Temple Gardens

            I’m in love with the Temple gardens again.  It took me a while to find my way back in this spring.  Being so caught up in the procession of retreats and ceremonies here at the Temple, I’ve only recently taken up my morning wanderings again.  I set out the back door with as little intention as possible.  Following my feet and remembering not to work, I am filled – heart and mind – with the subtle thrill green activity.

            This slow garden saunter is the true pleasure of gardening.   These gardens of our lives are never finished.  Always weeds to pull, plants to rearrange, new spaces to create.  Walking at leisure, I allow the ideas of the future to be part of the pleasure of this moment.  The only true place of appreciation is in the middle of it all –  joining in as part of the endless arising and falling away.  In this perpetual becomingness each blossom is separate and complete while only arising in the full support of the earth and the sky and the sun and the stars.

            I willingly take my place as the slowest one in the garden.  I am the younger brother tagging along with his beautiful older sister.  Hopelessly in love, I am happy just to be in her presence though I only dimly understand the necessities of her world.  But the garden is patient with me – not demanding any more than I give – but meeting me joyously wherever I show up.  The bricks on the path rise precisely to meet my foot with each step.  The shape and hue of each thing gives itself with abandon to the heart of my senses – with no effort –  as if it were not a miracle – as if it were just a wooden bench in the morning sun.  Such a clever disguise for God.  Who would have thought that she was here all along?  

Momentary Patience

Buddha sits patiently
while the weeping cherry 
blooms momentarily
in the early spring.

More Rain

The spring rain falls 

cold and life-giving.  

Joining with it 

I tumble down the mountain 

toward home.

Getting Down To Business

            The seeds I put into peat pots last week have sprouted.  The tiny dry brown flakes and little roundish bits of nothing have produced bits of tender green waving about on the slenderest of stalks.  To really look at what has happened from any kind of reasonable perspective is to witness the utterly preposterous.  But my mother taught me to plant gardens and watch closely.  I expected this all along.  And still, I’m unreasonably astonished and delighted. 

Each time I pass the glare of the grow light in my office, I pause to greet the tiny fellows lined up in their trays.  Each one is clearly committed to its path toward a summer exposition of beauty. 

I pause and smile to myself.  Here it is - the unspeakable – the grandeur of God – the one true way.  Right under my nose all the time.  At last, I can call off the search and get down to business.  I go into the kitchen and make a cup of tea.

A Sense of Things to Come

            In the early morning dark I sneak outside for a few minutes after I make my tea.  It’s been a night above freezing for the first time in months and the damp coolness in the air feels alive to me.   Standing out on the porch swinging my arms in random directions, my body remembers spring – the dirt and possibility lying silently beneath the seasons accretion of snow.

            Yesterday, it was nearly 60 and I spent part of my day digging in the snow bank that the plow has pushed up against the Temple.  My intention was to create a channel away from the foundation for the melting snow water to follow.  It wasn’t strictly necessary – a good idea – but no water in the basement yet.  Preventative.  Prophylactic.  But mostly for me.  To be outside – to be pushing the world around.  A shovel full of snow thrown out over the parking lot to melt.  A careful channel of water through the ice and snow.

            When I was young and it rained really hard in the summer, the water would come down the gutters of our suburban street in torrents.  My mother let us – I suspect even encouraged us – to play outside.  Or was it that we were out playing and got drenched before we could get home and asked if we could stay outside?  Either way we ended up totally wet.  Then, fearless of the rain, we walked up the street –delighting in the our freedom and wetness.  

            I do want to be included in this world - to escape this persistent dream of separation.  I want to wait for spring sprouting with the dignified patience of the bare trees.  But mostly these days I feel like an impatient sapling – dancing quickly in the breezes like a squirmy child:  ‘Are we there yet?  Is the winter over yet?  How much longer?’    

Enough Is Not Enough

            Schools are closed again today.  Even long-time New Englander’s are beginning to complain about the white stuff.  A headline in the Boston Globe reports ‘city officials’ as saying ‘Enough is Enough.’  Apparently this is not true.  Enough is not enough.

            Here at the Temple, our parking lot is growing smaller with each successive snowfall – the snow banks higher and thicker.  Soon we’ll have a walled parking lot – maybe it will become a secret garden – we’ll keep it a private place that only certain people can find their way into.  And perhaps inside, the season will change – the falling snow will become a soft mist that the morning sun will burn off.  And we’ll all take our jackets off – though we won’t let anyone know.  We’ll take off our jackets and maybe even our shirts – to dance slowly in the warm sun.  We’ll dance with the sweet currents of energy.  Sometimes we’ll even fly – become birds and fly though the sky with a wild freedom.  Ahhhhh – that’s better.

            But this morning, there is freedom and grace of snow shoveling and snow blowing to be done.  Bundle up, start the engine, make a lot of noise and do some real work.  As I head out, I hear the voice of a friend’s father – now confined to bed and near death.  He was sorry to be lying in bed, was sad to not be out shoveling.   So I remember to be grateful for this body that still has the energy and strength to rise out of bed and to go play outside, I’ll get my morning exercise clearing moving the white stuff from here to there.

New Year's Vow

 This year, I am determined to be more unproductive.  My goal is to do less and less – to move slower and slower until everything stops.  I and the whole world will come to a sweet and silent stillness.  And in this stillness, a great shout of joy will arise.  We will all be free – free from the advice of ancient ages, free from the whining voices, free from the incessant objections of the responsible ones.

            In this new world, it will be abundantly clear that the bare branches of the winter trees are our teachers.  In their daily dance of moving here and there, we will see once again the true meaning of our life.  In the wind song of their being, we will hear God’s unmistakable voice.  We will follow what appears before us - what had once been difficult will now unfold with ease.

*Ox and Window by Zen Master Hakuin Ekaku, 1685-1768