This Ruined House, Episode 291
When we stop walling ourselves off from the suffering of the world - our own, other people's - we give ourselves a chance to meet one another's moonlight beauty in the midst of the inevitable undoing that is part of every human life.
In this week's conversation we wonder together about what it is that makes this possible, and the relationships with one another that can grow as a consequence.
This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
Here’s our source for this week:
This Ruined House
Last year, the poet Jane Hirschfield shared with me that her life broke open when she first read a haiku by Izumi Shikibu. Izumi was a tenth century Japanese poet of the Heian period. This beautiful haiku is about risk, suffering, permeability, tenderness, and courage, the inner integuments of altruism.
Izumi’s haiku:
Although the wind
blows terribly here
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
Jane later wrote, “Wall up your well, and you will stay dry, but also stay moonless.” I believe that we have to let life into our lives, let others into our lives, let the world into our lives, let love into our lives, and also let the night into our lives, and not let the roof over our head, our knowing, our fear, keep out the moonlight. Altruism is exactly this permeability, this wall-less wilderness of the world, this broken roof that lets the moonlight flood our ruined house, our suffering world.
Roshi Joan Halifax
Photo by Jonny Gios on Unsplash