Just This
…All the utensils of the monastery and in fact everything that belongs to the monastery should be cared for as though they were the sacred vessels of the altar.
What does this invitation of Benedict’s mean to care for all the things of my household monastery? With full attention and energy…. for the beaten down old stove, burners crooked, for the bold and bright African fabric curtain and the chipped cereal bowls. For the worn-out potatoes stored since October and the fresh crisp apple, shipped in from somewhere warm. Sacred is receptive to each as a full expression of itself.
This present moment into which Benedict invites us, the actual experience of it, and the profound spiritual implications of true and complete presence, these draw me ever farther into the study and practice of Buddhism. Presence is for Buddhists the holy grail of practice. To be fully present is to be fully Awake.
As a member of a Zen sangha for many years, I participated each Sunday in a silent work period. I learned to just do the task to which I was assigned, whether I liked it or not. I learned to not suck up the spiders in the corners when I vacuumed, for this was their household, we were their Sunday guests. I learned that presence requires me to focus on just what my hands are doing.
In this way, I began to take baby steps toward that which Benedict and Buddha teach: JUST THIS. To truly be here with just this glass I am washing, just these Christmas things I am storing away, just the rolls of toilet paper going into the cupboard, is to show up with full attention, giving all of myself to the moment, each object revered. My capacity for this practice is a good measure of just how much my thinking mind is running the show.
Completing all the tasks of making meals is a good time to practice letting go of likes, dislikes, past and future, focusing my attention on just what is in front of me. Recently I had the experience of cutting up vegetables for a soup and being so present with the ingredients that I was aware everything glistened with aliveness, full of its essence, utterly precious.
The glistening sacredness emerges when the mind which is present to the stuff of now is not my ego-bound mind, but the Buddha mind. Those vegetables I cut? I went into that project primed by a prior sitting period in which my mind had become settled enough that thinking and feeling had been replaced with a settled heart and a clear internal stillness. Turning to the task at hand, I found there was room in my field of awareness for communion with a pile of carrots and onions. Not only was I present to the vegetables, but the vegetables were present to me. In our exchange, sacredness emerged. The onions were alive, and I was alive. Just this: Shimmering, heart-opening aliveness.
This Buddha mind to which I make oblique and unpracticed reference is revealed when we can leap clear of thinking and feeling, leap all the way to another shore where all is included, all is adored. This includes me. In this present moment, fully lived, I am adored and adoring. Adoration born of no separation between ourselves and everything else the whole world round.
Author: Getsu San Ku Shin
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