Paradise in Plain Sight (and a give-away)
Come see the garden,” my new online friend said to me, years ago. We had never met, barely knew each other through the ether, and yet here she was, inviting me to her sanctuary.
I was a New Hampshire housewife contemplating a field of granite rocks beyond my kitchen window. She was a west coast Zen priest, the rightful inheritor of a venerable Japanese garden tucked away in a suburb of LA.
What did we have in common? Perhaps it was something as simple as the belief that an ordinary life is a gift to be reckoned with — that folding socks and driving the carpool and washing supper dishes are opportunities for growth and grace. And we also shared this: a desire to fully inhabit the present moment by learning to pay attention to the ground beneath our own two feet.
It doesn’t sound like much — being quiet, noticing where you are, appreciating what you see, realizing that you already possess what you’ve been looking for because you already are everything you seek. Of course, this kind of seeing, this kind of unvarnished intimacy with one’s self, is also the task of a lifetime. Hard work. Simple. Not simple. Endless. Worth it.
So, perhaps it wasn’t a surprise that we first “met” because our books crossed each other’s doorsteps. Somehow mine, The Gift of an Ordinary Day: A Mother’s Memoir, found its way to her. Later, a twitter message from a stranger with a soon-to-be published book blinked onto my screen. Would I read a bound galley?
I would. I did.
And there in the pages of Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life I found a fellow pilgrim – no, more than that – I found a teacher. Here, as if delivered into my life by the universe, was a guide who could gently point my way forward on this endlessly challenging path called Paying Attention.
When you see your life, you bring it to life.” Yes.
Much later, when I finally did walk through Karen Maezen Miller’s front gate, she reached up and plucked an orange from a branch above us, placed it in my hands, and bowed deeply.
You are here for one purpose: to serve. Serving others will fulfill you as nothing else will.” Yes.
And then, our friendship sealed once and for all, I followed her — straight through the front door of the house and out the back, until we were standing in, well, paradise. I am tempted here to describe the garden. But instead, I’m going to let you discover it for yourself.
Sixteen years after giving up a life, a business, a home, an identity, and all certainty, to buy a run-down little house with a decrepit, hundred-year-old, overgrown Japanese garden that no one else cared to tackle, Karen Maezen Miller has written a book about her journey home and the lessons learned in her Zen garden. Of course, her journey is also your journey, and mine.
Each of is walking along a path with no sign of where we’ve been and no knowledge of where we’ll end up. The earth rises to meet the soles of our feet, and out of nowhere comes a gift to support and sustain our awareness, which is our life. Some days the gift is a bite, and some days it’s a banquet. Either way, it’s enough. Can you give yourself totally to the reality of your life and its unknowable outcome? When you do, the questions of where, when, how, and if will no longer trouble you.” Yes.
Last winter while visiting the west coast, I spent a night at Maezen’s house. As I was leaving in the morning, she handed me a manila envelope containing the first pages of Paradise in Plain Sight. It took me a long time to read those few opening chapters. I kept stopping, first to marvel at the almost magical events that comprise this very particular dharma story and then because, wildly different as our lives are, I saw myself on every page.
Have you ever read someone else’s memoir with the uncanny feeling that every paragraph has been written just for you? I am not a Zen practitioner. My garden has no history, let alone a plan or a purpose. I spend as much time wandering as I do sitting. And yet. The truth, delivered with such deep compassion, undid me. I wept and I laughed out loud. (Did I mention that Karen Maezen Miller is as funny as she is wise, as self-deprecating as she is compassionate?) I read more and more slowly. And then I went back and read again, with profound gratitude.
Love is abundant, but if you’re like me you may live a good part of the time thinking otherwise. That’s because love doesn’t always fit your idea of love. It doesn’t feel like you think it should. It doesn’t go your way . . .. Whatever you love will bring you to the final test of love: letting go of what you think love is.” Yes. (And, wow!)
If I were the host of a daytime TV show, I’d call it “The Journey Home.” I’d ask Karen Maezen Miller to be my very first on-the-air guest. And then I’d buy a thousand copies of Paradise in Plain Sight and put one under every single seat in the audience. That’s how certain I am that, no matter what you believe or what path you walk or what spiritual discipline you practice or what kind of row you hoe in your own backyard, this small, eloquent, powerfully provocative book will speak as directly to you as it does to me.
What will you do? First, don’t take my word alone as the truth. My words only point to paradise, the paradise waiting for you to bring to life. No garden looks like any other. Yours may not even be a garden. It may be a cracked sidewalk on a busy street, beside a river of roaring cars, headlights streaming nonstop in a noisy night. Your paradise may be a desert without a bloom, a kitchen without a window, a house now absent of love and laughter, short on the days and seasons you thought would last forever. I can only say this, me too. We are not so different from one another, any of us. There is one mind and we share it. One Way and we walk it. One path and it leads straight on. To see the whole of it you have to keep going and then keep going some more. When you come to the open ground, what will you plant? When will you tend it? How will you leave it?”
What I didn’t know, way back then as I spoke with Maezen on the phone the first time, is that she invites just about everyone to come visit the garden. That’s just how she is, and that’s also how she feels about this sacred bit of earth she’s been called to tend: it is meant to be shared. Not everyone takes her up on the offer, but those who do visit come away changed. “Pay attention,” Maezen advises her guests. “Bring all your attention to what is in front of you. You’ll wake up to the view and realize you’re right at home where you are.”
My advice? If you’re invited to visit a garden, any garden, go. And if you’ve ever sought a path, crossed a threshold, kneeled on the ground, planted a seed, and secretly yearned for life and love and roots to take hold, treat yourself to this beautiful book.
I can’t give away a thousand copies of Paradise in Plain Sight (much as I’d like to). But I do have one copy to share with you. And Karen Maezen Miller will sign it. In the meantime, take a stroll with Karen through her garden here.
To enter to win a signed copy
Just leave a comment below. Answer the question:
What do you tend in the paradise of your own back yard?
Or, you can simply say, “Count me in!”
A winner will be chosen at random before midnight on Friday, May 16.
Want to order Paradise in Plain Sight right now? Click here.
(As an Amazon affiliate, I receive a small commission on books sold through my site, which I use to order books to share here.)
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