I'd let religion go. I'd choose humanity. And nature. There's no explaining the ignorance with which we treat others. The political maneuvers. The lust for possession. The intrigue.

For all these years, my certain Zen:
Neither I nor the world exist.
The sutras neat within the box,
My staff hooked upon the wall,
I lie at peace in moonlight
Or, hearing water plashing on the rock,
Sit up. None can purchase pleasure such as this:
Spangled across the step-moss, a million coins!
- Ryushu Shutaku (1308–1388)

The intuition was good. Surely there is a God, it said, who knows, loves, and serves. So should we.

But the institutions of religion -- they tend to get a little too full of themselves. Much like the institutions of government. Even clubs which have to do the hard work of deciding who's in and who's to be kept out. There's an ossification that forms at the edges of institutions and structures. It happens to individuals too.

Plot Summary, Part One

The action of Murder in the Cathedral occurs in and around Canterbury Cathedral; Part One takes place on December 2,1170, the day that Archbishop Thomas Becket returned to England and twenty-seven days before his murder by four knights of King Henry II.

When the play begins, a Chorus comprised of the Women of Canterbury huddle outside the cathedral, certain that something is about to happen but unable to articulate any details: "Some presage of an act Which our eyes are compelled to witness, has forced our feet Towards the cathedral." They then describe their lives to the audience and these descriptions mark them as common people who fear any threat of change:"We try to keep our households in order," they explain, but "Some malady is coming upon us." Ultimately, they decide that"For us, the poor, there is no action,But only to wait and witness."
(--from Murder in the Cathedral Study Guide, by T. S. Eliot,
http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-murdercathedral/sum.html)

In the end, Thomas Becket is murdered.

The individual is easy to betray. So are countries. Betrayal is easy. It requires a hard exterior.

A professional football team in New England wins 16 games without a loss this season. This news pleases many. Crowds cheer and celebrate.

It doesn't matter, really, who dominates and who is defeated in sports.

It doesn't matter which denomination or religion claims upper hand and victory in possessing truth at the one yard line.

I'd rather hear a poem to its end or listen to a good short story come to thought provoking period.

Humanity, yes, humanity over religion.

You take belief. I'll stay with the stumbling path of longing and inquiry. Answers seldom satisfy.

But questions -- they interest.

Eh? N'est-pas? Do you think?

Whenever Holy Innocents (or the wholly innocent) are harmed we are reminded how cruel power can be when wielded in sole or self interest.

A woman said: "We are in God; God is in everything; everything is in God."

Without religion -- the woman's words are true.

With religion -- accompanied by the current ethos of intolerance, extreme views of proprietary truth, torture, bullets, and war -- we are faced with the opposite of the woman's words.

In prison conversation today someone asked: If you had to say goodbye to humanity or to religion, which would you?

A genuine innocence does not know separation. Not knowing, innocence (without overlay of romantic idealism), is virginal.

Perennial original simple encounter.

Innocence is willing to see the itself.

As itself.

Benazir Bhutto's death by assassination in Pakistan saddens and infuriates.

In the shop today two other deaths are told. Two deaths by hanging. Young men.

Suicide and assassination are terrible facts.

They dropped like flakes, they dropped like stars,
Like petals from a rose,
When suddenly across the lune
A wind with fingers goes.

They perished in the seamless grass,--
No eye could find the place;
But God on his repealless list
Can summon every face.
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

We cannot nor will we attempt to explain or intellectualize the pain and disappointment on the faces of those that knew the two different men and their separate deaths six days apart..

What will come of Pakistan and this country's marriage of convenience will have to wait to be seen.

We remain unfinished.

The open vulnerability of two oars in groaning oarlocks celebrating early solitude on Christmas morning.

From the distant shore as I rowed the Cape Dory 10 pulling boat into the outer route toward Curtis Island at sunrise yesterday, the sounding voice of someone invisible called, "Merry Christmas!" I placed right oar under left hand and raised arm twice arcing orange and yellow reflecting glove toward direction of unseen land-voice, then continued long strokes in rowboat. My smile at this greeting was deep joy. Swells tightened as the open bay caught growing breeze swirling from southwest.

Alone. But for that calling human voice, loons calling, ducks quacking, pipers chanting, other black and whites whistling, and crashing waves on rocky island coast -- it is an aloneness replete with enchanting company. A few minutes earlier, rowing empty channel past bookshop neighbors, the couple from San Diego in 3rd condo along harbor waved from bay window, her arm appearing from red bathrobe, from his a lifted coffee cup. Greeting the waterborne is a sacred act!

Midwinter, the eleventh month.
Wet snow falls unceasingly,
All the mountains have
Become the same color;
On the myriad paths
Human tracks are few.
My past journeys now
All seem like dreams,
The door to my grass hut
Is deeply covered.
All night long I burn small
Chunks of wood and
Silently read poems
By masters of the past.
- Ryokan (1758-1851)

Everything is subsequent to quietness and vulnerability of contemplation.

Certainly the solitude of a small rowboat in Camden harbor fitted well between dawn zazen in winter zendo at Ragged Mountain hermitage and mid-morning mass up to Belfast.

The day belongs to itself!

At dusk, walking up to grave sites alongside brook, lighting candle put inside hanging lantern on Cesco's grave, bowing to all beloved neighboring snow covered silences -- Sando, Koto, Tai, Mini. Back in meditation cabin, lighting candles for all the day's presences -- living and dead -- sitting a spell with their names and memories, bowing, tolling bell on porch before returning under view of mountain to house.

Bookending zazen in front room -- the quiet presence of everything!

Why are the nations in a ferment? Why do the people make their vain plans?
(--Psalm 2)

Peace is not the absence of war. Wars are the steady diet of insufficiency. Rather, peace is a more modest view.

To "view" is "to look at attentively." I view peace as the act of attentiveness. A saying we placed on the wall of the bookshop reads, "Our monastery is the attention we give to all of itself."

As monastics of no-other we long to practice viewing peace as the presence of itself in each and all of us, each moment, every thing, and the whole scope of appreciation of what is, for what is real and true in our midst.

Christmas now enters its own season. There's more to it than we've settled to believe. In the church calendar there are murdered men, murdered innocent children, writers, men and women who loved and lived, and the searching inquiry of foreigns looking to see for themselves the prospect, perspective, and palpable embodiment of peace. Yet, still, then and now:

The murderers are at work.

They are stoning Stephen,
They are casting him forth from every city in the world.
Under the Welcome sign,
Under the Rotary emblem,
On the highway in the suburbs,
His body lies under the hurling stones.
He was full of faith and power.
He did great wonders among the people.
They could not stand against his wisdom.
They could not bear that spirit with which he spoke.
He cried out in the name
Of the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness.
They were cut to the heart.
They gnashed against him with their teeth.
They cried out with a loud voice.
They stopped their ears.
They ran on him with one accord.
They cast him out of the city and stoned him,
The witnesses laid down their clothes
At the feet of the man whose name was your name-
You.
(--from poem THOU SHALT NOT KILL, (A Memorial For Dylan Thomas), by Kenneth Rexroth)

And me.

We are now ready for peace. This is both an intention and a daily practice. No more throwing at each other. Put down the stones. Build a cairn. It is a trail we set foot on. Build a day marker at the edge of sea. Be that which we look to and through as we learn the viewing of peace. There is much sadness and suffering in the season. Do not be afraid to see it through.

View yourself as the other person -- thus and then, there is no other.

Peace is viewing the whole in and through each and every being before you.

It is Stephen's Day.

It is your day

Take the trail.

Peace is an open vulnerability.

Row well through it!

Now.

Better to see the face than hear the name.
(--Zen saying)

Single flame in front window aside Madonna and Child icon.

Silent sitting in empty space. Nothing but morning and candle and what is right here.

Salt and Water
The degree of love we manifest determines the degree of spaciousness and freedom we can bring to life's events. Imagine taking a very small glass or water and putting into it a teaspoon of salt. Because of the small size of the container, the teaspoon of salt is going to have a big effect on the water. However, if you approach a much larger body of water, such as a lake, and put into it the same teaspoonful of salt, it will not have the same intensity of impact, because of the vastness and openness of the vessel receiving it. Even when the salt remains the same, the spaciousness of the vessel receiving it changes everything. We spend a lot of our lives looking for a feeling of safety or protection -- we try to alter the amount of salt that comes our way. Ironically, the salt is the very thing that we cannot do anything about, as life changes and offers us repeated ups and downs. Our true work is to create a container so immense that any amount of salt, even a truckload, can come into it without affecting our capacity to receive it.
( - Sharon Salzberg, Lovingkindness, from Everyday Mind, a Tricycle book edited by Jean Smith)

This Christmas morning -- stillness.

I am with everyone -- alone.

As I am -- with everyone, here or gone, now or gone beyond -- in this onlyness.

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

When the Christ-Reality is seen in this world, all will be untied and free to come and go, free to be what always they have been and are now.

What is that? What is this?

Christ-Reality, seen, is Son or Daughter, each and every being, and thing, of What-Is-Nearest.

No one has ever seen God;
it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father’s heart,
who has made him known.
(--John 1:18)

This is my Christmas prayer and practice: seeing each face, sensing each presence, gratefully attending what is nearest.

This is the beginning. And in the beginning is the Word: reality, life, energy of wholeness.

Receiving this.

Communion.

Facing what is.

Here.

...

(Merry Christmas, friends!)

Full moon. On ground. White snow.

The gift is each being itself.

'...this by the tender mercy of our God
who from on high will bring the rising Sun to visit us,
to give light to those who live
in darkness and the shadow of death
and to guide our feet
into the way of peace.’
(--from Luke 1:67 - 79)

It is still possible to end war. By dawn, war will be over.

If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
no root, no basis, no abode,
but is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it
You become further from it,
When you seek it
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji (d. 867)

Go to bed. Sleep. Let night do what it must do tonight.

By morning, the leap will have been taken.

We will awaken.

With first light.

To begin again.

The phrase spoken at end by celebrant was "Be God with us." Whichever word gets the emphasis changes and decides the meaning.

Where people of today dwell,
I do not dwell.
What people of today do,
I do not do.
If you clearly understand what this really means,
You must be able to enter a pit of fire with
Your whole body.
- Huanglong

The end of Advent comes. Monday appears. A hiatus arrives. It is the transition of 'this' into the body and blood, soul and divinity of a being heretofore unrecognized and unimagined.

Which being? (How will it arrive this time with us? Sentient? Human? Animal? Material? Mineral? Elemental? Ontological? Cosmological?) There's the koan. There's the mystery of Christmas wrapped in no ribbon with no name card affixed.

There will be no more night: they will not need sunlight or lamp-light, because the Lord God himself will shine upon them. (--Apocalypse 22:5)

It's the part of the Christian tradition that befuddles Christians. Instead of bowing down in complete reverence to the revealing truth that God is with us in ways too obvious and ordinary for us to attend -- that we are to be with God with us -- there is instead a race to define, exclude, demand formula, look past one another, attempt to defeat individuals and peoples who are (themselves) the mystery embodied. Finally, there is the absurd effort on the part of some to create a heaven and a theology that ignorantly bars the very God they so tout and crave.

Call It Quits

If you're not a movie mogul, rock star, or President
if you're not a CEO sitting on a billion in the bank,
no one will answer your e-mails, phone calls or letters.
You'll be helpless, hopeless, too old, too young,
in too much pain, the wrong color, some unacceptable
sex, a non-believer in some religion people kill for.
You could be struggling to see through everyone's
skin to their slick, writhing guts, including your own.
Or, you could call it quits, and slip into the unknown,
inexhaustible, frothing teeth of the sea that turns us
all to brine, sweet salt of the universe.
(--Poem by Freya Manfred, from Swimming With A Hundred Year Old Snapping Turtle. Red Dragonfly Press, 2008.)

A hiatus arrives. Look closely. Yes, the 24th brings hiatus.

hi·a·tus Pronunciation[hahy-ey-tuhs]
–noun, plural -tus·es, -tus.
1. a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc.
2. a missing part; gap or lacuna: Scholars attempted to account for the hiatus in the medieval manuscript.
3. any gap or opening.
4. Grammar, Prosody. the coming together, with or without break or slight pause, and without contraction, of two vowels in successive words or syllables, as in see easily.
5. Anatomy. a natural fissure, cleft, or foramen in a bone or other structure.
(--from Dictionary.com)

It's often like that, an arrival, unexpected and discontinuous, the missing part itself showing up, all surprising and an inadvertent complete necessity.

Perhaps we think, "Ah, a foramen!" ('Foramen' means 'great hole' --or is it 'whole' -- 'a natural opening.' It would change the meaning of exclamation following any prayer.)

Whether great hole or great whole -- there it is.

All of itself.

Being God with us

Nears the time of appreciation of each as each.

The older brother sat listening to younger brother. He'd been fly-fishing in the St. George River after wading hip deep in snow to get there. Fire in firebox.

A plane flies from Africa with young child and father to new room in New England house. Czechoslovakia, Holland, Iran and France by way of Canada and United States comes this sweet young Guinean-American girl to a festive house.

When I say there is nothing outside,
Students who do not understand me
Interpret this in terms of inwardness,
So they sit silent and still,
Taking this to be Zen Buddhism.
This is a big mistake.
If you take a state of unmoving clarity to be Zen,
You are recognizing ignorance as a slave master.
- Linji (d. 867)

Three Stolen bake in upstairs oven. Sour cream apple coffee cake being prepared by Saskia. We linger at the shop. Feels like Christmas Eve. It's not. It's the first day of winter. Light has taken a stand. Stopped downhill roll and stood still, then turned. Yes. Time to ascend. Once more to the climb. First, though, to gather gear and plot a course. Last night light remembered its source.

We observe the Feast of Solstice Night. This great night was for a thousand years the night we observed the Great Feast of Christmas.

Then when Pope Gregory reformed the calendar in the 16th century - every day on the calendar slipped three days earlier. In the revised calendar, Solstice was now the night of the 21st rather than the 25th.

This put Christendom in a quandary. What to do with the date of Christmas - should it be changed to the 21st or left on its traditional day of the 25th.

After great theological debate - an answer arrived.

Solstice literally means 'sun stand still.' To the naked eye one cannot see the light of the sun increasing until three mornings after Solstice night.

That was the answer. On the third morning after Solstice - the earth and all people of the Northern Hemisphere rejoice - for we now experience light re-born!
(--from A Christmas Message from Alexander J. Shaia, of The Journey of Quadratos)

Garrison Keillor cheers us again, this time from Bethlehem Pennsylvania. His ersatz gospel of ordinary touch, good humor, and memorable images drifting into recollection.

Jesus Christ, although he shared God’s nature, did not try to seize equality with God for himself; but emptied himself, took on the form of a slave, and became like a man – not in appearance only, for he humbled himself by accepting death – even death on a cross.
For this, God has raised him high, and given him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth,
and every tongue will proclaim “Jesus Christ is Lord”, to the glory of God the Father.
(--Philippians 2, from Vespers, Saturday Night)

Christmas is a good time of year. Light and food, reconnection and essential solitude.

It is a time of ordinary life experienced in the guise of especial effort and radiance. But it is, really, ordinary life. There's family and celebration of presents. There's the pervasive sense that we are not isolated and at odds, but rather part of a very large truth slowly becoming recognizable.

David Wagoner ends his poem Staying Found with the following lines:

When he stumbled onto the road again, his mind
Had changed. He was no longer lost in the woods
Or in cities as he had always been,
Not knowing it. Now, he would stay found.

Now.

Indeed.

Light.

For those not comprehending 'Holy Spirit' -- there might be approach another way.

Strange Peak

Looming up rough and steep
What force
The trees look like works of magic
And all of the stones
Are possessed of powers
Once you climb the peak
Your eyes will start from your head
But until then it stands veiled
In unbroken fog and mist
-- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Martha Heyneman's final chapter in The Breathing Cathedral is about the Christmas Tree. Before and above the big bang (the top of the tree) is the Invisible. The hanging balls are planets, the lights are stars, and at the lowest point a creche, the lowest point of which is the child -- here, Jesus. We are talking about this in prison today.

Around table we are talking. As Joe speaks, an insight occurs: It is the Invisible that engages my attention.

The Wholly Invisible is that before, beyond, between, and because,

The Wholly Invisible is source and emanation.

Kenotic emptiness, simple shunyata, and divine eternal presence.

It is to this, for this, and as this -- arises prayer, and thought, and grateful thanks.

Comes this Solstice.

Comes this Christmas.

Comes this.

And this.

Alone.

I am not my self, but the no-self I am.

In field or mountain,
Nothing stirs
On this snowy morning.
- Chiyo-Ni

There is a place where nothing is hidden.

Here is where nothing is revealed.

Sit still.

And...

See.

For Spinoza, freedom is the recognition of necessity.

Necessity is non-accidental.

I stop worrying about anything
I give up activities
I’m full of my life
I no longer go to
The temple evening and morning
If they ask me
“What are you doing in your old age?”
I smile and tell them
“I’m letting my white hair fall free.”
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Inner, not outer, cause.

For a monist, we are of it all.

There is only experiencing itself.

However much we like our stories, the story about the thing is not the thing itself.

The story about Jesus in Bethlehem is not the presence of Christ in this room.

Both field and mountain
All taken by the snow
Till nothing yet remains.
- Joso

The story about Siddhartha Gautama is not the presence of enlightened awareness within the form you are.

Without a story the reality is the reality.

With a story everything depends upon who tells the best version and wins the elocution award for holy discourse.

Tonight, no story.

(Shhh!)

Be.

What.

You.

Are.

(You don't say?)

I imagine myself dead. There's nothing there. So I'm not imagining myself dead, I'm thinking of nothing there. There's a difference.

As I live and breathe things are right here in front of me. Smell of stir fry comes up stairs. Root rumble of heating system converts propane through fire to heated air blown into metal conduits to registers on walls and floors. Sound of three tiered bell hanging from cedar tree at northeast corner of house tells of conversation with wind I cannot make out.

Snow Valley

Each drifting snowflake
Falls nowhere but here and now
Under the settling flowers of ice
The water is flowing
Bright and clear
The cold stream splashes out
The Buddha’s words
Startling the stone tortoise
From its sleep
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

The here and now is comforting. Even when trudging with Saskia and Britta (Erika's excitable German Shepherd) through woodland depths of Ragged Mountain snow, boots crunching through to wooden bridges across double brook, cold wind penetrating gloves freezing fingers wrapped around walking poles, there is comfort in the experience of the things in sight, under foot, and in mind.

The there and whenever is less attractive -- even when described by visionaries and believers as joyful warmth of divine beneficence where nothing spoils or rots and monthly bills don't invite despair any longer.

"Is that really Granddad?" he whispered.
"No," said Onno. "Granddad doesn't exist anymore."
On the other side of the coffin, his sister Trees shot him a reproachful look.
"Granddad has left this earthly life for eternity," she said to Quinten.
He looked agog at the motionless contents of the coffin, without understanding what he saw. Something impossible was lying there. Everything that he had seen up to now in his life had been possible, but it was there; but now there was something lying there that could not possibly be seen and that he still saw. It was Granddad and it wasn't Granddad!
(p.429, from The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch, c.1992)

Not to exist anymore is not to stand out from what is there. Quinten's Granddad did not stand out from the body prone in coffin. Whatever once was there, acting and speaking through the animated dance of breath and blood, no longer was on stage. "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond" -- as the sutra says -- "Awake! Hooray!"

Only What I Can Do

Dedicated to Juan Bernal, died September 9, 2001, at age 41

I write a letter for my client today.
I sit with him on the deck
of the skilled nursing facility.
He eats breakfast, smokes cigarettes.
He wants me to write to his baby brother
in jail doing time.
He dictates: "I love you —
I need a thousand dollars —
I will drive the get-away car."
He has these plans
he needs to convey—tells me
his little brother will tote the gun.

He dictates: "The doctor told me today
I am dying, but he doesn't know
how long it will take."

It is doubtful he will be able to drive
the get-away car when his legs are paralyzed
and two people have to transfer him
from his bed to his wheelchair and back.
He has a direct line morphine drip
he presses every ten minutes.

It is doubtful he will make it
home again, but he wants to go home.
He drifts in and out of sleep, nodding-out
his thoughts stop in mid-sentence,
he loses track of his message to his brother.

He asks if they'll read the letter.
The jail will, I say. He edits out the question
about whether his brother killed someone.
He thinks he did. I suggest he
take out the part about robbing a bank
but he doesn't. He thinks it's a good plan.

(-- Poem: "Only What I Can Do" by Julene Tripp Weaver, from Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues. Finishing Line Press, 2007. On Writer's Almanac)

As far as I know I'm not dying. Not in the "Oh my God, doctor!" kind of way. Still, in this quiet room, here and now, I cannot but think that the bell rung from the bottom of the stairs, tonal invitation to come to kitchen, where chicken and rice, a Sherlock Holmes video, and some leftover strawberry-rhubarb pie with whipped cream after -- seems like a good plan.

So it is.

Just for now.

In narrow valley pass between two mountains wind hustles through trees banging into everything fixed in place -- windows, walls, broken slats of gate riven in drifted piles. Storm runs through mountains a driven herd of mutating moisture taking shape and consistency like a gaggle of teenagers unaware anyone watches them.

On the old pond
Snow falls on the mandarin ducks
This evening.
- Shiki

I imagine I am an old man -- as indeed I come to be -- a core center of my life, a place with no extension, but everywhere itself mirroring oneself in each revelation of itself.

I have no other image of eternity. I reside in time. I hear no voices, channel no entity, not visited by supernatural beings, no receiver of omen or favor of saint or deity.

Still, I hear the wind. Pushing snow with sleigh shovel up sculpted ramps then pulling back sending payload forward in centrifugal haste. Left ventricular strain, lung complaint, tennis elbow with no racket for years -- the storm and mountain are companions in time -- and tires rushing mountain sluice sound wet and sloppy tracks an interim phantasmagoria of Barnestown Road.

I have been pleased to be here. This earth. This particular geography. These drops of rain, flakes of snow, hardened evolution of wet and softened devolution of Midwest air on way to Maritimes.

the narcissus no longer sacred
under the ant’s footfall
it passes
the paper bridge
into September

How precise the return to “materiality.” The tiny world of life is all around, and the poet notices a lone ant tracking across his notebook page. This coupling of stanzas makes me shiver. I see a trace of the Buddhist-inspired Noh drama of Japan. The paper bridge is a stark, stylized stage setting—it is “the bridge of dreams,” guiding us across to another “world.” Another season. Love has passed, gone with a breath. The world turns into itself, towards fall, and the “it” could be anything—

it passes
the paper bridge
into September

autumn of withered grass
autumn of ghost-like winds

On the mountain we leaned into a circle, lee side of the jumbled ridge, wind whipping the pines about. The pines of the American West look so vividly like Japanese ink paintings. They are ancient Buddhas, Dogen Zenji would say, crouched in concentrated postures. Or stepping forward to gesture madly. By contrast, we humans sat bundled against the now-roaring wind, vulnerable, resolute, working swiftly to finish the poem and get off the mountain. Everyone had to shout their new verse over the wind. You could feel links and shifts crackling about. Basho wrote: “In this mortal frame of mine, which is made of a hundred bones and nine orifices, there is something, and this something can be called, for lack of a better name, a windswept spirit, for it is much like thin drapery that is torn and swept away by the slightest stirring of the wind.”
(--from Whirling Petals, Windblown Leaves, By Andrew Schelling, in Tricycle, Winter 2007)

Bell rings.

Dinner.

Downstairs.

Note: Today as it snows mightily, with ice waiting down the hours to come lay atop the soft white bed, we think it a good day to stay inside and invite no one out of their own sanctuary.

Thus, The Bookshop/Bakery is closed today, and there is no Sunday Evening Practice this evening.

Stay in, or wander out, safely!

A hermit lady from another town sat by wood stove this morning. She was crotchety. Fuel costs are up. Midcoast is not rural enough. She's giving Christmas gifts in people's names to animal shelters. Dogs and cats, she says, are being given up. Too expensive to live and share costs with fuel companies.

Sitting in Meditation

Sitting in meditation does not primarily
Mean that the mind should be grasped,
That the idea of purity should be clung to,
Nor that it should be motionless.
When you talk of grasping the mind,
Remember that the mind is fundamentally
Unreal and is known to be illusory.
Therefore, there is nothing that can be grasped
When you talk of clinging to the idea
Of purity, remember that the self-nature
Is essentially pure. It is only due to false
Thoughts that the absolute is concealed.
If there is no thinking, the self-nature will
Appear pure and clean.
- Bodhisattvasila Sutra

Advent story from purple book today. About Johanna Marie, or Johnny. Misfit. We decide that 'normality' is the fiction clung to by those afraid of their oddity. Holding tight, they swing their fiction of normality like a cudgel at those whose fear has not paralyzed and imprisoned them

John in his prison had heard what Christ was doing and he sent his disciples to ask him, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?’
(--Matthew 11:2)

There is no one else to wait for.

Oddly, the Christ you are is it.

No fiction.

No stick.

We do go to the desert to see.

Nothing.

Clearly.

Don't lose heart.

Their enthusiasm came only at his funeral, this John of the Cross. Before that, when he was alive, he was annoying to men set in their ways. They wanted him off their case. That Teresa; there were complicities in their desire to love, pray, and serve with integrity.

If you want to freely live or die, go or stay, to take off or put on your clothes, then right now recognize the person who is listening to this discourse. That one is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place, yet is brisk and lively. As for all the manifold responsive activities, the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place. Therefore, when you look for him, he retreats farther and farther; when you seek him, he turns more and more the other way: this is called the “Mystery.”
- Lin chi (d.866)

In prison today a young man went on about wishing to respect and learn from the different denominations and faiths of others -- doing it in a study group. In the room the newly clean shaven self proclaimed practicing atheist tried to help him sort through and wrestle with the "monkey on my back."

We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.
For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ: In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God. The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labours, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training.
All these are lesser things, disposing the soul for the lofty sanctuary of the knowledge of the mysteries of Christ: this is the highest wisdom attainable in this life.
Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.
(--from A Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross)

The assisting voice posed these words: "What is the true nature of reality" -- a phrasing that might or might not be followed by a question mark or an exclamation point.

There's something just a few steps too far away from the reach of our consciousness that leads us up to the precipice then abandons us.

This aloneness is our solitude.

And our salvation.

With one another.

Wind last week knocked slat from upstairs porch facing head of harbor. Eight remain on that side. There is an opening allowing me to see green pinky schooner and red boathouse.

Temperature reading is 18 degrees Fahrenheit. Wood stove labors to throw heat into room. The sky says something's coming. The air stretches across bay to Islesboro, North Haven, and Vinalhaven with aluminum stillness interspersed by Mark and Saddle Islands.

What did the Buddhist woman say on the radio the other day?

"Life is so difficult, how can we be anything but kind?" (—Unknown author, quoted by Sylvia Boornstein.)

Kindness is where we wish to put up our feet. Sip hot cocoa. Watch fishing boat turn to float to tie up. Megunticook mountain shrouded with dusk cloud of white transparency, new falling snow.

Love

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills—
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.
(--Poem by Czeslaw Milosz)

I have always wondered if love means being alive throughout birth, death, and the stages of consciousness traversing each aspect of travel here and there.

Five bells.

Dark outside window.

I am, it can be said, in love.

The look of it. The clear wonder of appearance.

We are in love as God is.

Throughout.

What is a miracle?

Students of today get nowhere because they base their understanding upon the acknowledgment of names. They inscribe words of some dead old guy in a great big notebook, wrap it up in four or five squares of cloth, and won’t let anyone look at it. “This is the Mysterious Principle,” they aver, and safeguard it with care. That’s all wrong. Blind idiots! What kind of juice are you looking for in such dried up bones!
- Rinzai (d 866)

Pictures inside cloaks?

Very early one Saturday morning at the beginning of December of 1531, a poor but respected Indian called Juan Diego (born, it is said, in Cuauhtitlan and under the pastoral care of the religious community of Tlatelolco) was on his way to Tlaltelolco on a holy errand. When he reached the hill called Tepeyac dawn was breaking and he heard singing coming from above the hill. The singing stopped and was not heard again, but he heard a voice calling to him from the top of the hill. “Beloved Juan Diego”, it said. He responded at once, bravely climbing the hill towards the place where the voice was coming from.
When he reached the top he saw a Lady standing there, who called him to herself. When he came close to her he was stunned with how beautiful she was: her clothes shone like the sun. Then the Virgin gave him her command: “Know, beloved son, that I am the immaculate ever-virgin Mary, Mother of the true God who is the Origin of all life, who creates all things and keeps them in being, the Lord of Heaven and Earth. I greatly wish, I earnestly desire, that my house should be built in this very place. I will show him to you there and praise him as I show him, my Love and Compassion, my Help and Defence. For in truth I am your compassionate Mother, yours and of all who live together in this land and of any others who love me, seek me, and call on me with confidence and devotion. In that house I will listen to their weeping and their sadness, I will give them help in their troubles and a cure for their misfortunes.
(--The traditional narrative called "Nican Mopohua", Office of Readings)

Transmission of story is the miracle.

With confidence and devotion

The one reality, as it is, has myriad expressions following experience, as it were, making so many perceptions looking to claim foothold to truth.

Bamboo Garden

The third one crooked
The second one leaning
Bamboos have grown
By the stone steps of the garden
Every year
There are more of them
Until now they are a forest
At the clack of a stone on a bamboo
Hsiang-yen shattered the
Uncountable worlds
But this garden continues
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Argue vigorously, if you will, for no death or no birth, I will argue the unknown its unknowing elegance. There are times, such as now, when it matters not whether there is an afterlife or there is nothing. Either way, snow falls in dooryard.

The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal. Though empires fall, "the Lord shall reign forever."
(from Preface, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, 1875)

Some hint that empires totter again. It doesn't matter.

The core center has no extension. It reveals itself everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. We are grounded in no other place.

Filling bird feeders, climbing new wood step ladder, stray seed falls to white snow below.

Think it through.

With words.

Creating. And holding.

Being.

Well.