In a moonlit night

I just opened the Spring 2007 issue of UU World, the magazine of the Unitarian Universalist association, and on the front page they featured a poem by the Chan (read Zen) master Chang Chiu-ch’en, something he composed in celebration of his awakening.

In a moonlit night on a spring day,

the croak of a frog

pierces through the whole cosmos and turns it into

a single family!

I thought of it in relation to Brian Hines’ recent riff on neo-advita at his Church of the Churchless website, which I cited in my last posting. His concern with neo-advita being isolated from its traditions and how that seems frequently to lead to a consequenceless spirituality has been the shadow of Zen and other Buddhist practice oriented teachings in the West, as well.

I do believe the bottom line of awakening is discovering our joy. It is about a genuine coming home.

The catch is that the other stuff that comes along in the traditional tradition, while in some ways secondary, in some ways unnecessary, is also in many ways a pointing to the fact that awakening is a joy that comes with responsibility.

Chang Chiu-ch’en says it all.

That frog croaks! A stone hits a bit of bamboo. A father falls down and his daughter throws herself to the ground with him. Martin Luther finally has his bowel movement. I sit in the warmth of my office and look at at the snow falling so gently, so persistently, so beautifully and terribly.

And, if we’re just a little lucky: we really do notice.

And then, not even a heartbeat away: what joy!

Joy.

And then, as Chang Chiu-ch’en says, immediately following, the first thought that follows that joy is a discovery that “the whole cosmos” doesn’t actually turn into, it simply reveals “a single family.”

Living awake in the world is seeing how we are one family. There’s grumply uncle Al wagging his finger. There’s aunt Hillary coming on strong, cousin Barak saying it’s time for new visions. There are the cousins we don’t like, perhaps, like Mahumoud or even the one we don’t like to mention, such as Osama. Cousins, uncles, aunts, parents, children.

A single family that needs to be engaged.