The Moon in a Dewdrop

If you don’t yet have Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening, go get it.  (Amazon on sale $10.80)

“A true treasure chest of practices, relections, and poetry to remember the spendor, beauty, and magnitude of the human spirit.”  (Angeles Arrien, Ph.D., cultural antrhopologist author of The Four-Fold Way and Signs of Life)

July 11 – The Moon and the Dewdrop

Enlightenment is like the moon reflected in a dewdrop on a blade of grass.  The moon does not get wet, nor is the drop of water broken…

And the whole moon and entire sky are relected in even one drop of water.  — Dogen

The mystery – in love, in work, in any moment of oneness – is that, like the dewdrop and the moon, we are briefly ourselves and everything at once.  Our essential nature is not changed, only enhanced. 

The lovers and friends that have helped me stay alive and be more fully alive have come into my life like Dogen’s moon – all of their love, as big as the sky, fills my heart and yet I do not become them, but only more fully myself. — Mark Nepo

While researching this passage from Nepo’s book, I learned that Dogen was a provacative and influential Zen Philosopher who was instrumental in translating and advocating ancient texts.  I think he’s cool.

I am choosing to see the most influential people in my life as Dogen’s moon – the people through which I become more fully me.  And because of that I will teach Moon Salutation today during my lunchtime class to  honor them:

Beth, Dawn, Kathleen (B. and N.), Jennifer, Mike, Megan, Tighe, and Jane are but a few of my Dogen’s moons.  I love you all!

And Lord, please let me be someone’s Dogen’s moon.

With whom are you mostly fully yourself?

THAT, friends – is your Dogen’s moon.