Blue dot in empty billions of galaxies.

Magma, lava, volcano, tectonic plates.

Makes the silliness of politics even sillier.

Give us a million more years to think about it.

Qui tacet consentire

 Am living parallel lives in Aspy Bay NS, Santa Cruz CA, Bensonhurst Brooklyn NY, Nanuet NY, Rye Beach NH, Ranchos de Taos NM, Washington DC, Jolon CA, Callicoon NY, St Andrews by the Sea, NB, Camden Maine.

So many me's!

There's nothing to say of these me's.

John Cage, these 21 years, so eloquent, says it well.

a way within you

Prison and black holes. Quarry Hill and Robert Burns, Jane Kenyon, Ken Nye, and Emily Bronte. Finally Friday Evening Conversation with poems by Wendell Berry and John Fox.

No Going Back   

No, no, there is no going back. 

Less and less you are 

that possibility you were. 

More and more you have become 

those lives and deaths 

that have belonged to you. 

You have become a sort of grave 

containing much that was 

and is no more in time, beloved 

then, now, and always. 

And so you have become a sort of tree 

standing over a grave. 

Now more than ever you can be 

generous toward each day 

that comes, young, to disappear 

forever, and yet remain 

unaging in the mind. 

Every day you have less reason 

not to give yourself away.  

(--Poem by Wendell Berry)

Then: 

Finding What You Didn't Lose     

When someone deeply listens to you 

it is like holding out a dented cup 

you've had since childhood 

and watching it fill up with 

cold, fresh water. 

When it balances on top of the brim, 

you are understood. 

When it overflows and touches your skin, 

you are loved. 

When someone deeply listens to you, 

the room where you stay 

starts a new life 

and the place where you wrote 

your first poem 

begins to glow in your mind's eye. 

It is as if gold has been discovered! 

When someone deeply listens to you, 

your bare feet are on the earth 

and a beloved land that seemed distant 

is now at home within you.   

(--Poem by John Fox)

Give your self away; give your self a way.

Is now at home within you? Now is at home, within you.

Lines are inexhaustible possibilities of eternally ineffable parallel multidimensional imaginative incalculable ways of being in the universe.

choose life, or fear?

Comes August.

 "...I think we only have a tiny fraction of understanding the extent of the kinds of operations that are being done on a daily basis around the world..." (Jeremy Scahill, speaking with Amy Goodman, Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill and author Noam Chomsky recently sat down together at Harvard University to discuss Scahill’s groundbreaking new book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." Amy Goodman hosted the discussion, which was sponsored by the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and the ACLU of Massachusetts. --from Democracy Now  website. http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2013/5/23/video_jeremy_scahill_noam_chomsky_on_secret_us_dirty_wars_from_laos_to_yemen_to_pakistan

Here, across from Bald Mountain, in front of book shed, across from chapel/zendo, bees move from blossom to blossom, perpetuating beauty.

It seems an easy choice.

  

east of here

Francis in corner.

Sunlight sits on zafu.

Calligraphies by David Stinson.

Shadow visit of morning leaves on plastic sheet at edge of cabin porch.

Everything is temporary, impermanent, incomplete, and imperfect -- wabi sabi!

Oh! two apples thud to earth east of here!

sweet survival, productive availability

Born into Catholic culture, raised Catholic, have never left, not recovering. I'm fine, thank you. I'm also Buddhist, a little Pagan, partially agnostic, and mostly skeptical. All institutional leaders are smooth communicators and culturally savvy. Francis among them.

We are in an age when what matters is truth, not position papers. And truth, as Sherlock Holmes' Arthur Conan Doyle said, "Is arrived at by the painstaking elimination of what is not true."

As you can imagine, the interior conversations between various inner philosophical and spiritual points of view will be lively and diverse in nature. They focus on the question of how to live in peace with difference and change in a world that would rather suffer the rigidity of uniformity and sameness.

My Catholic-Buddhist-Pagan-Agnostic conclusion is that the conversation continue with respect and love for individuals. Fewer institutional mission and omission statements, please. Followed by kindness toward all who hold differing opinions so that they might have more time to reconsider a more fruitful and generous way of being with one another.

There's a precipice nearing. The instinct among our doctrinaire brothers and sisters is to throw over those with whom there is disagreement or disapproval. 

I'd prefer we begin to construct at that edge complimentary communities built upon sweet survival and productive availability toward the real common enemy we face. That enemy is distortion of truth, that truth that we are, each!

...

(--in response to, 'Pope Francis in Context,' by Ross Douthat, Explanations Blog, New York Times, 30July2013)

http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/30/pope-francis-in-context/#more-18867

Office of Readings

In cabin chapel/zendo.

Honoring Ignatius of Loyola.

"You are loving with those who love you." (Ps.18)

Haiku, On never yet ready

In the dream, promise

Coffee with assumptive friend

Lifetime half ours

(wfh/nunc ipsum)

Out, doors

A whole july's worth of daylight.

A morning's worth of prayer.

 

A flowering following rain.

Quiet within mountain breeze, drifting birdsong, and stretching sun ground.

Breaking dawn, Haiku

They sound singing

First light

Telling haunting sight

Its ancient memory

(wfh/nunc ipsum)

translation is long journey across wide space

Fellow sitting looking at tree outside window said, "So many leaves, each a cosmos we do not visit nor think about!"

Yet, there they are, mostly unperceived and ignored from spring when they green until autumn when they fall.

What 'mind' is it doesn't see what is there?

Mine? Yours? Our?

There is a need for translation of the unseen into the seen. That very explosion of what-is-there into awareness should keep us both very busy with noticing and very quiet with awe.

Sit down and shut up; stand up and walk away: why zen practice will never catch on in America.

The Principles of Zazen

Eat and drink moderately. Cast aside all involvements and cease all affairs. Do not think good or bad. Do not administer pros and cons. Cease all the movements of the conscious mind, the gauging of all thoughts and views. Have no designs on becoming a buddha. Zazen has nothing whatever to do with sitting or lying down.

(-- Zen Master Dogen, "The Principles of Zazen")

For the unborn not to be born is called not-being-born

Four quotes from guests on this morning's broadcast of "On Being" -- Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Dialogue with David Gushee + Frances Kissling

"We see the world, not as it is, but as we are." (Anais Nin, per Kissling)

"If you do not want to be changed, don't go into dialogue." (Thich Nhat Hanh, per Kissling)

"I think we're getting dumber as a society." (David Gushee)

"Students don't want loud talking points; they want to understand." (Gushee)

(- See more at: http://www.onbeing.org/program/pro-life-pro-choice-pro-dialogue/4863#sthash.FIJq5Q6m.dpuf)

the one you are, with

The workman sat quietly a brief while, then said, "It is beyond me."

We'd been talking about the vast distance across our galaxy (100,000-120,000 light years across), the speed of light being about 186,282 miles per second, there being in the Milky Way galaxy somewhere between 100-400 billion stars, with our neighboring Andromeda Galaxy containing an estimated one trillion (10¹²) stars, there being approximately 100-500 billion galaxies in the universe.

I tell him that the ability to speak that phrase is itself marvelous. More than that his phrase, as language, contains in four words the great mystery of the universe.

Namely: 

"It is."

"Beyond."

"Me."

Acknowledging scientific existence -- It is.

Acknowledging artistic source/transcendence -- beyond.

Acknowledging mystical relational identification -- me.

At Friday Evening Conversation eight of us considered depression, witnessing, and fallout from failures.

It occurs to me there is only one person in the world, the one you are with. There is only one being in the world, that with which you are.

And this "with" is not two, nor one: it is bewithing.

Being-with is beyond one being with another being. 

It is the unknowable and incalculable 'between' that occurs when one is with another.

Call it, if you wish, mitversation. It is that which occurs when one turns to and with another in the movement of grace engaging what is to be.

This 'grace engaging what is to be' is the triadic trinitarian interplay of Beyond, Between, Becoming.

The universe is the one you are with. This person is the one you are with. This tree is the one you are with. This day is the one you are with.

What we call 'God' is the one you are with.

Vaya con Dios!

Gracias!

What is beyond religions and philosophies?

Truth.

Truth is.

"Truth is a pathless land," said Krishnamurti.

look all you want, there's

No going back.

No going forward.

Only . . . Mu! . . .

No

n o w h e r e

Qui êtes-vous?

Je suis celui qui est.

Ich bin der ich bin.

I am the ONE who is.

 אֶֽהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶֽהְיֶה

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh

I shall be there as who I am shall I be there.

I Am that I Am. 

(Exodus 3:14) 

 Ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ Α καὶ τὸ Ω ἀρχὴ καὶ τέλος, λέγει ὁ κύριος ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐρχόμενος ὁ παντοκράτωρ  (Rev 1:8)
⁸ “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”

It is morning.

Good to know!

Mid-afternoon Haiku

Summer downpour

Sudden. Like death.

Just as fleeting

 Passing through

Away.

watching nothing through what is there

The sign of light through blinds is early invitation to see.

“Our entire life, the whole liturgy, and everything ceremonial are symbols. If you abolish the symbols, then you tear down the walls of your own house. When we abolish the signs, we lose our orientation. Instead, we should search for their meaning … one should unfold the core of the symbols. … The signs are not to be questioned, we are.”

(--	Anonymous Monk, Into Great Silence, film)

 Vision is silence making its way through an open heart.

Schweig, sei still! Frieden erklären!
(Be silent, be still! Declare peace!)

seeing through a lens

Tuesday art:

#5 haiku

Swimming in tree, fish
considers canopy -- yes --
nothing else buoys up

#13 haiku

It seems so easy --
straw brushes its shadow off
ground sweeping itself

#19 haiku

Forget Joshu's dog --
this pup raises fire from prayer,
walking under 'Mu'

(-- Haiku responses to "Photographing the Part of Buddhism That Can't Be Seen," by James Estrin, in New York Times, LENS, July 23, 2013)
http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/23/the-inner-lives-of-buddhist-monks/?comments&_r=0