Tsunami Or Gentle Stream

The source of nuisance : noise, speech, excitement… is not a nuisance as such.
It is not the noise that disturbs, nor the excitement of the speech in itself.
Observation teaches that nuisance is scattering, ignorance or the absence of awareness on the part of the person who initiates it.

Case Study : I’m teaching my 7-year-old son to “knock the wood”, as we do in Zen Soto, before sitting sessions.
As I am sitting zazen a few minutes later, he sits down beside me and practices hitting the wood panel – again and again –
The strong blow is very strong…and, under its mallet, the ‘river’ (fading out cascade of sounds) is more like a tsunami than a poetic evocation of a gentle stream.
If he had produced the same level of noise while fighting with his brother and sister, I would have felt more or less intense irritation.
But he stands here in seiza, focused, collected, it doesn’t bother me in the least.

©FJ August 2022 —
Groupe de Pratique
Recueils — Participations
Merci à tous