MWA Newsletter, Zen, -  Jan 13, 2024

Gratitude

Dear Friends,

Ending the fundraiser, grateful for support, I wondered what to say. I chose poetry.

It’s winter in 2024, here in North America. Cold and snowstorms are driving people indoors. Around the world storms, cyclones, typhoons, and all the rest are doing what they do in this time of climate change. Here at home, the storms skipped us but a few hours away people are snowed in, sometimes without power or heat. Bombs continue to fall in Gaza, in Ukraine, and in other places we don’t hear about so much. This is our life.

It brings to mind a simple poem by Dogen, founder of Soto Zen, my school of Buddhism.

All my life false and real, right and wrong tangled. 
Playing with the moon, ridiculing wind, listening to birds. 
Many years wasted seeing the mountain covered with snow. 
This winter I suddenly realize snow makes a mountain.

For myself I will say,

All my life looking for the truth, trying to do good,

seeking to uncover the real world from under civilization’s gloss. 
But the world is right here among us. 
Nothing is hidden.

The paradox of trying and hoping to stop climate change, seeking causes and power to change them, while the world does what it does. Even if it shakes us off like fleas, cooks us or drowns or freezes us, still we are just here, embraced by it all. The only thing we can count on is that things will be as they will be. And our actions together with that framework create our lives, and create the whole. We do not turn away from our own pain, that of those close to us, and the enormous suffering of the world, including humans dying and ecosystems failing. Do not look away. Take it into your heart, and recognize it as your own life. Love it dearly, madly, beyond reason or hope. Do not judge right or wrong, only love.

It’s too long since I’ve written poetry, but as I say good-bye to this phase of our connection, it seems like the right thing to offer. The mountain is not covered with snow: the covering makes the mountain. Same for our lives in every detail.

I had not seen that for myself before.

The fundraiser succeeded beyond my dreams. Asking for $15,000, receiving $21,580 – I am still amazed. Also amazed at the power of connections. I made myself reach out to everyone who has ever helped me (as far as I could remember) to send my thanks to them, not to ask for more. There were some lovely reconnections, and more important was the growing awareness of how well and thoroughly supported I have been, for so long. That deep knowledge is worth more than any dollars.

Borne on that energy, I planned offerings – teachings and retreats and talks – for the coming year.  The list always changes, so here it is now. Please notice there are several online talks in the next few weeks, plus an in-person talk and retreat in Duluth MN, an “intro to Zen” day-long retreat in February, and a new Wednesday night class beginning February 7.

As for the things on the fundraiser list, here’s a photo of the new meditation cushions.

Full disclosure on the winter photo: That was last January. Our snowstorm did not materialize yet.

With love,

Shodo Spring for Mountains and Waters Alliance