από τον ουρανό

 tell me

what you see

when you look

at rain

it falls

to earth

just as

truth does --

o happy earth

receiving rain

watering seed 

for tomorrow

η αλήθεια είναι ότι 

στάζει σαν ψιλή 

βροχή από τον ουρανό

(the truth that drops

like gentle rain

from heaven)

good for the soul

 i apologize

i don't care

if i'm forgiven

i wanted you 

to know i failed

to be kind

i pray

for your good

here-out 

miracles of modern medicine

 He went over the blood panel

Said what still needed to come in

The nice oncologist suggested

Another spinal tap and maybe

Begin pill chemo therapy — then

Asked what the man sitting across

From him was thinking about just then —

“Dunkin’ Donuts” the man answered

laissez les mots parler d'eux-mêmes.

 see

what you

are

say 

what you 

see

be

what you

say

now

enter

silence

Laissez les 

mots parler 

d'eux-mêmes.

let the words

speak for

themselves

push/knock, seeking le mot juste

 Yes, there is bitterness in the world. I am not one who pretends that optimism cures either pessimism or realistic assessment. We are, in America, under the reign of a foolish depravity and roiling madness that 34% of the voting population considers quaint and desirable.

The path to the meditation hall

Is steep and perilous;

I look back to view

The upper watershed.

A woodcutter’s trail links

All the peaks;

A boulder-choked creek

Flows through bamboo.

In deep woods,

Snow still lingers;

In foothills,

Gibbons have not yet cried.

Desiring to part from

The bitterness in the world,

I seek some words

From the Master.

Chia Tao (779-843)

Chia Tao (779–843)

Translations by Mike O'Connor 

In: The Clouds Should Know Me By Now: Buddhist Poet Monks of China 

Wisdom Publications, 1998, pp. 11-42. 

 

INTRODUCTION 

CHIA TAO WAS A BUDDHIST POET of the Middle T'ang dynasty. Born into an impoverished family near today's Beijing, he became a Ch'an (Zen) monk early in his youth, with the religious name Wupen. While scant biographical detail of his monastic days exists, his official biography does note that upon arriving at the Eastern Capital, Lo-yang, Chia Tao wrote a poem protesting a curfew forbidding monks to go out after noon.The poem caught the sympathetic eye of the eminent Confucian poet Han Yu (768–824) and led to the latter becoming Chia Tao's poetry mentor.  

 

A more famous account—a literary anecdote—describes the meeting of the poets this way: Chia Tao, while riding a donkey on the way to the marketplace, was deeply absorbed in trying to choose between two words, push (t'ui) and knock (ch'iao) in the line “Under the moon, a monk [knocks at, or pushes] the gate.” Reciting the line over and over, Chia Tao became oblivious of his surroundings and collided with a sedan chair carrying HanYu. Han Yu, waving off apologies from Chia Tao, became interested in his poetic impasse, and immediately opted for the word “knock.”The compound “push-knock (t'ui-ch'iao)” thereafter became the traditional term to describe, not only Chia Tao's assiduousness of craft, but any poet's exacting labor to find the   mot juste,   or to make careful stylistic distinctions.  

 

What is known factually is that Chia Tao, at about age thirty-one, abandoned monasticism to devote himself to a secular life of poetry, supported by subsistence civil service. He was encouraged in this by a circle of prominent poets, including Han Yu, Meng Chiao (751–814) and Chang Chi (ca. 776–ca. 829).The group was based in the political and literary capital Ch'ang-an, modern Xi'an, the largest city in the world at the time and Chia Tao's principal home until his “banishment” late in life to provincial posts—an apparent victim of slander.           https://terebess.hu/zen/mesterek/JiaDao.html 

Maybe poets can wrestle reality into a coherent line. Maybe departing from the bitterness is a journey begun by finding the right words to encompass/distinguish reality from delusion and trickery on the part of nefarious imposters.

Who is the master Chia Tao seeks for their wise counsel? Who and where do we seek?

Poets do not fire guns into the heads of insane poseurs and request a clear statement of intentions and executive orders aiming to obliterate decent interactions with local neighbors and neighboring countries.

For us the mot juste remains obscured by our oblivious calculation that the brigand in DC is merely a comical celebrity acting the fool for our entertainment.

He is a far more dangerous lack-of-character.

Look for good poets.

Look for your own words.

Wrestle with them. Pronounce them. Try to figure what fits.

This is no time for a distracted and conically dunce aphasia.

wipe your feet

 If you pray, pray for kindness

Sanity, cooperation and good coffee

The reign of bullies and bandits

Will pass when prayer is learned

The big bad boys and girls stand in mud

We have only to push and they’ll fall

יום הולדת שמח, מרי

 Happy birthday, Mary!

Today’s painting, The Nativity of the Virgin, was painted around 1400–1405 by Andrea di Bartolo, a Sienese painter. Originally part of a larger altarpiece telling episodes from the life of Mary, the little panel brings the sacred event of her birth wonderfully close to everyday life. Rather than giving us a grand heavenly vision, Andrea shows us something that could almost be happening in an ordinary medieval household: the arrival of a new baby.

https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/matthew-1-18-23-2026/

tired

 Sleep will

Come soon

No doubt

χάνοντας τον εαυτό της

"Christ is unknown to Hindus and Christians.” (--Raimon Panikkar)

The phrase "Christ is unknown to Hindus and Christians" originates from the theological work The Unknown Christ of Hinduism by Raimon Panikkar, which argues that the universal reality of Christ operates invisibly within traditions outside formal Christianity.  (Massachusetts Institute of Technology +1)

What I thought I knew recedes further and further into hazy obscurity.

I study the Upanishads. I study the New Testament. I study Buddhist texts.

And I continually miss the point.

So too, reading Parmenides and Kingsley, there is a pointing to a hidden innate and ahistorical Being/Reality that subsumes everything into itself and emanates everything out of itself without fully revealing itself into the cognitive apparatus of the human mind.

And so, science, theology, philosophy, literary criticism, and endless speculation as to the origin and end of things and existence.

These days I sit and read. These days I sit and breathe. I walk (slowly and only short distances) whenever the notion arises.

That there is something beyond and below my comprehension is not a surprise, never was. My stupidity and distractibility are as persistent as my grey ragg llbean socks.

So I read Panikkar and Kingsley.

I watch ensō streak across dooryard behind something grey that, thankfully, is faster than him.

I sip the dregs of tonic water from plastic into glass.

To what end?

It fills the day.

And these days I seem to drift away from anything outside my narrow solitude.

Perhaps prison will fall away as well.

I take too much delight in cancellation and fading away.

Even these words begin to disappear.

χάνοντας τον εαυτό της, η μέρα παρασύρεται στις σκιές

(Losing itself, the day drifts into the shadows) 

the new labor necessary

 I've noted the postings of the president 

they are alarming

the seeming madness 

the idiotic AI memes of his fantasies

I stop quickly

I've seen both depravity and psychosis

and he exemplifies both

and commentators embellish

it seems that soon enough someone

will oversee his departure

but the trauma will remain

no more innocence, no more decency 

a corner has been turned in america

the dizzy absurdity of the ruling class

the corruption and degradation -- no

wonder, no sanctity, no justice, no peace

doing nothing becoming itself seeing (no) one

 Nothing doing

Nothing to be done

Solar wind

Through window

I am

Passing through

As cat on stomach

Rises and lowers

Buddha in window

Sitting still

Wooden cross on wall

Just hanging around

If you want to ask me

Anything, go ahead

Nothing I say nothing I do

Is perfectly inadequate

The house is full of people

No one knows this but this

approve this

 Don’t get used to

Ugliness

Use your beautiful

Vote

sit semper nobiscum

 As contemplatives

Letting things be what they are

God has nothing to say

We have nothing to hear

Bowing to the incomprehensible 

wohnküche oratory

 sunday morning

incense and candle

honoring ancestors

honoring family, friends

neighbors, all surrounding

all our relations

may we be well within

as we are well without

deeply what is within/without

as monks in france

chant final deo gratias

for absent brothers/sisters 

query

 If you found out

There is nothing to reality 

Would you be still there

(28sept24, my words inside Peter Kingsley book)

my country tis of thee

Best first line of a poem, this:

“What’s wrong will always be wrong.” (Villager, by Richard Hugo)

We’re living that line

Asked not to call wrong right

asked to recognize perversion

not to turn away

The insult must continue to hurt

something turns our stomachs --

ugliness is what it is, ugly

voyager 1 is now exploring interstellar space outside the sun's heliosphere

• Voyager 1 is a NASA space probe launched on September 5, 1977, that is currently the most distant human-made object from Earth. [1] 
• As of August 2026, it is over 171 astronomical units (about 15.9 billion miles or 25.6 billion kilometers) away from Earth
• It is traveling at roughly 38,000 mph (17 km/s).
• It will reach a milestone distance of one light-day from Earth on November 18, 2026. [1, 2, 3, 4].   Wikipedia

Reading Reality by Peter Kingsley about Parmenides, Being, and Thinking.

Nice to have an actual book in hand, a # two pencil, and nothing else to do.

Whatever can be thought is; whatever cannot be thought is not.

What was it like before logic became reason?

The genius of contemporary capitalism is urging us to want.

Will becomes a crowded mind where thought is a plaything of desire.

I don’t understand anything anymore. 

Find me some good earth, cover me, add a flower, think openly, be the cosmos.

like this

 I don't meditate any more

I don't meditate any less

you might say I breathe through

my life, more or less, like this

once longer, now enough

picnic table

up spinnaker

one stone on top

new destination

hiking with ensõ

rest and return

good writers remind us of good writing

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

                            --by Wendell Berry

    

    Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

    vacation with pay. Want more

    of everything ready-made. Be afraid

    to know your neighbors and to die.

    And you will have a window in your head.

    Not even your future will be a mystery

    any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

    and shut away in a little drawer.

    When they want you to buy something

    they will call you. When they want you

    to die for profit they will let you know.

 

    So, friends, every day do something

    that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

    Love the world. Work for nothing.

    Take all that you have and be poor.

    Love someone who does not deserve it.

    Denounce the government and embrace

    the flag. Hope to live in that free

    republic for which it stands.

    Give your approval to all you cannot

    understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

    has not encountered he has not destroyed.

 

    Ask the questions that have no answers.

    Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

    Say that your main crop is the forest

    that you did not plant,

    that you will not live to harvest.

    Say that the leaves are harvested

    when they have rotted into the mold.

    Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

 

    Put your faith in the two inches of humus

    that will build under the trees

    every thousand years.

    Listen to carrion – put your ear

    close, and hear the faint chattering

    of the songs that are to come.

    Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

    Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

    though you have considered all the facts.

    So long as women do not go cheap

    for power, please women more than men.

    Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

    a woman satisfied to bear a child?

    Will this disturb the sleep

    of a woman near to giving birth?

 

    Go with your love to the fields.

    Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

    in her lap. Swear allegiance

    to what is nighest your thoughts.

    As soon as the generals and the politicos

    can predict the motions of your mind,

    lose it. Leave it as a sign

    to mark the false trail, the way

    you didn’t go. Be like the fox

    who makes more tracks than necessary,

    some in the wrong direction.

    Practice resurrection.

 

 

(--Poem by Wendell Berry, 1934-2026)

cf. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/books/review/wendell-berry-appreciation.html