[AUDIO AND TEXT]
Note: this is the concluding Holy Week retreat talk given by The Rev. Alice Cabotaje Roshi.
Reading:
See And Taste The Flowing Godhead
Lie down in the Fire
See and taste the flowing Godhead
through your being;
Feel the Holy Spirit
moving and compelling you
within the flowing
fire and light of God.
– Mechthilda of Magdeburg (1210-1297)
Good morning! Happy, happy Easter!
Easter Sunday, also known as Resurrection Sunday, is the most significant day in the Christian calendar. It commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, affirming the central belief of the Christian faith—the victory of life over death, hope over despair, and light over darkness.
On this day, many Christians around the world gather to celebrate the triumph of love and the promise of new life. It is a reminder that no matter how dark the night may seem, there is the dawn of light and beginnings. Just as the earth awakens from its winter slumber with the coming of spring, so too does our spirit come alive with the promise of re-birth.
As Jesus said in John 12:24: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”
Since Holy Thursday, we have explored, we have gone through, we have experienced the depths of ourselves, our struggles and vulnerabilities, and the barren landscape of our internal desert.
During this retreat, we steeped ourselves in silence, in attention to ONLY this, only to what comes up and what comes before us with less and less commentary… with more and more acceptance and embrace… with more and more clarity.
Poet and painter William Blake said:
If the doors of perception were cleansed
Everything would appear to us as it is…Infinite.
Another poet William Butler Yeats said:
The world is full of magic things,
patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
During this retreat, we descended into the Valley of Death, into the depths of the mundane, the ordinary, the dark, the messy with nothing sanitized, into the in-between, into the not knowing, into letting go of being in control, into losing the self.
…and yet this the place where we discovered, re-discovered and experienced new life…this is the place where we underwent transformation towards a new way of being, a new way of living that we offer to ourselves, to others, to all beings with open hands and hearts, with freedom of who we are, truly are with our beauty and distortions, with our gifts and talents through Divine grace with JOY!
Poet May Sarton wrote: “I am lavish with riches made from loss.”
As we go from this place back to the marketplace, may we go with confidence having these words in our hearts:
Even though an iron wheel were to revolve overhead,
The perfect clarity of my concentration and wisdom
would not be lost;
Even though the sun turned cold and the moon hot,
Or a multitude of demons exerted their power,
The truth would not be destroyed.
Divine Love is our true and essential nature. While being precious does not make us perfect[i] and neither does it protect us from human suffering, we also experience that we are indeed embraced in a Loving Presence that affirms us, receives us completely as we are, just as everyone else, everything else, is completely accepted as they are.
Author and theologian Belden Lane said: “Where one is free from the need to impress the one or to fear the other, all can be loved.”
What immense JOY and awe! What unspeakable beauty! All GRACE!
This is what Easter Sunday is about. This is what resurrection means.
And Resurrection is not a one-time transformative experience. It is an ongoing revelation for us.
Just as there are recurring defeats and crucifixion, there are also recurring victories and resurrection, throughout our lives.
In our Zen practice, resurrection can be seen as the continual process of awakening to our essential nature, which is inherently whole, pure, and unbounded, rather than a one-time event. It is renewal and rebirth that we practice in every moment… a lived experience that we integrate and embody in our daily lives.
Through all the happenings that arise may our wholeness continue to unfold, continue to come through, continue to shine.
Let us keep practicing ONLY this with attention and awareness and directly experience its transformative power, its blessed fruit, which includes the one in many and the many in one.
Poet Kobayashi Issa captures this wonderful truth in this haiku.
The distant mountains
are reflected in the eye
of the Dragonfly
With practicing ONLY this over and over again, Richard Nelson, author of The Island Within, wisely reminds us: “There may be more to learn by climbing the same mountain a hundred times than by climbing a hundred different mountains.”
As we come to the close of our retreat, allow me to honor our sitting together with this poem Zazen on Ching-t’-ing Mountain by Li Po.
The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
ONLY JOY. ONLY this. ONLY JOY!
Happy Easter Sunday! HALLELUJAH!
Gassho.
[i] Wendy Farley, Gathering Those Driven Away, 18.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 