live everything

Rainer Maria Rilke: “Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

In Letters to a Young Poet (Letter Four, July 16, 1903) as translated by Stephen Mitchell.

transformed by grief

“Zero Circle” a poem by Rumi (13th century Persian mystic)

Be helpless, dumbfounded,
Unable to say yes or no.
Then a stretcher will come from grace to gather us up.
We are too dull-eyed to see that beauty,
If we say we can, we’re lying.
If we see
No, we don’t see it.
That No will behead us
And shut tight our window into spirit.
So let us rather not be sure of anything,
Beside ourselves, and only that, so
Miraculous beings come running to help.
Crazed, lying in the zero circle, mute,
We shall be saying finally,
With tremendous elegance,
Lead us.
When we have totally surrendered to that beauty,
We shall be a mighty kindness.

mindfulness task #2

Each week one of the novices at my home monastery offers a mindfulness activity to help us became aware of our surrounding and to focus the mind on what’s right in front of us. This gives everyone the opportunity to bring mindfulness into the ordinary everyday and to practice alongside the monastic teachers, trainees, and guest residents … dedicating our joint efforts to the well-being of all sentient beings.

Ryushin (dragon-heart) writes: This week we’ll be focusing our loving energy towards those close to us, either at work or home. Often times we take people for granted when we feel sure that we know someone or thing. The less obviously interesting the person is to you the more creative you’ll have to be. Commit yourself to appreciating that person from all the angles that you can. Appreciate their thoughts, their physical form, their emotions, their speech patterns, their energy, the history you’ve shared with them, and so forth.

I’ve been reading The Art and Practice of Loving (author’s name to come) and would like to quote from it. “The word ‘ordinary’ is a curse you put on something to relegate it to the discard pile, where you can ignore it forever. This is worse than other curses, because when people hear it, they nod their heads in agreement rather than tell you that you are off the mark. ‘Ordinary’ says something about the one who speaks it, and nothing about the object.”

May we find nothing ordinary this week.

learning truth

From a talk by Zen teacher Hogen Bays, co-abbot at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Oregon. Click for full text. 

There is an old story about a young man who wanted to study martial arts. He hears of a true master living somewhere hidden deep in the mountains. The hopeful student begins by asking questions about where the master might be. He then makes his preparations and begins the arduous journey, climbing difficult mountain paths and searching the wild forest. Finally, the young man finds the remote and secluded hut where the master lives all alone.      

He begs the old teacher, “Please, master, teach me all you know.” The master laughs. “Absolutely not, you have no ability. I can see it by looking at you. Get out!” He kicks him out. The young man spends the night in the woods and returns the next day. “Please, please let me study with you,” he begs. “Out!” Another night in the woods. The third day the young man returns again. “I’ll do anything, please let me study with you.”

“Well, since you are so persistent and underfoot anyway, you may come in and clean yourself up. Then draw some water and sweep up around the place.” The young man is cold, tired, and quite hungry by then. He’ll do anything. He starts working earnestly, chopping wood, building a fire, drawing water from the well, making tea, cooking gruel. He works at these chores for a year. However, as time goes on, he becomes annoyed. “I’m not learning any martial arts. I’m wasting my time here. This teacher is a fraud!” Finally he explodes at the old man, “I asked you to teach me and you agreed. When does the training begin?”       

The master says mildly, “Oh, that’s what you want,” and suddenly turns and hits him with a piece of wood. The young man yells, “Ouch! What was that for?” The old man hits him again in the back. The student runs away into the woods, afraid for his life, the master after him in a fury. But then the master goes back and settles into the house as though nothing happened. The student creeps back later and begins to do the chores again, always trying to keep the old man in sight. But somehow, every day, many times a day, the master manages to sneak up on him and strike him from behind. The student never knows when he is going to be hit, from what side, or at what time. Constantly he has to be aware. Even in the middle of the night he might be hit. This goes on for a year. He is black and blue and he’s a nervous wreck.       

But little by little his senses become keener. He detects little noises, small shadows that are not exactly where they should be, moving the wrong way. Soon he is able to duck out of the way before he is hit. Finally, one day he whirls around and grabs the stick out of the descending hand and strikes the old man. The master bows to him.       

How does this story apply to us? This story is about our experience with practice. We do this practice because we want to learn something. What do we want? In Zen we say we want to be awakened, to be enlightened. Thus we find a teacher and plead, “teach me how to be clear, that is what I want.” We put aside things in our life to come to sesshin to learn how to be enlightened [or: to become enlightened?] Actually, we are pleading to the Truth within us: “Please emerge. I will do anything to be able to experience you.” Be careful. The Truth may answer and tell you what “anything” is.