Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

I don’t know if I have anything of interest to say about the war (and I know I have said that before). Teaching over the past few weeks, I have drawn on texts (like yesterday’s passage from Dogen) that point to our inevitably limited understanding – because all the causes and conditions for the current atrocities have roots not just in the post World War Two era, but also the British rule of Palestine (during which time my mother was born in Haifa), the Ottoman Empire, and frankly, everything going back to the time Bible stories were being written, and more. While trying to be well-informed, I don’t go deep into the weeds; at least one friend told me she was struggling after reading too many articles and seeing too much suffering.

In the online Zen Center group last week, we had an interesting discussion after I presented the Dogen passage, about our limited views, and about how hard it is to convince anybody of anything. The best we can do, we seemed to agree, was to model good behaviour. In the light of that, I would encourage you to read these stories about Sir Bobby Charlton. I am old enough that he was part of my very earliest football memories, though he was past his peak by then, and I have certainly heard his name evoked in far-flung countries where people’s knowledge of England was sometimes limited to the footballing greats. As I titled a recent talk, forget about enlightenment, just try to be kind.

This past week we had a couple more days of heatwave, and then some rain. It has been generally warm, but colder temperatures are coming, and with the clock change just around the corner, there is a sense of the winter (such as it is in San Francisco) approaching. The night time temperatures have dropped noticeably; I even ended up wearing long trousers to work on Thursday for the first time in many months, and think about getting my heater out again. I will try to spend as much time outside in the warmer parts of the day while I still can.