A Green World
for us no difference between reading eating singing
making love not one thing or the other
*Ikkyū (1394-1481, Japan, Zen Buddhist monk, poet)
We humans often live divided lives, pulled here and there, everywhere. Divided within. How do we bring it all together?
We can add our religion or spirituality to the disharmony. We can attach it to the rest of our life, in all its pieces strewn about.
Ikkyū reminds us of the destination of spiritual practice: harmony. When there is harmony within, so without.
We begin with our sacred practice being another detached piece, off to itself. That is a good place we start. Our practice, which includes regular stillness and silence, highlights the disharmony we have become accustomed to as our and our society's norm. In time, harmony grows. We feel it. We see with it. When this grows, we may come to feel dislocated in groups we once felt at-home in, possibly including our birth family and friendships.
We become silently, subtly drawn more to the sense of the harmonious display of life. Life becomes like the notes of a musical piece that pleases the ears, for the combination of life-notes is pleasing. We see harmony where we once did not.
One area we will see this appearing of harmony is the imposed split between sacred and secular, or religious and irreligious, begins to dissolve. Cherished divisions in the mind begin to lose their hold, and this can feel threatening to our sense of self and security. This dissolution of boundaries grows to touch every area of our life, every cherished division we have clung to to define right and wrong, who we are, and whom we belong to and with.
Likely, we will need to engage in a practice that fosters harmony for years, maybe many, until we feel what Ikkyū is saying. We may have to leave a religion or spirituality that does not encourage harmony. And there is little in most cultures to cultivate harmony. Therefore, we will need to be consistently intentional. And there are glimpses along the way that encourage us.
When harmony arises, it arises as something already present - arises does not mean it comes to be. Life is not divided. We are divided. Hence, harmony is a remembrance. Our body recalls something lost - communion. So, everything becomes spiritual, or better, we see everything is what it is. And we come to know that everything is as part of a single web of life. Yet, this is no longer mere theory we heard or read from a book. Web of life is no longer an intellectualized, faddish cliche.
Taking a poop, reading a holy book, praying, singing a hymn or chanting a chant, eating a meal, crying, laughing, enjoying sex, wiping one's snotty nose, and sitting in meditation are already connected, already in tune with each other, primordially. Diversity is harmony, harmony is diversity. Nothing has ever been apart, unconnected to the whole, and we have not either.
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*(C) brian k. wilcox, 2025
**Poem of Ikkyū from Stephen Berg, trans. Crow with No Mouth: Ikkyū Fifteenth-Century Zen Master.
