Zen Threads Talk – Shove Chapel
Saturday November 3
Once a month we invite a community member to give a brief talk at 8:00 AM during our Saturday morning meditation. (Meditation starts at 6:30 AM.) These are personal expressions of a person’s practice and understanding. This Saturday at 8:00 Meredith Pate – Willig will be speaking. She sent her thoughts for us to consider.
We continue to Wooglins to continue discussion and for breakfast following the talk.
Songyuan asked,
Why are perfectly accomplished saints and bodhisattvas still attached to the red thread?
The Koan came to fetch me, propelled by the ancestor’s unremitting love. Clues appear: a raging sunset, the juice of pomegranates, Staghorn Sumac leaves dancing as they descend to the earth on a late autumn morning. Not a bit perturbed with me, a slow learner, they whispered in the ear of my heart: blood, fire, sex, intimacy. Messy, complicated, real. This red thread is passion and pining — all the vulnerability and sorrow that link us to this world. Perhaps longing is at the core of life. Perhaps its curriculum is empathy, compassion born of passion. Perhaps it is about becoming fully human, the very one you are. Humanly entangled in emptiness, what if Guanyiun’s eyes and hands are the shapes that love takes?
Explaining the path, arguing Zen, the tongues of men
grow long.
I have always disliked piety.
In the dark, my nostrils wrinkle: incense before the Buddha.
The fire of desire is the master of all that exists.
Just as they are,
White dewdrops fall
On scarlet maple leaves.
Look – red dew.
Ikkyu
Life and death are grave matters. All things pass quickly away. Tick tock goes the clock. Perhaps we might listen to the whispers of our deep hearts. What to do with what remains of this one wild and precious life? Now.