Morning canoe paddling out West Middle River into St Patrick's Channel.

Performance of Celtic Mass for the Sea this afternoon in Mabou.

Time is to be valued! You just try to learn Zen or Tao on the surface as something outside yourself, learning to recognize terms and slogans, seeking “buddhahood,” seeking “mastery,” seeking “teachers,” considering them conceptually. Make no mistake about it -- you have but one mother and father, so what more are you seeking? Turn your attention back upon yourself and observer.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Tonight in New Glasgow with Andre's pizza and 2nd game of Boston vs Cleveland.

It's the fifth. Ramirez and Lowell homer. A new pitcher comes in.

The music stays alive within.

A fine mist shrouds Cape Breton as notes and strings vibrate up and down Cabot Trail.

In everyone it towers like
A mile high wall,
Flashing a great precious light
In everyone’s presence.
One thought ten thousand years,
Ten thousand years one thought,
Eating when hungry,
Sleeping when tired,
Who worries about the alternation
Of light and dark,
The change of the seasons?
- Daio (1235-1309)

We leave wood leaning against fire-can at campsite.

All is well as Celtic Colours draws down.

Every sheltered harbour and rock solid wharf is commitment to the sea.

We voted to allow Maine to become officially part of Atlantic Maritime Provinces.

It was unanimous.

Good move, eh?

Cape Breton fiddlers and guitar players. Canoe paddles in brackish Baddeck Inlet. Hiking boots on mountain trail to white water (Uisge Ban) falls.

Dog, woman, and man in tent on wilderness site.

What is the truth? The truth is the reality of mind. The reality of mind is formless and pervades the ten directions. It is being used presently, right before your eyes, yet people do not trust it sufficiently, so they accept terms and expressions, seeking to assess Buddhism conceptually in the written word. They are as far away as the sky is from earth.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Water carried us up river. Water carried us back.

Cesco wants dinner.

What a lovely sky!

Brisk winds at portal to Nova Scotia.

As to the roaming of sages,
They move in utter emptiness,
Let their minds meander in the great nothingness;
They run beyond convention
And go through where there is no gateway.
They listen to the soundless
And look at the formless,
They are not constrained by society
And not bound to its customs.
- Lao-tze

Canadian Thanksgiving is second Monday in October.

Canoe atop, old dog within, green element (frosch) leaves New Brunswick and rests a spell at Amherst.

We are grateful for merely being alive.

Today in Canada.

Understanding belongs to the collective. There is no private understanding. When we understand anything it belongs to everyone. And don't mention secrets. More ill and wrong hides in the seduction of secrecy than anywhere else.

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you. We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, in your various activities, what do you lack? The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.
(--Lin Chi, d 867?)

If.

You can see.

In this way.

Teilhard refers to "Centeredness" as a characteristic of the universe on all levels. Each corpuscle of matter has a centre "within", its principle of organisation. The more complex the being, the greater degree of centreity. Teilhard teaches that Centreity is the true, absolute measure of being in the beings that surround us, and the only basis for a truely natural classification of the elements of the universe. The axis of evolution stretches from the lowest degree of centreity to the highest, and entities having the same degree of centreity constitute "isopheres", forming universal units of the same type of being. So pre-living entities are ordered on Earth in the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, and the atmosphere. Organic beings make up the biosphere, and thinking entities (which in Teilhard's system solely means man) the noosphere. When ranked in their natural order, the whole family of isopheres will define at the heart of the system a focus-point of universal synthesis, the Centre of centres, Omega [Activation of Energy, pp.10-13, 102; Beatrice Bruteau, Evolution towards Divinity, p.138]
(--from , Teilhard de Chardin's Evolutionary Philososophy http://www.kheper.net/topics/Teilhard/Teilhard-evolution.htm)

It is a common flaw in our thinking to appropriate the divine to individual possession -- I am saved, God loves me, You are damned, I have the truth, Me me me.
I suspect divinity sips tea alone in a cafe, head shaking at the spectacle of absurd pronouncements of ownership and domination, forever waiting to be recognized as free gift for one and all -- one in all.

Reconciliation

Word over all, beautiful as the sky!
Beautiful that war, and all its deeds of carnage, must in time be utterly
lost;
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night, incessantly softly
wash again, and ever again, this soil'd world:
... For my enemy is
dead--a man divine as myself is dead;
I look where he lies, white-faced and
still, in the coffin--I draw near;
I bend down, and touch lightly with my
lips the white face in the coffin.
(--Poem by Walt Whitman)

I look at the corner table.

Where's the one who sat there?

What is there to understand?

That.

I have not.

Seen.

Yet.

The one not separate from reality is the one capable of unifying opposites.

The Canticle of the Sun
by Francis of Assisi

Most high, all powerful, all good Lord! All praise is yours, all glory, all honor, and all blessing. To you, alone, Most High, do they belong. No mortal lips are worthy to pronounce your name.
Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures, especially through my lord Brother Sun, who brings the day; and you give light through him. And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendor! Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
Be praised, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars; in the heavens you have made them, precious and beautiful.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and clouds and storms, and all the weather, through which you give your creatures sustenance.
Be praised, My Lord, through Sister Water; she is very useful, and humble, and precious, and pure.
Be praised, my Lord, through Brother Fire, through whom you brighten the night. He is beautiful and cheerful, and powerful and strong.
Be praised, my Lord, through our sister Mother Earth, who feeds us and rules us, and produces various fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
Be praised, my Lord, through those who forgive for love of you; through those who endure sickness and trial. Happy those who endure in peace, for by you, Most High, they will be crowned.
Be praised, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death, from whose embrace no living person can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin! Happy those she finds doing your most holy will. The second death can do no harm to them.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give thanks, and serve him with great humility.
(Poem/Canticle by Giovanni Bernardone -- Francis of Assisi, 1181-1226)
(translated by Bill Barrett from the Umbrian text of the Assisi codex.)

We like Francis.

St. Francis And The Sow

The bud
stands for all things,
even those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow
of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch
it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as St. Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of
the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking
and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
(--Poem by Galway Kinnell)

It's his feastday. It's an opportunity to learn.

He reteaches us loveliness.

Transitus.

From here.

To here.

To shake off the
Dust of human ambition
I sit on moss in
Zen robes of stillness,
While through the window,
In the setting sun
Of late autumn,
Falling leaves whirl
And drop to the stone dais.
- Tesshu Tokusai (?–1366)

Francis falling.

Through Francis.

Into Francis.

Not much for joining. Thus, never leaving. I read reunion news from seraphic Franciscans forty four years ago at edge of twenty. Alas, as hermit, I never attend. Am invisible. A history merely linear. No return.

Angels know circularity. I'm no angel. They are the message carried through and around history.

Angels are nothing but clear mystery communicating itself to sentient being.

Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it,
As soon as you are aware of it,
It will vanish.
If you remain for a long period
Forgetful of objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This is the essential art of zazen.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

When message is delivered, messenger disappears. Tom the mailman does this everyday. Angels, I suspect, are very good at this, very good as this.

'He has given his angels charge over you to guard you in all your ways.' These words should fill you with respect, inspire devotion and instill confidence; respect for the presence of angels, devotion because of their loving service, and confidence because of their protection. And so the angels are here; they are at your side, they are with you, present on your behalf. They are here to protect you and to serve you. But even if it is God who has given them this charge, we must nonetheless be grateful to them for the great love with which they obey and come to help us in our great need.
(--from a Sermon by St. Bernard, Office of Readings, Feast of All Angels)

As transitus of Francis arrives, I am aware of his departure. He arrived, became the message my youthful imagination heard, then went (as everything does) its wandering way. He travelled this way and that. His community thought him crazy. Maybe he was. They had him relinquish reins. They locked him away. (Their poor and holy father was a nuisance. Saints are such an embarrassment.) I am not worthy of such insanity. I have to settle for common ridiculousness. The frequency of his sound reverberated and wobbled and settled into a current idiorythmic expression of the good poverello's inspiration. We are poor mimeticists

# Like a dream
Abandon evildoing;
Practice virtue well;
Subdue your mind:
This is the Buddha's teaching.

Like a star, an optical illusion, or a flame,
A magical illusion, a dewdrop, or a bubble,
Like a dream, a flash of lightning, or a cloud--
So should one consider all compounded things. While reciting [Shantideva's] words, we should reflect on impermanence and the lack of reality in phenomena. . .
- The Dalai Lama, A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night

If someone says my name on the street, I am reminded I am visible. It is a conceit to be anonymous, where no one knows my name. The surprise is hearing it. I respond,  greet, nonplussed -- a persistent state of perplexity, confusion, or bewilderment uncovered.

I am surprised to stand in midst of, say, university classroom -- a reluctant lecturer. Nothing univocal; everything equivocal. A facticity which is reciprocal -- dialogical.

Heidegger discusses facticity as the thrownness (Geworfenheit) of individual existence. By this, he is not only referring to a brute fact, or the factuality of a concrete historical situation, e.g., "born in the 50's." Facticity is something that already informs and has been taken up in existence, even if it is unnoticed or left unattended. As such, facticity is not something we come across and directly behold. In moods, for example, facticity has an enigmatic appearance, which involves both turning toward and away from it. For Heidegger, moods are conditions of thinking and willing to which they must in some way respond. The thrownness of human existence (or Dasein) is accordingly disclosed through moods.
(--from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facticity)

We are thrown here. Some say it has been a choice, a series of causes and effects. An inevitability of consequences, traceable and tractable. Who knows?

Mozart, 1935

Poet, be seated at the piano.
Play the present, its hoo-hoo-hoo,
Its shoo-shoo-shoo, its ric-a-nic,
Its envious cachinnation.
If they throw stones upon the roof
While you practice arpeggios,
It is because they carry down the stairs
A body in rags.
Be seated at the piano.
That lucid souvenir of the past,
The divertimento;
That airy dream of the future,
The unclouded concerto . . .
The snow is falling.
Strike the piercing chord.
Be thou the voice,
Not you. Be thou, be thou
The voice of angry fear,
The voice of this besieging pain.
Be thou that wintry sound
As of the great wind howling,
By which sorrow is released,
Dismissed, absolved
In a starry placating.
We may return to Mozart.
He was young, and we, we are old.
The snow is falling
And the streets are full of cries.
Be seated, thou.
(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

We play the present.

It is a grand failure.

A great joy.

To be here.

As nobody.

As (this).

One.

Is.

Once I had a dream. But it faded. Now I have no dream. Morning comes and night arrives. Light from lamp. Click. Darkness. Sleep.

If you think that you have
Cut off illusory mind,
Instead of simply clarifying
How illusory mind melts,
Illusory mind will come up again,
As though you had cut
The stem of a blade of grass
And left the root alive.
- Menzen Zuiho (1682 –1769)

Hibiscus tree comes into house through barn on handtruck. Season changes. Cool nights.

We pray for all beings.

When I had looked upon the mystical body of the Church, I recognised myself in none of the members which St. Paul described, and what is more, I desired to distinguish myself more favourably within the whole body. Love appeared to me to be the hinge for my vocation. Indeed I knew that the Church had a body composed of various members, but in this body the necessary and more noble member was not lacking; I knew that the Church had a heart and that such a heart appeared to be aflame with love. I knew that one love drove the members of the Church to action, that if this love were extinguished, the apostles would have proclaimed the Gospel no longer, the martyrs would have shed their blood no more. I saw and realised that love sets off the bounds of all vocations, that love is everything, that this same love embraces every time and every place. In one word, that love is everlasting.
(--from St Thérèse’s autobiography, Office of Readings, feast of Thérèse of Lisieux)

Dog to vet, just to check in. Cancer quietly spreads. But eyes are clear. Mountain walks. Not yet. But soon. He will become the mountain. I will become the mountain. Nothing else. Nowhere other. Mountain as dog and man unborn and gone beyond.

The Fall

There is no where in you a paradise that is no place and there
You do not enter except without a story.

To enter there is to become unnameable.

Whoever is nowhere is nobody, and therefore cannot exist except as unborn:
No disguise will avail him anything

Such a one is neither lost nor found.

But he who has an address is lost.

They fall, they fall into apartments and are securely established!

They find themselves in streets. They are licensed
To proceed from place to place
They now know their own names
They can name several friends and know
Their own telephones must some time ring.

If all telephones ring at once, if all names are shouted at once and all cars crash at one crossing:
If all cities explode and fly away in dust
Yet identities refuse to be lost. There is a name and a number for everyone.

There is a definite place for bodies, there are pigeon holes for ashes:
Such security can business buy!

Who would dare to go nameless in so secure a universe?
Yet, to tell the truth, only the nameless are at home in it.

They bear with them in the center of nowhere the unborn flower of nothing:
This is the paradise tree. It must remain unseen until words end and arguments are silent.
(--Poem, The Fall, by Thomas Merton, in Selected Poems)

Growing at home.

With no name.

No sound.

Without.

And.

Within.

Silence.

Genuine intimacy is Buber's "Thou." It is the slender waist of hourglass where everything passes through enroute one vastness to another. It is liturgy of eucharist wherein what was not one becomes one before expanding to amnesiac diversity.

Just don’t seek from others,
Or you’ll be far estranged from Self.
I now go on alone;
Everywhere I meet It:
It now is me; I now am It.
One must understand in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807–869)

September has been a lovely month. October leans against barn door. It is the month of darkening light, holy women, Francis of Assisi, angels, baseball playoffs, remembrance of family gone beyond, and finally the thin place of worlds in proximity.

be
gin
by
be
ing

pa
tient

with
your
self

la
ter
you
can
be
pa
tient

with
oth
ers

(name
of
the
game

is
pa
tience.)
(--Poem be Robert Lax, from A Thing That Is)

If you look for me, find me there.

Where gaze requires no words.

Just feet to turn it around.

This circus cosmos.

Peanuts! Popcorn!

Consecration.

I don't know about angels. I don't know about anything. Today is the feast of Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. They are archangels. I expect they know who they are. I don't.

But that's the thing about life and belief. There's no knowing. Even if your sure of something, there's no knowing.

One narrow path surrounded by a dense forest;
On all sides, mountains lie in darkness.
The autumn leaves have already fallen.
No rain, but still the rocks are dark with moss.
Returning to my hermitage along a way known to few,
Carrying a basket of fresh mushrooms
And a jar of pure water from the temple well.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

So I sip water. Chew pizza. Watch a drama. Spell some words. Breathe and exhale. The wonderfully absurd practice of living is done day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. The practice could end in a second.

15
I am Raphael, one of the seven angels who enter and serve before the Glory of the Lord."
16
Stricken with fear, the two men fell to the ground.
17
But Raphael said to them: "No need to fear; you are safe. Thank God now and forever.
18
As for me, when I came to you it was not out of any favor on my part, but because it was God's will. So continue to thank him every day; praise him with song.
19
Even though you watched me eat and drink, I did not really do so; what you were seeing was a vision.
20
So now get up from the ground and praise God. Behold, I am about to ascend to him who sent me; write down all these things that have happened to you."
(-- NAB - Tobit 12)

I like the idea we are safe.

I don't know I am safe. But I'm told.

It's good that some know who they are and they are safe.

It's also good that others practice breathing for the time being.

I'm glad there are archangels. I'm glad that everything else is too.

It doesn't matter what I think. Nor my opinion. What matters is the reality of what is.

When the question "What is reality?" is asked, remember it is a self-answering question. The answer is the question understood as its own response.

This is how I see the one we call God.

No more.

No less.

Exactly as it is.

If you hear the voice, you've got the call. Some of us don't hear, and don't get it. This news doesn't disappoint me. I'm not afraid of being an outsider.

What truth am I talking about? I am talking about truth of the ground of mind, which can enter into the ordinary and the sacred, into the pure and the polluted, into the absolute and the conventional, and yet is not the absolute, conventional, ordinary, and sacred, but is able to give names to all the absolute, conventional, ordinary, and sacred. Someone who has realized this cannot be labeled by the absolute or the conventional, by the ordinary or
sacred. If you can grasp it, then use it, without labeling it any more. This is called the mystic teaching.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

Epictetus puts things this way:

XVIII
And to this I reply:
“Friends, wait for God. When He gives the
signal, and releases you from this service, then depart to Him. But for the present, endure to dwell in the place wherein He hath assigned you your post.
Short indeed is the time of your habitation therein, and easy to those that are thus minded. What tyrant, what robber, what tribunals have any terrors for those who thus esteem the body and all that belong to it as of no account? Stay; depart not rashly hence!”

Tom tried the metaphor of puppet. I objected. Rather, we are given, and life passes through us, cooperating in the invitation into one's own beauty and essence. In prison today John reflected John O'Donahue's words about humus beings, our being made of clay and given to listening.

So let them all be in the one shepherd and speak with the one shepherd’s voice, for the sheep to hear and follow their shepherd – not just any shepherd, but the one. Let all shepherds speak with one voice in him and not with separate voices: I beseech you, my brethren: say the same thing, all of you, and let there be no divisions among you. May that voice, cleansed of all division and purged of all error, be the voice that the sheep hear as they follow the shepherd who says 'The sheep that are mine hear my voice and follow me.'
(--from St Augustine's sermon On Pastors)

We must let one another alone.

The one we call God dwells alone.

With each.

And every.

One.

Of us.

Between true and false is emptiness. There, each is as it is. No leaning to more or to less. Each person's name is "at home."

When water is pure and sparkling clear
You see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn’t stray
A kalpa has no changes
From such awareness nothing hides.
- Cold Mountain

There is so much anguish about this or that. Our freedom is not this or that, but either and neither, it doesn't matter. So much worry about life and death. Between the two is this moment. More precisely is the awareness that between life and death is an unknowing instant -- now without name -- wherein we see the fact of things.

A writing of St Vincent de Paul
Serving the poor is to be preferred above all things
Even though the poor are often rough and unrefined, we must not judge them from external appearances nor from the mental gifts they seem to have received. On the contrary, if you consider the poor in the light of faith, then you will observe that they are taking the place of the Son of God who chose to be poor. (--from Office of Readings, Feast of Vincent)

On Monday nights in Bensonhurst my father would meet with other men to hear the needs and serve the people who needed help. It was their Saint Vincent's meeting. He didn't speak of what they did or who they helped. They just went out and came back.

Between the going out and the coming back is the revelation of being dead in life and alive in death -- nothing other.

The hole in our lives, the whole of our lives, is the emptiness of God.

Don't try to fill it.

Nor try to pour it out.

Find yourself there.

At home.

A sudden rain.

If your ears see,
And eyes hear,
Not a doubt you’ll cherish
How naturally the rain drips
From the eaves!
- Daito Kokush

Passing.

Through.

Moon hangs lightly above Curtis Island. Puffs of white cloud accentuate. Waters of Penobscot Bay calm and smooth. Voices from deck and restaurant carry on. This lovely September night.

Nothing and Everything
The great Indian teacher Nisargadatta Maharaj once said, "Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between the two my life flows." "I am nothing" does not mean that there is a bleak wasteland within. It does mean that with awareness we open to a clear, unimpeded space, without center or periphery--nothing separate. If we are nothing, there is nothing at all to serve as a barrier to our boundless expression of love. Being nothing in this way, we are also, inevitably, everything. "Everything" does not mean self-aggrandizement, but a decisive recognition of interconnection; we are not separate. Both the clear, open space of "nothing" and the interconnectedness of "everything" awaken us to our true nature. This is the truth we contact when we meditate, a sense of unity beyond suffering. It is always present; we merely need to be able to access it.
(-- Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Late yesterday afternoon rowing skiff out northeast channel around bell buoy, then across to number 2 bell buoy, beyond Coast Guard tender, back around Curtis, in to tie up at dock by shop. Lovely liturgy of oar and wave.

I like the notion that all teachers have gone away leaving just us. Gods have disappeared beyond clouds. All saviors, masters, saints, and bodhisattvas have gone silent. It's just us. And community is teacher. One another is hope.

Che fece ... il gran rifiuto

Translated by
Edmund Keeley & Philip Sherrard

For some people the day comes
when they have to declare the great Yes
or the great No. It's clear at once who has the Yes
ready within him; and saying it,
he goes from honor to honor, strong in his conviction.
He who refuses does not repent. Asked again,
he'd still say no. Yet that no-the right no-
drags him down all his life.
(--Poem by C.P. Cavafy)

Between yes and no is not maybe.

Between the two is emptiness.

I dwell there.

Tonight.

I mourn the death of a woman I knew. She died of lung cancer. Five years ago. I've just read her obituary.

Everyone dies. Fathers, mothers, relatives, friends, and strangers. Every day. That's not a surprising statement. The fact of it must be affirmed. And yet it's always a surprise when someone we know dies. Why is that?

What is the truth? The truth is the reality of mind. The reality of mind is formless and pervades the ten directions. It is being used presently, right before your eyes, yet people do not trust it sufficiently, so they accept terms and expressions, seeking to assess Buddhism conceptually in the written word. They are as far away as the sky is from earth.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

For a moment let's do away with both original sin and karma.

From: St Augustine's sermon On Pastors
The straying sheep you have not recalled; the lost sheep you have not sought. In one way or another, we go on living between the hands of robbers and the teeth of raging wolves, and in light of these present dangers we ask your prayers. The sheep moreover are insolent. The shepherd seeks out the straying sheep, but because they have wandered away and are lost they say that they are not ours. “ Why do you want us? Why do you seek us?” they ask, as if their straying and being lost were not the very reason for our wanting them and seeking them out. “If I am straying”, he says, “if I am lost, why do you want me?” You are straying, that is why I wish to recall you. You have been lost, I wish to find you. “But I wish to stray”, he says: “I wish to be lost”.
So you wish to stray and be lost? How much better that I do not also wish this. Certainly, I dare say, I am unwelcome. But I listen to the Apostle who says: Preach the word; insist upon it, welcome and unwelcome. Welcome to whom? Unwelcome to whom? By all means welcome to those who desire it; unwelcome to those who do not. However unwelcome, I dare to say: “You wish to stray, you wish to be lost; but I do not want this”. For the one whom I fear does not wish this. And should I wish it, consider his words of reproach: The straying sheep you have not recalled; the lost sheep you have not sought. Shall I fear you rather than him? Remember, we must all present ourselves before the judgement seat of Christ.
I shall recall the straying; I shall seek the lost. Whether they wish it or not, I shall do it. And should the brambles of the forests tear at me when I seek them, I shall force myself through all straits; I shall put down all hedges. So far as the God whom I fear grants me the strength, I shall search everywhere. I shall recall the straying; I shall seek after those on the verge of being lost. If you do not want me to suffer, do not stray, do not become lost. It is enough that I lament your straying and loss. No, I fear that in neglecting you, I shall also kill what is strong. Consider the passage that follows: And what was strong you have destroyed. Should I neglect the straying and lost, the strong one will also take delight in straying and in being lost.
(from Office of Readings, 24Sept2007)

I prefer: No one is lost. And Christ's "judgment seat" is more likely a "welcome, sit, rest, we'll talk" kind of thing. It is a curious belief that holds everyone liable for some past mistake or infraction. I'd rather the teaching be abandoned. Matthew Fox counters with "Original Blessing." My preference is the point of view that we dwell, always, at origin. Right now -- are we present cultivating kindness, healing, and trust? Or do we cultivate separation, harm, and mistrust. (Today is not a good example for me. I'd rather have nothing to do with anyone. The saving grace, though, is that I wish none harm.)

The theory of karmic rebirth is that one’s past life determines the circumstances into which one is reborn in this present life. If you were lustful in a past life, you might be reborn as an animal for example. Or if you led an exemplary past life, you might well be reborn as a god or demi-god. The point is that you get what’s coming to you, and if you want a favorable rebirth in your next life, you better watch how you behave in this one. At its best, it’s an odd and unnecessary elaboration of simple consequence. At its worst, it’s a means of citizen control and institutional support, extracting alms from the citizenry in return for merit favorable to a fortunate rebirth. I find little distinction between this disingenuous practice and the marketing of pardons and indulgences in medieval Christian traditions. In Buddhist practice it has served primarily as a way to sustain priestly authority and exact a living out of people’s fears and hopes regarding rebirth.

What’s particularly distracting about this teaching is that one can devote one’s entire life to acquiring merit for a future life. And what’s positively ugly about this teaching is its application to the misfortunes of people born into lives of present suffering. A child who’s born crippled or blind is by this theory assumed to be suffering a consequence attributed to past life behavior. While Buddhism encourages compassion for such a child, it’s nonetheless understood that the unfortunate child is a victim of his own doing. I don’t know about others, but to assume that a child born deaf or blind or suffering from aids or a child badly burned in a fire or struck down in a crosswalk or starving to death in some poverty ridden slum somewhere is simply getting what’s coming to him is a judgment I simply can’t stomach. Those Buddhist teachers who can — and this includes not entirely teachers from devotional Buddhist traditions but many Zen teachers as well — place great emphasis on purifying past karma, a notion so reminiscent of the biblical tradition of original sin as to be almost indistinguishable. Not only that but the anxious quest for a favorable rebirth is little different from a theist’s hope for a reward in heaven. Devoting one’s efforts to cleansing karma is a notion that renders present life to the status of a mere means to an end, and not something in its own right. The hope for reward distorts and undermines the simple modesty of living one’s life as compassionately and harmlessly as possible.
(from Choice, By Lin Jensen, in Tricycle, The Buddhist Review, 8/8/07)

Karma is perhaps best seen as consequences of present actions in present life.

The difficulty with original sin and karma is unknown past determinant of current reality. In the Christian metaphor a divine being is posited as savior of all. I'm fond neither of being condemned nor saved. And with the Buddhist metaphor there's a temptation to think you have to go about doing good for some rewarding next birth -- rather than good being its own delight.

The twin motif of crime and punishment is rife in our psyche.

Mary, my friend whose obituary of five years ago I've just read, is in herself an example of someone who came to be seen in this existence, smiled and cried, then disappeared. We looked at life together twenty eight years ago, ate pasta, and ran Fairmont Park because we could.

We feel sad at some news, and something deeper than that at confirmation of news.

In the war, the never-ending reminder of what original sin and karma used to try to account for -- we bait and condemn each other.

Under a program developed by a Defense Department warfare unit, Army snipers have begun using a new method to kill Iraqis suspected of being insurgents, planting fake weapons and bomb-making material as bait and then killing anyone who picks up them up, according to testimony presented in a military court.

The existence of the classified “baiting program,” as it has come to be known, was disclosed as part of defense lawyers’ efforts to respond to murder charges the Army pressed this summer against three members of a Ranger sniper team. Each soldier is accused of killing an unarmed Iraqi in three separate incidents between April and June near Iskandariya.
(--September 24, 2007, Soldiers Describe Baiting of Insurgents in Iraq, By Paul Von Zielbauer, New York Times)

Soon anyone who even thinks wrongly in anyone else's opinion will be killed. It is, it seems, the way we are. We kill. We see death as a solution.

Today I sequester myself at the harbour room. Earlier this morning I hiked Ragged Mtn with Cesco -- a good, long hike. Then here. I watched the big schooners -- the Angelique go out, the Lewis B. French come back, the Grace Bailey go out; and the small schooners -- Lazy Jack, Surprise, and Appledore, take passengers for two hour sails. The wind is stiff. Sun and sky clear and bright. Flags flutter with resolve.

I read Don DeLillo's novel Falling Man. I'll work on students' papers and read for Wednesday's class. It's autumn. Leaves have been seen underfoot.

Luckily, the oars and life jacket are in the skiff.

Sound in rural Maine is specific.

Wind along mountain through cedar, car beginning ascent between Ragged and Bald, longing loon call from pond, red squirrel nervous bravado as cat passes below, critter turning in wall, soundless moon through leaves, three sets of chimes in sudden gust, a cricket's solitary call.

Sages do not want anything
And do not avoid anything.
When you want something,
That may make you lose it;
And if you try to avoid something,
That may just bring it about.
When you desire something in your heart,
Then you forget what you are doing.
Therefore sages carefully examine the
Changes of action and repose,
Adjusting the measures of
Receiving and giving suitably,
Governing feelings of
Like and dislike rationally,
And harmonizing degrees of joy and anger.
- Lao-tzu

I'm angry. It's not so specific.

It has its own sound.

Tonight it's silence.

The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine; thou must pass for a fool, and a churl for a long season. And this is the reward; that the ideal shall be real to thee, and the impressions of the actual world shall fall like summer rain, copious, but not troublesome, to thy invulnerable essence."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Long, untitled.

Silence.

Nobody likes the word sin. So we'll call broken trust and selfish harm something else. Let's call it increased separative nefarious trauma, ("isn't").

Don’t say that only
clear water mirrors the moon.
Muddy water also reflects the sky.
Watch, after wind has settled
and the waves are calm,
for a wonderful moon, as lovely as before
- Lin Chi Chung ( 1119)

"Is it not" (the iterative expansion of "isn't") usually begins trying to prove the absence of what is. "Isn't it lovely?" "Isn't he the guy who did (such and such)?"
"Isn't she a someone we know?"

Sin isn'ts.

By trying to prove the absence or opposite of what is the goal is not to introduce doubt, as some might suggest. Rather the goal is to reach certainty. Sin tries to reach certainty.

Following Heisenberg's derivation of the uncertainty relations, one starts with an electron moving all by itself through empty space. To describe the electron, a physicist would refer to certain measured properties of the particle. Four of these measured properties are important for the uncertainty principle. They are the position of the electron, its momentum (which is the electron's mass times its velocity), its energy, and the time. These properties appear as "variables" in equations that describe the electron's motion.
The uncertainty relations have to do with the measurement of these four properties; in particular, they have to do with the precision with which these properties can be measured.

The uncertainty relations may be expressed in words as follows.

The simultaneous measurement of two conjugate variables (such as the momentum and position or the energy and time for a moving particle) entails a limitation on the precision (standard deviation) of each measurement. Namely: the more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa. In the most extreme case, absolute precision of one variable would entail absolute imprecision regarding the other.
(from, Ouantum Mechanics, 1925-1927, The Uncertainty Relations, http://www.aip.org/history/heisenberg/p08a.htm)

A bit like theology. Or poetry. Or the relationality we have with any person. Who can know precisely, or for certain, another. It is this awareness that keeps us honest. The absence of this awareness leads to possession and abuse.

I'm nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there's a pair of us — don't tell!
They'd banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
( Poem, "I'm nobody! Who are you?" by Emily Dickinson)

About sin I'm not sure I have anything else to say.

Isn't that something?

No.

It's nothing.

In prison yesterday one man said, "The present is gift."

No absence; no opposite.

An only begotten presence draws us all through and beyond.

All vows, Kol Nidre -- for unfulfilled obligations of the past year and the next, forgiveness.

Each night I gaze upon a pond,
A Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there and yet
It is all so clear and bright
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty mind
Your own mind must be as clear and bright
As this full moon upon the water.
- Chiao Jan (785 – 895)

In small church in Lincolnville there's a 12 hour vigil for peace through the night.

I've been thinking about at the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) it would take 15 billion years to reach the edge of the known universe.

Even there, finally arrived at, there'll be need for forgiveness and peace.

Pack up.

Let's go!

So many want to blame the church for their lives.

Do we blame shallow intelligence? Must an intellectual apologize for the ability to question?

Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it,
As soon as you are aware of it,
It will vanish.
If you remain for a long period
Forgetful of objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This is the essential art of zazen.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Being mindful of this or that is equally unifying. Heaven vanishes into the now. Why look anywhere else?

Identity is the concept that refers to this aspect of existence; the aspect of existing as something in particular, with specific characteristics. An entity without an identity cannot exist because it would be nothing. To exist is to exist as something, and that means to exist with a particular identity.
*--from A is A: Aristotle's Law of Identity,
http://importanceofphilosophy.com/Metaphysics_Identity.html)

We're here in this existence. We're in-formed. No need to pretend we're just passing through.

There's nowhere to go.

It's all here.

Even there.

Is.

Here.