This morning, early, as I emerge from underground onto the tony avenue where I spend my office days, the light is clearly growing brighter and stronger with the season. Behind the Arc de Triomphe stretches a bold swath of pink sky.
It’s gone when I pass again hours later. But spring is irrefutably near.
Crossing a broad paved plaza, I think of the beach.
The waves rise and fall, each different – in shape, size, intensity, density, color, weight – and each not separate from the one watery ocean.
Their causes and effects differ: Low tide results from different conditions and has different consequences than high tide. A tsunami effects the environment differently than a gentle lapping on the shore.
Yet it’s all one body of water.
Sometimes I see mainly the waves. Sometimes I see mainly the immense ocean. And sometimes I experience waterwavesocean, not shallow or deep, both shallow and deep, fathomless to the horizon at my feet.
Like a day at the office.
Ocean and office day
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
This morning is full of radiant Spring light and beauty. Ocean and waves all around…fragility-explodingchest-love-music-silence…beautiful, beautiful!!!
Today our little grandson broke his arm and had to undergo surgery.
To think of his pain, his fragility and helplessness…
The music can be uneasy and unfit for making a happy dance. But it is music.
Also today I read something that kind of annoyed me.
“Only a life without pain is emptier than a life without love.”
I don’t think there is such a thing as an empty life or a full one.
The music can come from an orchestra or from the ticking of a clock. It is music.
Pure silence is music too.
One eye sees it.
One ear hears it
One heart realizes it.
I dont know who is hearing the music. Just hears!
Who hears the music?
Only the difference of notes and the silence between – make music.
Music only exists in the wide open plain of silence.
But who is falling? and who is rising?