In the Snow

The wind howls. The snow falls. The keyboard makes comforting clicking noises as I type. Sunday has come and the New Year begins with white and gray here in New England.

Yesterday I got to go cross country skiing in Moore State Park. I had the honor of being the first one on the Paradise Grove trail and the first one on the trail by the lake and under the cliffs and down the road.

Breaking trails through the snow in the silence of the late afternoon I feel like a young boy off on an adventure. Or like a fifty seven year old man who has left the house of responsibility and is out in the freedom of the woods.

Something deep inside me smiles as in the presence of the trees and the rocks. This ancient scene. Everything is soft and covered. Snow still falling. Skis gliding . Breath breathing. Body moving easily. In the rhythm of activity, I am warm and comfortable. At home here alone in the gray woods.

New Year's Wishes

The front door Buddha is up to his neck in snow but doesn't seem to mind. He sits there under the weeping cherry tree like a lump of stone. I like to imagine he's smiling because the spring blossoms are already dancing in his head. Or better yet, that the bare branches are already beauty enough for him.

I, myself, seem to be hard wired for impatience. Once at a workshop, the instruction was to walk mindfully over to the lunchtime food across the room. In that short walk across the room, I noticed how automatically I get ahead of myself - how I lose track of these miraculous feet on the ground and miss the space in between. And I'm beginning to suspect that most of life is 'in between.'

So my New Year's wish this morning is to appreciate my feet on the floor and the vast space of all the moments in between. And as long as I'm wishing, I'd like to wish for a new appreciation of my impatience as well - that I might see impatience like the dark lines of the winter weeping cherry branches behind the Buddha - beautiful for what they are, not just for what they will be.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning – just 15 minutes to write before meditation. This first Christmas morning in the temple. It is a little brash to call this a temple. It mostly still looks like a big house with a big garage and a modestly sized parking lot. (I used to be inordinately proud of living in a house that had a parking lot. Now that the snow has come twice, the thrill is not quite as strong.) The house is white and has a mansard roof and a natural wood handicap access ramp that wraps around the small bare-branched weeping cherry tree on the side that we call the front.

The front faces west. Pleasant Street runs along the north side – the other side of the parking lot and up a small embankment. Though the house is large, you could easily miss it driving by. The road curves and you tend to see the large and slightly incongruous apartment building set up across the street. And our now snowy backyard with the brick pathways is all but invisible to people walking by.

But it is a temple – a building dedicated to practice and meditation. All of the first floor, except for the kitchen, is our practice space. The second floor is mostly our residence – where I sit now in my bedroom/study – drinking strong black tea and feel the warmth of the computer on my lap. (The new furnace has been readjusted and now no longer cuts out in the middle of the night which is certainly a Christmas blessing.)

The doorbell rings – the practice leader has arrived and the house is now open for zen business. Christmas morning – who will come out this early morning to sit still to investigate this fleeting and urgent matter of being human?

New Technology

The good news is that we just installed a new high efficiency furnace for our hot water heating system here at the temple. These nice guys – Ryan and Welcome (that’s really his first name) have been here for the past three days hanging and plumbing the new furnace. Just yesterday afternoon, we went live with the new boiler.

The furnace itself is about three feet high and two feet wide. It hangs on the wall and looks more like a small cupboard closet than a furnace. It’s replacing the existing 1950’s era furnace that occupies most of the room standing almost five feet high, five feet wide and six or seven feet deep. The new furnace is so efficient that the exhaust is not hot enough to vent into the chimney. It’s vented through plastic pipe out the basement window. We’re going to save bundles of energy and money.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I woke in the middle of the night and noticed that my nose was cool. We keep the thermostat set pretty low, so at first I thought nothing of it, turned over and pulled the covers up. A short while later I found that I could warm my head by putting the pillow over it. But as I drifted toward full consciousness I began to put the pieces together – the newly installed furnace, the unusually cool temperatures, the pillow over my head - I grew uneasy. I glanced at the clock – 3:30 in the morning.

At some point, I realized this problem was not going to self-correct and turned on the light. Getting out of bed, I put on my sweat pants, the fleece jacket I wear constantly in the winter, my favorite blue knit hat and manfully headed for the basement. There it was, our lovely new hi-tech furnace, shiny and new as a penny – totally silent. The words – “the bleeding edge of technology” ran through my head as I considered that high efficiency that doesn’t work is very efficient indeed, but rather cool in a New England winter.

Mustering my vast mechanical know-how, I found the on/off switch. I flipped it on and off. I heard the satisfying sound of the burner firing up – only to turn off almost immediately. Then, once again drawing on reservoir of problem solving skills, I called the guys who installed it. Their answering service put me through to Ryan who showed up forty-five minutes later.

I went with him to the furnace room. He read the error code, looked in the manual, and pushed the reset button. It fired up right away and stayed on. It’s been on for the past hour and a half. He’s still down there, sitting on a cardboard box reading through the manual, waiting for it to stop again.

Ryan reassured me that the two gallon stainless steel heat exchanger on the furnace is a great thing and that we’ll be really happy with it. Right now, my feet are still cold, but I’m hopeful.

All In This Together

This past weekend we had a houseful – a templeful of friends in the dharma. We gathered for three days of Zen practice – to pursue this matter of being human. We sometimes call it a retreat, but that is rather misleading. ‘Training period’ is a better description. This dramatically simple process of sitting in silence always requires an extraordinary level of effort and intention. Though we just sit around and do nothing, we’re not just sitting around and doing nothing.

For me, it has now been so many years and so many retreats. I am still challenged and delighted at what emerges – what is possible for human beings. This morning, I have special gratitude for once again realizing that I am not in this life by myself. I so easily fall into imagining that I am somehow separate from the world and from my fellow human beings. That ‘it’ is up to me alone. That I have to bear the responsibility and the work by myself. Over these past three days, through the silence and the chanting, through the sitting and the walking, it was clear to me that the ground of being human is shared.

As we each encounter our own particular life, we also enter into the share aliveness of all human beings. This experience of a common humanity heartens and nourishes me. I am deeply grateful to my brothers and sisters in dharma who journeyed with me this weekend – and for every human who steps out of the rush of daily busyness to encounter the sacredness and particularness of his or her life. We indeed are all in this together.

Accidents & Miracles

Several people I know have recently been in auto accidents and this morning I am especially grateful for the continuing accident of my life. Not that it’s always so easy. I am amazed at how quickly I get lost – over and over. Yet beneath and through all the being lost and being found is this awesome mystery that the world and I exist.

I raise my eyes from the computer screen and see the gradations of light on the far wall. The warm yellow center of the lamp radiates outward – perfectly received and reflected on the flat surface behind. I have no idea how I see this. I’ve been told it’s just a matter of photons stimulating cells in my eyes and this impulse being carried to my brain and there being decoded or encoded by other neural cells firing. But I know that I’m just seeing what is out there. It’s a wall lit by a lamp. It all happens effortlessly so I can focus on more important matters – like what I should have for breakfast and whether I should take my shower before or after morning meditation.

I send my wishes that everyone who is suffering might be healed. That even in the midst of suffering there might be peace. And that we might all appreciate today the miracle of the ordinary.

I’m reminded of the Native American poem:

Why do I go about

pitying myself

when all the time

I am being carried

on great winds

across the sky?

A Day Off?

Sunday morning breaks clear after snow. The predicted six to ten inches turns out to be one or two – but all of that sticking to the colder branches as it fell. Now the sky is bright and the horizon edge begins to color.

Me -- sitting here by the window in the warm house. Cars occasionally going by in front. Now the sound of a snow shovel across the street – scraping against the frozen snow. The top orange edge of the sun shows itself through the white branches to the southeast. I’m blinded as I foolishly look directly at it. There’s no stopping this day now. Even this low southern sun fills the white world.

Surprisingly, I have no particular plans for what to do while the sun describes the low winter arc of today. Of course, much should be done, but the morning is young and my head still slow with sleep. I wander freely, here in my morning chair, in a world of possibility. The responsible person I usually am waits patiently – like a set of formal clothes laid out for the day. But for now, just these comfortable and barely presentable sweat pants.

I know there are ways to follow rather than lead – ways to be surprised even in the small things. Maybe I'll trust the world to function today without my guidance. Maybe I’ll take the day off and let the clothes of my usual self rest gently on the bed.