The greatest problem
with our language
in the practice of zazen
can seem insurmountable.
We are lovers of tenses,
a dozen to choose from,
one spawning offspring,
time ever important to us.
In zen, on the cushion
there is no past, no future,
perfect or otherwise, nor
our friend the conditional.
We strive to always be
in the moment, there is now
and nothing else, and we
ought to strive to never be tense.
In the middle of a rouund of zazen
I hear the bells of a nearby church,
although I am nearby no church.
Zen teaches you to be present
in each moment, to be immersed
in and not witnessing life around you.
The bells break my struggle
to not think, they introduce time
again where there should be none.
Just as soon, the bells are silent,
and the silence of 1300 miles away
pervades our small zendo,
so just perhaps Zoom, or the ability
to control its transmission, is
after all, a mindful Buddhist tool.
We only see the present as history,
by day history is a matter of minutes,
by night of seconds, years or centuries.
There is no future to be seen, only
imagined, the mind writing a story
that can never be read, never told.
It is only when we close the eyes
that the present truly exists,
independent of the past, free
and the past is merely waves
washing over and around us,
and the mind can find freedom.
You said you can only accept
what is real and tangible,
everything else
is a delusion or figment.
I cannot accept your premise
as a generalization, it eliminates
so much, for what you call real
may be otherwise to me.
And given that you are not
always present, perhaps
when you are not, when you
are not actually tangible
you are a delusion, and that
is something I can do well without:
In other words, farewell.
There are things children know
that parents will never understand.
Odder still, things a person knows
as a child are forgotten in adulthood.
A child measures the success of a day
by the duration of the parent
demanded bath at its end.
A child know that boundaries, especially
those parentally set, are flexible
and you don’t know where
the limit is until you cross it.
Presents are not special, they are
expected periodically, and only
a parent imagines that Santa
would ignore a child no matter
how “bad” the child had been.
But happily, when a parent
crosses the boundary into the land
of grandparenting, somehow
the knowledge of the child
is refound, very often accompanied
by one or more conspiratorial winks.
I spend my day
looking at clocks, time
always present but never
knowing if they tell
the right time and what
difference it would make
if it were right or wrong.
Ostensibly time isn’t relative
but I cannot determine to what
it isn’t relative, so I just go along
wondering what time is.
It was easier
having no history
of my own, borrowed
histories are easily discarded.
After a while, you
begin to think of the adopted
history as your own,
and no one doubts you.
I have a history now
countries woven into
my DNA, always present
but never before seen.
It is mine, I passed it
along to my sons, and
although it grows weaker
it is a burden they cannot avoid
and one day, perhaps,
they will stop and consider
from where they came, and not
have to invent the answer.
They arrive unannounced
often not seen until
they have been among us
and won’t say how
or when they arrived.
Some claim to have seen
their arrival as they
have seen other visitors
visible only to them,
and predict their departure
with a certainty born
of a delusion or a sense
beyond the understanding.
Others say that the
are merely us in masquerade,
it is we who are deluded
for there is no arrival
by an ongoing presence.
I say nothing, for I
am one of them, just
as I am one of us, I am
recently arrived, while
I have long been here
and either you or I
may or may not be deluded.
He would be the first to admit
that he hated most things avant-garde
particularly when it applied
to either art or music.
It was simply a matter of being
in the moment, and he knew
you could not be ahead of time
for there was only the moment
in which you were in.
He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague shadow, sometimes present, sometimes faded into the background. He ex-wife is ever present, and he clings to her, despite her death, wondering if they will get back together. I don’t want to tell him that his wish will require a firm belief by them both in a hereafter, and that neither of them was very good at directions in any event, so who knows where they will end up.
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