[AUDIO AND TEXT]
Note: this is the third Holy Week retreat talk given by The Rev. Alice Cabotaje Roshi.
Reading
In silence it speaks, in speaking it is silent.
The great gate of charity is open, there are no obstructions.
If someone asks, “What truth have you realized?”
I say, “The power of transcendent wisdom.” Sometimes “yes”, sometimes “no” — it is beyond human discernment.
Not conforming, then conforming — even heaven cannot fathom it.
Good morning! We are on our third day of our retreat and I hope you have plunged further into silence and into your practice of attention, into ONLY this.
As author and contemplative Martin Laird said: “Silence is not simply the absence of sound waves. It is concerned with attention and awareness. Silence and awareness are in fact one thing.”
And as we practice, we may find ourselves horrified with what comes up. We see our pain, our sadness, our anger, our loneliness, our rage, our lusts, our desires, our anxieties, self-doubt, self-flagellation. We see our contradictions within… that we are a mix bag of strong and weak, honest and dishonest, kind and unkind, active and passive, patient and impatient, allowing and judgmental.
We sometimes experience things to be tasteless. Life feels dull. We are restless and want to flee. We feel trapped in this in-between space of an ending and a beginning that has yet to be.
Bible scholar and minister Renita Weems lamented in her book Listening for God: “Frustrated to discover that a journey I thought would be a linear tug in one direction has amounted to a journey of lurches and stops, I have been reluctant at times to admit out loud that mine was a journey of growth spurts followed by what felt like long periods of hushed decay.”
Then she asked: “How do you describe a journey that leaves you feeling sometimes as though you’re not getting anywhere, that you’re no better off than you were when you first started?…Perhaps the wisest thing to do is to take God’s cue and be silent.”
Such state feels to me like Holy Saturday, Black Saturday, Silent Saturday. With its silence and stillness, it calls us to confront the reality of death and to embrace the unknown. This is the liminal space—the in-between state where the old has died but the new has not yet emerged.
Silent Saturday embodies this liminality, as we linger in the space between crucifixion and resurrection, between despair and hope. It is a time of uncertainty, a time of not knowing.
Poet Jan Richardson captures the tension and ambiguity of transition in her poem “The Liminal Space.”
Blessed is the space between the no longer and the not yet;
Blessed is the space between the chaos and the calm;
Blessed is the space between the old and the new;
Blessed is the space between the ending and the beginning;
Blessed is the space between the darkness and the dawn.
In this liminal space of Silent Saturday, we are invited to dwell in the strain between endings and beginnings, to surrender to the tension between darkness and dawn.
As we stay, sit in this vague space, it will be uncomfortable, painful, dull, tedious, monotonous. It will be tempting to try to escape our suffering, to distract ourselves via our internal dramas, fantasies, stories, commentaries; our wish for certainty, for knowing; our desire to get rid of the pain; our longing for comfort; our prayers for hope and deliverance.
And yet I encourage us to stay and experience the wisdom of not avoiding, the wisdom of not evading…to be ONLY the discomfort; ONLY the pain; ONLY the sinking feeling. I also encourage us to simply REST. ONLY rest. And REST in the SILENCE. Move about with ease, with trust in whatever shows up internally and externally.
Personally, I find the liminal place, this place of ambiguity, this place of neither here nor there as one of the most difficult places to be in my life, because it is a place where I feel most vulnerable…because it is a place of I don’t know…
…because it is a place where my notions of what is good, what is right, what should be are shattered…because it is a place of waiting…waiting for what? Again, I don’t know…because it is place where I have to be still and be with whatever bubbles up, to be with everything that emerges, which aren’t always pleasant, which aren’t always illuminating, which aren’t always blissful.
It is a place where I face the fact that nothing can be excluded…that nothing is excluded. Zen teacher Albert Low said: “The threads of life are inextricably woven together in one grand tapestry that we call “experience,” and the threads are of all colors. Trying to be good alone can have disastrous effects.”
There is a Zen story of a governor who attended a retreat with Zen master Nansen. After the retreat, they took a walk and chatted…Nansen asked the governor, “How will you govern the people?” The governor answered, “With wisdom and compassion.” Nansen replied: “Then everyone of them will suffer.”
Indeed, the threads of life – of ALL colors — are inextricably woven together in one grand tapestry. Trying to be good alone can have ruinous effects.
This liminal place is actually a place of much potential, a source of creativity, an environment that offers the needed conditions for growth and transformation. It is a situation that offers the opportunity for true transition… because it is where we are invited to let go of our inner attitudes, of the way we view the world and others, of the way we view life and our expectations and demands of it…
…because it is a place where we are encouraged to let go of our hopes, fears, dreams, and beliefs that we attach to things and people. Without this internal process, there isn’t true transition, there isn’t real change and we end up mentally and emotionally back to where we started. Despite the external change – the new boss, new partner, new place, new car, new baby, new social circles, nothing is really different.
I would like us to consider these words from Floyd Zimmerman entitled A Transition Poem
Planted seed, baby rose,
Help me heal and help me grow.
Watered seed, budding rose,
Build me up, flesh and bone.
Flowering seed, blooming rose,
Teach me things that i don’t know.
Flower of Passion, flaming Rose,
Burn down these walls around my soul.
I encourage us to continue to practice ONLY this with attention, with awareness, with openness and DIRECTLY experience the fruit of this practice.
Writer John Brehm shared: “In my own practice of neighborhood walking meditation, I have found that looking intently, without judgement, at the most “insignificant” things – hubcaps, weathered fence posts, gate latches, bolts on fire hydrants, weeds, trash on the street, and so on – has the most profoundly awakening effect.”
Paradoxically, in practicing ONLY this, we include everything, we enfold ALL that comes up with ONLY this.
In his poem Reflective, A.R. Ammons wrote:
I found a
weed
that had a
mirror in it
and that mirror
looked in at
a mirror
in
me that
had a
weed in it
This is the gift of Holy Saturday, of Silent Saturday – that in-between place of neither this nor that… of neither here nor there…that in-between place of ONLY THIS.
Gassho.
EMPTY CLOUD ZEN 