The mind is restless, unsteady,
hard to guard, hard to control.
The wise one makes it straight,
like a fletcher straightens an arrow.

How good it is to rein the mind
Which is unruly, capricious, rushing wherever it pleases.
The mind so harnessed will bring one happiness.

Your worst enemy cannot harm you
as much as your unguarded thoughts.
A well-directed mind creates more happiness
Than even the loving actions of your parents.
- Shakyamuni Buddha

The Great Sage of India speaks the truth here (he always does). During last night's Zen Service, my mind raced through all manners of self-destructive and self-limiting thoughts, even as I was sitting at the attendants' seat behind the drum and gong. At the end of the period, I struck the gong, bowed to the alter, and turned to face the sangha, feeling unworthy to be standing there.

Until the first question was asked, and all the negativity flowed out of my body as compassion for the one asking replaced it. The impermanence of our mental states, the capriciousness of our mind, could not have been more apparent to me than at that moment.

We create our own heavens and we create our own hells, and we don't even realize that we're doing it.

The goose that was sitting on her eggs on the artificial island outside my office building is gone, and I haven't seen her parading little goslings around, either. Perhaps her eggs cracked, their shells rendered too thin from pesticides and poisons in the environment, or perhaps she lost a late-night battle to a opossum. I'll never know - she didn't leave a note.

In the afternoon, I heard the distinct honking of Canadian geese, and saw two fly past my third story window (through the trees and past the blue jay nest, which is still doing quite well, thank you). They made a second pass before moving on. It was probably her and her mate, trying to decide what to do next (the ultimate empty nest syndrome): Continue on with their migration to Canada? Try to start a new batch of eggs? Go back to Mexico? Or just kill a little time here in The ATL?

About this time last year, when I was in San Francisco, I saw a sign with the ancient Zen proverb, "The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection on the lake, for the water has no mind to receive their image." Which reminds me that the geese are not thinking any of these thoughts, they are not grieving, they are not killing time.

They're just being.