Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Having picked up a copy of Radical Dharma when Rev. angel Kyodo williams came to speak, I can tell I’m going to be quoting from it a lot; it has been challenging and bracing to read, and I feel opened up, grateful to have that challenge and that openness. Reading it on my commute across the bay, in half-hour chunks, with time to stare out of the window at the freeway structures and the sprawl of the port, distant views of downtown San Francisco, the skies over the Berkeley Hills or Mount Tam, depending on which way I am facing. The experience of reading is not separate from experiencing the subtle cues of the dynamics of the city that we move through, of wealth and poverty, of space and power. And not feeling separate from everyone who boards the car to travel the same lines.

I was reflecting, on the rides, that we have mental tendencies to stay safe, within boundaries of supposed control – when we understand this, we expose our trends of thought. We can still be caught by them; we do not get everything right, but we also do not hold to the idea that we are right. Room to grow. Also room to let go. So this line was both apposite and revelatory:

‘One of the extraordinary things about liberation is that you do not feel the need to control things when you are free.’ – rev Angel