After the crowd has gone
A short note on remaining ordinary once a gathering has ended.
When many people have sat together, the room keeps a warmth for a while. Then chairs scrape. Dust returns to being dust. Someone looks for their sandals.
This is also the teaching.
If the sweetness stays only while the gathering lasts, it was hospitality, not yet home. The work — if it can be called work — is to walk back into the kitchen, the bus, the unremarkable afternoon, without slamming the door on what was tasted.
The ashram of ordinary hours
I am learning to let the ordinary hours be the ashram. Not by decorating them. By not abandoning them.
The vegetables still need washing. Someone will still speak carelessly to you before the week is out. Nothing about the gathering exempts you from this, and nothing about this diminishes the gathering.
Sweep the courtyard. Put the mats away. That, too, is arati.
