A new month, and a new resolve. Too long hanging around outside the gate — no amount of theorising will tell me what's on the other side. So, step forward.While travelling this week, I took with me by chance, "Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind", the journal and letters of Maura 'Soshin' O'Halloran, who trained in her twenties at Toshoji in Tokyo and Kannonji in Iwate Prefecture. She died in a road accident in Thailand, returning to Ireland just a few months after her transmission. "She left this life immediately to start the salvation of the masses in the next life", Ban Tetsugyu. Without exploring why, I was brought up short by this re-reading. The journal and letters were obviously not written for publication and are the more powerful for that. They sit with the canon of the few other female Zen Priests who trained in Japan. More importantly, it shook me awake, the combination of the Chinese New Year, a move to Singapore, and the sudden realisation that my training hardly deserved the name, all coming together and ringing alarm bells. I take heed of Moving Mountain, acknowledge the fact and hit the "learn" button.
Through the gate!
I respectfully offer the merit of this post to Soshin O'Halloran.
Pure Heart, Enlightened Mind, Maura 'Soshin' O'Halloran, Thorsons, London 1995.
1 comment:
Bless you Walter. Zen practice, meditation, ticks away in the background. Who is to say what 'training' looks like.
By all accounts Rev. Soshin was quit a monk. I'll have to read the book, sometime.
You must soon be on your way into the air, right?
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