If Jesus Drove a Motor Home

Up in the country where Chao Chou likes to go, there’s fields and farms and small towns. As the Stinky-Mobile motored along after an Abbey’s Day of Mindfulness  [D.O.M: sort of a zazenkai in full-on slacker mode] lyrics streamed thru to soundtrack the drive.

If Jesus drove a motor home,
I wonder would he drive pedal to the metal,
or real slow? Checking out the stereo. Cassette
playing Bob Dylan, motivation tapes.
Tricked up Winnebago, with the tie-dye drapes.
If Jesus drove a motor home

If Jesus drove a motor home, and he come to your town,
would you try to talk to him? Would you follow him around?
Honking horns at the drive thru. Double-parking at the mall.
Midnight at the Waffle House. Jesus eating eggs with ya’ll.

Buddha on a motorcycle, Mohammed in a train.
Here come Jesus in the passing lane … but everybody smile,
’cause everybody’s grooving. Ain’t nothing like the feeling
of moving with a bona fide motorized savior.

Now if we all drove motor homes,
well maybe in the end, with no country to die for,
we could just be friends.
One world as our highway. Ain’t no yours or my way.
We’d be cool wherever we roam

If Jesus drove a motor home – Jim White

Saving the Many Beings

You can see more pix on Chao Chou’s Facebook.

This is one of the pix Chao Chou snapped after a retreat at Great Vows Zen Monastery. Their Jizo Garden speaks of impermanence and cherishing the lost.

Jizo (Earthstore Bodhisattva) stands by all beings in the six realms. Even reaching down into the hell realm to help out. For Jizo there are no lost causes. No one not worth saving.

Low self-esteem? Lonely? Suffering? Jizo will help.

Chao Chou feels a special connection to Jizo since taking up this Vow to save the many beings:

Bozos, smeg heads, moochers, slaggers, the clueless, chronics. Everybody. Included. We are all in it together. We all have the potential to wake-up.

Jizo is walking tall shaking the six rings of the dragon separating staff. The sound of the rings bring the beings of the six realms to mindfulness.

Stumbled across The Job, a poem, by U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. It reminds Chao Chou just how hard it is to transform Jizo’s encouragement to awakened practice.

Imagine that
the job were
so delicate
that you could
seldom — almost
never — remember
it. Impossible
work, really.
Like placing
pebbles exactly
where they were
already. The steadiness it
takes . . . and
to what end?
It’s so easy
to forget again.