at Bodi Zendo, Tamil Nadu, India 24/08/2016

This time-beaten house
This building of bones
Me…
I rise in the dark of the morning for zazen...
Rise and am grateful for these solid posts, these beams upholding…
Bones that are bearing the load still.
This flesh, my companion, this vessel, this body of me so travelled…
Has carried my weight across such distances…
Me, me this sagging, complaining bag,
Is grateful for the uprightness as I fold into a decrepit pose…
And dissolve into breath.
And ho!
The divine embrace welcomes me into the everlasting…
Folds me into the unformed…
I enter into the breadth of light, music, nectar.
Ah! awareness floats in the enthusiasm that is life.
All the tired busy-ness that is Buddhism
Is left to lie like the confinement of a coat behind on the floor.

Crow participated in a weeklong zazen intensive. Each day he wrote of his experience.