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Zen Garden
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Accepting its
invitation
(how could I not?) I walk over to a swinging-couch, positioned
exactly for optimum viewing. When I
sit
my body down on it, it creaks as if in a welcome. The thought occurs
to me "A person speaks a welcome; a swinging couch in a Zen garden
creaks it; speaking / creaking, is in the listening.". There's
nothing to do but swing slowly to and fro, to and fro. As I do, I'm
looking - just looking. That's all that's going on. Then (as if by
magic)
the looking stops, replaced by a letting be ie a space
in which all Zen gardens, all
worlds,
and
Life itself
show up.
There's a breeze. At first I don't feel it. Then I do: it's a
slight movement of warm, bone-dry air on my skin. It's not a
distraction. Rather, it occurs to me as a punctuation
in this Zen garden's paragraph (if you will). It's a breeze that
occurs to me as still (that's a
paradox:
breezes have movement, yet this one occurs as still). Uh oh! I find
myself trying to explain it. Then, noticing I'm explaining, and the
distraction it is from being, I stop. I get the anomaly, reverently
loving it.
A butterfly flies past. As it does, I have the thought "A butterfly
flutters by ...". Nice, very nice -
whimsy even. Briefly I'm absorbed in wondering what
it's doing here, where it's going. Catching myself, I smile at the
automaticity of it: butterflies have no agenda,
Laurence! I
laugh:
I'd just added "There's gotta be an agenda" the same
way as I pour ketchup on my eggs. No, it's just being a butterfly
in a Zen Garden fluttering by. And by. And by. And by. I thank it
profusely for
coaching
me (it doesn't register). Soon it
disappears
behind a lavender bush by a
bronze Buddha.
Then there are
birds
calling, adding more punctuation. There are whistles. There are
warbles. There's even hooting. Intrigued, I try my best imitations
in response, as if in conversation with them. Whatever they "say" I
echo back, wondering whether they'll continue to engage. They do!
So I try sounds they didn't make. Will they mimic me back? They
do ... as if we're in a communion. At first I'm
not sure it's really happening: if I'm simply imitating / mimicking
them, who would know? But when I make subtle changes in my
responses and they echo those, I know. It's extraordinary.
This Zen garden's a context for
speech:
when one syllable alters, they all alter.
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