in a dream, there were two of me. one is the recognizable version, the philosopher and dreamer, the one i know best. the other seemed exactly that: other; the symbol of the vision, the master of silence and intensity, the christ.

both are hunted by the tyrannosaur, a constant monster-figure of my childhood. its footsteps thunder throughout every location, the sound of death approaching.

one of us fears it more than the other; in fact, the other is completely without fear. he flies over the head of the monster without a thought. the philosopher cowers and hides. he reasons the best strategies for facing it, but must still resign to a life of reaction and retreat. he must fear, for the structure of his world requires the object of his fear. the sound of footsteps is significant of his reasonable worry.

the other does not cower, he does not flee. the tyrannosaur is hardly any more significant than the trees. the only thing that keeps him from flying, from soaring away into the unknown, is his compassion for the dreamer.

"If we are to reach real peace
in this world
and if we are to carry on a real war
against war,
we shall have to begin with children;
and if they will grow up in their natural innocence,
we won't have to struggle;
we won't have to pass fruitless
idle
resolutions,
but we shall go
from love to love
and peace to peace,
until at last all the corners of the world
are covered with that peace and love
for which
consciously
or unconsciously
the whole world is hungering."

-- Gandhi (Young Indian, 11.19.1931)

The problem is not that they fail to know,
but that we fail to challenge them
with the opportunity to find out.

I heard the Voice

say this morning, as I sat

on my bike atop a bridge

overlooking this mountain-range-surrounded valley:

When you try to pinpoint the wave

you find a particle

when you try to analyze your inventory of choices

you will discover you have too few or none at all

when you attempt to comprehend

or express

some ultimate grounding

the Unmoved-mover

a universal foundation

you will find yourself unable to catch up with it

it will fall out

right under your feet.

It is the unique
behavior of humans
to
create
and posit somewhere
a reason for our actions
or our thoughts
or feelings
in order
to find
one
when
we
believe we
need it.

By lack

of a

singular

vessel;

in virtue of

the collapse and

expansion

of

influences,

of conversion;

the air does not

fill my lungs

the words fall

not from my mouth

but

supplement,

transmogrify,

the expanse.

Translation

is migration;

there

are not

as many

words for

snow

as there are

flakes

that fall in

the arctic

sky.

There comes the moment:

you are somewhere you've never been before

or maybe you've been there a hundred times before

you try something you never tried before

or maybe compared to every time you've tried it

you do something

some odd little thing

different

your feet become roots in the ground

your hand quivers

your upper body jolts

or a bizarre taste spreads

throughout the recesses of your mouth

the depth envelopes you

it takes you in and raises you

years of life in just a

moment

you can see within that glimpse

of a glitch

that

one moment

you can see

even with your eyes closed.

女子の涙には

教師の僕が

対等にならせちゃって。

please turn your speakers up for this one

Dear Friend
find me right here
find me
right now
I am
spellbound
gutted removed
without a past
thereby too
with no expla
nation
for my future.

mouths talk
tongues
speak
and
teeth nash
The lips are without
a function.
There are
no faces.

Swallow always
swallow.

And let your hands
do the talking;

one is no-
thing
with out
them.
lost.

The discrepancy between
one
and multiple
lives is one as well
between statehood and
change.
A fascination
with the universal singular
demands a heaven.
Attention to
the impermanence within
heat & movement
characterizes
borderlessness
and
metamorph
osis.
Thriving by the heat and cold
our dead remind us of
our living.

The truth doesn't change
the truth
is change.

An interesting discovery: the past,
comprised of memories
and
incarnate
material shifts,
can most direcly
be altered
perhaps
through our dreams.


I now
again
practice flying,
and the speed
and stamina of my run
has rewritten the
history
of my childhood character,
through a time 'relived'
for this
very purpose.

An important lesson in
日本人心理学:
the
裏表
individual stands
in distinction
to he who is
本音　・　多々前.
Unlike the latter,
whose actions
and words
remain disparate by habit, he is not burdened
by an inside
and outside,
a
front
and
back.
He exists
instead
in a single dimension,
an honesty incarnate.
From this standpoint, he lacks the

complexity
of multifarious levels
and convoluted circuitry inherent to
the permutations
within a
dichotomous structure
between
what one says and what
one does.
Instead,
he is ingrained
with the
complexity
that substitutes bureaucracy,
one that represents the non-dualist,
rhizomic
philo
sophy
of the
sayer-doer,
the ordination of the
心.

It's a
real problem
for
the
writing
prolific:
we leave
our trail
wherever
we
go
.

Just across the way
from me
there is
what appears to be
a
crematorium.
Its smoke has charred
the rim of its
column
and floats just
above
the
roofs of our houses
toward the
wall of
black mountains
nearby.
These
reach up
toward the colored
clouds,
thus simul taneously
touching life
and
passively
encountering
death,
recalling
the stature of the samurai.
Hereby the
local
morgue
feeds our
archetypal
imposition as
well as our
scenic
constitution.

Parallel and fragile
are these times.
The destiny
of one
with the
shifting
of the continents.
Can't you smell the
burnt leaves of tea
that motion
the
slow breath of the jihad?

christian doing

from journal entry, 6.4月

Luther understood: no matter how diligently, how strenuously your fight for goodness and purity (at least their less popular forms) might be, there is no salvation by these deeds alone. Try as I might, I cannot fight -- and certainly cannot win -- every battle for a mindful earth-society. Purity is not only beyond our reach: it is not even in our field of vision

Instead, it is invisibly inherent to the manner of our reaching. In being so caught up in trying to become pure (in the more popular sense), we lose our insight to how. How do we make our children smile? We give them chocolate Easter eggs, over which they laugh, and embrace you, and become the star feature for Nestle's advertisement. Is it important for us to know that that chocolate was processed from cocoa beans imported from a country that employs children with little or no choice to work under brutal and inhumane conditions (that they cannot get adults to work under!) to gather them? The moment we become aware of this, the purity of the popular (simultaneously, of the ignorant) vanishes from their smiles, for the systemic violence that purported such purity is smeared across their mouths and between their teeth -- dark and vile.

No -- a purity of ends (which has not even an ontology per individual) cannot justify our means. We cannot truly expect to enter the Kingdom if our eyes are cast only to the clouds. Furthermore, we cannot call ourselves true Christians (as in those who follow Christ, in thought and action) if we believe that by our deeds alone we are saved. We must purify our intentions. By this, one cannot say, 'I had only meant to make my child happy in giving her chocolate,' if we do not further intend to stop or to invest in only organic sweets. Good intention can only beget good intention. If we mean to do good, we must carry it out to the furthest extents of our awareness and beyond the conventional understanding of what is pure and impure.

And by what are we saved? It is only by good intention that we can truly create good results. As it is, this intention requires the totality of one's awareness and consequent compassion. And such awareness is beget only by and event of grace. Indeed, it is only by God's grace that we can be saved. Let us never stop reaching.


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and there continues to be the opportunity for 'christians' to learn from 'non-christians' -- beyond the conventional understanding of faith being personally significant (if it all possible) without affirmative experience: "The Buddhist point of view is that we do not have to believe in anything we cannot experience for ourselves. When asked, 'How do we know whose teachings to believe?' Buddha replied, 'Do not believe something to be true just because it is spread by word of mouth, practiced as a tradition or sensationally spread far and wide. [...]'" (more, click on 'Believer Profile' toward the bottom)