We beat the rain and snow home. Myles has cooked meal for travelers. Oxygen set up. Room prepared. We toast with water our seven hour completed transition from Massachusetts to Maine.

Odd weather for October.

Two methods enable us to rectify the heart:
The first is study,
Enriching our mind through practice
And discipline; training, studying
Until an inner light begins to grow within.
This seed of consiousness,
The sages teach, should be nourished
And kept in silence.
The second is the cultivation of virtue.
A sincere student discovers the
Workings of Tao by overcoming all
Manner of temptation.
Hordes of riches are outweighed in
Merit by a single word, Virtue.
- Loy Ching-yuen 1879-1960's

One can only weather weather.

Teeshirt when hot; sweater when cold.

Generator at ready.

Moving day put off until tomorrow. Another hospital scan. The drone of oxygen machine.

Saskia's mom will accompany us to Maine for her convalescence.

"I'm not going to be walking outside, why are you packing my boots?" she declares and asks.

Ha! Maybe we should pack her work gloves and cross country skis too!

October 28. Day of shifting awareness.

Simply, Friday, at the end of October, at the beginning (always) of new life, new invitations to see.

Gott sei dank!

Preface: What is the Landscape of Eucharist?

What is happening with the enactment of the Eucharist?
1. Is it the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ?
2. Is it something else, something about you and me, something that has to be both remembered and longed for?

Could be #1.

Is #2.

What to remember? What is longed for?

If once there was only "one" without the dividing and fragmenting that came naturally with the development of consciousness and mind, then perhaps we are attempting to "get back to the garden" -- return to the one.

If, alternatively, we are coming to see that long perceived ordinary dualities of rational consciousness are no longer adequate to advance us into a desired realm of unity and wholeness, some different way of approaching what is longed for is needed.

At the Mass (the Eucharist) we are invited to consider numbers 1 & 2 as non-competing possibilities.

1. If transubstantiation is looked at from a non-dualistic eye, one substance and another substance are not two substances. One is, so to speak, the other. Thus, the historical person Jesus of Nazareth is bread and wine, is of the same being with the elements of sun and earth, wheat and grape, word and thought, as well as the underlying wholeness of the entire cosmos, seen and unseen, known and unknown, felt and unfelt.
2. If the collective longings of the human being-in-the-world, as well as all the feeling/conscious/existing additional beings also here in this phenomenal and epiphenomenal world, were to be extrapolated from the movements, behaviors, and seeming inclinations of each, we would observe the desire for light, warmth, security, preservation, continuance, permission to be, right connectives, sustenance and harmony.

Conclusion: Eucharist, which translates from the Greek as "grateful/gracious offer," is a practice of remembering and longing for what we are. What we are is non-separate wholeness which does not exclude anything and includes everything.

Perhaps the language of the Christian metaphor, if seen and understood in a particular way, indicates this:
A) sin is taken away -- meaning that lseparation, the perception of separation, and behaviors related to believing in separation, are no longer the sole or even primary operating condition of the mind;
B. we are forgiven the very natural mistake of trying to obtain something at the expense of another -- meaning that treating others as objects for our use, or unworthy of respect, or not in our "tribe," not our kind, not as good as, not true, not valuable enough to love, etc etc, is an unfortunate conditioning that we are not aware of, or if aware, have not actively attempted to overcome;
C) Innocence, not knowing, is our continuing way of being in this world. We do not know. Some believe or have faith and claim this as a knowing, and perhaps it is, for them. Still, we are always innocent in that we do not know what the whole reality of life, cosmos, and existence is. We do not have a clear and unambiguous grasp of what is meant by "God" -- while at the same time longing for, praying to, and taking comfort in, this God.
D) Finally, what we call Christ-Reality or Christ-Mind is the metaphor of wholeness, unconditional love, safe passage into the unknown, beloved presence, and here-for-us, here-with-us, even here-as-us in this particular manifestation of the entire realm of What-Is. We are continuously in the process of moving-through, looking-as, and acting-with this metaphor of God-With-Us which is the heart of the story.

Epilogue: The phrase "with us" or "with you" is one of the holiest phrases of our language. It is holy in that it resonates both the remembrance and longing associated with the gracefulness and gratefulness we are invited to offer and capable of offering one to another.

The landscape is the landscape.

Do you wish? To see what is there?

No wish. See what is there.

Leaves blow in wind tumbling Ragged Mountain.

Innocence is our better nature.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm

When I am not innocent I try to forget what I know.

Becoming marked by time.

Used.

Well.

We like to be informed.

In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

That's because outside of form, in the formless, sleep is not something else we do -- rather, we are sleep.

There would not be a 'me' out-formed.

Keep me informed about what you see.

I don't have an outside chance of seeing myself.

We're all ok. No excuses. No explanations. No apologies. We're all ok.

Questions are good. Just don't expect answers. Just listen to the silence responding with breath and presence.

Happy Birthday Dad!

What to do about stories?

Story
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.)

Tell them. Let them be heard.

They, too, are only passing through.

If the kingdom of heaven is between us, we'd best keep the gate open.

Imagine there's no heaven...elsewhere.

In the center of our being is a point of nothingness
which is untouched by sin and by illusion,

a point of pure truth,
a point or spark which belongs entirely to God,
which is never at our disposal,
from which God disposes of our lives,
which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind
or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty
is the pure glory of God in us.
[Merton says] It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.
It is in everybody, and if we could see it
we would see these billions of points of light
coming together in the face and blaze of a sun
that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. [says Merton]
It is only given.
But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
                         (--by Thomas Merton, from Conjectures of Guilty Bystander, p.158)

Here or nowhere.

Here or now here.

I like this point of view!

Who is it lives our life while we are busy doing something else?

We have got to learn to pay attention.

Presence is the great revelation.

The words go: "Truly I say to you - Gather in my name I am with you." (Matt. 18: 19)

These words stay with me. All day.

The name of the ineffable is: "I am with you."

Prosit!

I love these rainy days.

Staying at my desk. Organizing things.

Beyond silence, not much.

Everyone.

Everything.

All at on(c)e!

Thank you!

Who?

There is a bother about Being.

“Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself.”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

We speak the world into Being as did our recollection of God speaking the world into Being.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
--Martin Heidegger

Think about becoming yourself.

Say it: I am and aim to be myself.

God knows these words.

Though, God seems silent these days.

Perhaps we only see what our imagination wants to see. If a man wishes to starve himself to death, he will see death slowly eat away his body.

I prefer life eating with my body.

Gathering firewood I enter mountain depths
Mountain depths rising creek beyond creek
Choked with the timbers of bridges in ruins.
Vines tumble low, tangled over cragged paths,
And at dusk, scarce people grow scarcer still.
Mountain wind sweeping through simple robes,
My chant steady, I shoulder a light bundle,
Watch smoke drift across open country home.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-74o)

Walking road after twilight by Aldemere Farm I imagine I am simply alive walking with death.

Raccoon tries it's hand on strapped barrels with bird feeders secured inside.

According to some calculation there are a mere 18 days to mutate consciousness and make the leap into something, let's say, more...present.

Don't stave yourself.

Eat!

Or, Don't starve yourself.

Stay intact.

The unborn formless brackets the born form. Here we are in form, and we will return to the formless.

Ma (間) is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as "gap", "space", "pause" or "the space between two structural parts."[1][2][3][4] The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, ma, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.
Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval.[5]
(Wikipedia)

I will stop worrying about that which follows the born form.

It is divine emptiness.

Toward which I now fall asleep.

Guest arrives to stay in bookshed/retreat.

I row beyond Curtis Island this sunny very warm October day after morning meditation practice. In evening when bright moon illuminates road and snow bowl field I walk for an hour in the lingering warm moonlight beside Hosmer Pond. Then listen to Compline in cabin sitting in stillness as the Shema is recited on this holy day.

The world holds beauty and sorrow in wide embrace.

Climbing Green-Cliff Mountain

Taking a little food, a light walking-stick,
I wander up to my home in quiet mystery,
The path along streams winding far away
Onto ridgetops, no end to this wonder at
Slow waters silent in their frozen beauty
And bamboo glistening at heart with frost,
Cascades scattering a confusion of spray
And broad forests crowding distant cliffs.

Thinking it's moonrise I see in the west
And sunset I'm watching blaze in the east,
I hike on until dark, then linger out night
Sheltered away in deep expanses of shadow.

Immune to high importance: that's renown.
Walk humbly and it's all promise in beauty,
For in quiet mystery the way runs smooth,
Ascending remote heights beyond compare.

Utter tranquility, the distinction between
"Yes this" and "no that" lost, I embrace primal
Unity, thought and silence woven together,
That deep healing where we venture forth.
- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433)

When we are quiet there is no one not visiting in attendance to our receptive hospitality. Maybe that explains why we shun silence.

Tonight, no shunning.

Every one is here.

As God is.

Here.

Listen!

The call to prayer.

Let's be at one. It is the day of at-one-ment.

It's objective and it's scientific.

You can call it God if you want, but you don’t have to. Quantum consciousness will do. Nonlocality, tangled hierarchy, and discontinuity: these signatures of quantum consciousness have been independently verified by leading researchers worldwide. This experimental data and its conclusions inform us that it is the mistaken materialist view that is at the center of most of our worlds problems today. To address these problems, we now have a science of spirituality that is fully verifiable and objective.
(--Amit Goswami, PhD, Quantum Physicist)

As a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, Pagan, Atheist, Agnostic, all the above/none of the above -- I greet the night, the day, and the handing off of one to the other with nothing lost, nothing gained. As it is -- all and each in each and all.

It's time to walk our talk.

More than just theory, quantum activism is the moral compass of quantum physics that helps us to actually transform our lives and society.

’So let’s walk our talk, and make brain circuits of positive emotions. We just do it. We practice. Let some of us be good, do good. Be with God some of the time, be in the ego some of the time, and let the dance generate creative acts of transformation. With this resolution, with this objective in mind, I invite you to become Quantum Activists.’
(--Amit Goswami, http://www.amitgoswami.org/)

Morning in prison talking the moral conundrums of honoring life. Afternoon with circle of 80/90 year old companions reading poetry and marvelling at the revelations and disguises of words.

I am so grateful.

More than that.

I've eaten too many cookies.