Just This, Part 1

The theme for today is "Just This".

Whatever our culture
we live with and are motivated by many images
myths, hunches, rumors
of wholeness:

the Garden of Eden, enlightenment, a real or Buddha-mind;
ideals of "progress" and a better future;
the notion of knowing one's "self" more completely.

These are reminders
the remembrance of possibilities

We have conflicting,  valid life needs
for structure, safety
for freedom, boundlessness.

The actual experience
is a broken wholeness
and if we ascribe to a philosophy
of "being with what is"
it is to be with this ongoing state
of implicit, ungraspable wholeness
where life is both full and broken
being and becoming
at the same time.

Why do we talk about it?

The mind alone
by itself
(if that were possible)
doesn't seem capable of putting
Humpty Dumpty back together again
but does play a role

Suggesting opportunities for practice,
and for coordinating and developing
multiple ways of knowing

that are "larger",
relatively more complete
than mind alone
though It may not be philosophically certifiable
as "transcendence" in any absolute sense.

This what we have to work with
an existential fact
and it's really "not bad"

this experience
in the greater present moment.

Two of the most famous zen-inspired poems
by Matsuo Basho
are about "this":

Though in Kyoto
I long for Kyoto
at the song of a cuckoo

and

Ancient pond
A frog jumps in:
Ker-plop!

The "Kyoto" poem
shows a "nostalgia"
a longing to go "home"
to the real present that is already here
and a fine observation of its nearness
and at the same time, elusiveness
that "normalizes" this very common experience.

The "Frog" poem
is regarded as representing an enlightenment experience

and in both of these events
it is an ordinary event
perceived, not thought about:
the sound of the frog and the sound of the cuckoo

that are more than "triggers" for an experience
not symbols for something
or reminders
but the "just this" itself
not just the sounds,
but the whole world interpermeating them.

In their ordinariness
their role in the poem
is to stand in for
or rather remind us
that the "just this"
is not anything special
and doesn't need to be
but comes along with the whole.

How was it, though
that Basho had these experiences
and what was their nature?

What happened
such that he got close to "just this"?

He had spent his life
with an orientation to "just this"
and not just as an idea,
not as any kind of deduction.

Practice
had prepared him
had changed his "brain"
his way of being with and in the world.

He was a person with refined sensibilities,
an artist
a poet
a meditator
who loved to go on long journeys
that were pilgrimages
traveling, with eyes wide open
actively and sensitively immersed
in natural settings.

That's his story
and his practice
and it has some interesting points

but it creates a puzzle:
we might learn from it
but don't want to (and could not) emulate it.

A little thinking might be useful here:
What's the significance for my own life?
What can we make of his story?

For me,
some "take away" points are
sustained attention and practice,
life as art,
deep engagement with "what is",
immersion in the "ordinary"
and "just this".

What's your situation,
your practice?
(as in, the practice of You)

What's your "just this"?