MudSeason

The Spring Equinox! A glorious time of rebirth of Mother Earth, trees blossoming, tiny buds opening into verdant green, tulips, brilliant blossoms! Bunnies and baby animals! A time of hope, joy, reawakening and…

MUD.

In Northern New England, from whence Zenho and I originate, MudSeason is perhaps the most bitched about season of the year. It falls between the bleak late winter days, when nearly all hope is lost and the last memory of the previous summertime nearly completely forgotten, and the advent of Black Fly Season, a time of year itself worthy of a poem.

And yet, MudSeason brings a quickening in the blood. The sap is running, the sugarbush active and boiling pans belching steam in the woods, the scent of wet instead of ice, the back of winter has been broken, despite a few more winter storms yet to come. There is a desperate optimism in the air. Almost a generational, genetically coded belief that “we survived another winter”.

If you’ve ever spent a decade or two there in the North Woods, you know “hope” is not the right word.

Some of my favorite writers and poets are the Old-Men-of-the-Mountains of Vermont and New Hampshire: David Hinton, of East Callas, Vermont, Galway Kinnell of Sheffield, Vermont, David Budbill of Montpelier, Vermont, Donald Hall of Wilmot, NH. These are some of the great Zen Masters of the rural life and pen. Deeply immersed in the challenges of northern life with bruised-knuckle understanding of the dharma.

It seems to me these poets fundamentally transformed, with deep love and clarity, the raw materials of their particular lives into objects of great insight and beauty. Seeing things as they are through the lens of their rugged and fragile humanity.

Their greatness-in-smallness that was born not from promotion of ideas but from a natural attraction readers felt to works that they forged by their unselfconscious engagement with the primal materials of their existence.

Isn’t this courageous living? Isn’t it facing MudSeason full on?

One of the primary tenants of a creative and productive life is to transform the raw materials of living, whether they be clay, wood, metal, emotion, experiences of all kinds, into something that contributes to humanity, a single being is sufficient in this case. Such living requires courage, determination and in the face of failure, resilience and desire to persevere.

When we practice we allow the mud to nourish us. Each thing, no matter how small or fleeting, awesome or abstract has an effect upon us. Each particle of experience, encounters with the absolute and mundane, on or off the zafu are the primary materials we have to work with.

Written as poetry, fabricated as objects of beauty, enacted as compassion, expressed as desire or frustration, all are of equal value as mud.

Wishing you a sloppy MudSeason!

_{Deep Peace and Great Love, Issan (author) and Zenho Roshi}

_{This post dedicated to Vic.}

Schedule 3/24-3/30

Tuesday: 6:30AM Zazen at the Teahouse, Dokusan with Issan Sensei, Aspiration Prayer of Samantabhadra

Wednesday: 6:30AM, Zazen at the Teahouse, Andy opening

Thursday: 6:30AM, Zazen at the Teahouse, Andy opening

Friday: 6:30 AM Zazen at the Teahouse, Dokusan with Zenho Roshi & Issan Sensei

Noah’s Poem

Phantoms of past 

Unbelonging 

Float in

And I feel

Even these new blessings 

Could not convince me of 

Belonginghood

Yet I am being worked on

Rubbed polished

People of hearts 

Smile at me

And so does this land

Even so 

I yearn

To stroll down sidewalks 

And meadows and hills

And to feel beloved* 

To feel beloved upon this 

Earth.

*Raymond Carver: 

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.