Everyone is homeless

Everyone is homeless

“Everyone is homeless. It is a mistake if you think that you have a fixed home.”
— Kodo Sawaki, Homeless Kodo.

I remember listening to Roshi Joan Halifax, Abbot of Upaya Zen Centre, speaking one Rohatsu Sesshin, about the moment she discovered that she needed nothing, after spending 72 hours outdoors without food, water or shelter, on a retreat. Her realisation of this needing nothing was beautiful.

The Buddha gave up his home, to walk the earth with his disciples, making each step their home. I neither own, nor rent a home.

I go where I am needed, where I can serve. Wherever I am called to, I show up. Nomadic since 2007, this is how it has been. It may remain so for longer, or it may not. I hold to neither.

Maybe you think you have a home, that you own it?

But we never really own anything, we just think we do.

How could we? When we get down to the truth of who we really are, we are formless.

How could this formless one have a home?

“Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.” 
— Jesus Christ, Matthew 8:20

At the time he spoke these words, Jesus was completely free from earthly ties, living as an itinerant preacher.

We are all homeless.

This is the tradition of the homeless monk, found not only in Zen, but in other forms of Buddhism, and Christianity, and no doubt many other traditions, wherever monks are found. 

We must give up, let go, surrender, in order to find that we are more than that which we hold in our hand. Only in an empty hand, will the bird of paradise land.

This doesn't mean we all have to physically give up these things, but instead, we have to let go of our idea that we need them, or that we need to be without them.