Come, come, whoever you are,
~ Rumi
wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving,
it doesn’t matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times.
Come, come again, come.
In this talk from our February Zazenkai, Valerie turns to two Zen women, centuries apart. One, a wise old woman, known to us through a single encounter with a turning word; the other, a young Irish woman who entered a Japanese monastery, practiced wholeheartedly, awakened deeply, then died on her way back to Ireland where she planned to establish a zendo and teach the dharma. The unnamed woman at the side of the road and the well-documented voice of Maura O’Halloran mingle, calling to us now: “The past mind can’t be caught, the present mind can’t be caught, the future mind can’t be caught.” With which mind are you going to listen to this talk?
Photo by Julia Barbosa on Unsplash