If I happen to get lost, don't find me too quickly.

Yellow bags are lifted and tossed over railing into hopper at transfer station. It used to be called the dump. Everything is recycling. It used to be called garbage.

In Sara's story at Poetry, Tea, and Literature in the shop this afternoon, she wrote of someone who's insulted the character, "He was someone to be polite to." We used to say, "I'm going to knock his lights out." A lot has changed. There are people who you think you want to hurt. You might not. And for noble reasons. Still, the impulse is there.

If you have any desire to surpass others, or any thought of your own ability, this is egoism and possessiveness. These are sicknesses in the context of nirvana, so The Nirvana Sutra says, “Space can contain everything, but space does not entertain the thought that it can contain everything.” This is a metaphor for the disappearance of egoism and possessiveness, by which you proceed to indestructible concentration.
- Hongren (602-675)

Cesco walks into kitchen. Takes water. Turns, walks out. Saskia works at counter the makings of supper. Mu-ge is out in the barn. I am mulling about impulse and how many men I've known who've not mulled, but let rip into the fog of substances, anger, and immediate satisfaction.

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth–beware of heartless them
(given the scapel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.

All lose,whole find
(--Poem by E.E. Cummings)

What have you found?

Concentrate now.

One and zero. Something and nothing. Form and emptiness. Wholeness and partiality, fractionality.

It all belongs to all of us. It all belongs to God. We ought not accept what is not itself whole and entire. Don't be sold fear. Fear uses partiality and fractionality to lure us away from what is whole and undivided.

The Invention of Fractions

God himself made the whole numbers: everything else
is the work of man.
—Leopold Kronnecker

God created the whole numbers:
the first born, the seventh seal,
Ten Commandments etched in stone,
the Twelve Tribes of Israel —
Ten we've already lost —
forty days and forty nights,
Saul's ten thousand and David's ten thousand.
'Be of one heart and one mind' —
the whole numbers, the counting numbers.

It took humankind to need less than this;
to invent fractions, percentages, decimals.
Only humankind could need the concepts
of splintering and dividing,
of things lost or broken,
of settling for the part instead of the whole.

Only humankind could find the whole numbers,
infinite as they are, to be wanting;
though given a limitless supply,
we still had no way
to measure what we keep
in our many-chambered hearts
(--Poem: "The Invention of Fractions" by Jessica Goodfellow, from A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland.)

Let's clarify something important. We are not ignorant. Nor are we innocent. We are merely fearful of truth. Truth means nothing is disclosed. Are we ready to experience nothing? We have spent lifetimes loathing and fearing nothing. And now we are being asked to step away from fear.

Is it possible that we have managed to ignore God because we are unwilling to disclose the wholeness of our very nature, the frontside and backside, inside and outside, upside and downside of exactly what we are? Light and shadow? Help and hindrance? Good and bad? Is our hiddenness and incompleteness what keeps us back from experiencing God experiencing us? Do we actually think we are better than God?

By all accounts, it was Luther's early "theology of the cross" that most decisively influenced Heidegger. It was the "young Luther" whom Heidegger explicitly acknowledged as a tutor in these matters (G63 5/4).¹⁰ The "theology of the cross" is Luther's designation for any theological position, such as his own, that repudiates the classic tradition of philosophical monotheism, which he called the "theology of glory."¹¹ Luther worries, first of all, that philosophical monotheism actually misses the real message of Christianity. As he puts it in the "Heidelberg Disputation" from 1518, "The theologian of glory does not recognize, along with the Apostle, the crucified and hidden God alone (1 Corinthians 2:2)" (LW31 227). More than that, however, Luther worries that the "theology of glory" reflects the same drive for human self-aggrandizement that surfaces in the more familiar phenomenon of the "righteousness of works." More specifically, the "theology of glory" is the issue of a perverted desire to determine the nature of God independently of God's own free self-disclosure in the "foolishness" of the cross.¹² In the end, the "theology of glory" puts itself above God, dictating who and what God is and what God can do. Luther writes, "But alas, even now very many people think in an unworthy way about God and claim in bold and impudent treatises that God is this way or that way. ... They so raise their own opinion to the skies that they judge God with no more trouble or fear than a poor cobbler judges his leather" (LW25 167).

God's free self-disclosure is locked into the straitjacket of "human metaphysical rules" (LW29 111). The partisans of the "theology of glory," Luther tells us, "want to be like God, and they want their thoughts to be not beneath God but beside Him" (LW25 366).

The central concept that Luther uses to undermine the "theology of glory" is that of the "hidden God" (deus absconditus). By "hiddenness," Luther clearly does not mean "nonexistence." He tells us what he means quite clearly in the lectures on Romans: "[The work of God] is never hidden in any other way than under that which appears contrary to our conceptions and ideas" (LW25 366). The "hidden God" is contrasted with the "naked" God longed for by theologians of glory, that is, God as an object of immediate apprehension. For Luther, the "hidden God" reveals himself, paradoxically, in the suffering humanity of Christ.¹³
...
Footnote 13:
¹³ In order to remove the primary cause of alienation between humanity and God, that is, human pride, God reveals himself in "his human nature, weakness, foolishness" (LW31 52). God must be seen in the "humility and shame of the cross" (LW31 52–53). The God "hidden" in the humanity of Christ is elsewhere called "the God who is not seen" (LW29 111).
(--excerpt from "On the Track of the Fugitive Gods: Heidegger, Luther, Hölderlin," by Benjamin D. Crowe, University of Utah, in The Journal of Religion, Volume 87, Number 2, April 2007)

The hidden God isn't hidden from itself.

This is why we are so befuddled.

God's self-disclosure is the nearside of one's own true self.

Unafraid. And alone. We look through God as God looks through us.

Word must become body. Body must become word. When so, speech is act. When so, act is graceful silence. When so, graceful silence is eloquent articulation of what is longing to be revealed in the very next act, word, moment, and face.

We are -- foolishly -- one and zero in the presence of one another.

Is the presence of the Great Mystery, undisclosed -- not made known -- but only integral to, in, with and through us?

Is Christ suffering humanity?

Jack asked the circle tonight at Thursday Conversation, "What is it each one of us fears?

I mask my fear with anger. Fear, for me, is failure to question.

Few people believe their
Inherent mind is Buddha.
Most will not take this seriously,
And therefore are cramped.
They are wrapped up in illusions, cravings,
Resentments, and other afflictions,
All because they love the cave of ignorance.
- Fenyang

What I fear is ignorance -- mine and others'. I don't fear innocence. 'Not knowing' is devoutly to be wished. No, I fear ignorance.

Jack had said earlier, "We don't know what is experiencing what!" (Words have palpable reality.) For me "what is" is God...experiencing "what", that is, the question, or, the questioner.

As a hermit/monastic, I long to live my life as an open question. This entails calling things into question. (Hence my difficulty with ignorance and arrogance -- unquestioning, not wanting to know enough to warrant thought, feeling, or action.)

If fear is failure to question, then I fear "what is" not experiencing "what." If I am "what" I am, then without the "what" there is nothing there to experience. "What" is the question. I am the "what" in this moment in this place in this form.

Ignorance and arrogance -- my own, and that of others -- is my fear.

I cloak my fear in anger.

There is much to be angry about.

And a second time the voice spoke from heaven, “What God has made clean, you have no right to call profane”. This was repeated three times, before the whole of it was drawn up to heaven again.
(--from Acts 11:1 - 18)

Down from Lincoln, today in East Bangor, alongside Maple Grove Cemetery, Cesco and I walked out a broad field on snowmobile track, behind the Baptist Church. The enormous field was snow filled and ice crusted. The old dog is good company.

Each one of us is God's question.

Let God experience this question.

"Ashes to ashes,
Dust to dust --
Thou art --
Remember..."

It's her own version. That's what Saskia says making a sign with her fingers on my forehead before leaving for Pittsfield, Newport, Bangor, and Gardiner Maine.

Remember what? The historical Jesus? Or something equally compelling? What is that something?

That 'something' is the ongoing interpenetration and interlocution that being-in-the-world necessitates in order for authentic revelation to take place.

In other words, we are. First and foremost -- we are. As is, (we hold) -- God. We posit an incomplete perfection wherein each one of us is absolutely necessary for the perfect incompletion to move with the vital grace of God toward wherever it is the perfect and incomplete move toward with imperfect and complete mutual intention and assistance. It doesn't end. Life is without end. Suffering will end (so we pray). The world might and might not end. It depends on our perception and conception of 'world.'

Here's what William McNamara says:

WIE: Could you explain exactly how you define "the world" on the spiritual path?

WM: I find it necessary to distinguish between the world and what I call the "Mpire"—the world of the three M's: mediocrity, mendacity, and manipulation. The world that is the earth, the gift God has given us—I would never renounce that. All I want to do is embrace that and love it and become more and more a part of it—that objective, wonderful world.

But the Mpire is that aspect of the world that has been used and twisted out of shape in order to provide the power, pleasure, and prestige of human beings. The net result of that, down through the centuries, has been an unreal world. The Mpire is an unreal world. It's made up of a network of mediocrity, manipulation, and mendacity.

The whole sociopolitical world we live in is dominated by mendacity—the big lie. The big lie is coming through television, through magazines (not enlightenment magazines but through many magazines) through propaganda, ideologies. There is some truth in it, but it's the big lie because it doesn't reveal the ultimate. And it doesn't evaluate contemporary situations in terms of the ultimate. Therefore it goes askew.

Then there's mediocrity. Everything is worked out into a system so that there are no surprises. And God is surprise. God is beyond our conceptions, our images, our big to-dos. If we are not being surprised constantly, it means we are out of touch with the real, and we've worked things out simply to be manageable, to provide us with more power, more convenience, more comfort.

The third aspect is manipulation. I think the biggest problem of society today is that we let too many things happen to us. We've allowed ourselves to become usable items for government, for church, for whatever the big power structures may be. That's manipulation. It happens in respectable, subtle ways. First we allow television into the home. Then we allow computers, and then because there is pornography on the Internet, we get used to pornography in the home. It just becomes absurd, but we've gotten used to it. We are shrinking humanly. We're not being divinized; we're not being transformed. It happens little by little as we let too many dehumanizing things happen to us, so that we can no longer take a stand against it.

The term I like to use to describe that whole phenomenon is "pretty poison." It's not a spectacular kind of evil. Pretty poison is the kind of evil that killed Christ. It was not the bad men of that age, not the state, not the church. It wasn't the notoriously evil men but the pretty poison that seeped into the best institutions and the best people. Pretty poison is that kind of evil that seeps unnoticeably, imperceptibly into our nicest people and our best institutions and just disorients them, derails them. It's a respectable kind of evil.
(--in What is Enlightenment magazine, "THE e'M'pire", An interview with Father William McNamara, by Carter Phipps) http://www.wie.org/j18/mcnam.asp?pf=1

It is clear many in our midst, many of our 'betters' have nearly perfected this respectable kind of evil. They have their version of 'world' -- they have their version of 'Christianity.' They call it "Don't think, don't feel, don't act." They call it "Terror and perpetual war on terror." They call it "It's for your own sake, for your security, for your protection," (as they take all three from us.) And they call it "We know better than you; trust us." These political strategies operate in both secular and religious minds.

If trust means relinquishing inquiry, action, and common sense, if someone's notion of mind means abandoning heartfelt thought and clear compassionate thinking -- then don't mind them. Mind yourself. Practice cultivating a sound, sane, and sensible mind.

Calm yourself, quiet yourself,
Master your senses.
Look right into the source of mind,
Always keep it shining bright,
Clear and pure.
Do not give rise to an indifferent mind.
- Hongren (602-675)

Mind sees this movement through and through.

It is Ash Wednesday. The story is being told. Our story is being told. Common here is 'being, told.'

For in our history I know redemption only in fragments which are experienced personally and collectively; in which, however, Jesus remains the critical and productive promise of an undefinable definitive future salvation. Nowhere do I see signs of an 'objectively completed' redemption. Yet I believe that our action in helping people, healing them and bringing them political liberation, fragmentary though it may seem, has definitive value in and of itself, even when it fails. It is precisely to this that the living God will grant an even greater future. 'He gives a new face to darkness and light, to all that we do.'
Even in his[ or her] Christian view of grace and redemption, the Christian will have to remain aware of his [or her] human condition.
--p.25, in Christ, The Experience of Jesus as Lord, by Edward Schillebeeckx, c.1977, trans by John Bowden, 1981)

This is our daily, ordinary, journey.

Being present is the way, there and here. Presence transcends mere physical attendance. Presence also transforms that which is beyond physical into a concretion of real and felt re-membering, one permeated with remembrance.

Correspondence is the conversation of contemplation.

Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
(--1st stanza of poem Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot)

The usual reign is conducting self-immolation by using other bodies at its pyre. This holy season of Lent must redesign the mind that destroys others to uplift self. It is a brutish and hellish pattern of deceit and dishonor. We must begin with the resemblance of such thinking and behavior within ourselves. This is mortification -- coming to the end of death-designs on living beings.

For this practice, we need help.

For this practice we listen to the conclusion of Eliot's poem:

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
(--final stanza of poem Ash Wednesday, by T.S. Eliot)

We are.

Not to be...

Separated.

Remember!

The Tibetan Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche says that: "Empty cognizance is our nature."

If that is so, what would 'sinning against nature' be?

(Morning cool kitchen, looking out at green hanging bird-feeder, not a taker in sight.)

Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by
Those labels and slogans,
Both those used in
Ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your
Perception of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly.
- Linji (d.867)

At Meetingbrook we seem to fall between things and labels. Like perpetual inner ear imbalance, there's a dizzying awareness that soon the plunge will irretrieve itself. (Saskia tells of her fall on razor-slick second brook while assessing height of rising ice under plank footbridge, nearly going the unmoving cascading distance.)

A form of hermit-monastic life that wanders through the thin place between men/women, solitude/community, work/play, prayer/politics, monastery/marketplace, Buddhism/Catholic Christianity, hidden/open, conversation/silence, listening/engaging, and this/that. (Red squirrel runs down hill to splay of empty shells, foraging what has fallen from feeder. Climbs to source.)

Empty cognizance is our nature. We cannot separate one aspect of it from the other. Empty means “not made out of anything whatsoever”; our nature has always been this way. Yet, while being empty, it has the capacity to cognize, to experience, to perceive. It’s not so difficult to comprehend this; to get the theory that this empty cognizance is buddha nature, self-existing wakefulness. But to leave it at that is the same as looking at the buffet and not eating anything. Being told about buddha nature but never really making it our personal experience will not help anything. It’s like staying hungry. Once we put the food in out mouth, we discover what the food tastes like. This illustrates the dividing line between idea and experience.
(--from article, "As the Clouds Vanish, Training in the Dzogchen Approach to Enlightenment", by Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche (1920-1996). He was a master in the Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Issue September 29, 2006)

Looking beneath things, or beyond things, should come with a warning label: "Any sighting beneath or beyond things is likely to upset your balance. Do not tear off this label."

In the same way, if we have correct understanding, the moment we apply what our master teaches, we recognize our nature. That there is no entity whatsoever to be seen is called “emptiness.” The ability to know that mind essence is called “cognizance.” If it were only blank, bare space, what or who would know that it is “blank” or “empty” or “nothing”? There would be no knowing. These two aspects, empty and cognizant, are indivisible. This becomes obvious to us the very moment that we look; it is no longer hidden. Then it is not just an intellectual idea of how emptiness is; it becomes a part of our experience. At that moment, meditation training can truly begin.--Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

(Saskia washes dishes that camped out in sink last night. Water stretches to boil in tea pot on stove. Drip from faucet, warm air from floor register, trash can from under sink receives bits from drainer.)

We call this training "meditation," but it is not an act of meditating in the common sense of the word. There is no emptying the mind essence by trying to maintain an artificially imposed vacant state. Why? Because mind essence is already empty. Similarly, we do not need to make this empty essence cognizant. All you have to do is leave it as it is. In fact, there is nothing whatsoever to do, so we cannot even call this an act of meditating. There is an initial recognition, and from then on we do not have to be clever about it or try to improve it in any way whatsoever. Just let it be as it naturally is -— that is what is called meditation, or more accurately “nonmeditation.” What is crucial is not to be distracted for even a single instant. Once recognition has taken place, undistracted nonmeditation is the key point of practice.
--Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

It will be Oregon Chai Tea with toasted English muffins for today's travel to Ellsworth and Bar Harbour. Cesco will be at elbow between us in green car. Saskia will go to collect numbers; dog and I will wander collecting fragrances, sights, and sounds. Time will pass. Sky will be "Mostly cloudy with scattered flurries," (I thought it read scattered "flumes." A flume is "A narrow gorge, usually with a stream flowing through it.")

“Distracted” means that once the attention wavers and loses itself, thoughts and emotions can take place. Distraction is the return of all these kinds of thoughts, in which the continuity of nondual awareness is lost. The training is simply to recognize again. Once recognition takes place, there is nothing more to do; simply allow mind essence to be. That is how the cloud-covers gradually dissolve. --Tulku

If the slash between all the complementary arrivals begins to dissolve (this/that, cloistered/peripatetic, practicing monk/non-practicing monk) -- what would be seen, what would change? (Squirrel, the nervous one, finally makes it to roof of green feeder -- but issues his staccato high-pitch chattering declarations of his presence. It's a long ritual before taking seed. Much like us!)

The ultimate state is totally free from any obscuration, like the short moment of recognition. However, in the latter there is still the tendency for the obscurations to return. The state of realization, complete enlightenment, means that no cloud-cover can ever return; its causes are utterly and permanently eliminated. When the clouds vanish, what else can cover the sun? That is the final or ultimate realization — when there is only brilliant, pure sunshine throughout space without any cloud-cover whatsoever. In other words, everything that needed to be removed has been removed and everything that needed to be actualized is already present. The empty sky and the brilliant sunshine are not of our making. They have always been there and are fully actualized when the cloud-cover is eliminated.
-- Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche

Finally, red squirrel eats, perched on squirrel-proof wooden bar carefully distributing weight so as not to depress bar -- he gets to do what clever engineers say cannot be done. So it goes! It's a rare box that cannot be broken in to or out of.

We nibble around the edges of things, around the edges of boxes cleverly constructed and packaging what is trademarked and owned by executive, hierarchy, and lawyered pronouncements laced with 'no trespassing' and 'beyond here there be dragons' signs.

We long for something dissolved. Something like quiet simplicity.

Essential

She just wants to keep her essential
sorrow. Everyone wants her to
be happy all the time, but she doesn't
want that for them. There is value in
the thread of sadness in each person.
The sobbing child on an airplane, the
unhappy woman waiting by the phone,
a man staring out the window past his
wife. A violin plays through all of them,
one long note held at the beginning and
the end.

Employed

She just wants to be employed
for eight hours a day. She is not
interested in a career; she wants a job
with a paycheck and free parking. She
does not want to carry a briefcase filled
with important papers to read after
dinner; she does not want to return
phone calls. When she gets home, she
wants to kick off her shoes and waltz
around her kitchen singing, "I am a piece
of work."
Poems: "Essential" and "Employed" by Beverly Rollwagen, from She Just Wants. Nodin Press.)

We'll have to mull Tulku's words that, "Empty cognizance is our nature."

It is time to...

Go.

Her card was signed once "Merry Mary Christmas." Mary Christine was born on December 25. In dream before waking she visits, coming from where she sat across auditorium to where I stood looking for her after someone asked where she was. Hair shorter than long, in smart brown or rust suit, she arrives at wood high-back chair I have brought to the table.

The sound of a swollen
Mountain stream rapidly rushing
Makes one know
How very quickly life itself
Is pressed along its course.
--Saigyo (1118-1190)

Our mountain streams are swollen but not rapidly rushing. They are fast in their form waiting in slow frozen memory of what they once were and will be again. Hard wind blows. Land buoys sound swell waves whooshing through tubes, triangles, and tinkling wind chimes surrounding safe harbor of hermitage.

All wisdom is from the Lord,
and it is his own for ever.
The sand of the sea and the raindrops,
and the days of eternity, who can assess them?
The height of the sky and the breadth of the earth,
and the depth of the abyss, who can probe them?
Before all other things wisdom was created,
shrewd understanding is everlasting.
For whom has the root of wisdom ever been uncovered?
Her resourceful ways, who knows them?
One only is wise, terrible indeed,
seated on his throne, the Lord.
He himself has created her, looked on her and assessed her,
and poured her out on all his works
to be with all mankind as his gift,
and he conveyed her to those who love him.
Ecclesiasticus 1:1 - 10

Finch, momma and poppa Cardinal, Chickadee, Nuthatch, and Woodpecker take turns at back feeder before red squirrel zips down hill (then leaves without ascending) pole to green hanging dispensary.

Wood stove wakes from overnight doze. Water splashes shower wall behind kitchen bookshelves. Snowstorm left less through night than it might. We'll drive to Sabattus in a bit.

Mary died somewhere back. But she lives (this morning) in particular, real dream of a Monday before dawn alongside Ragged and Bald Mountains in a blowy gust, where now, quick and acrobatic squirrel balances and eats alone at feeder.

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
(Poem by Mary Oliver)

In last night's reading William McNamara said no fuss, no lust, and no rust are the properties of the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. These vows are curiosities in our world. Mary would giggle.

Word hides in words. All we get to see of nature's brilliance is what appears along surface for the duration we look to it. Nature presides even when we are distracted. So too Word resides in nascent kindness and compassion at periphery of our eyes and ears, awareness and wakefulness.

Dreams reveal the sound and sight of what is beyond hearing and seeing.

What is beyond. Hearing. And, seeing.

Revelation. The form of dream.

Avowal of One's restorative wisdom, with our avowal, sets sight on road's uncertain turns.

One's. With ours.

A sudden breath of creation transcending and conveying one in one to each one.

Chuang-tzu said:
"Cherish that
which is
within you."

He sums up contemplative life.

If we live looking out for ourselves, we usually wind up watching out for anybody coming near us. Fear is like that. Everyone is threat because everyone is seen as wanting to take what we are looking out for.

If the candle of craving, lusting, and arrogating is extinguished, then we are left with two options: utter self-defeat, or, contemplative life. Two options but only one choice.

The essence of nirvana is tranquil, uncontrived bliss. Realize your own mind is the true mind, and errant imagining ceases. When errant imagining ceases, you are accurately aware. By virtue of accurate awareness, dispassionately perceptive knowledge arises and thus one finds the nature of reality.
- Hongren (602-675)

February is lovely teacher. Ice and snow, cold and emptiness -- the approach of penitential forty days. Cutting wood for warm cabin to practice in tonight. Walking to brook which is nearly up against both foot bridges with swelling ice. Prayer whose name is empty sound, visits.

WIE: Why do you think it is that there are now so few people interested in the kind of life that you have undertaken?

WM: I think that most people in this modern age are seduced by the workaday world. The average human being is being deceived by hyper-activity, feverish activity. It's dispersed human energy. It is not hitting the target. It is not uplifting the world. It's just a roundelay of repetitive mechanisms, over and over again, with no final end.
George Santyana, the great Harvard professor, said, "A fanatic is one who, having forgotten the end, multiplies the means." And that's what we're all doing. Where are we? We don't know. Who are we? We don't know. We're just busy. And that embarrasses us, and so we keep doing more things to cover over the embarrassment, the emptiness, the hollowness of our lives. So given the condition that we're in, we shy away from the contemplative life.
(from THE e'M'pire, An interview with Father William McNamara, by Carter Phipps, in What is Enlightenment Magazine, http://www.wie.org/j18/mcnam.asp?pf=1)

There's no real cover for emptiness. Emptiness is hollowness and embarrassment uncovered.

Without cover is seen hallowedness and humility -- a holy earthiness faced squarely.

Jesus said: "I am with you always, even until the end of the world." I think he meant that he is with us, all ways. We should even the earth, "un-till" the "end" -- there is no end -- of the world.

So many cultivate the end, ending, finish, Armageddon, Apocalypse, judgment, punishment, reward, just desserts, and vengeful payback. Jesus, in today's meditation, says "un-till" that world of mind. Find balance and equilibrium. Equanimity. Harmony. Be even-minded, even-hearted, even-handed.

In this, he is with us.

This is that which is.

Within us.

Being alone has always appealed. Like the Sufi teacher stating he finds non-being less awkward than existence, I find solitude less awkward than social interaction.

But then again, one is never alone when one is aware of one's solitariness. Being and non-being dissolve like fizzy tablet in glass of water. What remains is sipping.

People who practice the Way should not seek externally. The essence of mind has no defilement; it is originally complete and perfect of itself. Just detach from illusory objects and it is enlightened to suchness as is.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Fire lighted in cabin chapel/zendo at 6:05am. Feeders filled. Dog out. cat out. Both in. Feet very cold as logs and kindling are coaxed in hibernating black firebox. Crunching footsteps, door opens, woman in rust-colored coat bows, sits on cushion, remains still and silent. Fire catches.

Practice rekindles morning presence. Posted times and mere commitment rise like white smoke just as morning prayer rises from odd spiritual gassho of assent and dissent.

In Praise of Imperfect Love

Courtesans of tenth century Japan knew
the keening of the caged copper pheasant,
solo double-note aria for a missing mate,
could be silenced with a mirror

The ideal of a love that completes
masks a yearning for homeostasis,
a second umbilical, island fever,
harmony tighter than unison —

dull as a solved equation;
like the ex-lover who said,
"Being with you is like being alone."
He meant it as a compliment.
(Poem: "In Praise of Imperfect Love" by Jessica Goodfellow, from A Pilgrim's Guide to Chaos in the Heartland. Concrete Wolf Chapbook Series.)

In stillness and silence we engage harmony tighter than unison.

A single mouse came over ice crusted snow to cabin's east side, then disappeared into roof-drop furrow.

Warm vision sits benevolent vigil in sunlit view of Bald Mountain.

Inside house, Jane's voice on WERU.

Her mom, Betty, requests Gorden Bok.

Baking fragrance from kitchen.

The settling simplicity of Saturday hermitage.

Will there be only a limited number of visits to harbour shop remaining?

Coffee completes idyll.

Time for four mile drive.

Each day mountain walks itself.

Cascading ice rounds tumbling solid forms sculpturing. February cold wavelets oh so slowly lean through ice flowing pre-dawn. Night millimetres winter growth under double-plank bridge across from animals' burial ground at turn of brook.

I am nowhere to be found.

The birds have vanished into the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
Until only the mountain remains.
- Li Po (701–762)

Would that be so. And is, but for my seeing it so. I still see ghost of what is no longer there. When I disappear, it is only holy ghost remaining -- as, at, on -- mountain.

At Thursday Evening Conversation eight sit antiphonal to Waterford 103 firebox inserted in fireplace. Finally, in 11th winter of shop at harbour, a warm place with no smoke filling back room, no cold draft sucked in under eaves, nor kabuki dance of dying fire cooling narrowing circle as edge-sitters pull sweaters and fleece tighter. Jack facilitates A Course in Miracles. Delia Mae arrives at end telling how Spring Hill was blocked and stopped for some 30 minutes (again, as it was that morning) with ice-misfortune cars, trucks, and plows. Lola said she prays just coming out driveway to Camden-Belfast Road. Even as we came down from Old Town through her place of prayer earlier for 5:30 conversation, wheels slid on curved road banked hill ice -- which is how we knew we were where we were at.

In car driving back from north of Bangor we talk about how landlord of building we use for harbour shop seems to be pushing us out; how it comes time to (finally) re-think the evolving blueprint of Meetingbrook, long stuffed in dusty closet; now that external cause invites internal affect -- something will change -- what effect will we fashion in this revelation?

So much of life is a dance. So, too, with death.

Just do the steps that you’ve been shown
By everyone you’ve ever known
Until the dance becomes your very own
No matter how close to yours another’s steps have grown
In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone

Keep a fire for the human race
And let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down

Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily, it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don’t let the uncertainty turn you around
(The world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive and the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive but you’ll never know
(from song "For a Dancer" by Jackson Browne, 1974)

As often as I think of it, I have no grasp on why I am alive, why here, why now. The steps and mis-steps called 'my life' seem the length of a single song over decades and decades playing background over glittering frozen pasture after ice storm. The seduction of each step. Of night with dawn, twilight with dusk, one body with another, one instant of awareness with consciousness itself.

It feels like a poet's version of the ten commandments -- Thou shall not commit, dancing!

My Methodist Grandmother Said

My Methodist
grandmother said
dancing
was adultery
set to music

how right she was

in that sweet sway
breast to breast and
leg to leg
sin comes into its own

if you have never
waltzed
you cannot imagine
the sheer voluptuousness
of it
the light touch
palm to palm
wool and silk
mixed below the waist
your partner's warm breath
on your neck
coming quicker
and quicker
the strength of the man
the yielding of the woman
so incorrect
so atavistic
so unspeakably sweet
he moves toward you
you back away
he pursues you
and with the faintest
pressure
you encourage him
and watch the blood
rush to his face

not a word is spoken
no one sees this
although it's done in public
in full sight of everyone

you touch
and retreat
meet
and touch again
in time to the music
saying yes
no yes
no yes
no
yes

you dance
without thinking of your body
in that gentle
rhythmic
careless
almost copulation
one two three
one
two three

the longest
foreplay
in the western
world
(Poem: "My Methodist Grandmother Said" by Mary Mackey, from Breaking the Fever: Poems. Marsh Hawk Press.)

There's foreplay everywhere. Wind with wind chime, cat with mouse, water with bottle, wood with fire, fingers with keys, silence with sound.

Life is foreplay with death.

Working around hermitage these days has been lovely. Hours cutting back unruly bush outside kitchen and barn, hours moving snow during Valentine's Day storm, cutting wood, repairing plastic against broken window in mud room. I have a body.

So does mountain. its body and my body are not two bodies. Our service and landlord's investments are not at odds. Marriages and divorces -- with accompanying hopes and despairs, are the unpredictable turns and high color, falterings and disconcerting realizations of the dance.

So we are, so we go on. Jory likes the word 'acceptance' over 'forgiveness.' Jesus might have said: "Father, help me accept that they are doing what they are doing, they don't know what they are doing." Forgiveness is a good word. Acceptance is its dear kin.

We are kin to one another.

If we dance, will only the mountain remain?

Am I irretrievably mis-placed? Or...

Now, here, to be, found?

What is wanted? Is truth...

Because they have no high
Opinions of themselves,
The sages’ minds are luminous;
Not caring for status,
They become illustrious;
Being without pride,
They achieve success;
Unassertive, they are supreme.
Because they do not contend,
No one contends with them.
- Lao-tzu

Only this. Which is what truth is like.

Aristotle makes the well-known definition: To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true Metaphysics, (1011(b)).

This definition sets down the general principle of correspondence and captures quite well the man on the street view of truth. Aristotle, however, is not the man on the street (he may be peripatetic, but he is hardly pedestrian); if we wish a clearer picture of Aristotle's view of truth, we must look more closely at what he says in other parts of his writings. In this regard, it is helpful to see how Aristotle defines "false" in the lexiconical section of the Metaphysics (1024(b)). For Aristotle, there are three kinds of falseness: false as a thing, false as an account, and false as a person.
(--from TRUTH AND ZEN, By T. P. Kasulis, Transcribed for Buddhism Today by Thich Nu Lien Hoa)

Often feeling false, I long to practice truth.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
(--Poem by Emily Dickinson)

I will try.

Truth is trying.

Tried (is often) true.

Tilt but re-center.

It always embarrasses me to say, "I love you!" (That's my {hi}story.)

To return to your original state of being,
You must become a master of stillness.
Activity for health’s sake,
Never carried to the point of strain,
Must alternate with perfect stillness.
Sitting motionless as a rock,
Turn next to stillness of mind.
Close the gates of the senses.
Fix your mind upon one object or,
Even better, enter a state
Of objectless awareness.
Turn the mind in upon itself
And contemplate the inner radiance.
- Anonymous

Still, everything inside and outside says "I love you!" without embarrassment. The wind, the snow, the trees, the dog, the cat, the woman, the cup of coffee, the Canadian boots heel to heel. They speak by silence, by presence -- they don't use words, words often misused.

We like the reality of love. It is, and is to be, seen everywhere.

[Teilhard's] vision of love is a spirituality that celebrates the oneness of creation, a spirituality that acknowledges love as the clearest understanding we have of God, of ourselves, of history, and of the cosmos.
- David Tracy, theologian

Teilhard was one of the first scientists to realize that the human and the universe are inseparable. The only universe we know about is the universe that brought forth the human. Teilhard understood this. He understood that the human story and the universe story identified with each other. The immersion into the deep creative powers of the universe is the most direct contact a human can have with the divine. Such is the spirituality that Teilhard makes available to us. A spirituality that is rooted not in the spatial cosmos of Ptolemy, but in the time-developmental universe that the scientists have detected.
- Thomas Berry, geologian

A VISION OF FIRE
The day will come when after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.
-from The Evolution of Chastity
(--quoted in "rediscovering fire," Religion, Science and Mysticism in Teilhard de Chardin, By Ursula King, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Bristol, Issue #39, Fall 2000, http://www.earthlight.org/essay39_king.html

Each one -- you, and you, and you -- are in the fire of a holy spirit's love.

It is there I bow to each of you in mindful silence.

As the poet says, "For love are in you am in i are in we." (e. e. cummings, in poem the great advantage of being alive.

So (t)here!

Deus in adjutorium meum intende. (God, come to my assistance). This is a beginning of prayer.
Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina. (Lord, make haste to help me!) This is how we sculpt awareness of origin.

These days we might say: "God: Help, Now!"

When mind clouds, we are lost in loneliness. When mind clears, we find ourselves in solitude. 'Alone' is a place of integrality. It is a matter of seeing.

We know that there is no Buddhahood to attain apart from this mind. The Realized Ones of the past were just people who understood the mind, and the saints and sages of the present are people who cultivate the mind; students of the future should rely on this principle.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

I sleep on floor in front room. My back hurts even though sofa cushions try to shape comfort. I listen to Cesco's breath, sensitive to any changes. Time is approaching when he will leave this place. Cancer. But for now he sleeps. Soon enough a decision will come. When dawn comes we'll walk the mountain together as we do every day, slowly, steadily, accounting every scent, one foot in front of the other.

At dusk last evening, up ahead about 40 yards, a porcupine waddled onto clearing going uphill from us. Cesco didn't notice; neither it us. Cesco looked at me as I looked up the runway snow traveler until it was time for us to veer left into wooded trail past boulder, curving pitch of pine, out to 2nd runway not used by skiers this season. Our invariable walking meditation with the mountain -- option number three.

The disciples had forgotten to take any food and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Then he gave them this warning, ‘Keep your eyes open; be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod’. And they said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread’. And Jesus knew it, and he said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you not yet understand? Have you no perception? Are your minds closed? Have you eyes that do not see, ears that do not hear? Or do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets full of scraps did you collect?’ They answered, ‘Twelve’. And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of scraps did you collect?’ And they answered, ‘Seven’. Then he said to them, ‘Are you still without perception?'
(--Mark 8:14 - 21 )

We often have no clear perception. We don't see how mind opens every possibility and gives to each situation what is called for. Twelve? Seven? Am I still cloudy, without clear perception? (Yes, I am.)

Everybody I talk to is ready to leave
With the light of the morning
They've seen the end coming down long enough to believe
That they've heard their last warning
Standing alone
Each has his own ticket in his hand
And as the evening descends
I sit thinking bout everyman
(--from For Everyman, by Jackson Browne, Asylum 5067, Released: November 1973)

There's a Bodhisattva plea to Browne's lyric. It's not just me, not just you -- rather, there's a mindful awareness of everyone -- no one left out -- ascending in our perceptions. Quietly, steadily -- step by step -- we ascend to an awareness of one another that transforms egoistic isolation, climbing into authentic solitude in the midst of community.

The tension is not the choice between being alone or being with others. The tension is calling awareness to embrace a transcending consciousness wherein solitude and community are not antithetical -- where being alone and being with others are not two things -- but converge in a respectful and responsible presence allowing each to be who and as they are -- with acceptance, compassion, and love.

I will have to practice this and continue practicing this.

With help.

Now.

O Santissime! O Santissima!

Hoeing sighs. Going back to boat. The sign is a sigh. Cultivate this. (Christ help us in this work!)

The Pharisees came up and started a discussion with Jesus; they demanded of him a sign from heaven, to test him. And with a sigh that came straight from the heart he said, ‘Why does this generation demand a sign? I tell you solemnly, no sign shall be given to this generation.’ And leaving them again and re-embarking he went away to the opposite shore.
Mark 8:11 - 13

The true passage is through the heart. Perhaps there is no other way but straight from and through the heart. (Sigh!) Those doing this work must be zen workers doing the odd work of ploughing the sea, hoeing sighs, cultivating the deep of the heart. Any other work plays illusion and deception. (Can this be true?)

Inside and outside are one,
Movement and stillness are the same.
In all these, functioning needs
To be free and clear.
If this is not so then
All the Buddha’s holy sutras
And all of the sayings of the patriarchs
Become mere tangles of empty words.
The Way of Zen
And the Buddha-dharma
Also become dead things.
- Torei (1721-1792)

It has recently and long ago been troubling consideration that matters of belief, theological thought in service to rationalization and manipulation, conviction in matters of interpretation of scripture made stone are then made litmus test then made derisive weapons of exclusion. Are the "signs" asked for by devious man and women merely talking points and fodder-statements to be used by frightening agents of security and control against gathering Spirit of compassion and inclusion? Jesus gave no sign, no signing statement nullifying his essential nature -- a nature longing for truth and love with wisdom.

No sign but re-embarking -- going back to sea.

Going to sea.

Hoeing to 'see.'

The Lord asked Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I do not know’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s guardian?’ ‘What have you done?’ the Lord asked. ‘Listen to the sound of your brother’s blood, crying out to me from the ground. Now be accursed and driven from the ground that has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood at your hands. When you till the ground it shall no longer yield you any of its produce. You shall be a fugitive and a wanderer over the earth.’ Then Cain said to the Lord, ‘My punishment is greater than I can bear. See! Today you drive me from this ground. I must hide from you, and be a fugitive and a wanderer over the earth. Why, whoever comes across me will kill me!’ ‘Very well, then,’ the Lord replied ‘if anyone kills Cain, sevenfold vengeance shall be taken for him.’ So the Lord put a mark on Cain, to prevent whoever might come across him from striking him down.
(--from Genesis 4:1 - 25)

Sometimes it seems we do not know what 'brother' means, what 'sister' means. We think it means family or relationship. And it does. It says same parents. It says one continuous strain of continuation. It means no breakage from origin. It means the sign is everything in existence. If everything is sign, there is no need for 'special' sign. No sign is given because everything signals true relationality.

Lies try to blind us to the ever-present reality. Ever-present reality longs to be seen. Once seen, truth is seen. This is how we testify to truth. This is how we witness truth. Truth is the sign. The sign is not hidden. The sign is obvious.

It takes an act of intentional cowardice to claim not to see what is present and obvious before our eyes.

If I nurture and cultivate, guard and revere true reality, it is enough for now.

It is the practice of hoeing the sea, the practice of seeing, one that sighs with what is seen.

"Come and let us return to the Lord (Teshuvah); For He has torn but he will heal us..."
(Hosea 6:1)

We must be torn (it seems, so wills the God-nature within) from whatever false nature threatens to leave us shorn in tatters and flattered by notions of smarter, better, brighter, more worthy -- the signs of success and power and wealth in this world. This requires holding our nose, holding our breath, and swallowing a poisonous dose of dissemblance.

And so, we practice healing antidote. Sitting and walking, mindful and aware -- we practice the free and clear to be free and clear -- the stillness and movement of this breath we are.

Hoe well. Sigh well. Set out on sea. Return to land well.

Be sighs of streaming grace.

Be guardian, angel.

Zen Master says that God is within our consciousness. Thich Nhat Hanh also says: "...[I]t is safer to approach God through the Holy Spirit than through the door of theology." His book Living Buddha, Living Christ was the reading tonight at Sunday Evening Practice. Six of us, humans and animals, made the practice.

Just know your own mind, and you will grasp countless teachings and infinite subtle meanings without even seeking. That is why the World Honored one said, “Observing all sentient beings, I see they are fully endowed with the knowledge and virtues of Buddhas.” He also said, “All living beings, and all sorts of illusory events, are all born in the completely awake subtle mind of those who realize suchness.”
- Master Chinul

It is a joy to walk February mountain snow with old Border Collie at dusk.

Then fixing his eyes on his disciples he said:
‘How happy are you who are poor: yours is the kingdom of God.
Happy you who are hungry now: you shall be satisfied.
Happy you who weep now: you shall laugh.
Happy are you when people hate you, drive you out, abuse you, denounce your name as criminal, on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice when that day comes and dance for joy, for then your reward will be great in heaven. This was the way their ancestors treated the prophets.
(-from Luke 6:17 - 26)

The trees are prophets in waning light. Old dog is Sherpa guide on narrow paths through branch and trunk over root and rock. Mountain I stand on and mountain across valley are the revelation of this very day this second month this season of February.

Of this I am (gratefully) aware.

How might we capture the conscience of the king?

'And it's not even the play that's the thing,' he said. 'To continue the analogy, in the old days anyone who felt like it could fling a rotten egg at the stage. Today, however, it's the actors who are more likely to rake the hall with machine-gun fire -- they might even toss out a bomb. Think about it, who would you rather be right now? An actor or a member of the audience?'
This was a serious question.
p.6, in novel, Buddha's Little Finger, by Victor Pelevin,

Congress is audience. Citizens and ordinary people are paying for the play. The Supreme Court dresses as supporting extras called when needed. The rest of the world -- those not written into antagonist part in script -- serve at the will of lead actors and hidden producers. Earlier proponents of the Theater of the Absurd are surprised at their prescience. On stage thousands of lines echo in repetitive cavernous staccato, "Alas (Alas) poor (poor) Yorick (Yorick)!" We have to consider that the man of infinite jest remains in the melancholy hands of a sullen actor heading pell-mell toward a tragic conclusion.

Unfortunately the monologues of single-minded men mute intelligent dialogues of thoughtful casts of billions for whom the play is passing strange in its exclusion of their lives.

'And what was the poem about?'
'Oh, it was completely abstract. It was about the stream of time washing away the wall of the present so that new patterns keep appearing on it, and we call some of them the past. Our memory tells us that yesterday really existed, but how can we be sure that all these memories did not simply appear with the first light of dawn?'
'I don't quite understand,' said Vorblei.
'Neither do I,' I said. 'But that's not the point.'
(p.7, Pelevin)

Sara read a lime from her work in progress this afternoon -- it spoke about a pointing finger that thought of itself as a knife. In the case of the absurd drama being enacted at America's National House Theater -- the star actor thinks of himself as Fantasy Marquee Idol. Act two is ending.

The curtain parts. He stands alone.

There is no third act. No ovation.

Only blank stare into footlights.

Who is the joker?

Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
(-- Hamlet | Act 5, Scene 1)

I always thought the ending was such a waste.

Would we not the same...

Re-write?

Maintain a practice of living quietly with deep listening.

That's what Thay says. Even in a time of terrorism? Thich Nhat Hanh says what is necessary is true presence, being peaceful, as well as awareness that I cannot be happy unless you are happy. This helps us understand what has to be done to realize deep peace in the world.

These days I am noisy, absent, and hard of hearing. It was good to hear Thay's voice during "Humankind" on Maine Public Radio. In the stacks a cinematographer shows Sam and Susan frames of recent footage and sounds of sea.

“What do you mean by the true Buddha,
The true Dharma and the true Way?
Would you be good enough to explain to us?”
The Master said,
“Buddha - this is the cleanness
And purity of the mind.
The Dharma - this is the shining
Brightness of the mind.
The Way – this is the light
That is never obstructed anywhere.
The three are in fact one.
All are empty names and
Have no true reality.”
- Lin-chi (d.867)

In midst of toppling through empty names with no true reality I find temporary footing in a curiosity of breaking news of recent deaths of two women.
In Iraq a woman dies unexpectedly and receives little coverage.

Marine from Bel Air, Md. killed in Iraq, By BEN GREENE, The Associated Press, Feb 8, 2007 4:56 PM BALTIMORE - A 2004 graduate of Fallston High School who followed her older brother into the Marines was killed during fighting in Iraq, the Department of Defense said Thursday.
Cpl. Jennifer Parcell, 20, of Bel Air, Md. died Wednesday "while supporting combat operations in Al Anbar province," a Department of Defense news release said.

Ms Parcell died in a difficult and dangerous country and war.

In Florida a woman dies unexpectedly and every news channel, Internet site, and cable station flashes images of ample bosom and blond hair every minute twenty four hours going. Ms. Smith died in a difficult and dangerous country and celebrity culture.

The Last Attack. To Klaus

Permit me to open by expressing joy and wonder
that we're marching at the head of our companies
in different uniforms under a different command
but with a single aim—to survive

You say to me—look here we should probably let
these boys go home to their Margot to their Kasia
war is beautiful only in parades
but apart from that as we know—mud and blood
and rats

As you speak comes an avalanche of artillery fire
it's that bastard Parkinson who is taking so long
he caught up with us at last when we took a walk
on an irregular route our collars loose at the chin
our hands in our pockets we were on leave already
when Parkinson suddenly reminded us that it was
not the end yet that this blasted war isn't over yet
Poem by Zbigniew Herbert, Translations from the Polish by Alissa Valles

The tumbling continues. Five distinct people sitting around wood stove talk about raising and tending pigs. They are surprised their common experiences converge of a Friday afternoon.

Returning from the district of Tyre, Jesus went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, right through the Decapolis region. And they brought him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they asked him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, put his fingers into the man’s ears and touched his tongue with spittle. Then looking up to heaven he sighed; and he said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened’.
--Mark 7:31 - 37

I mull whether being open during tumbling fall has any useful value. I pray for the woman killed in Iraq. I pray for the woman felled in Florida.

I like what Thich Nhat Hanh says about deep listening. I like what Mark tells about the man's healing release.

Wood stove has made the place warm and comfortable.

It's me that's tumbling. Earth quietly turns. Horses in Sam's story stand balanced on rail-less flatbed truck rumbling around corner. (Everybody winces.)

I ask high school coed waiting for her mother if she learned anything in school today. "Probably," she says.
Anything you remember? "Not particularly!" she concludes.

She is eating an apple.

Chickadee and moma Cardinal look around from feeder. I imagine when walking past they call out 'Thanks'. It's nothing. Only seeds. I silently pray they might save the world.

Some people think that they will practice the dharma once they have finished with their worldly business. This is a mistaken attitude
because our work in the world never finishes. Work is like a ripple of water continually moving on the surface of the ocean. It is very difficult to break free from our occupations in order to practice dharma. The busy work with which we fill our lives is only completed at the time of our death.
--Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold

Prayer has gone dark in me. So it matters that there is prayer in frosty morning at bird feeders and monasteries scattered everywhere. Cracking open shell and silence. There is great faith in such simple acts.

Iranian Cleric Warns U.S. on Attacks
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: February 8, 2007, Filed at 6:52 a.m. ET

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- If the United States were to attack Iran, the country would respond by striking U.S. interests all over the world, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday.

Speaking to a gathering of Iranian air force commanders, Khamenei said: ''The enemy knows well that any invasion would be followed by a comprehensive reaction to the invaders and their interests all over the world.''

World stage and world war. There is no prayer in politics -- only posturing to get in photo-op with rented god for daily prat and prance.

My community is right here.

Why I Need the Birds

When I hear them call
in the morning, before
I am quite awake,
my bed is already traveling
the daily rainbow,
the arc toward evening;
and the birds, leading
their own discreet lives
of hunger and watchfulness,
are with me all the way,
always a little ahead of me
in the long-practiced manner
of unobtrusive guides.

By the time I arrive at evening,
they have just settled down to rest;
already invisible, they are turning
into the dreamwork of trees;
and all of us together —
myself and the purple finches,
the rusty blackbirds,
the ruby cardinals,
and the white-throated sparrows
with their liquid voices —
ride the dark curve of the earth
toward daylight, which they announce
from their high lookouts
before dawn has quite broken for me.
(Poem: "Why I Need the Birds" by Lisel Mueller, from Alive Together: New and Selected Poems. Louisiana State University Press.)

Unobtrusive guides engaged in prayer of dreamwork and gratitude -- has there ever been need for charter or imprimatur? These brothers and sisters feather forgiveness as they gather Eucharist for all of the starving souls passing unnoticed.

Swoop and glide.

Dear spirit friends near.

Break shell.

Care for core.

Disappear there.

Hallow here.

If truth is the only reality, where do we go when lies occur?

D.T. Suzuki says: "Tasting, seeing, experiencing, living - all these demonstrate that there is something common to enlightenment experience and our sense-experience; the one takes place in our innermost being, the other on the periphery of our consciousness. Personal experience thus seems to be the foundation of Buddhist philosophy. In this sense Buddhism is a radical empiricism or experientialism, whatever dialectic later developed to probe the meaning of the enlightenment experience." (D.T. Suzuki, Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist, N.Y., 1957, p. 48)

Now the great obstacle to mutual understanding between Christianity and Buddhism lies in the Western tendency to focus not on Buddhist experience, which is essential, but on the explanation, which is accidental and which indeed Zen often regards as completely trivial and even misleading.

Buddhist meditation, but above all that of Zen, seeks not to explain but to pay attention, to become aware, to be mindful, in other words to develop a certain kind of consciousness that is above and beyond deception by verbal formulas - or by emotional excitement. Deception in what? Deception in its grasp of itself as it really is. Deception due to diversion and distraction from what is right there - consciousness itself.
(--in Zen and The Birds of Appetite, By Thomas Merton, from Chapter 3, A Christian Looks At Zen)

Everything quiets. Sunlight comes through hermitage front room. Tea cup cools. Dog tags jingle from kitchen. I have gone into solitude.

When there are clouds and fog everywhere, the world is dark, but that does not mean the sun has decomposed. Why is there no light? The light is never destroyed; it is just enshrouded by clouds and fog. The pure mind of all living beings is like this, merely covered up by the dark clouds of obsession with objects, arbitrary thoughts, psychological afflictions, and view and opinions. If you can just keep the mind still so that errant thought does not arise, the reality of nirvana will naturally appear. This is how we know the inherent mind is originally pure.
- Hongren (602-675)

Errant thoughts bump into me all day. They excuse themselves, then like a well-trained telemarketer they make their pitch while telling you how inconvenient "those" telemarketers are. You are tempted to disconnect phone. You do try to disconnect annoyance at intrusion. But thoughts that have lost their way find you. Tea? Fruit bar? If I offer you hospitality will you go away?

The Lyric

Suffering
lament, sorrow and wild
joy commingle in

the lyric — a collective
sigh of relief comes cascading
out of the blue —

a yearning to submerge
in life like the swimmer
in the pool forgetful

immersed and quenched —
water trailing scattered
diamonds in a rustling

voice of resigned subsidence
as though in the same stroke
everyone alive were speaking through you —
(Poem: "The Lyric" by Tom Clark, from Light & Shade: New and Selected Poems. Coffee House Press.)

Prayer is the resonance of many voices allowed through you. To pray constantly is to let this resonance glide through awareness. Not the content always, but the form and formless passage through.

No explanation of pain and cruelty has ever satisfied. In prayer we abandon explanation and listen to experience. In this abandonment we arrive in room like cat suddenly aware it is not alone. It jumps up on couch. Steps carefully over letters. Kneads available belly and chest. Purrs.

Free your minds, then, of encumbrances; control them, and put your trust in nothing but the grace that will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed. Do not behave in the way that you liked to before you learnt the truth, but make a habit of obedience.
(--1 Peter 1:13 - 14 Reading from Terce, Wednesday Office)

This revelation is the territory of abandonment.

Do we dare exploring?

Nothing.

But.

The grace.

[Long version]:

I imagine peace. This icon of imagination is what remains of us. We are disappearing. Do you hear that? It is silence. The icon is embedded in quarter-cut of wood. Hiding. In plain sight. No one sees it. Welcome to our time. Now go away. This is no place for us. Away, away!

The Art of Peace begins with you.
Work on yourself and your appointed
Task in the Art of Peace.
Everyone has a spirit that can be refined,
A body that can be trained in some manner,
A suitable path to follow.
You are here for no other purpose
Than to realize your inner divinity
And manifest your innate enlightenment.
Foster peace in your own life
And then apply the Art to all that you encounter.
- Morihei Ueshiba (1883-1969)

I cannot apply art. Nothing innate manifests. It is time to disappear. No sound, no trace, no epitaph, no silly pretense you will be missed. Just go.

St Paul Miki (1564/6 - 1597)
He was born in Japan between 1564 and 1566. He joined the Society of Jesus and preached the gospel to the Japanese people with great success. When a persecution of the Catholics arose he was arrested together with twenty-five others. Mocked and tortured, they were eventually taken to Nagasaki on 5 February 1597, bound to crosses and speared.
(Universalis, Tuesday 6 February 2007, Saints Paul Miki and his Companions, Martyrs)

We don't have a martyrology of Nagasaki 9 August 1945. Apparently we'd scuttled the idea we were a civilized and intelligent culture capable of spirituality purporting nearness to God. Just as well.

I don't remember exactly when God turned face from us. Looking elsewhere has become our new religion. God is not needed in this practice. God is locked away in museum and library leafing through uncatalogued books like an aging actress rummaging press clips from former glory. It is after hours. No security alarm protects the premises. No one wants in. What would they do with such a forlorn face that says nothing and remains silent in stuffy rooms?

A study of Schelling's late philosophy of mythology, despite the renewed interest it presently enjoys, still needs some justification. Why should we spend time and effort on a demanding philosophical text based on often outdated and inadequate historical information about myths? And why revisit a philosophy that claims to incorporate revelation, yet has been criticized for bending revelation to its own pre-established concepts, while in the process corrupting the methods of theology as well as of philosophy? The answer may be brief. Because Schelling (1775–1854) was among the first to recognize the myth as an independent form of consciousness, irreducible to rational thought or to a prescientific interpretation of nature or history. For him, mythology constituted an essentially religious phenomenon, marked by polytheism but indispensable for the rise of an inclusive monotheism, that is, to an idea of God that incorporates creation within God's Being. Despite the undeniable flaws of his work and the enormous progress since made in this area, no one has yet surpassed the scope and intellectual depth of the two-volume treatise on myth written during the final twenty years of Schelling's career. Schelling understood that neither mythology nor revelation could be simply juxtaposed to philosophical truth. The two had to be integrated or one would inevitably exclude the other.
(-- from The Role of Mythology in Schelling's Late Philosophy, by Louis Dupré, Yale University, in The Journal of Religion, Volume 87, Number 1, January 2007)

Edge nears. Over edge you imagine a fall to some inexplicable depth. You look over expecting to see a bottom far below. That is comforting. You envision a body broken on craggy ledge or limbs lifeless balancing momentarily on cracked surface of water. These images are wishful. What really is seen upon looking over nearing edge is nothing like these images. The sight is of your town and city. Ordinary people go about banking, buying insurance, making investments, managing real estate, and writing sermons, formulating dissertations sure to stun outsiders into sudden and solid salvation. Thank you, oh, thank you!

"Occasionally, even experienced mountaineers are faced with precipices that force them to say,'This is too much.' When I tell my friend Ferenczi about this, he'll say, 'You can convince me of lots of things, Sigi, but this is impossible.'"
--p.55, in novel The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch

What is 'this' impossible? This is what is seen. It's why we never see God. God is impossible.

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French & Latin; Anglo-French, from Latin impossibilis, from in- + possibilis possible
1 a : incapable of being or of occurring b : felt to be incapable of being done, attained, or fulfilled : insuperably difficult impossible deadline>
2 a : extremely undesirable : UNACCEPTABLE b : extremely awkward or difficult to deal with impossible on the set>
(Mirriam-Webster)

The edge of what? Of 'what is?' What does that mean? And why is God unacceptable? (This is where Christian friends lift eyebrow with certain assessment of apostasy, pale implication of anti-this/anti-that, a facile wispy dream of anti-Christ desacralizing mysterium tremendum et fascinans, an unwashed and unsaved rabble, hoards (to be pitied and prayed for) not on solid ground -- neighbors, fellow and sister citizens, not to be trusted, needing to be informed (or informed on), for the love of God and obedience to God and (naturally) to God's dutiful especially washed kinfolk.

There's a curious calculus occurring. A Stockholm Syndrome computes us. Politicians, priests, ministers, pundits, administrators, and populace are abducted hostages, hostages exhibiting loyalty to the hostage-taker. These hostage-takers smirk and strut with torn constitution and tattered bible mouthing mantras of compliance, complicity, and consecration to the new power, new idol, new deity on the block -- themselves.

An angry people slowly suspect anger is wrong. Tony and Chris say this view is wrong.

FORMULATION: SELF AND WORLD
The path beyond anger is formulation. By formulation I do not mean detached theories about the atomic bomb, but rather the process by which the hibakusha re-creates himself--establishes those inner forms which can serve as a bridge between self and world. Ideology and "world view"--often in their unconscious components--are central to the process, and by studying their relationship to A-bomb mastery, we gain a sense of their significance for mental life in general. Formulation includes efforts to re-establish three essential elements of psychic function: the sense of connection, of organic relationship to the people as well as non-human elements in one's life space, whether immediate or distant and imagined; the sense of symbolic integrity, of the cohesion and significance of one's life, here including some form of transcendence of the A-bomb experience; and the sense of movement, of development and change, in the continuous struggle between fixed identity and individuation. Conflicts we have discussed over issues of trust and peace, as well as struggles with residual anger, are part of the "psychological work" involved. And the internal "A-bomb philosophy" which results--the imagery of formulation--not only enhances mastery but, in an important sense, contains the mental representation of mastery or its absence.
(--p.367, in Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, by Robert Jay Lifton; Random House, 1967)

Anger is not-yet transformed into creativity. I have not morphed into palette or paean -- peaceful, wise, above-it-all, antidote to noxiousness. I am, rather, disheveled beyond belief.

I know where the museum is. I can see the library. The photographs and pamphlets are carefully preserved. Some vague amorphous thought drifts through walls and windows catching slanting light just out of focus on shimmering branch.

[Short version]:

Haiku
This February --
Debris, non-formulation
Not yet -- this cold time.

Robert Jay Lifton writes: We may define the survivor as one who has come into contact with death in some bodily or psychic fashion and has himself remained alive. (from chapter 12, THE SURVIVOR, in Death in Life, ibid)

I remember once being nearly electrocuted in Jolon, California in 1970. I fell back stunned and repeated over and over: "I'm still alive, I'm still alive, I'm still alive."

(Cat sits by outlet waiting for something hidden to appear. Old dog barks from barn to be let in.)

Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.

And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.

*

And look! look! look! I think those little fish
better wake up and dash themselves away
from the hopeless future that is
bulging toward them.

*

And probably,
if they don't waste time
looking for an easier world,

they can do it.
(--from poem, Dogfish, by Mary Oliver)

Mu-ge settles on couch. Cesco on rug. Saskia souths from north.

We go on.