This morning Masa took me to see his Buddhist teacher, the leader of a venerated temple.  We did the tea ceremony, an abridged informal version just for me, with Masa acting as translator.  I can’t really describe this meeting, except to say that there was a good deal of laughing and one idea which I had never heard before.  If I have a problem letting people approach, and am at my most serene when walking alone in the woods -- well, he said, people are like trees.  This was a new thought to me.  I like trees.  I feel they are doing exactly what they should be, as well as they can.  I feel Masa’s teacher summed me up in a heartbeat and handed me a rocket ship to the next level -- learn to feel about people the way I do about the natural world. 

This is a big hurdle!  I’m in some charity with my neighbors these days, but I don’t seek spiritual solace by walking among them.  But I can see it could be achievable.

Through a variety of circumstances I tried to avoid, I ended up at that same bridge where I’d experienced the moment of Nirvana Sunday.  In Zen, no two moments are ever the same, each is precious and unique.  I approached the bridge from the other side, and at a point downstream where fifteen egrets and a crane were wading next to a shallow waterfall.  I watched the perfection of their movements, splashing in the cold, economy of effort.  I thought, I may be able to love people as trees, but I am never going to be able to love them as egrets. 

The lights of the stores and crowds beckoned from across the river so I started across the bridge.  A little later than the day before, a little darker, but when I looked for it there was the same antique poled boat moving out from shore.  This time I was on the downriver rail of the bridge looking upriver, ie across the road with pedestrians hurrying to and fro.  I was looking at the same scene but the view was interrupted by figures passing across my vision.  I shifted perception so the passing human silhouettes were part of my vision instead of an intrusion.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten.

postscript, next day

I visited the Ryon-ji temple this morning with very interesting new friends who are staying next door at the temple.  The Ryon-ji temple has a very celebrated zen garden, the most austere I’d seen.  Just a few rocks, I thought on entering.  Great rocks, lotta gravel.  People kneeling raptly, schoolkids chattering.  So I tried People-as-Trees.  I learned from my companions that the idea’s a common one for meditation practice but it was new and illuminating for me. 

I got into a meditative state on the rocks and let it expand to include the people as part of the zen garden.  This is very hard work!  The effect, however, was to intensify my meditation until I felt I must be enveloped in a visible flame.

It occurred to me that today the greatest energy field on the planet is not the vegetation.  It’s not the animals.  It’s people.