Sieve

“Realize the light that runs through all things. Realize this wherever you are and whatever you are doing, so that meditation becomes seamless and you can’t tell the difference between meditation and anything else that’s happening in your life. It’s not hard. Fill a sieve with water.” Then the teacher left.

They followed with these instructions as best they could, different people being affected in different ways. Their lives changed and they were happier and less troubled by their thoughts, more open to what came to them. But there was one woman who was deeply touched by the image of the sieve and of the fairy tale task of filling it with water, and the story wouldn’t leave her.

So she traveled the day’s journey to see the teacher, arrived in the afternoon and told her story. The teacher said, “Well, you can stay the night and in the morning we’ll look into this.’” So she spent the night in the guest house and the next morning, the teacher said “Come with me,” and they went for a walk. On the way they made a detour through the kitchen where the teacher picked up a sieve. The house was by the sea and they went down to the beach; it was a calm morning, small waves ran up on the grey gravel and fell back. Without speaking, the teacher handed her the sieve. She was excited, as if something were trying to be born. Impulsively, she knelt down and scooped the cold water with her hand into the sieve. She was happy doing this and the bottom of the sieve glistened, but she was confused.

She stood up and passed the sieve back. The teacher took the sieve and took a breath and then threw it out far out into the sea where it rested for a while and sank. At that moment her heart opened, she wept, and an awakening came over her.”

“Each life is complete but sometimes it’s hard to let it be so. It is the strangest, most difficult truth that life gives us what it gives us without regard for our intentions, our kindness, or our devotion. We can accompany each other but there is no protection: we are always sinking into the ocean, and though our schemes are part of life they don’t protect us from it. And in the midst of this nakedness we can be at home, we have no other home...

Whatever appears, it is ours, it’s for us and if we say “No” to one part of life that “No” gradually seeps into everything. There is no life without holes; even if we try to fill the sieve with our hands, the starlight, the wind, and the sea pour through us…"

‘The sieve is in the sky now, and filled with the stars.’

~ John Tarrant, Zenosaurus