LIFE IS MUJO and a boy tying shoes

いのち無常
LIFE IS MUJO

Toda Bookstore is on Nekkan Road in Kannami. There's an elevated highway and a second Nekkan frontage road that runs parallel to it now. Construction on that just wrapped up a few years ago. The area looked a bit different back in 1998 but the big Toda Books sign is the same as I found it one weekend around my fourth or fifth week in Kannami, Japan.  I peddled my mamacheri (girly frame bike) down there hoping like heck they had books in English. I'd done read the few I brought with me a few times over and was tired of Japanese TV.  As luck would have it there was one small spinning rack with all of a couple dozen English books on it near the register. There I found a copy of James Clavell's SHOGUN and man what a great read that was.  I blew through it and was back in Toda Bookstore the next weekend. Nothing else on the little spinner rack looked all that great so I searched the aisles of Japanese books, stopping to inspect each and every one with English on the cover. Nothing! English is decoration, the text is all Japanese. Another aisle. Nothing. Another. Still nothing. Back wall. More nothing. In the last aisle there was a square book with orange border that I could actually read and understand the Japanese on the cover of. I'd self taught myself hiragana syllabary by then. (48 phonetic symbols that accompany kanji). The book was this

To my great amazement I saw English translation when I opened it.
I opened to a page near the front of the book and saw

LIFE IS MUJO

Then read

Here and now is all that truly exists
The future cannot be touched
And the past is already gone
Here and now
The life inside you
The life inside me

Long ago, Wise men told us that strictly speaking,
Using a word for the concept of "now" is an anomaly.
You see, by the time you have pronounced the "ow",
The "n" sound has already become part of the past.

At any point in time,
There is no situation which remains exactly the same,
Time and space never rest.
This is the concept known as Mujo.
It is true for all things.
There is nothing that does not constantly change,
If only in the slightest way.

Mujo, therefore the infant grows and matures.
Mujo, therefore the bud becomes a blooming flower.

And Mujo, therefore one can never guarantee, but only imagine 
What tomorrow will bring.

Wow!
I read it again. And again. And again.
I read the next poem and the next. I loved them all

But that first. Life is Mujo. Biggest Wow.

I bought it. I studied the Japanese. I memorized the English. I still have it on my shelf here. It was one of the first lessons in a concept, or way of thinking perhaps, that's long since become engraved on my soul. This is it. The trick is finding it here. I still suck at it, but have caught glimpses

Friday morning.  It came unexpectedly while standing in the entryway with the younger boy as he got ready to head off to school. Him sitting on the step tying his shoe, I standing at the door taking it all in. First thought was "This is a good moment, watching the boy fumble with his shoe laces. This is fleeting. Be present!" Thinking as much got me to watch a little more keenly as his nimble young fingers worked the laces. We spoke as he tied. He failed and tied again. Dad and son, son and dad. Perfect moment. The loop was too big. He backed up and worked the laces again.
"Make a smaller ghost and lasso it from the top".
I gave pointers.
He tried to pull on the second shoe without untying.  Too tight. Untie and work more laces.  Velcro strapped shoes were all he knew till last year; tying's still a task he must put some thought into.  I stood and watched with mind still fresh in first waking hour of the day. It hit me. What is "It" I still don't know. Call it what you will, I go with God but no matter the term it's metaphor pointing past something, or capital "S" Something, unspeakable. It's that indescribable feeling. It's awareness. It's always been fleetingly for me, yet present long enough to catch glimpses. I'm fully present. Out of soul or out of mind, or maybe just out of thin air or even straight from his soul to mine. Whence it came I do not know, but it was. It is. What it is I know even less. There's just one thing of which I have some certainty about it.

 It only knows the Now. 

Still I never know when or where it's gonna hit.
A boy tying his shoe.
Me watching and sending him off to school with a high five and "Have a good day"
I stood at the door and watched him walk down the road till he turned the corner and faded out of view. Awake in the moment.
It's surreal. Maybe it's heaven?
Who's to say heaven's not in the Here and Now?
 So what if there are no fluffy clouds. No halos. No St. Peter at pearly gates. Heck I wouldn't know what to do with that stuff anyhow.  I'll leave that heaven to those better fit for it.
I'm good with a boy fumbling with his shoe laces before heading off to school.