We arrive at Mountain Street as the
Lincolnville Town Band on flatbed truck played passing us. The Memorial Day parade was arriving at its end.
I think of sandlot schoolyard boyhood friend Vinnie today as Taps played at Mountain View Cemetery. He died in Vietnam in 1968. We cannot escape from the truth of impermanence.
We visit Tommy. He says Gene is doing poorly. We see Sam and Susan at Camden town landing as they install
cleat beside ramp near new restaurant on wharf.
In
Rockport we tie new seat to frame of ceder strip canoe at harbor. We'd come back from walking far side of harbor with
Rokie. We are grateful for being alive in Maine by the water this beautiful day. We paddle into the swirling wind hugging the coast in gusting embrace.
Ananda wept saying he was only a beginner as the Buddha was dying. Separation is the law of life. "Keep trying," the Buddha said to
Ananda.
We come back to the hermitage. Someone had been here and left us cut apple tree branches. We don't need a special teacher. We're given everything that we need. Joan Halifax is telling the story of the Buddha's death. I'm listening.
So many die in war. Some of these wars are waged in the quiet fields of our human hearts. So many die away from home. So many think it is not the right time to die. Still, everyone dies. Everybody is somebody. In my myth I am nobody. This myth is right and not right at the same time. In Buddhist emptiness I am part of the
inseparate whole. (These are not Joan's words. They're the wind blowing through this hermitage window.) Rather,
Roshi Joan Halifax reads a
Milosz poem:
Late Ripeness
by Czeslaw Milosz
Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year,
I felt a door opening in me and I entered
the clarity of early morning.
One after another my former lives were departing,
Like ships, together with their sorrow.
And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas
assigned to my brush came closer,
ready now to be described better than they were before.
I was not separated from people,
grief and pity joined us.
We forget -- I kept saying -- that we are all children of
the King.
For where we come from there is no division
Into Yes and No, into is, was, and it will be.
We were miserable, we used no more than a hundredth part
of the gift we received for our long journey.
Moments from yesterday and from centuries ago --
a sword blow, the painting of eyelashes before a mirror
of polished metal, a lethal musket shot, a caravel
staving its hull against a reef -- they dwell in us,
waiting for a fulfillment.
I knew, always, that I would be a worker in the vineyard,
as are all men and women living at the same time,
whether they are aware of it or not.
The earth is quiet underfoot. Ragged Mountain takes sun behind her to the west. So many birds!
In the silence, the wind. Gusts of sound. The gate is closed. The dog is safe from the speeding cars coming down long mountain pass from Hope.
When his young daughter died, the Japanese poet
Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828) wrote the following poem:
Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara - The world of dew --
- A world of dew it is indeed,
- And yet, and yet . . .
Remembering those dead and deadened, today by war...each of us on one of these days.
We grieve.
Some tears.
One by one disappearing.
And yet...
