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The Daily Dharma – September 9, 2021

Mother and Child Painting by Nazar Haidri

Continuing from When you Greet Me I Bow . . .

It is a wonderful and a necessary thing to hold your child next to your cheek or heart, to lie down with her at bedtime, kiss good night, perhaps fall asleep together. Such a thing is wonderful for parent, wonderful for child, this big feeling of peaceful security of belonging and transcendent warmth. A person can spend a lifetime longing to return to this feeling. In the same way, it is utterly relieving and necessary to fall into the sexual embrace with the beloved, to enter each other with warmth and delight and finally, peaceful release. It takes enormous trust to give yourself in this way with nothing held back. It’s a form of liberation. There’s no sense of control, reserve, or separateness. There’s no one there who could stand aloof.

Norman Fischer
from When You Greet Me I Bow; Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen
Chapter: Falling in Love

To be continued . . .