“And Yet”…from John Thomas

In the spirit of honoring Jeff’s life, and the grief that we may meet in facing his death, I would like to share a passage from the book “Upside-Down Zen,” by Susan Murphy (pages 40-41).  I think Jeff would have appreciated it.  John T.

Zen dares us never to push any part of life away.  John Tarrant once suggested that you may find the great gate of the Mahayana, the compassionate Middle Way, opening in just two tiny words of a haiku that the Zen poet Issa wrote upon the death of his beloved two-year-old daughter:

 The world of dew

is the world of dew – 

and yet

 The first two lines of the poem bow deeply to the orthodox Buddhist teaching of impermanence and non-attachment: we must accept our place in “the world of dew,” for all evanescent life is born in the morning and gone even before the afternoon – a fact strong enough to break human hearts.  But in a departure from orthodox Buddhism, the final line of the poem – the immensely tiny and powerful “and yet” – bows humbly and unreservedly to that ordinary breaking of human heart.  Issa doesn’t force a choice upon us.  He does not ask that we detach from our agony, grief, and longing but leaves us considering something far more challenging, something that transforms the notion of “clinging” from the inside out.

 “And yet,” he says, we have no choice if we are truly alive but to hold both love and grief together with the profound emptiness of all form in our own heart and bones.  If we can do that – with all the rigor and courage it undoubtedly requires – then we may deeply realize as the great fact of our sacred, mortal bodies that this limited human life and this boundless eternity are not two.  Are even less than one.  “This very place is the Lotus Land, this very body, the Buddha,” a famous Zen poem declares.  For the Zen path of practice runs right through the fertile ground of the great middle and nothing falls outside of that.

So when you are grieving, grieve just as if your life depends on it.  It does.  When you are grieving, lose your self in grief and let it open you beyond yourself into the immensity that is beyond the self and no-self 

Just sobbing.  Just laughing.  Not an inch off from your unrepeatable life.  And that is how to praise it.   

 

From Patrice Sauve

It is sad news to hear about Jeff's passing. It is also arising for me as a practice opportunity to accept what is, to accept the natural cycle of death and that it's not "bad."

 

Jeff truly was a remarkable human and spirit who touched so many of us deeply. The main picture you posted is so perfect of how I saw him--that nook in his San Fran place was one of his favorites. Even the clothes he's wearing are exactly "Jeff" in physical form.

 

I heard he seemed to shine more brightly in the final months. My deepest wish since I found out about his cancer was that he wouldn't suffer too much but would transcend that suffering through "being" his true nature of awareness. It sounds like his dying process was embraced with acceptance, noticing and allowing what is. And I'm sure, as a human, he experienced some resistance to it as well. It reminds me of one of my favorite messages from Nirmala, one of Jeff's most loved teachers, I hold so dear (there is no problem with any difficulty or even with the resistance to it. A big "yes" can be present to it all.) Jeff was a spiritual warrior who could really take this on and be a living example of it.

 

This was the nature of most of our conversations. We also spent many hours reminding each other and laughing about how we're not really "me." I'm sure as he was embracing the experience of death, he was reminded and comforted by knowing that he was not "Jeff," "me," the physical body, the personality, etc.

 

I'm tempted to feel sad that I didn't know about this when he passed or that I wasn't a part of his dying process. I know this is selfish and yet it's a natural human response for the type of relationship he and I had. I call on my understanding to accept it as it was/is. Though I was a significant part of his life experience for just a short period, this was apparently exactly as it was meant to be. Jeff and I discussed and expressed our sadness the last time we talked in the fall, 2008, that we couldn't continue to be as close as we were for various reasons.

 

It's funny that it all turned out exactly as it was meant to--as life does!!! It was my 50th birthday on Sat, Apr 18. To find out about Jeff's death on the 19th seemed to cap my weekend perfectly. It challenges me to recommit to being fully alive, to a rebirth of soulfulness and living from my true nature and to transcending my stuck/self-judging parts that have been present. Over the winter months, partly influenced by knowing Jeff was probably dying, I went in pretty deep into mortality issues. I grieved the end of my "youth," and felt anger, resentment and depression that I wasn't where I thought I'd be at 50. I felt hopeless about a bright future, that I'd better be more realistic than my idealistic first half of the century. In the midst of all this, I was always comforted by the non-dualistic principles and meditations that were the basis of Jeff's and my relationship. I intertwined these to heal my emotions and personality sorrows. In honor of his life and death, I'm reminded that I now carry the torch to have compassion for and heal that line of "sorrowful" thinking, come to peace with it and embrace the life I have as it is.

 

Thanks for your heartful listening to my writings.

 

Patrice Sauve (in Michigan)

After The Silence

It's been two weeks since the celebration and again, I’m amazed at the tricky spaciousness of time that has unfolded  since Jeff's death. That afternoon at the cultural center and evening at the restaurant seems like months ago, yet each interaction and face is etched in my mind. It was a great gathering of friends, many who have never met each other, met each other once or twice before; but afterwards, i'd surely say that we’re all friends of jeff now like Marjorie suggests in her comment on the blog.

      I appreciate everyone's participation at the memorial. I believe we still have a lot to share with each other. Jeff's death is both a hole in our lives and an entrance to another world; for we each must face our loss, but also the knowledge that we too will leave this earth like our dear brother has just done. 

     Many times during his illness as I was leaving, jeff and I would take a few moments to revel in the mystery of death. Even though his appeared obviously more certain and close, we had to admit, one never knew, and I could get wiped out on the way home. Even though jeff seemed more in on it; in the end he faced the same mystery we all do. I’d leave telling him that he was simply the first of our friends to be voyaging out into the unknown beyond the form.

     For me now, jeff is becoming more absent and more present simultaneously; disappearing further into the emptiness and the fullness. The particular identity is preserved as pictures in the mind now and events the memory says occured, while the real flavor of jeff, has the same sweet fragrance as truth, and that will always be one with everything else that is one.

     There is no way to spiritualize or trivialize the effect jeff had on many of our lives. He was just jeff; ;just a beautiful wave of love washing up 0n our shores. Was the man perfect? Did he not have flaws! Of course, he did, he possessed a lifetime of human imperfections, yet he constantly rose above them to shed the light of love on those he encountered.

     Jeff’s great gift to us was his love of connection, communion, chatter, laughing, talking, celebrating, enjoying; and now it's up to each of us to share in that family tradition.

    No one ever really knows what disappears into nothingness. 

          —Love,  Joe

     

More Pics of Jeff from Leolani

Here are some more pics of Jeff In Bali

Jeff In Bali

Here are some pictures of Jeff In Bali... I was looking through a large stack of photos and these were some that I deeply admired. There wasn’t always time to get to know Jeff  (busy little bee that he was) but there was time enough for him to listen, advise, and guide me, and with that care and attention, I eventually discovered my true self. I will always be forever thankful, grateful and blown away by the amount I learned in a relatively short amount of time. thnx Jeffe!!

    - With deep love and affection to all, Leolani 

From Good Morrow by John Donne

...My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears,

And true plain hearts do in the faces rest;

Where can we find two better hemispheres,

Without sharp north, without declining west?

Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or thou and I.

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.

- Posted by Karen Young 

The Celebration of Jeff

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make sense. 

-Rumi

A Celebration in loving memory of 

Robert Jeffery Wolcott

Pacific Cultural Center  

Saturday, January 31, 2009 3:00 pm - 6:00 pm

1307 Seabright Avenue, Santa Cruz, California 95062

Corner of Seabright and Broadway