Mushin: The No Mind

Recently I have been contemplating the meaning of the shishiki board that reads Mushin, or "nothing mind" given to me just before I left the U of Illinois by Zen Tea teacher, Kimiko Gunji, the director of the Japan House. This past Spring she visited my dissertation thesis art exhibit where I had displayed visual journal pages expressive of an internal war I had been facing, studying, and grappling with. Back at the Japan House, her warm but wordless response had a tinge of sadness in it for me, a sense that in my arts practice I was needlessly creating, identifying with, and participating in my own suffering. I believe this poignant gift of the kanji characters of "no-mind" was her prayer that I live my life free from being caught up in the clutter of the emotional mind. A hope that I would learn to become aware of my truer and deeper reality.
One of the most important phrases I learned from her, which I am only now beginning to truly comprehend and live is ICHI-GO, ICHIE, which translates "one life, one opportunity". In the practice of tea, this reflects the application of mindfulness, or allowing the mind to be present in each moment, open to all the senses so as to awaken what is at the source of all thought and being. Emotions, and the lenses of perception which they cloud are therefore only layers that mask one's true nature and being. They are not reality in a true form. Neither is the thinking mind, which, in working to be responsible, continues to participate in the project of ego. These minds are not about the pure love that changes the world. Love, therefore is that which is the Source, a grounded knowing rather than need for action or feeling to be attached to it. Compassion, meaning "with suffering" fuels us to return to the Source of Love and allow the fires of work and emotion to be burned up and transformed. In sitting meditation, where in doing nothing one experiences and connects with no-mind or the Heart of Compassion, the process of alchemy in silence begins to slowly and actively translate into our everyday relationships and authentically calls us into the service and care of others.

Home: The Nest of Rest

In the busyness of our lives, home should be a place of peace and rest, a feeling of purity and harmony that also comes from being clean and orderly. In contrast to the past 5 years, where books, journals, dishes, and kitty fur line the floor, counters, and sofas, I can now put everything in its place and develop a discipline of cleaning. While working in Japan, my junior high students did this for 15 minutes everyday at lunchtime, what they called soji, or the efficient and regular ritual of cleaning. More than removing dirt, it reflected the interior act of cleansing one's heart and mind. Taking shoes off also was a symbol of releasing the old to experience the new. At the Japan House at the U of I, we would also use the Tsukubai, or water basin, directly after removing our shoes, as a way to wash away the dirt of the world in preparing the heart for a tea ceremony. Perhaps in this way, all of life should be a tea ceremony and our homes remain as tea huts of harmony, purity, respect, and tranquility!

Settling into the Woodlands

Given the recent move from the flatlands and summer humidity of Illinois, the landscape and climate of Pennsylvania is absolutely a delight. Everyday, just blocks from my house, I have been taking walking adventures through canopy shaded paths that open onto vast meadows with haybales, down through hilly fields of wildflowers that run along a black asphalt, and cedar chip paths. The system of black gravel and tractor-flattened grasslands is in the process of going from a woodlands preserve to a University Arboradeum. During the forty-five minute loop I have been discovering the different shades of beauty that arise during different times of the day. Early in the morning there is a a glisten of dew and the wildflowers are facing the sun in full bloom. At dusk there is a quiet hush and bright colors are replaced with the subdued whites of the Queen Anne's Lace.Small animals occasionally scurry across the walkways as large hawks soar above in the sky.