The Circle of Life

Early in my Zen practice, Bob Lee, a long time Zen practitioner, student, and friend of my teacher, Genpo Roshi, visited the Zen Center on South Temple in Salt Lake City. Because I lived close, Bob stayed with me as did many others over time especially during retreats.

At the end of his stay, he gave me a photo with what I imagined were a mother and child sitting on a bench at the side of a stone floor sculpture. On the back of the picture frame Bob placed this:

"The Circle of Life

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And to know the place

for the first time

T.S. Eliot"

The photo looked like a maze or a labyrinth, a fitting image for my life, working mom, young adult daughter both trying to navigate our relationship, and our lives. Having arrived at a place where I had finished an important aspect of my reason for going into the law, when I started Zen practice my question was Who Am I? Who Am I without the labels of mother, daughter, sister, friend, lawyer,...

Through Zen practice we have the opportunity to continuously refine our life and ourself. We begin to see ourselves more clearly, what we like and dislike, what we want and don’t want, and have insights and experiences. We may begin to see our habitual patterns, and how they impact and play out in our relationships. We may see that our relationships are based on projections of one another. As we gain an accumulation of life experiences and knowledge, in Zen it’s about letting go of our ideas and concepts. What we gain is in the losing, experiencing less fear, having fewer judgments, and more. But the question remains who are we? This is the koan of everyday life.

Some get a glimpse of or realize who they truly are before they embark on the Zen path, and for some it is after. For both through practice and with the guidance of a teacher, deepen, clarify, and refine their realization, much like sanding a piece of wood, overtime the beauty of the grain emerges more clearly.

Eventually we begin to see there is no end to the exploration, and to arrive where we started is to realize who we truly are. That this place is unknowable, and ungraspable. That is who we truly are, that is knowing the place for the first time.

“We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown, remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning;

At the source of the longest river

The voice of the hidden waterfall

And the children in the apple-tree

Not known, because not looked for

But heard, half-heard, in the stillness

Between two waves of the sea.

—T.S. Eliot, from “Little Gidding,” Four Quartets (Gardners Books; Main edition, April 30, 2001) Originally published 1943.”

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets