Somehow, I must sit to listen.
Standing implies a readiness for action, for the executing of the will.
To hear You I must sit down and calm down.
The magpie mind chatters.
It doesn't know about stopping.
How helpless I feel in its automatic firing, its busy babbling.
It is impossible to hear You as long as I am full of sound.
I turn this helpless prayer toward You.
... slowly unknowing everything, becoming dark,
becoming yielding ... just sitting.
We meditate in the library's garden, desolate in winter. We shiver but aren't in a hurry... After a while I feel more rested, and strangely fortified, too, as though by a company of unseen helpers, wise ones who know what it means to live with a heart as open as a clear blue sky, as passionate as the summer sun, as patient as rain on rock. How I want to live that way. A Zen saying burrows into my quiet, becomes a prayer: "May I walk hand in hand with you, ancestors, the hair of my eyebrows entangled with yours." The empty garden is full.