zenscribe

Evening. A bird sings in the tree outside my window. One word for such a moment might be "sweet."
But the word is not the moment.
A poem I quoted yesterday:

A man pulling radishes
points the way
with a radish.

How do you point the way?

After all this, it finally happens: Change is now, as the new French president's campaign slogan said.
In France, we have a feeling of relief today, of a return to "normal" after five years of some sort of collective insanity when everything was about "appearance" rather than about things as they truly are, plain and simple.
Sometimes public life offers great moments of truth. This, unmistakably, is one of them.

A new month. The sky cleared and sun flooded the garden all day.
Love it.
All dark out there now. Love it, too.
Meanwhile, caught up in French politics, which is on everyone's mind here, even if it's one of the three subjects people say are not to be discussed at a dinner party (the other two being sex and money). Today was the battle of the May Day marches: who had the biggest? who had the most? who was loudest, longest? who "won" the numbers game?
Everyone has an idea, an opinion, and they're all making them known tonight. It's a world of counters and calculation.
I'm with Victor Hugo: "Tout nombre est zéro devant l'infini." (Every number is zero before infinity.)

Already Monday, late on a quiet night.
Much coming and going each day, like the wind and rain and clouds and sun.
Yesterday was election day in France, and I voted for the first time. Writing that, I'm wondering what "vote" means... Many people "voted" like I did, many did not, still others did not "vote" at all.
April showers bring May flowers, as we say.
I suppose the best thing I can say about anything tonight is that my certainty in the uncertainty grows.
I suppose I could also say poetry is not other than this.
Or as a poet wrote:
"La poèsie est sans réponse -
océan sans fin
elle se noie
dans un coquillage"
(Anise Koltz, "La poèsie c'est autre chose")
translation:
"Poetry is without response -
endless ocean
it drowns
in a shell"

First day back at work after much time away, and particularly after the lovely week of retreat in Belgium at the Château de Frandeux.
It was a deep, wide, rich practice with a group of 108 participants...
Now so many things to say...
...but, as I said there one morning, the lake swallowed my words.
I tried inserting a picture here of my window, my desk, the lake, the trees, the sun and clouds, but it was too big (the computer said)! Of course! Words and a box on a screen could never contain it!
Anyway, I loved settling into the world there moment to moment, a universe of faces. I loved meeting the world there moment to moment, a universe in every face.
Many bows to all who shared the week with me, wherever you are/were.

So it's been a long while since I last wrote here. And I've certainly given thought to what I might post, and then I've not done it.
When I start writing again, like now, I wonder why I haven't written before. I love it so!
Now preparing to leave on retreat for a week with my teacher, my students, my dharma brothers and sisters and their students. Which means another long while without postings here. Or maybe not...
In any case, I'm always here.
Join us in sitting wherever you, whenever you can. And stay tuned here for another "retreat in the heart of life," coming soon to a life near you.

Words seem flat when small children are murdered in cold blood as they were in France yesterday.
I'm not sure I even know what such an act means.
Except that to kill and harm, I would have to separate myself from the other and focus only on the differences. And whatever was different from me would have to be eliminated. There would be no end to the elimination. My suffering would be interminable.
Now, when I see that, I feel compassion arise for victim and perpetrator alike.
Even if I don't know how far that compassion extends. What if my own son or daughter had been killed in that schoolyard?

What could be noted here tonight?
Perhaps that is the most worthy note: a question that incites me to look, to listen, to open my heart to the infinite possibilities right here at my desk at this very hour, Sunday drifting nonchalantly toward Monday, a drizzle outside, me thinking of heading off to bed.
A question that incites me to widen my perspective: a pair of red-handled scissors in a jumble of pens, the distant roar of a plane overhead, everything depends on everything, everyone on everyone.

Ever since an article appeared on the sports pages in the newspaper last week about Americans turning yoga into a competitive sport (even hoping to bring it to the Olympics as a medal event!), I am at a loss for words. Although I don't practice yoga, I have rarely heard of something so absurd as this. And yet I can't say I'm surprised; it's just America doing what it always does, making everything into "material" for consumption.

When you stop to consider all the "current events" that capture our attention every day, it seems impossible to settle on one, to select a moment, an event, a person, an issue, worth singling out from the rest.
Is the ongoing slaughter in Syria more "captivating" than a presidential debate in France, Greece's ongoing economic woes, International Women's Day, the full moon, the cat staying out until all hours last night, a delicious mushroom risotto for dinner, a poem called "How I Know What I'll Never Know" revised this afternoon, a broken finger nail, Bob Wilson and Philip Glass's revival of their mythic opera "Einstein at the Beach," a random phone call inquiring as to whether I had any gold for sale, a cold rain in late afternoon, snapshots from friends in Australia, a new designer at Yves Saint Laurent, restless sleep, the stillness of the garden at 2 a.m....?
Each is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less. Which is less a response than an ongoing question.

More engagement with the "past" again today: particpated in a tribute reading following the death of an American poet who had been a pillar of the Anglophone poetry scene in Paris. Poets of all sorts came together to honor John, his work and his support for many of us.
Saw many people I haven't seen for years. The "one" community of diverse individuals (that he had helped foster with a reading series, "Live Poets") had come together. He would have loved the event, someone said. Too bad he couldn't be here, another said.
Somebody brought the funeral urn bearing his ashes and put it on stage, with a pint of Guinness.
Something else was happening around, inside, beyond all that, though: "He" was there because "we" were there; "we" were there because "he" was there.
And then we were done and the bar hands pulled down a giant TV screen and broadcast big men playing rugby in the rain.

Spend much of the day with old photographs, in response to a request for pictures to build an archive of Dana, my teacher's sangha, my own original heart sangha.
Each image stirs an association with people, places, times, lives. Sometimes there is a tug of wistful regret for what and who is "gone," nostalgia for what I think "was" and believe is "no longer" and wish could be "again." Mostly, though, I feel happy and full, which surprises me - even if I wouldn't mind looking now like I did then, 20 years younger. Or would I?
Only death is ageless.
The life that is remembered as I sift through the "past" is "mine," but it utlimately reflects how "mine" is intertwined with "theirs," how the times of our lives are lived all together, as one, now.

I was sweeping through the events of the day, big and small, when I recevied an email message from someone who had recently lost a dear sibling. It felt like the world's axis had shifted, she said, with everything different yet still just going on.
When I stopped reading for a second and looked up from the computer screen, I knew exactly what she meant. And I knew, too, that this is how things always are. The truth, I might say, or the answer, or the naked nature, what I am always seeking even when I don't know I'm seeking, is right there in the movement.

The first words that come are: "I don't know." And then there are others: "the cat purrs," "what time is it?" "keep looking," and more and more and more...
I back up, return to the first words again. Or is that I am moving ahead? Or maybe not forward or back, but rather "I" am right here, with the words that arrive now?
Now: the day was busy. Now: much activity, not much to "show" for it - some final touches on a manuscript, cooking, laundry, a few errands done, shared meals, great joy watching video clips from last night's Oscars with the winning team of "The Artist"!
Now: memory of a haunting newspaper photo a few days ago, showing a wounded man in Homs, Syria, cradling his infant, a 3-month-old boy, who also was wounded in the shelling and died within minutes. The picture, the story, the memory breaks my heart.
Now: memory of a moment during a visit to Jerusalem 11 years ago, a guide pointing out the olive grove from which Jesus looked down upon the teeming city and wept. An hour later, at the Western Wall with two dear dharma friends, Frank and Renata, my own warm tears came, the only possible response to the world at that moment.
Now: the only response tonight, the most intimate response, is I don't know, again and again.

Riding in a car the other day, I was told by the driver that sometimes the car's radar system, which is supposed to alert the driver when the car is nearing an "obstacle," malfunctions. It seems that it often sounds the alarm when there is in fact no "obstacle."
That's exactly like our minds, I thought, inventing obstacles that aren't there, building fictive walls, boundaries, enemies, threats that shimmer like a mirage but that we take to be "real."
And the biggest "obstacle'' it creates is "me."