17th May, 2022
Clear sky, windy gusts
Altitude 6,080'
Dear Everyone,
During a winter morning just before going to meditation, I read an article in the Washington Post about the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico. During Covid, they had been closed for over two years and were reopening in 2022. Not remembering when I had been on a personal retreat, I decided it was an opportunity to come to the southwest. I'm residing here for two weeks before returning home to Idaho on the 27th May.
I'm seeing how each of us came here for some reason, for something. I met a doctor who said he's come for clarity; he's about to take on a daunting responsibility. Two women said they come for peace, quietude and beauty. A diocesan priest came to rest, and restore after a busy Easter season. A man said he feels lost... Even I came for something.
I came for silence and 'the wild'. The wild goes on everywhere no matter where we are. Here the landscape is not pristine. There are: Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine blue spruce and aspen; wrens, nuthatches, creepers, and humming birds; towering rock formations; muddy waters; rattlesnakes, tarantulas, lizards, centipedes, scorpions, mice, kangaroo rats, skunks, coyotes, great horned owls, cotton tail and jack rabbits, hawks, eagles, and bob cats.
There's a familiar sound of wind in the pines especially at high altitudes. It's particularly audible in remote places such as this. Silence as presence is in full display. How does silence allow us to know who we are? Did we come to meditation to find precisely who we are?
Here in the high desert, we're in the company of Benedictine monks. They live a life of prayer and follow the Rule of Benedict. There is a dialogue in the Benedictine teachings that goes like this. A monk asked the teacher for 'a good word', 'I can't remember why I came here'. The teacher said, 'Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.'
In meditation we experience the silence that becomes stillness. We move into what is arising and then something opens. And if our hearts tell us that silence teaches us everything, do we remember that each of us all together, came here to wake up?
warm regards,
Jisen
Cerro pedernal Georgia O'Keefe Abiquiu, New Mexico
This narrow mesa is the westernmost part of the Jémez Mountains
Clear sky, windy gusts
Altitude 6,080'
Dear Everyone,
During a winter morning just before going to meditation, I read an article in the Washington Post about the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico. During Covid, they had been closed for over two years and were reopening in 2022. Not remembering when I had been on a personal retreat, I decided it was an opportunity to come to the southwest. I'm residing here for two weeks before returning home to Idaho on the 27th May.
I'm seeing how each of us came here for some reason, for something. I met a doctor who said he's come for clarity; he's about to take on a daunting responsibility. Two women said they come for peace, quietude and beauty. A diocesan priest came to rest, and restore after a busy Easter season. A man said he feels lost... Even I came for something.
I came for silence and 'the wild'. The wild goes on everywhere no matter where we are. Here the landscape is not pristine. There are: Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine blue spruce and aspen; wrens, nuthatches, creepers, and humming birds; towering rock formations; muddy waters; rattlesnakes, tarantulas, lizards, centipedes, scorpions, mice, kangaroo rats, skunks, coyotes, great horned owls, cotton tail and jack rabbits, hawks, eagles, and bob cats.
There's a familiar sound of wind in the pines especially at high altitudes. It's particularly audible in remote places such as this. Silence as presence is in full display. How does silence allow us to know who we are? Did we come to meditation to find precisely who we are?
Here in the high desert, we're in the company of Benedictine monks. They live a life of prayer and follow the Rule of Benedict. There is a dialogue in the Benedictine teachings that goes like this. A monk asked the teacher for 'a good word', 'I can't remember why I came here'. The teacher said, 'Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.'
In meditation we experience the silence that becomes stillness. We move into what is arising and then something opens. And if our hearts tell us that silence teaches us everything, do we remember that each of us all together, came here to wake up?
warm regards,
Jisen
Cerro pedernal Georgia O'Keefe Abiquiu, New Mexico
This narrow mesa is the westernmost part of the Jémez Mountains
17th May, 2022
Clear sky, windy gusts
Altitude 6,080'
Dear Everyone,
During a winter morning just before going to meditation, I read an article in the Washington Post about the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico. During Covid, they had been closed for over two years and were reopening in 2022. Not remembering when I had been on a personal retreat, I decided it was an opportunity to come to the southwest. I'm residing here for two weeks before returning home to Idaho on the 27th May.
I'm seeing how each of us came here for some reason, for something. I met a doctor who said he's come for clarity; he's about to take on a daunting responsibility. Two women said they come for peace, quietude and beauty. A diocesan priest came to rest, and restore after a busy Easter season. A man said he feels lost... Even I came for something.
I came for silence and 'the wild'. The wild goes on everywhere no matter where we are. Here the landscape is not pristine. There are: Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine blue spruce and aspen; wrens, nuthatches, creepers, and humming birds; towering rock formations; muddy waters; rattlesnakes, tarantulas, lizards, centipedes, scorpions, mice, kangaroo rats, skunks, coyotes, great horned owls, cotton tail and jack rabbits, hawks, eagles, and bob cats.
There's a familiar sound of wind in the pines especially at high altitudes. It's particularly audible in remote places such as this. Silence as presence is in full display. How does silence allow us to know who we are? Did we come to meditation to find precisely who we are?
Here in the high desert, we're in the company of Benedictine monks. They live a life of prayer and follow the Rule of Benedict. There is a dialogue in the Benedictine teachings that goes like this. A monk asked the teacher for 'a good word', 'I can't remember why I came here'. The teacher said, 'Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.'
In meditation we experience the silence that becomes stillness. We move into what is arising and then something opens. And if our hearts tell us that silence teaches us everything, do we remember that each of us all together, came here to wake up?
warm regards,
Jisen
Cerro pedernal Georgia O'Keefe Abiquiu, New Mexico
This narrow mesa is the westernmost part of the Jémez Mountains
Clear sky, windy gusts
Altitude 6,080'
Dear Everyone,
During a winter morning just before going to meditation, I read an article in the Washington Post about the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in Abiquiu, New Mexico. During Covid, they had been closed for over two years and were reopening in 2022. Not remembering when I had been on a personal retreat, I decided it was an opportunity to come to the southwest. I'm residing here for two weeks before returning home to Idaho on the 27th May.
I'm seeing how each of us came here for some reason, for something. I met a doctor who said he's come for clarity; he's about to take on a daunting responsibility. Two women said they come for peace, quietude and beauty. A diocesan priest came to rest, and restore after a busy Easter season. A man said he feels lost... Even I came for something.
I came for silence and 'the wild'. The wild goes on everywhere no matter where we are. Here the landscape is not pristine. There are: Douglas-fir, ponderosa pine blue spruce and aspen; wrens, nuthatches, creepers, and humming birds; towering rock formations; muddy waters; rattlesnakes, tarantulas, lizards, centipedes, scorpions, mice, kangaroo rats, skunks, coyotes, great horned owls, cotton tail and jack rabbits, hawks, eagles, and bob cats.
There's a familiar sound of wind in the pines especially at high altitudes. It's particularly audible in remote places such as this. Silence as presence is in full display. How does silence allow us to know who we are? Did we come to meditation to find precisely who we are?
Here in the high desert, we're in the company of Benedictine monks. They live a life of prayer and follow the Rule of Benedict. There is a dialogue in the Benedictine teachings that goes like this. A monk asked the teacher for 'a good word', 'I can't remember why I came here'. The teacher said, 'Go sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.'
In meditation we experience the silence that becomes stillness. We move into what is arising and then something opens. And if our hearts tell us that silence teaches us everything, do we remember that each of us all together, came here to wake up?
warm regards,
Jisen
Cerro pedernal Georgia O'Keefe Abiquiu, New Mexico
This narrow mesa is the westernmost part of the Jémez Mountains
'Since the virtues of the mountain are high and broad, the spiritual power to ride the clouds is always mastered from the mountains, and the marvelous ability to follow the wind is inevitably liberated from the mountains.' Dōgen 1200-1253
21th April, 2021
Dear Everyone,
In the last year of Shitao's life, he painted 'Riding the Clouds.' Most likely this is Mount Huang with peaks more that 3,250 feet high and the Xin'an River below with its headwaters in the Yellow Mountains. Here the clouds appear above the mountain peaks and swirl beyond the ridge line with the river flowing below. The painting feels mysterious and magical. There is little empty space; our eye is drawn to the interior landscape where someone on horseback is riding the boundless blanket of clouds. Her body similar in texture and color to the mountain landscape; it feels like she is riding on water. Beginning to reread Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra, I remembered seeing this painting. They seem to go hand in hand, compliment each other, and both speaking an eternal language. Dogen’s words aren't about mountains and rivers, they are mountains, rivers, clouds, horse, pines, the wind. Shitao’s life, beleaguered with unbearable difficulties, speaks a language that knits together with Dogen's writing-a life practice of paintings, calligraphy and poetry.
Perhaps it’s a good time to ask—Where is the mountain? Who travels the clouds? Last fall when climbing the steep peak at Boundary Creek in Stanley, Idaho and reaching a height at which I could no longer go beyond, I looked out across the valley toward the Sawtooth Range and said, ‘There are the mountains.’ Now I’m reminded of a passage in John Daido Loori’s book, The Way of Mountains and Rivers. Someone exclaimed, ‘Oh, there’s the mountain!’ Daido Roshi said, ‘That’s not the mountain.’ From the misty vista, there I was, riding the clouds, following the wind, and going everywhere. The moment the mountains and rivers manifest the great way, the Tao, we are mountains and rivers.
bowing from Idaho,
Jisen
Reminiscences of Nanjing: Riding the Clouds by Stone Wanderer(1642-1707)| Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
21th April, 2021
Dear Everyone,
In the last year of Shitao's life, he painted 'Riding the Clouds.' Most likely this is Mount Huang with peaks more that 3,250 feet high and the Xin'an River below with its headwaters in the Yellow Mountains. Here the clouds appear above the mountain peaks and swirl beyond the ridge line with the river flowing below. The painting feels mysterious and magical. There is little empty space; our eye is drawn to the interior landscape where someone on horseback is riding the boundless blanket of clouds. Her body similar in texture and color to the mountain landscape; it feels like she is riding on water. Beginning to reread Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra, I remembered seeing this painting. They seem to go hand in hand, compliment each other, and both speaking an eternal language. Dogen’s words aren't about mountains and rivers, they are mountains, rivers, clouds, horse, pines, the wind. Shitao’s life, beleaguered with unbearable difficulties, speaks a language that knits together with Dogen's writing-a life practice of paintings, calligraphy and poetry.
Perhaps it’s a good time to ask—Where is the mountain? Who travels the clouds? Last fall when climbing the steep peak at Boundary Creek in Stanley, Idaho and reaching a height at which I could no longer go beyond, I looked out across the valley toward the Sawtooth Range and said, ‘There are the mountains.’ Now I’m reminded of a passage in John Daido Loori’s book, The Way of Mountains and Rivers. Someone exclaimed, ‘Oh, there’s the mountain!’ Daido Roshi said, ‘That’s not the mountain.’ From the misty vista, there I was, riding the clouds, following the wind, and going everywhere. The moment the mountains and rivers manifest the great way, the Tao, we are mountains and rivers.
bowing from Idaho,
Jisen
Reminiscences of Nanjing: Riding the Clouds by Stone Wanderer(1642-1707)| Freer Gallery of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
I heard a voice saying to me, "This Lady whom you see is Love, who has Her dwelling place in eternity. Hildegard of Bingen 1098-1179
