Flowers are blooming here on Cape Cod. Always a welcome sign. But flowers are always blooming somewhere. Would it not suffice to just know this? Is it not common sense? Should we not feel the same about both statements? Well...no.
Thinking and experiencing are not the same, a phrase you hear often in zen. And most of the time we hear it, we think...yes that is correct.
Yet, we don't feel that is correct! What is going on here? Feelings are cousins to experience as in I'll never feel the same way about something now that I have experienced "X."
This morning during our zazen on Zoom, I said to the sangha you are "a sight for sore eyes." The context--my eyes have been missing you and they and me are better by just seeing you.. This opens a new perspective of being away and back or missing and now finding. Both conditions required for the true meaning ONLY IF, you have had a simulor experience.
What about sight for sore eyes? Here is one response- yes they are beautiful flowers but I have hay fever and my eyes are always itchy and sore. So lets insert two words into the previous sentence. Yes they are beautiful flowers even though I have hay fever and my eyes are always itchy and sore. Or, even though I may have been sad you brighten my experience.
There is another way of seeing that I offer for our open discussion Tuesday night May 4, 2021. I can accept, appreciate, your describing your wonderful experience even though I am sad. Please note this is a different experience wherein one does not block the other. This, I suggest is a remarkable ability to experience bittersweet.
Even if my eyes are sore, I still see your wonder, whether the flowers bloom or not and furthermore, I have hay fever!!
108 Bows
Sangaku