Hi everyone,

It's late here in Maryland, and due to a large amount of driving and adrenaline rushes for the upcoming school year, sleep just isn't happening. So I thought I'd share some thoughts on the above phrase:

The phrase "One Robe, One Bowl" is normally associated with our lovely poet-friend Ryokan

Returning to my native village after many years’ absence:
Ill, I put up at a country inn and listen to the rain.
One robe, one bowl is all I have.
I light incense and strain to sit in meditation;
All night a steady drizzle outside the dark window --
Inside, poignant memories of these long years of pilgrimage.
Something like that. Anyhow, for me, the teaching of one robe one bowl is incredibly, indescribably broad. For those sewing, we can't ever have more than one robe. Yes, technically speaking we can sew until our fingers fall off and pile up 50 kesa of various stripes and 300 Rakusu to keep all that bad karma from spilling on our shirt, but one robe is all we have. It includes everything - the sunsets, mountain sky-lines, forests, rain, birdsongs, and all those nice things. But it also includes the divorce, the addiction, the piss and s**t stained walls, the cancer, the AIDS, the trash, filth, and all those nice things. The problem I think we run into is wanting the scenic robe, the "Zen" robe with all the fancy Japanese and Chinese architecture, the foggy mountain tops, the serenity. We don't want to wear the robe of South Central Los Angeles, the robe of drug dealers and prostitues. Give me the idealism but please, for Christ's sake, don't give me real life!

Only when we can wear both on the same shoulder will we be ready to make peace with the world and with ourselves, suddenly being at ease in all OUR ills (because really, ours and the prostitues aren't that different, not one not two). To do so we have to bring our bowl into the world empty, ready and waiting to receive. If it's full of something (money, food, what have you) for the "just in case", we've already lost. What we put in our bowl to bring into the world in unnecessary, it implies that somehow we know better when we couldn't have less of a clue. I think it goes in line with our previous discussion on unknowing. If we stop trying so damn hard to know everything, maybe we might be able to learn something.

But anyways, just a few thoughts. My bowl's empty now, please do me a favor and fill it with the contents of yours.