What have I? Not learned: yet

The insight was that the community is the great teacher. This includes all sentient beings, the whole of the cosmos, all that is, known and unknown. A pretty interesting zen master, guru, and mystic presence to have as teacher, eh?

All I can do is listen, accept, internalize, and respond. (L.a.i.r.) What is "lair" and where am I in it?

lair   [lair]
noun
1. a den or resting place of a wild animal: The cougar retired to its lair.
2. a secluded or hidden place, especially a secret retreat or base of operations; a hideout or hideaway: a pirate's lair.
3. British . a place in which to lie or rest; a bed.
verb (used with object)
4. to place in a lair.
5. to serve as a lair for.
(--from Dictionary.com)

What is in me? What is in the world? What's the difference?

What have I not learned yet?

Totality is everything that is happening in your own body/mind and everything that is not happening in your body/mind. Embodiment is the only thing that we can find. That's why trying to fix the universe by what we know is ludicrous, because what we don't know is constantly folding into the known. This is what manifestation is. We become enamored with the manifestation, forgetting that it is already gone and what is next, which is the unknown, is now expressing. All we can see is the known -- a ghost image that has nothing to do with what is next.
So in coming to the end of the spiritual search, we actually come to the beginning of the exploration of consciousness. This is not a path of looking or finding; it is not negating the thought-process or changing anything. It is the exploration of the manifestation and embodiment of totality, which is expressing itself in what is next after now, in my body, in my life, in my relationship, in all the forms and expressions that are apparent and all the forms and expressions that are not.
(p.42, in What's Next After Now, Post-Spirituality and the Creative Life, by Steven Harrison, c.2005)

The Tibetan prayer flags are sheer against barn siding.

Bach chorale fills morning kitchen.

Understanding Emptiness

Every moment of experience is contingent on a vast complex of myriad conditions. Nothing exists in and of itself as 'this' or 'that,' 'self' or 'other.' Everything is what it is only in relation to what it is not.
(-from, Stephen Batchelor, "Nagarjuna's Verses from the Center" -- Tricycle Magazine)

I don't think I am afraid of what is next.

I don't think. I am a-frayed of what is. Next...

the eyes see nothing; doing

Some think there's too much said about enlightenment. I agree. Except that it's like commenting on the weather. If you don't say anything about the weather, there's still weather.

Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon. Each reflection, however long or short it's duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

I read slowly. And if I like a novel, slower still. These are these lines referring to protagonist, Mohammad Khan, architect:

Critics and historians credited him with helping to shift the aesthetic of the Middle East. "Even in a mosque you should feel yourself in a garden," he had told one interviewer. "Nothing between you and God."
(--p.287 of novel,The Submission, by Amy Waldman)

The line jumps out: "Nothing between you and God." And I think: maybe that's why so many feel uncomfortable with the notion of "nothing," because that is all that exists between you and God. And to realize God you have to move through nothing.

It asks the question: Do I want, really, to realize God?

Then again: Will "nothing" engulf and consume me?

If I submit, what will be left to be aware I have made submission?

"Gib deine Schönheit immer hin"

There are days when something striking and poignant arises. Eye and ear are grateful recipients.


Unpacking and shelving two dozen boxes of books from the house library of Saskia's mom and dad remind me I should have paid more attention the two years of German studied the better part of a half century ago.


I felt confident after the pattern drill, Mutter, wir haben post -- (Mother, we have mail). I stare with dull forgetfulness at titles such as Dostojewskij, sein Leben, sein Werk, sein Vermachtnis (Quellen und Studien zur russischen Geistesgeschichte) (German Edition)  or  Bildnis und Begriff - Die Rrepräsentationsproblematik in Max Frischs Roman "Stiller" (German Edition).


I did, however, memorize the Greek alphabet in what seemed like quick dispatch. I also set a good pick for Bob and Jon when the fast break failed to happen.


One of the pieces out of the haul box at end of day was KOVÁCS MARGIT MÚZEUM, SZENTENDRE. This museum booklet, with its photographs of figurines and sculptures immediately charmed. The pages gave way to decades of tiredness and separated with each turning.

#136, HALOTTI BESZED, 1970 (Trauerrede, a funeral oration. eulogy.)

#70, ANYAM, 1951 (Meine Mutter, my mother)

#117, ANGYALI  UDVOZLET, 1968, 

(Die Verkündigung, The Annunciation)

 The curve of surprise! The pathos of visage! The deflation of loss! 

This Gyűjtemény (Hungarian, for 'Collection') was housed in the Pest County Museums Directorate in Szentendre, where in 1972 she donated the majority of her work. Margit Kovács was born in Győr, Hungary on 30 November 1902 and died in Budapest on 4 June 1977. It was on the 25th anniversary of her death that I found her work. Dare call it coincidence! Did Saskia's mother and father visit the museum? Of course, the notation over "Ex Libris, Erica Huising" in Will's handwriting says "Szentendre, 1979."

While looking at these photographs I listen to "Wo gehest du hin?" by J.S. Bach (BMV166, 8fm) performed by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestre and Choir, Ton Koopman, soloist. 

I am surrounded by late afternoon slanting sunlight wending through the sluice between Ragged Mountain and Bald Mountain. Hayden's Sonata #1 in F major. adagio e sostenuto, sends violin strains through deepening dusk green.

INITIALE. 

Gib deine Schönheit immer hin 

ohne rechnen und reden 

Du schweigst. Sie sagt für dich: Ich bin. 

Und kommt in tausendfachem Sinn, 

kommt endlich über jeden.

(--Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke)

Quiet. 

Beckoning.

Mu; If the sangha is the next great teacher

What you have to do is listen, accept, internalize, and respond.

And sit zazen.

Until the cows come home.

Metaphor tells us; many stories

The dark wet ground mountainside green ferns glow in gray evening light.

Dewdrop,
The gaudy beauty of this world
Has no attraction for me;
My closest friends are
Mountains and rivers,
Clouds swallow up my shadow
As I walk along,
When I sit on cliffs,
Birds soar overhead.
Wearing snowy straw sandals,
I visit cold villages.
Go as deep as you can into life,
And you will be able to let go
Of even blossoms.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Mutatis mutandis, things being changed that have to be changed -- human heart, head, and hand crave harmony.

Go as deep into life as you can.

It is all story.

Easy is as easy does

The hardest lesson is coming to terms with dark in light and light in dark. It's not one or the other. Both are entwined.

When the mind's as is,
Circumstances also are as is.
There's no real and also no unreal.
Giving no heed to existence,
You're neither saint nor sage, just
An ordinary person who has settled his affairs.
Easy, so easy…
- Layman P'ang (740-808)

Where everything is in the same place, it's not a matter of amputation. It's a matter of navigation. How find your way to where you want to go and not slam into the hazards on left and right?

Prayer helps. Contemplation helps.

Settle your affairs!

Humbling haiku

When a gift is given, we are grateful.

Today, we compose this haiku for someone's kindness:

blue earth sphere floating
                      empty black space
just there
your kindness
has roots  

(wfh/nunc ipsum)

Earth in it's wandering meander through a very large expanse -- a breathtaking and breathgiving gift!

there really is no choice

If you ask nicely and say the right words you can get what you want. It's magical thinking.

This matter does not depend on being a male or female,
nor on being noble or a commoner.
If you once break through,
you are shoulder to shoulder with the Buddha.
- Ta-hui

On the other hand, if you keep quiet, wait for the inevitable to occur, you watch what you need walk through the door.

It's no thought at all.

What gives in us

Thought of Caryll Houselander at conversation tonight.

Simplicity is not — as so many think, and, alas, teach — silliness. Simplicity means not being complicated, not being double in any way, not deluding oneself or anyone else. The first exercise in simplicity is to accept oneself as one is. There are two tremendous results of this: one is humility; the other is that it enables other people to accept us as we are, and in this there is real charity.

People whose demand on others is simple and uncomplicated add to the life of the world. One of the main reasons for devitalization, depression and psychological tiredness is that we make complicated demands on one another.

(from, Giving Ourselves Unreservedly to Life, By Caryll Houselander, excerpted from "Wood of the Cradle, Wood of the Cross," by Caryll Houselander published by Sophia Press.) http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=528

Becoming a reed of God is to allow divine breath to flow unobstructed through you.

The Way does not need cultivation;
Just don't pollute it.
What is pollution?
As long as you have a fluctuating mind,
Creating artificialities and pursuing inclinations,
All is pollution.
If you want to understand the Way directly,
The normal mind is the Way.
What is normal mind?
It has no artificial contrivance,
No right or wrong, no grasping or rejection,
No ordinariness and no sanctity.
- Ancestor Ma (709–788)

The effort and struggle to remain separated from who we are is not worth the disappointment.

The acceptance of life as it is must teach us trust and humility. This is because every real experience of life is an experience of God. Every experience of God makes us realize our littleness, our need, our nothingness, but at the same time the miracle of Christ in us. Not only are we one of God's creatures — which is in itself a guarantee of His eternal creating love — but we are also His Christ, His only Son, the sole object of His whole love. These two facts balance the scales of trust: our nothingness and our allness.
(Houselander, Ibid)

Give in to what gives in us.

Passing through

                                          The water waves me on.

                                       

                                      

Where did I put my questions

Stupidity, said Bankei in the 17th century, is a good thing. Of course, he was a zen master. They like the "don't know" mind.

There's a difference between not knowing and operating with a "don't know" mind. One is simple ignorance. The other is Buddha mind seeing everything for the first time.

We are generally knowledgable. We know. And we let others know we know and what we know.

But the rare way is not not knowing and not letting on you don't know, rather, doing what you are doing with don't know mind in such a way that only discovery is what is taking place.

There, that's clear.

What else?

I don't know. That's because I'm stupid.

I'll take your questions now. You won't be needing them. Live the uncertainty with courage and joy.

There's nothing else remaining.

That, and heavy rain, thick mist, and lightning flashes with rolling thunder.

Nothing else.

At all.

A guest remembers what we forget

War deads. War kills. War is our new and profitable industry. Profits are gathered by the war-makers. These we do not honor.

So many die. These, we honor.

We honor those fallen with flowers, parades, and marching bands.

The people who send men and women to their deaths, to the deaths of hundreds, thousands, millions in war zones, lay wreaths on the perfidy of the politics of war under the illusion men and women are being honored.

These thoughts are anger and sorrow.

Rowing Saturday morning out toward Curtis Island, I pass below daily ritual as the canon at yacht club sounded at 8AM. The American flag was raised. I stopped rowing. I raised my hand to forehead in salute to those dead and deadened by war. I cried.

I was taken by the surprise of this private memorial. Just wind and wave and the spirits of all my brothers and sisters floating over the millennia of unenlightened mind steeped in conflict and violent action.

There's an awareness wanting our attention. A new step in consciousness that waits by our door. Oh God, it is time!

Last night at Sunday Evening Practice we read Ilia Delio on Franciscan Prayer. The reading ended with these words: "It is prayer, according to Bonaventure, that impelled Francis to see the world with new vision, a contemplative vision that penetrated the depths of reality. The world became Francis' cloister because he found it to be permeated with the goodness of God."

This is the cloistered life we long for. For all our brothers and sisters, here and gone.

Nowhere to go

Everyone speaks another's language.

If you forgive mindless misinterpretation or misbegotten misrepresentation what else is there to look around and see?

My God! What would become of us if everything came to be itself?

You, yourself. Me, myself. That, itself. Any, oneself.

seeker of truth

follow no path
all paths lead where

truth is here 

(poem, seeker of truth, by e.e.cummings)

What does God want?

Don't ask!

Read the moment.

Way off

I don't understand why it is ok for the government to assassinate people whenever they want.

Am I missing something?

A magic trick

When Friday ends, it will be Saturday.

Turning around, returning home

Thursday morning at the harbor. Ellens Dritter Gesang (Ellens Gesang III, D839, Op 52 no 6, 1825), in English: " Ellen's Third Song", composed by Franz Shubert begins classical music on Maine Public Radio with Suzanne Nance.

The piece was composed as a setting of a song from Walter Scott's popular epic poem The Lady of the Lake, in a German translation by Adam Storck (1780-1822), and thus forms part of Schubert's Liederzyklus vom Fräulein vom See. (Ave Maria, Schubert, Wikipedia) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_%28Schubert%29http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ave_Maria_%28Schubert%29

At harbor the schooners ready for their season. Lewis French, Olad, Lazy Jack, Surprise, Angelique, Grace Bailey -- are finishing scraping, painting, varnishing, and polishing. And then the gray Mary Day arrives back, is turned by yawl boat, reversing into berth.

The harbor life and coastal stretch from bell buoys to weathered pilings becomes a kind of poetry. I daily row the poesis, the making-creativity of nature's hand, composition.

"La poesia es la conciencia de la tierra." (--Alfonso Cortes: Poetry is the conscience of the earth.)

A group wants to work toward returning parole to the State of Maine. I'm for it. I'd also like to return respect for parole, (voice, spoken word) as it arrives at and passes through us.

Mike Divine greets the sitting sipping surveyor with his cheery assessment of how fortunate we are to live here. And we are.

We secure lines, offload gear, feel solid ground underfoot, and get sent off with the encouraging appreciation of crew.

Who's next?

articulating one's own being in a new way

If some wonder if they or I have lost faith, tell them this: faith is our profound longing for truth, and is not lost. Belief, however, is what we temporarily hold as true until we experience the ungraspable nature of truth. 

Thus it is that faith remains while belief is lost.

Keep faith, lose belief. Truth emerges within and through everything. 

Humility recognizes ungraspable emergence. Arrogance ignores what it doesn't comprehend.

Keats called it "negative capability."

In a letter dated 22 December, 1817, the poet John Keats coined the term “negative capability” and defined it this way:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, on various subjects; several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.

http://santitafarella.wordpress.com/2009/02/01/negative-capability-defined-walking-in-mysteries-and-the-shoes-of-others/

Later, in his blog PROMETHEUS UNBOUND, the author adds:

In the Virginia Quarterly Review (April 1, 2005), the poet Galway Kinnell offers a similar expansive spin on Keats’s notion of negative capability, suggesting that negative capability includes not just a metaphysical suspension of judgment—allowing mysteries to be mysteries—but the Shakespearean power to “obliterate” oneself and walk, as it were, in the shoes of other beings (human and non-human!):

Walt Whitman had Keatsian “negative capability”—a certain shapelessness of personality, a peculiar power to obliterate himself and flow into some other being and speak it from within—and speak himself in the process. “I am the man—,” he wrote, “I suffered—I was there.” A transaction seems to occur: Whitman gives whatever he flows into a presence in human consciousness, and in return, this other thing or creature gives Whitman a situation and vocabulary which enable him to see and articulate his own being in a new way.

(ibid)

It is akin to the title of Pema Chodron's book "Comfortable with Uncertainty."

Cool water for thirsty bodies!

If you meet the Christ on the road...

There used to be an argument over who killed Christ. It was a silly diversion. No one killed Christ.

But the church is trying.

The church is becoming a silly diversion.

I'll tell you what. Christ stepped out from the back of the church to catch a breath of air.

I wish Christ well. It's an uneasy walk down those stairs and off into the countryside.

Unless the seed breaks open

Easwaren points out that the skin of the snake must be sloughed.

Old ideas, failing institutions, dead practices.

We are in trouble.

Fear, not love, could be our fate if no regeneration.

SOUTH India is full of snakes, and every year as I was growing up, when the earth was warm after the monsoon rains, I used to marvel at the sloughed-off snakeskins scattered across our fields. “Doesn’t it hurt a snake to shed its skin like that?” I once asked my grandmother.

“It has no choice,” she replied. “It will strangle if it can’t grow. It has to slough its skin or die.” In the same way, I would say, civilisation outgrows the skins of old ways that begin to strangle it. If they are not discarded, they become so constricting that civilisation begins to turn on itself and become self-destructive.

In the last fifty years, we have come to a crisis in human evolution where we have to choose between violence and non-violence. If we choose to tread the path of violence, not only do we
impede our evolution, but we invite destruction upon all of us.
(--from The Power Within, by Eknath Easwaren)
http://122.183.185.202/globaladjustments/?q=book/export/html/397

The customs we cultivate and costumes we don take on their own officiating insistence to behave in accordance with some haberdasheric dictate arising when final button is secured.

We must slough our bad ideas and useless patterns of mental formations that we've carried too long and at great debilitating price to our body-mind longing to enter a new freedom for love and joy.

Let shells of seeds and shell casings of armaments fall to ground, empty.

Begin at Home
We don’t have to begin peacemaking on an international scale. We can start to make our contribution right in our own city – beginning, like Gandhi, in our own home.

Here I can make a few practical suggestions. First and foremost, the roots of non-violence need to be planted in the home. Non-violence is the absence of violence.

A non-violent home is a home that eschews violence in every form: not only in action, which is absolutely necessary, but also in word and even thought. A home that is non-violent in thought, word, and deed is governed entirely by love.

Sow Non-violence
When we sow non-violence, we begin to reap peace. We should not expect a civilisation to change as easily as a snake sheds its skin. Progress is won slowly, over centuries. Despite appearances it is we, the ordinary people of the world, who have the power to change our lives. We make history together, all of us, by the sum of our choices and desires.
(--Easwaren, ibid)

Let us begin with "being." By the "sum," he says. Might he be referring to "sum, esse, fui, futurus?" I am to be (what) I have been (and am) going to be.

Realize this!

Enter Being Whole!

Unlearning what we think we know

Did you see a homeless person? Did it hurt?

Was there a sign that said, "Broke. Hungry"?

Such homelessness is sad. Such suffering is difficult.

What to do?

You deal with your shit in Zen by sitting with it. By breathing right into it. You don’t try and ignore it with pleasant thoughts or lofty ideas, and you don’t try and bury it with solutions. You deal with it, you work with it, one breath at a time. You hold it right there, in your breath. You don’t try and breathe it out; you don’t try and breathe it in. You keep it suspended in your diaphragm like a burning hot coin. Your problems won’t change; only you can change. That’s the point.
(- from, Growing Ground, by Steve Krieger)
http://www.tricycle.com/feature/growing-ground?page=0,1

Go ahead, extend a fiver. Hand over a banana. Don't preach, judge, or ignore.

Suffer the indignity of the sign-carrier.

Be happy you feel what you feel. You could just as easily have scoffed, mocked, or laughed. Instead you brought both of you to Saturday Morning Practice and even shed tears.

It is maddening when our egos do not know how to respond, don't know what to do.

Sei stille, be silence, be calm, shush!

God is speaking to your heart/mind.

Listen with care.

You will learn.

To unlearn.