Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Because we cannot circle above all existence—sleepless, unbroken, boundless, glowing—we content ourselves with being submerged and awakening.’

I confess I have not read “I and Thou”, or any of his other works, but I am always encouraged when I read something from a different tradition that points to the essential human quality of searching – or ‘religiosity’ in his terms, according to this recent article in the New Yorker. The writer of the article suggests this response of his, later in life –  ‘“I do not know what ideas are,” he claimed. “Whoever expects of me a doctrine . . . will invariably be disappointed”‘  – as being worthy of a zen master; while not disputing that notion, I also find the quote above as pointed and poetic as anything I read in a zen book.