By Sister Chan Tu Nghiem (also known as Sister Eleni)
Entering the field, The path of mindfulness is before me. Making mindful steps In the forest of life, I feel Thay is walking beside me. Entering the field, The path of kindness is before me. Smiling at life, The good and the bad, All acceptance, (1) It’s the ancient wisdom. Entering the field, The path of peace is before me. Mind calm, Heart at peace. Coming and going in freedom.
The field can be any field we see in daily life.
A field of sunfowers glowing in the warmth of summer, a field of dafodils nodding in the fresh spring breeze in Upper Hamlet. But it can also be understood as our mind. Thay wrote,
“The mind is a field in which all seeds are sown.”
By recognizing what seeds lie sleeping in the depths of our Store Consciousness, the field of our Alaya Consciousness, we can choose what seeds to water, what path to follow and how to practice on this path.
This is how Thay lived his life so mindfully, so beautifully as the last verse in this poem hopes to convey.
(1) All acceptance was described by a Zen master as the “key to the gateless gate”
