Dale and David in Protective Custody think it might better read:

From Thee
through me
to we

or:

Through Thee
from me
to we

This is the cost and benefit of community. Theology demands communal kerygma. Dale says it was the crucifixion that rivets Christianity. I suspect the suffering, death, resurrection, ascension, and coming of the Spirit are of a piece -- one event that we apportion to particular distinctive multi-events so as to allow the mind a contemplative sequence. And yet, if the sequencing were true, these 10 days between Ascension and Pentecost are the bereft days. Jesus is gone. There remains only the experience and the teachings -- but no insight, no inspiration, no awakened mind and heart of those left bereft.

If you wish to bring the two matters of birth and death to conclusion, and pass directly beyond the Triple-world, you must penetrate the koan “This very mind is Buddha." Tell me: What is its principle? How is it that this very mind is Buddha? And "this very mind" just what is it like? Investigate it coming. Investigate it going. Investigate it thoroughly and exhaustively. All you have to do is keep this koan constantly in your thoughts.
- Daito (1282-1334)

The "triple world" (triloka) is a common Buddhist term for "universe." The three worlds are "the world of desire"--(kâmaloka), "the world of bodily form" (rûpaloka), and "the immaterial world" (arûpaloka).
(--from Sermons of a Buddhist Abbot, [Zen For Americans], by Soyen Shaku, translated by Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, 1906)

A variant might read: "This very mind is Christ." This, then, is a time of investigation. What happened? Who was he? What am I?

Not until I exhaust myself investigating do I let go, bereaving and bereft, into what is wholly-there beyond me. "From me."

That which is Wholly-there is the complete-Reality, which we have named "I Am Here and There, Where and When." This Holistic Inseparability, nicknamed "God", is what we must pass through, is what we are passing through, once we let go of our fragmented separative notion of small, isolated, disconnected self. "Through Thee."

This penetrative, permeative presencing of each in each, all in each, and each in all -- this integrative investigation and indwelling incarnative awakening -- this descent/ascent of the Spirit of Wholeness/Holiness -- is our arrival at the costly beneficial advent of community. Of sangha. Of church. Of circle. Of who and what we truly are --One/Another. No other.

Each as each. Each as all. All as each. All as all.

"To we."

Dale and David and Saskia and I, in that prison pod yesterday morning, investigating this mind beyond the triple worlds, enter a moment of peace.

We read Wendell Berry:

THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
(— Poem by Wendell Berry)

We remember times canoeing rivers in turns that become still waters.

We remember these times. Their quiet. Their peace. Their grace. 

An ascension to what we are.

To what each "I Am" is.

We.

Alone/Together.

Free.

"In your compassion," the psalm says, "blot out my offenses."

There's something new occurring. Christ, the essence of creation, has entered, sown through life and death, and ascending (as, with, and through) us, crosses the bridge from time to eternity, there to dwell in proleptic prescient presence with who we really are in the Eternal Now as we, until and always, dwell in this open wholeness with him, them, one another, we, ourselves, no other.

Ascension Friday

From me
Through Thee
To we
(--wfh)

Birds with early light sing this song. Horse from Draper's stable neighs in affirmation. Cars down Barnestown Road pass east to where water rises and falls in dawning dance.

Nobody in sight on the empty mountain
but human voices are heard far off.
Low sun slips deep in the forest
and lights the green hanging moss.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

It is Friday morning. Off to prison.

Warm coffee, a continuation, retasting last evening's conversation.

This weekend we remember all those dead and deadened by war.

Delia Mae walked sidewalk of Court Street with vases of flowers in both hands. Her flowered skirt. Her processional gate for Ascension Thursday. With quintessential devotion she stops to join three hermits in front of St Francis Church in Belfast Maine. They collate and converse about the day, the hard winter, their tiredness, and the feast.

She reads from book taken from shoulder bag. She said the Bodhisattva returned from the Radiant Realm and from mid-air said:

"With conscious, with unconscious, too,

Dwell, sorrow. Either ill eschew.

Pure bliss, from all corruption free

Springs but from Insight's ecstasy."

(from As The Sun Moves Northward, by Mabel Collins)

As quilters arrive and pass them by, the glow of sprig-green sunshines through trees astride shifting feet. What grounded witnesses they were! What did they see? Were they finished with looking up? Is there a new spirituality of shy hermits encircling the scurrying ants near curb?

In becoming a person of merit,
Though you perform no lofty deeds
If you are able to shake off worldly mindedness,
You will become one of the
Renowned for that alone.
In pursuing studies,
Though you make no increase in ingenuity,
If you are able to decrease
The externals that afflict the heart,
You will cross over to the land
Of the sages for that alone. - Hung Ying-ming

If God became human so that humanity become divine, why the fear? If Jesus died, rose, and ascended into the divine realm of not-other, why will we not follow? If the Spirit of Holiness permeates and inspires all who would be open to this new reality, why remain in hiding citing fears one by one?

As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on, and a cloud took him from their sight. They were still staring into the sky when suddenly two men in white were standing near them and they said, ‘Why are you men from Galilee standing here looking into the sky? Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven, this same Jesus will come back in the same way as you have seen him go there.’
(from Acts 1:1-11)

(See that last enumeration: Acts one, one - oneone).

In prison yesterday, on the writing board: "If I am here, where are you?"

We decide we are peripatetic itinerant mendicants stopping on a sidewalk speaking of Ascension and looking at and through one another.

The weaving hermit heads back to her yurt. The processional hermit continues her pilgrimage. The hermits from Ragged/Bald wandering in the open drive off to hug Kristen at Chases Daily who serves them coffee and tea, and selects the muffins for their boatyard consumption.

It is a solemn day with solemn acts -- each one of us.

The Ascension says: I am here, you are here! There is a new here and a new we.

No mere heaven and earth, no mere human and divine, no mere nature and spirit, no mere mind and matter.

No.

Merely us. Only we here -- with no exception, no exclusion, no excuse.

No wonder the Ascension is such a small, unnoticed, yet glorious feast!

We are gathered.

"We" gathers.

Where are we not?

Candle blown out. Compline ends.

Cut in thirds, split in half,
How can truth be expressed?
Can one see beyond white clouds
With the naked eye?
The monks still have not come
Back from Mt. Kukkuapada.
The leaves of the sutra
Merely stir a sad wind.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Bell sounds three times.

Truth itself.

Retires.

Brandon chose not to answer question four. It asked that the student develop his own theory of aesthetics. He did however tell me what it would have been. "Awareness."

Mountain home sleeping
No dreams of dust.
Three robes are plenty;
Who says I'm poor?
One for my pillow,
One to serve as a mat,
And at the thunder of my snoring
Heaven and Earth disappear.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

No awareness, no beauty.

With awareness, everything is beautiful. Even the ugly. Even the truth.

In prison, Peter said, everyone is a scared little boy.

Eight more conferences tomorrow.

On another matter, I sent the following to the Beloit Poetry Journal family at the death of Marion Stocking:

Final Submission
"She had a strong desire to get back to the woods," Fred Stocking said.

She took
no words
with her

where
we watch
this breath

only
parsing passing
silence

I'm aware how a poet dies.

Moving rocks with handcart around new garden sitting area between barn and kitchen. The small attempt to fashion a little place for intimacy. Words are shared. We carry each other by listening.

O Lord of Love, may I enter into you, And may you reveal yourself unto me, The pure One masquerading as many. You are the refuge of all devotees. I am your devotee. Make me your own.
--Taittiriya Upanishad

I write Governor of Utah named to be Ambassador to China asking him to do his best to help China release its stronghold on Tibet.

If how we are to one another is measure of our spiritual maturity, there is much in this world to pray for.

Here's my plan: Today I will pray for everyone who needs strength and courage to be the true person without and within. Tomorrow I'll pray for all those who are already true and loving and needing no prayer.

The next day, I will rest.

I wonder what will need to be done the fourth day!

Make me your own!

Until we are able to update our primary website, here's the Hermitage Update and Events at Meetingbrook placed on Google site: 

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/hermitage-upate

The way you feel is your meditation. Shitty feeling, shitty meditation. Joyful feeling, joyful meditation. Nothing other than what is there -- is our meditation.

Nature isn’t dualistic. It isn’t merely a collection of separate parts. It doesn’t throw anything away. It recycles everything. And it doesn’t operate out of a desire to improve things. While we fixate on the parts, nature acts out of the Whole.

We need to start recognizing that the world itself is not dualistic. We need to appreciate that our dualistic thinking doesn’t match Reality and that we pay a heavy and painful price for this discrepancy. Only then can we learn to live on this Earth without making a mess of it.

It’s not that we have to keep our hands off everything. We can’t do that, anyway; after all, we’re part and parcel of it. But we can learn to act in accord with Reality.
–Steve Hagen, from Buddhism: It’s Not What You Think (HarperSanFrancisco)

Everyone and everything is welcome at table and welcome on the cushion.

Working with what is there. Working through what is there.

It was nice to begin Sunday Hospitality at hermitage.

And the dogs somehow missed the cars in their crazed run at neighbor's dog at end of dooryard across road as gate was being worked on.

Some kindness revealed itself.

It is maddening that Sudan and Darfur continue to insult human decency. It is obscene that the former administration of the United States felt comfortable torturing other human beings to cover what appears certain to be their lies about starting an elective war. It is discouraging that our banks and credit card companies think that to trick and trap people in a scheme to punish and steal money from them is what America and capitalism do best.

Mountain home walking,
You don't step on dust,
Seldom meet anyone;
Who's ashamed to be poor?
Tired? Then rest.
What do you need a mat for?
Forget about the form
And the shadow will disappear.
- Gensei (1623-1668)

I call for a complete investigation of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and their cohorts' conduct in creating cruel and unnecessary suffering and death. I call for a worldwide outcry and desisting of the carnage and genocide in African countries. I call for a dismantling of an unkind and devious financial system that chokes people for their money.

If you belonged to the world,
the world would love you as its own;
but because you do not belong to the world,
because my choice withdrew you from the world,
therefore the world hates you.
(--from John 15: 18-21)

The mountain calls -- come away. The solitude of sorrow for the ways we are with one another is too deep for tears. Cruelty and cynicism towards the people of this existence is far beyond comprehension.

I stop.

Say.

No.

More.

Yes?

Until we update our primary website, here's the update placed on Google: 

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/hermitage-upate

In the film the lead character in voiceover says that each time you look at the future it changes. The same can be said of the past. It's a mystery why we don't look more often.

The lone tip of Wonder Peak is
Beyond any climber's reach.
One can only see white clouds
Drifting this way and that.
Thick pine and cypress forests
How old could they be?
Still, in rare moments birds
Along the steep cliffs sing.
- Daito (1282-1334)

What happens, happens. Just like that. Fact.

But what we tell about what happens, the story we create, narrate, and hold as gospel truth -- that is the myth mind fashions.

Can we live without story? That's not the question. The question is whether we see that the story we tell is just the story we tell.

To see story as story is not to confuse reality with what is said about it.

There's joy in story. There's sadness too. So -- we laugh, and we cry. It's the human way of being.

Also human is to be what is taking place without adding or subtracting anything.

Rare the moment!

I've been thinking about former Vice President Richard Cheney.

Not much.

Green mountains have turned yellow
So many times the troubles
And worries of the world of things
No longer bother me.
One grain of dust in the eye
Will render the Three Worlds
Too small to see
When the mind is still
The floor where I sit
Is endless space.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

He readies the country for another attack.

Knows exactly where to put the blame.

Suffering will be apportioned fairly.

He will be the one shining light in the darkness.

There's much to sorrow. He's one.

I see what he says.

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.
(Poem by William Carlos Williams, sometimes entitled The Red Wheelbarrow)

Why 'sometimes?'

It depends.

No need to worry.

Whatever happens, all is and will be alright.

Simmering Tea on Mount Hui

In an earthen jar at break of day
I dip clean cold water,
Shift it to the stone kettle,
Boil it on a broken slab.
Pine winds from ten thousand peaks
I offer in one sip,
Then gather my sleeves together,
Walk by the waterside.
- Chieh-shih Chih-p’eng (13th c)

Silence is the only teacher.

Not not speaking.

But silence.

Off to visit and pick up Saskia's mom for return trip to Maine. Cody, her new sweet German Shepherd, will visit hermitage for first time. Back Tuesday.

It has been lovely being home and working the place this past week. Aside from an exhaustion that will not quit, all is well.

To love is to mother

To love is

Being

True nature
(--Saskia, in Cabin Words, Welcome book in chapel zendo 10May09)

It is time for the revelation of earth. Rebirth. Resurrection. New beginnings. Anyone interested in using the meditation cabin for quiet presencing -- it is ready!

We have no choice but to start where we are...

We each have no choice but to start where we are with what we have.
This is our challenge, our life, our practice. Each obstacle, problem,
handicap is part of the practice. Every advantage, every success helps
to clarify our practice.
–Marc Lesser, from Z.B.A.: Zen of Business Administration (New World Library)

Wind blows. Sun slants. Storm clouds drift beyond Hosmer Pond.

To my mother.

To all my mothers.

I greet you with this new earth!

This place for the learning and practice of presence.

May itself!

Nobody is losing faith.

They've just stopped looking where others have told them to look.

On this frosty day, clouds and mist congeal,
On the mountain moon, the icy chill grows.
At night I receive a letter from my home,
At dawn I leave without anyone knowing.
- Fahai

I've been thinking about leaviing.

Without anybody.

Knowing.

Why.

We watch Jerome Bixby's The Man from Earth for Friday Evening Conversation. We are confronted with the possibility that much we believe is clothing easily discardable. Real faith is the direct experience of the individual. It doesn't matter what we think, nor what we believe.

Faith is an experience of the individual. The individual is that which is undivided.

Rain clears from the distant peaks
Dew glistens frostily.
Moonlight glazes the front of
My ivied hut among the pines.
How can I tell you how I am,
Right now?
A swollen brook gushes in the valley
Darkened by clouds.
- Daito (1282-1334)

These days we are tired.

We are here.

And tired.

In prison this morning we spoke about torture. Torture is a betrayal of language, language meant to actually convey the dignity of wholeness through expressive word. Torture is primarily a lie. It is a lie that asks for and receives lies in return.

It is so good to see the sun!

Rainy silence.

Rosy Breasted Grosbeak makes first appearance at feeder.

Subject and object from the start
Are no different,
The myriad things nothing
But images in the mirror.
Bright and resplendent,
Transcending both guest and host,
Complete and realized,
All is permeated by the absolute.
A single form encompasses
The multitude of dharmas,
All of which are interconnected
Within the net of Indra.
Layer after layer there is no
Point at which it all ends,
Whether in motion or still,
All is fully interpenetrating.
- Zhitong (d.1124)

Final class of Mythology last evening at University College at Rockland. Campbell spoke of Indra's Net with suggestion that each reflecting each posits no blame. Everything arises and occurs as it does. Everything dissolves and vanishes as it is. Who is there to take the blame for what has gone awry? Who is there to take credit for what is going fine?

Each raindrop falls from clouds in sky upon the earth beneath. A little dance of arrival at mud puddle. White dog stretches then returns to stillness on daybed.

I rearrange altar in front room. Between statue of seated Buddha and cross suspending Jesus is section of split firewood with empty knothole in middle. A space perfect in emptiness. For all three. In betweenness. Circularity seeing through. A morning's meditation!

For now, the serenade of silence soothes as rain on roof and skylight -- as glorious as any chant in any monastery in any part of the world.

For this sound, deep appreciation.

Twenty five years ago today Saskia and I first lay eyes on one another. In Portland. On Exchange Street. The beginning of 15.5 hours of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's film Berlin Alexanderplatz over 5 nights.

I don't remember if it is raining that first viewing.

“To listen to this, and to meditate on it, will be of benefit to many who, like Franz Biberkopf, live in a human skin, and, like this Franz Biberkopf, ask more of life than a piece of bread and butter.” ( —Alfred Döblin, from the preface to his novel Berlin Alexanderplatz)

Yesterday Saskia accompanies me to penultimate college class on Aesthetics for the college program at Maine State Prison. We watch Rouge (Red) by Krzysztof Kieslowski, the 3rd film in his trilogy Three Colors. Tomorrow we'll return for regular Friday Morning Meetingbrook Conversations at the prison.

Here in the beginning, Franz Biberkopf leaves Tegel Prison into which a former foolish life had led him. It is difficult to gain a foothold in Berlin again, but he finally does. This makes him happy, and now he vows to lead a decent life.
(--Opening words, First Book, Berlin Alexanderplatz, by Alfred Döblin)

In prison classroom, Greg, one of the inmates, offers and brings Saskia a cup of water.

In the final scene of film, the man whose life seems to be undergoing a quiet, joyous renaissance, looks out his window as if at his life retrouver, finding something lost, his life again.

From curious beginnings, curious continuation.

Penses-tu? (You think?)

Je pense que oui! (I think so.)

Alors allons-y! (So let's go!)

They're called parallel universes.

With compassionate hands Buddha and
Bodhisattvas constantly save those who are lost. 
Is there anything better than to stay
At the foot of this misty cliff
Watching in meditation 
The calm clouds on their way home to the cave?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

When I get back, I'll say more.

First Tuesday Evening Practice at hermitage. Sitting on cushion. Then beginning of Emptiness, A Study in Religious Meaning, on Nagarjuna, by Frederick J. Streng. With green tea. Then walk to pond.

The fine mist of dusk precipitation.

Digesting Mindfulness
Cultivating mindfulness is not unlike the process of eating. It would be absurd to propose that someone else eat for you. And when you go to a restaurant, you don’t eat the menu, mistaking it for the meal, nor are you nourished by listening to the waiter describe the food. You have to actually eat the food for it to nourish you. In the same way, you have to actually practice mindfulness in order to reap its benefits and come to understand why it is so valuable.
–John Kabat-Zinn, from Letting Everything Become Your Teacher

We actually practice because we actually have to practice.

Twenty eight years ago today Katherine died. I bow to her. Light incense. Light candle.

What time has gone by in eternity?

None.

None at all.

Hence we practice.

Hence we pray.