St. Nadie in Winter. Terrance Keenan

      

      St. Nadie

       in Winter

      St Nadie

       in Winter

      Zen Encounters

       with Loneliness

      by

       Terrance Keenan

      Journey Editions

       Boston • Tokyo • Singapore

      First published in 2001 by Journey Editions, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd., with editorial offices at 364 Innovation Drive, North Clarendon, VT 05759 U.S.A.

      Copyright © 2001 Terrance Keenan

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from Journey Editions.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Keenan, Terrance, 1947-

       St. Nadie in winter: Zen encounters with loneliness / by Terrance Keenan.

       p. cm.

       ISBN 1-58290-049-3 (hardcover); ISBN 978-1-4629-1817-1 (ebook)

       1. Keenan, Terrance, 1947- 2. Priests, Zen--United States--Biography. 3. Librarians--United States--Biography. 4. Spiritual biography--United States. I. Title.

      BQ968.K44 A3 2001

       294.3’092--dc21

       [B]

      00-060269

      Distributed by

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      First Edition

       06 05 04 03 02 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

      Design by Dutton & Sherman

       Jacket Photograph by Holly Schabowski

       Printed in the United States of America

      For my mother,

       Anne Patricia Lyons Keenan

      Acknowledgments

      Titles for poems in Part One are lines from an essay by Alistair Reid on the death of his father.

      Titles for poems in Part Two, which accompany selections from The Twenty-One Lullabies of St. Nadie, are from Blake’s Proverbs of Hell.

      Titles for poems in Part Three are from the Venerable Eido Shimano Roshi’s Five Ways To Live Happily.

      The Cambios poems were first published in 1979 in my book by that tide by the Zephyr Press.

      The drawings accompanying each part are by the author and are done with a hawk wing feather and India ink.

      I wish to thank my editor, Jan Johnson, whose idea this book was, for her good faith and trust; Gary Hill for his invaluable and blunt critique; my wife, Jane, for her meticulous reading and loving support; my son, Conor, for his moral and technical support; and my daughter, Bryna, for her open-hearted understanding.

      My deep gratitude goes also to my teachers, the Venerable Eido Shimano Roshi and the Venerable Roko Ni Osho Sherry Chayat, for permission to quote from their book, Endless Vow: The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa; for their rigorous support of my practice; and for their profound teaching. May true Dharma continue.

      Contents

       Introduction

       The Last Nostalgia

       Part One Death of the Fathers

       The End of the Rational Ideal

       The End of Perfection

       The End of Linear Certainties

       Part Two The Orphaned Dark

       Dissolving the Fictions

       Talking to God

       Hell Is Being without Space

       Habit of Being

       Giving Up Wisdom

       The Thief in the Infinity of Childhood

       No Blame

       Be Kind

       Love Everything

       Crossing the River

       Part Three Ways to Live Happily

       The Most Important Thing in Life

       Giving Up Giving Up

       Making a Difference

       The Mirror of St. Nadie

       Trusting

       Part Four A Boy Running in the Wind

       The Merciful Avatar

       Wild Apples, Crows in the Rain

       The Canticle of Ecstasy

       Part Five The Three Infinities

       Infinite Gratitude to the Past

       Infinite Service to the Present