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Poppies
Sat Siri Siri Akal Siri Akal Maha Akal Maha Akal Sat Nam Akal Murat Wahe Guru
Truth, Greatness, Eternal One Eternal, Deathless One, Great Eternal One Great Deathless One, Who Is Truth Timeless Form, Wondrous One
Often during the week, in addition to longer walks, I take shorter, slower walks. 'Beauty walks' because moving slower, with soft attention, I admire what appears before me, form sky to earth, to myself. I enjoy closeness. This is worship.
One of my joys is listening to and talking with the birds. I practice not reaching out to see and listen, but just to see and listen.
To let the things of this world come to us. Walking today, what came to mind was two prerequisites, and both are counter-cultural. One, space. Two, time.
If we stuff our spaces and minds, this derails the quiet attention, the welcome that is our nature. Time. By this I mean, patience, non-rushing, being-in-ease. Our nature is invitational. Closeness with the One, with ourselves, and with the myriad things arises in the spaciousness, inner and outer, and a non-hurried being-with, an easeful, relaxed inviting.
With our full presence with space and time, whatever meets us is a gift. Being met-with is intimacy. What is about us meets us and teaches us, it reflects Truth - not as a mere idea but a living Presence. The world of things becomes sacramental. The world is luminous, even in the dark places. Nothing is dead; all is alive.
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Dogen -
Do not wait for great enlightenment, as great enlightenment is the tea and rice of daily activity. Do not wish for beyond enlightenment, as beyond enlightenment is a jewel concealed in your hair.
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Being close, I am close to the other - close to the other, I am to you - closer than breeze brushing over face.
(Indian seers have said, 'alone with the Alone' - Alone, a circle encircling everyone everywhere)
- You being you, we seek the fullness from you, for you fill yourself with us, you the fount that whets our thirst - to thirst is to know living waters are near, hungering, we are already sitting at the Beloved's table.
Intimacy is drawn to intimacy - a silent pull - that is you - unsatisfied loves lead us to Love, like shadows call us to lift our gaze to the sun - but who listens?
Being near is not only your nearness, it is mine - there is no other.
Intimacy meets and greets intimacy without leaving itself - host and guest, undivided.
(Jesus says, 'I in you, you in me' - not just about a man long ago, a time sometime else - you and me - a union before a Jesus, anyone: the wise ones speak not just the truth but from the truth)
This immediacy satisfies out of its fullness - itself - no lack, even though it shares itself to the degree it chooses.
Love is self-giving, no coercion, its power in surrender - 'surrender'... loathed by the weak, celebrated by the strong; scorned by the fool, bowed to by the wise.
One woos gently, by word, deed, and silence - the gates do not open by force.
You, no other, love me and am loved by me through otherness.
Love is no other than the closeness, for love comes out of itself to meet itself - fingers reaching for fingers, voice listening for voice.
Equally, I know nearness through distance, oneness through separation, meeting through departing.
I choose but do not decide -... you of yourself arise - love has wings, it flies - between it and sky, no space.
(Jesus says, 'The Wind blows where it will ...')
You are the closeness, our Closeness, not other than, not outside - outside leaves us hungering.
You the innerness of every being.
You the hereness without a faraway.
To learn the strength and grace of union, I must yield to the accord welcoming me from over the distances - 'distances' as we see but are not.
(Spirit is the breath and the breather, we the lungs and mouth of one prayed to by 'god')
I must love the one I cannot see but can feel, and I do love her, for it is chosen to be - I am her fortunate servant but do not live in servitude, with her humble, not servile, lowly, yet lofty.
She has pressed me down, so to lift me high.
I am her gladdened captive, for set free by the captivity.
People speak of love and you, yet, there is one.
Such intimacy is a vocation, a calling, a trust - it begins when it begins, it ends when it ends: no one can seize the wind, no one imprisons the sunlight.
In losing myself in such grace, I have not lost anything, for in losing myself, I have been found, in dying, I live - for there is a dying and a dying, one dying to death, one life to life - the Jesus tomb, a passageway.
People speak of you and love, but there is one.
I must welcome the faint echoes arriving from over the waters - the 'living' and the 'dead.'
I must welcome the pain and ecstasy as an auspicious gift - one lives in the other - cannot be a choosy guest.
(Beloved, help me ... I cannot on my own - I have learned that, you see)
In the closeness, no one is a stranger to me, for strangeness manifests intimacy, too - you deign to appear in unfamiliar, unforeseen, and unexpected places and faces.
Call it bride or prostitute, church or bar, saint or sinner - you are there, that is you - even if unrecognized - you cannot be divided - how could you not be everywhere, our Everywhere.
To choose to love, she is already present - how could one choose an absence?
Yet, you do not equally manifest the same to all - there are degrees - you manifest to the extent one can receive.
All cups are cups, but not all can welcome the same capacity - wells there are shallow, wells there are deep.
When I drink fully of the fire, I enjoy the sweetness concealed within the spirited flame.
To be and enjoy the taste of you, I must yield, not turn away.
In enjoying you, I enjoy myself.
To enjoy you is to enjoy anyone, anything - all leaves on the tree are the tree.
I cannot say or see 'I' or 'we' without 'you.'
To taste all, i taste well of one.
To taste one, I taste wholly of all.
To love everyone, I love anyone.
Gates are open everywhere - how did I not see?
(we are taught not to see, told to go back to sleep to sleep with the sleepers - 'how dare you speak of the Light!')
When the seeking ceases, I see, you stand before the eyes.
(Jesus says, 'The Word became flesh' and 'Eat my flesh, drink my blood' - how much more intimate can it get?)
You, though unseen and intangible, I see and touch through bodies - adoring the other, I worship at the altar of sky and earth - a holy of holies, there is no more, no veil to part.
Bodies - flesh, parted covers, spirit finds its swell - the tide rushes in to make love with the shore - where begins or ends the water or the sand - she, you, I?
Temples are walking about everywhere.
Priests, not sanctioned by a church - everyday ones, in everyday attire - go-betweens for love to love.
Buddha awakens under a tree, the Love awakens within our hearts.
Jesus resurrects from a grave, intimacy flowers from inside the core - love being the center of the center that is everywhere.
Stop looking for, she already is caressing the eyes.
She is the impulse to seek and its end, the seeker and the sought - until the need to search is no more - not that one finds, but that the intimacy was never lost.
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(C) brian wilcox, 2026
*Dogen..., in Kazuaki Tanahashi, Levitt, Peter. The Essential Dogen: Writings of the Gre.
