Immortal Sea
I am a member of a dharma-study group that is presently reading a book called Heartwood. In one of the chapters of that book, its author, Barbara Becker, speaks of being troubled by the condition of many of her older relatives, who have contracted Alzheimer’s disease. A Zen monk gives her a koan to ponder in order to ease her mind: “What is bigger than Alzheimer’s?”[1]
Reading this koan, I was put in mind of a reality experienced by many zazen practitioners, and available to all. This reality is hard to describe, but it is very well alluded to by William Wordsworth, the 19th-century English poet. At the end of the ninth stanza of his poem, “Intimations of Immortality,” the poet says,
Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,
Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,
Can in a moment travel thither,
And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.[2]
The “immortal sea” is supportive and sustaining for a zazen practitioner who experiences it. It may come to him or her in times of trouble and bear him along through them.
Footnotes
- Barbara Becker, Heartwood, New York, 2021, p. 84.
- William Wordsworth, The Prelude, New York, 1959, p. 157