http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9lvw8rKAa4
It is naturally likely that an answer arises simply from mind attentive to earth.
"And what, monks, is the Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering? It is that craving which gives rise to rebirth, bound up with pleasure and lust, finding fresh delight now here, now there: that is to say sensual craving, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence. And where does this craving arise and establish itself? Wherever in the world there is anything agreeable and pleasurable, there this craving arises and establishes itself. And what is there in the world that is agreeable and pleasurable? The eye in the world is agreeable and pleasurable, the ear... the nose... the tongue... the body... the mind in the world is agreeable and pleasurable, and there this craving arises and establishes itself. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, tangibles, mind-objects in the world are agreeable and pleasurable, and there this craving arises and establishes itself."
(--Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, in Thus Have I Heard: The Long Discourses of the Buddha, trans. by Maurice Walshe. From Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book)
This meditation is a gift that Keiji Nishitani via Taietsu Unno gave at a conference entitled Encounters with Emptiness (Smith/Amherst Colleges, 1984).
San AntonioI find that love is a long looking. Without choosing nor discarding there is the arising and dissolving of all things with form. We appear and we disappear. In the interval we get to look in ways beyond explanation or description.
Tonight I lingered over your name,
the delicate assembly of vowels
a voice inside my head.
You were sleeping when I arrived.
I stood by your bed
and watched the sheets rise gently.
I knew what slant of light
would make you turn over.
It was then I felt
the highways slide out of my hands.
I remembered the old men
in the west side café,
dealing dominoes like magical charms.
It was then I knew,
like a woman looking backward,
I could not leave you,
or find anyone I loved more.
(--Poem: "San Antonio" by Naomi Shihab Nye from Is this Forever, or What? Poems and Paintings from Texas. Harper Collins Publishers, 2004.)
We get to fall into and to be the interstice. It is in this place where dwells that which we call God.
It is this invitation to look, to look around, that encapsulates the mystery unveiling in ritual this coming week.
Looking into, and seeing through -- in loving silence, in conjoining solitude -- the mysterious mutation of incarnate resurrection, is a gift presenting nothing but what is.
"Many arrivals" (indeed do, as the poet Hugo wrote) "make us live."
There is no.
Leaving.
This.
There is only allowing this its own way.
As you, love.