Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that work
in the night stopped? And the water-
wheel of thought, is it
going around now, cups
empty, carrying only shadows?*
This is a season of questions.
Our small group the zendo has been cultivating the koans that arise on the way to work, out to weed the garden, reading the paper, taking the kids to the park. What brought us here to this meditation hall? What are we looking for? What beehives are working in the night? What shadow crossed your path this morning?
To take up Zen meditation, you do need a question. It isn’t so much you need to get one out of a book, or even have something profound, like, What is the meaning of life? It’s that you need to uncover the curiosity, the uncertainty, the nagging itch, the intuition somewhere in day to day life that is a doorway to unfolding something you’ve forgotten. The Latin root of curiosity, curiosus, means “diligent inquiry” and also “meddlesome.” Where ever there’s some “meddlesome” in life, there’s some question we can unbury.
If we look at the the direction of most questions – who, what, when, where and how – Zen has simplified the matter and already responded to three.
Who? You.
When? Now.
Where? Right here.
It’s about being intimate with this, right here, right now. That leaves us with the two great gate openers – What? and How? What and how are the right and left hand that hold the unknown – they are wonderful mantras that should salt and pepper our days.
The questions about living this life are already there since they come with a breathing body. There is no insignificant query. How do I tell my friend the truth? becomes, How do I meet the Buddha? What will I do if I can’t get a job? is the same as What can I control in my life? As we went around the circle in the zendo a couple of weeks ago, it seems everyone’s questions distilled down into three themes: What does it mean to sit zazen? How do I take the next step in life? How do I alleviate the suffering of the world? In beautiful way, each of these questions are responses to the other and lead to an action in the world the summons compassion and wisdom – the universal qualities we study in this practice.
By living inside the question, something happens. It looks like this.
No, my soul is not asleep
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,
its eyes wide open
far-off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence*
It doesn’t matter where we start, it only matters that these questions matter to us and help us dig around to get to something authentic, something that touches our hopes and our fears, something that seems intractable, or impossible, yet demands a response. Resting in the uncertainty, being willing to sit with the discomfort, the practice of zazen helps us soften the edges of these questions and hatch surprising creative joyful moves meeting impossible circumstances and intractable problems.
Something happens. What is it?
Palms together,
Seido
* Is My Soul Asleep by Antonio Machado, trans. Robert Bly
