The quiet life.

Grasses bury the river bank,
Rain darkens the village;
The temple is lost in tall bamboo
I can't find the gate.
They're gathering wood and brewing herbs
I'm sorry a monk is sick;
They've swept the ground and burned incense
It cleans my spirit.
Farm work not finished, though we're into Little Snow;
Lamps lit before the Buddha,
Signal of dusk
Lately I've developed a taste for the quiet life.
I think how we could talk together
Through the night.
- Su Tung-p'o (1072)

It cleans my spirit.

We like the thought Jesus resurrected.

It is comforting to think the absurdity and treachery of modern times will not remain the reality once we learn to transcend illusory limitations and include the diversity of difference.

A cold evening in my empty room;
Time flows by like the incense smoke arising.
Outside my door,
A thousand stalks of bamboo,
Above my bed, how many books?
The moon has come to whiten
Half my window,
The only sound in any direction
Is the singing of insects.
In this there is boundless feeling,
But as I encounter it,
There are no words.
- Ryokan

Conveyance.

Think conveyance.

Beyond boundaries.

You are not an effect.

You are the cause of whatever you do next.

Happiness follows this cause .

Questioning God.

Maybe that response is to the question "Is there a God?"

If one can release the mind
That desires merit and fame,
Wealth and distinction,
He will be able to avoid the ordinary.
If one can release the mind
That desires the Way and its virtue,
Humanity and righteousness,
He will, for the first time,
Be able to join the sages.
- Hung Ying-ming

God is what is questioning itself.

Releasing the mind

Dull and slow to believe.

Believe what?

Today is Tuesday.

Let's start there.

Sounds of waking guests and passers through.

Easter Monday Morning Haiku

look -- suffering death
resurrection with new light --
this profound practice

There are no commas between "suffering death resurrection."

One body at a time.

Touched and let go.

Christ rises here!

At end of Vigil/Morning Easter Practice in chapel/zendo, this poem completes our meditation:

Sunrise

You can
die for it–
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
–Poem by Mary Oliver

Exsultet!

Our present, the gift, is With-Us!

Easter Meditation at Meetingbrook

...

Out of Darkness:

Light, Word, Water, Bread

…………..

We light the candles -- Christ the Light of awakened heart and mind

...

We listen to some stories of how we’ve wandered

...

We invite the water of Life to wash over us and enter us

...

We break bread, remember Christ, eat and become this reality

We take wine, remember Christ, drink and become this reality

...

We reflect on what we long for on this new morning, new day, new life

…

Out of darkness lead us to your light

From illusion, free us for your truth

Still our stormy minds, and

Calm all our striving

Present to us... With Life... Make Us One

(--from denis rackley retreat, 1980)

We begin again.

Haiku

(Between Friday & Sunday)

Holy Saturday:

Nothing is happening here --

Mist soaks still mountain

(23april2011)

Potter's Field took in strangers. A final resting place for the poor, indigent, and friendless.

When divine egolessness is at play, even questionable transactions find beneficial outcomes.

Be at rest with peace, Judas.

Christ is sleeping and will wake in the concretion of the Spirit.

Through this dark time.

Communion. Building together. One with.

It is Thursday of Remembrance.

Having realized true entrusting
Majestic and boundless
By the working of
Unhindered Light,
The ice of blind passion
Melts without fail
To instantly become
The water of enlightenment.
- Shinran

Passover meal, obedience, bread, wine.

Because he has given freedom to the destitute who called to him,
to the poor, whom no-one will hear.
He will spare the poor and the needy,
he will keep their lives safe.
He will rescue their lives from oppression and violence,
their blood will be precious in his sight.
(--from Psalm 71)

Send me away.

Empty.

Waco, Oklahoma City, New York, D.C., Baghdad, Kandahar.

The wagers of war carve distinct niches.

Buddhas know beings' minds,
Their natures each different;
According to what they need to be freed,
Thus do the Buddhas teach.
To the stingy they praise giving,
To the immoral they praise ethics;
To the angry they praise tolerance,
To the lazy they praise effort.
- Avatamsaka Sutra

Reading a Libertarian view. Here's a hard opening paragraph:

"The Davidian cult in Waco was dealt with by armored vehicles," remarked Muammar Gaddafi in February, defending his own crackdowns in light of the U.S. government’s. April 19 marks eighteen years since the end of the Waco siege and exactly one month since Obama began bombing Libya. Now that the federal government is again shedding blood in the name of humanitarianism, we might reflect on how it obtains legitimacy for its most brazen acts of violence.
(from, From Waco to Libya: 18 Years of Humanitarian Mass Murder, by Anthony Gregory)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory210.html

That and "Why the Left Won't Stop the Wars" make upsetting reading. http://www.lewrockwell.com/gregory/gregory209.html

The hobo at his campfire focuses on one thing.

To the lovers of war the Buddhas speak about hot dogs and universal love.

We create the world in our image.

War this Holy Week is between those embodying Christ Mind and those who think Jesus is a mercenary returning to convert or kill the Jews, Muslims, Pagans, Women, and Catholics. It's a nasty business, a simple-minded religious zealotry masquerading as Civil Servant Representatives. It is a war. Jesus is fodder.

As for no-mind, how could it require that the mind be darkened and put to no use? Instead, no-mind resembles a bright mirror that reflects things: does it have a mind? You should know that all living creatures first had no-mind. Their mind and body were originally still. Being still, they were in constant use. Being in constant use, they remained still. They reflected and distinguished whatever situation they encountered, and what they reflected was always the true nature. It is not that one must have a mind before one can be of use. But most living things do not understand that their mind is first still, and foolishly they scheme to have a mind…
- Taisho Tripitaka

I'm staying close to earth this year.

The pageantry doesn't attract.

I'm staying with water, fire, air, and soil.

I'm betting my soul on care and compassion.

I'll leave the grandiose politics of divine and satanic forces to those with no imagination for decency and simplicity.

Surely some treachery is afoot!

Someone asked: Just why did they make such a fuss when Jesus entered Jerusalem?

Maybe it was because they’d not seen someone without ego before.

But then they realized it was them that needed to be free from ego, that it wasn’t enough to delight in someone else's liberation.

For the future life,
"Namu Amida Butsu" is sufficient;
Beyond this you need have no concern.
Shingon monks follow the practice of incantation;
Dew, bestowed upon the grasses
Of the autumn fields,
Gradually soaks in the reflection of the moon.
Zen monks are captivated by the autumn moon
And springtime blossoms;
But when satori comes,
There's no need for spring or fall.
- Gocho (1749-1835)

Ego drives this country & this world these days. ‘My’ needs, ‘my’ wants, ‘my’ accomplishments. There’s no room for anyone else in the crowded space of ego-self.

The soul loves to meditate, for in contact with the Spirit lies its greatest joy. If, then you experience mental resistance during meditation, remember that reluctance to meditate comes from the ego; it doesn't belong to the soul.
(--Paramahansa Yogananda)

Soul, mind, consciousness -- let’s find them.

Holy Week isn’t a memorial of a time gone by. No mausoleum of memory.

No, it is the step forward into now where everything is again and again up for grabs.

I’ll go for the donkey man.

Riding in without ego.

A taste of freedom.

If one thing is everything, what is the one thing?

The wind blows hard outside the window tonight.

Illusion and enlightenment depend on each other,
Principle and actuality are ultimately the same
All day long, sutras without words,
Through the night, Zen without sitting.
Warblers sing in the willow grove
By the river,
A village dog barks at the moon.
I have no one to share my feelings
So I just write what is in my heart.
- Ryokan

Someone says someone close to them has died and they have lost interest in living. I hear that.

No man is an island

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

(Poem by John Donne)

We die when someone close dies. Most people pretend it's not so. But it is.

How do we go on once we realize we, too, have died?

There's the mystery!

Tell me when you find out.

And I'll share it with this person.

Who will, I'm sure, be grateful to know.

Maybe, only poetry matters.

Poem
BY MURIEL RUKEYSER

I lived in the first century of world wars.
Most mornings I would be more or less insane,
The newspapers would arrive with their careless stories,
The news would pour out of various devices
Interrupted by attempts to sell products to the unseen.
I would call my friends on other devices;
They would be more or less mad for similar reasons.
Slowly I would get to pen and paper,
Make my poems for others unseen and unborn.
In the day I would be reminded of those men and women,
Brave, setting up signals across vast distances,
Considering a nameless way of living, of almost unimagined values.
As the lights darkened, as the lights of night brightened,
We would try to imagine them, try to find each other,
To construct peace, to make love, to reconcile
Waking with sleeping, ourselves with each other,
Ourselves with ourselves. We would try by any means
To reach the limits of ourselves, to reach beyond ourselves,
To let go the means, to wake.

I lived in the first century of these wars.

(--Muriel Rukeyser, “Poem” from The Speed of Darkness. Copyright © 1968 by Muriel Rukeyser)

If we want to wake.

Try poetry.

_/\_ be-with...one-another_/\_

It's a silly life, being a hermit-in-the-world.

There's really nothing to it.

Watched “Mindwalk” in class.

It is like how a goldsmith must smelt ore to obtain gold before he can fashion it into implements for use. If you have a body, you have bodily impediments. And if you have bodily impediments, your dharma body is obscured by your outer shell. If you have a heart, you have impediments of the heart. And if you have impediments of the heart, your true wisdom will be obscured by your thinking and apprehensions.
- Taisho Tripitaka

Thomas said at end: “Life feels Itself.”

Breath, that’s what I think ‘mind’ is.

Try not to lose it.

John Searle says computers cannot think. He would agree with Krisnamurti -- Calculate, yes; contemplate no.

Listen to me for a second about the effects
Of a certain medicine
The pill I'm talking about is called
Penetrating One's Nature and Becoming a Buddha
Chew it well, chew it well
Won't you take my pill?
- Hakuin (1685-1769)

In my mind everyone looks as they did forty, fifty years ago. The mind is like that. It doesn't age. Why then should anyone kept in mind age?

A poet in Belfast, Jacob Fricke, ends a poem with: "No, Don't ever let your mind go to your head."

For forty years.

Wandering.

I have wondered.

I live quietly with other temple monks,
Get up at dawn to chant Namu.
The valley stream transcends clamor and stillness,
Mountain clouds know nothing
Of being or nonbeing.
Room a half a span wide,
Empty enough to hang a bell in;
Gruel in a gourd bowl
That might be left dangling.
And since I came here, what have I done?
"Bathed in the Yi, enjoyed the breeze
In the rain altars."
- Gensei (1623-1668)

What it was.

To say.

"Life Together."

As if there was a way to be.

Apart.

As is my wont.

This breath.

Is my first.

Buddha, in his bodhisattva stage,
Made the universal vow:
When beings hear my name
And think on me
I will come and welcome them.
Not discriminating at all between
The poor and the rich and the well born,
Not discriminating between the
Inferior and highly gifted;
Not choosing the learned
And those who uphold pure precepts.
Not rejecting those who break precepts
And whose evil karma is profound,
Solely making beings turn about
And abundantly say the name,
I can make bits of rubble
Change into gold.
- Tz'u-min ( 8th century) DailyZen

This breath.

Is my last.

First and last are silly concepts.

There is only this breath.