What does it mean to say we are alone with others?

Know the essence of mind.
Its intrinsic essence is
Pure clarity.
It is essentially the same as a Buddha.
- Tao-hsin (580-651)

When there we are there. When gone, gone. No residue. No expectation of return.

You who are threshed,
you who are winnowed,
what I have learnt
from the Lord of Hosts,
from the God of Israel,
I am telling you now.
(from Isaiah 21:6 - 12)

Tell us now, Isaiah.

Is Christ here?

Now?

I saw a picture of a child dying of AIDS.

Winter, in the eleventh month
Snow falls thick and fast.
A thousand mountains, one color.
People of the world passing this way are few.
Dense grass conceals the door.
All night in silence, a few woodchips burn slowly
As I read the poems of the ancients.
Ryokan

What poem reveals the hope behind hopelessness?

Dried sand. Rainless gaze. Desolated street.

Mother of God, Light in all darkness...

Pray for us!

Bread gives itself.

Berry went to a high school one day to talk to the students, wanting to convey to them a sense of our current spiritual predicament. The term 'autism' came to mind, and he asked if anyone in the class could define what that meant, unsure if he would get a good answer. A student jumped up and explained clearly: "People being so locked up in themselves that no one and nothing else can get in." Exactly, Berry thought. "That is what has happened to the human community in our times. We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual 'autism.'"
(From "Thomas Berry" By Rich Heffern, in National Catholic Reporter, August 10, 2001)

Wine gives itself.

In other words, caring for our planet and ascertaining where we are in the universe goes to the heart of what it means to be a faithful Christian. Nothing is really itself without everything else. Christianity's task, if it is going to survive, will be to place itself within the context of science's new story of our human origins and the evolution of the universe.
The best hope for a renewed earth, many feel, is reawakened belief in the Spirit as the divine force within the cosmos who continually indwells everywhere and works in amazing ways to sustain all forms of life. This renewal is happening on many fronts today, thanks to advance work done by Berry, to his sweeping synthesis, realism, imaginative insights and courage to confront the narrowness of traditional theology. This priest with the tousled hair and sly grin raised the challenge; it will be the work of others to move churches and communities forward toward Tom Berry's dream: all of us honoring the earth as the epiphany of God, making a prayerful event of every dawn and dusk.
(From "Thomas Berry")

Only say the word -- and each shall be heard. Only hear each as itself -- as what it is -- and all will be healed.

"This" is the body of Christ.

Do this.

Be this.

When priest says, "This is my body," I bow.

Mystic understanding of truth is not perception or cognition. That is why it is said that you arrive at the original source by stopping the mind, so it is called the enlightened state of being as is, the ultimately independent free individual.
- Nan-ch'uan (748-834)

When he says, "This is my blood," I bow.

Doing this, I remember.

Changing everything.

At home-ground.

Is there some place, something, some time we can fix?

Inwardly strive to develop
the capacity of mindfulness;
outwardly spread
the virtue of uncontentiousness.
Shed the world of dust
to seek emancipation.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)

Right here? This? Now?

Only the Dreamer
Can Change the Dream

Riding on his bike
in the fall
or spring Fel-
lini-like twilight
or dawn, the boy
is moved in some way
he does not understand.
A huge gray or green, long porched house
(he's partly color-blind)
crowns a low hill: rise-
s silent as a ship does
before him.
The vision makes him yearn
inside himself. It makes him mourn.
So he cries
as he rides
about the town.
He knows there are other great homes
and other beautiful streets
nearby. But they are not his.
He turns back.
He gets off his bike
and picks
up three fragments of unfinished pine
adrift on the green
(or gray) lawn
thinking -- hoping - that perhaps
there is something some place he can fix. (Poem by John Logan)

If, as Advayavada Buddhism says, there is not two and thereby not one, but shunya (obvious zero) -- perhaps nothing fixes and is fixed by itself.

Acceptance of the moment is allowing the moment to live, which, indeed, is another way of saying that it is to allow life to live, to be what it is now (yathabhutam). Thus to allow this moment of experience and all that it contains freedom to be as it is, to come in its own time and to go in its own time, this is to allow the moment, which is what we are now, to set us free; it is to realize that life, as expressed in the moment, has always been setting us free from the very beginning, whereas we have chosen to ignore it and tried to achieve that freedom by ourselves.
(from The Meaning of Happiness, by Alan W. Watts, 1940, New York 1970)

That is interesting:

Life is

this moment

setting us

free!

Coming to.

It is time to wake from sleep. Orange sun jumps from cabin stovepipe, to red van window, finally (stretching arms overhead) yawns above horizon of Atlantic Ocean -- at same time climbs down Ragged Mountain. Time for us to wake -- to come to this perspective of earth.

Attain the center of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet;
As myriad things act in concert,
I thereby observe the return.
Things flourish,
Then each returns to its root.
Returning to the root
Is called stillness:
Stillness is called return to Life,
Return to Life is called the constant;
Knowing the constant is called enlightenment.
- Tao-te Ching

Advent enlightenment and Buddhist awakening invite ordinary engagement as pathway through trinitarian new year. For those gathering within and without their-selves, the orange sun climbs and descends all at once -- what is called "church" is that gathering, within and without, ascending and descending, all -- at once.

Lao Tzu calls it "root," "stillness," and "constant." Trinity by any other designation.

This morning, en route church in Belfast, the descriptive phrases that call me in are: The ground-fact of God; the realization of God, and; the intuition of God.

Inside out? Outside in? The process and structure of this triadic interplay is the practice of meditative and spiritual life.

Oh, that you would tear the heavens open and come down!
No ear has heard,
no eye has seen
any god but you act like this
for those who trust him.
You guide those who act with integrity
and keep your ways in mind.
(Isaiah 63:16...)

Acting with integrity -- with wholeness -- suggests allowing no thought to separate us from that which there is no separation.

This Advent, as with each circular re-presentation, we prepare waking the appearance and realization of Jesus in both historical and real time. We also prepare a descent to the ground-fact through and out of which our lives pass and stay, stay and pass in a glorious invitation to disappear. Thirdly, we prepare to conduit the intuition of the breath of what-is-whole as it makes way into, through, and around this earth at this time with our assistance and service.

The trinitarian form of the later Christian baptismal confessions (the starting point of which can be seen in the Scriptures of the early church, Matt.28:19) can be understood as the development of the confession of Christ, as the development of the implications of a personal confession of Jesus in terms of what he meant, specifically in reference to his unity with God, which assured believers of community with God. But it is also to be understood as the development of the ecclesiastical nature of Christian confession. Henceforth the individual could confess Jesus only by taking over the confession of the congregation of its Lord, and also thereby confessing the work of the Spirit of Christ in this congregation.
(p.74, in The Church, by Wolfhart Pannenberg, 1977 trans. 1983)

Christ confesses.

He did it.

Jesus realizes this.

This gathering -- of all nature, all beings, all around.

It is Advent. We are coming to.

Wake up!

Periodically head pain winces. When I am still able to speak and walk afterwards, everything is as it is. When I am no longer able to speak and walk, everything then will be as it will be -- namely, as it is.

If you were able to put a stop to the mentality in which every thought is running after something, then you would be no different from a Zen master or a Buddha. Do you want to know what a Zen master or a buddha is? Simply that which is immediately present, listening to the Teaching. It is just because students do not trust completely that they seek outwardly. Even if they get something by seeking, it is all literary excellence; they never attain the living meaning of the masters.
- Lin Chi (803- 867)

The "Teaching" and the "teaching" are probably not two things. Whether they are sutra and commentary, or they are snowflake and lightning storm, whether capital "T" or lowercase "t" -- if immediately present, then it is time to listen.

Wet wood hissing in 20-degree morning cabin does not stand up to cold. Sunrise pink then orange over Melvin Heights and Hosmer Pond urge on paper kindling and soaked sticks from heavy rains even under tarp. Pile will have to find its way into barn. By time final Lauds psalm is chanted, final prayer said, fire has found its legs and runs around interior of iron stove.

We sit a bit. And say in Lectio conversation -- God is that profound place beyond feeling, emotion, and mind where faith has found experience. In that experience there is only fact. And kindness, love, and compassion are the facts it finds. There is no outside nor inside to God.

Blue blanket apologized for its unwillingness to remain wrapped to prevent through-floor cold climbing up legs. It is folded neat, draped over kneeling bench and husk cushion in front of window where gray cloud tucked pink and orange into zippered vest.

Cesco's eyes say "mountain walk." So we go up to brook, over bridge, to western run crunchy ice over to parking lot of waiting-for-snow ski area. Five dogs bound from pickup truck. Carousel of sniff and bark enswirls on open ground.

Open ground -- that's to ponder. Sometimes the only place there is, the only faith found worth attention, is the open ground of whatever appears. It is relational experience. Like Bishop George Berkeley's. Only here the koan asks: No God but the appearance of kindness, love, and compassion -- what is to experience?

Experience: [Middle English, from Old French, from Latin 'experientia,' from 'experins,' 'experient' - present participle of 'experr,' to try. See per-3 in Indo-European Roots.]

Try God. Or, try seeing. Try kindness; try love; try compassion.

The experience of God is trying.

Faith says there is something to kindness, love, and compassion.
Hope says it's worth trying.
Service says "Why not here?"

Nothing esoteric. Nothing, and emptiness, and wide as all space -- the open ground where relational reality longs to be tried.

God is not tried up.

God is us trying God trying us.

Back over brook bridge, Cesco carries stick.

Conductor of morning mountain!

It is a wonder to have spent today alive and free.

People who study Buddhism
Should seek real, true
Perception and understanding for now.
If you attain real, true
Perception and understanding,
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?)

I read a recent article about two men in my Ethics class in prison. One has a sentence of 59 years, the other of 70. The two men were convicted of a murder committed during an interrupted burglary ten years ago when they were 23.

Facts are facts. A husband and father stopped home from work for a change of clothes to go to his son's soccer game. They were in the house. A shot. A death. A loss of life and presence of father and husband. A sorrow.

Facts are facts, too, in that 59 and 70 years are a long time to spend in prison. They were found guilty, sentenced, and live day by day the result of that errant day in that tragic house.

It is a wonder every time I go through the security check points and heavy doors -- in and out -- of the maximum security prison. The wonder is the fact of it. I am able to go in -- for meetingbrook conversations, tutoring, teaching; and I am able to leave out from the razor wire, alternate universe of incarceration, and particular faces of men just like me as I am of them with the grace of God.

When we converse around a table -- we just converse. When we explore Kant, Pannikar, Berry, Oliver, Milosz, Bok, Confucius, Plato, or Nishitani -- we just explore. We speak each name, we speak one another's name, and we try to fit name, face, idea, and personal experience into a context that invites insight and understanding.

To face a fact, look into a fact, or see through a fact -- these acts require practice and courage.

Out Here

I know why he killed himself.
You know, the old man
who spent thirty years
trying to break out of prison
and his last two
aching to get back in.
I know him, how he missed
that cold comfort of gray.
I too, have seen colors be scary.
I know why he carved his name
in the headboard at the boarding house
before he swallowed the stolen pills.
For thirty years they barked his name.
He hasn't heard it since. After living
the same day over and over,
regimen and routine,
now he wakes without schedule.
There are no friends here.
There is no family.
He left all of that behind.
Though he didn't know it then,
prison gave him purpose.
It's lonely out here.
(Poem: "Out Here" by Robin Merrill from Laundry and Stories. Moon Pie Press 2005.)

The fact is ten years ago a man was murdered. The fact is two men are in prison.

The fact is that in the Confucian philosophy the following is said:
"Surely it is the maxim of loving-kindness: Do not do to others what you would not have them do to you." (Analects 15:23)
"Tse-kung asked, 'Is there one word that can serve as a principle of conduct for life?' Confucius replied, 'It is the word 'shu' -- reciprocity. Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.'" (Doctrine of the Mean 13.3)

Out here, we're trying to see one another through these facts.

To live with them.

Each one of us.

A blessing.

Of itself.

At weekday mass church in Rockland has new cross behind altar. Gone is figure of Jesus clothed in garb of his time affixed nowhere extending arms in welcome gesture. In is traditional figure of Jesus nailed to wood head slumped body near naked crucified.

No doubt you're in a Catholic church now. The corpus unambiguous is unmistakably back on cross. No refreshed resurrection motif here. Suffering and death takes center wall.

My teacher said to me,
The treasure house
within you contains
everything,
and you are free to use it.
You don't need to seek outside.
- Dazhu (487 - 593)

Resurrection is ambiguous. Crucifixion is straightforward. No confusing symbolism about being beyond death in some afterlife proscenium. Rather, all we know is we will suffer and die. What comes next is the stuff of theologians sipping cocktails at conferences and mystics sweating fear in the night. For bread and potatoes common folk -- simple unsubtle torture and murder.

The clarity of habeas corpus separates conservators from protestors.

In prison today we had lengthy discussion about what is good, why be good, free will, and God. Language reveals most conceptualize God out there and knowing ahead of time what will happen, mostly holding back instead of righting things. Standard issue placement of God is like scapegoat (albeit an all-knowing all-powerful scapegoat) sent out into desert wasteland of not-me not-us so as to die a death of detachment.

The view from where I sat was different. From where I sat God was the voice of every inquiry, every reach for understanding, and every attempt to speak into being ways of seeing that honor each of the assembled. God was voice seeking embodiment dwelling place near and nearer.

And maybe it is easier to identify with a man (or men) so obviously affixed by their acts to a place of suffering -- that the cross with corpus takes center gaze.

There it is. Here we are. With one another, as God is, with one another -- it was a good day.

"Every day is a good day," Un Mun Zen Master said.

I agree.

The original literal meaning of the word "absurd" is more interesting than any definition given it. [Latin absurdus, out of tune, absurd : ab-, intensive pref.; see ab-1 + surdus, deaf, muffled.]

I am often out of tune. In all respects.

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)(http://dailyzen.com/)

I do not feel this is the best of all possible worlds. Nor do I suspect it isn't. Sometimes, in silence, the world is a chickadee flying to feeder. What it hopes to find there is beyond me. Still, I fill feeder with seeds. Chickadee takes one at a time.

Garrison Keillor on "The Writer's Almanac" tells us:
It's the birthday of the man who helped spark the enlightenment in France, writing under the name Voltaire, born Francois-Marie Arouet in Paris (1694). He wrote so much in his lifetime that his collected works are still being assembled and edited by French scholars. He's known to us for a single short novel: Candide (1760), about a young man who follows the philosophy of Doctor Pangloss that no matter what misfortunes befall us, this is the best of all possible worlds. (http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/)

It is the world I find myself in. No matter what I hope for, when I arrive where I am, I feel exactly how I feel. Nor do I wish it to be other.

November 21, 2005 in the Catholic tradition is the Feast of the Presentation of Mary
Mary's presentation was celebrated in Jerusalem in the sixth century. A church was built there in honor of this mystery. The Eastern Church was more interested in the feast, but it does appear in the West in the 11th century. Although the feast at times disappeared from the calendar, in the 16th century it became a feast of the universal Church.
As with Mary's birth, we read of Mary's presentation in the temple only in apocryphal literature. In what is recognized as an unhistorical account, the Protoevangelium of James tells us that Anna and Joachim offered Mary to God in the Temple when she was three years old. This was to carry out a promise made to God when Anna was still childless.
Though unhistorical, Mary's presentation has an important theological purpose. It continues the impact of the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and of the birth of Mary. It emphasizes that the holiness conferred on Mary from the beginning of her life on earth continued through her early childhood and beyond.
Comment:
It is sometimes difficult for modern Westerners to appreciate a feast like this. The Eastern Church, however, was quite open to this feast and even somewhat insistent about celebrating it. Even though the feast has no basis in history, it stresses an important truth about Mary: From the beginning of her life, she was dedicated to God. She herself became a greater temple than any made by hands. God came to dwell in her in a marvelous manner and sanctified her for her unique role in God's saving work. At the same time, the magnificence of Mary redounds upon her children. They, too, are temples of God and sanctified in order that they might enjoy and share in God's saving work.
(http://www.americancatholic.org/Features/SaintOfDay/default.asp?id=1206)

I like the phrase "God came to dwell in her." Whatever is believed about "God" in our contemporary world, this phrase should be considered. Not just Mary -- though she's as good a beginning as anyone -- but by dint of anyone embodying the reality of God, each of us is opened to that singular experience of reality as it is.

It is not absurd that God dwells within and through us. In the silence of crisp moonlit nights there is a harmony of presence that transcends any grasp of it.

What is, however, absurd is the noise made by men and women claiming they speak for God, they are the instruments of God's power in the world, and that they are acting to bring down God to this world to destroy it, eliminate sin, and purge the unworthy from the face of God's everlasting, spitspot kingdom.

Voltaire wrote, "People who believe in absurdities will eventually commit atrocities."

Listen for a more profound, more loving tune.

Present yourself -- with bare attention-- to a conferred holiness worth the sound of God.

Hear, see, touch, and share this loving-kindness.

Still...as you are.

The liturgical year ends. Everyone looks around not knowing what to say. That's it, the Church says, curtain. Oh yes, it says, Christ is The King.

The King? Is that it? Everyone looks a little unconvinced. The king, you say? Yes, they say. And that's that.

And I will give him the Morning Star. (Apocalypse 1)

Gautama the Buddha got the morning star. He looked up, and there it was -- the morning star. That's what Jesus the Christ gets as well. He will be given the Morning Star.

Fits. Eh?

The mind of a Wayfarer is plain and direct, without artificiality. There is no rejection and no attachment, no deceptive wandering mind. At all times seeing and hearing are normal. There are no further details. One does not, furthermore, close the eyes or shut the ears; as long as feelings do not stick to things, that will do.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)

Yes. It fits.

The Promise of the Morning Star

Thou father of the children of my brain
By thee engendered in my willing heart,
How can I thank thee for this gift of art
Poured out so lavishly, and not in vain.
What thou created never more can die,
Thy fructifying power lives in me
And I conceive, knowing it is by thee,
Dear other parent of my poetry!
For I was but a shadow with a name,
Perhaps by now the very name's forgot;
So strange is Fate that it has been my lot
To learn through thee the presence of that aim
Which evermore must guide me. All unknown,
By me unguessed, by thee not even dreamed,
A tree has blossomed in a night that seemed
Of stubborn, barren wood. For thou hast sown
This seed of beauty in a ground of truth.
Humbly I dedicate myself, and yet
I tremble with a sudden fear to set
New music ringing through my fading youth.
(Poem by Amy Lowell, 1874 - 1925)

We'll sit again this Sunday Evening Practice. Wood fire warms cabin.

The fructifying power of honest doubt and simple faith in what is taking place.

It is time for change.

Some things fit, some have no need to.

Buddha is Buddha.

Morning star is morning star.

Christ, also, has no predicate other than itself.

I'm rethinking my life.

Rethinking the world requires investigating evidence of what the world has been, is, and might become. That's too large for the majority of us. So we look at something more limited, smaller, nearer to us.

Two weeks ago at Texas Book Festival a panel discussion on US/Mexico border issues, author Charles Bowden said it was odd in our prozac nation of self-medicators that we would imprison so many for so long who try to self-medicate without the blessing of pharmaceutical/governmental powers. I visit self-medicators every day -- on the streets of my town, in the confines of my shop, and between the razor wires of maximum security prison.

Maybe the goal for all of us is to change one letter and, thereby, change our lives.

From self-medicators to self-meditators. From medicate to meditate.

Some In Pieces

In World War Two
the oldest
of my uncles
picked up
dead bodies
dead weight
some in pieces
and threw them
onto the beds
of trucks.
His work spread
far as he could see.
When he came
home he poured
salted peanuts
into a Co-Cola
and prepared
for life
with folks
who could
never know
some things
as long
as they lived.
(Poem:"Some In Pieces" by Darnel Arnoult from What Travels With Us LSU Press. )

What we could never know is limitless. What we might experience is closer to hand.

In a talk about The Tender Bar : A Memoir by J.R. Moehringer, the author talks about his uncle Charlie -- who died yesterday -- as having disappeared for a number of years, who had the ability of disappearing, as it were, right before your eyes.

I know what he means. A woman wrote yesterday trying to track down some group of hermits in Maine. Not us, I decided. Too visible.

But then I remembered calling meetingbrook "hermits in the open," I like the notion of being invisible in plain sight.

I listen to the voices that visit the shop by the harbor. I listen to the voices of the men in prison. I listen, at times, to my own voice. We all speak into visibility what serves to keep invisible so much that cannot be known or shown. Who can present their first kiss? Who can present the last dream before dawn yesterday morning? Who can present verification we live alongside others in parallel existences that unfold hour by hour in untellable silence over long distances in vocabularies specific to the alternative life?

We pour salted peanuts into tops of jars and pick our way along visible moments others vouch as our life.

It is easier to toss one by one the peanuts into our mouth, chew, swallow, and smile into the gathered faces -- than to ramble aloud maddened mantras that traverse brane upon brane (which, in physics, is any dimensional or extended object in string theory ). The hollow echo crossing sound chambers of varied places, faces, and excruciating attempts to locate oneself where one simultaneously wishes they could be -- what do we call that?

Perhaps we call that "poetry."

Czeslaw Milosz in his poem "Ars Poetica?" wrote:
And yet the world is different from what it seems to be
and we are other than how we see ourselves in our ravings.
People therefore preserve silent integrity
thus earning the respect of their relatives and neighbors.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.

What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,
as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,
under unbearable duress and only with the hope
that good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
( -- Czeslaw Milosz)

There are many places we try to avoid -- most our lives.

Yes, there's a phrase to meditate, "Most our lives."

I don't know where my life is.

I'll take a line from Lloyd --"I'll have to think about that, I'll do some research."

And so, for a spate of a Saturday afternoon, I re-search my life -- sitting on porch, sipping coffee, watching chickadee, sun on smoke flavoring brisk November air.

I rethink it all.

As it is, after all, invisibly full of joy.

The silence was deep. Seven of us sat in the stillness. Thick cinderblocks muffled murmurs from hall and other rooms.

Sitting meditation. In prison. Nothing moving.

Male or female: why should one need
To distinguish false and true?
What is the shape in which Quanyin
Would finally take form?
Peeling away the bodhisattva’s skin
Would be of no use whatsoever
Were someone to ask if it were the body
Of a woman or a man.
- One Eyed Jingang

Bowing, I thank them for inviting me to sit with them.

Quanyin, Avolokiteshvara, and Andy wandered down hall. The bodhisattva of compassion wore drab grey. Down the hall another group of men were studying plankton. I read Joe J's revision of poem he'd given me earlier. I read from book on near-death Dick sent in for Sonny to read. Saskia tutored math. At end, with no announcement for conversation, Pat, Brad, Vaughn, Chris, Olin, Tony, and Everett wander in and we gab.

It's just us. In prison.

The warden, thinner from a time ill, shook hands when I welcomed him back in the lobby. On wall in chaplain's area, dream-catcher rounds itself watching for dreams. I agree to give talk for substance abuse group on spirituality in January -- there'll be poems.

A few acres of violence and mistrust. A few hours of connection and compassion.

When the Buddhist group ends, the statue of the staying-behind-one is tucked away until some more time goes by.

Bo Lozoff is right -- we're all doing time.

Today's felt ok. Like calling the lovely...lovely. There's nothing else needing to be said but what actually takes place.

Bowing: going stays, staying goes.

This koan looks both ways, then crosses road.

Some days human language sounds like stones rolling down metal chute. No matter how hard you listen, only clank, clank, clunk.

Today is one of those days. My voice, and the voice of everyone close enough to be heard, is tumbling stony tintinnabulation.

The great way of the buddhas is profound, wondrous, inconceivable; how could its practice be easy? Have you not seen how the ancients gave up their bodies and lives, abandoned their countries, cities, and families, looking upon them as shards of tile? After that they passed eons living alone in the mountains and forests, bodies and minds like dead trees; only then did they unite with the way. Then they could use the mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void, turning the incomparable wheel.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

So, I have to ask -- what are these stones saying? I am not a linguist of mute matter into translatable discourse -- so, at times, I despair.

Today I despair. Just that. Plain despondency. Not a lick of sense heard with my tin ears.

The past throws stones at the future,
And all of them fall on the present.
Weeping stones and laughing gravel stones,
Even God in the Bible threw stones,
Even the Urim and Tumim were thrown
And got stuck in the beastplate of justice,
And Herod threw stones and what came out was a Temple.

Oh, the poem of stone sadness
Oh, the poem thrown on the stones
Oh, the poem of thrown stones.
Is there in this land
A stone that was never thrown
And never built and never overturned
And never uncovered and never discovered
And never screamed from a wall and never discarded by the builders
And never closed on top of a grave and never lay under lovers
And never turned into a cornerstone?

Please do not throw any more stones,
You are moving the land,
The holy, whole, open land,
You are moving it to the sea
And the sea doesn't want it
The sea says, not in me.

Please throw little stones,
Throw snail fossils, throw gravel,
Justice or injustice from the quarries of Migdal Tsedek,
Throw soft stones, throw sweet clods,
Throw limestone, throw clay,
Throw sand of the seashore,
Throw dust of the desert, throw rust,
Throw soil, throw wind,
Throw air, throw nothing
Until your hands are weary
And the war is weary
And even peace will be weary and will be.
(from poem, "Temporary Poem Of My Time," by Yehuda Amichai, 1924-2000)

Ears are weary. The scraping sandy sound of war has worn down anything sensible that could be said of it -- until sand blast scraping rust metal of wearied brain falls deaf exhausted on lifeless ground.

Yes, yes, you say -- perk up, be optimistic, be the hope you seek. These sentiments will be taken under advisement. Today, an empty seat in circle of thoughtful reflection.

Instead, off to side, moping between glances at dance of November swarm of flying creatures outside kitchen window, slice of pizza with ginger ale will have to suffice.

And does.

Make do.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that the leaf is mother to tree.

Not the opposite.

Wonderful! Wonderful!
The sermon of the inanimate is inconceivable.
If you try to hear it with your ears,
After all you'll hardly understand
Only when you hear it in your eyes
Will you be able to know.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)

Walking with Saskia to brook with dog and cat after sitting this morning, hundreds of yellow leaves blanket ground underfoot.

Each one is mother to earth. To the four of us walking.

Continuation and transition.

One's way making itself through this reality.

Perfection.

What would untie us? Where would we drift if untied?

At Zen centers they say there is a Way to be practiced
And a religious truth to be realized.
Tell me, what religious truth is realized,
What way is practiced?
In your present functioning, what do you lack?
What would you fix?
Younger newcomers, not understanding this,
Immediately believe these ...[enthrallists] and
Let them talk about things that tie people up.
- Linji (d. 867)

Ordinary life is good enough. Everything is good enough -- once the mind is untied from thinking that there's something to get back to. Or untied from the belief there's a need to be untied.

You will not be expecting us to write anything to you, brothers, [sisters], about 'times and seasons', since you know very well that the Day of the Lord is going to come like a thief in the night. It is when people are saying, 'How quiet and peaceful it is' that the worst suddenly happens, as suddenly as labour pains come on a pregnant woman; and there will be no way for anybody to evade it.
But it is not as if you live in the dark, my brothers [and sisters], for that Day to overtake you like a thief. No, you are all sons [and daughters] of light and sons [and daughters] of the day: we do not belong to the night or to darkness, so we should not go on sleeping, as everyone else does, but stay wide awake and sober. (1 Thessalonians 5:1 - 6)

Religion -- from Latin, perhaps from 'religare', 'to tie fast' -- has as 4th definition, "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."

The monastery of the heart is where all devotion takes place. The context of meetingbrook is to practice contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. We continually look for ways to integrate the intellectual, spiritual, and social.

Lloyd last evening at poetry, tea, and literature said we should become a peace center. Sara spoke about the cathedral in DC where there was a center for prayer and pilgrimage. In Belfast this morning at St. Francis of Assisi Church the energy was sweet with intelligent spirituality in community.

What we look for is everywhere to be found. The difficulty we encounter is thinking one could tie it up and keep it as it is in the moment it was experienced. But it passes, circles wide and away, then returns differing in shape and form, waiting to be found and experienced anew.

Meetingbrook is each face that shows up, circles, swirls away, sometimes returns -- but always remaining in our practice of prayer, peace, and pilgrimage.

We are tied to this practice. By any other name, religion.

It doesn't matter where we are. Small, middling, big, scattered or centralized, the invisible cord of connection to an inclusive community of awareness holds each and all, present or absent -- in diaphanous intimacy of belonging.

We practice staying wide, open, and awake.

War ages us in ways chronological time cannot. Those who've been in war are older than the rest of us. Hence the word "veteran" -- from Latin "vetus" meaning old.

Sam, Tommy, Richard, Hugh, Buzz, Dan, Hughie, John, Tom, Diane, Lloyd, Michael -- and all the others who are veterans who sometimes drop in at Meetingbrook -- we salute your service. We're also glad to acknowledge Armistice Day, or in Canada, Remembrance Day.

Subject and object from the start
Are no different,
The myriad things nothing
But images in the mirror.
Bright and resplendent,
Transcending both guest and host,
Complete and realized,
All is permeated by the absolute.
A single form encompasses
The multitude of dharmas,
All of which are interconnected
Within the net of Indra.
Layer after layer there is no
Point at which it all ends,
Whether in motion or still,
All is fully interpenetrating.
- Zhitong (d.1124)

Many conversations, some arguments, surely strong feelings -- have been aired in front of the fireplace. Veterans for some wars, veterans against some wars -- but all of them clear about one thing, namely, the men and women who serve must be looked upon and treated with respect and honor. Service, especially during war, is demanding and difficult. Only those who have been there can speak to it. The rest of us must first listen. Experience must first be heard. Only then, depending on the numbers of cups of coffee drunk, might the conversation divert into matters of controversy or politics.

The Street Sounds to the Soldiers' Tread

The street sounds to the soldiers' tread,
And out we troop to see:
A single redcoat turns his head,
He turns and looks at me.

My man, from sky to sky's so far,
We never crossed before;
Such leagues apart the world's ends are,
We're like to meet no more;

What thoughts at heart have you and I
We cannot stop to tell;
But dead or living, drunk or dry,
Soldier, I wish you well.
(Poem by A.E. Housman, 1859-1936)

Before opening the shop today we drive to three houses where men who've been in war reside. Saskia brings each a pastry-puff and wishes them a happy Veteran's Day. She reports smiles all around.

The Messages

"I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three
Whispered their last messages to me..."

Back from the trenches, more dead than alive,
Stone-deaf and dazed, and with a broken knee,
He hobbled slowly, muttering vacantly:

"I cannot quite remember... There were five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench, and three
Whispered their dying messages to me...

"Their friends are waiting, wondering how they thrive -
Waiting a word in silence patiently...
But what they said, or who their friends may be

"I cannot quite remember... There where five
Dropt dead beside me in the trench - and three
Whispered their dying messages to me..."
(Poem by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, 1878-1962))

Remembering might be all we can do. The Canadians could be spot on. Remembering, not just mental recall, but physical/spiritual recollection that re-embodies a transformed reality to exist alongside the hard, frightening experience we know of as war. This transformed reality will serve to transcend time and space, will serve to attempt to make whole with wisdom and loving-kindness what the harsh, amputated experience of war could not.

Lament (1916)

We who are left, how shall we look again
Happily on the sun or feel the rain
Without remembering how they who went
Ungrudgingly and spent
Their lives for us loved, too, the sun and rain?

A bird among the rain-wet lilac sings -
But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
(Poem by Wilfred Wilson Gibson)

Today we turn attention to these little things: blue water, smoky fire, potatoes and sausage, conversation, flag waving in wind.

Old veterans never die, they become long-winded.

We rest awhile in the heart of things.

War?

War is not the issue. War is defined as: “A state of open, armed, often prolonged conflict carried on between nations, states, or parties.” War threatens to become fashionable. We are at war in Iraq with an enemy we cannot recognize. Before that we were in Afghanistan at war with people from another country. We are at war with terror. Every irregular behavior looks like terror and attracts wary police or military attention. We have no idea how to fight a noun, verb, adjective or adverb variant of “terror.”

Still, we are at war with terror. At home we have been at war with poverty. At war with drugs. There are wars between red and blue, liberals and conservatives, Bush-lovers and Bush-haters. There is a propaganda war. There is even a ratings war for dominance among television networks. There are battles between sports franchises. There are battles in congress, before the Supreme Court, and no one is quite sure what (if any) sensible outcome is possible or will ever result from these battles and wars. The president has recently declared war against bird flu.

War is not the issue. Greed, self-delusion, and deceit are closer to the issue. War is only war -- a means searching for a reputable end. But there is, it seems, no end to the human mind's attachment to war and the concept of war. Greed, delusion, and deceit are enders of human hope and trust -- a far more destructive effect than even the devastation mechanized war can reach.

A crowd of stars lines up
Bright in the deep night.
Lone lamp on the cliff,
The moon is not yet sunk,
Full and bright without being
Ground or polished.
Hanging in the black sky is my mind.
- Han Shan (early 9th century)

Time is out of joint. It is confusing for many of us. Time seems to be speeding up. The gulf widens between the rich and poor. Natural catastrophes, such as volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes tear through life and property with death and destruction. Men and women, wearing or driving bombs, hurl themselves into the midst of fellow and sister human beings detonating themselves. Elected leaders of nations have no response that indicates they have a clue what is going on and how to make a difference. At least not an insightful, enlightening response. So much of the behavior we see in corporate halls is grab while the grabbing's good.

We can deal with war, the so-called traditional war. Legitimate, ethical, and proportionate response to unprovoked attack against the well being of peoples or nations is necessary when the call comes to intervene. When we send young men and women into harm's way we have a responsibility to transcend politics, ideology, and self-serving ambition. It is always young men and women whose minds and bodies are torn apart in war. Every day from Iraq we are sent dead bodies of Americans, and we watch as dead bodies of Iraqis are sent to ground. The wounded – all of them from every side – limp, half blinded, shattered into a broken future.

A New York Times columnist relates a conversation with a man serving in the military:
A captain who is on active duty, and therefore asked not to be identified by name, told me yesterday:
"The only reason I stayed in the Army was because one colonel convinced me to do it. Other than that, I would have walked. Basically, these guys who are leaving have their high-powered educations. Some are from West Point. They've done their five years. Why should they stay and go back to Iraq and die in a war that's just going to keep on going?"
Beyond that, he said, "Guys are not going to stay in the Army when their wives are leaving them."
From the perspective of the troops, he said, the situation in Iraq is perverse.
He could find no upside. "You go to war," he said, "and you could lose your heart, your mind, your arms, your legs - but you cannot win. The soldiers don't win."
(11/10/2005, NYTimes Op-Ed, "An Army Ready to Snap" By Bob Herbert)

The issue is suffering. It is time to face suffering.

The suffering of Christ is not a trademark owned by any Christian church. The suffering of Christ is the suffering of each and every being. The church is the individual willing to open mind and heart to another individual, and then another. The process of such opening illuminates the reality of Christ as the loving acceptance of the reality of each. To find the reality of Christ we must look to the individual -- i.e. the undivided -- and be willing to sacrifice the belief in what is not of the whole in order to engage the reality of what is of the whole. The world is of the whole. The world is not a mistake, not a falling from a state of primordial perfection into matter, not the booby prize in a contest of spiritualist purity. The earth and all that it contains, all the beings it supports, and the humans that unlock nature's secrets -- all this, things as they are -- is the dwelling place of the one-we-call-God.

The Four Noble Truths -- about suffering: its cause, the penetration, understanding, and cessation of it -- are not the intellectual property of any Buddhist sangha. The Eightfold Path invites us into a life of practice that attends to 1. Wisdom, i.e. (Right Understanding, Right Aspiration); 2. Morality, i.e. (Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood); and, 3. Concentration, i.e. (Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration). These efforts to get ourselves "right" with the world and one another are efforts to realize the true and proper nature of who we are and what we are doing in the world. The dissatisfaction and unfulfilled lives we experience is directly an effect of clinging to views, beliefs, and opinions that are harmful to persons, places, sentient beings, and things of all shapes and purpose. Suffering discords and discards.

To allow the suffering of individuals and the suffering of the world to be transformed through us, we have to incarnate a new being. This being will not be discordant, but will harmonize the many sounds passing through it. This being will not be discarded, but will find its place in the dwelling of a community of awareness. You through whom the discord and discard passes, will not be harmed or destroyed by the process of transubstantiation. Why not? Because you have not made yourself other, have not taken stance antagonistic to the life flowing through you, nor have you pretended it was you doing the transforming work. Life heals itself. Or, put another way, life is healed by Itself. "Itself" needs a place through which the suffering of life's members can pass and be acknowledged, accepted, and affirmed. You are that place. We are that place.

Archbishop Romero, who was assassinated in 1980, had this to say fifteen months earlier:
But let us remember that Christ has become a person of his people, of his time; he lived as a Jew; he labored as a worker in Nazareth, and ever since, he is made flesh in all people.
If many have moved away from the church, it is precisely because the church has been a little alienated from humanity.
But a church that would feel as its own, all that is human, and would wish to incarnate within itself the sorrow, hope and anguish, of all who suffer and rejoice, that church would be Christ loved and awaited, Christ present.
And that depends on us.
(Archbishop Oscar Romero, 3December1978, in August-September 2005 issue of "The Catholic Worker")

Are we ready to put off greed, delusion, and deceit? Are we ready to vacate our views, beliefs, and opinions in order to arrive empty for the loving work of Itself to renew being and life?

We need to encourage those of us frightened by the prospect of embodying and transforming suffering. Encourage a reflection about dying and resurrecting through suffering's transformation and cessation. Encourage an awareness that ultimately, by birthing a new incarnation and new enlightenment in this world, yes, in this very world, this very existence -- we enter into the sacred meditation and transubstantiating miracle that is the grace of this moment.

This moment of grace is attention to our true nature. The work needing to be done is inner work that must be done through, with, in, and as "us." There is no world "out there" to change. The healing needing to be done is an inside job.

It is not a war.

It is, simply -- prayer and practice.

Lower guns.

Lower eyes.

Lower body to sit.

Silently, still.

Peace!

The elderly artist dropped his cigar to the rug in front of fireplace in his cozy study. He says he doesn't sketch anymore. "It's gone," he says. He's in shock over circumstances in his family's life.

Out in the van, cold rain blackening road, we drive home over wet leaves.

The purpose of Zen is to enable people to immediately transcend the ordinary and the holy, just getting people to awaken on their own, forever cutting off the root of doubt. Many people in modern times disregard this. They may join Zen groups, but they are lazy about Zen study. Even if they achieve concentration, they do not choose real teachers. Through the error of false teachers, they likewise lose their way. Without having understood senses and objects, as soon as they possess themselves of some false interpretation they become obsessed by it and lose the correct basis completely. They are only interested in becoming leaders and being known as teachers. While they value an empty reputation in the world, they bring ill on themselves. Not only do they make their successors blind and deaf, they also cause the influence of Zen to degenerate.
- Fayan

I pick up cigar and give it back to him. His wife says he hasn't sketched since January -- a long pause in a habit that he'd practiced every day for over sixty years. "But he's begun to write," she says. He tilts his head and raises eyebrows, ceding. "I'll stop by, read them, give them back, and leave." -- I tell him.

I don't know what to think about zen.

The cigar rolled to edge of rug by rear leg of chair.

Sometimes a visit is only a visit.

Saskia has food ready to eat.

Dripping spigot speeds beat into white pot in kitchen sink.

Your heart knows
The way to Heng Mountain.
You are not afraid;
Few people go there.
Inside the boat,
You still hear birds and temple chimes.
At the river's source,
You dry your monk's robe in the sun.
You had a family,
But left it when young;
Now there is no temple
That would not welcome you.
Managing to find
A shelter in the cold,
You do your usual zazen
As snow fills up your door.
- Chia Tao (779-843) dailyzen

Steady flow into sink, a drummer's flurry before handing lick back to tightened faucet.

Ayya Khema's words tonight at conversation about anicca, dukkha, and anatta -- impermanent, unfulfilled, of no core-substance -- also drip through kitchen's quiet.

Ball rolls in from front room. Border collie chases after. Maine coon cat sleeps on bed across from sink.

Wendell Berry ends his poem "To My Mother" with the lines:
...And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.

Baking paper fits on tray for frozen croissants defrosting.

Two good words: unentangled; undismayed.

Those who love have forgiven.