Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update
June 2002

Theme: A Common Solitude, A Complete Reliance: What Is There in Stillness  

Many people have no money. Some lives are poor because of lack. Some lives find a poverty that is treasure-filled with simplicity. Meetingbrook longs for this second poverty, a sacred trusting heart.

To that end we are always considering the end of the outer and public face of our having no money, to return to the inner and unseen soul of poverty. True poverty is complete reliance in a common solitude.

We’ve tried for 6 years to do what we do with no money. Now we smile at our absurdity, feel sadness of loss, and let loose the mooring line. We’ll drift away. Then, after a bit, another try, we’ll drift back.

And a good drift it is. Tail wagging dog becomes dog itself. We will then reconvene in a hidden, more silent life not pretending to retail in the marketplace what can only be found in desert emptiness. Enfolding.

There are many who wish us well. We wish them well. Just that -- nothing more & no other agenda. Wishing each other well the way rain falls on mountain rock and rolls down brook. We tumble. Reliably.

First to transfigure will be bookshop/bakery at the harbor. It will change into an alternative community resource bookshop/bakery. We will transfigure & reappear in regular contemplative practice at hermitage.

We will pray, sit silently, converse, engage stillness, enter solitude, and embrace hospitality at times --simplicity as sacred absurdity, liturgy as everyday seeing, prayer as grateful heart. Reliance is connection.              

The Meetingbrook promises (contemplation, conversation, and correspondence) will guide daily life at hermitage. Buddhists have precepts, Benedictines a rule. We have, absurdly: simplicity, silence, & service.

Others are welcome to stop by. But no mistake, it is simply our practice and prayer, not performance. A regular life: conversation, sittings, psalms, silence, service, & hospitality. When life runs out, we’ll die.

Blaise Pascal wrote: “Plus ca change, plus cela meme chose,” – translated here as – “The more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself.” Each becomes itself when exhausting resistance ends. We’ll let go.

So, let go. Become yourself. Be what you really are. Go deep or stay close to surface. Look for company or look within for inner guest, it doesn’t matter. What matters is letting go, leaving exile, & coming home.

What some people call Christ or Buddha is the truest part of each of us. Not ego, not plans nor successes. Not failures, mistakes, missed opportunities. What is most true is beyond mind and understanding. Look.

Christ is the embodying reality of God’s life in this existence, on this earth, freeing to love dearly. Buddha is the awakening realization of our inner & inter-connection to all, freeing to see clearly. A ligature of trust.

Call it what you will – but attend well. Call and listen. Listen and be silent. Be silent and find stillness. Be still. Come to know what is there in stillness. Zen’s ‘don’t know’ resides in stillness. Is What Is Itself God?

Meetingbrook will participate in dwelling stillness. We will invite, & dwell within, a solitude of heart. We will attend to What Is Itself everywhere. This is our refuge & strength: a common solitude, attending God.

Gratefully, Reliably

, Sando , Cisco , Mini and all who grace Meetingbrook,

7June2002, Feast of Sacred Heart

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Note: We are asking for individuals to become members, donate money (tax deductible), participate in Meetingbrook’s life. This is the way we’ll be able to maintain the alternative community resource {a.k.a. bookshop/bakery} in town. This is to say nothing of how the hermitage will continue with similar reliance.

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