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An Evening upon the Shore
Old Orchard Beach, Maine
Questions to the Sage -
I don't feel like I belong here. What am I to do?
Realize you belong everywhere. You are here to learn that. Otherwise, you'll just go somewhere else and feel you don't belong, rather than knowing you take belonging with you.
What do you mean?
You can't not belong. When you realize that, you realize the feeling of not belonging is a feeling. It's okay to feel that; I feel it sometimes, too. It may be saying, "Open your heart just a little bit wider right where you are?" Or it might be saying, "It's time to move on." Regardless, here or elsewhere, you already belong, for you are the belonging. True community is a communion of belonging. So, what do you need to do? Remember what you have forgotten. Somewhere along the way, most of us forgot we belong, so we search for it, like searching for the eyelids we're looking through.
*"Meetings with an Anonymous Sage."
* * *
Kobayashi Issa (Japanese Jodo Shinshu Buddhist, 1753-1825) -
A crane has lighted
on a rubbish heap
at Wakanoura.
*Robert Aitken. The River of Heaven: The Haiku of Basho, Buson, Issa, and Shiki.
* * *
Speaking of Wakanoura and the crane, the late Zen Teacher Aitken writes -
Wakanoura is a beautiful, scenic spot that now lies within the Seto Naikai National Park, south of Osaka, in Wakayama Prefecture. It has been famed for its scenery from earliest times ... The crane is a beautiful bird in flight and in its dignity when on land.
Okay, Aitken is saying, "People admire the beauty and grace of Wakanoura and cranes." They have for ages and, maybe, will for ages to come. But who admires a garbage dump? Has anyone ever stopped when seeing a landfill, stunned into awe, and said, "Wow! What a lovely pile of trash! Most beautiful pile of trash I've ever seen!"
The crane does not judge the trash dump as worthy or not of its landing there. Anyway, the crane might find something delicious to eat. If so, even better. Aitken refers to the crane as a jewel in a poophill. But the crane is a crane, not a jewel, not literally, even if comparatively, to the garbage dump or any non-crane thing or place. And the garbage heap is a garbage heap. The heap is not good or bad, right or wrong, or theistic or nontheistic. The crane and trash could care less what you or I think about them, or anything. We humans may be the sole beings with a well-trained, well-engrained concern with image, appearance, and self-importance.
In our eyes, crane and junk dump do not fit together. We see a lovely jewel on stinky trash. We prefer to see the crane flying in the clear blue sky or foraging beside a majestic lake. But the crane does not think as we do. Nor does the trash dump. The crane is at home on the stinky dump; the smelly landfill is at home in charming Wakanoura. And Wakanoura seems okay with all this. Maybe we humans need to be more like these non-human beings, especially considering our track record? I will leave that for you to answer.
* * *
Issa was a Pure Land Buddhist, Jodo Shinshu sect. Like Buddhists generally, Issa realized every being is on a journey of potential spiritual awakening, which is realizing they are buddha nature. This would be like a Christian believing every being can realize the christ nature. Different words.
Well, okay, what is this "buddha nature"? Sounds kind of weird. Every being is something every being is. You can call that "buddha nature." Or you could call it "Buddha." And you do not have it, like a soul or spirit inside the skin house; you are it. What you call it is not the big deal. The big deal is you are it.
Now, here is an odd-sounding fact: you cannot see buddha nature for you are buddha nature. Buddha does not stand off from Buddha and say, "Hi, Buddha!" Intimacy is intimacy, so you are too close to Buddha to see Buddha, yet Buddha is never lost, never a somewhere or an elsewhere.
So, in Hakuin's (1685-1768, Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhist) famous "Song of Zazen," he begins, "All beings by nature are Buddha" - so, all beings are buddha nature or Buddha: same thing. Yet, later he says when we see ourselves, we see beyond all traits we usually identify with ourselves or any other selves. This Buddha, or Christ, is not a self, is not a nature among natures. This is beyond debate. Buddha does not fuss with Buddha.
Much more, if you turn yourself about
and confirm your own self-nature -
that self-nature is no nature -
you are far beyond mere argument.
*Robert Aitken, trans., copied from https://thedewdrop.org/2020/08/23/hakuin-song-of-zazen/ .
.* * *
Now, ready? Okay... that something you realize when you confirm your self-nature that is not a nature among natures or a self among selves is what all those teeming tiny beings that make up the trash are, too. Can we include them, really? Sure. Why not? They are beings, too, right? They are included already, or oneness is not oneness, and you are not you. If you pull one thread out of the blanket, the whole blanket unravels. One star removed, the whole sky in all directions disappears.
You cannot divide up life. You cannot slice it human and everything else. Dogen (1200s, founder of Soto Zen Buddhism in Japan) speaks of this life -
Know that water is life and air is life. The bird is life and the fish is life. Life must be the bird and life must be the fish.
*Kazuaki Tanahashi, Peter Levitt. The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Great Zen Master.
See, water, air, birds, and fish do not have life; they are alive, for they are life. They are life living, alive. Most of what we have been taught about everything, including what we are, therefore, is incorrect. Sorry, but it is true. "I think, therefore I am" - now that is a load of nonsense, too.
So, life is the crane and all those microscopic somethings making trash trash and not a mountain or raindrops or cat poop. Life is Wakanoura, the Pacific Ocean, the church, the zendo, the jail, and the brothel. Life is the Vatican and the local pub. Life is the pron star, the mailperson, the hate-mongering politician, your favorite aunt or uncle, the horny teen, and the priest. So, all this is buddha nature of no-nature; it is life.
Still, contrasts are valid. All beings being life does not mean all beings are the same. Awakening spiritually does not mean you will be as glad to sit on a landfill as in your favorite rocking chair or eat tree bark rather than your favorite ice cream. Or that you will need to dive into a sewer to prove you have transcended all the rest of us unenlightened, dull-witted guys and gals who prefer to stay way, way clear of sewers and what fills them. No matter how you mature spiritually, a crane is a crane, a trash dump is a trash dump, Wakanoura is Wakanoura, and you are you.
* * *
Keeping with your wisdom path and practice, over time, you begin to sense unity among all beings. You begin to sense what Dogen and Hakuin are saying. And this changes not only how you see everything, but shifts how you treat them. You start to respect things as beings that are the same life you are. Animate and inanimate no longer apply. Nature is no longer out there and certainly not for us humans to conquer or use just for our benefit.
You realize nature is everywhere. And you are it. The planet and environment warrant respect regardless of what they do or do not provide us humans. We are just one kid on the block. But this new vision likely will not happen - maybe better, no, it will not happen - unless we follow a path of practice that helps us attune to this natural way of seeing.
Over time, you begin to see that when you take care of one thing, you are taking care of yourself... and everything. In this taking care, love arises and grows. This is why I have said to learn to love, it is okay to start with anything. Start with a pair of socks if that works. And our love for other beings will grow by our growing into a sense that they, too, are life.
Everything belongs, even if you do not want to walk up and hug it. I do not hug a lot of things, and I do not wish to. But now and then, you could come upon me talking with a housefly, crow, the two goats or the cows where I live, or a plant. Sometimes I talk to something not there - at least, not seen. I still prefer staying away from sewers, though I parked at a parking area off a lovely river some months past and had a time of meditation. I prefer not to meditate there again, unless a breeze blows in the opposite direction.
* * *
That crane is a wise teacher. Please listen to what it is saying atop the landfill. You do not even have to buy a book. Beings preach the Good News! But good news, at first, may sometimes feel like bad news. The crane says, for example, "You're not as special as you have thought." Wow! What a bummer to the ego. So, after hearing that, who wants the truth? Do all these enlightenment chasers and Jesus buffs really know how disappointing waking up can be to self-preoccupation with enlightenment, salvation, or holiness? Yet, how liberating, too, this truth the crane teaches us. So, as Hakuin says, turn around and see, if you really want to meet the truth.
But more, the crane says, "The human species is not as special as you all have thought." Well, we need to hear that, do we not? Then, we see and feel something is wonderful and liberating, and loving, about caring for all beings as the many faces of one life. For far too long, we humans have acted like Earth and all here is here for us. We are all here for each other. And you do not have to be a Save the Earth zealot to get the point, or you may be - either is okay. We all belong... for we belong together. We are not the same, but...
(c) Brian K. Wilcox, 2025
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