Tell them, “Love is all that matters.”

(Blanche Hartman is a Zen priest at the SF Zen Center. Our AZC temple was named after her, and she transmitted the two head teachers that have been/is at AZC. Last night we wrote about her statement, “… love is all that matters.”)

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Love is all that matters.
Love as vast as the sky of the Big Bend,
The ache in my chest
The pouring out of grief
Sweet warmth of family laughter.
A place to go to. A place I carry with me.

—Sally Mayo Daverse

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A teaching so broad, so deep,

so radical, the messenger is often

killed and those who do hear

find little direction in it, only

recognising it in the 

rear view mirror.

—Jeffery Taylor

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I imagine walking up to this shy and lonely teenager and telling her love is all that matters. I imagine snapping this photograph and telling her that one day, she’ll be forty something, and sit looking at it and be astonished by her newness, by all she cannot feel and see and know—of her own loveliness, of the inherent goodness of others, of—. I imagine her stopping me, waving me away, and turning over sleepily in the sun.

Of course she would, wise child that she is. “Love is all that matters” is not something that can be conveyed. Not really.

It can only be lived and known.

We can only dive deeply into life, get caught up in it and throw dirt, be good and kind and obnoxious and arrogant. We can only be addicted to our own cleverness and find ourselves deeply wrong, over and over again. We can only gain and lose sanity and husbands and lovers and jobs and whatever it is we most treasure. We can only be people who meditate daily in an effort to go beyond and people who don’t give a shit and go shopping. We can only get caught up in all that is large and lofty and all that is small and petty and relish every moment. We can only do this.

What I mean is that we can only trudge in the direction of “Love is all that matters,” one painful or ecstatic or lonely breath at a time.

Love is all that matters, yes.

And it all matters: all the pain and disconnection; all the meanness and longing; all the excitement of new touch, the hearts broken from rejection and misunderstanding, the bumping up against each other’s hurts and making a terrible mess and believing we will never, ever be loved again.

All the years of feeling ourselves utterly unworthy must be known so we can know something else entirely.

Everything that is, all that arrives, has to matter and burn away before love can be all that matters.

That is what is so, and it is good. It is life. It matters. It all matters.

—Emma Skogstad

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“Tell them Love is all that matters”

Love is all that matters.
How easy it is for other objects to obscure this truth, to distance the idea and its soothing influence.
Am I worthy of the Love? What are they getting in return?
Relationships often seemed like transactions, balances of goods and services. I always wanted to make sure I wasn't a burden. It was, and is, my biggest fear.

You see, about four years ago, I started recovery from anorexia. I took a Leave from college, stayed home, got better. Doctor visits, therapist sessions, creative art outlets . . . my parents picked up the tab. No questions. Not a bat of an eye.
I struggled, hugely, with self-worth. Often, I'd want to talk about it, exercise the words, see how they felt and sounded out of my head. Dad would stand there with me, in the same room, but planets away. Baby, how come you don't see what we all see? All that you are, you've done, you're capable of? It saddened and frustrated him, I could see that. And he learned over time that he wasn't needed to "fix" or answer anything--that just being in that room, stretching across planets to rub my back and listen . . . that was enough.

I woke up the next morning to a text from Dad:
“Go outside.
Look as far as you can in the sky to your right. Now to the left.
That's how much I love you.”

I returned to school. Part of my “maintenance program” while back was that I would spend as much as I needed on food—there would never be a question. Get what you need to get. Spend what you need to spend, they would say. One evening, I sat in the vacant conference room at college with Dad on the line. He naturally asked how recovery—food stuff—was going, how I was feeling, hard times that week, mental critiques, etc. I hesitantly voiced my fear of being a financial burden: Dad, what if I'm spending too much? Who are you two to have to pay for this? You didn't ask for this.
Dad responded: Baby, if it will help you get better, you can have all my money.

Love is all that matters.

—Jordan Spennato

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“Love is all that matters.”

Why didn't anyone tell me that? Actually there was a guy (Leo Buscaglia) who preached love. He had a college course called love and it would fill every semester. But generally we are led to believe that other stuff will make us happy, like having an ocean view, a college degree or lots of money.

Love will tell us what something needs. My wife will look out the window and hear one of her plants screaming for water. She'll drop everything to give them a drink.

“Love is all that matters.”

Blanche devoted much of her life to Zen practice. Both the former head teacher and the current abbot at Austin Zen Center were transmitted by her. AZC is named Zenkei-ji which was Blanche’s Dharma name (meaning Inconceivable Joy). She was responsible for teaching many to sew robes. And yet, at the end of her life, she is proclaiming

“Love is all that matters.”

Imagine what the reaction might be if the New York Times were to print in big bold letters on their front page

“Love is all that matters.”

Would road rage disappear? Would waitresses smile at their customers? Would the subway come to a gentle stop? Would the stewardesses, rather than instructing us on the use of the life preservers, tell us that

“Love is all that matters?”

And does she really mean it? Why didn't she just practice

“Love is all that matters?”

rather than Zen.

Maybe Zen, at its best, is about

“Love is all that matters.”

As we pay attention to ourselves and the world we would naturally care for things. We would handle thing “gingerly.” We would evaluate our actions as to whether they were an expression of love or not.

And this is where it can get a little hairy. I put out poison so our house isn't a den for cockroaches. Is that love? Maybe for us, but not the blessed little creatures.

If it were so simple, life would be that simple. What is the loving thing to do is sometimes quite difficult to figure out. It might take meditation to see the challenge clearly. It might take a college degree. It might take going to jail for what you believe to be the best action. It might take every ounce of our energies to act on that most import maxim

“Love is all that matters.”

—Kim Mosley