into the Mystic...

once again, Killing the Buddha throws up another great reflection from someone struggling with and working through their own faith (and doubt, as the case may be). it came at just the right time, as i'm currently making my way through Kempis' much loved Imitation of Christ.

i'm not going to attempt to retell what Prothero says, such a personal reflection deserves to be left to speak for itself. one thing that struck me though is the following -

Apparently such faith as I have resides in visible rather than invisible things—in blackberry bushes and snowstorms and the turn of a hip. When I find myself with a woman I love, what I love is the woman. And when I find myself in a place like the Province Lands, what I love is the place—the sand shifting underfoot, the shooting stars overhead, and the endless rhythm of waves that announce their arrival on shore just before giving themselves up forever.

...it made me think back to my own  earlier reflections about nature, sunyata and the nembutsu. i can sympathise with Prothero's friend who says with a honest conviction in her heart when looking out over the Cape Cod landscape "God is here". of course, i can't know what her conception of this God is precisely but i have felt, at times, a huge pull to attribute divine workings to the beauty of a sunrise, autumn's colours, the intricacy of a spiderweb...

i also sympathise with Prothero's faith, which resides in visible rather than invisible things. letting the beauty of form speak purely for itself, deviod of anything we may yearn to attribute to it. but further, i am left feeling that what appears to our senses is not the whole picture. my faith then, resides in the intricate working of interdependence - the sunlight which nourishes the earth and causes it to bloom, the spider from whence the web came, the rain which quenches, the wind which carries... and our minds can't grasp the entirety, how vast or intricate this network of interdependence is because it has no Alpha or Omega. it is endless compassion, not apart from, but neither residing within phenomena, simply the unfolding of phenomena itself.

namu amida butsu