If we decide to think positively, that may be useful,
but it is not meditation. It is just more thinking.
We can as easily become a prisoner of so-called
positive thinking as of negative thinking.
It too can be confining, fragmented, inaccurate,
illusory, self-serving, and wrong. Another element
altogether is required to induce transformation in
our lives and take us beyond the limits of thought.

Jon Kabat-Zinn²

We are not on the way

                                  to

                  somewhere
we are
           here
now.

RD Savage

02/17/05

Once the realization is accepted
that even between the closest of human beings
infinite distances continue to exist,
a wonderful living side by side can grow up,
if they succeed in loving the distance
between them which makes it possible
for each to see the other whole against the sky.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters

“without any hindrances, no fears exist.”

Heart Sutra

I live my life in growing orbits
which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
but that will be my attempt.

I am circling around God, around the ancient tower,
and I have been circling for a thousand years,
and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm,
or a great song. 

Rainer Maria Rilke

We are not on the way

                                  to

                  somewhere
we are
           here
now
crossing
infinite distances by
seeing the whole being.
 

RD Savage
02/18/05

One day, when he was practicing zen in the monastery
under his master, Nansen, Joshu shut the kitchen door
and stirred up the fire until volumes of smoke filled the room.
Then Joshu shouted, “Fire! Fire! Put it out!”
When all the monks and the zen master hurried to the kitchen
to help put out the fire, Joshu refused to open the door.
Instead he said nonchalantly, “If anyone can give me a word
that will turn my delusion into enlightenment,
I will open the door.” Everyone was speechless.
Except Nansen who silently handed Joshu
a key through the kitchen window.
With this key Joshu opened the door.

story told by Dainin Katagiri Roshi³

The best of zen masters ramble on and on without any apparent central point.
This is caused by the slippery nature of what they are trying to convey.
You can’t read a zen discourse the way your read a detective story,
trying to figure out the plot. You have to read this book like a giant catalog,
line by line, looking for items to buy and keeping the rest on hand
in case you might want to buy them later. When you finish this book,
you can start right in on the first chapter
and discover much more than you saw the first time.
That, after all, is how one learns about life itself.

Robert M. Pirsig⁴

Owl sat for awhile
and then said, “I read somewhere that
‘The heavy is the root of the light.
The unmoved is the source of all movement.’⁵
So true.”

Coyoté always knew to wait
when Owl began a conversation
talking about what he’d read.

“That made sense to me,” Owl continued.
But now I’m reading this,
“’In today’s fast-paced world,
fires are impractical or an occasional luxury
to set a certain mood.
We have only to flip a switch
when the outer light begins to dim.
We can light up the world as brightly as we want
and keep going with our lives,
filling all our waking hours with busyness,
with doing.

Life gives us scant time for being nowadays,
unless we seize it on purpose.
We no longer have a fixed time
when we have to stop what we are doing
because there’s not enough light to do it by…
we lack that formerly built-in time
we had every night for shifting gears,
for letting go of the day’s activities.
We have precious few occastions nowadays
for the mind to settle itself in stillness by a fire.’⁶"

Coyoté waited.

Owl screeched, “Those crazy humans!
How do we feed if there is no night?!
If all is lit?
If there is no heaviness as the root of the light?
No unmoved as the source of all movement?!”

Coyoté waited a second for the words to settle in
“I get the unmoved as source part
but consider

We are not on the way                                   to                   somewhere we are            here now crossing infinite distances by seeing the whole being.

And, just perhaps,

‘The attainment of wholeness requires one to stake one’s whole being. Nothing less will do, there can be no easier conditions, no substitutes, no compromises.’7

Even for us!”

Owl studied Coyoté,
watched the gleam build in his eye.
Owl chuckled, brought wing tips together,
watching Coyoté, he lowered his head, saying,
“Namaste⁸, Coyoté! Namaste rock roshi!”

Then, “Did you ever hear this story?
‘…about a Chinese Buddhist philosopher, Tao-sheng,
whose enlightenment was so profound
that his contemporaries could not understand it.
He was expelled from the Buddhist sangha for being a heretic.
When Tao-sheng found human beings too hardened
to hear the truth, he lectured to the rocks in the desert.
Later Buddhists say that when Tao-sheng told the rocks
that they, too, had Buddha-nature,
the rocks nodded in agreement.’⁹ ”

“That, my friend, is you!”
They paused, looking at each other,
then they each collapsed in a shaking heap.
Laughing. Just laughing.
“Namaste, Owl,” Coyoté gasped,
“Namaste to the rocks too!”

Useless Worry

There is no use
for worrying about what comes
next.

Coyoté spoke quietly.
We cannot avoiding hurting
those left behind.
Other than
being the last one standing.
And what’s the glory in that?

All we can promise
is now - this that is.
We don’t know what comes next.
We can only live with them
and their pleasure
now.

Don’t worry
about later.
It isn’t here.
It isn’t now.

Don’t push them away
from the joy of you and this now.
That diminishes the later,
removes it
rather than smoothes it.

The only song I know
I sing each day,
“Heart like a wheel,
hummin’ to myself.”

That is the valentine
for you
and for me.
What is
is.
Joy!

RD Savage
02/13/05