From Practice, Path, Goal and Contacts with Source

A memory from the eighties:
After the closing ceremonies of a 7-day intensive meditation retreat (sesshin) at our Zen Mountain Center I was walking alone in a meadow, enjoying the smells of the dry grasses, the sounds of the birds and insects, the textures of the trail underfoot, and the translucent quality of the sunlight. The thought arose that in this moment identifying as a human being would be a severe restriction, artificially wrenching me out of the magnificent sacred complexity/simplicity of the nameless presence. It would be a betrayal of all the life forms I would be making “other”. So many layers of concept had dropped away in those seven days that there was nothing separating me from the living presence of the meadow-earth-universe and all my brother and sister beings, sentient and insentient.