vows as fluid as starlings, vast as the sky.
murmurations and vows are not that different.
The seasonal shift is here again: the earth turns to the Autumn Equinox on Wednesday. It’s also Fall Training Period at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center-a period of intensified practice. A renewal of the vow to practice wholeheartedly.
I’ve been thinking about how to carry that intensive training period out here, back east, away from Yokoji. What does Training Period mean when you’re not on the mountain? In the midst of everyday work? In the midst of anxiety, in the grip of challenge?
Is there really a difference?
Which has me thinking about balance: how the weight of the seasons shift; how day falls into night; how water seeks its own level. The murmuration of starlings shifting like mercury against a cerulean sky.
How everything is held in balance with everything else.
Which brings me back to that vow to practice wholeheartedly. That vow to our lives. Isn’t zen practice simply that? A vow to be present to life, to embrace the wholeness of our experience whatever it may be, in every shifting moment. To allow our life itself to just be that vow. The intensification of attention to the gritty and beautiful and challenging and painful and exquisitely joyful existence we all share. And then to the next moment. And the next.
A murmuration of starlings in a vast and endless sky