don't know mind

here is a poem presented to master ryotan tokuda on the day of my monk ordination some twenty-six years ago in a crumbling stone house clinging to the mountainside he named: ei-tai ji temple / temple of eternal peace, in the lower alps in france.

after a few of years of studying and practicing zen buddhism, meeting my teacher one day in 1997 in paris was a pivotal experience. after following his teachings and doing sesshins with him for some time, asking to be ordained monk seemed a natural step in deeping my commitment to the path.

i developed a deep sense of love and admiration for this unique man and extraordinary teacher who thought me both through words and silent co-responding many essential things. even if he is not present in my life today, through his absence he continues to guide me.

time, space and distance are not obstacles on the way of a heart that has learned, not out of choice but out of necessity, how to keep loving through absence. isn't that another way of speaking of deep longing?

there is a longing in the human heart that at one point loses sight of the object of its longing. that loss of sight is the silent illumination of the heart as it crosses the many deserts and wastelands of absence. rumi's longing for shamse tabrizi was probably of this nature. the longing consumes and empties you of what you know to be you.

this is how we are intitiated into loving without wanting anything in return. an expression of love the greeks called agapé. in other words, agapé is to be freed from the needs of love through the grace of love that is the emptying of the self by the other. except that when it comes to agapé the distinction between self and other collapses.

returning back to mind after years of forgetfulness, i hear these lines by rené char echo in me:

le poème est l'amour réalisé du désir demeuré désir. / the poem is the realized love of desire remaining desire.

in the zen tradition it is common to present your teacher with poems about significant events such as your ordination day by expressing how it is that you came to want to become a monk, or a death poem, trying to put into as few words and as close to silence as possible, while still of this world, what sense you have made of this fleeting and evanescent existence and how wayfaring on the path has shaped your understanding of it.

on the morning of that fateful day i went to master tokuda's room and presented him with this poem. he unfolded the paper, slowly read the words then looked up at me through his reading glassed and said: beautiful. that was all there was to the exchange and after a moment of silence i walked out.

that he liked the poem was what touched me the most. being confirmed by your teacher for your understanding of zen was not a concern at that point and never became one afterwards.

twenty-six years on i still don't know what he appreciated the most; the poem on it's own merit or what it expressed of someone's insight into zen through an open expression of the don't know mind, or maybe both. maybe he appreciated the simplicity with which i expressed how clueless i was in asking to be ordained monk. maybe he found that honest.

no, i still don't know. zen, not zen, i still don't know. is this the unknowing zen masters have talked about through the ages? still don't know, still inquiring, still asking questions, still being questioned.

the still inquiring mirrors the unfathomable in the not knowing. a not knowing into which we are all born, born without a beginning, and into which we all will die, die without an ending. in zen this is called: no birth, no death.

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after years of erring from land to land my steps bring me here to ei-tai ji a rundown monastery in the alpes-de-haute-provence where to my own surprise i am to be ordained monk

isn't this in keeping with my ways of old never knowing where i have been what i have done

ei-tai ji temple, la rochette, 13 august 2000