Returning home here after all my travels, across the Atlantic and into America…
The trip included family time in two cities and wanderings around New York, as well as a lovely Bloomsday workshop at the Village Zendo. I’m the richer for it all in a thousand ways.
My world was unfixed during those days, as I lived something of a vagabond life, with limited access to my usual online « connections. » This, too, was an enriching experience, expanding the notions of connection, space, time, and revisiting expectations of presence, mine and those of others, or what I perceive to be those of others…
I think I’ve been gone so long, so far from a few words put down softly here.
Yet now, sitting back down in my « normal » place, I end up marveling: Nothing, I know, is « normal, » nothing ever happens/happened as expected.
It’s just nice to be here.
Nice to be here (in the « normal » place)
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.
By "I’m afraid these too many words mean little practice…" I meant “these too many words of mine”.
I suppose one knows “things” by experiencing them. In fact, one shouldn’t call them “things” but rather thing-events. The water of a while ago is not the same as the water of now. Where goes my fist when I open my hand?
All is in relation.
There’s no water without the one who drinks (or bathes or swims), there’s no object without subject. That’s Mind-only (Sanskrit: cittamatra), which is the same as sunya (“void”) or tathata (“suchness”, “thatness”). Tathata means the thing-events of the natural word do not point to anything else other than themselves. They are what they are. It is us who create “shelves”, classes of objects, names: water, river, mountain… The same way the sound “water” (or eau, or aqua) cannot be drunk, so the word, the mental concept “water” is not the water.
I’m afraid these too many words mean little practice… True understanding is not something one can grasp through intellectual knowledge but something to be realised directly, e.g. through zazen meditation.
Thank you sensei, thank you white cloud, merci à tous!
Hi Toney,
With what do you drink a glass of water: your "mind"? your "intuition"? your "feelings"? your "senses"?
all is one
yet all is relative too
there is no absolute outside the relative
“Thirty years ago, before I had studied Zen, I saw mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers. And then later, after a first glimpse into the truth of Zen, I came to see mountains not as mountains and rivers not as rivers. But now that I have attained the abode of final rest [enlightenment], I again see mountains just as mountains and rivers just as rivers.”
– attributed to Ch’ing yuan Wei-hsin, Chinese Zen master of the T’ang Dynasty.
Wei-hsin means “Mind-only” (Sanskrit: Cittamatra). But what does it mean “to see mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers”?
How do we know it? By our mind? By our intuition, by our feelings, by our senses???
welcome sensei 🙂
I know the water when I drink it.
Nothing, i know, is "normal" …
what do we "know"????
whagt is possible to "know" in life?
How do we know it? By our mind? By our intuition, by our feelings, by our senses???
I’m not sure…….
Thank you Flamme d’or. I’m happy to be back, very happy to hear from you.
Welcome home Amy…so good to read you are (good) arrived in this ‘normal – exeptional´ life…enriched with so many experiences and warm meetings, experiences of precense.
Good to read you!