Readings: from After Ikkyu by Jim Harrison

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~ 6 ~

Shoju sat all night in the graveyard
among wolves who sniffed his Adam's apple.
First light moving in the air
he arose, peed, and ate breakfast.

...and another:

 ~ 12 ~

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don't know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch. 

...yet one more:

~ 24 ~

The monk is eighty-seven. There's no fat
left on his feet to defend against stones.
He forgot his hat, larger in recent years.
By a creek he sees a woman he saw fifty summers
before, somehow still a girl to him. Once again his hands
tremble when she gives him a tin cup of water.
 
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Rodak's Writings: a Poem

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First Century Photo Op

It seems to have been long ages ago,

and there has since been little reason to think

about these things so lodged in the past;

but here is what I remember…

He did not shine

as I had been led to expect,

and he smelt like my father,

except for his feet, which smelt of dust.

My father’s feet recalled the overturned loam

of the cultivated fields after a rain,

and the richly pungent dung of the sheepfold.

But, I get ahead of my story:

First, they came, two-by-two, his advance men,

disciples; and they knocked on those doors

within which they apparently had reason to expect

a welcome, a meal, perhaps a pallet on the floor,

or on mounded straw in a humble shed, comforted

in the chill of night by the body heat of beasts.

A strange lot, they walked unafraid through the dark

forests and over the cave-riddled hills of the Galilee,

with nothing more than a stout staff between them

to afford a bit of protection from highway robbers.

Despite the chill of the nighttime hills, each was content

with but a single coat. And a robber would not have

profited for the effort made to waylay these gentle

souls, for they carried no purse, nor even a rough loaf;

each relied for his sustenance on God’s providence

through the inspired agency of sympathetic strangers.

Neither did the stones in the road slow them,

though they wore neither shoes nor sandals,

but made their way like children, unshod in every weather.

I happened to have been with my father, bringing a cartful

of fresh produce to market on the day when a pair

of these forerunning promoters arrived in our little country

township, trailing a line of curious youngsters

like the tail of a noisy gust-buffeted kite. Knocking,

they were swiftly admitted through the front door

of Jacob, the greengrocer, whose wife, one recalls,

had a local reputation for mild hysteria, founded

upon a devoutly anticipatory and credulous disposition.

Having established this advance station and operational

headquarters in the home of a respected merchant, and

generous supporter of the local synagogue, each man went

his separate way, mingling with the market folk, engaging

in conversation whomever they could, to announce to every

man and woman thus detained the imminent arrival

of their teacher; a rabbi, so they claimed, of unprecedented wisdom,

whose message of universal brotherhood and unconditional love

of each for all would soon be the end of sickness and death

in a gloriously transformed world; a New Eden in which

the righteous would wear crowns that shone like stars,

and where every miscreant would receive on that Last Day

his just deserts, long since earned through their enjoyment

of evil in its myriad manifestations, which mirror this fallen world.

I may be too earthy, too pragmatic, too dubious

a man; finally too much the straw-sucking hick,

but even as a lad I never gave much credence to the rumor

that these fellows possessed the power to cast out demons.

To this day, I cannot personally attest to the reality of evil spirits.

I tend to harbor a tentative, but persistent, conviction

that your “demon” is really no more than a weak man’s

excuse for his flagrant failure to do what is right,

having exchanged the quieting of his conscience

for the satisfaction of some overweening appetite;

the gratification of his greed for gold; the titillation

of his lust for forbidden flesh; or a bottomless hunger

for an excess of victuals and wine to fill his burgeoning belly

and muffle the quiet voice of prudent decency: elective deafness

empowering a fear of damnation deferred to another day.

Based upon the wonders told of this miraculous rabbi by his pitchmen,

I had almost expected him to arrive in glory, shining like a Roman pillar,

riding upon the winds in a colossal chariot of light-saturated clouds.

But the sky did not open. It was a day much like any other. Hot, busy.

Children ran the streets in shrieking packs. Women in pairs, well-wrapped

despite the sun, stooped to criticize the goods in the market stalls,

in hopes of getting a better price on the basis of their skepticism.

Excited dogs pursued the soles of laughing men, who had walked

on the urine pooled in the alleyway behind the public house.

And when he arrived, barely stirring the dust of the market’s

central lane, his mode of transportation was but humble shank’s mare.

Without being led, he made his way to Jacob’s door, knocked and entered.

He was not seen again for an interval of time during which village life

went on as always. There had been little to see.  And that had ended.

I was later to learn from my sister Shoshana, as she had from the lips

Jacob’s all-too-nubile daughter, Rachaela -- a girl of fourteen and ripe

to a fault -- just what had transpired within Jacob’s four walls.

This girl had been bidden by her hyper-ventilating mother, to heat

water for the bath of this dust-ridden rabbi, while she spread a meal

on the table that his presence in their home so abundantly honored.

And Rachaela told Shoshana, and she to me later whispered,

that the bath duly poured, Rachaela had bowed and quickly departed,

but only to peek through a chink in the wall  as this guest in their home

disrobed for the bathing. And Rachaela reported, with a lascivious titter,

that this rabbi, once naked, had stood gleaming with water;

wholly man, as revealed in every proportion.  

There stood a small copse, just without the market, where

the women of the village maintained a small garden of flowers,

not to squander such shade as leafy boughs had to offer.

It was here, on a monolith, in the midst of this beauty, that his

scouts predetermined that he would be seated to preach to those

gathered of the glory of his Kingdom, which would surely arrive

without preview or warning, like a thief in the night, was how he later

described it. And all through the market, their master once seated, his

disciples had scurried, exhorting the shoppers to come hear their teacher

whose words would transform them, show the way to redemption; and

so a crowd gathered, not many in number, and quietly waited.

There was now consultation of this man with his helpers;

for led by Rachaela, a giggling set of young girls had shouldered

their way to the front of those tightly assembled. And I was there

watching, interested more in those girls, I can rightly assure you,

than I was in the preacher. And I saw that his eye picked out the bracelet

on the ankle of Rachaela, and he shook his head slightly and made a

small gesture. It was not girls like these that would illustrate his message.

His eyes searched the crowd and he picked out and summoned

the innocent young ones. He bade them come forward. Pushed

from behind by their fathers and mothers -- I amongst them --

these reluctant children stood before the high seat of this

stranger and soon found themselves unexpectedly joyful.

He reached down and hoisted up two of the smallest, whom

he placed on his lap, where they beamed like twin cherubs

singled out in high heaven for special attention.

The set thus arranged to his specifications, he began his performance.

And that’s what I remember of that long-ago day.

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Rodak's Writings: senryu ~ 12.15.13

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xxxxxsleet hits the windshield
cold seat empty beside me
xxxxxfind me where i am
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Readings: Buddha's Zen

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Below is story number 101, the concluding story of the first book of Zen Flesh, Zen Bones:

Buddha's Zen

Buddha said: "I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasures of gold and gems as so many bricks and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as a golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the illuminated ones as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs as but traces left by the four seasons.

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Rants: A Translation from Facebook

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 A couple of days ago, I posted the following on my Facebook timeline.  Several people read it and expressed their agreement, but it did not evoke the controversy that I expected. Evidently nobody read it who was willing to question its validity:

All ideological conservatives are essentially either gullible or evil. If gullible, they are also, consequentially, prone to being evil-doers. If essentially evil, and also intelligent, they may endeavor to drive whole herds of the gullible into such things as war and divisive hatred of the Other. Thus, conservatism, although it uses religion to recruit gullible mobs to be used as it suits a particular conservative agenda, is in reality antithetical to every major religion in the world. Conservatism is evil because it is founded upon selfishness and greed, both of which things are destructive to agape which is central to true religion.

 I don't know whether to be pleased or disturbed that his rather harsh estimation of contemporary American political conservatism raised no howl of protest.
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Readings: The Panopticon

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The musings of Anais Hendricks, the wonderful teenage protagonist of Jenna Fagan’s great novel, The Panopticon:

They say the devil’s best trick was to make everyone believe he didnae exist. Maybe God’s just a scientist. This is all an experiment gone wrong, every single one of us, just wonky as fuck because of some chemical cock-up that was meant to produce something less faulty.

Yes. Quite possibly so.

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Reflections: Some Hard Saying

What follows here are two pretty much unedited comments I made on a Facebook status update that asked the burning question: "Can a person be a Republican or a Democrat and Follow Jesus?"

I commented as follows (with some minor modification):

 Nobody follows Jesus. St. Francis, and a few others, made a good run at it. Somebody will say "Mother Teresa." Uh-huh. Well, mean-spirited as it was, much of what Hitchens said about her was true, unfortunately. Nobody can function in modern civilized society and follow Jesus. Jesus was an anti-establishment, subversive, drop-out, who lived only for the next world. And that is what He asked of his disciples. 

But, on second thought, I shouldn't say "nobody," because I can't know that. But if that person is out there, he is a filthy, smelly beggar, living on the street, with a heart full of sorrowful love for each and every distracted, deluded,  ego-burdened soul who hurries on by him without giving him a look.

That, my friends, is the cold, hard truth.