Stars in Our Sky Series #7
Allyn Field's Buddhist teachings (and art)
Stars in Our Sky #7
Allyn Field, Buddhist teachings.
Our friend, the lay Zen monk Allyn Field, is married to Lianne Moccia (who will be a future Star), a Revere girl Pa has known for over 60 years. When asked to provide a bio, Allyn answered in true Zen fashion:
A biography? The problem is, for what really matters, no one was there! Like the sunset that “took my breath away,” when, as some say, “I died and went to heaven.” But the mundane explanation is that I was born and raised in Connecticut on the grounds of a tuberculosis sanatorium where my father lived as both patient and doctor. He died soon after my 13th birthday. I never saw him that last week. Maybe it would have been hard for him to see me. Maybe they thought it would be hard for me. In any case, I was afraid of my own grief. 14 years later, at a Zen retreat, I finally wept, and discovered something like that sunset: the joy of having known him. Meanwhile, I got an education, toyed with the prospect of medical school, instead became a war protester, a carpenter, a Zen student, a married man with two children. I was ordained a lay Zen monk. Now I am a Zen teacher at Upper Valley Zen Center, a hospital chaplain, an old man, and a grandfather three times over, number four on the way.
Upper Valley Zendo
ZAN and PA: Allyn, tell us what inspires you.
ALLYN: The meeting of day and night.
Sunset on Mount Cardigan
“Kinhin” (walking meditation in the woods) block print
And here is a bit of Allyn’s wisdom in audio form:
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Reading and listening to this post this morning following my own "meditation class", once again I experience the divine synchronicity of life, of reality, of how life works in harmony with all of existence~Toward the ONE! So grateful for this moment. Thank you to you for what you offer to reality. Blessings and peace that surpasses understanding, Mirabai
Allyn,
"In any case, I was afraid of my own grief."--Allyn Field
A fascinating concept, to fear your own grief. Sooner or later, I suppose we all reach a point in life when we grieve, unfortunately. The emotion is inescapable. I certainly have my share of reasons to grieve, and I know of no one in my life who doesn't have reasons to grieve. And I suppose we all find ways to live with grief. I tend to accept its presence, but to keep it at a distance; always there, because again, it's inescapable, but at a remove from my conscious thoughts and actions, from my living in this world. As a way to live with grief, it sometimes works, but not always. Or more precisely, it never works or doesn't work, but instead takes me down a path different from the one I'd been walking before the grief arose at that moment in my life, a slightly darker path, but nonetheless a path as livable as it can and must be, the prior path no longer reachable.
I'll also occasionally try the converse, going beyond accepting grief's presence but keeping it at a distance, to embracing its presence and making it front and center in my conscious thoughts and actions. Doing so can serve as a kind of remembrance of what's been lost, the presence of absence, loss usually for me the source of grief. That latter way of living with grief is riskier, though.
That said, I've never considered fear as a way to live with grief, never explored the undesirable and perhaps inescapable emotion of fear as a way to live with the undesirable and assuredly inescapable emotion of grief. I suppose fear would then serve as that distance between my grief and my conscious thoughts and actions, another way of keeping grief at a remove. I rely on fragile obliviousness to serve as that distance, tenuous at best in its effectiveness, like fog, which only partially obscures. Fear might be the better architecture for living with grief. I need to think more about this possibility.
Thanks, Allyn. And thanks, Roland and Zanny, for the post.
--Bob