More the essential question: what does wisdom look like? There is a certain amount of lived life….along with a compassionate, hard-won empathetic gaze far, far into the distance. A dose of sorrow for those losses accrued, observed, deeply felt…
Category: Blog
Thoughts on beauty, change and mud…
What A Bright Day It Is Today
What we see when we encounter and interact with the world around us depends so much on the weather we’re navigating inside. Have you ever noticed that face in the crowd, that one face in a dusty, busy, chaotic city interchange, that is as bright as this one? At once, just seeing that kind of face, you feel a bit of that brightness transmitted directly to you! Ah.
Our Ribs Made Out of Mud
A small wall hanging, abstract. Made by squishing clay up into the “collarbones”. What is it? Looks like ribs, that fragile interior now inside out.
And that shiny patch at the bottom? Stamped with wonder at the mysteries that prevail – the very nature of being.
How to Save the Cat
With elections coming up, how might we navigate our engagement with politics from a meditation practice point of view? Interestingly enough, we already have a roadmap for this in a famous kong-an?Nan-ch?uan Kills a Cat. It begins as follows:
The monks of the eastern and western halls were disputing about a cat. Master Nan-Ch?uan, holding up the cat, said, ?Please, give me one word and I will save this cat. If you cannot, I will kill it.?
There is another segment to this story, but first, there is this critical matter, ?How can you respond to Nan-ch?uan and save the cat??
A couple of pointers (for the kong-an, and for how to find our way in contentious times): 1) if you do nothing, that is in itself a choice of action and as Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust survivor and writer, points out, ?Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.? In other words, if you do nothing, you are demonstrating an attachment to emptiness; you are evading your duty and the cat gets killed. 2) If you just join in the bitter fray, heaping slogans and slurs on top of everyone else?s, you are attached to name and form, and the cat gets killed. So what is to be done? It might be helpful to consider that the cat is a metaphor for our family, our neighborhood, our community, our country, and our planet–all of which are in our life’s blood. In other words, this is a kong-an about love, compassion and wisdom.
As Zen practitioners, we start with a before-thinking mind. Practice clarity. Keen focus and spacious awareness will help us to see, listen and understand the situation. What is going on, really? And what is obfuscation, dualistic thinking and distraction? If our minds are clear, then we can see clearly, and act with wisdom.
I?hope all of us will handle language will care in these times. Emotions can get heated, but we don?t have to inflame them further by harmful speech or action. May we, each one of us, practice exercising a fitting response, moment by moment, as suits the situation and our own unique relationship to it. May we, each one of us, save the cat!
The Oh-So-Human Enlightenments
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Everything is Given
Everything is given. However, because of the transient nature of all phenomena, nothing can ever belong to us. As a mother, as a wife, this can be a tough pill to swallow. But this is the insight of our meditation practice. It warrants a lifetime’s examination and celebration in the midst of coming and going, everything is given.
What bounty is spilled out before our eyes, our hearts and minds. What unexpected potentiality and occurrences.
It must be said that the Zen teaching of letting go is not, by any means, a teaching of loss. Letting go means releasing our mind’s fixations so that we may participate, fully, in this wondrous parade of being. May it be for the benefit of all.
On Finding the Perfect Expression of Our Imperfect Love
In honor of our mothers, I would like to bring forward a story that?my?first Zen teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn, tells about the enlightened teacher, Sul, that lived during the Tang Dynasty in China. Because she was a woman she was never authorized to teach or given an official title but in spite of this, she was acknowledged in her community as an awakened Master. The following quote is taken from Seung Sahn’s book, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha:
?One day, when she was an old woman, her granddaughter died. She cried bitterly during the funeral and kept crying back at her home, as the visitors filed past to offer their condolences. Everyone was shocked. Soon they were whispering. Finally one of them went up to her and said, “You have attained the great enlightenment, you already understand that there is neither death nor life. Why are you crying? Why is your granddaughter a hindrance to your clear mind?” Sul immediately stopped crying and said “Do you understand how important my tears are? They are greater than all the sutras, all the words of the Patriarchs, and all possible ceremonies.”
It might be helpful to consider that what we feel is already complete, whether the sensation is pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Though we, as human beings, tend to love imperfectly, just to express it can be a complete teaching of great love, great compassion and the great Bodhisattva Way.
As spring blossoms, may we extend ourselves and give ourselves away with just this kind of Mother?s Mind.
Embodying the Dharma
In Zen we encourage ourselves to embody the dharma. Why?
Actually we don?t have any real choice in the matter. We are either alive, or not. We either 1) chase phantoms of thought and cling to the psychic rollercoaster of delusive passions, or?. 2) we embody the dharma and choose to be here now, and live the super-abundant bounty of present moment reality.
There?s a famous kong-an that asks, simply, ?Why are there no other animals in the lion?s den?? The poetic metaphor of a lion is often found in writings from both Indian and Chinese Buddhism. The implication is clear. Believe in yourself 100%. Just do it!
Embodiment has nothing to do with liking or disliking, feeling happy or sad or even neutral. It has everything to do with being alive. To be alive to present moment reality, it then becomes possible to find our fitting function, whether it be to march in Washington, to sooth a child from a terrifying dream, or to ride out an overwhelming mystery of what it means to be?a human being.
The Gold Within
Be the Ride, Be the Spinning Top
When my children were little, they dreaded going to the doctor?s, especially when they knew they would be getting a shot. Maybe some of us adults still fear it? But always, that pre-suffering suffering far eclipsed that instant prick on the arm!? And yet, how captivating (how apt a term) it is to imagine what the pain will be like.
Just think of the way the news is broadcast to us in a daily dose of ?what if?s?. There is excitement in fear, energy stirred up in projected visions of doom ? after all, that what sells the news. That?s what sells the tickets to the Big Top Show of not knowing. So what?s the difference between the dread of not knowing, and the awakened grace of not knowing? Should we simply disregard our concern for the future?
Of course we do need to prepare, in a practical sense. We need to consider the effects our actions have on the planet so that we can heal its wounds. We might well consider the possible repercussions of a political leader?s bad speech so that we do not become infected by it. But we also need to distinguish between when our minds get held ?captive? by the hook of fear as opposed to a spacious wonder at the wild ride that is unfolding before our very eyes.
May we always, all of us together, be the ride and the life of the dharma.