Revisiting old Haunts.

Excuses, excuses! That's all we got to give for what we have no time, nor interest in wanting to knowings that matters that is if one were to truly claim to be a human being, a man, a woman, a Right Understanding of the functioning of our system as a whole, a complete whole- Mind - Body and Spirit (Soul). This keeps repeating itself in my consciousness I know nothing i am saying is new or original, but these are repetitive thoughts that seem to demand attention. So I am going to untangle the tangle, knot by knot till the line is straight again or at least i have been trying to do this for many years of my life now way before the Blogging happened. I have chosen this path as one of the paths towards Right Understanding of who or what i truly am. I feel its dumb too but I am addicted to many things in life and writing my thoughts is one of them. If you are reading this then you are riding the same train as my thinking mind, sometime long and boring and sometimes it can be be inspiring. It is all in how you choose to ride this gravy train, as a winner or a looser, a bum or a man of destiny, a man who chose the path less taken, or a drifter...who are you, I ask. And the answer eludes me time and again, I know and fully realize that there are many instances and moments in my life that things happen and I was baffled and had no explanation to provide and so most of these, I call Satori, or Epiphany or Grace kind of magical moments I have experienced but never talked about as I feel they are too sacred and was and perhaps still is meant for me alone. I might share these 'Mystical moments if and when I find the mind and the right space for it to happen.

Let me relate at least one such moment that i call the 'Magical Moment,' It happened after three hours of weeding with a Japanese hoe on a hot summer afternoon, of rows and rows of baby spinach. It happened at Green Gulch Farm, the Zen Center at Marin County, across the bay from the City of San Francisco. I was working alongside a Japanese man who stopped the farm for R&R after having led a group of Japanese tourists up the Grand Tetons, in Wyoming. He hardly spoke any English and i knew next to nothing about Japanese, but we got along. Laughed and called each other pig and would yell our guts out so it echos through the valley and make s small group of horses stop grazing and held their heads high perhaps wondering, what the devil was going on. Weeding after while became a challenge between us as we raced down one bed after another with not a word between us. The we arrived at the end of the last bed and I was so tired I just dropped the hoe across two beds and I laid down with my head hanging back over the hoe handle, I must have passed out and when I came to i found myself staring up toward the deep blue sky with white clouds passing by at faster than normal speed and all was quiet. My head then dropped to one side and I found myself staring  at tiny baby plants growing out of the ground like you see in a time lapsed movie. I felt blissful and chuckled at the irony before my eyes telling me that the weeds too have to grow, they are part of nature. 
Then I was shocked to my senses by a loud shout or as the Japanese a Kia! "Buta!" or PIG!And i saw my Japanese friend Miyoshi standing with his chin hanging leaning over the end of the hoe and his face a big Grin! I got up and we both marched ourselves right into the Zendo or Meditation Hall and sat; just the two of us. The next morning upon waking up I found a whole complete set of camping equipm, a ent, along with a Gortex Down Jacket, a two man tent, a Gortex Rain gear and Japanese Man's training kimono, like those worn by Samurai warriors while in training. A note said thank you for my hospitality and friendship and hope that our path cross again one day; I found out that he had left for Home.

Perhaps in telling it as it was does not do justice upon the spiritual rush that happened on that day unless one has had the experience of something similar. These moments albeit during the wakeful state or in dreams are mystical moments that bring one into the presence of consciousness itself when the mind finally was silenced and the sensory organs becomes alive; sound I found will be switched off totally and you feel like you are in a vacuum state of presence. There was also a sense of connection between two souls who hardly could communicate in words but touched one another's heart and be moved. Suyoshi  and i were the only two students allowed to hang out with Nakamura Sensei, an over eighty year old Japanese Lady Tea Master in her tea house built by the Rockefeller Foundation built according to the exact way as they would have be built in Japan. Two Japanese tea house construction masters craftsmen were employed from Japan to do the job. Nakamura Sensei and the Tea House were both registered as National Treausures. It was more than a privilege, it was an honor for the two of us sitting in the tea house and chatting with the old lady while she fed us all kinds of expensive sweets that hey had bought for her from downtown San Francisco. We drank expensive Sake and Japanese wine and I kept seeing the old lady turn into a giggling young girl when Tsuyoshi teased her.The mystical or magical moments that some would call Satori or Moksha, or simply spacing out, happened in my past and sometimes still do in the present. 
#San Francisco, #Moksha, # Green Gulch farm, # Zen Practice.