It is a fascinating two weeks. What we call 'nature' and 'sacred' come together in celebrations worldwide. Leading figures are noted and feted. Historical events are recalled and restated.

• Snow melts

• Vernal Equinox Wednesday, March 21, 2007

• Rama Navami, The Birthday of Lord Rama, Tuesday, March 27, 2007

• Mawlid al-Nabi (12 Rabi 1), Prophet Muhammad's Birthday. This holiday (in 2007, 31March/1April) celebrates the birthday of Muhammad, the founder of Islam. It is fixed as the 12th day of the month of Rabi I in the Islamic calendar. Mawlid means birthday of a holy figure and al-Nabi means prophet.

• Pesach (Passover) Start - Sundown Monday, April 2, 2007 through Wednesday, April 4, 2007 End - Sundown Sunday, April 8, 2007 through Tuesday, April 10, 2007

• Holy Thursday, Thursday, April 5, 2007

• Good Friday Friday, April 6, 2007
  

• Easter Sunday Sunday, April 8, 2007

• Shakyamuni's Birthday (Gotan-e), or the Flower Festival (Hanamatsuri), Sunday, April 8, 2007

(http://www.curw.cornell.edu/holidays0607.html)

The confluence of Pagan, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Christian, and Muslim themes over this two week period calls to mind.

What is this mind?
Who is hearing these sounds?
Do not mistake any state for
Self-realization, but continue
To ask yourself even more
Intensely,
What is it that hears?
- Bassui (1338-1500)

When we listen to the individual drops of rain splashing, do we hear rain itself? If hearing includes both -- and more, hears itself throughout the hearing -- everywhere 'nature' and 'sacred' are celebrated. As we are -- celebrating. What mind is this? What heart is this?

Citta
In Pali, heart and mind are one word (citta), but in English we have to differentiate between the two to make the meaning clear. When we attend to the mind, we are concerned with the thinking process and the intellectual understanding that derives from knowledge, and with our ability to retain knowledge and make use of it. When we speak of the "heart" we think of feelings and emotions, our ability to respond with our fundamental being. Although we may believe that we are leading our lives according to our thinking process, that is not the case. If we examine this more closely, we will find that we are leading our lives according to our feelings and that our thinking is dependent upon our feelings. The emotional aspect of ourselves is of such great importance that its purification is the basis for a harmonious and peaceful life, and also for good meditation.
(--Ayya Khema, When the Iron Eagle Flies)

Light of day slips quietly below last season's silent leaves finally revealed out from under passing snow on hillside. Above, the slightest sway of high limbs kissing dust away. Everywhere else televisions tune into Final Four broadcasting from Atlanta. This religion too, as well as beginning of baseball season, round out the devotee's devotion. There is enormous variety in how we respond to the holy.

René Descartes said, "If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

John Fowles said, "Passion destroys passion; we want what puts an end to wanting what we want."
(--The Writer's Almanac, 31mar07)

There is joy in moments no want is felt. Times no need to say 'No" -- nor say 'Yes.' Just the gaze. Only looking. (What is it...looking?)

All the great scriptures were probably penned by poet-mystics. Mysticism is not an aim of art (nor is it an aim of mystics!): mysticism is a pejorative used by critics in a rational age to denote a departure from the established meanings of words. Every good poet is a "mystic"; that is, he departs from the dictionary, as the painter departs from the straight line and the perfect circle.
(-- Karl Shapiro, in "What is Not Poetry", The Poet's Work, ed by Reginald Gibbons,c.1979)

Day is its own poetry. Dusk, a seeing naming itself. Tomorrow someone will be heard saying: "Hosanna! Make him king!" We'll watch with foreknowledge and again the whirlwind failing truth will gather reasons to make us forget another face made sorrowful for us. We live in a time of war. We who are far away are not asked to sacrifice much. It's easy to forget faces we never look into. Look carefully at what is loved. That gaze will carry beyond forgetting. The liturgy of remembrance is upon us.

(Old dog laps water. No other sound -- his drinking. Walks around table.)

Tracks

The small birds leave cuneiform
messages on the snow: I have
been here, I am hungry, I
must eat. Where I dropped
seeds they scrape down
to pine needles and frozen sand.

Sometimes when snow flickers
past the windows, muffles trees
and bushes, buries the path,
the jays come knocking with their beaks
on my bedroom window:
to them I am made of seeds.

To the cats I am mother and lover,
lap and toy, cook and cleaner.
To the coyotes I am chaser and shouter.
To the crows, watcher, protector.
To the possums, the foxes, the skunks,
a shadow passing, a moment's wind.

I was bad watchful mommy to one man.
To another I was forgiving sister
whose hand poured out honey and aloe;
to that woman I was a gale whose lashing
waves threatened her foundation; to this
one, an oak to her flowering vine.

I have worn the faces, the masks
of hieroglyphs, gods and demons
bat-faced ghosts, sibyls and thieves,
lover, loser, red rose and ragweed,
these are the tracks I have left
on the white crust of time.
(--Poem: "Tracks" by Marge Piercy, from The Crooked Inheritance. Alfred A. Knopf.)

What is -- wonderful delight!

So many faces!

We wear.

Out.

Hello.

(Then the gaze.)

Goodbye.

Throughout, a crazed suspicion -- "Perhaps I've never ever been here."

Cast off what has been realized
Turn back to the subject
That realizes,
To the root bottom,
And resolutely
Go on.
- Bassui (1338-1500)

What is, at root, bottom?

There is a story (to be) told:

The Sickness of Adam

In the beginning, at every step, he turned
As if by instinct to the East to praise
The nature of things. Now every path was learned
He lost the lifted, almost flower-like gaze.

Of a temple dancer. He began to walk
Slowly, like one accustomed to be alone.
He found himself lost in the field of talk;
Thinking became a garden of its own.

In it were new things: words he had never said,
Beasts he had never seen and knew were not
In the true garden, terrors, and tears shed
Under a tree by him, for some new thought.

And the first anger. Once he flung a staff
At softly coupling sheep and struck the ram.
It broke away. And God heard Adam laugh
And for his laughter made the creature lame.

And wanderlust. He stood upon the Wall
To search the unfinished countries lying wide
And waste, where not a living thing could crawl,
And yet he would descend, as if to hide.

His thought drew down the guardian at the gate,
To whom man said, "What danger am I in?"
And the angel, hurt in spirit, seemed to hate
The wingless thing that worried after sin,

For it said nothing but marvelously unfurled
Its wings and arched them shimmering overhead,
Which must have been the signal from the world
That the first season of our life was dead.

Adam fell down with labor in his bones,
And God approached him in the cool of day
And said, "This sickness in your skeleton
Is longing. I will remove it from your clay."

He said also, "I made you strike the sheep."
It began to rain and God sat down beside
The sinking man. When he was fast asleep
He wet his right hand deep in Adam's side

And drew the graceful rib out of his breast.
Far off, the latent streams began to flow
And birds flew out of Paradise to nest
On earth. Sadly the angel watched them go.
(--Karl Shapiro, From "Adam and Eve")

Always, alone, we continue. Even, with another, still alone.

Do not fret this.

There is (we hold) no other. Hence, alone is never what we think it is.

Goodbye. (Gazing.) Hello.

We are.

Here.

All.

Right.

Place yourself well.

"The art of literature, vocal or written, is to adjust the language so that it embodies what it indicates."
-- A.N. Whitehead

Then, all is well.

The Suffering Itself Is Not So Bad
It is possible to take our existence as a "sacred world," to take this place as open space rather than claustrophobic dark void. It is possible to take a friendly relationship to our ego natures, it is possible to appreciate the aesthetic play of forms in emptiness, and to exist in this place like majestic kings of our own consciousness. But to do that, we would have to give up grasping to make everything come out the way we daydream it should. So, suffering is caused by ignorance or ignorant grasping, or suffering exaggerated by ignorance or ignorant grasping and clinging to our notion of what we thing should be, is what causes the "suffering of suffering." The suffering itself is not so bad, it's the resentment against suffering that is the real pain.
--Allen Ginsberg, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. II, #1

Some place.

You have.

Here.

To trust is to allow each thing its own being; each person their own being.

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."
-- T.S. Eliot

It is rare to find trust.

Equally rare to give it.

We're so busy. In such a hurry. We scamper about, thinking there's no time to lose.

Something, (as is) said these days, seems to shift.

(The wary mind says "Slow!" -- but something else shifts energy, and even "slow" seems an irrelevant notion.)

Buddha the Baker
Buddha was not interested in the elements comprising human beings, nor in metaphysical theories of existence. He was more concerned about how he himself existed in this moment. That was his point. Bread is made from flour. How flour becomes bread when put in the oven was for Buddha the most important thing. How we become enlightened was his main interest. The enlightened person is some perfect, desirable character, for himself and for others. Buddha wanted to find out how human beings develop this ideal character--how various sages in the past became sages. In order to find out how dough became perfect bread, he made it over and over again, until he became quite successful. That was his practice.
(--Shunryu Suzuki, in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind)

Enlightenment is not the goal -- it is the practice. To treat one another in a combination of how they wish to be treated and how we ourselves wish to be treated -- re-collects energy that had split and drained itself in acrimony, mistrust, and cynicism. Such a rush to nail down what isn't there.

It is spring. Ground softens. Anyone intent on holding tight to fear and blame grows tired of the weight and is invited to put it down.

In "The Way of the Bodhisattva," Shantideva explains how we can connect with the very best of ourselves and help others to do the same. One powerful method he describes is rejoicing. Rejoicing in the good fortune of others is a practice that can help us when we feel emotionally shut down and unable to connect with others.

Rejoicing generates good will. The next time you go out in the world, you might try this practice: directing your attention to people—in their cars, on the sidewalk, talking on their cell phones—just wish for them all to be happy and well. Without knowing anything about them, they can become very real, by regarding each of them personally and rejoicing in the comforts and pleasures that come their way. Each of us has this soft spot: a capacity for love and tenderness. But if we don't encourage it, we can get pretty stubborn about remaining sour.

I have a friend who, when he begins getting depressed and withdrawn, goes to a nearby park and does this practice for everyone who walks by. He finds this pulls him out of the slump before it’s too late. The tricky part is getting out of the house, instead of giving in to the seduction of gloom.
(-- From, The Practice of Rejoicing, in "No Time to Lose" by Pema Chodron, published by Shambhala.)

There is "no time". Therefore there is "no time" to lose.

Lose it. It's not there.

Rejoice.

It is no longer "what" our vision is.

It is "how" our vision is.

"How" we see replaces "what" we see.

Wing it.

Three pieces of news; only one not about death.

Well versed in the Buddha way,
I go the non-Way.
Without abandoning my
Ordinary man’s affairs,
The conditioned and
Name-and-form all
Are flowers in the sky.
Nameless and formless,
I leave birth-and-death.
- Layman P’ang

1.
Yesterday, a meetingbrook community person, Jim McLarty, 61, died during a kayak-related event on the St George river in Searsmont. Our hearts go out to Chris, Jim's wife.

Haiku
(for Chris, on hearing sorrowful news)

Frost covers both cars
Outside barn door, ground draws hard,.
Walking to chapel.

(wfh, 25mar07)

2.
Last week, on St Patrick's eve, the feisty Dorchester former postman, Joe McMorrow, 88, long time member of meetingbrook community, died after a stroke. We hold his wife, Gigi, in our hearts.

Haiku
(for Gige, who will be my hospice volunteer)

Joe thought the Red Sox
should play in his alleyway --

He'd stay awake then.
(wfh, 25mar07)

3.
This morning, meeting with landlord, the two of us, along with 3 board members, seemingly arrive at an open field with clear running water. The surprise of any unusual occurrence usually befuddles the mind. Horizon appears with invitation to continue -- should that be our choice.

Epilogue.
Sam, Susan, Tommy, Peter, Saskia, and I keep a brief silence for Jim and Chris before our meeting at the harbor shop. The suddenness of death puts things in context.

Gige, Joe and I used to have lively complaint sessions Joe sparked about the Red Sox and the Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. (There might have been some space between the two topics, but not much.)

And Bubba, whose unwritten resume was he'd never darken a church door, died in waters he loved to fish, to his heart's joy. No more emails about fighting monks on Mt Athos or irresponsible contraceptive restrictions foisted by "that other church" in the Africa in which he led safaris.

The joy of life is our diversity and surprise. Some surprises sadden. Some gladden. And the diversity surrounding the unknown moment to moment breath we capture and release -- this is what makes us sensitive to, and profoundly aware of, the well-being of each and every one of us.

Rain falls.

We celebrate Annunciation.

Each announcement bids us -- Listen!

There is revelation in words that transcend the sentence they comprise.

Take Martin Luther's reputed words ending his argument with the Roman Church delivered at Diet of Worms in 1521. In German: "Hier stehe ich; ich kann nicht anders." Translated: "Here I stand; I can do no other."

The words reveal more than his unwillingness or inability to recant and alter his way of thinking grown contrary to the Roman Church. The words actually encapsulate a position of independence.

He says: "I can do no other."

"No other" is a point of view that is not dependent on "other" -- on a church, tradition, creed, or God "out there" or "above" or in a "heavenly afterlife." As it is, he might not have been aware of the insight the words themselves invited.

Does Luther realize that he can do "no other" -- that he is able to dwell in the undifferentiated suchness (as Buddhists say) which is the ground reality of existence?

"Here," he says, "I stand." Luther expresses the absolute near-side of presence -- he stands "here" where there is nowhere else. His words indicate an appreciation of the perception that "Here" is "no other." The sole reality is here, and he can do "no other" -- a non-dualistic activity that is not predicating, nor predicated on, anything else, other, or absent. (Far from being a solipsism, this is front porch to egolessness.)

I like this as a useful apperception of the reality of God passing through as well as dwelling within and around everything.

When we became monastics of no other we were not aware that Martin Luther's insight would take so long to reach us. (It is quite astonishing what the man Martin Luther, and his words, unleashed.)

Now it is here.

We, too, can do it.

(Almost.)

Apperceptive dwelling in itself.

Perceiving the inner meaning of no other.

Jump?

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

(There's something about that phrase -- "as it is.")

"Thy will" might refer to that which is true, lovely, and compassionate. The words need not refer to something other than what is deeply inherent within the core of each and every being. If grace is gift, if God is creating love, and if ego is the sometimes necessary but often deluded impression that it is in charge of what happens -- then the prayer "Thy will" is prelude to surrender to what is true, lovely, and compassionate.

Avoid Doing Harm
If you wonder whether evil karma can be neutralized or not, then know that it is neutralized by desire for goodness. But they who knowingly do evil deeds, exchange a mouthful of food for infamy. They who knowing not wither they themselves are bound, yet presume to pose as guides for others, do injury both to themselves and others. If pain and sorrow ye desire sincerely to avoid, avoid, then, doing harm to others.
(--from W.Y. Evans-Wentz, in Tibet's Great Yogi Milarepa)

Caring and careful watchfulness is our constant meditation. We watch everything within and without us. We watch with attention; and we watch with an open and (prayerfully) wise awareness when to, and when not to, engage. There is often a mysterious gap between active engagement and active surrender. Many experience themselves in that gap, betwixt and between -- unsure whether to jump or to jump,(that is, jump headlong into the engagement, or jump out of the way and settle temporarily into stillness and non-engagement). (Ask Arjuna.)

Overnight At a Mountain Monastery
Massed peaks pierce
The sky’s cold colors;
Here, the trail junctions
With the temple path.
Shooting stars pass
Into sparse-branched trees;
The moon travels one way,
Clouds the other.
Few people come
To this mountaintop;
Cranes do not flock
In the tall pines.
One Buddhist monk,
Eighty years old,
Has never heard
Of the world’s affairs.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

I've heard of the world's affairs. They are complicated and dizzying. Engaged or non-engaged -- most of us are not neighbors of that monk on his mountain top. Only in our inner vastness can those of us in the world come close to what we might call 'loving non-engagement' with the affairs of the world. We ordinarily live very close to the necessities and consequences of proximate experience living with the difficult realities of this material/temporal existence. Suffering is observed and felt. If our eyes and heart are open, suffering is observed and felt.

Jung used the term individuation “to denote a process of becoming a psychological ‘individual,’ that is, a separate, indivisible unity or whole.” To individuate is to gradually actualize our innate capacity to live as a unique individual. Jung recognized that there would be times on this journey when we are challenged to surrender the central dominance of ego to the deeper significance of what he called the “Self.” For Jung, “Self ” refers to the center of our totality--a deeper seat of wisdom that holds a sense of our innate potential as we unfold in our lives. He was not implying that the Self had some kind of ultimate existence, but that it is nevertheless experienced as a center of wholeness, just as the ego is experienced as a center of consciousness. The Self individuates us--that is to say, its “intention” is that we evolve in such a way that the relationship between the ego and the Self matures. At certain times on our journey, the ego begins to realize that it is not the prime mover, that there are forces at work that have far greater influence. The Self asserts a kind of psychological pressure on us to change and become whole, a pressure that can be extremely disquieting as the ego loses its safe, familiar ground. A major aspect of this undercurrent of change is the need to shift our understanding of what is really at the center of our lives. The shift of emphasis from the ego to the Self has been described as the shift from “I will” to “Thy will be done.” While as a Buddhist I find the notion of a Thy somewhat untenable, I have always found the sentiment of letting go to some deeper sense of purpose profoundly meaningful.
(-- from The Solace of Surrender, February 6, 2007 , By Rob Preece, in Tricycle)

What is really at the center of our lives? What is experienced as a center of wholeness? What is the shift from ego to Self? How do we move from our experience of and belief in careless separateness, to the understanding and embodiment of a core caring oneness?

One of my favorite lines in the Course, which really is a perfect definition of a miracle even though it does not use the word, says that "the holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love" (T-26. IX.6:1). Someone whom we hate, hatred being the ego's way of looking, becomes someone whom we love, and that vision of love is given to us by the Holy Spirit. What we are talking about are two different ways of looking at the world and, more specifically, looking at the relationships in our lives. One is the ego's way of looking, which is a way of seeing more and more separation, anger and guilt, justifying our anger, and making sickness real here in the body. All these perceptions really reinforce the basic ego premise that we are separate from each other and from God. The correction for that is to go from the ego's way of looking to the Holy Spirit's way of looking, and it is that shift from the ego to the Holy Spirit that is the miracle. The identical word for that process of shifting from the ego's perceptions of someone else to the Holy Spirit's, is "forgiveness."
(--from pp.6-8, in The Fifty Miracle Principles of a Course in Miracles, by Kenneth Wapnick. C.1992.)

There's something here.

One way, or another, we are asked to leap.

Compelled to leap.

Any tasty berries at hand?

Word is our landlord at the harbour shop wants the building for his brother and other purposes.

A blustery wind blows through phone calls.

Is it time to become a mindless piece piece of wood? Or would a slingshot be handier? (Ask David.)

Like A Mindless Piece Of Wood
Shantideva... mentions specific instances when it is advisable to remain like a mindless piece of wood. We can do this when our mind is very distracted or when the thought arises to belittle, slander, or abuse others. If pride, haughtiness or the intention to find fault with others arises, we can also remain impassive until our deluded motivation fades. Feeling pretentious, thinking to deceive others and wishing to praise our own qualities, wealth, or possessions are all occasions when it is wise to pretend that we are made out of wood. Whenever we have the desire to blame others, speak harshly or cause disruption we should practice this technique of non-reaction.
(--Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold)

Eleven years has been a good run. It's always a wonder the way wind moves things around.

Time to think about packing up the odds and ends that accumulate over time. Endings are beginnings seen through back of mirror.

Our vocation is to let blustery winds blow themselves out, pick up fell wood, and stack for future warming stove fire.

Brethren, how fine a thing it is to move from festival to festival, from prayer to prayer, from holy day to holy day.
(--From an Easter letter by Saint Athanasius, bishop)

Day by day.

Holy way.

(I bow.)

(As best can be done.)

How lost is lost?

Sitting in screened porch of meditation cabin for an hour last night in cold moonless silence of Ragged Mountain, nothing comes to mind. I sit in the emptiness of my life. Up path, across frozen footprints, pieces of bark from broken and fallen tree lay on icy indentations. Out behind barn, where white-lights circle on front red sliding door, ashes from once burning wood stove fire settle stiff in plastic bag by sawn harbor pilings under crusted snow. According to Hsuan-sha, that's where I might be found.

The way of buddhas is wide open, without any stages. The door of nothing is the door to liberation; having no intention is the will to help others. It is not within past, present, and future, so it cannot rise and sink; setups are counter to reality, because it is not in the realm of the created. Move, and you produce the root of birth and death; be still, and you get drunk in the village of oblivion. If movement and stillness are both erased, you fall into empty annihilation; if movement and stillness are both withdrawn, you presume upon buddha nature. You must be like a dead tree or cold ashes in the face of objects and situations while acting responsively according to time, without losing proper balance. A mirror reflects a multitude of images without their confusing its brilliance; birds fly through the air without mixing up the color of the sky.
- Hsuan-sha

Nothing makes sense. Wind blows through it. Bell-chime moves vibration through it without hindrance. Morning fragrance of something in kitchen oven downstairs comes through open door over wool socks without permission. Low rumble-groan of basement furnace says to no-one in particular that, although it is calendar spring, it is not time yet to stay unbidden and unmoving.

It is time of weakening spirit.

Come quickly and hear me, O Lord,
for my spirit is weakening.
Do not hide your face from me,
do not let me be like the dead,
who go down to the underworld.
Show me your mercy at daybreak,
because of my trust in you.
Tell me the way I should follow,
for I lift up my soul towards you.
(--from Psalm 143)

It has been a question since I first looked out over stair-shed in Bensonhurst backyard at white DeSoto near patch of grass bordered by hydrangeas. Will someone tell me the way? Or is the way looking out from the question over slanted shingled roof?

So many of my dear brothers and sisters offer, and want to tell us, the way. Some have wanted to beat it into us. Others shake their heads and say, "You are lost!" I've been grateful both for their caring and their conclusion.

Hsuan-sha's One Bright Pearl

(Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi. See at http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/daido/teisho05.php
True Dharma Eye, Case 15, Featured in Mountain Record, Fall 1996.)

The Main Case

The great master Hsuan-sha was once asked by a monk, "The entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl.1 How can I understand the meaning of this?"2 Hsuan-sha said, "The entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl. Why is it necessary to understand the meaning of this?"3 On the following day Hsuan-sha said to the monk,4 "The entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl. How do you understand the meaning of this?" 5 The monk replied, "The entire world of the ten directions is one bright pearl. Why is it necessary to understand the meaning of this?"6 Hsuan-sha said, "Now I know that you are living inside a cave of demons on the black mountain."7

The Commentary

When our lives are not free of fixed positions we drown in a sea of poison. Following after another's words and mimicking others' actions is the practice of monkeys and parrots. Zen practitioners should be able to show some fresh provisions of their own. Be that as it may, you should understand that even in the cave of demons on the black mountain the one bright pearl's radiance is not diminished.

The Capping Verse

The question came from the cave of demons--
The master answered with a mudball.
Beyond telling, absolutely beyond telling,
Ultimately we can only nod to ourselves.
(--True Dharma Eye: Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koans, is a complete, modern English translation of Master Dogen's Three Hundred Koan or Chinese Shobogenzo.)

I notice this practice of nodding. When walking aisles of grocery market, when passing individuals along town streets, when looking into zendo, chapel, or cemetery, I nod, or bow -- sometimes slightly, other times profoundly -- at my companions, visible or invisible. It is beyond telling, this companioning realization.

Dear Reader

Baudelaire considers you his brother,
and Fielding calls out to you every few paragraphs
as if to make sure you have not closed the book,
and now I am summoning you up again,
attentive ghost, dark silent figure standing
in the doorway of these words.

Pope welcomes you into the glow of his study,
takes down a leather-bound Ovid to show you.
Tennyson lifts the latch to a moated garden,
and with Yeats you lean against a broken pear tree,
the day hooded by low clouds.

But now you are here with me,
composed in the open field of this page,
no room or manicured garden to enclose us,
no Zeitgeist marching in the background,
no heavy ethos thrown over us like a cloak.

Instead, our meeting is so brief and accidental,
unnoticed by the monocled eye of History,
you could be the man I held the door for
this morning at the bank or post office
or the one who wrapped my speckled fish.
You could be someone I passed on the street
or the face behind the wheel of an oncoming car.

The sunlight flashes off your windshield,
and when I look up into the small, posted mirror,
I watch you diminish—my echo, my twin—
and vanish around a curve in this whip
of a road we can't help traveling together.
(--Billy Collins, The Art of Drowning, University of Pittsburgh Press)

We are composed in the open field of this...

This...what?

This lost...

(How lost?)

And...found --

Traveling together.

How lost is lost if there is only "Being!...Alone?" If nothing is between the statement and the question -- then we travel together, one by one, through this open field.

Nodding, affirming, what is here and there, in our midst.

Ultimately, (one bright rosary of circling light), we can only nod, to ourselves.

It grieves me that I have approved torture. It saddens me that my spirit is damaged by the torture I have encouraged.

"There is no such thing as a little bit of torture."(-from HBO Documentary, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib")

We do not seem to understand how torture deteriorates and destroys the human spirit of both tortured and torturer. If anywhere in the world torture is used against other human beings, the torturers and tortured experience diminishment and horror. If America approves and condones torture, then the human spirit of Americans is deteriorating.

Our government does our bidding. And yet, by approving torture -- by allowing my representatives in the executive and legislative branches of American government to speak for me to legalize and employ torture -- I choose to abuse my spirit, doing so as the bodies of perceived enemies are abused. Is this self-abuse one of the byproducts of not recognizing my self -- not being aware of true self? If so, there is a great distance yet to traverse before coming to genuine self-knowledge and self-awareness.

Skillful Versus Unskillful
Rather than dividing thoughts into classes like "good" and "bad," Buddhist thinkers prefer to regard them as "skillful" versus "unskillful." An unskillful thought is one connected with greed, hatred, or delusion. These are thoughts that the mind most easily builds into obsessions. They are unskillful in the sense that they lead you away from the goal of Liberation. Skillful thoughts, on the other hand, are those connected with generosity, compassion, and wisdom. They are skillful in the sense that they may be used as specific remedies for unskillful thoughts, and thus can assist you toward Liberation.
(--Henepola Gunaratana, Mindfulness in Plain English, from Everyday Mind)

We have been living in an age where private armies and mercenary forces acting with no oversight or accountability are used as substitute for US military to fight wars and carry out the wishes of powerful men often using means and tactics under deep cover and with no checks and balances. We are becoming what we fear -- lawless and unaccountable.

Return to me, says the Lord of Hosts, and I will return to you. Do not be like your ancestors, to whom the prophets in the past cried ‘Turn back from your evil ways and evil deeds’ but they would not listen.
(--Zechariah 1:3 - 4)

The morning in Maine is glowing. Today is the first day of spring. Sun shines brightly. Nature turns on its axis of retrieval.

We can, and must, retrieve our dignity. We the torturers and the tortured must work to retrieve the spirit of wholeness and compassion available to us by the grace of wholeness and the practice of compassion.

Write down how many things you want.
Meditate on how many things you need.
When you write them down
You will see
That you want millions of things.
When you meditate
You will notice
That you need only one thing
And that is God the Compassion,
God the eternal Compassion.
(- Sri Chinmoy)

Notice this need. Notice sunlight turning warmer, daylight turning brighter. Notice our spirits longing for return. Longing for a retrieving, renewing, wholeness.

I confess my unskillful acts.

I watch for -- and hope to notice -- the change.

I research antonyms of torture.

I need to practice antonymic connection with both tortured and torturer -- namely: alleviation, contentment, happiness, relief.

Let us.

Return.

And retrieve.

Wisdom attends when asked to. It demands we attend, first and foremost, in our passing through.

[1] Agaphsate dikaiosunhn oi krinonteV thn ghn fronhsate peri tou kuriou en agaqothti kai en aplothti kardiaV zhthsate auton (SOFIA SALWMWN, Wisdom of Solomon - Septuagint, 1:1)

(1: Love righteousness, ye that be judges of the earth: think of the Lord with a good (heart,) and in simplicity of heart seek him. (King James Version. Wisdom of Solomon, 1:1)

The news report says the former vice president of Iraq is hung to death from gallows for crimes committed against humanity during wartime footing, for his role in the 1982 killing of 148 Shiites. The vice president of the United States has legal protections should any future reversals or judicial inquiry implicate him in recriminations about Iraq invasion -- decisions, behaviors, and actions during that footing. America has a lot to reflect on.

An inquiry into wisdom might prove worthwhile. But wisdom, whether conventional or sacred, is itself asked to go beyond and deeper. Mystery -- radical and radiant visage of God-seeing, an openness to core and caring true reality -- is the profound longing of human heart and soul; a soul-friendship with the Lovely One with its Realization, and Engagement.

Don’t love sagehood; sagehood is an empty name. There is no special truth but this radiant spiritual openness, unobstructed and free. It is not attained by adornment and cultivated realization. From the buddhas to the Zen masters, all have transmitted this teaching, by which they attained liberation.
- Te-shan (d. 867)

What will make humanity safe from humanity is radiant spiritual openness. We listen for strains of this sound in our contemporary existence.

It still makes sense
to know the song after all.

My wiseness I wear
in despair of something better.

I am all beggar,
I am all ears.
(--from poem The Song, by Robert Creeley)

'Something better' is incarnate incorporation between/with and as what-is-revealing-itself in this world at this time with love and compassion.

I am lonely as a pelican in the wilderness,
as an owl in the ruins,
as a sparrow alone on a rooftop:
I do not sleep.
(-- from Psalm 102)

There are innumerable pilgrims walking unnoticed in the world -- praying, longing for, practicing, and encouraging one another quietly -- to come to realize, with wisdom, radiant spiritual openness.

“Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.
“Each of you must respect his father and mother.
(--from Leviticus 19:1 - 3)

Father and mother here might be wisdom and compassion. Our biological parents tried in their own way to respect their father and mother. We must also.

Do not be put off giving by a lack of resources. A generous spirit is itself great wealth, and there can be no shortage of material for generosity where it is Christ who feeds and Christ who is fed. His hand is present in all this activity: his hand, which multiplies the bread by breaking it and increases it by giving it away.
(--From a sermon by Pope St Leo the Great, in Office of Readings, Tuesday of the 4th week of Lent)

Let's be bread for one another. Bread, not gallows. Let us feed, and be fed by, one another.

There is no shortage of material for generosity. The means of delivery is radiant spiritual openness.

We with grace can become pilgrims carrying through this lovely conveyance.

Durch und durch!

(Through and through!)

Nota Bene: We note with unpassing sorrow the 4th anniversary of armed conflict between the United States and Iraq. We pray for those killed and wounded during this terrible time, and for all the families of those killed and wounded -- Iraqi, American, (and others from away). If prayer has any force, we pray for sanity, sanctity, and safety. If peace has any cogency, we extend our hands for peace.

Soft blue gray dawn on snowfell hillside this feast day of Joseph and birthday of Patricia.

St Joseph
Nothing is known of St Joseph except what is said of him in the Gospels. He was a carpenter; he accepted the will of God; and he supported Mary and brought up Jesus. From the human character of his son we can see that he was a good and responsible father. Although he is not officially a patron saint, he is widely venerated as a patron of artisans who honourably do good work with the gifts God has given them, and of workers in general. (-- from Universalis.com)

Patricia shared our mother and father. I miss asking her questions about the tucked away facts and stories of family she carried.

The learning of the sages
For a thousand years
Is just recognized in a moment
Of spiritual illumination.
- Wang Ji (1498-1583)

I pray their names today. Something about making home with hospitality and unknowing care of God-gift.

Making a Fist
by Naomi Shihab Nye

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist.

Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
(--From Words Under the Words: Selected Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye.)

At the end Patricia's hand lay open on white spread that hospital midnight. And Joseph? His hands we cannot see but for tools and wood, his likenesses in churches.

Light lays quietly on hill.

Recognize this moment.

As oneself.

Vorhanden.

How we see.

Vision. Vision is how we see. Not what we see, but how. Without vision there is no seeing.

How do we see from the reality and place we are? It is an important question. Face it!

There is no other task but to know your own original face. This is called independence; the spirit is clear and free. If you say there is some particular doctrine or patriarchy, you’ll be totally cheated. Just look into your heart; there is a transcendental clarity. Just have no greed and no dependency and you will immediately attain certainty.
- Yen-t’ou (828-887)

I like the prospect that the only thing we can be certain of is our original face. This is an interesting thought -- so many of us are certain -- yet cannot face ourselves, do not see the faces of others, or...have no face.

To 'lose face', defined, is: lose face -- to do something which makes other people stop respecting you. 'He refused to admit he made a mistake because he didn't want to lose face.' (--in the Free Dictionary)

We can never lose our original face. We can only lose the face we pretend is ours, one crafted by conditioning, politics, fear, greed, lies, or dishonesty. And that face is not real, is artificial, does not really see, nor care to see the plaintive presence presenting itself before us.

To see God as He is in Himself, this is the essence of perfect happiness.
(--p. 159, from My Way of Life, Pocket Edition of Saint Thomas, The Summa Simplied for Everyone, by Walter Farrell O.P, and Martin Healy)

We get to see God by seeing what is in God's eye; we see what God is looking at by looking through our original face. God is what is looking through.

Original face is to be shown through and through moment to moment.

All that can be annihilated must be
annihilated...
the Reasoning Power in Man
This is a false Body; an Incrustation over my
immortal
Spirit; a Selfhood, which must be put off &
annihilated always
To cleanse the Face of my Spirit by
Self-examination.
(- William Blake, Complete Poetry and Prose, p. 142
Chan Buddhism and the Prophetic Poems of William Blake)

When we observe carefully or critically, when we inspect something that captivates our attention, we open eyes and mind to what is presenting itself.

So it is we face one another.

With itself in our midst.

Enlightening...how we see.

We wake and Saskia is thrilled reading from Raimundo Panikkar's The Cosmotheandric Experience. Outside this morning snow after six inches turns to six hours of flooding, teaming rain.

Someone writes of him:

Panikkar is no obscurantist or anti-intellectualist, however, for he stresses that we must communicate what we experience. Experience must be interpreted, otherwise "myth and faith would perish the moment that the innocence of the ecstatic passes away." In fact, experience is inchoate even to the subject until it is captured first at the level of mythic expression, much of which is nonverbal, then in mythologies which cast myth into the form of narrative, then in fully conceptualized systems. where mythos, to use his term, has become logos.

Given the mythic formulations in which communication is carried on, Panikkar argues, the process must become a critical one. We must critically analyze one another’s mythologies across our cultural and religious differences in order to lay bare their roots in our experience of our differing truth claims. In this kind of dialogue, the parties must maintain their respective commitment, but they must also recognize that the ways in which they express those commitments are something less than, or a distorted picture of, the truth contained in experience itself. With this recognition comes a recovery of the humility about oneself and the veneration for the absolute transcendence of God that pluralism requires.

One assumption Panikkar makes -- one that reveals the Thomistic strain in his thought (he is a Roman Catholic priest, trained in Madrid and Rome) -- is that everyone has an experience of God (even the secularist, especially the secularist) and that everyone seeks God in the form of some absolute. This absolute is embodied in each individual’s experience in some concrete way; indeed, it can be experienced only in that particular embodiment. Thus, Panikkar insists that religious particularities cannot be dispensed with; they can be critiqued, but not discarded. Any attempt to abstract the absolute out of the concreteness of experience is doomed to fail; it is a destruction of experience itself, an intellectualizing destruction that reduces the living God to an object.
(--in, "Raimundo Panikkar: Pluralism Without Relativism," by Peter Gorday, an Episcopal priest, from article in the Christian Century, December 6, 1989.

We talk about pictures on wall, how zen dharma combat would demand something real be said about the experience in one's eye, then we follow words about the experience of meetingbrook and how it wishes to become real once more.

Rain slows. Roads wash out. Bridge across 2nd brook is 6 inches under torrent flow.

Saskia says, "Raimundo Panikkar says it for us." And he does.

His gift words our picture with Catalan Christophany.

All is between/with.

Gale gusts between mountains. Snowstorm on way. Wind chimes call to each other with news of what each one of them (and trees near by) already knows -- the wind, she blows!

All things are free-flowing, untrammeled. What bondage is there, what entanglement? You create your own difficulty and ease therein. The mind source pervades the ten directions with one continuity; those of the most excellent faculties understand naturally.
- Tzu-hu (800-880)

Thirteen gathered for Thursday Evening Conversation, ongoing Course in Miracles, about there's only one will, God's. Jack helps us through. Tom and Maria were up. (Her new valve and bypass work healing well.) The conversation and inquiry penetrates name of God, what is meant by 'will', the human response to 'what is', the ego-self and the 'higher-self', as well as how clear acknowledgment and aware surrender to what is, with compassionate engagement, is what some might call 'doing the will of God.'

To Hold

Before I left for camp, my mother sewed my name
with a firm stitch into everything I owned.
She even looped a string of nametapes
through the scissors I keep to this day on my desk.

She wanted to be sure, when she sent me into the woods,
she'd get the right child back at summer's end,
that I'd not be left in the laundry drum
like an unmarked sock. Others—

careless lazy mothers-favored marking pens,
illegible black letters bleeding into stain.

My mother knew nothing was permanent.
She'd seen how fast a child could disappear:
her two dead sisters with names like flowers:
Lily, Rose, their summery smells, indelible voices.

That's why she sewed my name so tight
on all four sides, double-knotted the knots.
So I wouldn't forget when she sent me off
into the wet, the dark, the wild: I was hers.
(Poem: "To Hold" by Jean Nordhaus, from Innocence. The Ohio State University Press.)

Deb and Diane arrived at end with 3-legged Chance the hungry dog. Deb argued that we need clear-eyed ability to judge; we discern and deliberate with the ability, even as she suggested that animals choose with swift immediacy the course of action they will take.

There's an impulse we humans have to put God elsewhere managing the details of this life imposing 'his' will on the mechanisms of this existence. I sometimes start with the phrase "what is is what is" and, from that, or with that, it seems that human beings there and then enter 'what is' with either compassionate engagement or contentious opposition. The 'will of God', then, is a co-creative communication between what is taking place with what is engaging what is take place.

If we highlight two words -- 'between' and 'with' -- from the previous sentence, I think we begin to connect what cannot be disconnected. In the 'between/with' dwells the interconnectivity of our human dwelling/divine reality. When we rhetorically or really wonder about God, we are always asking 'where' God is, and 'what' God is, even, 'whether' God is. For this morning, it seems to me, that God is between/with. The intimacy of humanity/divinity is as close and undifferentiated as intimacy of animate/inanimate, materiality/spirituality, and self/other -- all of which presents itself whole to our experience moment to moment everyday as we live and breath. (I do not know and cannot say what takes place when life and breath no longer appear in this realm whereof we now speak.)

One of the scribes who had listened to them debating and had observed how well Jesus had answered them, now came up and put a question to him, ‘Which is the first of all the commandments?’ Jesus replied, ‘This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.’ The scribe said to him, ‘Well spoken, Master; what you have said is true: that he is one and there is no other. To love him with all your heart, with all your understanding and strength, and to love your neighbour as yourself, this is far more important than any holocaust or sacrifice.’ Jesus, seeing how wisely he had spoken, said, ‘You are not far from the kingdom of God’. And after that no one dared to question him any more.
(--Mark 12:28 - 34, Friday Gospel, 3rd Week of Lent)

If we dared, what would we now ask?

I would ask: "Would you say more of what is 'not far'?"

He'd, no doubt, say, "What is, is 'not far'."

"No?" (And then) "Yes?" (I'd ask.)

"Yes," he'd say, "'What is' is only and all there is; 'What is' is only and all here is."

"Where is 'what is'," I'd ask.

"Who is it wants to know?" he'd ask.

He'd look at me. I'd look at him.

And there we'd be -- between one another, with one another -- the answer in the very fact and facticity of it. Question dissolves.

(Another question inevitably arises: Do we love what is between and with us? Inevitably, even this question fades. Yes?)

Only between/with one another.

Really -- that's all there is...right...here.

What-is.

Between/with.

One-another.

Learning to think comes first.

The human mind is
Empty and illuminated:
Its essence is profoundly clear.
Originally it is leaping
With life:
How could it be held fast?
- Wang Ji (1498-1583)

Learning to feel is thinking with bodies.

Philosophy is but the conscious and critical accompaniment of Man's journeying towards his destiny. This journeying is called religion in many cultures.
...[P]hilosophy, [is] that human activity which asks questions about the very foundations of human life under the heavens and on earth.
(-- Raimon Panikkar. in Religion, Philosophy and Culture )

Learning presence and compassion is thinking/feeling becoming human.

Becoming human was good enough, Christians say, for God.

Maybe you and I should try it.

Sitting on porch of meditation cabin with cat at cloudy sunrise, red squirrels jitterbug their territory near seed mesh holder hanging from tree. Inside, incense, offered to ancestors and all who have taught us hope, compassion, and charity, swirls to the guidance of breeze. Only breath. Rising. Falling. Temperature has gone from -5F to +50F in a matter of a week.

I've been reading the tale "Geser of Ling." It is fantastical legend -- the things Geser is able to do with his body and image of body during his adventures up to the age of 16 when he becomes king, are the stuff of fantasy and metaphoric excess. The imagination has to work hard to keep going with the narrative. (But, then, the fantastic does not always coincide with laws of reason and logic.)

Not so with the news report from further down-east Maine. Authorities think they know the identity of the 17 year old reported missing from home and school.

Divers end search for body of Prospect bridge jumper,
By Walter Griffin
Wednesday, March 14, 2007 - Bangor Daily News
Three witnesses saw the boy jump off the Prospect side of the bridge at approximately 7 p.m. Monday, March 5. They said the boy was not wearing a shirt and had been seen walking down the center lane before going over the side.

One witness told authorities he was driving west toward Prospect and saw a young male without a shirt lying down in the median between the lanes. The man said he stopped his vehicle and watched the youth get up and walk toward the guardrail.

Keating said the witness got within a few feet of the boy and by that time he was on the outboard side of the railing. He said that when he told the boy not to jump, the boy let go. The travel deck of the bridge is 155 feet above the river at high tide, which was at 11:55 p.m. Monday.

The Marine Patrol, U.S. Coast Guard and Bucksport Fire Department rushed to the scene and began a rescue operation. They searched up and down the river for about four hours before suspending the operation. Subzero temperatures kept searchers off the water for the next few days until the weather improved over the weekend.

We learn the height of bridge above water as well as time of high tide that evening of March 5th. We do not learn, by any external observation, what the young man was jumping from or toward. 'Bridge' and 'water' are names -- geographic references. But we cannot discern yet the mind of the lad, the history of inner thoughts, the moment of decision, the insights during flight.

We are troubled by suicide. Each one of us knows it is an option. We might be saying: "Not for me it's not!" We might note there's good reason for the strong moral and spiritual prohibition -- yet, still, we are riveted by the examples of suicide we so frequently hear about.

For now -- we pray. For him. Family. Peers. Ourselves. For all human beings distraught, for all sentient beings unsafe.

Sarvajnamitra Stansa
Some see Your form as red like the sun, with rays that are
redder still than the red of minium or red lac;
Others, as beautiful intense blue like a powder of splintered
fragments on the precious stone, sapphire;
Others again as shining like gold, or dazzling white, surpassing
the milk when the Ocean of Milk is churned.
It is a universal form, varied like crystal, since it changes
according to circumstance.
- Sarvajnamitra
(--from Poet Seers. Sarvajnamitra lived in Kashmir in the 8th Century AD. He was a Tantric Buddhist.)

Back in my room in solitude, the book on Tibetan Folk Tales falls open to a familiar story with capitalized final line cautionary note.

The Monkeys & the Moon

Once, in the distant past, there was a band of monkeys. They lived in a forest, and in the forest was a well. One night, the leader of the band of monkeys peered into the well, and seeing the reflection of the moon in the water, said:

"Look! The moon has fallen into the well; we ought to get it out or our world will be without a moon."

The other monkeys looked into the well and saw that it was indeed so. "Yes," they agreed. "We should certainly get the moon out of the well."

So the monkeys formed a chain, each holding onto the tail of the one before, while the monkey at the top of the chain held onto a branch to support them.

The branch began to bend under the weight of the monkeys as they lowered themselves into the well, and soon began to crack. The water was disturbed and the reflection of the moon disappeared, the branch broke, and the monkeys tumbled headlong into the well.

WHEN THE UNWISE HAVE AN UNWISE LEADER THEY ARE ALL LED TO RUIN. (--p.96, in Tibetan Folk Tales, by Frederick and Audrey Hyde-Chambers, c.2001)

Ours is a curious and disturbing time. Our time, with its distraught and dismayed populace either receiving the pain of war, or giving it -- with terrifying examples of destruction and corruption -- begs for, longs for wisdom. We need wisdom to emerge from our distracted and distant attention to assist us on our pilgrimage.

Some think that everything is a political wager -- a sides-taking gamble where, if the horse you back comes in first, that's all that counts. (Go to window, collect your winnings, no need to question anything.)

Our experiment with democracy delimits to questions like: Who will win? Who will assert power? Who will emerge with the prize?

Representational government (a good notion) devolves into cash and carry -- whoever pays the most money wins favor, (despite popular call to work and legislate equally on behalf each and all.) Even our image of a Supreme Court has become clouded by leftright leftright leftright appointments with pre-set ideology, and not on intelligent, sagacious, and pragmatic consideration of the matters brought for deliberation.

It is time to attend to a spiritual need more profound than the petty scorecard we keep by our chairs as we spectate the turns and flats of horse races. From premature presidential campaigns to troublesome presidential pronouncements about ghastly circumstances in a war maiming and killing without sane end in sight -- we are bombarded with political (and only political) handicapping -- and all too seldom with insightful and judicious conversation extending beyond pithy talking points of the day. We, the citizenry, are under-willed. We are wanting in the arenas of civics and governance. We are equally wanting in the realms of spirituality and personal depth.

Pundits, whether political or pastoral, want to tell us what to do. They often fail to invite us into who we are. We need to step aside -- we need to consider carefully the alarming and liberating mystery of who we are and what we are doing. It is a quest into the heart of being.

Some of the anger foisted against anyone questioning the current warlike behavior and continuing presence of the US in Iraq appears to resemble the anger we experience when we know death is coming and we feel a need to lash out at everything and everyone near the news of it.

That anger is also sorrow -- a sorrow we might have been wrong. There is (or should be) an equal sorrow we might have been right, but, O, the suffering involved! There is no joy with war. Even the most hard-bitten among us know that only sorrow and loss result from war. No ideology softens suffering. We have to travel to a more profound place -- a path leading to deep roots in dark ground of human experience -- only there do we get an inkling of authentic heart/mind .

From the book addressed to Autolycus by Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God
If you say, “Show me your God”, I will say to you, “Show me what kind of person you are, and I will show you my God”. Show me then whether the eyes of your mind can see, and the ears of your heart hear.
It is like this. Those who can see with the eyes of their bodies are aware of what is happening in this life on earth. They get to know things that are different from each other. They distinguish light and darkness, black and white, ugliness and beauty, elegance and inelegance, proportion and lack of proportion, excess and defect. The same is true of the sounds we hear: high or low or pleasant. So it is with the ears of our heart and the eyes of our mind in their capacity to hear or see God.
(--from Office of Readings, Wednesday of the 3rd week of Lent)

The hermit's vocation is to enter the heart of being. It is sometimes a fearful visitation. Noise fades. Distinct sound emerges. Each thing, each being is clearly itself. The business (and busyness) of distraction is set aside for a while. We are faced with something clear. The experience is more like no-experience. More like actual...conveying.

There is a stillness that is a keyhole. You are the key.

What does it mean to enter the heart of being?

Turn yourself slowly.

Feel the tumbler fall.

Take a breath.

Now...

We begin this Tuesday Evening Conversation the reading and conversation flowing from Pema Chodron's No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva, a line by line study of "The Way of the Boddhisattva," by Shantideva, 8th century Indian Buddhist sage. We'll inquire into 'bodhichitta' -- awakened heart/mind.

Bodhichitta is essentially a quality of warmth, an experience of our connection with all beings and with all things. It's said traditionally that it's expressed as a wish or an aspiration, initially expressed as a strong longing or wish that nobody suffer, and that we could in some way in the course of our lifetime, as much as possible, help to alleviate suffering in the world.
(--Pema Chodron)

So much suffering.

So few awakened.

So...we look to it.