I offer haiku from A White Tea Bowl, 100 Haiku from 100 Years of Life. The haiku are by Mitsu Suzuki, the widow of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center.
Her laughter
comes ahead to greet me –
spring in motion
Leaves of speech –
unable to put words in order
I stamp through fallen leaves
Jizo Bodhisattva
protector against dementia –
fringed iris
The rain pours down, and the wind chimes play their notes. I sit in the pause, reflect and come back to myself. What rings inside?
I’m with these words of Ruth Denison:
Breath is the food on which sensations live – on which aliveness lives. When the sensations are fed they come out of their dullness. It’s not simply the air, it is the force of movement. Breath is the switch that turns on the lights of the sensations. When they come to life, they flicker and shine, just like the stars at night …
Allen Ginsberg wrote that the three lines of haiku ‘make the mind leap”. A good one lets the mind experience “a small sensation of space which is nothing less than God”.
Natalie Goldberg says a photo can do the same.
A loving project can do that too. Here’s an inspirational story on saving Monarch butterflies.
The kitchen is completed to where I can bring dishes back in from the garage to the house. Because they are so precious and delicate, my grandmother’s dishes sit in a heavy box on top of other boxes. They are labeled “fragile”.
The box is too heavy to lift, so I take out cup after cup, and carry each one up five steps, unwrap it, and go back down for another. I feel it as a pilgrimage, not as strenuous as walking The Camino de Santiago, but still each step mindful as I carry and cherish my grandmother’s dishes. She passed away when I was 13, and my mother gave them to me when I was married at 21.
Now, I learn they are worthless to others, that they can’t even be given away. The suggestion is to use them now, so they might as well go into the dishwasher, though it could risk their rims of gold. Instead I think of the beauty and mindfulness in hand-washing them, the caress and connection between present and past, the cleansing and renewing of ancestral memory.
I wash them by hand and place them in a sacred place, cup by cup, plate by plate, breath by breath, step by step.
It’s raining, an invitation to stay in bed and listen, look, contemplate, and feel. I feel the breath, the movement through me, an exploration merging in and out.
Pema Chodron’s words are a pond within me.
You are the sky. Everything else is just the weather.
And there’s Br. Curtis Almquist:
If you’re not in touch with the mysterious majesty of life, look again. It’s just as mysterious as you thought it was as a child.
Today we’re supposed to wear green because it makes us invisible to Leprechauns who like to pinch anyone they can see.
My interest today is in the throat. I was surprised when before my cataract surgery, the anesthesiologist looked into my mouth to see if my throat was flexible enough to be intubated if something went wrong. He was pleased to see it was supple and open. It seems many people are so tense before surgery it’s tight and closed.
Since my time on the houseboat which was filled with watching marsh birds, especially the herons and egrets, I’ve been even more aware of my throat, especially the indoor corridor. We might have awareness of the outside as it connects torso and head, but there is also this beautiful living inside that it’s fun to notice and play with. How open is it? How silky? How curious to bend?
Today, in addition to awareness of green, I offer photos of birds with beautiful, sinuous, flexible in and out throats.
What is seeing? What do we see? Where do we focus ?
With my post-surgery enhancement of seeing, my brain is busy integrating this new world. All senses are affected. I smell and hear better, touch more deeply into enchantment, discernment, layers. I’m tasting my world. I feel part of this world as though I, too, am being tasted, smelled, touched, heard, seen.
I close my eyes to refresh and honor healing as I need to remember not to lift anything over 20 pounds, and not to bend below the waist, and not to let water near my eyes. Presence is requested and required.
When I left the house on Monday to have cataract and lens replacement surgery on Tuesday, I saw a Great Blue Heron standing in front of my neighbor’s full-size playhouse. I took a photo and it looks like the Heron is bigger than the house. I saw it as a good omen for my surgery.
The ophthalmologist was clear this experience would be different than the one two weeks ago because it was a different surgery and the brain is complex in its processing. I agree. Today is again a recovery day.
What makes me laugh though is this article on penguins having my same surgery. I asked the ophthalmologist about it and she said vets have done cataract surgery for many types of animals and even big fish. Who knew?
The aging penguins with their “new” eyes became more active and exploratory, so I’ll see what happens to me. I feel like I’m emerging from a tunnel wondering what the changing combinations and layers of light and dark bring now and now and now.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/15/asia/penguin-cataract-surgery-singapore-bird-park-intl-hnk/index.html
This exquisite duck couple kept swimming, then, walking toward me as though to say protect this precious environment, this buffer zone, these oxygen producers that nourish your lungs.
Today I’m reflecting on the birds I’ve met this last month and a half. Going through photos, I’m honoring the words of Martin Aylward:
If we can rest into being here and do nothing, then plenty can happen.
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