with unprejudiced attention

Facing the wall, opening the window.

Our collaborative arrangement, to which we added from the landscape around us all week.

With eyes just inches from a newly-cleaned windowpane, my dear chaplaincy colleague and dharma sibling Clif is in deep focus, holding a small rag, polishing the glass. Amidst a field of desert flowers on their last breaths, Jameson holds a broom, sweeping the flagstones as leaves fall around him, despite his best efforts. Abi kneels in the flowers, trimming summer growth away to nourish next spring.

Laurel June

, Ash and the kitchen team are chopping, slicing, organizing the coming meals. As for me, I’ve just finished up changing and cleaning the trash bins, thoroughly enjoying every second of not thinking, catching the most incredible light in the fields.

Settling into four days, with a collection of Upaya residents and chaplaincy candidates, we’re here to experience this ordinary practice of zazen. Quietly upright, just sitting, nothing special, nothing added, open-hearted acceptance and intimacy with what is, as cultivation for our work, our life of service.

For most of the sits we’re facing the wall, precisely what my busy mind needs: I can meet, greet, and, with resistance, release these habits of thinking again.

As dear teachers Monshin Nannette Overley and Kozan Matthew Palevsky speak in a handful of dharma talks, we’re offered generous direction, reminded to let it go as swiftly as we take it in. Monshin makes a case for facing the wall, to open the window to the reality of this moment, from a posture of unprejudiced attention, which she’ll later reference as unconditional love. Her teacher Katherine Thanas spoke on this matter, transcribed in her precious book, The Truth of This Life.

We sit in zazen to realize there’s a deeper awareness existing beneath the active mind. It’s the mind of clear observation that witnesses our life from the shore of ease, from a posture of unprejudiced attention.

-Katherine Thanas

In an hour of post-talk stillness on the final afternoon, my subtle inner defiance gives way, tears are suddenly tracking down my cheeks silently. I think I’m seeing myself on my deathbed, is it possible this is happening? How am I actually at peace with this?

Self-cherishing be gone, I’m just over here dissolving, nothing to see.

The kitchen gong at Upaya; seeing this image I can hear it.

There are so few words I can say regarding what facing the wall teaches me, but I’ve written my reflection paper for this practice and decided to share it below with you.

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