What is essential is the breaking.
Three days weeping through zazen. After it all shattered, opened, and I fell completely apart. What remains in brokenness: silence. What remains in brokenness: a cerulean sky, cracked.
Molten light escaped everywhere.
This life expressed in jagged networks of platinum. This life expressed in seams and scars. What is a history.
The broken field of boulders at the base of the canyon, just above Yokoji: blurred wrens criss-crossing the tops of the oak and pine. The canyon’s high rim outlining where it has ruptured. Bending up at those edges.
Descending the valley, an occasional Hawk. Traces a liquid line.
This perfectly fired, shattered and seamed blue cup held in my hands. Steam off blistering tea. Thin fissures, networked finely, traced against my fingertips.
Love has broken me, breaks me. Her cooling fingers resting on the skin across my back. Untraceable scars.
What is broken. Remains.
The dark, cracked skin of bread where the lahm sliced at the center; edges curling up where steam escaped, forced open that fissure. 500 degrees carmelizing the crust.
Yokoji. Across the room, a thin seam of incense smoke from the altar. That molten light slashed across it, poured down its spine. It flows everywhere. This practice of silence breaks me, again and again. It just keeps breaking me. Those wrens outside the Zendo. The cracked concrete steps up from the path. That broken field of boulders. Her touch on my back. It is all breaking.
What remains in brokenness: silence. What’s left after. How the broken sky is an eggshell: the occasional Hawk.
What is essential is the breaking.
Your comments are always welcomed and encouraged. I’d love to hear from you.
One more thing.
As a zen priest I’m a student of Tenshin Fletcher Roshi at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center. For more info on Yokoji, please visit www.zmc.org.
I’m also the caretaker of Warwick Zendo, a small in-person and online sangha based in the lower Hudson Valley of New York. if you’d like to check out our practice community, we’re at www.warwickzen.org.
How this works.
I plan to post at least once a week, at minimum. The Freeside offers those weekly posts, which will always be accessible. Payside will (eventually) offer access to some longer writing and ongoing investigations into practices both literary and zen.
Payside also helps to sustain this project, and this practice. Like any creative project, keep sweeping is a kind of labor, and as such, your support to sustain that labor is much appreciated.
If Payside is not for you, that’s all good. The posts will keep coming on Freeside. The support of your reading and attention is a deeply appreciated gift, and I thank you for being here.
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