fortunately

I’ll begin the posts here this week with a passage from the Zen teacher John Tarrant:

“Eventually we just start to accept. Not only do we not dislike our circumstances, we do not dislike our own states of mind, which is the key thing. We begin to think, ‘Fortunately I don’t get it yet.’ And if we forgive life for not being what we told it to be, or expected, or wished, or longed for it to be, we forgive ourselves for not being what we might have been also. And then we can be what we are, which is boundless.”

I try to keep my Zen practice out of the blog, out of nearly every conversation I get to have with someone any day. Which is of course impossible. I’m the one writing and saying things. But, I’m sharing the above from Tarrant Roshi just ’cause it feels worthy of sharing – no matter where it’s falling out from. “Fortunately I don’t get it yet.” What a relief. Life not being what I told it to be, or (even) longed for it to be, opening a door to a spacious something else.

Like not having much money and the rent’s wicked high and going back to work this late in life and hearing lots of Spanish in the hospital cafeteria and “Duolingo” comes to tap me on the shoulder, and something whispers, “Your age, ain’t never gonna be a bad thing firing up a few different, sound-asleep brain cells.” And who knows where any of these dozens of paths may lead.

Strange travel suggestions.