Flower Growing On A Rock

I’m back from my annual BWCA trip with my son, canoeing and camping through it all with nowhere to go (well, there is the tent…) – rain and heat, wind at our back and in our face, and oh the wonderfully persistent insects.

Flowers growing out of rock.

Five days alone with my son was great. At 12 he’s incredibly grown up and yet very open, questioning everything in a Zennish way:
“Why is smoke grey?”
“Everywhere we camp, the waves are coming toward us. Does that mean there’s somewhere on the lake that all the waves are coming from?”

And today back at it – setting up the webinar for Keep Me in Your Heart Awhile (there’s still room but it starts with a tech check Saturday morning – click here for more information) and attending to what seems like all the 10,000 things that come forward after vacation.

Oh, I added a “translator” over on the right sidebar but not sure if it works like that. Please let me know.

And speaking of “oh!,” often during vacation or sesshin I get a really good idea for what seems “exactly” what I need to do next with this life. It hit me again this time in the early morning while sipping coffee after zazen (on an inflatable zafu no less). But I’ve learned through experience (i.e., hard knocks) that it really is best to let those “great” ideas cook for at least three days because sometimes they don’t look so good after awhile … so that’s all I’ll say about it for now.

I’ll leave you with this from

The Record of Yaoshan from James Mitchell’s website with his translations of the early Soto tradition (lots of good stuff here):

Shitou taught: “This ordinary mind isn’t expressed by words and ideas.”
Yaoshan said, “No words and no ideas also have nothing to do with this ordinary mind.”
Shitou said, “You can’t penetrate this further.” [Shitou says literally, “You can’t penetrate me.” “Rock” of course is also Shitou’s name.]
Yaoshan said, “I’m like a flower growing on a rock.”
Shitou agreed.

Flower Growing on a Rock