Returning Home

The moon remains 

Now full…clouded…unseen… 

Still-less. 

Return home empty-handed. 

Still-full. 

“Empty-handed” comes from continued reading in Nishitani:

“In short, Existenz as a ‘coming home with empty hands’ and a birth-sive-unbirth is Existenz on the field of śūnyatā as samsara-sive-nirvana, the field of the birthplace that is self-identical with the unbirthplace. This field embraces all things on their home-ground, where they become manifest as they are in themselves. If the term ‘embrace’ be thought to incline too much toward a spatial sense of unity, we may paraphrase it: that all things are severally what they are in themselves directly implies that they are all collected together. Such is the field of emptiness.” ((Keiji Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, p. 192)

     The coming-home-empty reminds me of the homecoming reception of the “prodigal son” (Luke 15), especially by the elder brother. Taken in the way a dream can be seen in which all participants are characters within the dreamer’s psyche, both brothers (as well as the father) may represent dimensions of the self (as well as other relationships). The quotation from Rumi cited last time (“God has stationed two headmen, heedlessness and heedfulness, so that both worlds will flourish”) containing both the “heedless” as well as the “heedful,” might apply to the two brothers. Might the hostility of the elder who can be seen as suppressed/repressed anger due to being too contained by the external directives (like the root-bound tree too confined in limited space), “safe” from the wilderness where discernment of authentic voice suffers the edge where the true hones against the wasteland, sharpening a sensitivity more than can be developed in the homeland.