I unlatched the shutters. The light was as intense as a love affair. I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing. Nobody needs this much sunlight. Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is as extravagant as a world can be.
We are the ones obsessed by measurement. The world just pours it out.
Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping
Sometimes it takes time for the meaning of things to emerge or for us to develop a deeper understanding.
The ox is slow, but the earth is patient.
Indonesian Proverb (or maybe, as some say, Chinese)
Zen speaks of “expressing a dream within a dream”, acknowledging that we never quite rid ourselves of delusion and confusion, yet we can be present and fundamentally kind. There is so much bounty, so many tangled and twining vines, as well as so much lostness. Practice isn’t abut escaping any of it. It is about putting our feet on the ground, feeling the moist grass, knowing the wet stream of tears on a cheek…and not wandering off, looking for something better. “Here is the place; here the Way unfolds”, Master Dogen wrote.
Summer asks that we not confuse enlightenment with distraction. Where there is a dream of intractable pain, Buddhas show up to be a salve to that suffering. They show up for you. They are not other than you. “Just as cages and snares are limitless, emancipation from them is limitless” Dogen also wrote.
Bonnie Myotai Trace, A Year of Zen
This is for you.
Enlightenment is
Mistake after mistake.
Ikkyu, 1394 – 1481, Zen Buddhist monk and poet.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better
Samuel Beckett, 1906 – 1989, Worstward Ho!
I cannot tell if what the world considers ‘happiness’ is happiness or not.
All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it,
I see them carried away headlong, serious and obsessed,
in a general rush,
unable to stop themselves or to change their direction.
And all the while they claim to be
just on the point of attaining happiness….
Chuang-tzu, Chinese philosopher, 4th century BC
Zen Master Genshu Watanabe (1869 – 1963) in his last years called to his bedside a monk who had recently become a disciple. The master asked, “How can one go straight on a steep mountain road of ninety-nine curves?” When the young disciple replied “I don’t know”, he was told, “Walk straight by winding along”.
When told to walk straight, we stupidly think we have to cross mountains, hills, rivers and the sea in a straight line. Ignoring traffic lights, we dash off like a race car, looking neither left nor right. But we only deceive ourselves into thinking we progress as we lurch forward. Instead, “Go straight by winding along”
Shundo Aoyama, Zen Seeds
Mindfulbalance 