Have been dealing with a lot of annoying smallish health concerns. The nice part of all that sort of thing is it keeps to the fore the primacy of being aware of self relating to self. Of self letting go, incrementally, of the self and then letting the vigil lapse and having to let go all over again. Only, the next time it’s different. The subtle teaching of repetitive awareness intertwined with persistent fog horns coming from, somewhere.

Life is good. Next month I spend a couple of weeks living at temple again while our monk is traveling. I plan to fashion it into a retreat in preparation for a jaunt up to the inland Northwest. To visit Dharma friends and renew deep-heart acquaintance with neighbors and fellow travelers  and possibly lay groundwork for future return to the area.

Here’s a view that came up for me a few weeks weeks ago:

It is a simple wooden gate tethered to

Two fence posts that anchor a plain

Split-rail fence that runs to the left and the

Right of me; as far as I can see. To the very

Curvature of the Earth, and then I see the 

Meadow I’m standing in, also stretches to

The horizon, although in every direction. And,

I wonder, for a moment; why the fence? Why the

Gate? Then I shrug and step through. The meadow

Rolls on and on under my feet. Who built the gate? The fence?

Is the purpose simply for the stepping through?

What’s good for me to Know? What’s good for me to Do?

Today my wife Linda would have been 67.

There is an empty place in my heart and life;

There are others too.

A past that can’t be changed

A present that can’t be wished different and,

A future that excludes certain hopes.

This is life. This is death. This is real.

There is 

No Thing

Going wrong.

Just, going On.

Happy Birthday Toots!

I was gone awhile. Incommunicado. Out of touch.

A fog of which I was unaware, because I was in it, lifted.

The fog existed because I harbor ideas of finding out how’s and why’s and the reasons for things. I want resolving, resolution (Like the Beatles great song “Resolution”.), I want closure (what a dreadful word). Things tied up in an acceptable package. Which, as it turns out, once again; is very different from accepting things as they are.

So, there I was.

What to do?

Nothing. Wait. Things unfold.

That I can be aware of the unfolding and learn from it is another matter.

So far I see several things.

I’m mistaken at times and I assume that those mistakes are the best response that the situation calls for and that my response was the best I could do. The problem lies in my clearly seeing what the best response was.

If I don’t see that clearly then the best I can do is usually off, at least a little.

All of that comes back full circle to a point where I never saw the situation clearly.

So, life is quite simple and subtle all at the same time.

The simpler I keep it the

Less subtle it has to be.