Hollyhock Presenter & Guest Blogs
Presenter's Blogs · 1st May 2008
Deborah Coryell
Join Deborah at Hollyhock for Good Grief: Living the Love You Thought You Lost, June 29 - July 4.
There are two Zen stories that come to my mind when I think of what it means to "live the love you thought you lost".
The first tells of a group of students gathered around their Roshi's deathbed weeping. "Why do you weep?' asks the Roshi. "Because you are leaving us" reply his students. "But where could I go?" asks the Roshi in reply.
The second tale begins with the Roshi sobbing inconsolably. One of his students approaches him tentatively and asks:" Roshi, why do you weep? Did you not teach us that death is an illusion? Yes,
(Roshi answers ) and the death of a child is the greatest illusion of them all".
The greatest suffering I have experienced within myself and with others walking the path of life is the feeling that we have "lost" someone or something we need. But as our Zen stories begin to teach us, where does "it" go? To what illusion does the Roshi in the second teaching point?
Ram Dass, one of our teachers once said that the challenge of loving is to continue loving into death. That our love does not need to stop living and growing because there is no longer a physical vessel to receive it.
There are many ways in which we experience and express our love that are independent of physical presence. We think about our loved ones, we imagine where they are, what they are doing, we carry on conversations that often don't ever get shared and through all of this, we nurture the love.
We are inspired by moments we have shared and ideas that stimulate us and values to which we are committed. And none of these require physical presence.In sharing with others the energy of that love, the love grows and continues to contribute to the world around us.
I have "met" so many individuals and been inspired by them AFTER their lives had ended. Because someone continued to carry the generative force of that love out into the world. We need not be so afraid of falling into the pit of denial and delusion that we consign those and that which we love to our past. WE become the vessel for the love that does not die.. Love is a feeling that we can continue to care for and nourish in the soil in which it was conceived even when the plant dies.
This is the ground upon which we will walk during our time together at Hollyhock. We are all students of loss. Loving well means losing well. And so we learn how to be bold and creative in the face of what feels like the forces of destruction. We water the love we choose to live.
There are two Zen stories that come to my mind when I think of what it means to "live the love you thought you lost".
The first tells of a group of students gathered around their Roshi's deathbed weeping. "Why do you weep?' asks the Roshi. "Because you are leaving us" reply his students. "But where could I go?" asks the Roshi in reply.
The second tale begins with the Roshi sobbing inconsolably. One of his students approaches him tentatively and asks:" Roshi, why do you weep? Did you not teach us that death is an illusion? Yes,
(Roshi answers ) and the death of a child is the greatest illusion of them all".
The greatest suffering I have experienced within myself and with others walking the path of life is the feeling that we have "lost" someone or something we need. But as our Zen stories begin to teach us, where does "it" go? To what illusion does the Roshi in the second teaching point?
Ram Dass, one of our teachers once said that the challenge of loving is to continue loving into death. That our love does not need to stop living and growing because there is no longer a physical vessel to receive it.
There are many ways in which we experience and express our love that are independent of physical presence. We think about our loved ones, we imagine where they are, what they are doing, we carry on conversations that often don't ever get shared and through all of this, we nurture the love.
We are inspired by moments we have shared and ideas that stimulate us and values to which we are committed. And none of these require physical presence.In sharing with others the energy of that love, the love grows and continues to contribute to the world around us.
I have "met" so many individuals and been inspired by them AFTER their lives had ended. Because someone continued to carry the generative force of that love out into the world. We need not be so afraid of falling into the pit of denial and delusion that we consign those and that which we love to our past. WE become the vessel for the love that does not die.. Love is a feeling that we can continue to care for and nourish in the soil in which it was conceived even when the plant dies.
This is the ground upon which we will walk during our time together at Hollyhock. We are all students of loss. Loving well means losing well. And so we learn how to be bold and creative in the face of what feels like the forces of destruction. We water the love we choose to live.