Tonight I think of the men and women in jail and prison. Their families living in questions about guilt, innocence, bad breaks, and hard time.
I think about prisons of ego in which so many of us do a bid.
If you break open
The cherry tree,
There is not a single flower.
But the skies of spring
Bring forth the blossoms!
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)
Then I think about surrender. I think about the hard acceptance that precedes freedom, a freedom even in prison, or in the shadow of an ego no longer completely in charge.
Eckhart Tolle with Oprah said one could be whole without being perfect. I like that.
We are whole. We don't perhaps realize it yet, but we are.
The mother cries for her son, for herself, for her recently deceased husband.
And when I talk to her I am humbled by the wholeness one and one reveals.
In sorrow, no separation. In solitude, no loneliness.
In a moment of words moving through stillness, nothing is said.
But this.
Awareness.