Witness and Participant

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

Each day we are both witness and participant in our universe. As interactive players we both learn and teach simultaneously. So each day we should look to ourselves and ask, what do we want to teach? What do we wish to learn?

The most simple and routine tasks are often the best examples and offer the greatest teachings. Feeding the baby, feeding the dog, taking a bath, brushing our teeth, saying hello to our neighbor, driving our car, doing our work, preparing our food, eating, using the bathroom, making love, sitting zazen: teachers all. In each of these, it seems to me the most valuable teaching and learning is presence.

Can we be present when feeding the dog? Do we really see our neighbor? Do we feel the food as we prepare it, recall the various hands and lives it is? As we join our partner, can we allow ourselves to drop away and be union itsef?

These take practice. These take deliberate effort. A seeming contradiction: practice-effort and simultaneous witness-participation. But is only seeming. When we first learn anything, we are painfuly and acutely aware to our "learning" state. As we accomplish and integrate the teaching, we become the teaching, and become less aware of "learning" or "doing." The flow from subject to object, relative to absolute, and back again, becomes increasingly seamless.Soon we notice there is no flow at all.

I invite you to be a witness and a participant in our universe today.

Be well.