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Sunday, February 07, 2010
"So, to come back as a worm wouldn't be a career ender?"
We were talking about reincarnation. It came to the possibility that "being reborn" is not the problem in the Buddhist or Hindu or even Christian tradition. Rather it is the continuation of the ego. Every atom continues. Energy has no half-life. We're all part of everything. But -- to identify yourself with what you become due to some karma is the localizing-by-ego effect of not yet having been released from the illusory control of ego.We all come back. For a very few, it is no problem. They've been through "Mu" (or "Wu") and become what they are. For the rest of us, we so want to be this or that, attain this reward or avoid that punishment -- we fail to surrender to the facticity of emptiness, and remain a solid continuation of false identification.
He unasks.
"So, to come back as a worm wouldn't be a career ender!"
That's what Dean said.
And like a man with a pool cue in his hand, circling the table, in the zone, he cleared the green felt.
The cheddar veggie chowder was delicious.
"So, to come back as a worm wouldn't be a career ender!"
That's what Dean said.And like a man with a pool cue in his hand, circling the table, in the zone, he cleared the green felt.
The cheddar veggie chowder was delicious.
• • • • •
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Maine is cold and dry. Old snow has been packed solid by tires in dooryard. Not so in places south this weekend.
Forecasters were predicting that the mountains of West Virginia and Maryland, west of the nation's capital, would receive the most snow -- possibly 3 feet.These quiet hours pre-dawn!
"Tomorrow will be a day when everybody's digging out," Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley said. "And Sunday, for that matter, too."
Accumulations of 20 to 30 inches are expected in the D.C. area. It could turn out to be one of the heaviest snowfalls Washington has seen, forecasters said.
The storm is expected to produce record snowfall for Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and metropolitan areas, according to the National Weather Service.
(-- from: Travel grinds to halt after powerful Mid-Atlantic snowstorm, From Greg Morrison, CNN, February 6, 2010 4:01 a.m. EST)
Friday morning was conversations at Maine State Prison, (Paramahansa Yogananda in Protective Custody, Kahlil Gibran's "On Freedom" in Education Department). Friday afternoon was poetry at Quarry Hill (May Sarton, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Simic, Rudyard Kipling, Walt, Gertrude, Baron Wormser, Hafiz) with a dozen residents in a circle of elderly smiles. Friday evening conversation was re-engaging John O'Donohue's Anam Cara -- (the first time six of us sat in reflective circle in the upstairs of nearly completed BookShed -- the fruit of Jay's Chief Codger Construction Formaning begun last August). Afterward, Friday night was sitting with someone looking at their decision-in-progress to transition through a change in focus. Now Saturday morning, a couple will come by to have us witness their wedding with each other.
We are surrounded by Being, Consciousness, Bliss.
It is an illusion, they say, that we seem so alone and separated.
God Alone.
We are surrounded by Being, Consciousness, Bliss.
'The Unmanifest Absolute according to Sri Aurobindo'The morning fire leans against the morning cold. The elderly Waterford wood stove yawns before slowly chewing frozen logs with red teeth.
In Indian philosophy, the Absolute is conceived of as being Sat-Chit-Ananda, of the nature of pure Being, Consciousness, and Bliss. On the basis of this, Sri Aurobindo speaks of the "Upper Hemisphere" or "Supreme [Absolute-Divine] Nature" which constitutes infinite and unitary existence, and which he divides into the planes of Pure Being (Sat), Consciousness-Force (Chit-Tapas), Bliss (Ananda), and Truth-Consciousness ("Supermind"). The latter constitutes a somewhat more manifest level then Sachchidananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss), a sort of "logos" or "Divine Mind" between the true Unmanifest and the Creation. But all these realities are eternally pre-existent, and constituting the modes or qualities of the Absolute. At the level of the Absolute, there is no differentiation. As Sri Aurobindo puts it,
"Existence is Consciousness and there can be no distinction between them; Consciousness is Bliss and there can be no distinction between them;"[The Life Divine, p.126].
Here existence is "solely and simply a pure identity in oneness." [Ibid, p.320]. So there is only one Sachchidananda, but this contains within Itself specific modes. And although these three attributes - Sat-Chit-Ananda, existence, Consciousness, and Bliss - are in inseparable unity, each "can stand in front of the others and manifest its own spiritual determinates, for each has its primal aspects or inherent self-formulations, although all of these together are original to the triune Absolute"[Ibid, p.314]. http://www.kheper.net/topics/Aurobindo/Sachchidananda.htm
It is an illusion, they say, that we seem so alone and separated.
The Mahavakyas are "Great Sayings" of the Upanishads, the foundational texts of Vedanta. Though there are many Mahavakyas, four of them, each from one of the four Vedas, are mentioned often as "the Mahavakyas". The subject matter and the essence of all Upanishads being the same, all the Mahavakyas essentially say the same in a concise form.
The four statements indicate the ultimate unity of the individual (Atman) with God (Brahman)
The Mahavakyas are:
Prajnanam Brahma - "Consciousness is Brahman" (Aitareya Upanishad 3.3 of the Rig Veda)
Ayam Atma Brahma - "This Self (Atman) is Brahman" (Mandukya Upanishad 1.2 of the Atharva Veda)
Tat Tvam Asi - "Thou art That" (Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7 of the Sama Veda)
Aham Brahmasmi - "I am Brahman" (Brhadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10 of the Yajur Veda)
The Kanchi Paramacharya says in the book "Hindu Dharma" [1]:
“ It is to attain this highest of states in which the individual self dissolves inseparably in Brahman that a man becomes a sannyasin after forsaking the very karma that gives him inward maturity. When he is initiated into sannyasa he is taught four mantras, the four [principal] mahavakyas. ”
(from Mahavakyas, (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahavakya)Rokpa sleeps on daybed at end of Wohnkuche. The Yule Tree will slip out of ornaments and lights today. It has served so well, beautifully illuminating the darkest time of the year in New England. Now that mid-winter lengthens light earlier and later, the lovely tree will return to the earth, leaning against barn a while, then laying down to rest as it is drawn back into its origin-soil with our deep gratitude.
Trees
I think that I shall never seeOnly God.
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
(Poem by Joyce Kilmer. 1886–1918)
God Alone.
The epitaph on Nikos Kazantzakis' tomb is: "I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free."
- We have seen the highest circle of spiraling powers. We have
- named this circle God. We might have given it any other name
- we wished: Abyss, Mystery, Absolute Darkness, Absolute Light,
- Matter, Spirit, Ultimate Hope, Ultimate Despair, Silence.
- We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.
(From The Saviors of God, by Nikos Kazantzakis, 1927; English 1960)
We read his words, and wonder.
God is with us as we are with one another.
As each day arises and falls.
We greet one (as, with, within) another.
• • • • •
Friday, February 05, 2010
I sit in silent stillness with and in all my brothers, sisters, sentient beings everywhere this morning. May each and all be well within themselves!
• • • • •
Thursday, February 04, 2010
And an orator said, "Speak to us of Freedom."
And he answered:
At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
(from, Freedom, by Khalil Gibran)
Forgoing, even freedom,
This,
Freedom?
• • • • •
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Yes and no.
Are we at war with Pakistan too?
Constantly see your body asOne by one.
Empty and quiet
Inside and outside
Communing in sameness.
Plunge the body into
The realm of reality,
Where there has never been
Any obstruction.
- Tao-hsin (580-651)
We war.
(Silence)
"Help!"
• • • • •
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
What we need is presence. You, me, everyone.
Not your or my ideas, money, or our particular narratives.
But presence.
Let's make it a turning point. Rob McCall says it is a time to visit one another. Just that. A turning to one another. A presentation of particular arrival.
The mind is all sky,Midwinter is a time people begin to think they are tired and it is time to go.
The heart utterly empty,
And the perfect moon
Is completely transparent
Entering western mountains.
- Saigyo
Let's make it a turning point. Rob McCall says it is a time to visit one another. Just that. A turning to one another. A presentation of particular arrival.
And draw us near
And bind us tight
All your children here
In their rags of light
In our rags of light
All dressed to kill
And end this night
If it be your will
If it be your will.
(Lyrics from "If it Be Your Will" by Leonard Cohen)
The will of God, should that phrase be meaningful, is presence with compassion.The door is open.
This morning I sit here -- with you -- and thank you for your visit.
You are a turning point.
• • • • •
Monday, February 01, 2010
The bleak midwinter.
Prodigy
I grew up bent over
a chessboard.
I loved the word endgame.
All my cousins looked worried.
It was a small house
near a Roman graveyard.
Planes and tanks
shook its windowpanes.
A retired professor of astronomy
taught me how to play.
That must have been in 1944.
In the set we were using,
the paint had almost chipped off
the black pieces.
The white King was missing
and had to be substituted for.
I’m told but do not believe
that that summer I witnessed
men hung from telephone poles.
I remember my mother
blindfolding me a lot.
She had a way of tucking my head
suddenly under her overcoat.
In chess, too, the professor told me,
the masters play blindfolded,
the great ones on several boards
at the same time.
(Poem by Charles Simic)Half gone; half remaining.
I turn out the light.Retiring.
No king.
Nothing.
Else.
• • • • •
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Keep the essence; ditch the form. That's the implication. We are moving from form to form in our sleepy wandering from religion to spirituality from denomination to liberation. We are a formless people. We carry the essence of spirituality with us. But we seem to want to park it somewhere.
That's what some felt at the circle discussion following the showing of Velcrow Ripper's "Fiercelight, Where Spirit Meets Action."
They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.We suspend our memberships in banks, churches, social clubs, and political parties. We wander the backstreets and edges of known routes. We are the thousands of individuals and small organizations battling through personal and corporate deception and inauthenticity -- seeking a way home. We're not sure what that home is -- but it will be reached by means of compassion, kindness, fierce longing for truth, and a love that is grounded and real.
(--from Luke 4:29-30)
Why Are Your Poems So Dark?
Isn't the moon dark too,
most of the time?
And doesn't the white page
seem unfinished
without the dark stain
of alphabets?
When God demanded light,
he didn't banish darkness.
Instead he invented
ebony and crows
and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.
Or did you mean to ask
"Why are you sad so often?"
Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.
(Poem by Linda Pastan, Source: Poetry, August 2003).
Tide so high in Rockport Harbor today.I am sad often, too. It comes with the journey.
Slipping through the crowd. Walking away. Living to learn...another day.
• • • • •
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Sometimes it feels the heart will stop. Like some flywheel it manages to turn over. It gives me one sentence at a time.
The true practitioner of the Way completely transcends all things. Even if heaven and earth were to tumble down, I would have no misgivings. Even if all the Buddhas in the ten directions were to appear before me, I would not rejoice. Even if the three hells were to appear before me, I would have no fear. Why is this so? Because there is nothing I dislike.I don't ask God many questions. Not about someone's sister diagnosed with brain cancer. I request a healing peace for those who suffer the road ahead.
(from The Record of Linji, Linji Yixuan, Rinzai)
One ArtI still think I might call family and friends dead now over thirty years.
The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.
--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
(Poem by Elizabeth Bishop)
I look around in a solitude of thankfulness we've been here at all.
• • • • •
Friday, January 29, 2010
The Full Wolf Moon. So bright on fresh snow!
The bamboo's shadow sweeps the yard,Listening to President Obama take questions by House Republicans at their retreat in Maryland, I am delighted in the intelligence and clarity of responses. If reason has any staying power, we are well served by this President.
But the dust doesn't move.
Moonlight enters the sea,
But the wave leaves no trace.
- Jinkag Haesim (1178-1234)
We await a return to hard work by our politicians. Republicans have painted themselves into a corner-- how compromise with a man they publicly say is trying to destroy the country with his policies; they know their words insincere. Time to stop posing and do some work. This tired marriage of democracy and ordinary people.
Like former married couple drifted apart there is a longing to remember what might not have been.
Elizabeth Hardwick wrote in 1965 about Selma, Alabama. She wrote about the ghost of the South walking its last steps ending a devastating one hundred years:The Old Flame
My old flame, my wife!
Remember our lists of birds?
One morning last summer, I drove
by our house in Maine. It was still
on top of its hill -
Now a red ear of Indian maize
was splashed on the door.
Old Glory with thirteen stripes
hung on a pole. The clapboard
was old-red schoolhouse red.
Inside, a new landlord,
a new wife, a new broom!
Atlantic seaboard antique shop
pewter and plunder
shone in each room.
A new frontier!
No running next door
now to phone the sheriff
for his taxi to Bath
and the State Liquor Store!
No one saw your ghostly
imaginary lover
stare through the window
and tighten
the scarf at his throat.
Health to the new people,
health to their flag, to their old
restored house on the hill!
Everything had been swept bare,
furnished, garnished and aired.
Everything's changed for the best -
how quivering and fierce we were,
there snowbound together,
simmering like wasps
in our tent of books!
Poor ghost, old love, speak
with your old voice
of flaming insight
that kept us awake all night.
In one bed and apart,
we heard the plow
groaning up hill -
a red light, then a blue,
as it tossed off the snow
to the side of the road
(Poem by Robert Lowell).
How do they see themselves, we wonder, these posse-men, Sheriff Clark's volunteers, with their guns and sticks and helmets, nearly always squat, fairfaced, middle-aged delinquents and psychopaths? The State Troopers seem one ghostly step ahead of them on the social ladder. They ride around in their cars, their coats hanging primly in the back; they might be salesmen, covering their territory, on to the evening's motel. Who will open the door of the University of Alabama or Clemson or Tulane to the sons of Klansmen? The posse-men live in a joyless night, with no culture or consolation except whiskey. The ignoble posture one observes so frequently in them puzzles. They are strangers to beauty and grace and are indeed the saddest looking people to be seen anywhere in the world. Even the hungry, bone-thin poor of Recife do not present such a picture of deep, almost hereditary, depression. These Southerners have only the nothingness of racist ideas, the burning incoherence, and that is all. No sacred text or hymn bock or Armageddon in which all the black devils of the earth are to be swallowed up in some final quicksand of white eternity. Only violence can fill a hole so deep; this bereft, static existence which seems to go back so many generations has its counterpart in the violent, deranged hopelessness of the deprived youth in the cities.We read that in prison this morning. Along with Jimmy Breslin's piece. Good writing helps to see history.
(--from The New York Review of Books, Volume 4, Number 6 · April 22, 1965, Selma, Alabama: The Charms of Goodness, By Elizabeth Hardwick, Selma, Ala., March 22)
• • • • •
Thursday, January 28, 2010
On the video Desmond Tutu says: "I exist only because you exist."
Cat comes up onto bed. He is here only because I am here.
The near full moon shines white with frost mist on newly fallen snow.
No more categories and thoughts. Only the fact of things.
You exist because you are lovely, loved, and loving.
Now then. Turning off light. Wind outside. Furnace air inside.
The mere reality of what is! This is prayer, poetry, and practice enough.
We pray for all whose hearts long for mere prayer.
• • • • •
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
"Better worlds (I suggest) are born, not made; and their birthdays are the birthdays of individuals. Let us pray always for individuals, never for worlds." (--from I: six nonlectures, by e.e. cummings)Pray for peace. In individuals.
This room is so wide and emptyTake a load off. Sit down. How's your day been?
Every thought vanishes in it.
A narrow lane carved in rock,
A well sprung from a hole in a stone.
The bright moon hangs at the
End of the eaves,
And a cold gust shakes the valley.
Who can follow in the footsteps of the scholar
And, sitting quietly, learn true happiness?
- Deagam Tanyon (1070-1179)
• • • • •
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
I like the phrase: God is Itself, or, Itself is God. I don't know what it means, I just like it. If the word "God" fell out of use, I'd be happy with "Itself."
Perhaps it is the identity, unity, and onliness about the word. It is itself and none other.
A nice old temple against a green mountain;I worry about those wanting to do good as I worry about those inclined toward bad. I prefer those wanting to do what asks be done when the time arises. Fidelity to what is. Nothing more. Nothing less. A state of what might be called "grace." The doing of what needs be done when the doing of it needs to happen.
A white cloud opens and closes
Its two brushwood doors.
All I have is a water bottle and a stick,
And I don't care if time passes or not.
- Daegak Euchon (1055-1101)
There are two fundamental lies: the one that proclaims, "I am telling the truth," and the one that states, "I cannot say." The reasonable being who reflects on himself knows the emptiness of these two propositions. The first fact is the impossibility of not knowing oneself. The individual cannot lie to himself, he can only forget himself.After the earthquake in Haiti many donate money. May it get to them, be useful, help relieve suffering, and heal the hurt!
(--p. 57 The Ignorant Schoolmaster, by Jacques Ranciere)
Some say don't send money, it'll do no good to send good money after bad. This is their opinion. They need not send money. Others do.
As for the truth, it doesn't rely on philosophers who say they are its friend: it is only friends with itself. (p.60, Ranciere)Truth is a funny thing.
Just when you think you get it, you don't.
Nothing to worry about. It hasn't gone anywhere. It's just not ours to own.
Only to acknowledge in passing.
• • • • •
Monday, January 25, 2010
I would have said, "Not yet, wait a while. Let's have a coffee or a cup of tea."
But I wasn't there. I didn't know. It's what we do. In our mind. Afterwards.
Each human encounter invites contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. She'd been someone who'd stop into the shop in town from time to time over the years.
The seemingly fleeting and passing -- no more than that. So we think. It's one of the ways we protect ourselves in this fragile wandering into the realm of who we really are.
Still, contact and connection always transcend the casual. Our relational knowledge, even cloaked by evanescence and impermanence, is personal, intimate, and profound.
Yesterday I read of her death last week by suicide at 41.
"Would you like some Apfel Kuchen with that?" I'd ask.
This morning I light a candle and burn a stick of incense in her name.
"Any time you'd like to sit in silence together, I'm here."
• • • • •
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Nirvana, Thay says, is release from all views.
That's what he says.
Worth listening to.
As is "Peace through Music, Playing for Change" worth seeing.
• • • • •
Saturday, January 23, 2010
We're mistaken.
When we realize our absence, we'll want to return.
Only presence is no mistake.
• • • • •
Friday, January 22, 2010
Bird tracks among towering snow clad peaks;If you wish to know God, know what God knows.
With the master's passing away,
Who will embody Ch'an?
Dust on the table has gathered
Since he entered Nirvana;
The color of the trees is different
From the time when he was alive.
The storied pagoda faces the wind
Blowing through the pines;
Traces of his presence linger
By the deserted spring. I sigh only for the tiger listening to sutras,
As time and again it comes by the side
Of the dilapidated hermitages.
- Chia Tao (779-843)
What does God know?
I don't know.
Know yourself.
God helps us.
Who knows...
Ourselves.
• • • • •
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Icy roads. Men with nefarious plans. Corporations spending their will on legalized bribery.
Count on nature to run its course.
What's white is cloud, and blue, mountain.
Carefree, she enjoys noble leisure.
The crane nesting in the pine tree,
In the world outside,
Is her only companion,
Oblivious to time passing.
--Daegak Euchon (1055-1101)
Step by step things find their way creating place.
But that was yesterday.
And as we know, yesterday's gone.Unless, of course, you know something... I don't.
• • • • •
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
How lovely
the snow up-on the mountain!
Not a single soul
Knows why he is born
Or his real dwelling place;
We go back to our origin,
We become earth again.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
we are in-
comparable.
• • • • •
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Heads roll. Democrats lose Massachusetts. Maybe they'll find a backbone. Republicans put some concrete into their cackle.
Late night TV is awash with multimillionaire comedians trying to find better hours for their trade. Health Care Reform, deformed over the past few months -- forget it being about people and care -- becomes again an assassin's bullet aiming for anyone in favor of it.
The Trappist monk was right: "Cheer up," he said, "things are only going to get worse." He wasn't being gloomy. Seeing absurdity he calls it absurdity.
It's time to go to the mattresses. Put on a pot for spaghetti. It might pass. If we wait long enough.
Unity, someone said, not union.
It's a hard distinction for us. We hear it. Still...
The Trappist monk was right: "Cheer up," he said, "things are only going to get worse." He wasn't being gloomy. Seeing absurdity he calls it absurdity.
It's time to go to the mattresses. Put on a pot for spaghetti. It might pass. If we wait long enough.
Everything is quiet, and the night is clear:The 360 degree spin out today in slick fresh snow doing 33mph ending slamming backwards into snowbank between two trees, not hitting either of them, then starting engine again, pulling out, driving home -- reminds me that not all accidents are accidents. Not a scrape on car nor myself. The snow continues to fall.
The perfect time to raise your pillow
And cultivate your mind.
The shadow of a cold lonely lamp
On the pine window,
And the sound of leaves falling
In the windy yard.
The forest stream flowing
Around the beams stirs
A noble taste
And the birds flitting
By the door are the friends
Of my calm heart.
After long wandering, I settled
At Hongryun Temple;
The splendor of the world
Weighs less than a grain of straw.
- Daegak Euchon (1055-1101)
The SongMaybe we are alone. It's not a problem. We seem to be frightened to be alone. The monastic wording is: To be alone with the Alone. The "Alone" doesn't want company -- rather, it is sufficient to be in the company of none other.
It still makes sense
to know the song after all.
My wiseness I wear
in despair of something better.
I am all beggar,
I am all ears.
Soon everything will be sold
and I can go back home
by myself again
and try to be a man.
(Poem by Robert Creeley)
Unity, someone said, not union.
It's a hard distinction for us. We hear it. Still...
It's like a song I can hear playing right in my earSure, we're one family. But we easily forget. And, sure, we're members of a community. but we still prefer to consider ourselves superior or better or more in the know. That we obscure our true nature and veil the longings of our hearts seems part of the price of admission to this desolate time.
That I can't sing
I can't help listening
(--from "For a Dancer," lyrics by Jackson Browne)
Mostly, though, we are alone.
And yet, and yet, and yet...
Even if the sound is silence.
Go on ahead, make it!
"Alone" is not what we think it is.
And yet, and yet, and yet...Keep a fire for the human raceI greet you there.
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down
Perhaps a better world is drawing near
And just as easily it could all disappear
Along with whatever meaning you might have found
Don't let the uncertainty turn you around
(the world keeps turning around and around)
Go on and make a joyful sound
(--Browne, ibid)
Even if the sound is silence.
Go on ahead, make it!
"Alone" is not what we think it is.
• • • • •
Monday, January 18, 2010
I'm grateful for Martin Luther King Jr.'s gifts to this culture. I like the fact that he was persistent, courageous, skillful, and flawed. I'm ok with flaws. I've several. Martin Luther King was exactly the way he was, did extraordinary things, and helped diminish the unkindness and blinding prejudice permeating our society and rotting our psyche.
If you break openWhere is Martin now? If you say, "He's dead," or "He's still alive," you are right, but partially. If you say, "He is in heaven," you are again only partially right. If you suggest, "He's in the ground, nowhere else," you are still only half right.
The cherry tree,
There is not a single flower.
But the skies of spring
Bring forth the blossoms!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
In the photo on Huffington Post, Martin is linked-arms with Dr. Benjamin Spock on one of the marches, (Eunice Kennedy and Rosie Greer alongside). It occurs to me, in that Ben Spock used to attend silent sittings at our shop the year before his passing, that through his handshake and presence, Saskia and I have been "in touch" with Dr King.
Martin is hic et nunc, here and now: alive/dead, heaven/ground. He's where we least suspect.
In its physical reality there is only the total system; as far as its real operations and structure, all and each of the psychic notes are “of” the organic notes, and each one of the organic notes is a note “of” the psychic notes. Therefore, man does not “have” psyche and organism, but “is” psycho-organic, because neither organism nor psyche, each by itself, has any substantivity; only the system has it. Because of this I think we cannot talk about a psyche without an organism. Let us say in passing, that when Christianity for example, talks about surviving and immortality the one that survives and is immortal is not the soul, but man, that is, the whole human substantivity. Anything else is not of faith. Man is not psyche “and” organism, but rather his psyche is formally and constitutively “psyche-of” this organism, and this organism is formally and constitutively “organism-of” this psyche. The psyche is organic by itself and the organism is psychic by itself. This moment of the “of” is numerically “identical” in the psyche and the organism, furthermore it incorporates a “physical” characteristic. This numerical and physical identity of the “of” is what formally constitutes the systematic unity of human substantivity. It is a structural unity; structure is precisely and formally the unity of an “of” in its notes. Hence, human substantivity {108} is “one” by itself and from itself. The moments of this substantive system codetermine each other, but not as potency and act (as the Aristotelians might put it) of a hylomorphic substantial unity, but as realities in act and ex aequo whose codetermination consists in each being “of” all the rest. The “of” is a unity of the metaphysical type superior to the unity of potency and act. Moreover, in this “of” not only the radical unity of human substantivity consists, but also the very sameness during its entire life, a sameness that is entirely different from the numerical persistence of all the notes, something perfectly inexistent. Consequently, man is a psychorganic substantivity.The snow in Maine this morning is light and nearing 4-6 inches. I finish nailing off the wood ceiling on 2nd floor of bookshed. Rokie is relentlessly dropping tennis ball under chair in Wohnkuche. I'm growing adept at tossing it across kitchen up through louvered doors on far upper wall and through to upstairs hallway. It's a necessary skill to occupy the Border Collie. (Oops...I missed. Three for seven now! ... Four for fifteen -- just like my sandlot batting average -- 'adept' was, as usual, inaccurate.)
(MAN AND HIS BODY, by XAVIER ZUBIRI, From ESCRITOS MENORES (1953-1983), Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 2006, pp. 103-116, (Original article El hombre y su cuerpo, appeared in the journal Asclepio, No. 25, 1973, pp. 9-19), Translated by Joaquín A. Redondo, M.E., M.A. (Phil.) 2008)
The Edges Of TimeI climb Tom's ladder to dust blades of overhead fan. It stops wobbling.
It is at the edges
that time thins.
Time which had been
dense and viscous
as amber suspending
intentions like bees
unseizes them. A
humming begins,
apparently coming
from stacks of
put–off things or
just in back. A
racket of claims now,
as time flattens. A
glittering fan of things
competing to happen,
brilliant and urgent
as fish when seas
retreat.
(Poem, The Edges of Time, by Kay Ryan)
Bald Mountain is serene in white snow across the way. Chickadee take seed. Cape Breton dory rower keeps his back to the wind atop vane. The pain in my head abates. It is all a matter of time and earth.It is a good pericope for Martin -- "brilliant and urgent."
No retreat!
• • • • •
Sunday, January 17, 2010
I wonder where we think we are? I wonder what we think we are doing here?
No worldly dust in Chongmyung Temple,It's hard to forget the din of the world, even if some suggest doing so in the name of a disengaging spiritual purity pretending we are not living in this illusory madness called by many "the world." But here we live. I suspect our task is not to blink twice, tap our heels, and set off to a home free from the suffering and chaos of the world, landing in a heavon of transcendence and reward for our cleverness. While here, our task is to be here.
Among the clean mountains and streams.
A monk whose hair is turning grey
Lives there, forgetting the din of the world.
- Daegak Euchon (1055-1101)
“There are thefts everywhere,” said Joel Querette, 23, a college student camped out at a park near the airport. “People have guns and knives, and they are stealing and looting the stores.”Does he get beaten and burned to death because he was looting? Or, because some misguided impulse of vigilantly justice says he has transgressed the ethos of earthquake survival wherein you are guiltless until the police say you are bait for the desperation of traumatized frenzy?
As night fell, the police brought a man to Pétionville in the back of a pickup and informed a gathering crowd that he had been caught looting in another neighborhood, witnesses said. While the police officers stood by, an angry mob pulled the man from the truck.
The mob stripped the accused looter, then began beating him. They dragged him up the street while pummeling him, then threw him on a trash heap, where he lay vomiting and bleeding.
One man began piling trash on top of him and set it on fire. As the firelight flickered on an art gallery and a church on opposite sides of the street, dozens gathered to watch the man burn to death.
(--from, Looting Flares Where Authority Breaks Down, By SIMON ROMERO and MARC LACEY, Published: January 16, 2010, NY Times)
Trahison
Ce coeur obsédant, qui ne correspond
Pas à mon langage ou à mes costumes
Et sur lequel mordent, comme un crampon,
Des sentiments d’emprunt et des coutumes
D’Europe, sentez-vous cette souffrance
Et ce désespoir à nul autre égal
D’apprivoiser, avec des mots de France,
Ce coeur qui m’est venu du Sénégal?
—Léon Laleau
Betrayal
This unrelenting heart, whose rhythm suits
Neither my language nor my clothing
And into which bite, like jaws of a trap,
Borrowed sentiments and European
Customs—Do you feel this suffering
This despair unlike any other
Of domesticating, with words from France,
This heart that came to me from Senegal?
( Poem by Léon Laleau (1892-19??) who was a Haitian diplomat, intellectual and poet.)
And then:
Nouveau sermon nègre (extrait)
Ils ont craché sur Ta Face noire
Seigneur, notre ami, notre camarade
Toi qui écartas du visage de la prostituée
Comme un rideau de roseaux ses longs cheveux sur la source de ses larmes
Ils ont fait
les riches les pharisiens les propriétaires fonciers les banquiers
Ils ont fait de l’homme saignant le dieu sanglant
Oh Judas ricane
Oh Judas ricane:
Christ entre deux voleurs comme une flamme déchirée au sommet du monde
Allumait la révolte des esclaves
Mais Christ aujourd’hui est dans la maison des voleurs
Et ses bras déploient dans les cathédrales l’ombre étendue du vautour
Et dans les caves des monastères le prêtre compte les interêts des trente deniers
Et les clochers des églises crachent la mort sur les multitudes affamées
Nous ne leur pardonnerons pas, car ils savent ce qu’ils font
Ils ont lynché John qui organisait le syndicat
Ils l’ont chassé comme un loup hagard avec des chiens à travers bois
Ils l’ont pendu en riant au tronc du vieux sycomore
Non, frères, camarades
Nous ne prierons plus
Notre révolte s’élève comme le cri de l’oiseau de tempête au-dessus du clapotement pourri des marécages
Nous ne chanterons plus les tristes spirituals désespérés
Un autre chant jaillit de nos gorges
Nous déployons nos rouges drapeaux
Tachés du sang de nos justes
Sous ce signe nous marcherons
Sous ce signe nous marchons
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim.
A New Black Sermon (excerpt)
They have spit on the blackness of Your Face,
Lord, our friend, our comrade,
You who parted the locks of the prostitute's face
Like a curtain of reeds covering the spring of her tears
They have made
the rich the pharisees the landowners the bankers
They have made of the bleeding man the bloodthirsty god
Oh, Judas, laugh,
Oh, Judas, laugh,
Christ between two thieves like a torn flame at the height of the world
Set fire to the slaves' revolt
But Christ is today in the house of the thieves
And his arms spread out like the vast wings of a vulture in the cathedrals
And the priest in the monastery's winecellar counts the interest on thirty pieces of silver
And the church steeples spit death onto the famished multitudes
We will not pardon them, for they know what they do
They have lynched John who organized the trade union
They hunted him with dogs like a weary wolf in the woods
Laughing they hung him from the old sycamore's trunk
No, brothers, comrades,
We will pray no more
Our revolt rises up like the cry of the storm bird over the lapping waters of the stinking swamps
We will no longer sing our despairing spirituals
A different song springs from our mouth
We will spread our red flags
Stained with the blood of our just
Under this banner we will march
Under this banner we are marching
Arise ye wretched of the earth
Arise ye prisoners of starvation
Jacques Roumain (1907-1944) was a Haitian intellectual and author. As a founder of the Haitian Communist Party, he was imprisoned early in his career for his political activities, then became active in the government after the end of the American occupation of Haiti
(--from, Oregon Literary Review, Vol. 2, No.1, Winter/Spring 2007)
The belly of the Mother known as Earth has shaken loose the world's attention on a small, very poor, island to the southeast of Guantanamo, Cuba, and attached to the Dominican Republic.
The two small nations are linked by geography and destiny. They share the island of Hispaniola and have similar histories of tyrannical governments and foreign invasions.A televangelist fundamentalist preacher, Pat Robinson, has suggested the suffering and earthquake was a result of "a pact with the devil" made by Haiti to get free from France, the colonial power of the time. It could be the ramblings of demented belief.
Yet a gulf of historical resentment and prejudice divides them. Even today, Haiti's occupation of Santo Domingo during the 19th century is still a source of mistrust.
But after the apocalyptic devastation and death inflicted on Haiti by the quake, the historical mistrust has given way among many Dominicans - both on the island and in New York - to an overwhelming sense of pained solidarity.
"We are family; we are brothers and sisters. We live side by side," a middle-aged Dominican woman in Washington Heights told Univision, the Spanish language TV network. "We have to lend a hand, to help in any way we can."
...
Although Dominican President Leonel Fernández has offered aid to Haiti, his military has been sent to the border to halt desperate refugees from crossing.
(--from, Earthquake closes gulf between Haiti and Dominican Republic, ALBOR RUIZ - NY LOCAL, Sunday, January 17th 2010, 4:00 AM, NY Daily News, 17Jan2010)
The native leader Jean-Jacques Dessalines – long an ally and general of Toussaint l'Ouverture – defeated French troops led by Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, at the Battle of Vertières. At the end of the double battle for emancipation and independence, former slaves proclaimed the independence of Saint-Domingue on 1 January 1804,[20] declaring the new nation be named Haïti, to honor one of the indigenous Taíno names for the island. Haiti is the only nation born of a slave revolt. [14] Historians have estimated the slave rebellion resulted in the death of 100,000 blacks and 24,000 of the 40,000 white colonists.We sometimes don't know what we are saying or doing nor why we say or do it.
(--from Wikipedia, Haiti)
I grieve this ignorance.
I grieve the man burned to death in a street between a church and an art gallery. And all who suffer the shaking earth.
Enter the heart.
Dispel false notions.
Oremus pro invicem -- which translates, Let us pray for each other.
• • • • •
The Zen Master said, "Just like this," when asked for a definition of truth.
The poet places it here:
Seeker of Truth
seeker of truth
follow no path
all paths lead where
truth is here
(Poem by E.E. Cummings)
It's late. And dark.
There are, however, quiet illuminations. Scratches like guest animal/rodent in walls.
Like truth.
So it is.
• • • • •
Friday, January 15, 2010
Either way. Whether perception is projection, or projection is perception, it is our choice what we see.
Enlightenment Song"I'm glad you choose to see me the way you do." (Walter to Peter in episode of "Fringe" on Fox TV).
Every green mountain is the
Cave of Amitabha Buddha
And the boundless sea is the
Palace of nirvana.
- Master Wonhyo (617-686)
No thinking.
Only looking.
New moon.
• • • • •
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Walking frozen pond. Hammering ceiling boards in place. Teaching nothing I know.
"The language used by Zen is therefore in some sense an antilanguage, and the “logic” of Zen is a radical reversal of philosophical logic. The human dilemma of communication is that we cannot communicate ordinarily without words and signs, but even ordinary experience tends to be falsified by our habits of verbalization and rationalization. The convenient tools of language enable us to decide beforehand what we think things mean, and tempt us all too easily to see things only in a way that fits our logical preconceptions and our verbal formulas. Instead of seeing things and facts as they are we see them as reflections and verifications of the sentences we have previously made up in our minds. We quickly forget how to simply see things and substitute our words and our formulas for the things themselves, manipulating facts so that we see only what conveniently fits our prejudices. Zen uses language against itself to blast out these preconceptions and to destroy the specious “reality” in our minds so that we can see directly. Zen is saying, as Wittgenstein said, “Don’t think: Look!”"No system of thought suffices. Only experience.
-Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, pp. 48-49
Thinking is not thought. Thinking is seeing.
Look here.
• • • • •
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
• • • • •