day-blurb with book in hand

I’m reading (for about the 6th time now) The Roaring Stream: A New Zen Reader, a wonderful anthology of works of Ch’an and Zen masters. I’m haunted by these words of Hsueh-feng: “The whole world is you.” It seems to me that this basic idea takes dead aim at my deepest being – in terms of responsibility, in terms of possibility. Hsueh-feng follows this with the notion that we’ve adjusted our minds – or maybe our minds have been adjusted for us would be more to the point – to the belief that there is something else. This belief in a “something else” gives rise to such falsehoods as… There is someone to make me happy, something else that defines me, some other place for me to be, some other thing I need… And the list could go on.

The casual reader might think Hsueh-feng’s purpose is to focus on the “smallness” of human nature, but I don’t think that’s his intention. He realizes the absolute and indispensable spot in the universe each person holds. My take is No one breathes as I breathe. No one sees as I see. No one moves as I walk. I love the freedom, the release. This allows me to be what is necessary.

When I die, the universe dies with me – to paraphrase Alan Watts.

Here’s a poem by Mark Strand that has at its core Hsueh-feng’s notion. Very Zen.

“Keeping Things Whole”

In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.

When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body’s been.

We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.