Spring has got to be my favorite time of year. In a temperate zone with its changing seasons, I like the cool breezes of spring, even its sudden showers and cloudbursts. Life all around is waking up and every green thing seems precious. Later and in the summer Mother Nature is almost overwhelmingly full of life; in minimalist spring it is easy to appreciate the few, little sprigs of life that shoot out from under old leaves. In Japanese Shin Buddhism, practitioners think of themselves as bombu, "foolish beings." Our foolishness expresses our karmic limitations. To see clearly our limitations is to be free—free of unrealistic expectations, free of "foolish" desires.
Taitetsu Unno wrote of meeting D.T. Suzuki at Berkley when he was 21 years old. He asked the Japanese scholars whom many believe introduced America to Zen what karma was. Suzuki, then 80 years old, replied, "The elbow does not bend outward." Herbs sprout in springtime, are full of worms by summer, look depleted in the fall, and in the winter disappears under the cold earth. Is this foolishness? To want to walk on water, says another Zen teacher, that is foolishness. To sink in the water, knowing and respecting, maybe even loving this, is wisdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment