The Earthen Path

Truth comes with fruition, when the ground
and the path are indistinguishably
worn into one.
In all four directions, at all four levels,
within all four layers
everything comes together again.

Hermit of Sarada

I am Native American–Tsalagi, Eastern Cherokee in ancestry; I was baptised Christian with my mother when I was a young child. While in college, I discovered Buddhism, and began a long journey of interfaith exploration. My earliest and fondest memories are of the zazen practices of my youthful spirit; they were days of great peace!

I am currently a retired interfaith sister in Shantivanam Ashram, Tamil Nadu, India. A personal devotion to Sri Sarada Devi–revered as an embodiment of the Motherhood of God by thousands of people throughout the world–began after I took Vedantic initiation with Swami Bhashyananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order of India.

I then professed private vows as a hermit, and have lived alone in my hermitage for over three decades. I seem to have been born with a contemplative temperament, and easily able to live the life of a solitary spiritual practitioner.

Now I am an elder, and settling into an aging body, and a different kind of life: doing more of what I want to do now, and a bit less of what others have expected of me over the years!

More recently, I have felt drawn to return to the zazen practice that I began many years ago, before taking my formal vows as a hermit. In all my interfaith journeys, there have been many wonderful thoughts about things-as-they-are, to borrow the words of Shunryu Suzuki–now I was starting to feel a need to renew the wonderful state of no-thought-at all, and to actively integrate it back into my other interfaith spiritual practices.

One evening, as I sat in my computer chair, I wandered into the website of Daily Zen and found my way home again. I had landed in the Instruction Hall pages! I had been blessed by the presence and inspiration of Daily Zen over the years of development of my other practices, but here in the Instruction Hall, I now found everything I needed to begin to renew my zazen practice!

Here were the full wisdom gifts of the Daily Zen creator and resident artist, being freely and lovingly offered, via the quotes and selections, and the complementary beautiful artwork!

Then I found the recorded Teishos. Listening to the Teishos can be done over and over again, each time allowing the words to go deeper and deeper, and the contemplation to open out further and further. The recordings with their gongs and background music, are a wonderful gift for all of us, from the anonymous “long time friend of Daily Zen!”

Often in the earliest of mornings, or in the latest of evenings, I am drawn to sit in the zendo–feeling no other expectation than just to BE here, at this moment, on this day or in this night.

And that feeling of no expectation is sometimes the most restful and peaceful of that day or night. I dim the lights on the computer, so that the soft translucence of the Zendo shrine gently enters the room, touching my heart with its unconditional availability.

I find there are no words to describe how this shrine symbolizes for me, the beauty and the sorrow of the totality of life’s impermanence–like a sand painting, which is here briefly, but which is also here forever in memory and meaning.

I have felt so welcomed into my new “awareness community,” with new memories of linking and joining hands with others in the zendo. As we walk together in awe and reverence, and in silent awareness, may we all know that we belong to each other, and that we all belong to our Mother Earth!

Judith T.