About a robbery

The thief, left it behind:
The moon
at the window.

Every single day is a humbling experience that I don't even know what I don't know.  It is not just me though.  How could one possibly know it all anyway.  The very fact that we couldn't possibly know it all should automatically make every one of us humble to the core.  Yet, humble we are not!

Consider the verse at the beginning of this post.

The thief, left it behind:
The moon
at the window.

Even by itself, the verse is lovely.  It lets us imagine a scenario in which a person has been robbed of everything owned.  But, the moon viewed through the window is so priceless that it makes up for everything that the thief robbed.

The backstory, and the verse itself, I read in this essay:

According to traditional lore, the Japanese Zen master and poet Ryokan Taigu, who lived from 1758 to 1831, was a happy hermit. He trained in a monastery for 10 years, then rejected conventional religion. He went on to live a simple life, meditating, writing poetry, occasionally drinking sake with rural farmers, and sharing his modest meals with the birds and beasts.
He didn’t have much to steal. But one night, a thief came to Ryokan’s spare mountain hut looking for treasure. The criminal found nothing of value and was disappointed, which saddened the Zen master. It’s said that the poet pressed his clothes—or his blanket, depending on which account you read—upon the thief, saying, “You’ve come such a long way to see me, please accept this gift.”
The stunned thief took the poet’s clothing. But he didn’t take anything that mattered to the Zen master, who reportedly spent the rest of the evening naked, gazing at the moon in the sky—a jewel that no one could steal, yet everyone can enjoy. Ryokan was still a bit sad, as he hadn’t been able to give the thief this most valuable of treasures. In his diary, the Zen master penned a now-famous poem

Picture in your mind a naked Zen monk writing that verse, and the verse and the story becoming a masterclass moment in the pursuit of happiness!

The story is told by Zen teachers to remind students that most people are attached to things that don’t really matter, while missing the marvels that abound in the natural world.

Indeed!

The thief left it behind!

When out walking by the river, or at the coast, or even in our backyard, I feel sometimes overwhelmed by the wonders all around me.  The other day, two white butterflies flitted around in the garden.  One moment by a flower and the next somewhere in the bushes and then reappearing from nowhere.  I now realize that the thief left them behind!

There are great riches everywhere.  I often blog about some of them that I see.  And often complain that people are missing out on the riches when they are yakking on the phone as they walk by the river and oblivious to the osprey suddenly diving towards the river, the mama duck and the ducklings floating by, the heron flying, and the geese obnoxiously honking.  Whatever could be more valuable to talk about than these riches that the thief left behind?

The other day, as we started walking back--after all, it is miles to go before we sleep--I passed a young woman who was clearly out there with her guy.  He was a few feet away holding their puppy by the water.  I told her, "you should check out the moon."  Where she was seated, the moon was completely blocked out by the trees.  I smiled and kept walking.

I had walked a mere couple of steps when I heard a bunch of Spanish words from her in which all I recognized was one word: luna.  My guess is that she wanted her guy to confirm that there was something special about the luna.

I hope her guy asked her to go where he was standing with the puppy in order to look at the moon.  And, I hope that she too enjoyed what the thief left behind.  

What a treasure this Zen verse and story that the thief made possible!