Thursday, March 4, 2010

Some o.k. verse from the director of a zen center in Columbia, Missouri- pretty much well considered diary entries. But there is a sweet one about a task familiar to me, having been a single parent with two sons- wiping your kid's ass when they are young and tasked with potty training. See, Ronci links doing this, irritated and distracted as he tends to his son, with the much-chronicled stories of Ikkyu caring for his dying master day-after-day with great fealty, producing the tender scatology in this verse:

my dying teacher could not wipe himself unlike you disciples
who use bamboo i cleaned his lovely ass with my bare hands.

Also, Seido Ray Ronci gave us this pith line, simple and crucial:

One learns through zazen that enough is enough.

It all links up- crows, zen, ordinary life filled with both service and knowing your limits.

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