CM Brown

Mountain Cloud Zendo Sitting on the ground.The howl of the coyotes.No thing. No sitting. Zazen At the Zen Center in Sante Fewe sit in silence, eating our breakfastof oatmeal and fruit. The shapes of tables,the shapes of eyes and arms,the shapes of the chevronscarved into the backsof the wooden chairs,the shapes of straw,and the shapes of tiny cracksin the adobe walls are stilland always listening. After the last of the oatmeal disappearsI walk into the kitchenwith my empty bowland place it in the sink. I too am a shape.I change as I move.I am a shape that shifts.I pass into another blue morningthat flows over the tops of the trees.The stars and the half moongradually fade into blazing desert lightas this body, that I mistakenlycall “me,” sits down on the black cushion. I have no ambition.The shadows of the pinon treesflow along the brown, pine needleson the desert’s shifting floor. Shadows have no ambition.I listen as the silence returns.Always a returning; a body,a thought, a cough, a silence. I’ll sleep in the desert tonightand listen to the coyotes howl and thedeep, round bell on the Zendo floorcalling us home again;home to the shape of the space thathas never left, nor has it ever arrived. Can you everarrive whereyou already are? CM Brown is a poet, painter, and Integral Yoga and Meditation teacher, practicing yoga and meditation for more than twenty years. He is the author of two books of essays on meditation, Let Go and Live and, The Beautiful You. CM Brown lives in Louisville, Colorado (near Boulder, CO) and is a longtime practitioner of Zen Buddhism.