Love's the Only House

Love's the only house big enough for all the pain in the world.
Love's the only house big enough for all the pain. - Martina McBride from "Love's the Only House"

Day 170. Twenty-one miles alone on the bike. Even with the strong south wind (imagine that!) I averaged over 17 mph. I'm getting stronger. It feels good.

When I clicked on "Publish Post" after last night's blog, I felt like a limp dish rag. The theme from "Rocky" was, literally, blaring in my head. I read over my post, teared up, then began to weep. Then sobbed. It felt incredibly liberating. When I quit crying, a subdued sense of relief came over me. I felt calm and relieved and courageous. To be honest, I felt like a writer. For the first time. I felt like I wrote from my gut - like Natalie Goldberg teaches - without a critic on one shoulder and an editor on the other. While I wrote, I was outside of myself, like the rare and precious moments of zazen when I transcend my Self.

I've invested deeply in maintaining my blog, and try to approach it, like my cushion, with sincere intent each evening. It's just that sometimes I write like crap. Probably, most times I write like crap. I may have even written like crap last night, but the product seemed irrelevant. The process of the writing paralleled all that is best about sitting zazen. Like those amazing bike rides that mimic deep meditation. I wish I lived like that all of the time. I think it's how we were originally intended to experience life. My everyday existence pales in comparison. Hard to imagine why the hell we cloak our Aliveness with so many layers of bunk.

I hadn't been on my cushion five minutes last night when loving kindness washed over me. Depositing my anger onto the computer screen left a vast open space for love to find me. Funny how important "creating space within" is. In the aftermath of my writing purge, I entered meditation immediately, already resplendent with emptiness. With no effort, no mantra, no aspiration, a great and gentle sense of peace and well being flooded through me. I sensed, rather than thought, the Great Love that is our origin and our nature. Knew at the cellular level that all sentient beings begin and end with Love. It is our gift, our grace, our essence. Tears welled again. I believe they were tears of gratitude for the reminder that I have all I need within me. I arrived on the planet that way, as we all do. This is the place from which all solutions originate. I need look no further.

Love is the only house big enough for all the pain in the world. It is our salvation and our home. I hope to make it my permanent address.

Gassho,
CycleBuddhaDoc