptive action, much of the infrastructure of social support and authentic caring compassion has been gutted from the fabric of governance. Health care, emergency response, education, equitable distribution of resources, taxation, corporate responsibility and accountability, scientific assessments of environmental patterns threatening quality of and life itself, ignorance of international interdependence, bad faith and arrogance in perpetrating and perpetuating war with ill-begotten intention, and finally, a palpable insincerity about having the interests of all Americans, indeed, all peoples, in mind when making decisions narrowly focused to benefit the few. What has angered the mind is now breaking the heart. A desperate uprising of awareness struggles to begin.

Margaret Mary, in Catholic-Christian tradition, had a great devotion to the Sacred Heart:
May He teach you what He desires of you, and may He give you the strength to accomplish it perfectly. If I am not mistaken this, in a few words, is what I think He requires of you: He wishes that you should learn to live without support -- without a friend -- and without satisfaction. In proportion as you ponder over these words, He will help you to understand them.
(-- #12, September, in Thoughts and Sayings of Saint Margaret Mary (1647-1690 Alacoque) c.1935)

17th century spirituality can be as enigmatic as contemporary spirituality.
Will the heart make the journey through the difficult times and stressful attitudes through which minds of contemporary men and women struggle?

In the nation's capital hearings begin to deliberate the appointment and ratification of a nominated candidate for Chief Justice of the United States. Following the 4th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and fresh upon the devastation of hurricane Katrina along the Gulf Coast, the citizenry of the country intently inquire into the heart of the man, the congress, the court, and the president.

The heart wants no politics. The heart wants love, community, authenticity, and a spirit of justice. The heart -- individual heart and collective heart -- longs for what is embedded profoundly within and, at the same time, gone completely beyond the obvious and everyday matters of life lived from hour to hour, day to day, year to year. The heart yearns for enlightened sight.

The challenge of enlightenment is not simply to glimpse the awakened conditioned, nor even to continually experience it, but to be and express it as your self in the way you move in this world. In order to do this you must come out of hiding behind any superstitious beliefs and find the courage to question everything, otherwise you will continue to hold onto superstitions which distort your perception and expression of that which is only ever AWAKE.
(~ Adyashanti, in talk "The Courage to Question" c.1999 )

These last few weeks reveal the vulnerability of both hard-hearted and open-hearted individuals. The swagger of political certitude staggers. Eyes that have seen loss, death, and destruction sear their inquiry after hope into us. We are all wounded by our common fate -- namely, we are alive, here in this world, and we cannot fathom either how to love or why we are not constantly in the presence of love.

We long to ask into love. And yet, we are frightened by those who believe the barrel of a gun or the detonation of bombs and explosives are reasonable substitution. We are frightened by those who seem to show they have not experienced love -- who intentionally ignore or harm others, who force themselves on the vulnerable.

We are all vulnerable. And we are frightened.

Here it is: each beat of the heart is love.

We need to know the truth of the heart.

Feel what is taking place.

It is critical.

Finding heart.

The bird, unmoving by paw of cat, was pliant but unresponsive when I picked it up.

Don’t tell me how difficult the Way.
The bird’s path, winding far,
Is right before you.
Water of the Dokei Gorge,
You return to the ocean,
I to the mountain.
- Hofuku Seikatsu

There comes a time when departure is deep within. I place what seems (to these senses) the dead bird in shade of wood block in tall grass. Cat is brought inside house. No recrimination. Merely the fact of it.

Still, we feel the fact of it.

I like the idea that there is no opposite nor end to love.

I like the notion that what is loved is lovely.

We visit woman in closed unit at hospital last night. She wonders if they will hold her against her will if she decides, at the end of medical physical diagnosis, she'd prefer to end her life. My suspicion, I tell her, at that time she'll be rested, clear-minded, and well-sighted enough to say and do what best she can say and do with this lovely life that is hers.

Birth and death don't affect you;
You are free to go or stay.
You needn't seek wonders,
For wonders come of themselves.
- Linji (d. 867?)

Gave a talk to Lifetime Recovery Group in prison yesterday on "Spirituality: Seeing, Breathing, What Is Itself." Saskia was down the hall wrestling math with someone not interested in leaving a paper trail of calculations. Next room was a gathering of men in a science class. I'll see them Tuesday morning for Ethics course meeting. (Last one was cut short by half due to one of the many administrative issues relating to security and order that come up).

We'll be reading Robert Pirsig's Lila in the course. Came across the following from Pirsig's first novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:
Nothing much happened ... He'd entered India an empirical scientist, and he left India an empirical scientist, not much wiser than he had been when he'd come. However, he'd been exposed to a lot and had acquired a kind of latent image that appeared in conjunction with many other latent images later on..... He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them .... great value is placed on the Sanskrit doctrine of Tat tvam asi, "Thou art that," which asserts that everything you think you are and everything you think you perceive are undivided. To realize fully this lack of division is to become enlightened. (Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, p.143)

If the Sanskrit doctrine is accurate, then there is much I have to consider about my actions on a bridge between New Orleans and Gretna. Why did I fire my gun? What do I think of those who are not interested in my survival?

There's a first person account making it's way around. It is the experiences of some New Orleans people attempting to make their way out of the city. The whole piece is available on site listed below -- but here, an excerpt:
As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move. We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the six-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their city. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.
("Hurricane Katrina -- Our Experiences," Larry Bradshaw, Lorrie Beth Slonsky, http://www.uusc.org/katrina/bradshaw_2.html)

Meanwhile, in Iraq, I am found dead; I close airport because I'm not getting my fat paycheck, and I continue to kill those I consider not-me:
Some 30 miles south of Baghdad, meanwhile, police found the bodies of 18 men who had been handcuffed and shot to death in Iskandariya, a town where dozens of killings have been reported in escalating vengeance killings by Shiite Muslim and Sunni Aram ''death squads.''
''Two days ago gunmen in police uniforms broke into their houses in a Shiite neighborhood of Iskandariya,'' police Capt. Adel Kitab said of the latest victims.
In the capital, Baghdad International Airport reopened early Saturday after a day's closure in a payment dispute between the government and a British security company. Global Strategies Group said it agreed to resume security work after the government promised to pay half of what the company said it is owed.
Iraq police said two mortar shells were fired into the Green Zone that houses the U.S. Embassy, the Iraqi parliament and government offices. There was no word on casualties or damage.
(Iraqi and U.S. Forces Launch Offensive on Insurgent Stronghold, By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: September 10, 2005, NYTimes)

Bone-tired last night, we stared at end of film Solaris (by Steven Soderbergh) on AMC channel after returning from hospital. The character named Chris Kelvin suddenly sees the character named Rheya in final scene.
KELVIN: Am I alive or dead?
RHEYA: We don't have to think like that anymore. We're together now. Everything we've ever done is forgiven. Everything.

We are left wondering.

In an article about Solaris and our wondering, Paul Newall writes:
Although we the viewers are already aware that this Rheya is not really Kelvin's dead wife but an imitation, she is not and has to piece the realisation together herself. "I do remember things, but I don't remember being there. I don't remember experiencing those things." Obtaining her memories from Kelvin's, she has content but not context. From our privileged vantage point we watch as this inevitably leads to tragedy:

"Don't you see? I came from your memory of her. That's the problem. I'm not a whole person. In your memory you get to control everything, so even if you remember something wrong I am predetermined to carry it out. I'm suicidal because that's how you remember me. My voice sounds the way it does because that's how you remember it."

Although we can observe that Kelvin would be expected to have largely negative memories of his wife given her suicide and the part he feels he played in it, there is something more important at stake in the inadequacy of his recollections; namely, that all memories are inherently incomplete -- even those we have of ourselves. Given that Rheya is dead and therefore must be reconstructed from his memory, the question is not why this should happen but how it could be otherwise? The implication of the polytheres, it seems, is that there can be no total knowledge or understanding of another. Drawn as they are from the thoughts of the crew, they are nevertheless recognised as incomplete renderings by their "real" double; but rather than this being a comment on a supposed failure by Solaris to achieve a perfect copy, instead they speak of the failure of our own conceptions of others to match them. That is, it is we who fall short, not the polytheres or their originator.
(http://www.galilean-library.org/solaris.html)

Saturday afternoon is quiet. I will walk in to town to the bookshop. We'll read and listen at Poetry, Tea, and Literature. On Barnestown Road, Hosmer Pond Road, and Mechanic Street (three names for the same straight road) I will think of life, memory, love, and death. (A dear friend married yesterday -- she is a love that has always evaded understanding.) I'll recall the words added by Newall:
Kelvin appreciates this failure, at least in part, by rejecting the idea that his memories should dictate how life with the new Rheya must play out:

"I don't believe we're predetermined to relive our past. I think that we can choose to do it differently. The day I left and you said you wouldn't make it -- I didn't hear you because I was angry. This is my chance to undo that mistake, and I need you to help me."

He thus increasingly conceives of Rheya not as a copy of his wife but an opportunity to atone for his previous errors, with his admission ("all I see is you") pointing us in the direction of acknowledging that complete knowledge of others is both impossible and what we yearn for nonetheless. When Rheya says "I wish we could just live inside that feeling forever", it is difficult indeed to recall that she is supposed to be composed of Kelvin's memories and sustained by Solaris, rather than a new person in her own right. He is, as it were, on almost a level playing field with this Rheya because while she came into existence with an incomplete recollection of her past, Kelvin comes to realise that he is handicapped in exactly the same way as we all are. The desire of lovers to slow time or live in a perfect moment then becomes not a hopeless dream but exactly the response we should expect given that this feeling can neither be recorded as it is in our memories nor expressed in a way that has the same meaning to anyone else.
("Soderbergh's Solaris," by Paul Newall, http://www.galilean-library.org/solaris.html)

Newall ends his reflections by saying: "What is apparent, though, is that Kelvin has been given another chance precisely because life ends but love does not."

Finally we are brought back to poetry -- where everything arises and returns. This time it is a poem by Dylan Thomas. And this is the first stanza to his poem "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" --

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
(Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953)

Finis vitae sed non amore, -- Life ends, love does not.

We settle for what is lovely. All of it -- forgiven, and found -- right here.

For one thing to come to birth, everything else must go.

Every day priests minutely examine the Dharma
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters
Sent by the wind and rain,
The snow and moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1491)

Go where?

Being humble

If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff,
even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry.
But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear.
If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing.
And all because there is somebody in the boat.
Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world,
no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you....

Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men?
He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home.
Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool.
His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation.

Since he judges no one, no one judges him.
Such is the perfect man:
His boat is empty.
(20:2, 4, pp. 168-171, from Chuang Tzu, by Thomas Merton)

Go away. Right there, where you are, be gone.

No need to commit suicide. Just end everything considered "else" -- and abide in the singular reality of passing smile.

Some call it God's smile. Some, Buddha's. But here's what I think:

The smile, as does everything, belongs to itself.

So is birth.

Welcome back!

The male voices of local authority, breaking with anger and sorrow immediately after Katrina, were crying out to Mr. Bush and administration: "Shut up! Just shut up -- and show up!"

Like the words of the song that say "don't talk of love...show me" these men wanted feet and action, not promises and pronouncements. If there is any proof of love in the world, it is in the hands, the pudding, and the real presence of caring attention served up.

The iris pond has flowered
Before the old temple;
I sell tea this evening
By the water's edge.
It is steeped in the cups
With the moon and stars;
Drink and wake forever
From your worldly sleep.
- Baisao (1675-1763)

A circle of women gathered around a dismayed and distressed member of their community last evening under prayer-flags and asked her how they might help. Finally, exhausted by the dishing of advice and shrugging of shoulders, she got to tell them what she felt and where she was stumbling.

Parting

My life closed twice before its close;
It yet remains to see
If immortality unveil
A third event to me
So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.
(Poem: "Parting," by Emily Dickinson.)

All part to their own ways. The flags float and sway their prayers in the breeze with each passing breath of presence.

What can we do? We can stand, sit, or walk with one another. We can wait until the natural opening of reciprocality and receptivity. We can fast from the exorbitance of too easy and too rapid opinions -- until the morsel crumb of authentic sustenance appears as if by miraculous manifestation.

Nourish one.

Another.

Under water, rhetoric, and our varying attention and inattention -- the people of New Orleans and environs pass through death.

"My lands are where my dead lie buried," (Crazy Horse, d.5/6Sept1877). These are his words over the impressive, unfinished work in the sacred Black Hills in South Dakota.

What I teach people just
Requires you not to take
On the confusion of others.
Act when necessary,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
When students today do not attain this,
Wherein lies their sickness?
The sickness is in not
Trusting yourself.
If your inner trust is insufficient,
Then you will frantically go along
With changes in situations,
And will be influenced and
Affected by myriad objects,
Unable to be independent.
If you can stop the mentality
Of constant frantic seeking,
Then you are no different
From Zen masters and Buddhas.
- Linji (d. 866)

Families are dismayed and seek their separated loved ones. Politicians scramble for their footing along the muddy road of self-interest. Rescue workers open doors and call out to living and dead souls.

The woman and the man dreamed that God was dreaming about them.
--God was singing and clacking his maracas as he dreamed his dream in a tobacco smoke, feeling happy but shaken by doubt & mystery.
--The Makiritare Indians know that if God dreams about eating, he gives fertility and food. If God dreams about life, he is born and gives birth.
(from Genesis, part one of Memory of Fire, by Eduardo Galeano, 1982)

It is not a mystery that men in power want mostly to safeguard their power no matter what the cost.

The mystery is that God continues being born in and through every death, every life, and every birth. We just can't figure out the right order of things.

We bless the dead, heal the living, and through it all, suffer fools tap dancing and politically posturing atop the desolation of others.

No blame. No praise. Only to do what needs be done.

New Orleans collapses. Something else collapses. We don't know how to say it.

The ancients had a lot of complications to help you,
Such as Xuefeng's saying,
"The whole earth is you," Jiashan's saying,
"Pick out the teacher in the hundred grasses;
recognize the emperor in a bustling market place."
Take these up and think about them over and over again;
Eventually, over time, you will naturally find a way to penetrate.
No one can substitute for you in this task;
It rests with each individual, without exception.
- Yunmen (d. 949)

The whole earth is you -- that's what Yunmen said. We'll have to sit with that.

Jared Diamond - Collapse. How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Civilizations collapse. That is the rule that we learn from history, and it is a rule whose implications deserve careful thought given the fact that our own civilization - despite its global extent and unsurpassed technological prowess - is busily severing its own ecological underpinnings. Thus we should pay close attention when Jared Diamond, one of the world's most celebrated and honored science writers, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Guns, Germs, and Steel, devotes his newest and already best-selling book to the subject of how and why whole societies sometimes lose their way and descend into chaos.
Diamond uses his considerable popular non-fiction prose-writing skills - carefully honed in the crafting of scores of articles for Natural History, Discover, Nature, and Geo - to trace the process of collapse in several ancient societies (including the Easter Islanders, the Maya, the Anasazi, and the Greenland Norse colony) and show parallels with trends in several modern nations (Rwanda, Haiti, and Australia).
One theme quickly emerges: the environment plays a crucial role in each instance. Resource depletion, habitat destruction, and population pressure combine in different ways in different circumstances; but when their mutually reinforcing impacts become critical, societies are sometimes challenged beyond their ability to respond and consequently disintegrate.
(from "Meditations on Collapse," by Richard Heinberg, in MuseLetter, February 2005,
A review of Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed)

No blame. No praise.

Only to do what needs be done.

Silent.

Act.

Why not be as perfect as is?

Perfect--
To make or do
One's way through.
(wfh)

One dictionary definition of "perfect" reads: Lacking nothing essential to the whole; complete of its nature or kind. (from dictionary.com)

A woman is uncertain whether she is dying. She's also uncertain she wants to live. She's tired of everybody's opinion of her frame of mind. She asks if I'm afraid to die.

Am I?

Forty-some years I've lived in the mountains
Ignorant of the world's rise and fall
Warmed at night by a stove full of pine needles
Satisfied at noon by a bowl of wild plants
Sitting on rocks watching clouds and empty thoughts
Patching my robe in sunlight practicing silence
Till someone asks why Bodhidharma came east
And I hang out my wash.
- Shih-wu (1252-1352)

No, I'm not. And yet, that's as much a lie as saying I am afraid to die. Until the moment itself, every prior thought is only speculation. I don't trust speculation -- but I enjoy it. I trust what is -- but I don't understand it.

Speaking with a woman from China just before Windjammer Weekend fireworks at the harbor, she told me how her preference has moved from Confucious (too legalistic) and Lao Tzu (too idealistic) to the direct simplicity of Zen.

Then reading Iris Murdoch, who says:
"Christianity can continue without a personal God or a risen Christ, without beliefs in supernatural places and happenings, such as heaven and life after death, but retaining the mystical figure of Christ occupying a place analogous to that of Buddha: a Christ who can console and save, but who is to be found as a living force within each human soul and not in some supernatural elsewhere Such a continuity would preserve and renew the Christian tradition as it has always hitherto, somehow or other, been preserved and renewed. It has always changed itself into something that can be generally believed."
(p.419, in Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals, by Iris Murdoch)

I trust what is found as a living force within each human soul. We might only be able to talk with each other, to sit a while with each other -- to speak of what the soul is facing. If we do this with someone, with one another -- that's perfect.

keen as midsummer's keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly(over utmost him
so hugely)stood my father's dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn't creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise
offered immeasurable is
(from poem "my father moved through dooms of love" -- by e.e. cummings)

As our (heavenly) father is.

Making one's way through.

Perfect.

With.

Katrina and God! Within each we long to see what is taking place, and who we are.

ACT OF GOD - A natural event, not preventable by any human agency, such as flood, storms, or lightning. Forces of nature that no one has control over, and therefore cannot be held accountable.
This phrase denotes those accidents which arise from physical causes, and which cannot be prevented. (http://www.lectlaw.com/def/a011.htm)

Is that what we conceive God to be: not preventable by any human agency; that which no one has control over; and that which cannot be held accountable?

They call it an "Act of God." Which is curious. I'd rather it was said: "What is taking place is a direct result of what is, given and found, within the whole of life and existence, there and then, experienced and responded to."

Could it be that's what God is? If God is "What Is Taking Place" -- what do we "human beings" respond to what is taking place? Call longs for response; appearance longs for realization. There are no isolated, unrelated events. What arises longs for whole response and wholesome effect. What arises and what responds in this process of wholeness is akin to reciprocality.

Reciprocality is defined as "interchangeable; complementary; alternating." The Way of reciprocality is a Way of Being, a way of God, a way of existence, a way of human and all sentient being. If we are to come to appreciating and dwelling in wholeness, we must consider and follow this way.

What is taking place -- for wholeness -- is dependent on where, when, how, and who is the reciprocity and dynamic interdependent co-origination of what is taking place. In other words, the Alone involves Everyone. That which is Itself is nothing other. What you see is what you get. This calls for opening our eyes to see what is there -- something very difficult, so it seems, for many of us to do.

Perhaps, as an aside, if put in computer terms, we'd come closer to getting the process of coming to any wholeness, temporary or final:
WYSIWYG (pronounced "wizzy-wig", "wuzzy-wig" or "wissy-wig") is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, and is used in computing to describe a seamlessness between the appearance of edited content and final product.
The phrase was originated by Jonathan Seybold and popularized at Xerox PARC during the late 1970s when the first WYSIWYG editor, Bravo was created on the Alto. Seybold and the researchers at PARC were simply reappropriating a popular catch phrase of the time originated by "Geraldine", a character on The Flip Wilson Show, (1970-1974). In addition to "What you see is what you get!" This character also popularized "The Devil made me do it!" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WYSIWYG)

Flip -- was he being flip? Or was he flipping the way we think on its head? If what we see is what we get, it is vital to see clearly and openly. If we fail to see what is there, or if we perceive incorrectly what is taking place -- is that when we mutter the phrase "The devil made me do it" and hide in our blindness? Is what we call the "devil" a co-origination of our unwillingness or inability to see with awareness and clarity?

Buddhists help with another perspective:
The doctrine of dependent origination is the key insight upon which the entire teaching of the Buddha rests. The Buddha even went so far as to equate the Dharma itself with dependent origination. "Now this has been said by the Blessed One: 'One who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma; one who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination.'" (Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, p. 284) An understanding of dependent origination is integral to having a clear understanding of Buddhism.

Put simply, dependent origination means that all phenomena arise as the result of conditions and cease when those conditions change. The general theory of dependent origination was taught by the Buddha as follows: "When this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases." (Connected Discourses, p. 575) So nothing exists as a static, isolated entity. Everything arises and ceases depending on causes and conditions which themselves arise due to causes and conditions. There is no ultimate ground or primordial cause, but a network of causes and conditions. This undercuts the view of a metaphysical selfhood, fixed entity, or substance underlying the constant change which is life.
Dependent origination can be summarized in a few words, but truly understanding what it means and the profound implications of it is something else altogether.

And:
We may be the products of causality but we are also the producers of the very causes which will determine whether we perpetuate suffering or attain liberation. The Buddhist vision of dependent origination is a vision in which sentient beings are not determined by forces beyond their control, but rather are fully integrated in the co-arising of all things and as such are able to take responsibility for themselves and create better conditions for themselves and others by making better causes informed by an awareness of the way things arise in mutual dependence. ("On Dependent Origination," by Ryuei Michael McCormick, http://nichirenscoffeehouse.net/Ryuei/depen-orig.html)

If we were to speak of God, the use of the words "God is love" is a good way of speaking. Perhaps we do not comprehend "love" -- but in that non-comprehension I continue to find it difficult to listen when some, bizarrely, perhaps bitterly, suggest the death and devastation of hurricane Katrina is something fore-ordained and approved by "higher powers" to "cleanse and purify" a region of the world. (These comments are heard about natural disasters, wars, and diseases. Presumably something, according to these proclamations, needs "cleansing and purifying" -- euphemisms for death and destruction.) It is hard to understand such rationalizations.

Rationalizations usually emerge equally from those who descry "intellectual" inquiry as insufficient to their "spiritual" understanding. There is a touch of cynicism in the failure of the mental structure of consciousness to comprehend the myth of God. The reality of God, if I understood it, would take the myth to a further consciousness, beyond mental, and surround it with a new wholeness. Of course, words cannot hold the fullness of anything. They point. So do the words "myth" or "reality" only point toward what is taking place in that which we call "God."

The fire pit is cold
The stone bed like ice
The clay censor died
Before the end of night
The world of sound is
Silent, my mind
Completely still
And now it seems
My body exists inside
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

A disaster is a disaster. They prove unfortunate in many ways: the act itself, the aftermath, and the explanation. We have grown accustomed to blaming and shaming any and all associated with the events undergone -- from looting to lawsuits, from inadequate fore-knowledge to inappropriate response, from sex to sickness, from desire to survive at the expense of others to believing the egoistic delusion that might is right, or, finally, from fear of goodness to love of power. Disasters all. Disaster begins when we move awareness away from the stars, the planets, the suns and vast beyondness of deep and incomprehensible Being. Disaster begins when we reduce Being to personal desire.

Some say global warming factors in. If so, fie on those who know better yet refuse for political and economic reasons to act responsibly to carefully study and assess the matter, and urge changing our way of life when results call for it.

There isn't much that can be said of God. (If my intent in saying the previous sentence is honorable, the emphasis should be more on what cannot be "said" and less on there cannot be "God.")

Our hearts open and stay open for all touched by the hurricane and its aftermath. Our hearts do likewise for all those in Iraq suffering death and pain resulting from the no-act-of-no-God awfulness of invasion, war, and aftermath. Our hearts remain open and prayerful for these as well as all suffering ravages of disease, e.g. AIDS in Africa, alcoholism, cancer, and depression world-round.

For anyone interested in God, a re-reading of Han-shan is called for. Perhaps, using literary transparency, Han-shan might be God telling us of God's whereabouts:
The world of sound is
Silent, my mind
Completely still
And now it seems
My body exists inside

At this time, in this place, we look, openly.

Inside.

Out.

All around.

What are we at heart?

Whenever you seek Zen,
your mind ground must
be even and straight,
and your mind and speech
must be in accord.
Since your mind and speech
are straightforward,
your states are thus
consistent from start to finish,
without any petty details.
- Foyan (1067 -- 1120)

As things become clearer, it is more obvious that nothing matters more than spirit -- and that spirit and matter are not separate. If there is an attraction to monastic life it is because it is a life of wholeness. However attractive the alternative of cutting oneself off from the wholeness of life, it is not the way of monastic life. Wholeness is found in a humble affirmation of one's own wholeness. The dark and the light, the inner and the outer, the knowing and the feeling, the divine and the earthly, finally, the true self and the not-yet self.

A Trappist Abbot speaks about being momentarily surprised by God:
In fact, aren't such surprising moments what all our spiritual practices are meant to prepare us for? Not in any causal sense of making something happen, but in the sense of opening our inner experience, our inner senses to God's presence - God's loving ownership and personal desire for each one of us.

THE LORD SHALL BE YOUR LIGHT FOREVER, YOUR GOD SHALL BE YOUR GLORY. Isaiah 60.19

I am convinced that this is what monastic life is all about. Fundamentally, all the monastic practices and discipline are aimed at a continual availability to be surprised by God's overwhelming, erupting desire for us. And such eruptions are by no means limited to formal times of prayer. God can catch us off guard (in fact being "off guard" is really another name for this availability) anywhere and anytime - while praying, reading, working or relating with the brothers.
(Fr. Damian, Abbot, St. Joseph's Abbey, Spencer MA)

In Meetingbrook Hermitage's circumambulation, men and women, sentient beings, matter itself -- all manner of earthly reality -- turn around a center which sustains and nourishes its surroundings. Holy Spirit is true-center of spiritual life.

In constant reference to that center, and in hopeful connection with that center, we walk about our days and nights. The monastic heart and mind in the world has as its practice the remembering, embodying, and ultimate dissolving surrender to the Holy Spirit as it is in this present reality.

This dissolving -- i.e. the passing into, releasing into, and emptying into the root reality of our spiritual life -- is a daily practice that calls for constant and connected awareness of sacred reality passing through, releasing into and through, and emptying out from and through this being we refer to as our self. "Self" is a convenient word -- it is not something that exists apart from its ground. We might be distinct, but we are not separate. (We might distinguish one from another, but not disunite.)

A woman at the shop will often say that spiritual reality is changing everything -- not what we think. She emphasizes spiritual reality over intellectual matters. If we have argument, it is based on wishing not to separate biological, social, and intellectual functions from spiritual. There's a temptation, I sense, to emphasize one above the others -- in her instance, the spiritual. In my instance, there is an attempt to see how all our functions are integral to one another. "Spiritual" is not a separate, not a desired end at the expense of the biological, social, and intellectual. (We'll be reading Robert Pirsig's Lila in ethics class. He'll rake our confusion over the coals of insight.)

At heart we are here and now. At heart we are "this."

If we are to live the life of the heart, we must allow our heart to be surprised by the holy spirit -- that is, the wholeness of life shone through with light and love.

We need to stop worrying whether we are coming to life or beginning to die. We are doing both at the same instant and in this very place.

It is the monastic call to dwell in the house of God. Teresa of Avila tells us the light of God is the center of who we are. It is the longing of the monastic to allow that light to shine through to every place light can reach.

There is no place light is unwilling to reach through the heart open to compassion.

It is the monastic call to have the heart for it.

Practice, prayer, and perseverance.

From start to finish.

Off guard.

The vet says it is time to spoil Sando. Her cancer returns and this time will go away with her. She's a good dog.

Yesterday Sando, Cesco, along with the cat Mu-ge, walked the mountain path. This is just the second time the cat made the round with us.

We walk together. When walking is finished, and I think back, I'll remember that we walked together.

This moment, and this, then this. The simple and mere fact of being alive.

This morning before prison, before donuts, communion at St Bernard's, Rockland.

The simple, and mere, fact of it.

Let's doubt anyone calling themselves Christian.

Many people wear a sign saying "I am a Christian" or call out loudly "I am saved, born again, washed in the blood of the lamb" -- and expect others to stop dead and listen to the next set of words they proclaim following presentation of their credentials. There's a better way to recognize a Christian. That way is less obvious and less noisy.

Reading Stanley M. Hauerwas, Professor of Theological Ethics at Duke University, writing in Time Magazine just before the invasion of Iraq in the March 3, 2003 issue: "No, This War Would Not Be Moral" (a companion article to 'Yes, a War Would Be Moral' by Andrew Sullivan)

Hauerwas wrote:

March 3, 2003
By: Stanley Hauerwas (in Time Magazine/Time.Com)

No, This War Would Not Be Moral
(a companion article to 'Yes, a War Would Be Moral' by Andrew Sullivan)

The impending war against Saddam Hussein seems morally coherent to many because Saddam is "evil." After all, who in the world is against eliminating evil? Well, I am, if war is the means for its elimination. I am an advocate of Christian nonviolence, but I don't think that means I have nothing to say about the war fever gripping much of America. I believe that Christians, of all people, should worry when the President of the United States uses the word evil to justify war.

I have no doubt that Saddam is a brutal dictator. And I am well aware that he has failed to live up to the conditions of the 1991 truce. But I doubt that any of this makes him more "evil" than a number of other current officeholders around the world. Nor do I understand why President George W. Bush thinks it is the job of the U.S. to eliminate brutal dictators. America's foreign policy has often supported these same brutal dictators -- including Saddam -- when they have been on "our side." Bush's use of the word evil comes close to being evil -- to the extent that it gives this war a religious justification (which Christians should resist). For Christians, the proper home for the language of evil is the liturgy: it is God who deals with evil, and it's presumptuous for humans to assume that our task is to do what only God can do. Advocates of "just war" should be the first to object to the language of evil because that characterization threatens to turn war into a crusade.

Does that mean there is nothing we can do? No, I think that a lot can be done -- once we free our imaginations from the presumption that the only alternative is capitulation or war. Nonviolence means finding alternatives to the notion that it is ultimately a matter of kill or be killed. Christians might consider, for example, asking the many Christians in Iraq what we can do to make their lives more bearable. A small step, to be sure, but peace is made from small steps.

At the same time, we must insist on being told the truth about why this war seems so inevitable. The moral justifications for war against Saddam would surely lack any persuasive power had Sept. 11, 2001, not happened. As Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, has rightly observed, any attempt to sustain truthful speech was lost as soon as the word war was used to describe the events of Sept. 11. What happened on that day was not war; it was murder. In his rush to assure the American people that everything could return to normal, President Bush declared a "war on terrorism." Oddly, knowing we are at war makes many Americans feel safe. Thus the metaphorical wars against drugs and crime are now stretched beyond all sense to become a war on terrorism. It's not clear, however, what it means to fight a war against terrorism. How do you fight a war against a phantom?

What a gift Bush gave Osama bin Laden. Prior to the President's declaration of war, bin Laden had been a murderer. But Bush's response made bin Laden what he so desperately wanted to be -- a warrior. And by declaring war against terrorism, Bush was able to fight an undeclared war against Afghanistan. Now his Administration is trying to justify an impending war against Iraq as a continuation of the war against terrorism.

G.K. Chesterton once observed that America is a nation with the soul of a church. Bush's use of religious rhetoric seems to confirm this view. None of this is good news for Christians, however, because it tempts us to confuse Christianity with America. As a result, Christians fail to be what God has called us to be: agents of truthful speech in a world of mendacity. The identification of cross and flag after Sept. 11 needs to be called what it is: idolatry. We are often told that America is a great country and that Americans are a good people. I am willing to believe that Americans want to be good, but goodness requires that we refuse to lie to ourselves and our neighbors about the assumed righteousness of our cause.

That the world is dangerous should not be surprising news to Christians who are told at the beginning of Lent that we are dust. If Christians could remember that we have not been created to live forever, we might be able to help ourselves and our non-Christian brothers and sisters to speak more modestly and, thus, more truthfully and save ourselves from the alleged necessity of war against "evil."
(Stanley Hauerwas is a professor of theological ethics at Duke University Divinity School)

Someone has said there was only one Christian (Jesus) with two or three who've come close (Francis? Gandhi? Teresa? the man or woman you know who just might be?) Everyone else has filled out a form, paid a fee, and gotten a membership card. Membership is no guarantee of belonging or owning. Like a lottery ticket, you pays your money and you takes your chances -- but as with most lotteries, chances are you won't get it.

No, it is doubtful anyone can call themselves Christian.

What then? How do we come to being, to becoming, Christian?

I don't know. But I'll venture a guess.

When someone sees Christ through you. When someone hears Christ through you. When someone feels Christ through you.

Maybe that's what we're looking for. When someone calls Christ through you. It is not something you do; it is something you are without knowing. The matter is relational.
Christ is related through us without our impeding or imposing.

To "relate" is to establish or demonstrate a connection between.

Christ is relative. Christ is the between. You and me.

War blinds its authors, they do not see the evil they unleash; in their blind groping the authors of war and assassination do not see Christ, nor is Christ seen through them.

Doubt gives pause, as we look though.

May we be relatively transparent so as to be seen through.

When we live in the open, there is no protection nor worry. We are life's carefree and uncertain reality. If you want security, there is none here. At this news, we can either dance or weep. Let's do both.

feather, leg on trail
cat has eaten yellow finch --
nothing moves -- raindrops
(-haiku, wfh)

I have fallen into retreat. Bob would say, "Why not go forward?" He's like that.

Ordering books for ethics course at the prison. I choose four novels, Kristof Kieslowski 10 video Decalogue, Plato, Aristotle, G.E. Moore, Emerson, James, and much more. Someone said that teaching ethics in prison would be interesting. Anytime anyone thinks about ethics, without rote or retaliatory emphasis -- that's interesting. Most like right or wrong, black or white. Few seem willing to look directly into the ambiguity and uncertainty of human existence.

In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers
Completely disappear.
The eye of delusion
Looks out upon
Deep fog and clouds
Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days
As they pass
The wisteria has grown
Thick over the eaves
Of my hut.
- Muso (1275-1351)

Chickadee on cedar branch -- soaking open sunflower seed.

Reading Karl Stern on Descartes, Schopenhauer, Sartre, Ibsen, Tolstoy, Kierkegaard, and Goethe. Reading Jean Gebser on the aperspectival, on the concretion of the spiritual. Thinking of other course on art, being, science, living -- whether and how self is discovered.

Something breaks open. Or, perhaps, burns away. At least, turns in. If the quiet was any quieter, even with splashing sounds of tires and eaves drippings, there would be no need of anyone standing out from reality itself.

Elsewhere, there is gunfire and shouts of fear -- decisions whether to kill immediately figures approaching, or the click of detonating explosives screaming out their woeful cry, "I kill you!"

There is no security. Not a moment's worth. Still, we dance as well as weep. We pray as well as sleep.

We watch. Breaking open. Burning away.

barn's burnt down
now
I can see the moon
(Haiku by Masahide, tr. by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoti)

See through. Be free from time. Decree oneself inseparate from the whole of it.

Consciousness itself surrendering to what is in the world.

This time, with love.

Nothing on the inside; nothing outside. Sometimes it all just disappears.

Untitled

Each time I go outside
the world is different.
This has happened all my life.

*
The clock stopped at 5:30
for three months.
Now it's always time to quit work,
have a drink, cook dinner.

*
"What I would do for wisdom,"
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much. Or so it seems.
Even on walks I follow the dog.

*
Old friend,
perhaps we work too hard
at being remembered.
(From Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser. c.2003 by Jim Harrison and Ted Kooser.)

What I remember from the time before disappearance is less than you'd think.

Try this: open your hand. Now the other hand. Look at your palms. The nothing there is what we have given, and what we receive.

There's nothing to hold on to. Nothing to let go. Drop that too.

God give you pardon from gratitude
and other mild forms of servitude

and make peace for all of us
with what is easy.
(poem by Robert Creeley)

Then, they say, comes prayer. Then, they also say, comes mere watchfulness.

The unseen God is seeing itself. No looking for gratitude.

Forget everything. Remember this.

Let me stumble into
not the confession but
the obsession I begin with
now. For you

also (also)
some time beyond place, or
place beyond time, no
mind left to

say anything at all,
that face gone, now.
Into the company of love
it all returns.
(from poem "For Love" by Robert Creeley)

For all those who no longer find it important to show up, to be remembered, or say anything at all -- try this.

Be easy with yourself.

Make peace.

Watch.

Standing alone, smoke rising from incense stick in hand, four bows in four directions. Three bells, sitting begins.

Flat Lake cold penetrates
Water-lily clothes
The mountain by the lake
Is neither right nor wrong
Dusty tracks all end, and
The world is far away.
White clouds and gulls
Have no hidden plans.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

Two women, one man, two dogs, and a cat.

Warm damp fog drapes Ragged and Bald Mountains.

If there was anything to say it would probably not need saying. Cat mewed and was let out. Dog barked and was rolled a zafu. Heart Sutra chanted with help of voices in moderate pace. Candles extinguished. Windows closed. Cabin screen door held by roller latch.

Now, hours later, Sando gets medicine.

Day closes itself with night.

It is merely practice.

Chaos and emptiness, says the once radical now neo-conservative man on C-Span. He is recovering from prostate cancer. He finds a new perspective on life. He thinks conspiracy theories are just attempts to impose order and control on the world. So too is the activist imposition of one's own ideology on matters. He's an agnostic. Others, he says, prayed him through.

I like it when one-sided thinkers fall over into the other side. They leap the middle as through there were none.

He said that a religious thinker told him: "Believer and non-believer stand together, neither see God."

Earlier the doctor who passionately warns against the real dangers of nuclear weapons and possible use of them said: "It is intrinsic in every soul -- that's where we know the right thing to do."

For these two, without postulating a God (separate or out there), there is that of God in everyone and everything.

She says we must not practice psychic numbing, rather, we ought to be psychologically uncomfortable with the way everything is endangered and all powers of destruction are on the table.

All sentient beings are essentially Buddhas.
As with water and ice, there is no ice without water;
apart from sentient beings, there are no Buddhas.
Not knowing how close the truth is,
we seek it far away

--what a pity!
(- Hakuin)

The heavy-headed sunflowers are held aloft by yellow cord around slats encircling birdfeeder.

What has been given, gives back.

What are we...

Giving?

A light frost, he said in his call, covered his field, away in the county last night.

Becoming a buddha is easy
But ending illusions is hard
So many frosted moonlit nights
I've sat and felt the cold before dawn.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

Diversion. To divert is to turn aside.

Inversion. To invert, to turn inside out or upside down.

The current coldness in the world precedes what soon will dawn.

Conversation. It dawns on us during the turns we take and exchanges we make while in one another's company.

Real prayer whiles away, sits till bedtime, finally bows, closes eyes.

Falls into oneself.