More on Fievel

Back to "Somewhere Out There." This time the original: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jhCP40PpW0k

This little mouse is all of us yearning for connection (on any level- human, divine), feeling small, feeling lost, possibly doomed, but yet still able to express hope in a tiny voice. It seems beyond silly to be so touched by this image, like the image I saw a while back of the tiger nursing little piglets (an earlier post).

Silly, but inevitable if I can feel my emotions; necessary, if I am to practice any kind of compassion in the world. I do not mean the kind of "compassion" one expresses with intellectual or political activity. I mean face-to-face encounter such as I experienced in the little church on Hawaii. It is compassion that does not result in analysis or conclusions, just presence.

In zazen, Roshi encourages me to "be there" with whatever state is occurring, not necessarily for the purpose of developing compassion (though that is a possible outcome), but just to learn to sit alongside my various states of mind without having the need to waste energy avoiding them.

I felt I lacked compassion in my drugged state. Thus, this medication issue is a spiritual one. I also feel I had a wake-up call, a reminder, of something missing in my life not just because of medication, but also for lack of a spiritual community. These are things I will be sitting with in my upcoming four day zazen, or possibly laying with, as the case may be.