Wishing. Merry Christmas!!!

Sanjusangen-do is so beautiful at dusk. Please, go there. Please. The sweet golden glow of the evening light stokes the 1001 golden statues. Inside the temple, I pick up a wooden slat. It is one of many that will be burned during a ritual called "Goma". I have to write down a wish and my name. I am just left there with the wood and the pen and my mind is getting mad and crazy with all sorts of wishes and expectations. It is like a merry-go-round of deluded thoughts, very familiar friends arising in sitting Zen. After a while, I come to the conclusion that my only wish is the following line: … OK, you might want to know it but there is nothing personal about it. It is about everybody. All human beings. See, nothing exciting. Just the wish that they could be a father Christmas for everyone, and not just on Christmas day. Everyday. Every Now. And not a father Christmas that brings presents and toys, but rather, a very unsual one that would take everything away. So I write down this wish and sign with my monk’s name and nickname. In the next few days it will be thrown with many others in the furnace with great sutras and solemn rituals. I don’t know if it is going to work… Wanting sex, satisfaction or food is easy, but wishing this is pure madness. It is impossible to fulfil. I cannot reach it ( not with my deluded practice, and by the way, what then the value of my wish?). Nevertheless, one breath, one moment when one can hold that wish and let it go, release it into the unknown… are enough to bring it to life. Goma takes place before it happens.

As I make my way out of the long wooden hall, the lively pond talks to me. Whispering koi. Singing ripples of a waterfall. I go there. I sit there. Loving it. In the water, a huge fire rages. In the water set ablaze, the wish starts to live.