The Invisible Paths

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back -- Chinese Proverb

An ash tree in my front yard--large and sprawling shade across the ground below it--has died. Not of old age. Not from a chainsaw. But a parasite called the emerald ash borer. It has actually taken out all of the ash trees on our property. Sparing none of them regardless of age or location. They die slowly over a few years time, sparsely leafing out less and less till they no longer have the circulatory system to transfer its energy to the leaves. They shed their small branches and bark and stand skeletally against the walnuts and maples that surround them.

This bothers me because the ash is one of my favorite trees. I think of wooden baseball bats and I see them as the source. That sound. The summer air and a game that is truly pure when played with joy. But the making of bats requires the death of trees for that process to take place. Perhaps I just feel the connection to the living source that a live tree represents.

I was asked to try to explain Zen by someone when my wife recently traveled out of state to participate in an extended silent retreat. This activity forced a bit of silence on myself as well for my most rewarding conversations exist with her listening to me or I listening to her. I thought of a conversation that took place in the movie "The Natural" between Iris and Roy and I feel the mystery of it. It is somewhat representative of a Zen-like moment or thought. At least as close as Hollywood can get.

Iris Gaines: You know, I believe we have two lives.
Roy Hobbs: How... what do you mean?
Iris Gaines: The life we learn with and the life we live with after that.

Zen is all about trying, and I emphasize trying, to reach wisdom and attain a bit of enlightenment. To try to harness the travelers that are constantly as thoughts returning through your mind. They are moments that keep coming back to you. They bring old luggage and stinky things with them and they are hard to not grab onto them and hold tight to the often bitterness of their existence.

Learning to let go is the truth of it. It is forgiveness. Understanding. Kissing your loved ones and letting them go. Smiling back at a smile or at a frown. Knowing that there is grass under the snow. Fish swimming in the water.

Birds travel through the air yet they leave no trace in the sky. Invisible paths, but they are there. I saw them leave them with my own eyes. Like many of the paths to the answers I seek, they are invisible to all but the heart.

The Zen of the New Year

"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence." -- Meister Eckhart

I think about this Meister Eckhart quote at the end of the year. For some mysterious reason, to humans an imaginary line is drawn through the time that is celebrated as New Years Eve. There is the granite-like sensation of past and future and we are really only fully aware for a brief moment of the present. And it often times reflects in our faces joyfully. Or sadly. What our consciousness is feeling at the moment of transition is what waves to the world. Similar to the Greek comedy and tragedy theatre masks--smiling when one mask is chosen and frowning when the other is used.

What mask will I wear when the clock strikes midnight?

When that clock does strikes twelve on New Years Eve, people kiss, hug, cheer, raise their glasses in toast, exchange presents, often even sharing these personal gestures fully with perfect strangers at that moment in time. That precise, present moment.

It is potentially the single greatest expression of a mass Zen-like moment that takes place all year. Though it may be at times and with certain people be fueled with alcohol, it still works.

The New Year may be all about resolutions and changes and promises to ourselves and to others, but it is really that moment that counts. When we recognize ourselves, captured in amber for that moment in time.

I want piles of amber moments to climb down from when my time is up. I have a couple handfuls already.