In "Everything Is Going To Be All Right," Derek Mahon has written a life-affirming poem that has flown from the hand unbidden. The title of my blog is buried in the line ... the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The poem's title recalls for me a time in 1995 when my Zen teacher Maezumi Roshi gathered some of us at Green Gulch Farm for a joint meeting with the Japanese Soto Sect. A main point of contention was that the schedule devised by the Japanese did not allow for open dialogue, and we felt strongly that open communication needed to begin now! A few of us were talking about this when Tetsugen (now Bernie) said, "You know, it'll be kekko desu again" -- the Japanese expression for "everything is fine" (especially when it isn't).
As we shared past incidents of kekko desu, Maezumi Roshi appeared, having just returned from a meeting with the Soto representatives. He walked over to us with his hands extended palms facing downward gesturing as though holding down the lid, and said, "Everything is fine, everything is fine." We all burst out laughing, Roshi too. Tetsugen said, "No, Roshi, everything is not fine." The open discussions began that morning. In the afternoon, Tetsugen said to me, "After thirty years of saying kekko desu, I no longer feel like I have to say it anymore."
For the Irish poet Mahon to say everything is going to be all right is an amazing declaration in the midst of the cold facts of life: there will be dying, there will be dying, but there is no need to go into that.
I myself prefer "everything is as it is" and the all-rightness of it is entirely up to me.
