With palms together,
With the death of Reverend Fern-roshi and my recent bouts with my body, my mind has been on living and dying. I just went through a stack of old photographs and found some very old pictures of myself and my brother as young boys, pictures of my travels, the development of my body through my body-building phase, through my horse phase, and into my priesthood. It has occurred to me that unless we are actually living we are dying.
By “actually living” I mean being aware of our bodies as they are in this very moment, living in them, with them as fully and completely as is possible, and with them as they relate and interact with others. I fear too much of my life has been squandered on activities in youth not worth remembering, sleep walking, as it were, through the days and nights of middle age. Grasping for youth in late middle age. And worrying far too much as an elder. Frankly, I love the sentiment in that old phrase, “Don’t worry, be happy!” Yet, it is so difficult when nerve endings seem to be on-fire or have dulled to the point of numbness, and activities that were once taken for granted as mainstays of health and fitness seem no longer available.
We each are dying as we exhale each breath we inhale. It is a fact of the universe that everything comes and goes. As the Genjo Koan suggests, life has its dharma reality as does death. When living, live; when dying, die. We cannot avoid death, nor need we fear it. Our practice is to be awake in everything without picking and choosing what we will pay attention to. I know I personally fail in this everyday in nearly every moment. This is why it is called practice. To practice is to open our senses without directing them. In Zen, our senses include our mind. An open and supple mind can be developed through Zazen.
May we each, through this practice, be free from suffering.
With the death of Reverend Fern-roshi and my recent bouts with my body, my mind has been on living and dying. I just went through a stack of old photographs and found some very old pictures of myself and my brother as young boys, pictures of my travels, the development of my body through my body-building phase, through my horse phase, and into my priesthood. It has occurred to me that unless we are actually living we are dying.
By “actually living” I mean being aware of our bodies as they are in this very moment, living in them, with them as fully and completely as is possible, and with them as they relate and interact with others. I fear too much of my life has been squandered on activities in youth not worth remembering, sleep walking, as it were, through the days and nights of middle age. Grasping for youth in late middle age. And worrying far too much as an elder. Frankly, I love the sentiment in that old phrase, “Don’t worry, be happy!” Yet, it is so difficult when nerve endings seem to be on-fire or have dulled to the point of numbness, and activities that were once taken for granted as mainstays of health and fitness seem no longer available.
We each are dying as we exhale each breath we inhale. It is a fact of the universe that everything comes and goes. As the Genjo Koan suggests, life has its dharma reality as does death. When living, live; when dying, die. We cannot avoid death, nor need we fear it. Our practice is to be awake in everything without picking and choosing what we will pay attention to. I know I personally fail in this everyday in nearly every moment. This is why it is called practice. To practice is to open our senses without directing them. In Zen, our senses include our mind. An open and supple mind can be developed through Zazen.
May we each, through this practice, be free from suffering.
1 comment:
Dear Daiho-roshi,
The death of spiritual people grieves me less than the deaths of people who never spent much time in the practice. Nonetheless, I grieve for your orphaning and the loss of two friends.
I remember Ken-roshi well from my one visit to Cloudcroft. In particular, I delight in the memory of overhearing you and him discussing non-duality, how as soon as you say "non-duality" you make a duality between non-duality and duality, and how to resolve that by radical acceptance.
Fern-roshi left less of a mark on me in the short time I was there, but she must have been quite the partner for Ken. My own parents were married for 64 years, and died medically unrelated deaths eight days part. I think it says something about the depth of their union that Ken died so soon after Fern.
May your spirit be restored soon, and may your physical problems lighten up so you can continue to pursue the Way as you wish to.
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