holiness

I grow into these mountains like a moss. I am bewitched. The blinding snow peaks and the clarion air, the sound of earth and heaven in the silence, the requiem birds, the mythic beasts, the flags, great horns, and old carved stones, the silver ice in the black river, the Kang, the Crystal Mountain. Also, I love the common miracles-the murmur of my friends at evening, the clay fires of smudgy juniper, the coarse dull food, the hardship and simplicity, the contentment of doing one thing at a time_ gradually my mind has cleared itself, and wind and sun pour through my head, as through a bell. Though we talk little here, I am never lonely; I am returned into myself. In another life-this isn__ what I know, but how I feel- these mountains were my home; there is a rising of forgotten knowledge, like a spring from hidden aquifers under the earth. To glimpse one__ own true nature is a kind of homegoing, to a place East of the Sun, West of the Moon- the homegoing that needs no home, like that waterfall on the supper Suli Gad that turns to mist before touching the earth and rises once again to the sky.

My foot slips on a narrow ledge; in that split second, as needles of fear pierce heart and temples, eternity intersects with present time. Thought and action are not different, and stone, air, ice, sun, fear, and self are one. What is exhilarating is to extend this acute awareness into ordinary moments, in the moment-by-moment experiencing of the lammergeier and the wolf, which, finding themselves at the center of things, have no need for any secret of true being. In this very breath that we take now lies the secret that all great teachers try to tell us_the present moment. The purpose of mediation practice is not enlightenment_ it is to pay attention even at unextraordinary times, to be of the present, nothing-but-the-present, to bear this mindfulness of now into each event of ordinary life.

Holy communication, Holy life.

Throughout my life, until this very moment, whatever virtue I have accomplished, including any benefit that may come from this book, I dedicate to the welfare of all beings.May the roots of suffering diminish. May warfare, violence, neglect, indifference, and addiction also decrease.May the wisdom and compassion of all beings increase, now and in the future.May we clearly see all the barriers we erect between ourselves and others to be as insubstantial as our dreams.May we appreciate the great perfection of all phenomena.May we continue to open our hearts and minds, in order to work ceaselessly for the benefit of all beings.May we go to the places that scare us.May we lead the life of a warrior.

But we need to pray daily for humility and honesty to see these sinful attitudes for that they really are, and then for grace and discipline to root them out of our minds and replace them with thoughts pleasing to God.

But we have, if not our understanding, our own experience, and it feels to me sealed, inviolable, ours. We have a last, deep week together, because Wally is not on morphine yet, because he has just enough awareness, just enough ability to communicate with me. I__ with him almost all day and night- little breaks, for swimming, for walking the dogs. Outside it snows and snows, deeper and deeper; we seem to live in a circle of lamplight. I rub his feet, make him hot cider. All week I feel like we__e taking one another in, looking and looking. I tell him I love him and he says I love you, babe, and then when it__ too hard for him to speak he smiles back at me with the little crooked smile he can manage now, and I know what it means. I play music for him, the most encompassing and quiet I can find: Couperin, Vivaldi, the British soprano Lesley Garret singing arias he loved, especially the duet from Lakme: music of freedom, diving, floating. How can this be written? Shouldn__ these sentences simply be smithereened apart, broken in a hurricane?All that afternoon he looks out at us though a little space in his eyes, but I know he sees and registers: I know that he__ loving us, actively; if I know nothing else about this man, after nearly thirteen years, I know that. I bring all the animals, and then I sit there myself, all afternoon, the lamps on. The afternoon__ so quiet and deep it seems almost to ring, like chimes, a cold, struck bell. I sit into the evening, when he closes his eyes.There is an inaudible roaring, a rush beneath the surface of things, beneath the surface of Wally, who has now almost no surface- as if I could see into him, into the great hurrying current, that energy, that forward motion which is life going on. I was never this close to anyone in my life. His living__ so deep and absolute that it pulls me close to that interior current, so far inside his life. And my own. I know I am going to be more afraid than I have ever been, but right now I am not afraid. I am face to face with the deepest movement in the world, the point of my love__ deepest reality- where he is most himself, even if that self empties out into no one, swift river hurrying into the tumble of rivers, out of individuality, into the great rushing whirlwind of currents. All the love in the world goes with you.

John Bunyan says that he never forgot the divinity he taught, because it was burnt into him when he was on his knees. That is the way to learn the gospel. If you learn it upon your knees you will never unlearn it. That which __en_ teach you, men can unteach you _ if I am merely convinced by reason, a better reasoner may deceive me. If I merely hold my doctrinal opinions because they seem __o me_ to be correct, I may be led to think differently another day. But if __od_ has taught them to me _ he who is himself pure truth _ I have not learned amiss, but I have so learned that I shall never unlearn, nor shall I forget.

We must clean ourselves of any impurity.We must clear our cities of any dirt."For God has not called us to uncleanness, but to holiness." 1 Thessalonians 4:7

The only wisdom is to fear God.

Glory to God in the holy highest heavens.

For lack of knowledge of the Holy One, we perish in sin of hell.

Whoever loves God, pray for purity.

You know how they say a holy man falls seven times and gets back up?" he asked, quoting the Hebrew phrase, the ancient words flying smoothly off his tongue. I nodded. "I always think that it isn't the persistence that makes him holy but the fact that he fell." His eyes sparkled with passion as he spoke. "You can't really commit to being religious, to loving God, if you haven't spent some time with your face in the dirt.

That sin will never stand firm which is heartily prayed against....We must spread out all our case before our heavenly Physician, if He is to give us daily relief.

The holy God proved holy by his righteous acts.

The righteous God promotes the cause of righteousness.

God's holiness is not an unloving holiness, and God's love is not an unholy love. It is only by keeping these two primary moral qualities of the divine being closely related that we may rightly behold the character of God. (p. 98)

God called us to live a holy life by his grace.