Making these images of Temple Walls is part of my ongoing interest in understanding and expressing how meeting takes place between our self, one another, each thing. Through my 40+ year engagement with Zen practice, as a practitioner and teacher in the tradition of Donsghan and Dogen, I have found that it is essential “to believe in nothing.†Out of the utter clarity of this dynamic, ever changing nothing, each arising may appear as it is, each meeting may take place not limited to our views and preferences. This nothing is born of a not knowing; not knowing does not mean that we do not know anything, but rather that we do not have to be limited by what we know. The contents of each moment as well as the moment itself may have a wild, mysterious, yet to be explored quality, fresh and pure. It is a purity that is not about being free from defilements. Prior to preconceptions, purity is about neither being this way or that. It manifests as a deep intimacy where we are able to see ourselves in each thing, and may allow our meeting others /each thing to be expressed uniquely as us. Each arising, whether new to our experience or not, is intimate. Everything is close ...
