Out on Penobscot Bay, rowing to sound of bell buoy, in chill afternoon sun.

Meetingbrook's koan is:

Embodying the dwelling-place of the Alone; Stepping aside to make room for another.

Buddha is enlightened, John Lennon dies well remembered, and Mary, mother of non-separation is born into being, the same being she will herself birth.

There are only two stories in all of literature -- a man goes on a journey, a stranger comes to town. (--Leo Tolstoy)

In Olin's art room at the prison there are many words for reflective individuals.

We belong as we find ourselves.

There's no cure. Not for what ails us. There's healing. Truth heals us. Heals, not cures.

Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic, for it takes a realistic view of life and of the world. It looks at things objectively. It does not falsely lull you into living in a fool's paradise, nor does it frighten and agonize you with all kinds of imaginary fears and sins. It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquility and happiness. One physician may gravely exaggerate an illness and give up hope altogether. Another may ignorantly declare that there is no illness and that no treatment is necessary, thus deceiving the patient with false consolation. You may call the first one pessimistic and the second optimistic. Both are equally dangerous. But a third physician diagnoses the symptoms correctly, understands the cause and the nature of the illness, sees clearly that it can be cured and courageously administers a course of treatment, thus saving his patient. The Buddha is like the last physician. He is the wise and scientific doctor for the ills of the world. - Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith

So many of us want the world to fit the construction plans of our afflicted egos. That doesn't happen. Meditation and prayer deconstruct the ego. The prayer of listening to the sound of what is being said is dismantling the plans creating the world in our image.

The peer art instructor has quotes around the room in prison. "Real deep discipline unlocks desperately needed individuality" was the quote from Harley Brown in the well kept room.

Prison is one thing. But in our everyday lives I'm not sure why we excoriate others for not being our idea of who they should be. Nevertheless, we do.

It's hard work trying to steer everyone else's direction.

I will not work that hard.

Nor take it well.

Let life.

Do it.

With.

Each.

No ideas, the man said, but in things. And things, someone else said, are made of words.

In all things be a master
Of what you do and say and think.
Be free.
Are you quiet? Quieten your body.
Quieten your mind.
By your own efforts
Waken yourself, watch,
And live joyfully.
Follow the truth of the way.
Reflect upon it.
Make it your own.
Live it.
- Buddha from the Dhammapada

We have to speak. To keep things in existence.

For the time being.

Only words.

Filed with silence.

Leave a shoe out tonight. Nicholas will be about.

Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the Truth.
- Sogyo (1667–1731)

Glance, maybe.

Don't watch.

A brief gaze.

Then, away.

Richard's daughter calls this afternoon from Warren to say her father died three days ago. At Tuesday Evening Conversation his chair is vacant, but he is merely absent.

John O'Donohue writes that presence and absence are sisters; vacancy being the opposite of presence.

Saskia leads Buddhist prayer and bells for a deceased person.

You ask me why I stay on this blue mountain?
I smile but do not answer.
My mind is at ease!
Peach blossoms and flowing streams
Pass away without a trace.
How different from the mundane world!
- Li P’o (701–762)

He wanted to be done with the cycle of birth and death. It took a Saturday afternoon going to prepare snow blower for coming storm to lay him out on ground with no getting up.

Many months ago, just before going out door after conversation, Richard asked: "Are you my friend?" I said: "I am." I didn't know it until he asked.

In the Ninth Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:

Maybe we're here only to say: house,
bridge, well, gate, jug, olive tree, window —
at most, pillar, tower... but to say them, remember,
oh, to say them in a way that the things themselves
never dreamed of existing so intensely.

We rang bells after touching earth, burning incense, bowing, and saying grateful words.

Many bells. A joyful cacophony.

For a friend.

Practice makes perfect.

Perfect what?

Practice makes perfect this.

This what?

Practice this: making one's way through.

Just detach from all sound and form,
And do not dwell in detachment,
And do not dwell in intellectual understanding,
This is practice.
- Baizhang

The bird feeder capped with snow dome shows colored lights through white snow covering lights and feeder.

There is no state of perfection separate from the one practicing making way through what they are doing as who they are being where they are.

Practice.

This.

First Advent

Storm approaches. Night.

As for Christ...hard to say. Still

No removal. Snow.
(-wfh)

It is. It is time to wake. It is time to wake from ignorance, illusion, and sleep.

Why?

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good,
for his love is for ever.
Give thanks to the God of gods,
for his love is for ever.
Give thanks to the Lord of lords,
for his love is for ever.
--Psalm 135 (136)

It turns to Advent. For too long we have been away from ourselves.

Now, we are being called home.

Being.

Called.

Home.

Here is wide open. Wherever 'there' might be, 'here' is wide and limitless open.

My thatched hut the whole sky
Is its roof
The mountains are its hedge
And it has the sea for a garden
I’m inside with nothing at all
Not even a bag
And yet there are visitors who say
“It’s hidden behind a bamboo door”
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Here is beyond understanding. How can there be 'here' and still be there?

As he was walking by the Sea of Galilee, Jesus saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew; they were making a cast in the lake with their net, for they were fishermen.
(-Matthew 4: 18)

The feast of Andrew is an iconic beginning to Advent Season. It all begins again. Will there be a birth to bring here what we've always considered there?

Christmas Anticipation Prayer
Beginning on St. Andrew the Apostle's feast day, November 30, the following beautiful prayer is traditionally recited fifteen times a day until Christmas. This is a very meditative prayer that helps us increase our awareness of the real focus of Christmas and helps us prepare ourselves spiritually for His coming.

Hail and blessed be the hour and moment In which the Son of God was born Of the most pure Virgin Mary, at midnight, in Bethlehem, in the piercing cold. In that hour vouchsafe, I beseech Thee, O my God, to hear my prayer and grant my desires, [here mention your request] through the merits of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of His blessed Mother. Amen
http://www.catholicculture.org/liturgicalyear/prayers/view.cfm?id=951

The prayer asks 'here' to mention its request. What will 'here' ask for? Something vital you might suppose. Something which no one could do without.

'Here' asks, I suspect, for itself.

Itself -- where hour and moment complete what is blessed.

There is no bamboo door.

Just sky, mountain, and sea.

Dwell out of the bag.

Cat comes in from barn. Chilled night.

The wise people of old who
Took goodness as their way
Were retiring as though shy

Their conduct to all was
Respectful as though to
Honored guests;
They could adapt themselves
Like ice melting before a fire;
They were artless
As blocks of uncarved wood.
- Lao tzu

We're not meant to be dependent on one another. Something is meant to exist between us. To that place we venture, stepping out of ego and self-containment.

The middle place is not me, not you.

A new being is there.

We must consider.

What we have.

Made.

Each yawn wider.

suppose

Life is an old man carrying flowers on his head.

young death sits in a cafe
smiling, a pierce of money held between
his thumb and first finger

(i say "will he buy flowers" to you
and "Death is young
life wears velour trousers
life totters, life has a beard" i

say to you who are silent.--"Do you see
Life? he is there and here,
or that, or this
or nothing or an old man 3 thirds
asleep, on his head
flowers, always crying
to nobody something about les
roses les bluets
yes,
will He buy?
Les belles bottes--oh hear
, pas cheres")

and my love slowly answered I think so. But
I think I see someone else

there is a lady, whose name is Afterwards
she is sitting beside young death, is slender;
likes flowers.
(Poem, suppose, by e.e. cummings)

No more.

Sleep.

Today, yes, today.

# One Single Day
110. Better than a hundred years lived in vice, without contemplation, is a one single day of life lived in virtue and in deep concentration.
111. Better than a hundred years lived in ignorance, without contemplation, is one single day of life lived in wisdom and deep concentration.
112. Better than a hundred years lived in idleness and in weakness is a day of life lived with courage and powerful striving.
113. Better than a hundred years not considering how all things arise and pass away is is one single day of life if one considers how all things arise and pass away.
114. Better than a hundred years not seeing one's own immortality is one single day if one sees one's own immortality.
115. Better than a hundred years of not seeing the Path supreme is one single day of life if one sees the Path supreme.
(- The Dhammapada, trans. by Juan Mascaro from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

Reading Immanuel Kant: Not inclination; good will.

Bailing skiff after Tuesday Evening Conversation -- Pema on Shantideva.

Watching helicopter in Bangor Airport from Public Works yard in afternoon, walking by piles of stones, culverts, and earthen mounds.

Just once. For everything. It's just once.

The illusion is habitual repetition.

It happens just once.

Nothing twice.

Each time, once.

We never know about prayer.

It opens into the open itself. Prayer goes into the open. There's no telling to whom or where it goes. Thich Nhat Hanh says we pray to the living as well as the deceased.

Awake or asleep
In a grass hut,
What I pray for is
To bring others across
Before myself.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Bodhisattvas, at times, don't know they are bodhisattvas. What they do know is the gaze of compassion, the steadiness of listening, and the longing to assist the other into a happy, safe, dwelling in peace.

I'd like to live a life of prayer.

Grateful for any response. Or none.

Longing for well-being, yours and mine.

Ours.

High tide was high. Low, low. Town was empty. Moon full,

When we drop our boundaries we not only see neighbor as self, we let what is there be seen, without fear.

Here I have enough to eat
And I have taken root far
From the world
People who like to find fault
Can melt even gold with their talk
Why should I listen to that
My mind is weightless and
Without color like the lingering fog
The sound of the evening waves
Wakes me from my afternoon nap
Cradled in the breast of this mountain
I have forgotten its original wildness
Day after day watching the sea
I have never seen its depths
If I cannot attain the very heart of Zen
A wave a thousand miles long
Will rise up and heave on the
Sea beyond my gate.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

There really is no place to go -- not here, not hereafter.

By letting go of geography and wristwatch -- dropping space and time -- we understand the priest's words: this is my body, this my blood -- and we look around to see ourselves resplendent in the forms of each and every thing and being nearby.

I don't know if you recognize me. I'm no one. Just passing through.

Going nowhere.

In particular.

Loving the ride.

Forgetting what we think is outside us, we breathe in. Forgetting what we think is inside us, we breathe out.

What is there to remember neither inside nor out?

Now and again, it is necessary to seclude yourself among deep mountains and hidden valleys to restore your link to the source of life. Breathe out and let yourself soar to the ends of the universe; breathe in and bring the cosmos back inside. Next, breathe up all the fecundity and vibrancy of the earth. Finally, blend the breath of heaven and the breath of earth with that of your own, becoming the Breath of Life itself.
- Morihei Ueshiba

Neither inside nor out is the Breath of Life Itself.

It is exchange. It is traveler. It is full moon in empty sky.

It is nothing we know and everything that is.

Forgetting even my name, I respond to the sound of any voice longing for itself.

Life is itself. As such, holy.

Breathe each breath.

As first.

Last.

And only.

One.

Dying isn't what it used to be. Not any more.

The Journey of the Soul
The meditative experience is, to my mind, the practice of dying, the practice of letting go. The more you practice letting go, the more you begin to understand the journey of your soul or your spirit as it detaches from the material nature of existence. There is a river, and as soon as you unmoor the boat and you start to enter that river, you end up on a journey. Not all of us have gone to the mouth of that river, but I think we are all aware, in the meditative process, that the journey exists. As you go deeply inside your psyche you're aware of the similarity of this journey to the journey of the soul after death.
(--Bruce Rubin, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Fall 1991
from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book)

It's less. Dying. It's less and less until so little matters you begin to laugh at the obsessions and anxieties that once seemed so large.

Death is the diminishment of what is not you.

We're meant to die daily. To let go that which is not essential.

Behind and below and beyond matter is no-matter.

Breathe deeply. Spirit waits to reveal itself in the space between intake and outflow of breath.

Sleeping

Whether you think it's trampy or not,
when we are not awake,
we really are ALL sleeping together.
Sawing logs, snoozing,
getting a little shuteye,
some sacktime,
heading to slumberland,
doing the blanket drill,
the bunk habit,
having a siesta fiesta,
a pajama party
or just getting forty winks
and a good night's rest

We're all setting alarms, reading a bit,
warming our feet and spooning in,
stealing the covers, hogging all the pillows or
taking up the whole bed, grass mat,
hammock or our bit of dry earth.
Whether the satin sheets, fur or flannels
are on the futon, floor or igloo ice
whether we are naked, night gowned
or wearing what we wore all day.
We have been doing this a long time together, alot.

Terrorists and tyrants,
the embargoed, enemies and occupying forces
within a few blocks of each other
lay down everyday
not only their weapons but their bodies,
anger and ideologies.
They give up. They surrender,
not to overwhelming odds or power
but to being...tired.
They know they can't win against it.
Something much bigger says
"I don't want to hear another peep out of you.
Now tuck each other in and go to sleep!"
(--Poem: "Sleeping" by Daniel Sisco, from A Breath On Stone: New & Selected Poems by Daniel Sisco. Self-published, 2006.

That's just it -- we're tired.

Give up. Surrender.

Be in yourself the longing of absence for presence.

Fog hides island.

Hides shore of mainland. Fog drips sound of bell buoy and two loons, gulls, geese, and ducks calling through pea soup thickness as we row around Curtis Island.

A Thanksgiving meditation with oar circles -- pull and glide.

The imperfect becomes whole.
How true that is!
To become whole and
Return to the Source,
One must ever be in accord
With nature.
There is nothing in the world
So weak as water,
Nor anything strong enough
To overcome it.
The person of great wisdom
Is like water which,
Though benefiting all things,
Never strives.
- Lao-tzu

At church this morning we sat with Tommy on back bench after walking Rockport Harbor.

At cusp of dusk candle is lighted on newly filled grave. And Mary -- we remember her on her 5th anniversary of transition.

Otherwise, and always, things are pretty much exactly as they are found.

Clearly here and grateful, remarkable haunting call of loon.

Source.

Water.

The season turns.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

If there is no gratitude, there is no ground on which to stand.

The seed is in the ground.
Now may we rest in hope
While darkness does its work.
(--Sabbath Poem V, 1991, by Wendell Berry)

No ground but within ground.

The work of it.

Here is why I like zen.

I leave to the highborn
All the honors of this dissolving world
A life of poverty has taught me to love
Haze and mist.
Today in the spring
The friendship between us adds
Warmth to the sunlight
Even a dry post here on the shore
Is blossoming.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Zen is why I like here.

No I. No why. No like or dislike.

Zen is here.

Here is zen.

Nevertheless.

I like why.

Spirituality is the moving revelation of truth with love.

Simplicity is something that our
Fundamental nature inherently
Possesses. If we prepare in
Advance and nurture it within
Ourselves, then wherever we happen to
Be, whether in wealth and high rank,
Or poverty and low status,
In foreign lands, or in difficult
Circumstances, we deal with
Whatever situation we are in
By retaining our simplicity there.
It is not increased when we do great
Deeds or reduced when we are
Dwelling in obscurity.
Wherever we go, we are at peace,
Because we have found simplicity.
- Nie Bao (1487-1563)

In circle at prison today these words found themselves on green chalk board:

Who am I?
I
am.

Read right to left and down, they place us well.

As it is, we belong...

Here.

Truth with love.