bagatelle

 The very moment

He knew not much time remained

Each breath so careful

we too

Yes, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin!

Noosphere, pleroma, complexity-consciousness.

He, too, was condemned for alleged ambiguities.

Times change, thinking evolves, Le Phénomène Humain never ceases to disappoint some and unanimization, our movement toward Some Thing ahead of us, must also aspire toward Some One. 

We stumble awkwardly toward this authentic unanimity.

Have you heard this one? 

A Governor and a Journalist walk into a correlation between materiality and spirituality and long to become conscious.

neither young man nor old man

 In Paris a bench

never sat on, river not

crossed, seen, song unsung

maybe jahwist didn't exist

 fictitious and not 

factitious, it's a story --

J wrote God's bio

gotik in der steiermark

 everything kills you

flea collars, carbos, whiskey --

how am I still here

rorate coeli desuper

 Looking at moon, halved

Thin branches over cabin

Morning window prayer

losing track

 Emptiness each day

One following another — 

This echoing void

never lost

Two for Thursday morning:

1.

Having no destination,

I am never lost.

― Ikkyu

2.

Nikos Kazantzakis’ epitaph reads, "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." (Δεν ελπίζω τίποτα. Δε φοβούμαι τίποτα. Είμαι λέφτερος.)

Some translate the first phrase, “I expect nothing.”

today, if you hear the voice of the lord

 If nothing comes, then

Let it go — life is right here

Nowhere else, purring

change of weather

Ice fishing houses 

are off the pond, up on land --

eagle fends for self

alter christus

 One room is not the other room.

But the doorway

Moving through that luminary space

Doing the movement itself

What do we call that transfiguration?

in the harbors

Of Cheslaw Milosz, he said: “we knew him in the harbors, we never saw him in the full sea,” Not in the hurricanes at sea.

He concludes:  "The world doesn't belong to any single poet." (Adam Zagajewski, UC Berkeley, 2011)

Take a view. Speak the sight. Round the world with words!

but in wonder

 Yes

92 yr old elder from 

Just west of New England 

Morning after

Sunday evening practice

Writes gratitude for

Teisho by Karin Ryuku Kempe, Zen Center of Denver

As she presents poem by Cheslaw Milosz 

To make organic our fondness:

Encounter

 

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. 

A red wing rose in the darkness.

 

And suddenly a hare ran across the road. 

One of us pointed to it with his hand.

 

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, 

Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

 

O my love, where are they, where are they going? 

The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. 

I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

 

~ Czeslaw Milosz ~ 

 (The Collected Poems 1931 - 1987,

translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee)

where you are is who you are

 Come

Arrive here

Now

See what is

Before you —

There

You are

And will become

Infinitely

This

le compte rendu

February will end tomorrow night. Today it rains. Inland, snow. It feels winter might be winding down. Less than a month by calendar.

Coffee and donut by Rockland harbor earlier. Met prison librarian on main street. Brief catchup. Been a year since last physically there. 

They say I'll be called when vaccine is ready for my age range. They've gone sixteen and a half years under mine. They say.

I'm ready. If I get covid I'll die. No reason in particular. Just the panoply of vulnerable conditions. It doesn't seem to phase me.

In New York Review of Books, this: “People evangelize because they fear that the belief to which they have committed themselves may not be true.” (T.M. Luhrmann, anthropologist) 

The urge to convince and convert seems a natural outgrowth of one adopting a particular belief as one's own. The desire to have company is strong.

Woman during conversation said that Vipassana meditation was the one that the Buddha practiced in India. To see things as they really are is a good thing.

On revient toujours a son premier métier. (One always returns to one's original calling.) The prayers and Latin from childhood and early adulthood reemerge. 

The poetry and zen and philosophy and theology and religious studies of university time sit next to me more and more often these days.

Reminiscing:

Graduate course on Yeats' poetry in late sixties with Marjorie Perloff at Catholic University in DC. 

Graduate seminar on Heidegger with John Macquarrie at Union Theological Seminary in NYC. 

Graduate course on Bhagavad Gita with Thomas Berry at Fordham University in Bronx NY. 

Graduate course on Vedanta and Pantanjali's Yoga Sutras at The New School in Greenwich Village Manhattan by a swami from India.

Graduate course on Phenomenology with John Caputo at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

I've been reading and studying since first attempt at college in 1961. I've been teaching as adjunct for The University of Maine at Augusta for thirty three years. Philosophy and Humanities. A great many of those courses at Maine State Prison's college program. (Two students from a course in 1988 are still there.)

Today a book arrives, Degrees of Givenness: On Saturation in Jean-Luc Marion (Philosophy of Religion), Oct.22, 2014, by Christina M. Gschwandtner.

I enjoy learning. And conversing. 

Sitting Zazen.

Listening to books via Scribd. Podcasts. Subscribing to NYRB, LRB, New Yorker, Plough, Vanity Fair, Sojourners.

Reading NYTimes, Washington Post, additional news feeds daily. 

Listening to monks chanting liturgy of hours from France. Praying Universalis from Great Britain. Divine Office from Utah. 

The political noise on radio and cable. The political noise. Cacophonous.

Après le bruit, l'écoute.

And the silence.

Walking silence.

Reclining silence.

Watchful silence. 

Realizing everything, in its own time, falls into silence. 

Le compte rendu. 

other days the bear eats you

 There are days when darkness arrives too early.

There’s a very bright moon tonight.

I notice that

Still, the darkness

laetitia mane

 What if each word were an angel?

Each book a covey of temporary residence for messages ready to light up minds upon opening?

Would we cease our foolish antagonism toward truth and fall in love with what is revealed to our heart?

Cor mundum crea in me, Deus.

Redde mihi lætítiam salutáris tui.

(A pure heart create for me, O God.

Give me again the joy of your help.)

(Ps 50, 12a. 14a)

What is revealed is reality ready for itself.

Tat tvam asi!

A message longing to be read and said and felt throughout.

because he did not care

 So many have died

Too sad to remain angry —

A fool was in charge

friends show up

 When needed

Different, but lovely, slants of light.

am in i are in you

Stay right here

See, hear, now

Don’t tell stories

You’re finally as you are

Fine as such.

(I’m kidding about the stories.

Tell another one.

I’ve plenty of time.)

And when you stop

I’ll still be listening

Just like this

As a last line of a short story

Always feels 

Incomplete

Waiting for 

What comes next