Love: A Zen Meditation

Love: A Zen Meditation June 23, 2016

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I’ve been thinking a lot about love of late.

I recall an etymological dictionary that suggested the distant ancestor of love was “lub,” a word meaning desire. It kind of works, don’t you think? Of course desire is a dangerous thing, a variation on the very thing that old Gautama Siddhartha marked out as the cardinal cognitive error in human consciousness – grasping, specifically grasping after that which is in motion as if it were permanent. A fool’s chase that ends, always, in grief.

At the same time I’ve seen people who try to follow that analysis and cut themselves off from life. It births a desiccated spirituality and a stunted person. Another mistake. Of course, then there’s that other old Buddhist caution that describes our lives as “one continuous mistake.” True stuff, that.

So, how do we deal with this conundrum? On the one hand it is a dance with grief. On the other, in denying it, we become something ugly.

Well, as it happens today is June Carter Cash’s birthday. And that has taken me in another direction. Her husband Johnny had his own problems with love. His song “I walk the Line” was his attempt at a vow of fidelity to his first wife Vivian Liberto.

There is something noble in it. And, it is shadowed by his failure to live up to the vow. It is easy to rebuke him for his failure, and his turn from his vow. I think he deserves some rebuke. And.

When we speak of love we are talking around a mystery, something half dove and half dragon. It is the song of peace. And it breathes a fire that can burn us to ashes.

Which makes me think of June. And of her song about love. Now, Johnny really, really liked it. And he wanted to make it his own, and he did.

Oh, I love those Mexican horns. And there is something deeply authentic here. No more toeing the line. Now, it is something all consuming. Something real, but also so harsh it kills. Ring of fire.

That’s when I found myself thinking of June. Actually, it was her song. And if you’ve ever heard her versions, they’re different. No swagger. Cool as that is. Here something else is happening.

Here love comes as the destroyer. Two marriages collapse. Pain flows like blood.

And two people are caught in the great desire.

In that moment of confrontation something is found. We are wounded, and the world is wounded. To know ourselves is to know failure and collapse, as the old man said, sickness, the best we can hope for, old age, and, somewhere along the line, death.

And in between the enclosing great night some spark, something beautiful, burning like a lamp, and something terrible.

A ring of fire.

And the call for us. Here’s the Zen of this. Become a Buddha of fire.

Then our lives becomes a dance. And with that word, “dance,” one more song. This by another artist. One who also knows love in all its glorious sadness, its blessed loneliness calling into the great intimate.

Let’s call it a Zen song. Or, just a song of love.

There is no other way.


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