I don't think I can stay awake for the end of the game. San Francisco jumps ahead by a run.

When water is pure and sparkling clear
You see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn't stray
A kalpa has no changes
From such awareness nothing hides.

- Cold Mountain

The women come to visit Saskia with the broken ankle.

Everyone brings something.

Possibilianism is a philosophy which rejects both the idiosyncratic claims of traditional theism and the positions of certainty in atheism in favor of a middle, exploratory ground. The term was first defined by neuroscientist David Eagleman in relation to his book of fiction Sum. Asked whether he was an atheist or a religious person on a National Public Radio interview in February, 2009, he replied "I call myself a Possibilian: I'm open to...ideas that we don't have any way of testing right now." In a subsequent interview with the New York Times, Eagleman expanded on the definition:

"Our ignorance of the cosmos is too vast to commit to atheism, and yet we know too much to commit to a particular religion. A third position, agnosticism, is often an uninteresting stance in which a person simply questions whether his traditional religious story (say, a man with a beard on a cloud) is true or not true. But with Possibilianism I'm hoping to define a new position -- one that emphasizes the exploration of new, unconsidered possibilities. Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story."
(--from Wikipedia)
http://www.possibilian.com/

Tell me a story.

Any one of them.

Of course I will question the story.

And it will answer.

The over-paid baseball celebrity strikes out, looking, to end his team's chance to advance to the World Series.

People who study Buddhism
Should seek real, true
Perception and understanding for now.
If you attain real, true
Perception and understanding,
Birth and death don't affect you;
You are free to go or stay.
You needn't seek wonders,
For wonders come of themselves.
- Linji (d.-867)

Not even the fact that a former government high official used to own the team can diminish the poetics of such muted conceit.

I remain a fan of the phantom team of Bedford Avenue.

That other New York team remains too...uptown... for this sbrodolone.

My meals lack a sherbert interlude.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

People sometimes talk about having an experience of God. I think God is no experience. I could be mistaken. "I" usually is.

O Master of the Secret, what is enlightenment?

It means knowing your own mind as it really is.
This is unexcelled complete perfect enlightenment,
In which there is nothing at all that can be attained.
Why?
Because the form of it is enlightenment,
It has no knowledge and no understanding.
Why?
Because enlightenment has no form.
The formlessness of all things
Is called the form of space.

- The Scripture of Vairochana

I like the notion that God usually is.

Artists, dead people, enlightened beings, and Christ Reality share a similar understanding. It is an understanding rooted in transparent awareness.

“We went into the building next door, and it was empty, and we went up to the tower, and nobody stopped us, so we just started working,” he said. “It’s crazy. This city is so huge and overgrown, the more you’re in the middle of things, the more you feel transparent."
(--TED Prize goes to J.R., Award to Artist Who Gives Slums a Human Face, By RANDY KENNEDY, Published: October 19, 2010, The New York Times) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/arts/design/20ted.html?r=1&hp

We are already connected, or, interconnected, to one another and everything there is in the universe. This union or unity is our ground reality. Do we feel it? Do we know it? Are we it without feeling or knowing it? Can we be and act in such a way that being and acting are not a result of preference, thought, feeling, or obligation and necessity? But, rather, our being and action flow seamlessly into and through the core of reality which is our commonality, communion, and creativity.

On a website, "Beyond the Mind ..." dedicated to the views of Krishnamurti, this:

The Core

The core of Krishnamurti’s teaching is contained in the statement he made in 1929 when he said: ‘Truth is a pathless land’. Man cannot come to it through any organisation, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophic knowledge or psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.

Man has built in himself images as a fence of security—religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man’s thinking, his relationships and his daily life. These images are the causes of our problems for they divide man from man. His perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind. The content of his consciousness is his entire existence. This content is common to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form and superficial culture he acquires from tradition and environment. The uniqueness of man does not lie in the superficial but in complete freedom from the content of his consciousness, which is common to all mankind.

So he is not an individual. Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not choice. It is man’s pretence that because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without direction, without fear of punishment and reward. Freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choiceless awareness of our daily existence and activity.

Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle. There is no psychological evolution. When man becomes aware of the movement of his own thoughts he will see the division between the thinker and the thought, the observer and the observed, the experiencer and the experience. He will discover that this division is an illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any shadow of the past or of time. This timeless insight brings about a deep radical mutation in the mind.

Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all those things that thought has brought about psychologically, only then is there love, which is compassion and intelligence.

Krishnamurti first wrote a statement of the core of the teaching in October 1981 for Mary Lutyens, at her request.

She included it in her book The Years of Fulfilment, the second volume of her biography of Krishnamurti.

On re-reading the statement in 1983, Krishnamurti made changes which are included above.

This is the complete and final statement.

Copyright © 2002 Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

(From the Spring Newsletter, 2008; paragraphs added)

http://www.beyondthemind.net/corequotes.html

Can we see through what is right before us? Can we be transparent, and therefore, seen through? What would be seen if what is looked at becomes looking as and is thereby only seeing itself?

Many years ago, I saw my sister into her death and through the story of our common parents, her family, and the notions of end-of-life and no-longer-here. I sat with her in the hospital for eight weeks. I fell asleep and she fell asleep. She remained asleep and when I opened my eyes there was a quiet in the room that no number of people attending vigil could penetrate. What was seen through?

This morning's sun slants through the small window in this cluttered room. Saskia, in her foot-cast-boot, is one week into knitting-anklebone recovering in the Wohnkuche. I don't go rowing. I will tidy the kitchen for Wednesday hospitality. Then, make coffee, toast, and eggs for visitors. Whereupon I will prepare midterm experience for tonight's ethics class. I'll walk the dog. Sit zazen. Stoke the woodstove. Observe the rituals of the day.

This is what is seeing through.

This is what is seen through.

Love compassion and intelligence.

Each is the other, hence, there is no other.

Here we are, strolling the pathless land ...

From Prakriti to Purusha. That which gives shape and that which is clear creative consciousness.

After awakening, it is still necessary to observe and examine yourself. When errant thoughts suddenly arise, do not go along with them at all; reduce them, reduce them, until you reach the point of noncontrivance, which alone is the ultimate end. This is the ox-herding practice carried on by all illuminates after their enlightenment. Even though there is subsequent cultivation, they have already realized sudden enlightenment.
- Master Chinul (1158-1210)

The cycle repeats. We must not try to stop or freeze it.

We live in an extended, dualistic, world.

We need to be attentive. Be awake. Be present.

Everything alive moves.

Even stillness.

Breathes.

Rangers beat Yankees to take AL lead 2-1. Lee pitched so sharply that Yankees were numb.
It's the playoffs.

Election's not until a few weeks. There's time for statistics that don't mean as much as other statistics.

What happens in politics has become numbing.

We need wisdom. And compassion. Until then, we'll take a shutout against New York.

What sages learn
Is to return their nature
To the beginning
And let their minds
Travel freely in
Openness.
What developed people
Learn is to link their nature
To vast emptiness and
Become aware of the
Silent infinite.
- Huai-nan-tzu

I still root for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. The Yankees were too uptown for us. The Giants were like the Mets -- too marginal.

Tommy's keeping stats on Harden Avenue tonight.

I read tonight that Connie Conover, our lighthouse keeper at Curtis Island, has died.

That's a loss much more valuable than sports or politics. His summer was one of preparation for leaving the island. I waved to him every morning in July and August and into September as I rowed around the island until he returned ashore in the Boston Whaler.

He was a sweet man.

I would like to be more aware of the silent.

Infinite.

The stones become flesh when mind realizes the expanse of the dharma.

There's nothing mysterious about that sentence. Flesh and stones are not two things. Unless you think they are, then for you, they are.

One continuous clear void, the night precisely midway; the moon, cool, spews frost. When light and dark are merged without division, who distinguishes relative and absolute herein?

Thus it is said, "Although the absolute is absolute, yet it is relative; although the relative is relative, yet it is complete." At this precise moment, how do you discern? How clear. Twin shining eyes before any impulse! How stately. The eternal body outside forms!
- Hung-chih

We visit folks and drink tea in their kitchen talking about the brain, Alzheimer's, awareness, and the mystery of soul. It is, we agree, an awful experience to lose a loved one long before death arrives.


There is only mind. It's where we live. But at times the brain loses its connection, the key doesn't turn. It grows lonely and frightening.

We must become mediators between mind and the disconnected. Bridge. Passageway. Conduit.

Even if there is no recognition, we must be recognizable for everyone as long as life surrounds.

That men and women traffick others into the sex trade against their will is a disgrace and failure of compassion we must confront.

CONSTANTA, Romania

THE 15-year-old had been “trained” in prostitution in a nightclub in the southern Romanian city of Calarasi. Now, the sex traffickers were getting ready to sell her off to a Turkish brothel for $2,800.

Iana Matei, Romania’s leading advocate for the victims of trafficking, had made contact with the girl and offered to wait outside the nightclub in her car, ready to take the teenager away if she could get out on the street for a cigarette break. But the girl had tried to escape before, and had been beaten severely. Ms. Matei was not sure she would have the courage to try again.
(--opening lines from THE SATURDAY PROFILE, Rescuing Young Women From Traffickers’ Hands, By SUZANNE DALEY, Published: October 15, 2010, The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/16/world/europe/16romania.html)

When I think of chastity or celibacy I think of the non-sex trade. All slavery is heartbreaking.

If you can get through
The world by following
The Way and embracing
Virtue to the end of your years,
It can be said that you are able
To embody the Tao.
- Huai-nan-tzu

I offer this heart to those who are enslaved. And to those enslaving. All are in need.

Maybe our needs truly understood will diminish our wants.

We must learn to recognize the problem.

The problem is belief in separation and the illusion of disconnection.

See beyond problem and illusion!

In prison today Pat suggested the lack of self-responsibility on the part of so many in the world.

Ryan quoted from a film where an AA sponsor claimed we have an agreement, a covenant with each other not to go crazy on each other.

Earlier, in a repeat Awanadjo Almanac from 5 years ago, Rob McCall said "Don't cry, don't curse, just care."

The world is unstable, like a house on fire. This is not a place where you stay long. The murderous haunt of impermanence comes upon you in a flash, no matter whether you are rich or poor, old or young. If you want to be no different from a Zen master or a buddha, just do not seek outwardly.
- Lin Chi (d 867)

Don't go crazy on me.

Just care.

Watching, or pure gaze.

In hushed stillness.

We read in circle tonight.

Through green fog, red clouds,
Miles of bamboo,
To a hut where quiet lasts
Just let go and worries end
Stop to think and they're back
An unpolished mirror holds millions of shapes
A bell doesn't ring until it's rung
Your basic nature is the real Buddha
Not form or space nothing old or new.
- Stonehouse

Asking for presence.

Is God.

Realized.

The crisis of consciousness advances.

Make no mistake about it; if you do not find it now, you will repeat the same routines for myriad eons, a thousand times over again, following and picking up on objects that attract you.

We are no different from Shakyamuni Buddha. Today, in your various activities, what do you lack? The spiritual light coursing through your six senses has never been interrupted. If you can see in this way, you will simply be free of burdens all your life.
- Lin Chi (d 867

Awaken?

Or stay asleep?

It's anyone's guess as election time nears and the irrational perdures.

Of course there is a hell.

It's in all our stories.

Look in prisons. Look in the eyes of torturers and tortured. Look in the back rooms of pedophile's obsessions. Look in the anguished faces of abducted women forced to perform as sex-workers and men who have little humanity remaining them.

There is a hell. It resides in the decisions of governments to choose retaliatory war for acts only marginally connected with other governments which sit on geography laden with lusted after resources of minerals or oil or direct routes for transport of same.

Hell occupies offices of defense operatives in public and private sectors negotiating contracts for stinger missiles, 50 caliber munitions, fighter planes, unmanned drones, depleted uranium, and martial law.

Who marches into hell with a heavenly cause? How do mythic stories of heavenly or enlightened beings play in the world of pain and suffering promulgated as an economic strategy and national security priority?

Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze
Brings forth a myriad of blossoms!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

I can't help but marvel -- It is wonderful living in a place where the horror of war and terror of denied freedom is not felt personally with razor edged pain. It is a reminder that martial law, terror-as-tactic, and fear of reprisals for difference of opinion or belief, while not overtly sanctioned, is often hiding like a poisonous bite just out of sight, yet taking aim.

On mornings like this one -- when autumn air in Maine is cool at dawn and colors peek from mountain -- there is a lingering mood mingling with wood-stove smoke from house that says: Be grateful for the moment, and do not forget your brothers and sisters who need comfort in their suffering.

Story
by Sabine Miller

Tell me the one
about the sick girl —
not terminally ill, just years in bed
with this mysterious fever —
who hires a man
to murder her — you know,
so the family is spared
the blight of a suicide —
and the man comes
in the night, a strong man,
and nothing is spoken
—he takes the pillow
to her face — tell me
how he is haunted the rest
of his life — did he
or didn't he
do the right thing — tell me
how he is forgiven,
and marries, and has
2 daughters, and is happy —
no, tell me she doesn't
die, but is cured and
gives her life to God,
and becomes a hand-holder for
men on death row —
tell me the one where the man
falls in love with the girl
and can't do it, or
the girl falls in love
with a dog and calls
the man to tell him
not to come, or
how each sees their pain
mirrored in the other's eyes —
tell me how everyone is already
forgiven every story
they ever told themselves
about living
or not living —
tell me, oh tell me
the one where love wins, again
and again and again.
(--Poem, "Story" by Sabine Miller, from Circumference of Mercy. © Mountains and Rivers Press, 2010.)

Some say all of this existence is just story. Stories all the way down. Once, upon a time, until, the end.

Some others say that this existence is a testing ground or experiment in human quality for humans and a time of extended reach for other beings upward to a humanity seen as highest experience of sentience on precipice of an ascension beyond our ken.

Still others point out that earth is a statistical anomaly where the only life in the universe exists. Scientists and Ufologists have a different opinion -- but await further evidence.

Species have come and gone on earth.

Over 98% of documented species are now extinct, but extinction occurs at an uneven rate. Based on the fossil record, the background rate of extinctions on Earth is about two to five taxonomic families of marine invertebrates and vertebrates every million years. Marine fossils are mostly used to measure extinction rates because of their superior fossil record and stratigraphic range compared to land organisms.

Since life began on Earth, several major mass extinctions have significantly exceeded the background extinction rate. The most recent, the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event, occurred 65 million years ago, and has attracted more attention than all others as it marks the extinction of nearly all dinosaur species, which were the dominant animal class of the period. In the past 540 million years there have been five major events when over 50% of animal species died. There probably were mass extinctions in the Archean and Proterozoic Eons, but before the Phanerozoic there were no animals with hard body parts to leave a significant fossil record.

Estimates of the number of major mass extinctions in the last 540 million years range from as few as five to more than twenty. These differences stem from the threshold chosen for describing an extinction event as "major", and the data chosen to measure past diversity.

(--from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event)

Some feel the insignificance of life on earth has to be viewed in a larger context.

Earth at a Glance: Fast Facts

Age -- About 4.54 Billion years

Location -- In the Solar System, on the outer edge of the Milky Way, about 28,000 light years from the galactic center (Source: European Space Agency). It takes the solar system 225 million years to make one full trip around the Milky Way.
Closest Major Galaxy -- Andromeda, about 2.3 million light years away.

Age of the Milky Way -- About 13.6 Billion years

Home System -- Solar System (One Sun)

Earth's Sun -- A medium sized, yellow star. Scientists call it a G2 star. It is the largest object in the solar system and contains 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass. It is located in the center of the solar system.

Distance from the Sun (average) -- About 93.1 million miles (also one Astronomical Unit or AU). -- It is the third planet from the Sun.

Farthest Distance from the Sun: -- 94.5 million miles.

Closest Distance to the Sun -- 91.4 million miles.

Speed through Space (around the sun) -- 18.4 miles per second or about 67,000 miles per hour.

Solar Orbit -- It takes Earth 365.2422 days to orbit the sun. This is the basis for the year.

Rotational Speed -- About 1,070 miles per hour at the equator.

Rotational Time -- It takes the Earth 23 hours, 56 minutes and four (4) seconds to make one complete 360° rotation.

Rotational Tilt -- 23.5° on its axis, a straight line through the planet from the North Pole to the South Pole. The tilt is in relation to Earth's near circular orbit around the sun.

Gravitational Pull -- One Earth Unit. This measurement is relative to other objects in the universe. Earth's gravity is the force that pulls objects toward the center of the Earth and is measured by the Earth's mass. Gravity is what gives objects their weight. Without gravity, the Earth's spin would fling everything on the planet out into space! See Earth's Weight (Mass), below.

Atmospheric Pressure -- 14.7 pounds per square inch at sea level. This is the measure of force exerted on objects by the weight of the air. Many times gravity and atmospheric pressure are considered one and the same thing. Actually, they are not! In fact, it is the Earth's gravitational pull on the atmosphere that gives weight to the atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure decreases above sea level, and it increases below sea level.

Earth's Weight (Mass) -- 5.972 sextillion (1,000 trillion) metric tons. That's 5,972,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons! Actually, scientists prefer to refer to this measurement as the Earth's mass instead of weight since weight is the result of

Earth's gravitational pull on another object. And the Earth cannot pull on itself! As the Earth orbits the Sun, it is weightless. If the Earth were placed on the Sun, it would weigh more than if it were placed on Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system but much smaller than the sun. Yet, Earth (or any other object for that matter) would have the same mass regardless of where it is located.

(--from Ecology.com, http://ecology.com/features/earthataglance/youarehere.html

Meanwhile, the black and white cat is bothered by fleas. The white and black dog plays with green tennis ball. Brown leaves lay curled on crushed gray stone in front of barn doors.

We celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving yesterday with turkey, potatoes, and squash after canoeing Megunticook Lake into headwinds forcing us to turn and run into quiet cove where someone lay on floating dock curious about our appearance.

One thing I know is -- I am here.

For now.

And that suffices.

Hell be damned!

We long for peace and freedom for every species.

And if heaven has any cogency, let it be among and within us here and now.

Tell the story of the cherry tree and the spring breeze.

A heavenly myriadic blossoming!

There is so little we can do about injustice in the world.

We can be just. We can be loving.

Just a little.

It's a beginning.

You sit. You breathe. Just that.

But, why?

The Paradoxical Commandments

People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.

If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.

If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies.
Succeed anyway.

The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway.

The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds.
Think big anyway.

People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs.
Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.

People really need help but may attack you if you do help them.
Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
(Copyright Kent M. Keith 1968, renewed 2001)

We're in this together.

As soon as everyone realizes this, the better things will be.

It's a great illusion, separateness.

Be done with it.

Bewith one another.

Capitalism is not the answer.

Compassion is.

Help in disguise

When people are unsympathetic to you, and the world does not go as you wish, this should be a help to detachment of feelings from the repetitious cycle of becoming and decay, gaining and losing.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

Catching people out is not the answer.

Correct relationship is.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.
(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

First fire in wood stove.

"Two cord," I leave message on machine.

It really is -- compassion and correct relationship -- I know now.

Bewith.

It's a good word. A marriage of sorts. 'Be' takes 'with' for loving spouse. A new relationship.

If bewith is a new name, its pronounciation sheds light on older use of it when once seemingly stuck in duality. But now not.

"The Lord bewith you." Dominus vobiscum.

"Peace bewith you." Pax tecum.

Et cum spiritu tuo. "And with your every breath, bewith what is whole."

A new hearing of one of the many names sounding God.

John Fowles began his novel Daniel Martin (1977) with:

WHOLE SIGHT; OR ALL THE REST IS DESOLATION.

To be, seen whole, is great, consolation.

Bewith.

Bless you!

On further reflection, hermits neither go away nor send away.

Nothing needs to be added; nothing needs to be taken away.

Everything and everyone is already 100%. To be perfectly how and what and as we are takes no effort and requires no additions or subtractions.

Would you believe it?

I must strain to see
The few buds this old tree
Labored to open;
In pathos we’re one, and I wonder
How many more springs we'll meet here.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

If we let go what we are not, if we let go what we are, we begin to realize that right here, right now, everything is being revealed as it is. Earth, heavens, universe, and all sharing dwelling therein and thereupon.

When we think of or call upon God we place ourselves in the joyful expectation and loving gaze of the one wherewith we live and breathe and have our being.

To say that I am made in the image of God is to say that Love is the reason for my existence, for God is love. Love is my true identity. Selflessness is my true self. Love is my true character. Love is my name.

If, therefore, I do anything or say anything or know anything that is not purely for the love of God, it cannot give me peace, or rest, or fulfillment, or joy.

To find love I must enter into the sanctuary where it is hidden, which is the mystery of God.

(-- pp.60-61 in New Seeds of Contemplation (1961) -- from Thomas Merton, A Book of Hours, ed. Kathleen Deignan, c.2007)

The white Border Collie enters zendo, bows & stretches (as he did after being blessed by kind man in Bucksport on Francis' Day), sits on my folded right leg on zabuton, revealing again the reality of mystery life and presence.

In this silence. in this gusty morning after heavy rain, leaves are sodden on soaked ground -- nothing needs to be added, nothing needs to be taken away.

Back in the house, Rokpa walks around with half biscuit in mouth, torn between burying it or eating it. He relents, jumps to couch, snuggles in, dozes.

We eat Farina with dried cherries and Greek yogurt. Sip coffee and tea.

Look out at gray day.

Sense God to be everywhere and nowhere else.

Bruno knew how to be a hermit. Tell them all to go away. Then, he did.

So few Christians want the correct relationship with God.

Perhaps it might better be called no-relationship with God.

"With God" is the only correct relationship. So many Christians want, instead, something perfect, sinless, pure. They do not yet understand that being-with God is, in itself, the way without anything other.

Learned friends,
Our self nature, Bodhi
Is fundamentally pure
And clean.
Use only this mind
Of yours for direct
Understanding and
Attainment of Buddhahood.
- Altar Sutra

There is nothing other with God.

Our usual concept of relationship suggests something other to be in relation with. That's where we lose our balance.

Let's say it this way: God is "with-us." "With-us" is God. The word 'with' does not mean next to. 'With' means in the middle of.

Be in the middle of God. God is in our middle. God is the between of no others. Center and core of everything without end.

This is incarnational. This matters. This is the self-realization of reality itself.

God is nowhere else.

If you think there is no God, there is no God.

But if you feel all alone, then you feel the close and intimate reality that some call God.

That close and intimate emptiness is what Buddhists call Shunyata, no-thingness. It is what Christians call being-with God, no-other God.

Someone asks why we want to know God.

Someone answers because it is the way we are.

Two peanut butter cookies later, it is time for bed.

Peace and what is good!

Francis said something about preaching always taking place, and sometimes words are used.

It is our every movement that must resound the sweet presence of what is most loving and most true.

For this we pray today.

Rokpa's birthday, he turns 3 today. On the feast of Francis. Pretty nice coincidence.

At Long Pond on Mount Desert Island as late afternoon quiets into dusk, we paddle between mountains.

Francis is half the inspiration of the hermitage. Dogen, the second half. Each thing and each being itself is the whole of it.

Relationship is the whole of it, not the attempt to make the parts fit together. Nothing fits. Only the relationship transcends and incorporates.

We are so fortunate to celebrate the day -- eucharist in Bucksport, hiking Flying Mountain at Southwest Harbor, canoeing with two Loons in silence.

Many paths lead from
The foot of the mountain,
But at the peak
We all gaze at the
Single bright moon.

--Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Each is all. Is peace! Is good!

May true poverty and simplicity dwell in such perfect joy.