Good morning!
We are now all surrounded by the abundant fresh green with a lot of rain as in rainy
season. I have been thinking of cleaning the pond filter and mowing our garden, but
have been postponing due to my bad cold. Rick cleaned the filter. Someone mowed
our garden, though I thought of doing it on Monday or Tuesday when Scott offered
to work in our veggie garden. Seeing something to be done and taking care of it is
called intoku, hidden virtue working unnoticed by others (陰徳). It is a good practice
for its own sake.
We are glad to sit with Bill, who was one of the first board directors and has been the
longest practitioner here. I remember Bill usually joining sesshins (接心・摂心,
touching and embracing the heart) and quietly taking notes. Bill has been a school
principal and knows how important it is to learn, thus “sit another thirty years” –
now more than three decades. Dogen said, “Cultivation and verification of all
dharmas through carrying around the self is delusion. Cultivation and verification of
the self by all dharmas coming forward is awakening.”
I read a report in an e-list of JUMP (Japan United for Ministry of Peace) visiting a
small island Narushima. When the author said how beautiful Narushima was, 6th
grade students said there are only mountains and the ocean. She said that they
would someday understand how wonderful it is to have mountains, the ocean, and
clean air, hinting that only a few things might be truly important. I commented that
we should have mountains and oceans and that only heart and life are to be looked in
and for.
Carl Busse’s poem “Over the Mountains” tells us of our misguided notion of
happiness over the mountains, thus always we must come home with tearful eyes.
What we must do is come home, mountains and oceans – life source, and not going
out in foreign dusty realms of matter and power, constantly fighting for them. We
must come home to our life and heart, our original nature and core, without which
nothing can exist and meaningful. We must orient our hearts from the origin,
practicing the way cycle daily – enjoying amrita, ambrosia, immortality.
6/15/13
Note:
1.
Carl H. Busse (1872-1918) made a poem titled “Over the Mountains“:
Over the mountains,
Far to wander, people say,
Lives the Happiness.
Aah, so I went,
In the swarms of others,
Came back with cried out eyes.
Over the mountains,
Far, far away over there, people say,
Lives the Happiness.
2. The Way Cycle is aspiration, action (cultivation), awakening, and unconditioned peace.
