As I mature (read aging and losing my hair), my love of simplicity continues. I am drawn to the simple, plain, old, and well used, and as an artist I am deeply satisfied with the wabi sabi aesthetic of rusted buckets, dilapidated barns, tractors rusting in fields, all that is fading and evocative of unknown past utility. Rikyu's love of beauty and the understanding that one flower is all flowers ended up in his samurai style execution, pity the emperor who didn't understand that the whole universe manifests in each thing.
Simplicity of mind is truly joyful, and for me the source of poetry. A clear single thought! A vivid impression that forms a string of vowels and consonants! The mind is complex, emotions the same. Modern life measures itself in nanoseconds and light years and the geopolitics of interdependent ecosystems. The grind has us tossing and turning at night. How do we find simplicity today, in the moment, right now!
In Zazen there is a brief moment between in and out breathing, a resting place at the very bottom of things, the abode of silence and not-knowing, the simplicity of essential being, presence without a thought, flowing calm mind that is a river of peace, the blissful warm bath of the still center of things. Whitman, in his poem 'When I heard the leaned astronomer', waked out of the science class and all the explanations to stare in silent wonder at the stars. On the path of living and dying, simplicity is a way through the eye of the needle.
A single cherry
left on the bush,
Fall turning to Winter
Simplicity
