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April 2009, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update

Theme: Not Something To Be Grasped

We strike the set.

Of one thing it is said
"that is bad"
and of another it is said
"that is good."
But there is nothing
inherent in things
that make them good
or bad, for each thing's
self is empty of
independent existence.
(- Samantabhadra-Bodhisattva-sutra)

Props, costumes, and backstage scenery are tossed out to proscenium.

When the loons cry,
the night seems blacker,
The water deeper.
(Opening lines of poem New Hampshire, by Howard Moss)

The woman to my left reacted to her own words when contextualized as, "God is everywhere you are not."

The view of you, she said, is too small. I agreed, I said. Even though I didn't.

"God is everywhere you are not," I say again. To no one not here.

It is all so beautiful!

As you are.

Here.

No curtain.

Final Course in Miracles at bookshop/bakery tonight. We stay late cataloging and packing a few of the dozens of book-boxes over the final 7 days until the 30th.

Calm and contemplation
has in itself a
clarity and tranquility
beyond anything known to
earlier generations.
- Kuan-ting

Talk of forgiveness and atonement. Rosie brings up that if we are at origin we’ve never left nor ever changed our true intimacy with God. Like the conversation between two people when some surprise revelation is made and one is asked by an embarrassed another not to tell anyone about the matter -- the phrase is used: "This conversation never happened." So too with what we've called sin and guilt. In God's slang: It never happened! Forgiveness is radical return to original state. Forgiveness is a radical re-turning to and with original intimacy.

YES -- even after my death
you shall not escape me
I'll follow you
in the eyes of every hawk,
every falcon, vulture, eagle
that soars in whatever sky
you walk beneath,
all the earth over,
everywhere.
Yes -- and when you die too,
and follow me into that deep
dark burning delicious blue
and become like me --
a kind of bird, a feathered thing --
why, then I'll seek you out
ten thousand feet above the sea;
and far beyond the world's rim
we'll meet and clasp and couple
close to the flaming sun
and scream the joy of our love
into the blaze of death
and burn like angels
down through the stars
past all the suns
to the world's beginning again.
(from "Earth Apples: Collected Poems," by Edward Abbey, http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/abbey/abbey.html, )

Judith speaks of “setting things right.” I think of hermitage table practice where in silence the table is set for reading, soup & bread mindfully eaten, then sharing of observations with deep listening & loving speech.

Setting things right for Maria also suggests an additional aspect of atonement, making reparation or acknowledging transgress.

There's a sentence in the Course that reads:

13 Look, then, upon the light He placed within you, and learn that what you
feared was there has been replaced with love.
(Ch 13 The Guiltless World, IX The Cloud of Guilt)

Like much of the language in the Course, this needs further translation for me. Fear is called the opposite of love. Often, over both ordinary and extraordinary occasions, we find ourselves afraid -- as when a loved one is in the hands of a medical doctor. Some would say that fear suggests an absence of love.

I translate the sentence in a different way. Fear feels alone and separate from what we desire to be the loving, healing outcome. And yet, like setting things right (as with the table), the sentence suggests that fear has been re-placed with love. By bringing fear near to the source and consoling presence of Love Itself, our fear is re-placed in proximity to, in warming circularity with, love, with Love Itself. Love is the only reality that does not exclude anything, not even fear. Fear has a seat at the table of human experience, not to be banished nor shunted off to the cavernous darkness of alienation. As Maria says, “Do the loving thing!” When fear arrives, place it near love at the table of human/divine Eucharist, the table of our lives wherein the revelation of love is our constant collation. The grace of gratefulness feeds and sustains us as our sometimes fears are embraced and befriended as Love's gift to human uncertainty.

Perhaps our task is to extend God's love here and there. To extend is to continue as...without separation or exclusion. That's all there is -- what is here.

Your capacity to care is God, it is your beauty.
Anywhere care comes alive, God is present.
(Two lines by John O'Donohue from Beauty)

I am as God is creating me.

Here's the thing about God's creating...(or is it God-creating?):

Some disappear into it and are not seen separately again. Saints, the released, we say.
Some experience it.
Some know it.
Some have none of the above, but believe it.
Some anticipate the possibility that someday they might...
And some depend on others, maybe you and me, to safeguard and preserve the fact and reality for them -- what the Quakers call holding in the light.

It's what is done by all of us when we extend God's love.

Let's.

For each of our brothers and sisters.

With each.

Love.

Earth is home for now.

Welcome home.

I note there is a debate whether those who've tortured in the name of the United States should be investigated and charged with crimes. I'm sure inmates in prison will be watching the outcome of the debate. For if torture and killing were to be forgiven, there's a lot of folks who'd like to jump on that forgiveness truck. It is a grand notion -- to look ahead, not in rear view mirror.

Let's make it happen for all who've found themselves in a personal war. Forgiveness is a wonderful reminder that we all either kill or allow killing to be done in our names. Now is the time to set things right. Either fill the prisons with all who murder or empty the prisons of those in there for murder.

Here, beside a clear deep lake,
You live accompanied by clouds;
Or soft through the pines, the moon arrives
To be your own pure-hearted friend.
You rest under thatch
In the shadow of your flowers,
Your dewy herbs flourish
In their bed of moss.
Let me leave the world.
Let me alight, like you,
On your western mountain
With phoenixes and cranes.
- Chang Jian

A grateful woman writes: "If we stopped avoiding dying we could fully live." She's right, of course. Perhaps we should be busy living/dying. Nothing morose, mind you. Just the facts. An entropy of affirmation.

We are in transformation.

I want to call all the someones I've loved or tried to love. It's uncertain what happens around a curve out of sight. I'd say: I've loved you as long as rain fills April!

April Prayer

Just before the green begins there is the hint of green
a blush of color, and the red buds thicken
the ends of the maple's branches and everything
is poised before the start of a new world,
which is really the same world
just moving forward from bud
to flower to blossom to fruit
to harvest to sweet sleep, and the roots
await the next signal, every signal
every call a miracle and the switchboard
is lighting up and the operators are
standing by in the pledge drive we've
all been listening to: Go make the call.
(Poem "In Early Spring" by Larry Smith, from A River Remains)

I'll get to it. And if I don't, I've said it here.

Then again, that's my favorite prayer: 'Thanks for bringing me here!'

How it rains!

Raking stones back from grass. Cutting felled branches from path. Dismantling dam from second bridge still burdened from last week's flood.

Finishing work, sitting in green plastic chair by 1st bridge as twilight dimmed day. Heart slows. Head falls back. Bright light as I surrender.

Standing alone beneath a solitary pine
Quickly the time passes.
Overhead the endless sky
Who can I call to join me on this path?
- Ryokan

At table reading last night Henri Nouwen on his stay at Genesee Abbey.

I realize I am going to die.

It could be sitting by a brook.

It doesn't matter.

Living now.

The ubiquitous exclamation "Whatever!" is a one word position paper for the "Who gives a shit!" crowd. Who can fault them. It's not easy to care when every indicator points to the silliness of caring.

"Ask me if I care?' was popular a while back.

Something odd is taking place.

Sincerity is the fulfillment
of our own nature,
and to arrive at it we need
only follow our own true Self.
Sincerity is the beginning
and end of existence;
without it, nothing can endure.
Therefore the mature person
values sincerity above all things.
- Tzu-ssu (483-402 BC)

Existence might be ending.

Ask me if I care.

Because I do.

Don't you?

What do you mean "Whatever!"?

Poetry can bring us home.

Close or far, poetry opens the door.

Trust in the Heart

The perfect Way's like boundless space
Nothing lacking, nothing extra
It is because of choice
That its absolute truth is lost.
Don't pursue externals;
Don't dally in the interior void.
When the spirit remains serene
In the unity of things
Dualism vanishes by itself;
When that unity is not clear
There is loss in both directions.
- Seng-ts'an (d. 606)

Still, there's Thomas. He wants to see, feel, and hear this risen body of Jesus. Touch. You keep belief. He wants something that turns and walks off, stops and laughs.

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah
(from song, Hallelujah, lyrics and music by Leonard Cohen)

The author wants the song to stop for a while. It's over-sung. Monks have that problem with psalms. I have that issue with so much that we say.

The community of believers was of one heart and mind,
and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own,
but they had everything in common.
With great power the apostles bore witness
to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus,
and great favor was accorded them all.
There was no needy person among them,
for those who owned property or houses would sell them,
bring the proceeds of the sale,
and put them at the feet of the apostles,
and they were distributed to each according to need.
(from Acts 4:32-35)

Maybe there'll come a day we share. Real sharing. Maybe.

Until then, there's poetry.

An Infant In Your Arms

The tide of my love
Has risen so high let me flood
over

You.

Close your eyes for a moment
And maybe all your
fears and fantasies

Will end.

If that happened
God would become an infant in your

Arms

And then you
Would have to nurse all

Creation!
(Poem by Hafiz)

Touch it. Let it happen!

There there.

Enlightenment is like the
moon reflected on the water.
The moon does not get wet,
nor is the water broken.
Although its light is wide and great,
the moon is reflected even
in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
are reflected in dewdrops on the grass,
or even in one drop of water.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

If we go anywhere, we are there.

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle
(Poem by William Carlos Williams, 1934)

The four of us at table in the prison pod read this poem 17 times as it read us the same number of times.

Take your time. You have 16 times left.

Go there.

There.

Through him, with him, in him.

A monk asks: "What is this 'seeing one's nature and becoming Buddha'?"
Daito replies: "The snow melts and the bones of the mountain appear."
- Daito (1282-1334)

Though, with, in.

The ending of Season 2 of "Life" had this voice-over:

What we learned as children --
that one plus one equals two,
we know to be false.
One plus one equals one.
We even have a word
for when you plus another equals one --
that word… is love.
(from "One," final season episode, Life, NBC, April 8, 2009)

Love is within through.

Hope is now changing.

Repeatedly undergoing birth and death is just due to grasping at objects. When we reflect back on the mind that grasps at objects, we see that the real identity of mind is originally pure. Within this purity, grasping mind does not exist. Within nirvana, fundamentally there are no thoughts moving; the movement is ever still. Being still, there is no seeking.
- Records of the Lanka

There is only now and there is only change.

Perhaps we can, if needed, live without hope.

Because hope is now changing.

I need you now.

What if resurrection is through?

When I give the poem to the monk in the tower room he reads it aloud to me. It is a moment that mirrors through.

Running Out Of Words
(for Fr. Robert, fondly)

The old monk is senile with sinus infection.
Who would listen to him?

Prattling on about “exitus et reditus” as if anyone
knew Latin words anymore.
We listen to be kind; there’s nothing in what he says for us.

We are visitors to his contemplative universe, exiles in a world of woe and credit cards, both full enough.

But I’m lying.

Once I dwelt in words, a room with dusty books and scattered papers piled
in order of abandonment.

“Detritus et transitus.”
This life an oscillation between throw away and go away.

Jesus might have a wrap on theological formal iteration, but in today’s 

world spirituality

it’s just irritation, something the pure of purse get to do in monastery or mountain spa with top dollar.

After Vigils, zazen, and walking
full moon through kindly silhouette branching chill tree, the cup of coffee
set on wood chair satisfies.

I lied about the monk too.

His senility is happy ploy forgetting what is not real even as illusions of time stack up like beams of dust reminding us to remember this remember that don’t forget.

He remembers one thing: He has 

gone out. 

He remembers another thing: He is 

come back.

Between these two one things reside all wonder and revelation of forgiveness, which I ask him for.

All trespass, all unkindly, all looking away,
unhearing, running off.

Out of words, knock on wood, prattling
on with silence.
(-- wfh/5:33am, Holy Thursday morning)

When the inner becomes outer and the outer becomes inner, there are no words for inner/outer.

Something has gone through.

It begins with palms. The rush of dream. Things will change now!

It's Holy Week. Things will change. 'Now' is always and only itself. Even so, now changes.

Becoming Real

Many people have the misconception that spiritual life or religious life is somewhere up there in the sky—an ethereal or mystical reality—and that our everyday life is too mundane and not so nice. Often people think that to be a spiritual person, we must ignore or neglect our everyday life and go into another, special realm. To me, being a spiritual person means becoming a real human being.
–Thubten Chodron, from Taming The Mind (Snow Lion)

Practice was lovely tonight. Carol, Saskia, Linda, Judith, Anna, Jory, Dean, Rokpa, Mu-ge, and I. Learning to smile as fear arrives.

In the morning off to monastery.

To silence.

Considering Christ.

All my brothers and sisters.

Becoming real human beings.

Let us hold one another in heart and mind.

For a quiet time, in a quiet place, in prayer, for quiet peace.

For us all. 

Until we can edit again on this website, for Hermitage Update and Events at Meetingbrook go to http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/Home

This is what is there now:

April 2009, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update

Theme:  Not Something To Be Grasped

The Bookshop and Bakery will be ending it's stay where it has been these 13 years. The new owner of the building on harbor edge wants the place for himself. So, on the 30th of April, we'll exit and he'll have it. 

Paul in Philippians, said:

Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus, 

Who,  though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. 

Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,

he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. 

                (--New American Bible, from Philippians 2)

The Palm Sunday reading is good reminder.  We no longer grasp what will become of our market face. We look about for another site. We think about a bookmobile. We concede the backup plan -- to fold back into the Barnestown Road hermitage site. It all seems possible, and impossible. It's out of our grasp.

Still, the longing is there to continue a life of prayer, meditation, hospitality and service. That we'll do. What form it will take, where we will locate ourselves, what we will look like -- all this is unknown. When thought about, it resembles the mythological problem confronting the psyche face to face with the Jesus story and Christ event.

What form after death of body? Where will Christ be found? What will the resurrected Jesus look like? 

Our mythic journey is not in the same category as the one beginning with the narrative of Palm Sunday through Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday and culminating Easter Sunday. But the narrative of our lives, all our lives, is not separated from each other. We are companions on the journey.

So, keep in touch. More information when it reveals itself.

There's not much we can hold on to, not much to be grasped.

We'll just fall into the empty, into the service of our human family, and all nature, humbled to have been able to be anywhere for so long.

With love,

, Rokpa ,  & Mu-ge ,

and all who grace Meetingbrook,
  4 April 2009

Rain and mountain melt begin to flood basement. The hole-through under Barnestown Road cannot let the volume pass. We connect sump pump hose out basement window. Two years dry and unplugged in submerged laundry basket and it springs to life, sucking our personal Bay of Fundy tide back from bottom of wooden stairs near new furnace.

I let mind and body go
And gained a life of freedom
My old age is taking place
Among ten thousand peaks
I don't let white clouds
Leave the valley lightly
I escort the moon as far
As my closed gate.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

Turns out I do have retreat booked at Trappist monastery two states from here for Holy Week. And will go. Two films for two classes next Wednesday. A needed hiatus. A quiet look at what to do as current incarnation of meetingbrook prepares to die. What will be?

Which myth will prevail? Resurrection or Rebirth? Oblivion and Emptiness?

A Father’s Pain
by Larry Smith

My father ignored his pain,
rode it out without complaint—
high threshold they call it now.

He worked as a brakeman in snow and rain.
Once he pulled his own back tooth,
held the pain in his side one time
till it burst his appendix, then
lay in a hospital bed for days.

He wasn’t hard on us kids,
never struck us, took us to
doctors and dentists when needed.
He used to sing in the car
bought us root beers along the road.
He loved us with his deeds.

The day he died, he played golf
in the morning, came home,
muffling the pain in his arm,
went upstairs and lay down.
"A Father's Pain" by Larry Smith, from A River Remains. WordTech Press, 2006

Caring is good. Even in the pain. It's not an impossible teaching -- that suffering is redemptive.

John O'Donohue wrote: "Your capacity to care is God; it is your beauty." (p.225, in Beauty)

The gate is tied open tonight.

Maria says it is our humanity, not egoity, we should focus on. Tom says we should rise to what is unknown, not focusing on the minutiae of analysis and judgment. Saskia says the body has it's limits and is to be respected. Jory says we are meant to remain aware and concerned about the hurting, the poor, the unfortunate.

Humankind, in our weakness, is the doorway through which God, in strength, passes through to be of service.

Some people, not knowing the essential emptiness of good and evil, think practical cultivation of mind means to sit rigidly immobile, subduing mind and body, like a rock placed on top of grass. This is ludicrous. That is why it is said that followers cut off confusion in every state of mind, yet the mind that does the cutting off is a brigand.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

Spirituality isn't rising above the human, earthly, and fragile weakness of this existence. Spirituality is serving strength through weakness.

When what is wrong is seen, do not judge it. Serve God through it.

And don't think you have to save the world. That you have to martyr yourself. That because Jesus was crucified, you have to be. The ego likes to accuse you of not doing, nor being, enough.

Enough. You are enough. Because of you, because of Jesus, because of God -- we trust that all will be transformed, forgiven, and accepted with love.

Give Yourself a Break

Give yourself a break. That doesn’t mean to say that you should drive to the closest bar and have lots to drink or go to a movie. Just enjoy the day, your normal existence. Allow yourself to sit in your home or take a drive into the mountains. Park your car somewhere; just sit; just be. It sounds very simplistic, but it has a lot of magic. You begin to pick up on clouds, sunshine, and weather; the mountains, your past, your chatter with your grandmother and your grandfather, your own mother, your own father. You begin to pick up on a lot of things. Just let them pass like the chatter of a brook as it hits the rocks. We have to give ourselves some time to be.
(–Chogyam Trungpa, Ocean of Dharma)

To be.

With.

What is.

Love.

There's a new window in front room, our winter zendo

Those who wear the patched robe of a Zen wayfarer should be completely serious about taking death and birth as their business. You should work to melt away the obstructions caused by conditioned knowledge and views and interpretive understanding, and penetrate through to a realizations of the great causal condition communicated and bequeathed by the buddhas and ancestral teachers. Don't covet name and fame. Step back and turn to reality, until your practical understanding and virtue are fully actualized. - Yuanwu (1063-1135)

The better to see you with.

Even discouragement has its place.

From high above, the river steadily plunges.
Three thousand feet of sparkling water,
The Milky Way pouring down from heaven.
- Li T'ai-po (701-?)

What is it runs in kitchen ceiling? We look at each other.

New window inserted in front room.

The question, Saskia said, was asked at Congregational church whether one could be Jewish and Buddhist, Christian and Buddhist. What did they say, I asked. Good responses, she said. Concepts are only concepts.

Were I there, which, being a reformed hermit, I wasn't, I'd have added: Only God is God. We don't have to think that way anymore -- the way of this or that, one or other.

Call yourself what you want. Only, love, serve, forgive, and avoid doing what you'd not have done to you.

I call it before and beyond.

Before you dwells Another. Beyond you dwells the Alone.

Within each, what once called you dwells nameless and formless.

Still, there's room for discouragement.

We created a new way of life for Tibetan monks who no longer wear the robes. Nor are they monks, in their minds. I bow to the one I meet in Belfast. Coffee cup in one hand, thus one handed bow one handed coffee.

In the ultimate stillness
Light penetrates the whole realm;
In the still illumination,
There pervades pure emptiness.
When I look back on the
Phenomenal world,
Everything is just
Like a dream.
(- Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing)

We will found a lay monastic refuge for all expressions of reverence and wonder. We'll call it EW-- for East West, Engaging Wonder!

We'll occupy the Duck Trap Monastic Refuge and Hospitality.

 
Then our eggs and blueberry pancakes came.

We still want to be part of this wonderful engagement.

When we bow to open up the ego to the whole universe we are ordinary students practicing Zen. When the universe expresses itself through the body as a bow, that is the awakened perspective.

(--Shunryu Suzuki)

But we are nobodies.

With little imagination.

Less money.

And growing older each day.

I bow to you.

Orange marmalade?

The kind people at end of harbor said no to our inquiry about a space for meetingbrook. It is not always easy to smile back at God.

Our death is our wedding with eternity.
What is the secret? "God is One."
The sunlight splits when entering the windows of the house.
This multiplicity exists in the cluster of grapes;
It is not in the juice made from the grapes.
For he who is living in the Light of God,
The death of the carnal soul is a blessing.
Regarding him, say neither bad nor good,
For he is gone beyond the good and the bad.
Fix your eyes on God and do not talk about what is invisible,
So that he may place another look in your eyes.
It is in the vision of the physical eyes
That no invisible or secret thing exists.
But when the eye is turned toward the Light of God
What thing could remain hidden under such a Light?
Although all lights emanate from the Divine Light
Don't call all these lights "the Light of God";
It is the eternal light which is the Light of God,
The ephemeral light is an attribute of the body and the flesh.
...Oh God who gives the grace of vision!
The bird of vision is flying towards You with the wings of desire.
(Rumi, Mystic Odes 833)

One by one they come in and say how badly they feel we are losing our lease. Like the uncertainty of a wake there's an awkwardness -- even if you consider the one dead to have been foolish and irresponsible, you realize that someone in earshot might have loved them. We're chastened by the unexplainable aspect of love. 

The Guests
by Leonard Cohen

One by one, the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The open-hearted many
The broken-hearted few
And no one knows where the night is going
And no one knows why the wine is flowing
Oh love I need you
I need you
I need you
I need you
Oh . . . I need you now

And those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
And "Welcome, welcome" cries a voice
"Let all my guests come in."

And no one knows where the night is going ...

And all go stumbling through that house
in lonely secrecy
Saying "Do reveal yourself"
or "Why has thou forsaken me?"

And no one knows where the night is going ...

All at once the torches flare
The inner door flies open
One by one they enter there
In every style of passion

And no one knows where the night is going ...

And here they take their sweet repast
While house and grounds dissolve
And one by one the guests are cast
Beyond the garden wall

And no one knows where the night is going ...

Those who dance, begin to dance
Those who weep begin
Those who earnestly are lost
Are lost and lost again

And no one knows where the night is going ...

One by one the guests arrive
The guests are coming through
The broken-hearted many
The open-hearted few

And no one knows where the night is going ...
(--Poem/song, The Guests, music and lyrics by Leonard Cohen)

Saskia says maybe we should contact the brother of our landlord who lives down under who's buying the cape and setting us loose. We laugh. Another deathbed conversion? We remember Nishitani's observation that when loss occurs the immediate response of the Western dualistic mind is to find substitute and replacement and go running back instead of allowing the all into radical emptiness, absolute nihility, and the becoming itself of itself.

A woman by back door sketched a woodblock depiction of three crosses as five of us read Rumi, Yeats, Rilke, Oliver, Strand, and personal creations.

A woman taking Catholic instruction says it was the Benedictine hospitality and open acceptance of the place that inched her to consider the path she is on.

A man who lives in war stories talks when no one else is around about the closer issues of his life. No footlights, only bare bulb on empty stage.

We'll be fine.

All of us.

For a while.

But then...

That's all there is.

Unless, of course, you consider the invisible to be the visible hiding in plain sight.

Fog drips from everything
I love
this morning in Maine.
(--wfh)

The woman turns to ascend the stair. She is singing the words, "Now is the time!"

We drive to Belfast to see what Fr. Joe has to say about the miracle and the guest no one understands nor anyone doesn't see.