Joseph Priestley Zen Sangha<\/a> in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. We\u2019re an affiliate of Empty Moon Zen.<\/p>\n\u201cNow is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this sun of York.\u201d And it has been a winter of our discontent, perhaps an entire year of our discontent. This past winter in particular and the autumn before that and the summer before that and the spring before that. Pandemic aside, if it can ever be aside, I don\u2019t seem to ever be able to find a place to live that doesn\u2019t flip from the icy depths of winter straight to the full blown heat and humidity of summer without pause for more than a passing glance at spring. But, nevertheless,\u00a0 spring, a new spring arrived this morning at 5:37 am Eastern Daylight Time here in central Pennsylvania, at least that\u2019s what the Farmer\u2019s Almanac tells me, and when you live surrounded by soy bean and corn fields, you pay attention to the Farmer\u2019s Almanac. I know that for many of you, the equinox dawned, so to speak, in the middle of the night, the witching hour, and that, for many of you, particularly those of you in California, the idea of four seasons, however skewed, is an amusing east coast conceit. But here it is.<\/p>\n
Yes, here it is. Wendell Berry, that poet of Appalacian farmland, wrote<\/p>\n
Geese appear high over us,<\/em>
\n pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,<\/em>
\n as in love or sleep, holds<\/em>
\n them to their way, clear<\/em>
\n in the ancient faith: what we need<\/em>
\n is here. And we pray, not<\/em>
\n for new earth or heaven, but to be<\/em>
\n quiet in heart, and in eye,<\/em>
\n clear. What we need is here.<\/em><\/p>\nYes, what we need is here and now, in this place, in this time, in this first evening of spring. We sit on our cushions, in the still darkness. We sit surrounded by our companions on the Way, even if virtually. We sit here and we pray to be quiet in heart. Those geese, flying over, landing in the fields behind the house just outside this window behind me, gleaning the fields of stray corn cobs left from last autumn. This is all they need. This is all they have. For them, nothing is missing.\u00a0 That field, this sesshin, this time is complete, virtually, magically, in the grit of form, in the expansiveness of the boundless, complete. What could be added?<\/p>\n
Wumen gives us, in the verse to accompany case 19 of the Gateless Gate:<\/p>\n
Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon,
\nSummer with breeze, winter with snow.
\nWhen idle concerns don\u2019t hang in your mind,
\nThat is your best season.<\/em><\/p>\nThis moment, this spring equinox, this season,<\/p>\n
Seven hundred and seventy five years ago on another March 20th, deep in the mountains of central Japan, at the temple Daibutsuji, our ancestor Eihei Dogen spoke to his assembly saying:<\/p>\n
The boundless sky is the nose of all people. The vast earth is the legs and feet of all people. Therefore, the ancestral teacher [Bodhidharma] came from the west and directly clarified how all buddhas appear in the world. The nose performs the Buddha work of the eyes; the eyes perform the Buddha work of the ears. The six sense faculties function together, and all objects practice together. So it is said, \u201cA stone person resembles you, and sings a popular song. You resemble a stone person, and are in harmony with the music of the snow.\u201d Exactly thus, exactly now, all sense fields are perfect wisdom. Everybody, do you want to enact this reality in complete detail?<\/p>\n
After a pause Dogen said: Who would complain that spring radiance does not seek after anything? The bright green grasses and hundred flowers are refreshing.<\/p>\n
For a practice steeped in sitting still, have you noticed how much riotous motion there is in Zen? Dogen tells us, in his Mountains and Rivers Sutra in the Shobogenzo that the mountains themselves are walking, who then can doubt that a stone person can sing? Or that, as the Precious Mirror Samadhi tells us, that the stone woman rises up to dance? Hakuin assures us in his song in praise of Zazen that \u201csinging and dancing are the voice of the law\u201d.<\/p>\n
A stone person, singing popular songs, and harmonizing with the silence of the snow, snow that is, I hope, now just a distant, quiet memory, though the grasses here are still brown and beaten down after a long winter. But the green shoots have been popping up.<\/p>\n
On my walks down by Turtle Creek, the ground, frozen just a week ago, has now turned to mud. I see small flowers, white snow drops, something purple, pushing up through the dead leaves, reminding me that \u201cFor lo the winter is past, the rains are over and done.\u201d The deer in the fields behind us are shedding their winter grey for the browns of summer. On a day like this, according to the Blue Cliff Record, Changsha went off to wander in the mountains and when he returned, the head monk of the temple met him at the gate and asked, \u201cWhere have you been?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been strolling about in the hills.\u201d \u201cWhich way did you go?\u201d \u201cI went out following the scented grasses and came back chasing the falling flowers.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s exactly the feeling of spring,\u201d said the head monk. \u201cIt\u2019s better than autumn dew falling on the lotuses,\u201d said Changsha, and Xuedou wrote \u201cI\u2019m grateful for your reply.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is so little that we require, the sky over our head, a gentle warm breeze, the light of a candle, the smoke of a stick of incense. The poet Galway Kinnell<\/u><\/a> asked us in his poem Why Regret? to \u201cThink of the wren and how little flesh is needed to make a song.\u201d<\/p>\nNow this is the first night of spring and the last night of sesshin, our ends become our beginnings.\u00a0 I would miss an opportunity if I didn\u2019t urge you all not to let down your guard, not to miss this precious opportunity to practice. No, I don\u2019t have to tell you not to pack up yet, we are , after all all on Zoom and already home. But remember the geese passing over us. For them and for us, what we need is here.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 YOUR BEST SEASON A Zen Meditation on Spring Edward Sanshin Oberholtzer Delivered on March 20th, 2012 at Empty Moon Zen\u2018s Inaugural Zoom Sesshin \u00a0 Good evening, my name is Edward Keido Sanshin Oberholtzer. I\u2019m the resident priest here at the Joseph Priestley Zen Sangha in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. We\u2019re an affiliate of Empty Moon Zen. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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