From emergency room to room 31. Julianne, the nurse, is admitting Erika after exhaustion and low blood count, nausea, and possible mild heart attack two days ago.

It nears midnight. It grows late. An extra hour will grace the night.

Paying a visit to Monk Yung

A monk's robe hangs in a retreat in the hills.
Outside the window I find no one but passing birds.
Dusk has come up halfway down the mountain road;
Then I hear the sound of the spring
Cling to the green-tinted slope.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

Outside the hospital window, beyond and through the dark, is an ocean under growing moonlight.

At 23:15 the most recent vitals were taken.

At meditation practice sitting this morning short sentences were broken in half. I wondered: "Why am I doing this." "What am I doing here."

Then they broke:
"Why am I?"
"Doing this!"

And:
"What am I?"
"Doing here!"

Reading Karen Maezen Miller, she speaks of earth as the altar of impermanence.

I bow to this altar.

Just for now.

"Thank you," says the tired, weakened woman just before 2am as she settles back into bed.

"I had nothing else to do," I say, "you're welcome!".

Space is enfolded in this way with these words.

Do try to let time go.

It is no longer needed.

All Souls know this.

Not worth a glance, not a look. Maybe not giving harm-workers the time of day.

Revenge

At times ... I wish
I could meet in a duel
the man who killed my father
and razed our home,
expelling me
into
a narrow country.
And if he killed me,
I'd rest at last,
and if I were ready—
I would take my revenge!

*

But if it came to light,
when my rival appeared,
that he had a mother
waiting for him,
or a father who'd put
his right hand over
the heart's place in his chest
whenever his son was late
even by just a quarter-hour
for a meeting they'd set—
then I would not kill him,
even if I could.

*

Likewise ... I
would not murder him
if it were soon made clear
that he had a brother or sisters
who loved him and constantly longed to see him.
Or if he had a wife to greet him
and children who
couldn't bear his absence
and whom his gifts would thrill.
Or if he had
friends or companions,
neighbours he knew
or allies from prison
or a hospital room,
or classmates from his school ...
asking about him
and sending him regards.

*

But if he turned
out to be on his own—
cut off like a branch from a tree—
without a mother or father,
with neither a brother nor sister,
wifeless, without a child,
and without kin or neighbours or friends,
colleagues or companions,
then I'd add not a thing to his pain
within that aloneness—
not the torment of death,
and not the sorrow of passing away.
Instead I'd be content
to ignore him when I passed him by
on the street—as I
convinced myself
that paying him no attention
in itself was a kind of revenge.

(Poem by Taha Muhammad Ali, translated by Peter Cole, Yahya Hijazi and Gabriel Levin, Nazareth)

Forgive me my cruelty. I did not look at you.

That's what saints do. They look. Not turning away.

All of them. They looked.

Their seeing is honored today.

If I die tonight I will have nothing more to say about the nothing more I have to say.

Outwardly go along
With the flow,
While inwardly keeping
Your true nature.
Then your eyes and ears
Will not be dazzled,
Your thoughts will not
Be confused,
While the spirit within you
Will expand greatly to roam
In the realm of absolute purity.
- Huai-nan-tzuI

It escapes me why anyone wishes to live longer than any one day in their lives.

I'm alive still because it is that one day.

It is always that one day.

Always will be.

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?