the golden wind

I arrived through Zoom in Colorado Springs yesterday afternoon – Mountain time – to sit with a few folks gathered to consider this Zen Koan:

Blue Cliff Record, Case 27 : Yunmen’s Golden Wind  A monk asked Yunmen, “When the tree withers and the leaves fall, what’s happening?” Yunmen replied, “It’s revealing the golden wind.”

I don’t know, maybe this is me being all esoteric, or weird, or other, or really out there, or lost in the cosmos again. I hope so. There’s something so beautiful for me in the Koan’s words. I’m the withering tree. I’m the falling leaves. And – too – I’m the golden wind. I woke up this morning and swung my feet onto a strange floor, which isn’t strange at all, and after a few minutes went down on my knees and asked – among other things – for help to be wide open to all the offers of the day. This Monday. And to not, as I heard someone recently say, bother the traffic.

This isn’t a Beatles “Let It Be” thing for me. Way more like their “Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except For Me and My Monkey.” “Your outside is in when your inside is out.”

Oh, honorable withered tree.