Fingers Ease Rocking Beads

1.

Fingers finger
this precious world—
pointing, jabbing
and touching
everything possible
while torsos rock
forward and back
mumbling the infinite
prayer that mysterious
ease might flow
like a mighty river.

Beginning as a trickle
it tickles everything
it touches—
urgently bearing
every soft thing
along to
the laughing sea.

Each life a single bead
of the bracelet God
wears on her wrist.

2.

We are God’s probing and loving fingers.
Our prayer is gently rocking the world.
Beads scatter when the bracelet breaks.
Ease breaks out all over.

Personal Practice – Ask a friend to give you two words. Go dreamy and find two words yourself. Without thinking, write an essay or a poem using all four of these words. Wonder what your essay might mean*.

*special thanks to long-time friend, colleague and teacher Tamara Scarlet-Lyon for her continuing inspiration and companionship on the journey

Adventuring Together

This is the last morning of our virtual retreat. We have been weaving formal Zen meditation into the fabric of our lives. As Zen retreats always are, it has been challenging and wonderful. Though I have been on countless of these rigorous training retreats, I am always surprised by what arises—both within me and within each person that participates.

Who would think that sitting still and meeting what arises with compassion and curiosity would be so wild and difficult? But when we slow down enough to be where we really are, we discover that all of life slows down with us and meets us in each moment. And all of life includes a range far beyond any image or plan we might have in our mind.

It turns out that we humans are travelers through a vast geography that moves from landscapes of ease and delight, to dark lands of fear and anxiety. Ordinarily we meet this flux with attempts to protect and control. We automatically think: ‘I’ll just try for more of the good stuff. What I don’t like, I’ll fix, avoid or pretend it’s not there’. From this perspective, our life becomes the exhausting and endless work of fixing, avoiding and pretending.

In our Zen practice, we make the unusual vow to let things be as they are. This is not a matter of believing some special doctrine, but of being willing to be an explorer in our own lives. The teachings of Zen are not to be studied, believed and held onto. Rather they are signposts to suggest places to look and areas to explore.

When we allow things to be as they are (including ourselves) we find that life is far beyond whatever we thought it was. Though words are a wonderful part of life, life itself is far beyond anything we can say about it. The mysterious aliveness of life equally resides beyond the edge of infinity and in this very moment. Whatever we call this mystery—God, Allah, Buddha nature, universal love—only points to something beyond our conception.

Everything is included in this vast and shimmering web of vibration we call life. Each thing arises from the inconceivable source, lives and maintains itself with support of everything else, and disappears back to the inconceivable source. Now it appears as the sound of the bird. Now as the fathomless sorrow that lives in my heart. Now as the ease of leaning my head back and looking up at the morning sky.

Everything is sacred. Not one single thing is left out. Our problems and our anxieties. Our failures and our terrible flaws. Our secret joys and our unseen sorrows. Everything is included.

In these still unusual Zen Zoom retreats, we support each other to do this deep and essential human work. Alone together and together alone, we each dive into what is already here to learn how to be who we already are. We get lost. We get found. We begin slowly and quickly to realize what we have always known.

Life is a precious gift and we are all part of the vast and wondrous river of life.

On Virtual Retreat

The first day of our virtual retreat. Our second virtual retreat of the pandemic here at the Boundless Way Temple (on-line).  We’re calling it The Distant Temple Bell.

As far as I know, these virtual retreats are a new form of practice in the history of Zen. For thousands of years, Zen practitioners have gathered in temples and monasteries, in retreat centers and in individual’s homes for in-person intensive training periods traditionally called sesshin. During these gatherings, we live together in silence as we follow a simple routine that supports us in consciously doing the challenging and mysterious work of waking up. Sitting still together alternating with periods of walking are always the core of the schedule.

It is rigorous and wondrous work, this sitting together in silence and stillness. These next three days, a group of us will do this ancient work through periods together on Zoom alternating with time on our own. Though the form is different, the intention is the same – to withdraw from the busyness of the world in order to break through the fierce and mindless inertia of our lives—to find ourselves right where we are.

I’m reminded of St. Paul’s injunction to ‘Pray ceaselessly and rejoice in all things.’ This is a good description our intentions during intensive periods of Zen training. The ceaseless prayer is the seamless container of practice. We do our best give up pursuing the endless mind roads of desire and accumulation. We turn instead, moment after moment, to the source of life which only resides right here in this instant—this breath, this sound, this sensation. Life is always generously arising and offering itself to us, only usually we are too busy to notice.

Our vow on retreat is to practice appreciating what is actually here—to rejoice in whatever arises. Of course we have our opinions: ‘I like feeling like this. I don’t like that.’ But beyond what Rumi calls ‘the field of right and wrong’, there is a vast freedom that we touch only when our habitual objections releases us to be present to what has been here all along.

Life itself is nowhere else. There’s nothing to search for and nothing understand. Life itself is continually and effortlessly presenting itself to each one of us. All we have to do is wake up to what has always been here.

Personal Practice – Consider joining us over these next three days in consciously turning your attention to what is right in front of you. If it’s possible, allow yourself to sit in silent meditation or prayer more than usual. Don’t try to quiet your mind or achieve peace. See if you can appreciate life in whatever form it arises. No special tricks necessary.

Dividing Ourselves

‘I think we are finally at a place where we can accept the truth that no one escapes from oppression, not one of us. Everyone is deeply wounded.’ Rev. angel Kyodo williams

Everyone is deeply wounded by the collective trauma of racism. No matter your part or your role, no matter who you ancestors were, we are all woven together by the horrors of our past. This trauma, like all trauma, lives on in the present—haunting our every moment and manifesting in all our actions and institutions.

Slavery, lynching, mass genocide and violence are part of our American heritage. They stand alongside visions of freedom and righteous struggle—people of all backgrounds who have worked tirelessly—who have given their lives to fight against bigotry and cruelty. But until we can collectively acknowledge the fullness of what has happened and how it continues, none of us are free.

The violence and inhumanity of our American history are a bitter pill to swallow for a country that has prided itself in its exceptionalism and its self-image as a beacon of shining light. Just like individuals, countries create images of themselves and then defend these images as if they were the truth. If I imagine myself as a kind and sensitive person, I will unconsciously do my best to deny any actions or accusations that indicate otherwise. We all erect walls of the self-protection to defend our illusory self-image and to keep us safe from all that we would rather not see.

These fabricated self-images are necessary and helpful and only a problem if we hold them as true and unchanging. Then we spend our time defending a picture of who we think we are rather than being able to look around and respond to what is actually present, both within us and outside of us.

We all know people who seem particularly oblivious to the world around them. Regardless of what they are confronted with, they tell the same story about what is happening: ‘I never get a break.’ ‘Everyone always turns against me.’ ‘Why do people blame me for things that are not my fault?” ‘Why am I so broken?’ ‘Why don’t people see how kind I am?’ ‘Why does this always happen to me?’

These stories, even the negative ones, protect us from information that might be dissonant to the image we have created. Even when these self-images no longer serve us, they can have a fierce hold on us—unless we actively work to acknowledge our self-centeredness and open to that which is disturbing and unknown, we will be forever held within our own self-deception. This is part of the woundedness that Rev. angel Kyodo williams speaks of above.

Of course ‘those people’ are always, in some way, us. Though each one of us lives in a bubble of imagined exceptionalism, this is simply part of what makes us all fully human. Each one of us contains the full range of grace and pathology. Each one of us has the capacity for acts of courage and acts of cowardice – acts of mercy and acts of cruelty. When we create groups and classes of people, then start calling them names, it is a sure sign that we have divided ourselves against ourselves.

This self-splitting happens at every level. I can wonder why my partner is so self-centered and mindless while I am so virtuous and attentive. I can wonder why Republicans are the bad things and the Democrats are the good things. I can think New Zealand’s political leader is wonderful and our current leader is horrible.

There are different positions and roles. Everyone is not equal. Some actions hurt others and some are more helpful. But we’re all entangled together.

In the cycle of abuse, everyone suffers the loss of their humanity. Breaking out of the patterns of terrible woundness require all of us to engage—to look at inconvenient and outrageous truths about ourselves, our history and the hidden realities of the country in which we all live.

Personal Practice – How do you divide the world? Think of three qualities that most describe who you are. Now think of three qualities that describe who you are not. Write them down. Take the list of the three things you are not and consider how, sometimes, you are these things too. Now pick one of the things you are not and consider how it might serve you to incorporate some of this quality into your life.

Learning (again) to See

Now, well into July, the garden marches slowly toward maturity. Even as the days grow shorter, the marigolds grow and throw out their blazing orange blossoms. Hydrangea bushes proudly hold aloft their fantastic blue. I’ve tied up the gangly tomato plants, built a rustic support for the zinnias and run strings up to high places to guide the heaven-reaching morning glories. We’re all ready for the full heat of the summer predicted for today.

I’ve recently completed a wonderful biography of Thoreau by Robert Richardson. (Just as I’m writing this and checking on Wikipedia, I’ve learned that he married Annie Dillard (another of my heroes) in 1988 after she had written a fan letter to him upon reading this very biography.) In Henry Thoreau: A Life of the Mind, Richardson reports that, late in his short life, Thoreau was greatly influenced by the English art critic and philosopher John Ruskin’s writing on art and how we see things. Ruskin was a wonderful writer and Thoreau was moved by his descriptions of paintings as well as his observation of the infinite subtlety of color in nature.

Though we have words for colors, when we look closely we can notice that we see a wide range of hues that we might call by one name. In the eye, in the mind and in nature there is a wide range of experience that cannot be conveyed in words. We say the leaves of the tree are green. But look closely at the leaves on any tree and you will find a wide range of shades of color. And you will see that the color is constantly changing through the day as the quality of light shifts and varies.

Even the walls of one room that we say are one color, are actually, when we look closely, always many colors. The play of the reflection of light creates a multitude of shades that we easily cover over with the idea of ‘one color.’ Our minds have learned to edit out the variation. The wall is white—never mind the greenish reflection of light off the plant or the gray-blue shadows around the edges. Words and convention innocently obscure our direct experience.

Painters and artists must train themselves to see again. Perhaps we ordinary folks should do the same. As I look out at the crab apple tree near where I am sitting, I notice the outer leaves are almost transparent in the soft morning light. The inner leaves are darker and more solid. Though the sun is hidden in the morning mist, some leaves shimmer a golden green while others hold an opaque and steady green.

A thousand colors reveal themselves as I take the time to look more closely. The light bounces off pigments in the leaves then activates the receptive cones in my eyes which send impulses to some remote corner of my brain and I ‘see.’ We work together, me and the trees and the all photons dancing in between us all.

There’s not as much to do in the garden these early summer days. The planting and rearranging is mostly done. Now it’s the tending and befriending time—taking it easy in the heat, drinking lots of fluids and appreciating the riot of subtle color that appears before me.

Personal Practice – Take a break from your life to look around. Find a comfortable vantage point (it could be right where you are), settle in and take a breath. Then look around at the color that surrounds you. Notice the subtle variation of hues and shades. Notice what is shiny and what is dull, what reflects and what absorbs, what colors infiltrate and what reflects. Appreciate the world beyond words—clearly evident and ever changing. This is your true home.