The Fierce Urgency Of The Now: MLK, Katagiri, Dogen, And Krista Tibbets

In addition to MLK day here in the US, today is Katagiri Roshi’s 81st birthday and Dogen’s ~809th. A phrase of Martin’s, “the fierce urgency of the now,” has wonderful dharma implications, and is one thread that runs through Dogen, Katagiri, Martin Luther King, Jr., and all of us, on and off the cushion.

Speaking of now, yesterday while transporting kids, I caught a piece of Krista Tibbet’s locally produced Speaking of Faith, “Preserving Words and Worlds.” It’s about the brothers and others of the St. John’s Abbey Hill Museum and Monastic Library (about 100 miles from here) and their inspiring mission to preserve the sacred texts of any world tradition they can microfiche. I was touched particularly by comments about how many traditions went extinct in just the 20th Century in the Ukraine. All those interviewed spoke about how much is irretrievable.

The texts, of course, cannot fully capture the spirit, especially the actual daily lives of those practitioners and how specifically they unfolded and expressed the great mystery. But at least they point to something lost.

“Yearning for the old ways,” is the phrase that came to mind. Seems that Dogen and Katagiri both got a bad case of this in their later years and I imaged that Roshi would have enjoyed listening to this program a great deal.

So I found myself zipping along in my little truck missing my old teacher.

“Happy birthday on the auspicious occasion of your birth,” he once said to all of us. I now say it back to him.

The Fierce Urgency of the Now: MLK, Katagiri, Dogen, and Krista Tibbets