Every Day

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

After a steady morning of doing Zazen, hiking and running in the desert (2.4 mi), doing dishes, and so on, KoMyo has prepared a wonderful pot of oatmeal. The scent is calling me to the table.

We will be leaving for sesshin at 3:00 PM this afternoon and will return Sunday afternoon. I am looking forward to being at the Refuge for a few days.

"Setting aside one, you gained seven." (a line out of the Blue Cliff Record, Case 6 Every Day is a Good Day) Katsuki Sekida notes, "You put the past aside, you ignore even enlightenment; that is 'setting aside one'. And in penetrating into the present moment's activity of consciousness, you meet with many things; that is how 'you gained seven'..."

Awake means living in multiple moments that are not at all multiple. We recognize a past, a present, and a future, but we know these are just mental constructs. We recognize a "me" and a "you" a "coffee cup" and a "cat" but we know these are not what we call them, they are just what we call them.

Getting to Awake we take the next step. We get up off our asses and out from under that Bodhi tree and we put one foot in front of another. We sweat. We eat. We work. We sleep. Yet we do these experiencing them both exquistiely and subtly as both real and false; one and many. To know One, set aside Many; to know Many, set aside One. Do this seamlessly.

Be well.