So Much

Your pure name
shall rise
to the cloud-filled heavens...
like the snowy White Mountain
of Koshiji from whence you came.
                ---Rengetsu

So many hands
So many hearts
Your pure name shall rise
Heiwa wo--a prayer
Sweeping away the dust...

Angels

                                               See here
                                               What heaven looks like
                                               Love
                                               Chorus
                                               Repetition

                                               So much
                                               The heart knows
                                               No names

Lotus

                                              Sandbags

The levee

Broken mirror

Of the river swallowing

A fireworks tent

Red flags whipping red

Risen water

Lifting tensions

Over sandbags

The levee broken

Mirror the river

Lotus on muddy water

Mist

Autumn
Mountain
Color of leaves

Autumn
Colors of leaves
Mist

Mist
Space of trees
Wren song

Mist
Ascending
Mountain

In the mist
More
Mist

Mist
A mountain
Mist

Pine

A dove
Pines
The rain just so

The bell
A dove
In the rain

Seed and Fruit

Doves

Spread-winged doves

Skyward

Sound

Water

Outline of light

A dove

                                                     Dove

    Gray rain

    Cooing

                                               Gray mountain

                                               Floating

                                               Pearl

In the foothills

I see a rhinoceros

I hear a dove

Tree bark

Cracking

Moss
                                                                                      

Mountain

Peak

Fog of doves
A letter
Postmarked

From the Sketchbook

Harbor view

A single crane

Arising

Passing through

Pelicans

On pine pilings

Acorn

                                                     Hut like an acorn

    Heart strong like an oak, weathered

    Straw hat and raincoat

Incense Offering

The fragrance of this incense
invites the awakened mind
to be truly present
with us now.

The fragrance of this incense
fills our practice center,
protects and guards our mind
from all wrong thinking.

The fragrance of this incense
collects us and unites us.
Precepts, concentration, insight
we offer for all that is:

Namo Bodhisattvebhyah
Namo Mahasattvebyah

A Pilgrim's Retreat

Your own face

The face of a stranger

O World! O Life! O Time

On whose last steps I climb,

Trembling at that where I had stood before;

When will return the glory of your prime?

No more—O never more!

                        —Percy Shelley, A Lament

Magnolia Grove Monastery

Harvest Moon Festival

13 September 2019

September

Spiders grown

In every corner

Friday Night

The brothers and sisters gathered on the steps of the Great Meditation Hall for a moon viewing party. Colorful paper lanterns were strung across the courtyard casting a warm glow on the paving stones and the grass growing in the borderlands between them. The moon, round and orange, hid behind the treetops as we enjoyed hot tea and lotus root mooncakes. Rising into the night, the sound of the sisters’ singing, the moon showed its face.

Rabbit

Pausing in the garden

Harvest moon

Saturday Night

The altar had been prepared. All the brothers and guests were seated on cushions in the Brothers’ Meditation Hall to celebrate the beginning of the Rains Retreat with the Sticks Ceremony. The bell. Moving, two brothers stood, the first carrying a number of small post-beam sticks on a tray approached each brother in turn who took a stick and placed it solemnly in front of him, the second coming behind with another tray to collect those same sticks. The ritual is ancient and intended as an accounting of the presence of all the monks for the Rains Retreat. A reading of the physical boundaries of the monastery property was given next. No brothers or sisters are permitted to go beyond the grounds for the duration of the retreat. A special ceremony of chants and music together with sitting followed. In my excitement to attend the ceremony I misunderstood and brought a stick myself that I had picked up under the nearby oaks. Nothing was said. Not a single frown. No stick in the mud.

Six Buddha statues

Sitting

One with bird poop

Sunday Morning

Sitting in the Great Hall—The moon is still with us.

Squirrel skull

In the window

White sun

Moon in morning sky

Path to meditation hall

Footprints on footprints

First falling leaves

Grasshoppers

Take wing

Sunday Afternoon

Both the brothers and the sisters were united in a Rains Retreat ceremony in the Great Hall today. Bowing to each other after chanting and sitting together is yet another mutual reaffirmation of their commitment to the monastic community as a whole and to keeping to the confines of the monastery for the nascent three month period.

Gong

Singing

With voice of Great Hall

Before dinner I found a dried cut tube of bamboo short enough to use as a bud vase. I went down to the vegetable garden and picked a flower from the trellis of bitter melons. One bud is opening on the same stem, and I hope that the others will soon follow.

Melon vines

Blooming sunshine

Yellow flowers

Sunlight

Standing in bamboo

Green silence

Sunday dinner: eating alone at a picnic table looking down at the small meadow in front of the Great Hall as a caterpillar approaches.

Sunset sloping

Butterflies wings

Temple bell

Monday Morning

Lazy day. Waking up a little later than usual, I make it to the Sisters’ Dining Hall for Vietnamese coffee around 7:30 AM. I sit quietly sipping, then wash the cup. I pass the lotus pond and temple bell on the way back to the Men’s Dorm to take a shower. Outside my window is a row of flowering myrtles luring birds to play.

Greenfinch

Leaves behind

Stripes

Monday Afternoon

Word gets around that a puppy followed one of the brothers returning from a hike. When I arrive at the Brothers’ Dining Hall, I see what looks like a blue-tick hound mix chewing on a flip-flop pulled off an outdoor shoe rack. The pup is small and wide-eyed but the brothers aren’t really supposed to keep pets, so they will try to find him a home. For now, compassion wins out.

Puppy

Newness of playing

Old shoe

At dinner that evening, I suggested maybe the little hound had heard about the Sticks Ceremony. He has not yet been given a name.

Monday night lights out just at the time for noble silence—9:30 PM. Early sitting in the morning. 

Dawn bell—

The owl greeting

A lone bat

I’m not used to sitting on a cushion. I got a tip from a fellow pilgrim about the technique of spreading your knees wide and getting them down on the mat in order to open up your posture for breathing. Next time I will find my position.

The walking meditation takes a path past the Great Hall meadow and around along the edge of a wooded patch to a bending gravel road that connects to the gently rising Macadam road leading to the entrance of the monastery itself. The sign on the gate says: 

                                              Arrived and Home

A brother told me there used to be a path in the woods themselves for the walking meditation to wind through, but in the course of a season it quickly became overgrown. Chiggers and snakes are in there. 

Tick

Tick

Breathe

I saw an old deer track in the dirt. Here they are more than safe from hunters.

Wednesday

One of the melon blossoms fully opened today—yawning yellow. I’m yawning too. 

Candlelight sitting in the intimate Brothers’ Meditation Hall, heart of pine walls and ceiling with a bamboo floor. Sitting before sunrise. Rhythm of sun and moon.

The afternoon finds us on working meditation in the hot sun weeding the rock garden—this kind of beauty takes a bit of nurturing. Some of the weeds stand their ground, but mindful persistence completes the task at hand. Such is the nature of impermanence.

Rock garden

Weeds

Hardy hello

At dinner the brothers again have a platter of fresh sliced watermelon. After working in the sun for a few hours, the juicy melon is fragrant and silky on the tongue. A large wedge was passed down the length of the table to me.

Many hands

Light work

Deep red cold melon

We wash our own dishes after dinner. The brothers have a system of four water trays set up—the first brims with suds and the others contain progressively clearer water. Clean and clear. The dishes are racked, wheeled into the kitchen and sanitized. Washing dishes is a good chance to chitchat with the monks, as there are rules about talking during mealtime. Silence is a way of life here. Whenever a clock chimes, everyone stops what they are doing and comes back to mindfulness. Breathe and smile. Also, during dinner, mindfulness is a rule. It goes without saying that gratitude is an appropriate feeling when someone places a meal of the freshest ingredients in front of you. But the monks also encourage us to chew and eat meditating on our food. 

For me, looking down the table at the good monks dining together, the interconnectedness of all of us to the earth and beyond comes to mind. My personal thoughts while chewing are:

Love in

So many hands

Love spelled out

Peace in

So many hands

Peace spelled out

Repeat. Rep-eat.

Relishing a crumb

Fly

On the table

I spotted an unusual rock in the garden today, but instead of picking it up I left it where it lay.

Crystalline streaks

Otherwise ordinary

Brown rock

Thursday Morning

Another early sitting session in the Great Hall—this time in silence except for the sounding of the bell. After slowly rising, we step over our mats and turn to face the sisters and bow in respect. Then we turn to face the altar and bow low on hands and knees with foreheads touching the earth.

Slipping into my shoes in the anteroom, it is first light when I step out into the courtyard. 

Happy and alive

What a miracle

Now, the third thing

Birds

Breathing

Flowers

Back in my room, I sit in my bunk and wait for the sun to cross before the window opposite me. In my practice I like to touch foreheads with the sun as well.

Nothing

Limits

But possibilities

Dharma talk in the tearoom at the Brothers’ Residence.

Lotus pond

Fetching

Moon

Pebble

Concentric ripple

Concentric

Walking meditation left without me so I spent some time looking at the fallen magnolia leaves. There were many leaf showers in the soft wind—chimes. 

Magnolia leaves—

green supple

brown leather

I walked to the rock garden before heading back down to the Brothers’ Tearoom for dharma sharing. I arrived early and had the pleasure to join in an informal tea. The tea was brewed by one of the brothers from what he called one-leaf tea, from each plant only one leaf is picked, new and tender. 

One-leaf tea

All in

One cup

Rock garden

Pebble heart

Golden fly

Lunch with the sisters at the Brothers’ Dining Hall. So many hands. Chocolate cake!

Dinner Thursday

On my plate I put a fair portion of what I took to be kimchi. I used to teach English in South Korea so I am accustomed to hot foods. But this kimchi turned out to be not kimchi. It was hotter Vietnamese-style fermented green papaya. So my mealtime meditation was:

Warmth

Loving kindness

Gratitude

After the bell, betrayed by a sniffle, I told the brothers about my peppered insight. We all had a grin.

Tiny red chilis

Matter of hotness

Vast and wide

Outside the Men’s Dorm is a small basketball court. When I heard the distinct sound of a bouncing ball, I parted the curtains. To my surprise, a sister in her monastic dress was shooting hoops. Making it rain!

Friday Morning Already

Before dawn, entering the Brothers’ Meditation Hall.

Keyhole

In the clouds

Shape of the moon

Around the Brothers’ Residence, there seemed to be many unmatched flip-flops. 

Packing the car. Saying goodbyes at breakfast.

Dragonfly

On walk

Sharing stillness

Love in

So many hands

Love spelled out

Warmth

Loving kindness

So many roads

Safe travels

Walk in peace

Freedom

One kingdom

Touching foreheads

A little prayer

Another yellow bud opened this morning.

Perhaps when I come back the otherwise ordinary brown rock in the garden will be one shining crystal.

I leave the flower pressed between these pages here for you.

Find the rock yourself.

The midnight moon is as gentle and wondrous as a mother’s love.

                                                —Thay

Written at Magnolia Grove Monastery, Men’s Dorm, Dandelion, on the week of Harvest Moon Festival, September 2019. Thinking on the sweetness of many fresh watermelons and the benefits of seeds.

Most important is knowing how to ride the waves of impermanence, smiling as one who knows he has never been born and will never die. 

            Nhat Hanh

Birds of spring

                                                          Birds of springg
                                                          Your names are for your friends
                                                          And yet your songs

Dandelion

                                                               First aid field guide:
                                                               This might sting...
                                                               Blow on it

Violet

                                                                 medicine flower
                                                                 for health
                                                                 don't pick at it

infinite LoVE

                                               Better to see the face than to hear the name.
                                                                                     Zen saying

The Nine Prayers

May I be peaceful, happy, and light in body and spirit.
May I be free from injury. May I live in safety.
May I be free from disturbance, fear, and anxiety.
May I learn to look at myself with the eyes of understanding and of love.
May I be able to recognize and touch the seeds of joy and happiness in myself.
May I learn to identify and see the sources of anger, craving, and delusion in myself.
May I know how to nourish the seeds of joy in myself every day.
May I be able to live fresh, solid and free.
May I be free from attachment and aversion, but not be indifferent.

                                                               Thich Nhat Hanh

First day of the Seventh month

Enjoying or creating beauty is free, and something all human beings have access to.    —Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles, Ikigai

There is a phrase in Japan—another one of those seemingly untranslatable aphorisms: kachou fuugetsu. Separately, the characters are flower, bird, wind, and moon, but together they are greater than the sum of their parts, describing something far more powerful and emotive. Kachou fuugetsu most commonly translates as learning about yourself through experiencing the beauty of nature. 

                  Erin Niimi Longhurst, A Little Book of Japanese Contentments

All that I have produced before the age of 70 is not worth being counted. It is at the age of 73 that I have somewhat begun to understand the structure of true nature, of animals and grasses, and trees and birds, and fishes and insects; consequently at 80 years of age I shall have made still more progress; at 90 I hope to have penetrated into the mystery of things; at 100 years of age I should have reached decidedly a marvelous degree, and when I shall be 110, all that I do, every point and every line, shall be instinct with life.

                  Hokusai, Postscript to One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji

Take your time. Smell the flowers. And then paint them.

Second day of the Seventh month

From the Aeneid of Virgil: Neptune responds to the pleas of Venus after Aeneas’ ships have been battered by storms at sea—

“In safety as thou [Venus] prayest shall he [Aeneas] reach the haven of Avernus. Only one shall there be whom, lost in the flood, thou shalt seek in vain; one life shall be given for many.”

In the night, the pilot Palinurus was stricken with sleep and swept overboard. Through the waves, the ships were guided as Neptune said.

Katabasis is a descent to the shore, like a journey to the underworld…

I know what you want—

you want Orpheus, you want death.

Orpheus who said ‘Help me find Eurydice.’

…

I fell asleep in a river, I woke in a river,

of my mysterious

failure to die I can tell you

nothing, neither

who saved me nor for what cause—

…

Winter will end, spring will return.

The small pestering breezes

that I so loved, the idiot yellow flowers—

         Louise Gluck, Averno

The secret of happiness (and therefore of success) is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm, always lucid, always willing, ‘to be joined to the universe without being more conscious of it than an idiot’, to let each wave of life wash one a little farther up the shore.

                                    Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave

Anabasis is an ascent or return…without the return, katabasis is a fall.

Seasons of truth.

Repose, tranquility, stillness, inaction—these were the levels of the universe, the ultimate perfection of Tao. 

                                                      Chuang Tzu

Third day of the Seventh month

The death by which we enter into life is not an escape from reality but a complete gift of ourselves which involves a total commitment to reality. It begins by renouncing the illusory reality which created things acquire when they are seen only in their relation to our own selfish interests.

Before we can see that created things (especially material) are unreal, we must see clearly that they are real.

For the ‘unreality’ of material things is only relative to the greaterreality of spiritual things…We cannot see things in perspective until we cease to hug them to our own bosom. When we let go of them we begin to appreciate them as they really are.

                                             Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

But God is true; and every man a liar, as it is written.

                                             Romans 3:4

Life is not attained by reasoning and analysis, but first of all by living…And until we have begun to fail we have no way of working out our success.                Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

We all have something to add—ourselves. Contribute now.

Fourth day of the Seventh month

So why are self-discerning reflections more likely to happen when living abroad? Well, when people live in their home country, they are often surrounded by others who mostly behave in similar ways, so they are not compelled to question whether their own behaviors reflect their core values or the values of the culture in which they are embedded. In contrast, when living abroad, our data found that people’s exposure to novel cultural values and norms prompts them to repeatedly engage with their own values and beliefs, which are then either discarded or strengthened.        How Living Abroad Helps You 

         Develop a Clearer Sense of Self, 

Harvard Business Review

There are many traditional tattoos associated with life at sea. ‘Hold Fast’ across the knuckles of young deckhands was supposed to prevent losing grip on vital ropes…Compass roses or nautical stars were worn to ensure the sailor always knew the way home, and Neptune or turtles were used to show the wearer had crossed the equator or date line.

                           from a Cunard newsletter

Tattoos mark the travels of an old salt. Perhaps when we reflect on our journeys we too will find our own skin permanently changed…narrow views shedding, horizons broadening, diversity and tolerance holding fast. Compass roses.

Fifth day of the Seventh month

You get on a train, you disappear.

You write your name on the window, you disappear.

There are places like this everywhere,

places you enter as a young girl,

from which you never return.

                  Louise Gluck, Averno

From Anna Karenina by Tolstoy:

Anna…took a paper knife [to cut the pages] and an English novel from her handbag. At first she was unable to read. To begin with, she was bothered by the bustle and movement; then, when the train started moving, she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow that beat against the left-hand window and stuck to the glass, and the sight of a conductor passing by, all bundled up and covered with snow on one side, and the talk about the terrible blizzard outside, distracted her attention. Further on, it was all the same: the same jolting and knocking, the same snow on the window; the same quick transitions from steaming heat to cold and back to heat, the same flashing of the same faces in the semi-darkness, and the same voices, and Anna began to read and understand what she was reading. Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was unpleasant for her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people’s lives. She wanted too much to live herself. When she read about the heroine of the novel taking care of a sick man, she wanted to walk with inaudible steps round the sick man’s room; when she read about a Member of Parliament making a speech, she wanted to make that speech; when she read about how Lady Mary rode to hounds, teasing her sister-in-law and surprising everyone with her courage, she wanted to do it herself. But there was nothing to do, and so, fingering the smooth knife with her small hands, she forced herself to read.

Extension is either in length, height, or depth. Of these the length strikes least, an hundred yards of even ground will never work such an effect as a tower an hundred yards high, or a rock or mountain of that altitude…the effects of a rugged and broken surface seem stronger…carry us out of our way to enter in this place into the cause of these appearances…as the great extreme of dimension is sublime, so the last extreme of littleness is…when we attend to the infinite divisibility of matter, when we pursue animal life into these excessively small, and yet organized beings, that escape the nicest inquisition of the sense, when we push our discoveries yet downward, and consider those creatures so many degrees yet smaller, and the still diminishing scale of existence, in tracing which the imagination is lost as well as the sense, we become amazed and confounded at the wonders of minuteness; nor can we distinguish in its effect this extreme of littleness from the vast itself. For division must be infinite as well as addition…

—Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful

Anna Arkadyevna, a character in a novel reading a novel in the closeness of a dim train compartment, living beyond experience, experience beyond words, the details of her person reflected in the frost-streaked window. Reality. Appearances. Disappearances.

Better to see the face than to hear the name. 

                                             Zen saying

Life extends…

Sixth day of the Seventh month

After a long succession of noises, as the fall of waters, or the beating of forge hammers, the hammers beat and the water roars in the imagination long after the first sounds have ceased to affect it; and they die away at last by gradations which are scarcely perceptible. If you hold up a strait pole, with your eye to one end, it will seem extended to a length almost incredible. Place a number of uniform and equidistant marks on this pole, they will cause the same deception, and seem multiplied without end. The senses strongly affected in some one manner, cannot quickly change their tenor, or adapt themselves to other things; but they continue in their old channel until the strength of the first mover decays. This is the reason of an appearance very frequent in madmen; that they remain whole days and nights, sometimes whole years, in the constant repetition of some remark, some complaint, or song; which having struck powerfully on their disordered imagination, in the beginning of their phrensy, every repetition reinforces it with new strength; and the hurry of their spirits, unrestrained by the curb of reason, continues it to the end of their lives.

—Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful

Socrates his cicuta [hemlock], Lucretia’s dagger, Timon’s halter, are yet to be had; Cato’s knife and Nero’s sword are left behind them, as so many fatal engines, bequeathed to posterity, and will be used to the world’s end by such distressed souls: so intolerable, insufferable, grievous, and violent is their pain, so unspeakable and continuate…the cramp and convulsion of the soul, an epitome of hell…

                           Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy

So first of all, we accept ourselves as we are. Then we can accept the other person as she or he is. Looking deeply, we see how that person has been formed. Just as a flower is made only of non-flower elements, that person has been made of elements that are not him – his ancestors, his parents, his society, and so on…“Looking with the eyes of compassion” is an expression from the Lotus Sutra, describing Avalokiteshvara [Kanzeon]. When you look at others with the eyes of compassion, not only do they feel pleasant but you also feel very pleasant, because understanding and love pervade your heart. The amount of happiness you have depends on the amount of compassion that is in your heart. Compassion always carries with it joy and freedom…We learn how to touch the beauty of the sky and the autumn leaves even if pain and sorrow are still there.

                                    Thich Nhat Hanh

And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in his shroud,

And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,

And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,

And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,

And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe,

And any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes.

…

I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least, 

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

…

I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;

I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name,

And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.           —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

Perspective. Lines receding to infinity. Perhaps in a state of trauma, a fractal—like Ophelia. Perspectives. Weather. Seasons. Leaves. Us. Always.

Seventh day of the Seventh month

The greatest gift we can make to others is our true presence.

The Four Mantras:

1.  I am here for you.

2.  I know you are there, and I am very happy.

And if you are truly present, this mantra will produce a miracle. You become real, the other person becomes real, and life is real in that moment. You bring happiness to yourself and to the other person.

Whenever you are really there, you are able to recognize and appreciate the presence of the other – the full moon, the North Star, the magnolia flowers, or the person you love the most.

The Four Mantras:

3. I know you suffer. That is why I am here for you.

4.  I suffer. Please help. 

In true love, there is no place for pride…When you are hurt by the person you love, when you suffer and believe that your suffering has been caused by the person you love the most…Do not let pride stand in the way. Practice the fourth mantra, “Darling, I suffer. Please help.” If you really consider her to be the one you love the most in this life, you have to do that. When the other person hears your words, she will come back to herself and practice looking deeply. Then the two of you will be able to sort things out, reconcile, and dissolve the wrong perception.

                                             Thich Nhat Hanh

True love shares truth. Across the Universe. Orihime and Hikoboshi—the weaver-girl and the cowherd. Only this night of the year they meet, Tanabata. True love is true. It is in the stars. The arrow flickers.

A dark sky sanctuary is a remote piece of protected land that is prized for the quality of its starry nights. Geographic isolation makes reaching one of these rare sanctuaries difficult, which also makes it all the more worthwhile. Orihime and Hikoboshi will leave the light on for you.

Certified IDA International Dark Sky Sanctuaries

• !Ae!Hai Kalahari Heritage Park (South Africa)
• Aotea / Great Barrier Island (New Zealand)
• Cosmic Campground (U.S.)
• Devils River State Natural Area - Del Norte Unit (U.S.)
• Gabriela Mistral (Chile)
• Massacre Rim (U.S.)
• Pitcairn Islands (B.O.T.)
• Rainbow Bridge National Monument (U.S.)
• Stewart Island / Rakiura (New Zealand)
• The Jump-Up (Australia)

www.darksky.org