The Good Old Days

I’m out on the porch to write in the open air for the first time this year. Fifty degrees is my cut off point, below that, even bundled up, it’s not worth it. Now it’s almost sixty and I’m quietly giddy out here with my tea and my laptop. The birds call to each other and to me with great vigor as the morning darkness begins to give way to the twilight of another day.

I love this time—before the schedules and the responsibilities begin. Just me and the birds. The trees in the Temple garden are now the fuzzy electric green that comes as they once again release their tiny green leaves—tender and miraculous solar collectors coming online for a new summer of sun. A few cars whoosh by on the street in front of the Temple.

Though the governor of Massachusetts has just mandated that we all wear masks in public (beginning Wednesday) and there is no date for ‘opening’ the state, the number of cars on Pleasant Street, where the Temple lives, has gradually increased over the past couple weeks. It’s like we can’t help ourselves, we have to be in our cars. We have to be moving. It’s too scary to stay at home.

Already I kind of miss that ghost town feeling of our first weeks of the pandemic when we were all staying at home. It was possible to walk down this major artery into the city of Worcester and see no cars at all. No need for cross-walks. Those were the days.

My teacher used to tell a wonderful story about his teacher Zen Master Seung Sahn, the founder of the Kwan Um School of Zen. Kwan Um is now a world-wide organization and one of the major sects of Zen in the west. But this story happened in the early seventies, at the very beginnings of the school, when it was just a hardy band of young Zen enthusiasts.

One weekend a month, they would have sesshin—a traditional Zen meditation retreat that would last for three days. As this story goes, George and Seung Sahn were sitting side-by-side on the front stoop of the run down tenement that was their home and meditation hall. It was nearly time to begin the retreat and not a single person had yet showed up for the sesshin. They sat in the formal robes they had just received from Korea. Through some mistake in the ordering, the only robes that arrived were winter weight. It was late August and they were both sweating profusely.

Seung Sahn turned to George and said: “These are the good old days, Georgie. These are the good old days.”

So it is that the present relentlessly becomes the past. The fears and anxieties, the joys and aspirations, however vivid, are all folded into the dream we carry of ‘how it used to be.’ We may imagine that it really was like we remember it to be, but our memory, like ourexperience of the world, is selective and creative.

But there is this morning. The bird sounds and car sounds come easily to my ears. The coolness of the slight breeze is gentle on my cheek. The hosta in the large pot at the corner of the porch is now a small army of green lances poking through the crusty soil. The light of another day softly seeps into everything.

I have a slight headache and my tea is now lukewarm.

Ah, these are the good old days.

Daily Practice: Sometimes a word or a phrase can be a useful tool to focus your attention and allow you to enter more deeply into your life. If it sparks your interest, try using ‘These are the good old days.’ as a training phrase today.

Try it right now if you want. Repeat ‘These are the good old days.’ silently to yourself, then look around at the particular circumstances of this moment. Everything here is fleeting. You’ll be on to something else soon enough. Can you stop right here for a moment and appreciate the exact quality of this? The way the light falls on the floor? The warmth or coolness of the air. The sounds? The smells? The precise quality of whatever mind-state you happen to inhabit?

This passing moment is your life. These are the good old days. Enjoy.