Morning Star, a blog by Living Vow Zen Guiding Teacher, Mike Fieleke, Roshi

Morning Star, a blog by Living Vow Zen Guiding Teacher, Mike Fieleke, Roshi

April 7, 2019

Who Lives, Who Dies?

I sit on the deck behind my house this early spring day. A distant bird's chirp sounds like drops of water falling into a pool. The whoosh of distant traffic travels through the space of my heart. The adjacent fir tree's branches lift and dive in the wind, needles whispering, then settle into stillness.

"Who, who?" asks the mourning dove in a nearby maple tree. Though its branches are bare, I cannot find the source of this descending note.

The sun illuminates streaming gray clouds, turning them silver, warms my face, then tucks behind a bank of dark clouds. 


A dog's bright bark cuts through everything.

Somehow each element is distinct, yet vanishes into this edgeless world where beginnings and endings no longer matter. 


Who lives, who dies, in this eternal vastness? 

"Who? Who?"






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