Jukai in the Time of Quarantine
by Tetsuhō Christopher Kolon

There is this sangha that includes
stray dogs, fire ants, angels,
and pages from discarded calendars
used to light winter fires at Jikoji.

I am so far away from those
buddhist hearts in California, but
they beat in unison with me on this
softly, thundery day at my house in Santa Fe.

Shohō greets the witnesses, says
“Everyone looks so familiar.”
They chuckle behind homemade masks
and black bandanas, their breath held close,
their presence the only PPE needed
to hold this space safe.

My neighbors, the Apodacas, must hear
the bell ring and ring and ring as Mike
walks from the house to the deck set
under the ash tree surrounded by
burgeoning desert greens.

This zendo is vast. Neighbors sit with us,
as do Towhees and squirrels, sunflowers,
and family members who have passed on.
Incense drifts over the coyote fence, tendrils
of our ancestors’ breath, soon joined by the smells
of barbecue and cigarette smoke and the exhalations
of good people sheltering in place.

Everything on this deck is repurposed,
the rug from the entryway, a bed desk,
a bamboo cabinet, and an old chipped Buddha
made of cement and straw, precious in
his imperfections, just like each of us.

I sewed my rakusu not fifteen feet from
the place I am kneeling now. I stitched this vow
which has taken me fifteen feet to the edge
of beyond, and my preceptor meets
me there, infinitely patient.

I have to open my hands to receive
the precepts given to me, and as
I do I hear the traffic faintly in the distance,
feel the afternoon sun on my back, sense the
shifting of the witnesses and the movement of
the finches as they flit about the backyard.

Jukai in the time of quarantine on a
redwood deck in New Mexico, with
thunderclouds over the Sangre de Cristos,
bottles of hand sanitizer, and a spaciousness
that comes, not from chairs spaced 6 feet apart,
but from the presence of all beings
in all times, who must see this pandemic
as a tiny pebble under Buddha’s foot.