Judging

I recently posted about Ryōkan, the Zen priest and poet. One line stands out above others, coming to me regularly; religiously here in Japan. Earlier this year, I turned seventy-one years. He wrote:

Reflecting on seventy years
I am tired of judging right from wrong
Faint traces of a path trodden in deep night snow 
A stick of incense under the rickety window.

(Kazuaki Tanahashi translation)

The differences between the States and Japan are too obvious to ignore. I don’t think I could begin the list them and will not do so, except as they rank themselves up and down in my overly stimulated brain. It would be neither fair nor helpful, to me or anyone else.

Like Master Ryōkan, I am tired of my persistent and self-defeating judgment making. Better to sit and look out over the sea, be it the Sea of Japan or, from the Washington or Oregon coasts, out over the North Pacific. From these places I can see little but the waves and the wide and calm waters lit by the lights from the heavens.

The waters are the deep night snow, the rolling surf the incense curling up and up.