Meditation

Two snippets from two of my teachers. The first is by John Tarrant, who is a (my?) zen meditation teacher in Santa Rosa at the Pacific Zen Institute. He is a master healer, who gave me the wonderful gift of a koan that became a raft keeping me afloat for a time. It was a time not so very long ago now when I was dangerously close to drowning in an ocean of fear and indifference. The second snippet is a poem by Hafiz, the great Sufi master who is reemerging in the west from the shadow of Rumi. If John supplied the raft, perhaps Hafiz gave me a paddle.

A Snippet on Not Knowing
(from Bring Me the Rhinoceros, by John Tarrant, pp 31-32)

The old teachers thought that not to know is to step into life without repeating yourself. It is to forget the prejudices and comparisons that say, "I'm better than you, I'm worse than you, I'm good at this, I'm bad at that." If you practice "don't know" mind for long enough, perhaps you can learn how to be good at anything.

While emptiness is what is left when you take away the thoughts and beliefs that you have constructed around an event, not knowing is a way to move in the absence of such thoughts. It's a creative possibility. Not knowing who you are calls you to meet an event without pretending it is something else - something that happened before. Then you might experience just what is happening: something unpredictable, delightful, dangerous and safe - eating a taco or walking down the street.

A Snippet on Not Owing

(from The Gift, Poems by Hafiz trans. Daniel Ladinsky)