2000.01.02-serial.00033

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SF-00033
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Sunday dharma talk.

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wow
can't believe so many people turned out the day after new years
ah thank you for coming and happy new year
hey isn't happy millennium
for sunday of the
something new movie going
when i was coming up here to sit down
i flashed back a few years quite a few years actually to being one of you and watching the elaborate ritual
that the speaker goes through in our practice
before even opening his or her mouth
to take your seat is a
what all these robes is yards and yards of material
is a lesson in what we call the first level of entanglement
these robes have a propensity for catching on to the slightest thing that sticks up twigs or
gurnard your especially treacherous
i can remember was going into see one of my teachers
feeling already on edge and as i close the door behind me my robe got caught in the door
and i heard this tearing sound behind me as i bowed
but clown buddhas are necessary
this is one of these is the first sunday of every month it's a custom now at the at the green gulch to have the children here with us so we have a lot of you today and
it's wonderful to see you
i have a story
a little story
five minutes or so

maybe long enough
for too long
this is a story about dragons
no dragons dragons are in most cultures it seems that there's a figure of a of a dragon in the west dragons of often in the west i mean in europe and
the western world dragons are often depicted as being rather february fears but
kind of spitting evil and very dangerous kpi critters
but in china as we know dragons are looked at as being known
kind of our every a powerful are
image also a spiritual
image one of a transcendent power so the dragon is looked upon little bit differently in the far east traditionally than it has been in the west any case in book in both cases you know dragons look like right
couldn't be turning a long faces long snouts like like alligators and then long tongue that comes out with fire and they breathe fire
he have scales that go back and back and then a tale that comes up as a big one on the end like a like a like a stinger somebody
so this your stories about somebody who
had heard about dragons of course had seen many pictures of dragons and loud for way dragons looked and began as a little boy am i going a little girl but i think the story i heard because we were talking to me about it was a little boy this little boy love to take pictures or think of pig
pictures or look at pictures of dragons and as he got older he began to carve out a little pieces of wood with a knife that somebody had given him for his birthday these dragons first year they weren't so great you know he didn't really look i dragons and people who kind of laugh and say that looks more like a frog than a dragon
so on but he persisted
a great faith in his ability to carve a dragon and little by little he began to turn out some very interesting dragons and pretty soon not only the a child interesting dragons but he began to turn out a lot of them little pieces of wood any piece of wood he could get hold of out would come the knife and the carbon would begin
and so the dragons begin to accumulate first they were on his dresser top right
and pretty soon they began to move into the other rooms of the house and then into the closet and pretty soon there were dragons under his bed and pretty soon the whole garage outside was filled with dragons you gotten in the attic are you go down in the basement and you will see dragons of all sizes and shape
apps and colors
so one day
a real dragon was flying overhead you know dragons live at the bottom to see that's one place their dragons live in this dragon had come out from the bottom of the sea and was flying through the air

looks down and knowing we only sees this young boy conan dragons
and because you know dragons have this kind of us super skilled as he even through walls and so on he could see all the dragons our car gonna
so suddenly he's swooped down and came up to the window and appeared out the window on the little boy who's carving the dragons suddenly looked up and when we
yeah
because he had never seen a real dragon
and in fact he was scared out of his wits
scared out of his wit
you know what he saw
what did he really say that's what you're going to talk about today what the real drag and loose like might not look just like the dragon the car a real dragon that turns up suddenly and knocks on the door it's not the avon lady maybe
this is a little bit like another story you've probably heard i'll tell this one to you've heard this story about the elephant in the for visit five five lineman five five
for
so since

let's let's start with for
so for blind people come up to a drag now you come up to an elephant whoever has the story go
we're you know
well they will will remember they want to understand they've never seen a real elephant either just as the boy and seen a dragon so they're going to come up and feel the elephant and describe the elephant with an elephant is
so the one comes up and grabs the leg right and what does he say
this
it's like a what it's like a barrel that's good there's no movement elephant is just like a barrel neither one comes up and grabs the tale of the elephant
like a rope or maybe like a snake to could be
now the one comes up and feels the side of the elephant what's that gonna be like
an elephant's just like a wall
neither one comes up and how about his trunk
has a hard way just like us
what
i think
or sprinkler springs a spritzer
faucet like a faucet as good
what else what else maybe
maybe maybe a king it's kind of beginner's moves around right i always that of a hose and hose and firemen head right because
but none of them actually had described an elephant how they just described
oh the ears i forgot the years so
like what
i didn't hear it nice for years you like mice
well that's a good one
elephants are scared of mice right
moses
for what do you think eyes maybe maybe this can be a basis of some are you know a subject for some kind of discussion with your friends and folks about what the real drag and loose like or what a real elephant is or is it
little philosophical for the new year but
this is the information age and maybe if you can't get the answer out syria you can look it up and dot com something elephant dot
dragon dot com triumph
i gives me an idea of
maybe we can start doing our sunday lecturers with god com
well thank you very much
going to go on talking but i think it's time for the kids to go out and play in the sun or i don't know will be discussed things and
have a philosophical discussion about the meaning of life
thank you very much for coming

i haven't seen you since last year
so long
that's a great hat

before i go on a i want to say one more thing that's that for the past
almost a full week we've had the honor of hosting about forty or fifty people
here who have come volunteered to take part in a new year's end of your program
joining us to clean up repair work period at green gulch and it's something we've tried a couple of years but this year it seemed to go especially well and for all of those people who are still here some have left but many are here yet want to say on behalf of everybody thank you
so much for your for your labor for your practice i've never seen the new year so quiet actually we had a wonderful new years here is very quiet i'm sitting and working together very harmonious it's
inspiring that when we say zen center we realized that the center is everybody is the center represents a video and without all of you each and every one of you there is no such thing called and center
so thank you very much
i suppose we're sick to death you know of talking about an and hearing about them the so-called millennium an arbitrary division and time based on arbitrary somewhat arbitrary calendar
but it is interesting that
a
that we that we celebrate new year's
at this particular time and have for quite awhile by this particular time i mean in the dark of the year in the dark of the year and that that seems fitting the spring of the original una day and night or exactly equal the the time with the vernal equinox zero degrees aries
when time is marked from that point that comes around every every year that has also been the beginning of a of a year and it seems a also
significant place to start counting
solar year but there's something about isn't there's something about the dark of the year of going into the long night and then
for slow return of the light the will return of warmth the promise of spring that promise of a new beginning and so on that seems psychologically at least to be a good starting point
time to make new premises vows resolutions and new a new beginning to clean the slate as it were of the past
so we clean up our act at the end of a year and that's what we were doing here and guys
custom in many countries to do that japan as one read the interview we clean up our act and start for credit clean up our deaths start with zero and the same will kind of applies i would say to our relationship with one another in the world
so one of the
think one of the
words that occurred to me
concepts that occurred to me around this time of the year is the question of what faith is
people talk about faith a lot you know and ask about faith and
i get that question and in discussions a lot from from folks who are practicing what on what i think about face how that works in our practice here that is to say in a buddhist practice and in particular
the zen buddhist practice of foot faces and how do we knew faith and and you know we we use faith in many ways fates applies i have to loyalty no faith to our partners face in some
concept door ideal about the world
we have faith in our jobs and faith in the future and so on so
fate has a lot of different connotations and shading say i think but dumb
in our practice
faith is not a week how about blind faith you know we also said people we have a just have kind of except something blindly and not start from zero and just hope and believe in something and then there's the truth in that but
actually the word faith in in buddhist practice translates as a as conviction
and not
the early buddhist practice
faith was called the first faculty of the first power that we develop without faith
without conviction in conviction and what conviction in
first of all conviction and somebody who's telling us what we consider to be the true what we might say conviction that their teacher
is telling us the truth some conviction about that and conviction that whatever is being taught has some validity that that based that kind of root of conviction but his conviction that is based on a teaching that says don't take this on blind
face take this on the practice that is based on the experience and then what is the experience to experience and an early buddhism is that we are responsible each individual for the consequences of our acts which we call karma we forget word i think we're familiar with ca
arma
and that by studying karma which is the result of our mindsets which comes out of the intention that we have that we project on the world and then react to the force of those projections that the karma that we have
have accumulated in in the least this lifetime and in in a model of the early buddhist teachings and many many lifetimes over many lifetimes is being reborn again and again
that we begin to pay some attention to the or the our actions in the world and that those actions are the result
have a mindset of the way we project our ideas and our views and to experience and react to the force of those and usually because the world is ah
as we have learned or learn is impermanent that all things were constantly in flux and change that our views often bounce back to us in a sense of our own resistance to the things that change in life and so the karma that we study and the karma that
there we begin to look at requires that we we restart some place and so we said we have faith in this in the three treasures in a triple jewel with we have faith in the fact of the buddha and what is the buddha you say well in time the faith and in the buddha is the faith that
we already have an inherently goodness in as a seat oh goodness it is our birthright to have that to be that that there's a spark with which we that our life in short is workable
that's a simple maybe a simplistic definition of faith and buddha but that's as a starting point
and that the faith in in in our own inherent or goodness that with which we are born the possibility of openness to the experience in the world
is faith in a path repeat interface and in a direction that we can take
that we're not putting our energy or faith into some other power in some other place
in buddhism there isn't a god in which we have faith your face comes back to a practice that there's a path by which we we can take and which will give us the answers to our problems so we take faith in what's called the the dharma for buddha dharma
the face of the buddha diamonds that we don't practice alone in the world we practice with all things all beings everything else practices together and a great interdependent hole in a universal whole and that's the sound off as the triple treasure in other words
each one of us
is unique in the sense that each one of us has a has a vision of of the world or we could say the universe has a vision of itself as each one of his uniquely and we work out what we can't work out independently separately from everything else there's nothing that a separate from anything else and everything else
so we began to realize that this interdependent relationship this path that we take demands a certain discipline
and so we begin to apply ourselves some some practice what brought you here today you see what brings us together
there's some there's a dynamic force in the universe that we can call buddha buddha mind
at brings us together to open up these questions about how do we overcome our negativity her savage qualities and ask that have brought so much suffering if not great suffering at least disease or anxiety or stress in our life
we've we've come to this practice because we are since we have a sense of were from or of stress of anxiety of dissatisfaction
and so we hear about something called we have to recognize first of all that that's true in our life
but there's something not quite satisfying about the way i live
for no matter how much progress i make how many things i have how many relationships i make that seems successful
we all change and at the at the very least you're going to get sick and die at some time what are we gonna do about that when all the things that we get we lose eventually what how do we finally come to that point is there a way of really meeting our life in the face of the fact that everything change
person i was last week the person i was even a few minutes ago let alone the person i was when i was a child
he's not one person
it's constant constant change
when a person identity and in new universal identity so what kind of teaching do we take up to deal with that so the four noble truths is one that life is this is in life in this condition existence
on
dissatisfaction
anxiety stress fear or sense of
ah isolation
so we begin to have some faith that is that not only is this the truth we have to admit to herself that the first of all this is all
with a remit that we are the ones that are responsible for this being so rather than finally saying it's because of and naming some aspect of phenomenon returned back to ourselves i say suffering begins here but do practice because
to look inward what is the cause of all of this suffering that i admit
what words that begin i can find it blame the government i can finally blame this or that but in the end i have to turn it back and look at myself the second noble truth is all dissatisfaction starts with craving to desire to hang onto some aspect of a world that's influx and can
that be held onto
i have to admit that that's true
have their faith in fact have the conviction to see that that are so enough conviction that least sit down and practice with it come to a place where i'm dumb enough to get to give up everything and sit down and look at a wall for example
to watch to sit down and simply fold my hands together and stare at a wall and notice that everything changes not even a thoughts and feelings that i call me have any permanency whatsoever are constantly and change
and there's a way out of this
this is called be cummings constantly becoming something new grasping on some new aspect
some new aspect of phenomenon that will
where will arrange the world for me and such a manner that it becomes more separable more enjoyable happy
by abandoning
yeah particular mindset by finally surrendering to the way things are in that sense is the next step having faith that that is possible it is very difficult for us to do
it's very difficult for us as human beings
we've been conditioned
by our society
by whatever society we were born into
not to think of ourselves in those terms as absolutes i am diagon that's a buddhist name i'm buddhist i'm an aquarian i'm an american i'm a male and this i'm a that and see that those are all conventional aspects those are all conventional ideas that are absolute
necessary but in fact i'm constantly changing and have and that i'm a man for example and not a woman that's true
those dualities prepared is not the absolute truth as a relative truth for things occur as dualities has pairs
after faith the conviction that and when i begin to see that that is so i get some inspiration from that a little bit of inspiration to go on and to the next step that it's possible to drop
those aspects of those ideas i have about myself in the world where by
i can perhaps take a step forward into the unknown
what is the unknown
is there a way to have to to step into into our life without assurances
how things are going to be okay to take that step
i knew a woman who told me that
not recently that she went through this into an incredible crisis in her life lost everything all the beliefs or the meaning that life had family job
education all the things that she had worked for other things that have been condition in her life
suddenly lost all their saver
she hit your house was okay
she had her health she had her life and nothing else and she decided all she could do to keep going as the count from one to ten and start again and she said to me it as i begin to come from one to ten
and just start over and over and over i noticed something very peculiar i noticed that everything just kept going on very got hungry that had to go to the bathroom and when i walked outside the sunshot shown on me just the same as when i was happy
well the rain fell on me and ago that nothing had actually changed except my ideas about what the world is and who i a minute that is what was changing
and all at once she said i found a certain release a certain desire something when paying i could step back into life a little bit again
when things begin to pick up for me but now she said i begin to see things in a different light i'd be going to see that although everything is
undependable in the way i thought it
she used to think that everything she could depend on saturday the life than now have to be undependable that did not have to be secure she can step out into open space and that there was suddenly a new release and she said i got a tremendous desire again persistence to just open up
my my heart my life the door of my life she used open the door of my life
and let a new caddy and let a new person in write a new way of being in
she had faith in herself she had faith in life and faith and faith this was self generated out of out of the experience that she found herself she gave herself enough or enough space ten breaths
to start over and over and let
lifeforce if we want to call it that the buddha dharma if we want to call it that the divine event if we wanted to call it that manifest
fatally eight there there is a path eightfold path right view right view the buddhist right views the bill that things are impermanent
right meaning complete view
that things are empty of our concepts of them
recall this you know at han
has a wonderful analogy of emptiness in our life is holding up a piece of paper something you've probably heard that this because do you see the moon in your son in this piece of paper
do you see the tree in it
to see all the elements had fed that tree
do you see the people that
cut the tree down and milled the tree that to the tree their families you see the independence of all things in his piece of paper
this piece of paper's going to turn yellow and it's going to eventually crumble away did you see that
the so what i'm trying to bring forth year however stumbling lee is that we do not take on a buddhist dharma something just as blind faith we take we here at teaching life is it for example impermanent things are impermanent
and and look at that and see if that's actually true and our life to feeling about that is practice with that
if it's true that we can we recorded a conviction
am i willing to maybe take on an even more pronounced practice more detailed practice

in buddhism we have what is called on particular in the mahayana that is the large mom means grade and yeah no means a great vehicle
in the early teachings of the buddha dharma called the hinayana a smaller vehicle that was for more monastic practice of people for people could practice and get liberated from from the suffering that chain of events that causes suffering called dharmas
and that there is that these dharmas and that is scandals where these five
elements that make up an individual form our bodies for example feelings sensations that we have from the bodies were we made from those how we like and dislike it
for our perceptions about those the stories the formations that we set up in the consciousness of that that those elements
in some sense but the later mahayana said even those elements
perform the feelings sensations and perceptions that consciousness are themselves dependently arisen and have no basis in as a as as our continuous
substance self
get all things even those things are in flux the mahayana teaching the greater vehicle teaching was that even the buddha dharma
it's not something that you can hang onto and take home and grasp there is nothing nothing nothing
take ultimately can be held onto yeah that is the ultimate jupiter conventional choose
is the truth by which we live in a day to day world i'm a man you're a woman we have to practice on that basis but can we see can we practice with the idea that although that is so
for the function you in the world these are mere conventions
that is it becomes a practice that we have to take to begin with unfit it does not seem obvious to us as human beings at all
for things are empty of herself
we hear that teaching but we have to practice it and one of the ways we practice it is by doings us in
we begin to gain conviction out of our lives and out of our practice by actually taken it on assuming it
hearing at first thus have i heard and been practicing with that aspects different aspects
faith you know that we'll have their lot of stories about people who have faith in on the placebo effect for example
there's a tibetans story about a woman i just read this one recently as why remember it and another of who was a devotee of the buddha dharma and her son was traveling to india and she wanted him to bring back a tooth of the buddha you know you know after the
the rate was a holy ones die the ashes are scattered so a little pieces of bonus i picked up in it and if they were great great teachers and so on their considered didn't have
powerful
ah healing properties transcendent properties so she wanted a tooth of the buddha but he forgot all about it he had other things that hear a lot of business to do it
so we came home and she said where's the truth of the buddha
and he said r o g mama forgotten
but i have to go back i gotta go to business next wish go of the himalayan night
and when i come back bring in the tooth on the buddha but of course he got over there and there's other things more important even if we could have found the tooth of the brothers you have more urgent business came back and mother was very disappointed in him again she said you know send i'm going to be dying one of these days and if i don't have that tooth i think i'm going to kill myself behind
i have of natural causes because i can't live without it
being a good son is that this is i'm going to get that tooth but again he forgot because whatever is going over for or with had overriding power and know wiki guess what that might have been
but when it was coming back he de vraag right beside the road so he'd pulled out one the canine tooth of the dog took to clean up a little bit i'm sure
and brought it to his mother gave it to his mother and he said her mom is well maybe wrapped it up nicely here's the buddhist to
and his i am so happy
and and whatever problems you had they all cleared up in her life
for cancer that she had disappeared or the doubt the great doubt that maybe she was suffering vanished from to filled the room with like sparkling luminescence
and she was very happy and she had faded that tooth you say was the buddhist tooth and in fact it is a buddhist to just as you in your tooth and my tooth is also the buddhist tooth if we believe that deeply enough
but
we have to balance you see in this practice faced with understand it we say that one strong and faith and week and understanding has confidence that is uncritical and groundless
so in the buddha dharma give you something life is in permanent things are impermanent check it out for yourself
bring back a self that has not changed to bring back
knock on the door some family that hasn't lost somebody you know that story about the buddha the woman who came in great distress and
had lost somebody was a grievous shape the buddhist had go get a mustard seed knock on door go get a mustard seed from that family which has not experienced to passing away of a loved one and course she couldn't find it
so we'd have to base this on and the heart experiences the real experiences of my life
in the early buddha dharma with the faith was gained by practicing the eightfold path right view know
right thought right speech complete speech right action right livelihood right concentration right samadhi or meditation so far but in the in a greater vehicle that includes all people not
just months all of us here part of the sanga
oh possible discovering that we are already the world honored want everyone in this without exception the world honored why nobody can be nobody can fill your shoes but you and yet it depends on the whole universe do it
the path is the path of what has called the pair of me does repair and meters means the pyramids sir
it's all answer
has two meanings actually means to cross over
to to the other side from listeners from beside of suffering to the side of realization the first pair of that we can practices is the pyramid of giving her generosity generosity of first of all in the strict sense that that where the generosity of passing on the buddha dharma
for the generosity of giving our time and generosity giving material things the generosity of giving help where just needed practicing generosity
your practice generosity we also need some kind of moral and ethical structure in our life with the moral and ethical structure and buddhism as i try to print out another talks here is not based on good versus bad some absolute like that is based on whatever the conditions that are arising require so although we'd
take on
ah
the virtues of our precepts and so forth not killing and and are not stealing and our software
they're not set up as absolutes and so we though we need to precepts
to guide us we'd see them not as absolutes
we'd be in the practice with precepts the harpist to to give more freely without asking anything in return
there's the precepts than of there's the perimeter via the way to help us to cross over are suffering by a patients
queenie patients particularly in the mahayana view that that speaks of this life that is ungraspable that the ultimate cat lover cannot be understood by the logical discursive mind
we need patients to be in a practice these these virtues
and we need to practice on
ha
with some kind of vigor and persistence and so these are kind of natural natural around
steps one can take in face
one is already buddha

but you know
my own experience i have to say this
for the faith is actually come out of the dark knight
it is now when things are really going well as when things fall apart
you know darkness and in the buddha dharma darkness means the it means you know the undifferentiated you can you can see in the darkness you know we say a whole body turns into hands and eyes as we feel our way through the darkness that kind of faith
the practice of waking up a and
feeling that where are we the darkness reaching back for a pillow reaching for the lamp and so on
that it is when you reach the end of all of the kind of meaning that ordinary life is provided like that woman and nothing seems to be working out for you anymore
open yourself
ah find god on your knees as we say
most christians say i got on your knees we find buddha in our news maybe
when everything is ripped off
where is the phaser
well your hard to beat a breath still comes and goes
blood to circulate

you know zen tradition there's a there's a teacher called haku in in in the past and he said great faith great doubt and great persistence and the three legs of zen practice
great face means gonna feed them talking about when there's nothing that's going to use is up to you
to realize your the world hundred one and how you do that and that means a great doubt as not i don't get mean just look pessimistic that they kind of doubt that comes up you know that is easy around which it seems to become cynical
it's very easy to become cynical and pessimistic and this world that we live in isn't very easy indeed in fact it seems the only sensible way to act sometimes when you pick up the paper in the mine but great doubt is a great deal about being itself what do you know as an ontological basis what is life what is the mean
yeah right what is this about
why am i practicing what is buddha is there such a thing
from that begins to take hold a great doubt and having as stephen batchelor in one of his books says a great faith to doubt
faith to down fade in their hope and the whole process that takes place in this dynamic process there were talking about the buddha dharma is a dynamic process
faith in that process without any assurances
i go along with it it's going to work out
and great persistence

her persistence comes because
naturally arises naturally i think when we sit zazen
and in this practice we don't sit zazen in order to get something it's all registered thousand or to sit practice to get something to feel better but in this practice we simply sit for the sake of sitting we simply assume
the posture
and open ourselves our minds and our bodies to whatever arises without judgment there's no way finally to judge the practice
know there's no way finally to judge your life for anybody else's life
are we have to put ourselves in a nap take that step to put ourselves in that posture that place where it is possible to open to being itself
and non-being
is there such a thing as being and non-being what is this
and not once but again and again and again endlessly
if the buddha dharma were a thing that we could get hold of and finally wrap up in a single teaching and so on it would be a closed system but life is not a closed system and you notice the keeps evolving ring is restarted the news age right now that's evolving into something socially speaking conventionally speaking
do we don't know what it is

i have a quote from dog and zingy dog as ngo courses
know the founder of in japan soto zen lineage
and are great great great great great great grandfather the particular practice that we do here
in in the in one of the
chance that we do come ginger call on
he says enlightenment is like the moon reflected in the water enlightenment is like the moon reflected in the water although it's light is wide and great the moon is reflected even at a puddle in inch ride
even in a puddle an inch wide the whole moon
and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass the move the whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass even even in one drop of water the depth of the drop is the height of the moon
each reflection however long or short it's duration
reflects manifests the vastness of the dewdrop and realizes that limitlessness the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky
each reflection however long or short in duration
however long or short your life however long or short to the realization you have of the buddha dharma
here's the entire bodhidharma
that's very encouraging
when i was getting this brown robe there's a thing that we
read called day g the great matter
what this is about that even if your practice is very since very small in comparison to dogan zen geezer to buddha says something your practice just as it is fills the entire universe have not a single thread can be remove not a single thread can remove it says
even if we're very small or very large reflect her whole moon in this guy enlightenment the awakening possibility
they have faith in it can find the conviction that datasource

ha
there's a lot of mundane
not exactly mundane because all poetry or spiritual
but i like david white very much and david why i can use her extraordinary pot he he came here recently and new back and for the millennium series as coming up in september but i haven't you know what to think of my face what happened to pick up a poor a book of david wide and the funny thing is turn to page patient
everyone knows this kind of serendipity and happens in your life as you pick out the book about the very thing you're thinking of the word is there before you for something mysterious at work here and there's a poem called true love or that true love and i'd like to just finished by reading that and maybe to make things a little clearer
ah for you and
here is a faith there is a faith in loving fiercely there was a faith and loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours we also read the the work that is rightfully yours that life that is rightfully yours
especially especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed ever believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand how loud you this way especially if you can never believe that you deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way i'm thinking
face now i'm taking a faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world
years ago the hebrides i remember an old man who walked every morning on the gravestones to the shore of being seals who would pass his hat to presses hat who had presses had to his chest and the blustering salt wind and say his prayer to the turbulent jesus hidden in the water and i think of the store
three of the storm and everyone waiting and seeing the distant yet familiar figure far across the water calling to them and hall and how we are all how we are all preparing for that abrupt waking that abrupt waking and that calling and that moment we have to say yes except it will
not come so grandly not so biblically but more subtly and intimately and the face of the one you know you have to love so that when we finally step out of the boat toward them we find everything everything everything holds us and everything confirms our courage and if you want it to drown you could
but you don't want to because finally after all this struggle and all these years you don't want it anymore you've simply had enough a drowning if simply had enough of drowning and you want to live and you want to love and you will walk across any territory and any darkness however fluid
and however dangerous to take the one hand you know belongs in yours
are we all know that kind of face at some moment in our life
it might take the shape of something called buddha dharma but it usually takes the warm flesh of another human being
who teaches us that kind of face of love in life

for after
ah
wow thank you very much