"Love Waiting"

I’ve been wanting a dog for a few months now. The thought of getting a dog excites me for some reason. After our cat, affectionately nicknamed “Yodi Bodhi,” died last August after 18+ years I said I was not going to have another animal. It was too much responsibility, demanding a lot of time and energy in the last 8 years of his life, and tied us down in many ways. But – here we are 8 months later and I’m swooning for a dog. There can never be another cat like “Yoda”, so it must be a dog – but not just any dog.

And then I read a blogpost over at 108zenbooks that did me in. Briefly, it was about a dog named Hachiko who, after his owner died while at work, went to the train station every day for *9 years* to wait for his “owner”/life companion to come home! (Until he himself died on the steps!) Genju describes this as “love waiting!” OMG. My Heart started quaking open. Actually my Heart has been experiencing a lot of little quakes lately. I’ll call them pre-shocks, as if warning me of the big quake to come. And I can feel it, the big quake is coming. This intuiting of the big Heart Quake is causing an anxious quiver to run throughout my body. I want to run even before it has actually happened. And I can barely sit with it long enough to get in touch with it before wanting to get up and eat or watch TV or whatever else I can *consume* to numb this deep quaking of the Heart. Even writing about it is creating the RUN response!

I know that having a dog will quake my Heart and crack it open – full quake. I know it will. And yet I want it. Am I ready for that!?

So what is it that I *really* want? What is it that a dog represents for me? I think the phrase “love waiting” says it all… I want “love waiting” - that unconditional, tail wagging, love response that only dogs can give. I’ve tried with humans but it doesn’t seem to work out too well – humans tend to bite. :) And I’ve been known to send a few darts to the heart as well… But can I call a dog “love waiting?” How about “Buddha” – the *Essence* of “Love Waiting…” – or Being-Self, or Divine Mother, or Spirit, or Awareness, or…. You get the idea…

A dog doesn’t care about our baggage; doesn’t feel a need to argue or wrangle over words like “self” – "me" -“non-duality”, or the meaning of “Truth”, or “existence.” A dog *is* in many ways a reflection of “True Nature:” loving, accepting, open-hearted - just Be-ing Presence in the way that only dogs know how to do – “love waiting.” Sorry I just love that phrase.

I ask myself, so why is the thought of all this causing all this heart-quaking, this quiver in my being? What am I trying to avoid? What do I not want to see?

I have a sneaking suspicion it’s “Love Waiting” – but I’ll have to let you know after “The Quake…”

~*~