Proof Of Life
The condensation on the windows is proof of life
for passersby who might try to see past the curtain
or the blacked-out covers into the interior
of my not-exactly-a-home on wheels.
I’m sitting upright, my bottom half in a sleeping bag,
my top half shrouded in a wool blanket,
meditating because it seems like the right thing to do.
There’s an insistent bird in the leafless tree
outside the rear window of the van, its song
one I would have been able to name just a few years ago.
That knowledge, like so much I used to contain,
has passed through the bone safe of my skull
into the poorly designed container of the world.
In more than twenty years of meditation
I have rarely quieted the dancing monkey
who jumps from one sparking synapse to the next
with a shrill laugh.
I keep at it because I don’t have a control group,
so no comparison can be made.
A text from my sister: “Peace and stability are just ahead.”
She is not, as far as I know, clairvoyant,
but I’d rather believe her than lend credence to myself.
The bell dings and I use the remote starter
to turn on the van I’m sitting in.
It’s easier than crawling up front.
Soon the heat will kick in and I’ll do the crossword
and the bird will keep singing or else it won’t.
/ / /
20 April 2022
Pittsfield MA
(NaPoWriMo Day 20)
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I came across this book at Bookmans in Tucson during our apartment-hunting trip a couple weeks ago. I’d never heard of the book or of Soshin O’Halloran, but I’m an admirer of books about the lives of Buddhist monastics and other practitioners. Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind is a collection of diary entries and letters published after O’Halloran’s death in a car accident at the age of 27. She was on a tour of Asia following three years as a Buddhist nun in Japan. It’s a lovely book; honest and forthright and brimming with zeal for her newfound Buddhist practice. At times the focus on kensho (englightenment) was a little much for me, but that’s because the flavor of Buddhism I practice doesn’t emphasize that aspect of Zen to the extent that Soshin’s did. It’s a worthwhile book, made bittersweet in the knowledge that she died just weeks after receiving transmission and being given permission to teach.