Sometimes life sucks. Sometimes life is a real bitch. And there is no escape. Jundo and his beloved wife are doing all they can for their sweet little girl in hospital, many treeleafers are now going tough time: unemployement,cancer, breakdown, I am struggling to carry one living in Japan as my job is seriously threatened and things don't look good at all.

In this situation, no need to dress it up and make it cheerful. No need to flee and avoid the problem. We are all invited to participate with joy to this, because it is the very nature of life, fleeting, changing, fragile, the very nature of what is given to us, sooner or later taken back. In front of this, we invite the unknown, throwing body and mind into it, trusting a process beyond thoughts, feelings and fears. As Dogen says in what he left us as a death poem:

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky.
A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds.
Hah!
Entire body looks for nothing.
Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs.


What a remarkable way to live! Leaping into the unknown, life and death merged and both totally transcended. Every single moment is an opportunity for all of us to exactly do that, that this body of thirty, fourty, fifty years and a few days and throw it into the amazing unknown reality.

entire body looks for nothing
living, I plunge into the Yellow Springs


Nothing left, no traces, no shadow. Just the taste of what is as it is. That's our way to live, far from the hopes and consolations found in so many religions and belief systems.

Life sucks and it is OK!

gassho


Taigu