From My Journals (Part 1)
Feet on floor and over to the nearby window. My first interest on waking is the familiar view. I expect to see the familiar but peer out with curiosity, nonetheless. I look for anything in the early sky, that might forecast drama in store. The color of the sky is never exactly the same as before, nor is the mist. A robin on the grass hops, runs and stops, hops, runs and stops. She is engaged in a foraging ritual memorized in the first month of her life. The scene outside the window has a dull certainty. I am left with what I can’t see. What prowling critters visited overnight? The warming air rising as indeed it is. I can’t feel the remaining night cold still captured in that large stone. I imagine the chill I would feel in my palm, holding the stone tightly. Still gazing, I cannot see beyond this moment because I yearn, at the same time, to possess the present moment. It is too fleeting. The present moment is not a photograph. Still gazing, I am left with what I do not know, what is not possible to know closely. Ignorant to the suffering people of the earth far from here. Perhaps that is why I come to the window. Needing a ritual reminder of not knowing.
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Silence.
We do not understand it. It is dispositive and it brings wonder. Thomas Merton called it, “My bride”. It often inspires gratitude. It is that which we seem to come home to. It is often the best answer. We use it to honor the dead. If it did not exist, we would have to invent it. Yet it does exist.
Silence.
Cows indulge in it. It can reveal so much to us. Appreciating it is enough. Thomas said, “It will not fail us”. It is the nothing being said between two lovers. It frees our lips, our eyes, our ears, our hands, our breath, our imagination. It is missing in our day too often. Meister Ekhardt said it resembles God. It can spark a wonderful vigilance.
Silence.
It does not harbor preconceptions. Thomas Merton called it, “The strength of our interior life. Nothing is required of it. My strongest experience of it was when I watched our daughter, Carrie, being born – me – the doctor – the nurses – the room. It can and does challenge us. It is in all art forms – in all forms of life. It is neither visible nor invisible.
Silence.
It has something to say to me. Elizabeth Browning wrote, “In silence, God strikes”. It is respected and nourished in most spiritual paths. Thomas Merton urged us, “to let it sink into our bones”. It is indispensable to a still mind and an awakened life. Buddha said, “When a person knows the solitude of silence, and feels the joy of quietness, she is then free from fear and feels to joy of the Dharma. (Here I would translate Dharma as “Being alive”). It has brought me to this place.
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Looking over Seven Meadows farm, a sentence appears in my mind, “I own all this”. I immediately sense guilt for the thought. Then, just as immediately, “No that was really my ego’s way of expressing my great gratitude”.
I gaze on the tall trees, so commanding, the energy of interdependence from earth to root to crown.
The massive clouds coming to have a “look see.”
The farmhouse where I can eat and sleep and write in peace.
The combination of tree bark and grasses as far as my eyes can see. All part of the farm. Only the Shawangunk Mountain Range in the distance is not farm.
All is so still, that just to turn my head has a force, a noise like taking a step in the dead of night.
“I own all this.” We must make it part of our practice to observe how our mind works. The ego pays a part in the majority of our thoughts. OK. But the more we acknowledge that, that, the more the ego will back away, leave the stage, making room for compassionate gratitude and forgiveness.
Written on Thanksgiving Day, 2020
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Recognizing, acknowledging and then living peacefully with Paradox is the way of an Awakened Life. We often want to fight paradox by using our rational mind to dispel it. One of the virtues of Zen Koans is that they free us of insisting that linear, discursive thinking and mind-talk is the only way to live. This delusion cripples Intuitive Mind, which always needs to be nurtured. Paradox was of keen interest to Thoreau and Camus. The teacher, Shunryu Suzki Roshi said, “If something is not paradoxical, it cannot be true”. Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was a seminal figure in the establishment of Zen practice in the West.
Some Examples of Paradox.
In a 9th century Chinese koan, Joshi asks his teacher, Nansen, “Which is the Way toward Ordinary Mind?” Nansen tells him, “The more you move toward it, the more you go against it”.
There is the major Zen dictum: Things are not what they seem. Nor are they otherwise.
The first line of the Tao de Ching is, “The Tao that can be taught is not the Tao”.
In the Zen poem, The Sandokai (The Identity of Relative and Absolute) is written, “It is not near, it is not far”. And, “If you do not see The Way, you do not see it even as you walk on it”.
I cannot leave out Master Yogi Berra: Advising a young teammate, “Kid, if you see a fork in the road, take it.” And, “That restaurant is so crowded, no one goes there anymore.” And, “I didn’t say all I said.”
Paradox continued—
He died. He lived.
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My practice has been to let go of all dogma. Little ones that creep into my mind/life it seems every other second. That fit their way into every moment’s experience. Little dogma. It’s not enough to say, “I wish away dogma”. I must come to see that I don’t need them. Don’t need certitudes, reminders to be sure of “I”. Don’t need such inserts. I practice to live without such inserts. Some epiphanies come. However, as Mr. Lincoln knew, not all angels are good.
I find nature to be my Upaya—my means. Nature does not breathe dogma. Its breath is too large. Nature is my breath. These dark winter days and nights, the best I can do is a walk down the long meadow lane or lay my head back to look at our night sky. Truth be told, the Natural World is still a strange place for me. Maybe that’s good. Keeps me alert. Sam sent me a marvelous book, Nature in Winter by Donals W. Stoke.
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Buddha was a Teacher of Morality – how to live and sustain a moral life. He was not a theoretician. In his 45 years of teaching, he refused to answer any theoretical question.
Among the 15 subjects about which Buddha refused to speak, 8 concerned the nature of the Universe; 2 concerned the nature of life, and 4 concerned the nature of a Tathagata – a Buddha such as himself; Whether a Buddha exists or does not exist after death; Whether a Buddha both exists and does not exist after death. One question never answered concerned the possibility of his having a numinous personality – many people thought he was an angel. Buddha never used the word for “enlightenment”.
The topic Buddha most spoke about was Patience (Kshama in Sanskrit—Behavorial discipline and the practice of forgiving and forgetting). He spoke about it more than he did about nirvana or meditation or elephants or tigers.
There is a story about Buddha walking down a road and being approached by a person very taken by his charisma.
The person asks Buddha, “Are you a God?”
“No,” replies Buddha.
“Are you an angel?”
“No.”
“Are you a prophet?”
“No.”
“Then what are you?” the person asks.
Buddha replies, “I am awake.”
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Zen Archery (Kyudo) reaches our Body/Mind directly with this dharma. There is the saying in Kyudo, “I am not shooting’, it is shooting”. I depend on the bow, the bow depends on me. I once took up Kyudo for a very brief period but had to discontinue for lack of time. Perhaps I will take up simple archery again sometime.
The gifted conductor comes to find that while she is conducting the music, the music is conducting her. It is for this reason that the integration of conducting great music and listing to great music is experienced as deeply, or shall I say, pointedly personal, in the best possible way.
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There are lines from the poem, Among School Children, by William Butler Yeats:
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance
How can we know the dancer from the dance?
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Late in life, Buddha said, “I am always at the beginning.”
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Roshi Gregory Hosho Abels is a writer, poet and former theatre mentor His work has been seen in NYC and throughout Europe. His books include Never Something Else (Seven Meadows Press and Where to Begin (Lightwood Press).
More of his work can be read on Lightwood by entering his name on our Search Button.
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