Sabi

Kirei sabi – refined beauty and lonliness
Kirei suki – taste for refined beauty
Sabi – lonliness, lonely beauty
Yugen – mystery and depth

Things that just keep passing by

Sei Shonagon lists “Things that just keep passing by: A boat with its sail up. People’s age. Spring. Summer. Autumn. Winter.”

This autumn there are some very cool days and one thinks about changing clothes to wools and long sleeved flannel shirts. But then the very next day the temperature soars into the 70s and there is renewed hope that the summer will linger forever though signs in the garden tell us winter is quickly approaching.

Sunsets and sunrises are lavish with color. Pale pinks and oranges flood the sky. Trees and shrubs wear a brocade of woven hue: reds, oranges, pale green, and brown. Ferns and grasses spell the end of the year, dahlias and salvias throw out the best of the season. It is truly a splendid time.

It is delightful when there has been a dawn rain

It is delightful when there has been a dawn rain shower and then when the early morning sun comes out drops of water on the leaves sparkle like millions of diamonds.

Living at Green Gulch Zen Center for a month

I can’t believe how fortunate I am to have been practicing Zen at Green Gulch Zen Center since 1984. This year I left the cold January of New York to spend three weeks at Green Gulch outside of San Francisco for the January 2015 Intensive led by Tenshin Reb Anderson. We spent most of our time in silence with much zazen – meditation sitting.

I lived in the authentic style Japanese tea house with tatami mats, shoji screens, and fusuma. On occasion I walked to Muir Beach, just a 45 minute hike away. Here are some visual  impressions of my immediate environment.

I felt at home – like these last two phrases from Dogen’s Zazen Shin :

“Clear water all the way to the bottom,
A fish swims like fish.

Vast sky transparent throughout,
A bird flys like birds.”

The color of the mountains

This is one of my favorite scrolls. The words in English:

The color
of the mountains
purifies
the pure body

These words have been a favorite of mine for a long time. I remember a ten-day Vipassana retreat in the desert of Joshua Tree in southern California: it was spring, the mountains far in the distance were framed by the blue endless sky. I walked for hours outside  in meditation – these words in mind with new blooming flowers carpeting the desert floor under my feet.

These words are with me now as they were then, but I usually associate them with spring or fall and hang this scroll in the tea room when the Catskill mountains across the river show different hues of color depending on the changing seasons.

I never thought about these words for winter until yesterday when I saw the mountains dusted with the first snow. What could be more pure than white? The snow, the early blooming narcissus, the white paper to hold the black ink?

Sei Shonagon has a list titled “Things worth seeing.” Indeed. But how about a list “Things worth being?”