who is breathing ?

AN INTERIOR LANDSCAPE

Facing myself facing
a white-washed wall
Breathing my parents sadness
Still silence falling into a bottomless well
Of bare emotion
where sorrow lines the walls
And the cave am I that echoes the memory
Of those narrow moments
When the slightest gesture would have consoled By J T Herron

How long have I been sitting here? Breathing. My face wet and stinging with the salts of ancient tears- ancient hours - that flow straight from the sea of remembrance. The sea of love. I am so comfortable here. I remember this feeling well, from somewhere else; when was it? Maybe it was a dream. Have I always been here, in this place where others tread so carefully, preserving peace; bells sounding the structure of time. Hands join in gassho, palms meeting at my heart, eyes half cast, I stand up alongside others all breathing, all moving as one, bowing to the white-washed wall so innocently reflecting my mind.

Breathing, stepping, I have come to love the sound of rain, hard on the worn tin roof, softly entering the sphere of my hearing mind. Tap, tap, tap, tap… I kneel at the head of a robed row of kindred spirits, awaiting the gong to lead me to meet a gentle man of expanded calm, of deep composure, of sensibility. A smile so wry, so full of comprehension, leaking wit, I sit before him in the breeze of his presence. Candle light, incense, and breath… Darshan. ‘Who is breathing? You are a hair’s-breath away.’ Gassho. We bow to one another.
The white-washed wall receives me. Breathes me. Ahh, the comfort of this place, the familiarity of my soul, my sanity., This zafu! This pure simplicity defines me.
Forgive me, my mind, I only forgot temporarily, I never was lost, I am here for you - for me!
Nothing to lose, nothing to gain. I just found a place I already knew. How lucky am I, far from home I find my true home, in the sound of rain on a tropical tin roof.
Maui Zendo sits in the lush tropical district of Haiku in Maui Hawaii, a fitting name for such a sublimely poetic place. It had once been a discreet and exotic geisha house for rich Japanese business men. The wood floors shone with a natural elegance and circular glass windows framed the tropical scenery outside. Situated in a lofty spot high in the Maui Hills you could see all the way out to the ocean and beyond to limitless sky. The seasons were punctuated by rainfall and morning chill, but the endless summer warmth maintained a divinely pleasant atmosphere for all living things.
My first seven-day sesheen meditation retreat was just beginning as I arrived to this sacred place. The poem above came from this experience and heralded in a grateful appreciation of meditation that is still with me as I write and as I grow into the autumn of my life.

I am sitting on a little stool next to my mother and sister in our long, beautifully furnished blue and gold sitting room. All the mirrors have been completely covered with large drapes and people are milling around, crying,, and reaching out to me. I am wearing a long, chestnut-brown corduroy Laura Ashley dress that I love, that protects me like a monk’s habit. I feel like a dark, lost cloud. Heavy with rain, heavy with guilt, condensed by the pressure of so many faces searching mine for answers; answers to questions that I do not understand. I speak a different language, one that is submerged beneath the irony of being a teenager fighting for emotional independence and the co-dependent loss of my parent. I do not know what to say, or what to feel. How to respond to the tsunami of grief that floods every atom of oxygen around and within me. I appear here in body, yet my mind and spirit have absconded for refuge in a place I do not know, that is hidden from my responsibility to respond; from my sense of belonging. Men are praying in the ancient language of my forefathers, rocking piously back and forth and my mother weeps with other women, some strong, some weak..
The polished baby grand piano sits solemnly at the far end of the room as if waiting to be heard, and my gaze goes to my fathers’ well-stocked bar at the other end where Patsy, his dearest friend props up one side. I have always been close to her and I move over to her side where we drink sweet red kiddush wine together in a heavily burdened silence. We reach for one another every now and then, embrace and pour another drink.

There is movement outside the room and I am ushered into our dining room where my mother is shrieking and tearing her sweater. The old sun-scorched rabbis wife tells me that it is tradition for the wife to tear her clothing over her husbands open coffin to express her grief. I am stunned by the exposure of my fathers composed face, and the heat of the room, the tears and wrenching cries. I cannot breathe but stay there as I am too heavy to move, too sad for my mother, whose grief reaches a part of me I do not know, cannot recognize, and I am freezing over like Alaska. I am hiding somewhere far away from the pain of remembrance.

At sixteen my father died at a time when we were not on good terms. Our relationship had degenerated through what seemed then to be our vast differences of opinion. Being a strong willed and explorative person I had left home very early to travel the world and find my own education. In fact, I had run away at one time and caused harrowing anxiety for my parents which also brought me into experiences so prematurely that I could not share them with anyone. The accumulation of so much grief and loss for my father formed an unapproachable distance and lingering sadness between us.

We loved each other but could not accept each others differences. When he passed on we were still struggling on the battlefield of our emotional wills and I did not have the opportunity to make friends with him or tell him I loved him before he died. Raw anger arose in me at his death which I aimed at the doctors who I felt had mistreated him and vowed to learn to heal in my life-time. This anger was, of course, my own pain for not having reached him myself or made the difference between life and death, between peace and war, between father and daughter. Yet it was this vow that began the journey I was destined to travel. The healing I wanted to give was the healing of my own life and the sharing of love that comes from this. Years later I was to go through this healing with my father within the sanctity of a silent, three month meditation retreat.

Young and wild at heart I was not aware of the tremendous impact my fathers death had on my emotional body and in my heart. A dam opened up within me pouring out the vast sea of love and sadness of the past. When I began to meditate at Maui Zendo dreams with the clarity of cut-glass filled my silent nights. Many were embellished with vivid visions of gazing into clear turquoise pools through which I could see my own reflection and the sandy waterbed beneath. All the sadness that had been buried or frozen within my emotional body flowed out to be recognized in this new home of awareness that meditation had given to me. Like the prodigal son, I had truly arrived home, to a place that was new yet familiar, a place I had forgotten. The irony was that I had traveled to the other side of the planet to glean this insight and yet my breath had been there for me all the time. My awareness had opened to touch the hurt and sadness hidden deep inside me. I was being initiated into the lost land of my family inheritance, the connection to my parents, my birth, even before my birth to a sense of my original unchanging nature.

The Diamond Sangha on Maui, Hawaii was lead by Aitkin Roshi, a grand teacher of the Soto Zen tradition who had practised and been ordained with Yamado Roshi in Japan. Aitkin Roshi embodied an elegant stance and lucid mind. His non-interfering wisdom during these formative years of my practice was an example within itself. Some time later in Japan, I sat with other monks and teachers whose vibratory qualities and ceremonious style embroidered my cloth of understanding with the origins of this cultural discipline. For many years I breathed and sat in meditative silence at the Maui Zendo, a Zen Buddhist lay community of fellow practitioners. My life there revolved around daily practice, sesheen (retreats), silk painting and community work.

Maui Zendo was the first real school I had ever been to, where deep respect, mindfulness and compassion were being cultivated. There was purpose here and the solitariness suited my growth. I loved Zazen. The refinement of the environment, the practice dojo, the poetic teachings, the discipline and the form all appealed to my aesthetic senses as well as the calling of my heart and mind for tranquility. This was a place where I could truly listen.... hear the sound of my own thoughts, my breath, the Hawaiian wind and rain. As the years went by I absorbed and wholly appreciated this orchestrated life and intensity of practice. There, Jutta Hahne, a unique and statuesque fellow practitioner who took care of Roshi taught me how to batik, simply by watching her artistic excellence on many happy afternoons. My skills in batiking and silk painting developed fast and I created exotic hand sewn kimonos that were sold and exhibited locally on the island and people would visit me from all over to order special commissions for themselves or as gifts. I recall an abundance of fulfilled, warm, breezy days in my wooden hut in the Eucalyptus Grove. The smell of hot bees-wax, ready for batiking that I had bought from the bee-keeper down the road, embedded with poor dead bees that were drained away after the wax had melted. I batiked images of the beauty all around me; bamboo, banana leaves, hibiscus flowers, birds of paradise, long wild grasses, sunsets and moon scenes. Dying the silks in bright radiant colors and hanging them out to dry, watching the breeze flow through them. Then sitting quietly for hours stitching the pieces together whilst listening to the sound of the wind, birds and leaves. This utopia was a very special time of my life and I cannot find words to express the gratitude for the blessings I received. I began to read and write more poetry and one of my favorites has always been the hermit Japanese monk Ryokan:

Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days’ worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.Ryokan (1758-1831)