a zen buddhist monk's blog about things almost zen and telling it the way it is - zen or not (yet)

November 30, 2009

Leaves fall - that's natural!

So the leaves are falling! Well they usually do around this time of year but THIS year they have hung on longer than usual. The weather has been unseasonably mild and the life-force even stronger than usual. The inevitable is inevitable but that doesn't stop us from hanging on like "grim death" - what an unusual saying; life hanging on like death!

Oh! how we hang on to things, any "thing"; possesions, feelings, fears even! Yes, even our fear of something must remain "ours"; it's our fear of flying or of small places, or of maybe having an attack of fear about being affraid! Hanging on somehow makes us comfortable, even if that means feeling comfortable about being uncomfortable! As long as we can identify these feelings as being "ours", we are OK.

Our ability to hang onto life no matter what; our desire to continue to live against all odds like the trees around me now, is why we are the dominent animal on this watery planet, but...

Couldn't we do things a little differently comme mème? Couldn't we learn to let go of some things? Do we really need to hang on to anger, greed, jealousy, and our ignorance of how our neighbour feels or in what they believe?

"Difficult", you say, "that's how we're made", you repeat like a mantra (hanging on to our platitudes). Well, NO, that's not how we're made but I believe for most of us that it is difficult. However, we must try to return to how we WERE made; return to our original self; our original nature without predjudice and with just enough fear to keep us safe from any "real" dangers and not those we create in our heads! Sometimes our leaves need to fall, it's natural and after all, they're not really ours anyway, but simply lent to us for a while. Hanging on to stuff just increases our fears; fears that things are changing, and, we don't like that! But nothing is more natural, nothing is more "true" than that everything changes - stop hanging on!


- seiun hosei joza


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