Spring!

Clean meditation cabin.

Place rugs in bookshed.

Delusion, enlightenment
just fox-words fooling
Zen practitioners everywhere.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Thank you winter.

Hello spring

Deep bow!

was winter
then (wait,
wait...wait)
will be
spring
when winter
no longer
is
but was

Let's say the truth is love.

Let's say that grievances are the ego's way of saying there's something greater than love and truth. Some call it fairness. Some, justice. Some even self-preservation.

I'm not sure about this.

Pushed along by wind,
Clouds layered along the peaks
Diffuse at daybreak:
Honking geese who've crossed
The mountains open the fall.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

I think that truth-telling is best.

I think that love-creating is best.

There's nothing beyond truth-telling and love-creating.

And that nothing is what we are about.

There's nothing better than best.

Only this.

This.

This truth-telling.

This love-creating.

Let's call it love-truth.

Nothing more.

Nothing else.

When younger this day was a bigger deal. I'm just happy to remember that once it was and now...it's just the 17th, I wear a bit of green, and finish stacking wood.

The Rose Tree

“O words are lightly spoken”
Said Pearse to Connolly,
“Maybe a breath of politic words
Has withered our Rose Tree;
Or maybe but a wind that blows
Across the bitter sea.”

“It needs to be but watered,”
James Connolly replied,
“To make the green come out again
And spread on every side,
And shake the blossom from the bud
To be the garden's pride.”

“But where can we draw water”
Said Pearse to Connolly,
“When all the wells are parched away?
O plain as plain can be
There's nothing but our own red blood
Can make a right Rose Tree.”

(Poem by William Butler Yeats)

A melancholic theme.

The 18th nears.

Parker Palmer suggests that to transcend is not to get out and away, but rather to enter in, to in-spire, to breathe within the reality. Those who want out are doing something else.

We must resist the popular tendency to think of transcendence as an upward and outward escape from the realities of self and world. Instead, transcendence is a breaking-in, a breathing of the Spirit of love into the heart of our existence, a literal in-spiration that allows us to regard ourselves and our world with more trust and hope than ever before. To experience transcendence means to be removed -- not from self and world, but from that hall of mirrors in which the two endlessly reflect and determine one another. Prayer takes us out -- not out of self and world, but out of their closed circular logic.

(p. 13, in To Know As We are Known, Education As A Spiritual Journey by Parker Palmer, c.1983)

It is, they say, a complicated world. Take the financial meltdown.

Complicated.

Michael Lewis writes about some few who saw the disaster coming.That these sub-prime mortgage bonds were going to tank was obvious to a few people. Why not more people?

In Ireland, Switzerland, and Germany (so far) there are scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church and sexual abuse. Some folks knew it was happening when it was happening. Why not more people?

In the wars America fights in Iraq and Afghanistan there have been egregious criminal shootings and killings committed against civilian men, women, and children. These precipitous shootings, done by both military and mercenary private contractors, were cloaked under rhetoric proclaiming noble patriotic safety behavior -- essentially the ethic was: we have the guns and the vehicles and you are in our way. Some knew the abusive and criminal acts were taking place. Why not more people?

I suspect that we all knew. Ignorance is no explanation or excuse. We knew but decided not to know what we knew.

Lewis, speaking with Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" about The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, his book assessing the Wall Street fiasco, says that it was a folly of perception. He says we are incentivized not to see what we see.

What is it that I don't see? I don't see the source of being -- even though I most likely do, as do you.

I have just three things to teach:
Simplicity, patience, compassion.
These three are your greatest treasures.
Simple in actions and in thoughts,
You return to the source of being.
Patient with both friends and enemies,
You accord with the way things are.
Compassionate toward yourself,
You reconcile all beings in the world.
- Lao Tzu

The back roads to Bangor were clear and sunny.

I have no idea about anything in my life these days. Not why I exist. Not what I am doing. Not why so much seems so silly. I do know I am alive, and, here. That, for the time/being, is enough.

Root Cellar

Nothing would sleep in that cellar, dank as a ditch,
Bulbs broke out of boxes hunting for chinks in the dark,
Shoots dangled and drooped,
Lolling obscenely from mildewed crates,
Hung down long yellow evil necks, like tropical snakes.
And what a congress of stinks!
Roots ripe as old bait,
Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich,
Leaf-mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks.
Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.
(Poem by by Theodore Roethke)

There is only bare breath remaining.

This one. And this.

And this.

New moon.

New moon, seemingly, with no light, no moon.

The moon shining in the middle
Of the sky swallows the lights
Of all creation.
The light in every age so clear
And mysterious that no words
Can describe it.
- Baekoon Kyunghan (1299-1375)

Wind sways trees. Rain pauses.

Students, when you want to say something, think about it three times before you say it. Speak only if your words will benefit yourselves and others. Do not speak if it brings no benefit.
(--Dogen)

Silent today.

I ask how I am within myself today? Am I particularly tired, stressed, or off-form?
If any of these characteristics apply, can I try to let go of the concerns that disturb me?
(--in Sacred Space, http://www.sacredspace.ie/dailyprayer/index.php?lang=en&d=15&m=03&y=2010#consciousness)

Only today. There is no tomorrow.

Of course, nothing that exists exists for its own sake; it exists for the sake of the whole. In origin, the whole is pregiven for man; it takes on for man its conscious character in the time-free present, for consciousness is not restricted to time and space. It cannot be concretized in conceptuality since conceptuality deals with abstractions and absolutes. It can be fathomed only dimly in vital, magic life, and is realizable through imagination and experience, as in myth and mysticism, only in a twilight of consciousness. It is approached in thought, but thought immediately closes itself off since in its process of deduction discursive thought always eludes any openness in its compulsion to system.
The new mutation of consciousness, on the other hand, as a consequence of arationality, receives its decisive stamp from the manifest perceptual emergence of the spiritual.
(--p.541, Ch 12, TheConcretion of the Spiritual, in The Ever-Present Origin, by Jean Gebser,c.1949)

The arational, that which is not based on or governed by reason, in Gebser is acausal and integral.

The answer to the question "Why?" in no longer "Because!"

The new answer is "Be acausal!"

As I said, what is there...

To be said?

Wind blows down from Ragged Mountain. Rain runs for lowest places. It is an hour later than yesterday at the same time.

Don't talk about awakening.

The Second Patriarch Hui-k'o stood in the snow, cut off his arm, and awakened. The Sixth Patriarch heard someone recite the Diamond Sutra phrase "arouse the mind without placing it anywhere," and he awakened. Ling-yun saw a peach blossom and awakened. Hsiang-yen heard a tile fragment strike bamboo, and he awakened. Lin-chi was given sixty blows by Huang-po, and he awakened. Tung-shan noticed his own reflection when he was crossing a river, and he awakened. In each case, these men met the Master. - Daito (1282-1334)

Finally get to stack strewn wood. Wind tosses the tarps. I set them again. And again.

When a woman used the word 'spirituality' at conversation on Friday, I asked her what she meant by that word. She thought then said "universal connectedness..." which seemed right to me.

To live a solitary spiritual life sounds odd. The realization that we are universally connected means that to live is to live as one, whether together or alone.

Like the Willie Nelson song, solitaries and cowboys are always alone -- even with someone they love. The distinction used to be between the eremitical and the cenobitic life -- the solitary and the communal life.

Today it could be thought of as the Asperger Contemplative Outsider and the Socializing Active Insider.

Solitude

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1855-1919)

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone.

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own.

Sing, and the hills will answer;

Sigh, it is lost on the air.

The echoes bound to a joyful sound,

But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;

Grieve, and they turn and go.

They want full measure of all your pleasure,

But they do not need your woe.

Be glad, and your friends are many;

Be sad, and you lose them all.

There are none to decline your nectared wine,

But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;

Fast, and the world goes by.

Succeed and give, and it helps you live,

But no man can help you die.

There is room in the halls of pleasure

For a long and lordly train,

But one by one we must all file on

Through the narrow aisles of pain.

(From: Poems of Passion by Ella Wheeler Wilcox)

It need not be pain. Just a walking through something that feels formless. A psychical uninhabitation.

There's no one else there.

Even if you are there, there's no one there. It doesn't seem right.

"The sense is obscured whenever we focus only on small, finished segments of being." --Chuang-tzu

Feast and fast.

Take your time.

I look at you.

You look at me.

If we learn to listen and speak with open mind and open heart we are practicing the promise of conversation. It is the practice of faith most needed today.

Almost a Conversation

I have not really, not yet, talked with otter
about his life.

He has so many teeth, he has trouble
with vowels.

Wherefore our understanding
is all body expression—

he swims like the sleekest fish,
he dives and exhales and lifts a trail of bubbles.
Little by little he trusts my eyes
and my curious body sitting on the shore.

Sometimes he comes close.
I admire his whiskers
and his dark fur which I would rather die than wear.

He has no words, still what he tells about his life
is clear.
He does not own a computer.
He imagines the river will last forever.
He does not envy the dry house I live in.
He does not wonder who or what it is that I worship.
He wonders, morning after morning, that the river
is so cold and fresh and alive, and still
I don't jump in.

(Poem by Mary Oliver)

Nobody's death in particular, but every death today.

I listen to "God Moving Over the Face of the Waters" by Moby from soundtrack of film "Heat." It is a death scene set to a creation theme. The good guy and the bad guy at end clasp hands. We are not to think anything. We are to feel.

Mourner's Kaddish

Yit'gadal v'yit'kadash sh'mei raba (Cong: Amein).
May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified (`Cong: Amen.)

b'al'ma di v'ra khir'utei
in the world that He created as He willed.

v'yam'likh mal'khutei b'chayeikhon uv'yomeikhon
May He give reign to His kingship in your lifetimes and in your days,

uv'chayei d'khol beit yis'ra'eil
and in the lifetimes of the entire Family of Israel,

ba'agala uviz'man kariv v'im'ru:
swiftly and soon. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein. Y'hei sh'mei raba m'varakh l'alam ul'al'mei al'maya
(Amen. May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.)

Yit'barakh v'yish'tabach v'yit'pa'ar v'yit'romam v'yit'nasei
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled,

v'yit'hadar v'yit'aleh v'yit'halal sh'mei d'kud'sha
mighty, upraised, and lauded be the Name of the Holy One
(Mourners and Congregation:)

B'rikh hu.
Blessed is He.

l'eila min kol bir'khata v'shirata
beyond any blessing and song,

toosh'b'chatah v'nechematah, da'ameeran b'al'mah, v'eemru:
praise and consolation that are uttered in the world. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein
Amen

Y'hei sh'lama raba min sh'maya
May there be abundant peace from Heaven

v'chayim aleinu v'al kol yis'ra'eil v'im'ru
and life upon us and upon all Israel. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein
Amen

Oseh shalom bim'romav hu ya'aseh shalom
He Who makes peace in His heights, may He make peace,

aleinu v'al kol Yis'ra'eil v'im'ru
upon us and upon all Israel. Now say:
(Mourners and Congregation:)

Amein
Amen

http://www.jewfaq.org/prayer/kaddish.htm

We don't know what happens after death.

We barely know what happens after birth.

Look at me.

I look at you.

There's nothing else.

Only the gaze.

Like John Crichton in Farscape series, we seem to be mostly through the wormhole. The star system outside the window today is bright and sunny. The remainder of the website is drifting toward a new location.

Astronaut John Crichton assumes he'll be home in time for dinner. But a freak accident during an experimental space mission catapults him across a thousand galaxies to an alien battlefield. Suddenly, he's trapped among alien creatures wielding deadly technology - a battle that 20th century sci-fi pop culture never prepared him for. Hunted by a merciless military race, Crichton begins his quest for home from a galaxy far, far away...

(--from The Jim Henson Company website, http://www.henson.com/fantasy_scifi.php?content=farscape)

With the help of Bob O'C, who arrived from an unspecified galaxy, we have begun to transfer the domain, hosting, and blog so ably created and maintained by Karl G for so many years into a new search for a new home that should resemble the place we began before the wormhole.

Home is no place to lose.

And, there is no place like it.

Hello

I think I've begun a process of moving this blog. Like being in a wormhole, I have no idea where it will emerge. Or whether it will.

Salat

poetry is prayer
light dancing inside words
five times a day
I try to write

step by step
I move towards the mihrab
I prepare to recite
what is in my heart

I recite your name

(Poem by E. Ethelbert Miller)

If we know the direction for prayer, perhaps we know the direction of the one praying.

It is the poem.

Look there.

Word yourself.

Plato worried we would not have the courage for democracy. It's a reasonable worry even these 2500 years later. Lies and other demos-denying behaviors run rampant.

Song of T'aego Hermitage

I've lived in this hermitage
How long I don't know
Deep and secret and
Without obstructions
Heaven and earth meet
Like box and cover:
There's no turning toward
Or turning away.
I do not stay in the east, west,
South or north
The jewel tower and the jade palace
Do not stand opposite me.
I do not take guidelines from
Bodhidharma as a model
As the light shines freely through
Eighty four thousand gates.
- T'aego (1301-1382)

I think that education is invitation and prelude to presence and compassion.

John O'Donohue spoke it well:

Transformation: Let’s move to the presence of compassion. How do we recognize it?

O’Donohue: We recognize compassion in the willingness of someone to imagine himself into the life of another person. We recognize its presence in the withholding of huge negative moralistic judgment. We see compassion in the expression of mercy, in the refusal to label someone with a short-circuiting terminology that condemns her, even though her actions may be awkward. We see compassion in an openness to the greater mystery of the other person. The present situation, deed or misdeed is not the full story of the individual, there is a greater presence behind the deed or the person than society usually acknowledges. Above all, we see the presence of compassion as the vulnerability to be disturbed about awful things that are going on.

Transformation: What is the relationship between absence and compassion?

O’Donohue: Absence and presence are sisters. The opposite of presence is not absence, the opposite of presence is vacancy. Vacancy is a void, a space which is hungrily empty, whereas absence is a space of spatial emptiness, but there is a trail of connection toward the departed one, the lost one, the absent one. To feel absence is to feel connection with the one who has gone. There is still a huge affective involvement with the person. In exploring compassion and vacancy, vacancy is a sinister pain, because of its hunger, its emptiness. A form of vacancy that is prevalent in post-modern culture is indifference, the inability to imagine or show compassion to others who are in trouble. Absence is different. The feeling of absence can create an incredible feeling of compassion.

(--from, The Presence of Compassion, An Interview with John O’Donohue,
By Mary NurrieStearns, http://www.personaltransformation.com/ODonohue.html)

We have to care. To be responsible for the world and the new ones entering it. For the creating materials of truth and dialoguing difficult reasoning discourse together.

THE ORANGE

At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.

And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.

The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
(Poem, The Orange, by Wendy Cope)

So do I...

Love you...

Glad you, and I, exist.

Two is where three is but for one alone.

Ask anyone.

Meetingbrook Hermitage is a place of contemplation, conversation, and correspondance at Ragged Mountain just across from Bald Mountain on Barnestown Road in Camden Maine.

We will soon begin again.

See?

Yes, you see!

All religions are founded on a deep spiritual experience of unity consciousness where there was complete union between the personal and universal. Unfortunately, many times the followers of religion, instead of understanding the religious experience and seeking it for themselves ended up merely worshiping the founder of the religion. It is more important to fully grasp the teaching of the religion and its basic tenets, that have come from a deeper experience of transcendence. Self-righteous morality is not a means for experiencing higher consciousness. Higher consciousness, spontaneously leads to moral and ethical behavior. However, because spiritual knowledge is powerful, the custodians of organized religion have frequently ended up with destructive behaviors -- power mongering, cronyism, control, corruption, and influence peddling. As a result organized religion has frequently become quarrelsome, divisive, and led to conflict. No organized religion has been immune to this unfortunate tendency. So, we have had the crusades and witch-hunts of Christianity, the Jihads of Islam, the violent communal riots instigated by fundamentalist Hindus and the persecution of minorities and ethnic cleansing all in the name of God.

Our present times are particularly dangerous because ancient habits combined with modern capacities and technologies of destruction are a devastating combination that can destroy life on our planet.
(--Deepak Chopra, Only Spirituality Can Solve The Problems Of The World: February 24, 2010 10:22 AM, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak-chopra/only-spirituality-can-sol_b_474221.html)

Generator worked. Well pump installed. Rain again. Sump pump working. Bell at end of silent sitting always surprises when on timer.

Is there really anything to look for? To see?

George Harrison's My Sweet Lord Lyrics

My sweet lord
Hm, my lord
Hm, my lord

I really want to see you
Really want to be with you
Really want to see you lord
But it takes so long, my lord

My sweet lord
Hm, my lord
Hm, my lord

I really want to know you
Really want to go with you
Really want to show you lord
That it wont take long, my lord (hallelujah)

My sweet lord (hallelujah)
Hm, my lord (hallelujah)
My sweet lord (hallelujah)

I really want to see you
Really want to see you
Really want to see you, lord
Really want to see you, lord
But it takes so long, my lord (hallelujah)

My sweet lord (hallelujah)
Hm, my lord (hallelujah)
My, my, my lord (hallelujah)

I really want to know you (hallelujah)
Really want to go with you (hallelujah)
Really want to show you lord (aaah)
That it wont take long, my lord (hallelujah)

Hmm (hallelujah)
My sweet lord (hallelujah)
My, my, lord (hallelujah)

Hm, my lord (hare krishna)
My, my, my lord (hare krishna)
Oh hm, my sweet lord (krishna, krishna)
Oh-uuh-uh (hare hare)

Now, I really want to see you (hare rama)
Really want to be with you (hare rama)
Really want to see you lord (aaah)
But it takes so long, my lord (hallelujah)

Hm, my lord (hallelujah)
My, my, my lord (hare krishna)
My sweet lord (hare krishna)
My sweet lord (krishna krishna)
My lord (hare hare)
Hm, hm (gurur brahma)
Hm, hm (gurur vishnu)
Hm, hm (gurur devo)
Hm, hm (maheshwara)
My sweet lord (gurur sakshaat)
My sweet lord (parabrahma)
My, my, my lord (tasmayi shree)
My, my, my, my lord (guruve namah)
My sweet lord (hare rama)

[fade:]

(hare krishna)
My sweet lord (hare krishna)
My sweet lord (krishna krishna)
My lord (hare hare)

If we can speak, we can sing. If we can sing, we can find a way to smile and laugh.

And with that posture of joy, we can cry freely.

Oh happy day
Oh happy day
When Jesus washed
Oh when He washed
Mmm, when He washed
All my sins away
Oh happy day

Oh happy day (Oh happy day)
Oh happy day (Oh happy day)
When Jesus washed (When Jesus washed)
Oh when He washed (When Jesus washed)
Mmm, when He washed (Mmm, when He washed)
All my sins away (Oh happy day)

He taught me how to watch
Watch and pray
Watch and pray (Watch and pray)
And live rejoicing every day
Every day (Every day)

Oh happy day (Oh happy day)
Oh happy day (Oh happy day)
When Jesus washed (When Jesus washed)
Oh when He washed (When Jesus washed)
Mmm, when He washed (Mmm, when He washed)
All my sins away (Oh happy day)

It was a happy day (Oh happy day)
(--Music and lyrics by Edwin Hawkins, 1967, based on 18th century hymn)

Music is the excuse we can use to step away from all forms lacking compassion, contemplation, and consideration.

You know the tunes.

Go ahead.

Sing.

Simone Weil said: "Absolute unmixed attention is prayer."

Like entrusting yourself
To a brave person
When greatly afraid,
By entrusting yourself
To the awakening mind,
You will be swiftly liberated,
Even if you have made appalling errors.
- Majjhima Nikaya

To pray always is to practice this absolute unmixed attention.

Begin again.

You are in my prayer.

Very wet and rainy.

John Dewey says that totality is continuity.

Totality means continuity -- the carrying on of a former habit of action with the readaptation necessary to keep it alive and growing. Instead of signifying a ready-made complete scheme of action, it means keeping the balance in a multitude of diverse actions, so that each borrows and gives significance to every other. Any person who is open-minded and sensitive to new perceptions, and who has concentration and responsibility in connecting them has, in so far, a philosophic disposition.
(John Dewey, in Democracy and Education)

Go on.

All of you.

If you haven't seen the film Departures, do.

Pine trees murmur in the wind.
Spring water bubbles in stone.
The moon sets at dawn.
An owl hoots in the mountains.
- Jinkag Haesim (1178-1234)

Off you go.

We'll meet again.

That's what the gate-keeper said.

Temporary site for events and update.

For Events, see http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/Home/events-at-meetingbrook

Dying is safe. That's what Singh said in her book. Good words.

Once the human mind goes astray,
Truth, the true pattern of the Tao,
Is lost.
Once the human mind is gathered in,
The true pattern of the Tao is there.
- Hu Juren (1434-1484)

My personal response to the themes of hospice conversation:

• To understand the spiritual significance of death and dying :

Be still with it, listen with a silence that sorts; a silence which is “an ordering instinct [which] sends people into the hush where the voice can be heard." (Patricia Hampl)-

• To recognize the difference between spirituality and religion:

Spirituality is the longing for true home, for true belonging; religions are the attempts to organize that longing. One is not the other. We each have an innate spirituality. Sometimes that spirituality finds a welcoming organization for it to visit.

• To identify the spiritual concerns of the dying person:

Trust the dying person and yourself to allow the revealing of what needs revealing in its own good time. No forcing. No fretting. No trying to save or change the dying person’s view. Only loving, compassionate, presence.

• To respect the spiritual needs and perspective of the patient:

We are guests and visitors to their journey. We are not teachers and guides. We must learn with them their way at this time in this place.

• To learn to respond to questions relating to life after death:

We respond with our presence and our appreciation of the questions. Honest open conversation follows honest open listening.

• To learn to provide support and understand the role of the volunteer:

To serve as a companion on the way. Be “voluntary” in your support and understanding, i.e., “voluntary (of your own free will or design; done by choice; not forced or compelled”-

• To provide an overview of the role of cultural attitudes in death, dying, and bereavement:

Not everyone says there is a heaven or a hell somewhere else. Not everyone says we live on only in those who remember us. Not everyone says we will rest a while then experience rebirth on earth. Not everyone says reincarnation is based on karma. Not everyone says we dissolve back into the one ocean of being. Not everyone says there is a spirit world, multiple dimensions of physical/mental/spiritual dwelling beyond this visible dimension we occupy. Not everyone says there is nothing after death, just this life, that’s it. Not everyone thinks a priest, pastor, imam, sheik , rabbi, roshi, guru, shaman, pagan leader, chaplain of any denomination, or official representative of any other religious or spiritual point of view -- is necessary to minister to the dying person.

Some do. And that’s the wonder of being alive amid so much diversity. There are many ways. The task of the volunteer is to be open and responsive to the particular focus and questions of the dying person, and to be of whatever assistance you can be. You do not need to know the answers to all questions. But you can help to assist the dying person and the family feel more comfortable in the search.

'Safe': from Latin 'salvus' meaning 'uninjured.' Not likely to be harmed or lost.

We are safe. Dying is safe. Death is safe.

Dance well!