Are you here? Who is here? What is here?

A lobster claw shell washed ashore at Odiorne Point State Park: 12/07/12

In my blog entry 11/22/12, In our bones is the rock itself, I quoted Joan Halifax talking about how Buddhism, Shamanism, and Deep Ecology are all centered on radically questioning who we are in the present moment, stripped bare of societal encumbrances and convention.

Jane Hirshfield, Buddhist and award winning poet, in the quote below talks about the same need for radical questioning, whether one is meditating or writing poetry:

“To enter the ground of concentration, one begins with the mind of not-knowing. Bowing to a meditation cushion or encountering the moment just before the words begin, there is a moment of dwelling in the turning, of attention palpably greeting emptiness.

Sitting down to zazen or addressing the white page, we call ourselves to this question: Are you here? Who is here? What is here? And begin to answer.”•

             * Jane Hirshfield, page 150, from  the anthology,
Beneath a Single Moon, edited by
Kent Johnson and Craig Paulenich
with introduction by Gary Snyder