What the rain teaches us
By MoOn Susan Hagler
We are our biggest barrier to realizing our own true hearts. As human beings we’re endowed with self-consciousness, different from most other beings in this world. This is a double edged sword for us. Consciousness gives us the ability to have an awareness of how our actions affect others and ourselves. With this awareness we can choose to live with intentionality. We can cultivate wholesome ways of being or on the flip side choose to act in detrimental ways. In this fashion, we can create obstacles through our actions that purposefully or unpurposefully result in deep difficulties and suffering for ourselves and others. Or we can live with the intention of cultivating wholesomeness and do our best to not create obstacles needlessly. The latter is what Buddhist teachings are pointing to.
Shinshu Roberts, in the introduction to her book, “Being Time” (p.18) has this to say about nonobstruction:
One day, when I looked outside my window during a rainstorm, I watched rain striking the branches of a tree. I wondered how rain striking a leaf constituted nonobstruction. Watching this dynamic, I realized that nonobstruction is about the practice of dropping the self-oriented mind
The point is not about rain physically pushing or breaking the tree branch; it is that rain does not have the experience of being obstructed and the tree branch does not have the intention of obstructing. Neither is engaged in selfish mind. What happens is just the nature of tree and rain as one interactive entity separates as rain and tree.
Please consider this.
MyoOn (she/her) began Zen practice in 1980 with Katagiri-Roshi and the MZMC sangha. She took time off from formal practice while raising her family in the 1990s, participating in family practice at MZMC and practicing at home. In 1999 she returned to MZMC more formally and was ordained by Tim Burkett in 2003. In 2010 she began practicing with Dokai Georgesen at Hokyoji Zen Practice community. MyoOn received dharma transmission from Dokai in 2018. In 2020, she joined the teacher-ryo at Clouds in Water. MyoOn works with Zen students at all levels from lay to ordained. She can also officiate at marriages and memorial services. She has lived in Minneapolis with her spouse, Duane Peterson since 1986. They have 3 adult children and 3 grandchildren who bring them great joy.