Open Your Heart. Happy New Year 2012

Plenitude Economy: Creating a New and Sustainable Reality

The High Price of Materialism

Sistine Chapel

Click on the link for a virtual tour set to music. Very beautiful!


http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html

Let Your Heart Show The Way

Recently, Neurophysicists have been astonished to discover that the Heart is more an organ of intelligence, than (merely) the bodies' main pumping station. More than half of the Heart is actually composed of neurons of the very same nature as those that make up the cerebral system. Joseph Chilton-Pearce, author of The Biology of Transcendence, calls it "the major biological apparatus within us and the seat of our greatest intelligence."


The Heart is also the source of the body's strongest electromagnetic field. Each heart cell is unique in that it not only pulsates in synchrony with all the other heart cells, but also produces an electromagnetic signal that radiates out beyond the cell. An EEG that measures brain waves shows that the electromagnetic signals from the heart are so much stronger than brain waves, that a reading of the heart's frequency spectrum can be taken from three feet away from the body...without placing electrodes on it!

The Heart's electromagnetic frequency arcs out from the Heart and back in the form of a torus field. The axis of this Heart torus extends from the pelvic floor to the top of the skull, and the whole field is holographic, meaning that information about it can be read from each and every point in the torus.

The Hearts' torus electromagnetic field is not the only source that emits this type of electromagnetic field. Every atom emits the same torus field. The Earth is also at the center of a torus, so is the solar system and even our galaxy...and all are holographic. Scientists believe there is a good possibility that there is only one universal torus encompassing an infinite number of interacting, holographic tori within its spectrum. Because electromagnetic torus fields are holographic, it is more than likely that the sum total of our Universe is present within the frequency spectrum of a single torus.

This means that each one of us is connected to the entire Universe and as such, can access all the information within it at any given moment. When we get quiet and access what we hold in our Hearts, we are literally connecting to the limitless supply and Wisdom of the Universe, thereby enabling what we perceive as "miracles" to enter into our lives.

When we disconnect and shut down the Heart's innate wisdom of Love-based thinking, the ego-based intellect takes over and operates independently of the Heart, and we revert to a survival mentality based on fear, greed, power, and control. In this way, we come to believe that we are separate, our perception of life shifts into one of limitation and scarcity, and one in which we must fight in order to survive. This amazing organ, that we often time ignore, neglect and build walls around, is where we can find our strength, our faith, our courage and our compassion, enabling our higher emotional intelligence that can, if we allow it, guide us through our lives.

Be Here Now meets The Power of Now

Circling the Drain

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Corporations. Hallelujah!

How To Become Generous

How to Become Generous

The movement from ordinary states of self-concern to selfless giving always involves a gradual transformation of character, not a sudden leap. Like any form of strength, generosity needs to be intentionally cultivated over time, and everyone must begin in whatever state of mind they already happen to be. Understanding and accepting who you really are right now is as important as the commitment to become someone more open and generous. Whatever the quality of motivation, when we intentionally reach out to others in giving, some degree of transformation occurs. We become what we practice and do in daily life.
 
For the entire article follow the link:
 
http://www.tricycle.com/feature/bodhisattvas-gift

Body Ecology

A meditation on dependant arising and the body.

In the Samyutta Nikaya, the Buddha says, “This body is not mine or anyone else’s. It has arisen due to past causes and conditions.” The Buddha intuited some type of evolutionary process that creates our bodies, and his essential point is that they are neither formed nor owned by us. We now have evidence that our bodies arise from the forces and elements that make up the entire universe, through a complex chain of interdependent events. Internalizing this understanding can help liberate us from the powerful sense of ownership and attachment we have to the body, which is a cause of tremendous suffering, especially as the body grows old and we must face its inevitable destiny.

The following guided reflections from the Buddha are adapted from the classic exercises on mindfulness of body found in the Mahasatipatthana Sutra. Here we combine the experiential aspect of bringing mindfulness to various parts of the body, with some simple reflection on the evolutionary origin of those body parts. These exercises can help to reveal that this body is not ours; it is evolution’s body. The body we live in is a loaner. The exercises are best done in a seated position (sitting in a chair is fine), keeping the spine as straight as possible. It is useful to read through the entire series of exercises, and then return to the beginning and focus on a single reflection at a time. After reading a reflection on one particular body part or function, close your eyes and bring your attention to that area of the body and begin the exercise. These reflections can be done in any order, or separately, and you may take as long as you wish for any of them.

THE BODY AND THE ELEMENTS

Begin by bringing attention to your entire body, and for a few moments just feel the body’s warmth and strength, its ability to hold itself upright. The vitality and aliveness that you experience in your body require various chemical and mineral substances, a continuous supply of oxygen, the energy of the sun, and the cohesion and conductivity of water. The Buddha instructs us to reflect on the body as composed of the elements of earth, air, fire, and water, so that we will see how this life is interwoven with universal processes.

Resting attention on your breath for a few moments, sense the fact that you are located in an atmosphere - the medium through which you move, and by which your body lives. Can you feel the air all around you as a substance? Move your arm and feel it parting the air, almost as if you were swimming through this medium.

Now bring attention to your breathing, and simultaneously look at a plant in your house or the plants growing outside, and realize that with each breath you are feeding the plants and being fed by them. Doing this simple reflection just a few times can begin to alter your feelings about the plant kingdom.

As you sense yourself exchanging nutrients with the plants, you will be able to recognize that you are not only located in an atmosphere, but are an integral part of it. With every breath you are participating in the great cycles of water and gases, the hydrosphere and atmosphere. With each breath you are joining in the single great breath of all earth life.

THE SKELETAL FRAME

Focus attention on the great bone of your skull. Let awareness roam over the entire area of your head, feeling this massive bone that houses the delicate brain. Notice the holes conveniently placed for the sense organs of hearing, smelling, tasting, and seeing, and the great opening at the bottom of the skull for the spine to enter. It has taken 500 million years of vertebrate evolution to get your skull into this shape, with its narrow, brooding forehead.

To get a better sense of the skull bone, gently clench your jaw and grind your teeth together a little. As you feel the power of your jaw, you might reflect on the fact that the jaw began developing in an early, wormlike marine creature, which gained great survival advantage with the newfound ability to eat things that were bigger than itself. The vast number of chewers now alive in the world testifies to the usefulness of this powerful hinge.

Next, move awareness down from the skull into your spine and ribs. See if you can sense the entire skeleton of bones extending outward from that central ridgepole of spine. If you move your limbs or head around a little, you might get a kinesthetic sense of the skeletal structure. You could also visualize the skeletons you have seen, from Halloween, anatomy books, or Grateful Dead posters. As you visualize and feel the bone structure, be aware that there are over six hundred separate bones in your body.

While you are feeling the entire skeleton, you might also reflect for a moment on the fact that our bones are composed of calcium phosphate. They are, quite literally, the clay of earth, molded into our human shape. Our bodies are not only on the earth, they are of the earth. When seated or walking, you can feel your body as a kind of earth sprout that gained mobility.

While on the subject of bones, we can draw a good lesson in dharma practice from the early microbes, which apparently were irritated by calcium phosphate and other sea salts and would flush them from their bodies. Then some enterprising microbes, perhaps after “sitting through” the irritation (so to speak), discovered that the mineral substances could help protect their bodies. Thus the bones of the first skeleton began to take shape. It is interesting to note that in mineral content and porosity, human bones are nearly identical to certain species of South Pacific coral, and plastic surgeons have begun to use this coral to fix and replace human bone.

THE DIGESTIVE SYSTEM

Next, move your mindful awareness to your stomach area. Although you may not feel many distinct sensations, let your awareness linger there as you reflect on some of the activity taking place in this region of your body. For instance, at this moment, along with digestion taking place - nutrients being extracted from food substances and waste being processed for disposal - there are thousands of cells being born and dying. Your stomach contains hundreds of thousands of digestive glands, and the stomach must produce a new lining every three days to protect itself from its own digestive juices. For this task, your stomach is producing up to five hundred thousand new cells every minute.

Along with all of this activity, you might consider that at this very moment there are more living beings inside your stomach than all the humans who have ever lived on earth. Considering the billions of bacteria and microbes that live inside each of us, microbiologist Lynn Margulis writes, “Our concept of the individual is totally warped. All of us are walking communities.” We are not separate selves. Each of us is an ecosystem.

THE HANDS

Bring attention to your hands. Spread your fingers out, wiggle them, press them against your palm and thumb. The five-digit design of your hands goes back 370 million years to the first land vertebrates, called tetrapods. Maybe five digits were the minimum number needed to hold on to the land and not slip back into the sea. As you feel your hands, consider that just two million years ago, a blink in biological time, our ancestors could barely manipulate rocks and sticks, and now some of our hands can play the piano, type over a hundred words a minute, and build rockets and computers. You can experience the great dexterity of your hands right now, by simply unbuttoning a button. You don’t even consciously have to direct those movements! Our hands (and brains) definitely deserve a round of applause.

As you clap, you might also notice the flexibility of your wrists. Most people can move their wrists around in an arc of almost 360 degrees, and our shoulders are almost as flexible. According to the evolutionary biologists, this range of movement in our wrists and shoulders came about because for millions of years our ancestors got around by swinging through the trees. How many of our physical characteristics are inherited from the life that came before?

Recent research indicates that the dexterity of our hands was also very important in the growth of our brains. As our hands began to manipulate tools, a bigger brain was required to direct the movements and store the enormous new amounts of information being learned. The interaction and mutual stimulation of hand and brain created an evolutionary feedback loop in which both developed to an unprecedented degree. As you move your fingers around - buttoning, typing, playing an instrument - you might reflect on the complex acti-vity going on simultaneously in your brain to direct those movements.

As we feel our arms and hands, we can also reflect that these appendages were once fins, and not just in our distant ancestors. Each of us, in the womb, develops both fin and gill-like structures as we cycle through the genetic instructions of the many life forms that preceded us. Our body and brain are built out of the triumphs and defeats of all earth life, an amazingly complex stream of causes and conditions.

THE WHOLE BODY

Finally, bring awareness to your entire body, sensing the complete organism. Feel the energies within the body, the streams of sensation, the points of twitching or tension, the great pulses of breath and heartbeat.

Realize how much activity is taking place at this moment within you - and without you. Right now there are literally millions of brain cells firing signals to one another, a veritable storm of electrical activity taking place inside your head. Your brain stem is busy monitoring your body temperature and rate of heartbeat, while your limbic system remains on alert for possible survival threats and opportunities.

Meanwhile, oxygen is being inhaled and transported throughout your body and burned as fuel in the process of transforming the stored energy of the sun into your own living energy. In every second, millions of cells are dying and millions more are being created. Chemicals that do the work of the brain, stomach, liver, and kidneys are being manufactured and secreted. As we contemplate our body, we begin to realize that we don’t direct most of these processes. We don’t live, so much as life lives through us.

These are just a few reflections on the evolutionary sources of the body and behaviors: They are practices of both deep ecology and self-liberation. Using scientific information as a skillful means, we can experience what has been called our “ecological self,” or “species self.” Through such exercises we can begin to realize that our individual human life is first and foremost life: second, it is human; and only third is it individual. Getting to know ourselves as biological beings, interwoven with all of earth’s elements and other forms of life, can be a good source of both our liberation and compassion.

Wes Nisker is the author of Buddha’s Nature, recently issued in paperback by Bantam. His book Crazy Wisdom was reissued by Ten Speed Press last year. Founder and co-editor of the Buddhist journal Inquiring Mind, Nisker is a meditation teacher affiliated with Spirit Rock Center in California.

The Occupy Movement and the Church

L'ecole des ruisseaux

L'école des russieaux (French version) from Péter Vácz on Vimeo.

Zsolt Miklya


L'école des ruisseaux


Une montagne parle,
Une vallée murmure,
Le ciel écoute,
En silence.

Au coeur de la vallée,
Un petit ruisseau apprend :
Les roches sont sa loi
Et le ciel son maître.

A l'abri des regards,
il grandit.
Creusant son chemin,
il disparaît dans le lointain.

Il rejoint les plaines,
Et déborde de son lit.
Au fond de lui,
Il voudrait rester un petit cours d'eau,

Mais l'infini et l'inconnu l'appellent,
Plus forts que la peur.
Dans le courant de la rivière,
Les désirs des ruisseaux
s'amoncellent en vagues

Pour aller loin, très loin,
Vers des terres inconnues,
Là où vogue le bâteau-Rêve,
Haut perché sur les flots,

Là où le fleuve sage
s'abandonne à la mer.


Vácz Péter

Animation
Illustration

www.vaczpeter.blogspot.com

Be Like The Earth by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Like waves, all the activities of this life have rolled endless on, yet they have left us empty-handed. Myriads of thoughts have run through our minds, but all they have done is increase our confusion and dissatisfaction.


Normally we operate under the deluded assumption that everything has some sort of true, substantial reality. But when we look more carefully, we find that the phenomenal world is like a rainbow—vivid and colorful, but without any tangible existence.

When a rainbow appears we see many beautiful colors—yet a rainbow is not something we can clothe ourselves with, or wear as an ornament; it simply appears through the conjunction of various conditions. Thoughts arise in the mind in just the same way. They have no tangible reality or intrinsic existence at all. There is therefore no logical reason why thoughts should have so much power over us, nor any reason why we should be enslaved by them.

Mind creates both samsara and nirvana. Yet there is nothing much to it—it is just thoughts. Once we recognize that thoughts are empty, the mind will no longer have the power to deceive us. But as long as we take our deluded thoughts as real, they will continue to torment us mercilessly, as they have been doing throughout countless past lives. To gain control over the mind, we need to be vigilant, constantly examining all our thoughts, words, and actions.

To cut through the mind's clinging, it is important to understand that all appearances are void, like the appearance of water in a mirage. Beautiful forms are of no benefit to the mind, nor can ugly forms harm it in any way. Sever the ties of hope and fear, attraction and repulsion, and remain in equanimity in the understanding that all phenomena are nothing more than projections of your own mind.

To realize that appearance and voidness are one is what is called simplicity, or freedom from conceptual limitations.

Practice

Obstacles can arise from good as well as bad circumstances, but they should never deter or overpower you. Be like the earth, which supports all living creatures indiscriminately, without distinguishing good from bad. The earth is simply there. Your practice should be strengthened by the difficult situations you encounter, just as a bonfire in a strong wind is not blown out, but blazes even brighter.

When someone harms you, see that person as a kind teacher showing you the path to liberation. Pray that you may be able to help that person and never hope for revenge.

Look right into it, and you will see that the person who is harmed, the person who does the harm, and the harm itself are all totally devoid of any inherent reality. Faced with these empty appearances, is there anything to be lost or gained? It is all like an empty sky. Recognize that!

As long as you pay heed to your hatred and attempt to overcome your external opponents, even if you succeed, more will inevitably rise up in their place. Even if you managed to overpower everyone your anger would only grow stronger. The only really intolerable enemy is hatred itself. To defeat the enemy of hatred, meditate one-pointedly on patience and love until they truly take root in your being.

Ask yourself how many of the billions of inhabitants of this planet have any idea of how rare it is to have been born as a human being. How many of those who understand the rarity of human birth ever think of using that chance to practice the dharma? How many of those who think of practice actually do? How many of those who start continue? How many of those who continue attain ultimate realization? Indeed, those who attain ultimate realization, compared to those who do not, are as few as the stars you can see at daybreak.

As long as you fail to recognize the true value of human existence you will just fritter your life away in futile activity and distraction. When life comes all too soon to its inevitable end, you will not have achieved anything worthwhile at all. But once you really see the unique opportunity that human life can bring, you will definitely direct all your energy into reaping its true worth by putting the dharma into practice.

Adapted from "Mind" and "Practice" by Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Reprinted by permission of Editions Padmakara: St. Léon sur Vézére, France, 1990.

Jason Mraz

I'm Yours by Jason Mraz

I'm yours. This is the official version on youtube. Follow the link.

This blessing by Henry Van Dyke was included in the funeral service for John Johnson who died Marh 19, 2011 in Asheville. John was an inspiration to many hundreds if not thousands of people because he embodied the spirit of true compassion which was strengthened by his own struggle with addiction. He died of cancer.

"I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of strength and beauty. I stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and the sky come to mingle with each other.



Then someone at my side says, 'There, she is gone!'



'Gone where?'



Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port.



Her diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says: 'There, she is gone!' There are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: 'Here she comes!'



And that is dying"



We know that even as we celebrate the life of a loved one here today, and mourn the fact that we can no longer feel there arms around us and feel sad that we have to say, "He is gone", friends and family were jumping up and down on the next shoreline shouting , "Here he comes! Here comes our beloved!"



Here are a few more favorite sayings that John used to quote:

• God doesn't love us because we are good. God loves us because God's good.
• You want to make God laugh? Tell her your plans!
• Happiness is a choice.
• Be the love.
• Life is but a series of ever increasing moments of NOW.
• There are no great teachers-only great students with great questions.
• Look around and ask yourself what is wanted and needed here.
• If it wasn't for good luck I wouldn't have any luck at all.
• Be the man your dog always thought you were. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
• There is something I don't know, the knowing of which could change everything.
• There is only love or fear.

Basic Human Rights

Hillary Clinton's important speech. 8 key points:

Tuesday's landmark speech from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton outlined the United States' stance on an "invisible minority" in many countries, as she put it — LGBT and gender-varyiant people. The full speech is available here, but if you're in a hurry, here are eight key points made during her address on global gay rights to United Nations member countries.


1. On the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

It proclaims a simple, powerful idea: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. And with the declaration, it was made clear that rights are not conferred by government; they are the birthright of all people. It does not matter what country we live in, who our leaders are, or even who we are. Because we are human, we therefore have rights. And because we have rights, governments are bound to protect them.

2. On the Status of LGBT Rights in the U.S.

I speak about this subject knowing that my own country's record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country. Many LGBT Americans have endured violence and harassment in their own lives, and for some, including many young people, bullying and exclusion are daily experiences. So we, like all nations, have more work to do to protect human rights at home.

3. Why Do Countries Need to Distinguish Gay Rights?

Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct; but, in fact, they are one and the same. Now, of course, 60 years ago, the governments that drafted and passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not thinking about how it applied to the LGBT community. They also weren’t thinking about how it applied to indigenous people or children or people with disabilities or other marginalized groups. Yet in the past 60 years, we have come to recognize that members of these groups are entitled to the full measure of dignity and rights, because, like all people, they share a common humanity.

This recognition did not occur all at once. It evolved over time. And as it did, we understood that we were honoring rights that people always had, rather than creating new or special rights for them. Like being a woman, like being a racial, religious, tribal, or ethnic minority, being LGBT does not make you less human. And that is why gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.

4. What Are Violations of Gay Rights?

- When a person is beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave

- When governments declare it illegal to be gay, or allow those who harm gay people to go unpunished

- When lesbian or transgendered women are subjected to so-called corrective rape, or forcibly subjected to hormone treatments

- When people are murdered after public calls for violence toward gays, or when they are forced to flee their nations and seek asylum in other lands to save their lives.

- When lifesaving care is withheld from people because they are gay, or equal access to justice is denied to people because they are gay, or public spaces are out of bounds to people because they are gay.

5. On Arcane Views on Homosexuality


Some seem to believe it is a Western phenomenon, and therefore people outside the West have grounds to reject it. Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes; and whether we know it, or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends, and our neighbors. Being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality.

6. On Religious Doctrine and Gay Acceptance

It bears noting that rarely are cultural and religious traditions and teachings actually in conflict with the protection of human rights. Indeed, our religion and our culture are sources of compassion and inspiration toward our fellow human beings. It was not only those who’ve justified slavery who leaned on religion, it was also those who sought to abolish it. And let us keep in mind that our commitments to protect the freedom of religion and to defend the dignity of LGBT people emanate from a common source. For many of us, religious belief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity, and fundamental to who we are as people. And likewise, for most of us, the bonds of love and family that we forge are also vital sources of meaning and identity. And caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human.

7. How Laws Push Progress

In many places, including my own country, legal protections have preceded, not followed, broader recognition of rights. Laws have a teaching effect. Laws that discriminate validate other kinds of discrimination. Laws that require equal protections reinforce the moral imperative of equality. And practically speaking, it is often the case that laws must change before fears about change dissipate.

8. Clinton's Message to Gays Around the World

And finally, to LGBT men and women worldwide, let me say this: Wherever you live and whatever the circumstances of your life, whether you are connected to a network of support or feel isolated and vulnerable, please know that you are not alone. People around the globe are working hard to support you and to bring an end to the injustices and dangers you face. That is certainly true for my country. And you have an ally in the United States of America and you have millions of friends among the American people.

Morning meditation

Changing Habits

Like a turtle we carry this shell around which announces our arrival. The shell is made up of habitual behaviors. We are hardly aware of it because it has become associated with who we think we are. It has become fused to our identity.

Like a force field, it affects the immediate surroundings and to a certain extent determines the quality of our experience in those surroundings. I know this to be true because I have experienced how something as simple as smiling can dramatically affect my interactions and general experience of life. Things just seem to go smoother and often it feels as though the universe is arranging itself around a positive axis for me.

Once I experimented with this in the Atlanta Airport, a very busy place. While listening to the 7 universal tones on headphones I just sort of wandered around aimlessly. It seemed as though people could almost feel the positive vibration through me, and they were quite friendly and accommodating in response to this energy I was putting out.

If we want a new shell, one that will allow the universe to arrange itself in positive ways for us, then we need to change some of those negative habits; replace them with positive habits.

Here are a few habits worth changing:
1. Always having the last word
2. The need to be right
3. Reluctance to show joy or smile
4. Seeing seriousness as more worthy than playfulness
5. Reluctance to be silly and playful
6. Paying too much attention to the outcome and not the process or intention
7. Being bi polar instead of omni polar (seeing the points in-between)
8. Judging
9. Being critical instead of inquisitive
10. Expecting people to understand you

My 2 Moms

Watch and reflect on the question: What defines a family?




To read the article follow the link


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/12/06/a-tale-of-two-moms-a-teenage-son-and-a-video-that-wouldn-t-die.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_morning&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_morning&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet

Morning Meditation

Many of my friends are turning 60! In fact we just celebrated Jane's 60th and I will turn 60 in a few months as well. Visiting family have already passed that milestone. We are all getting older. Often in my men's group (where everyone except me is 60+) our discussions turn around the fact that life as we know it is speeding up toward the end of the road.

So that tends to focus the mind on the question "How do I want to spend my remaining moments? What is important now?"

It seems to me that I have spent my life polishing the mirror of ego, making it conform to some idea of what is admirable from an external perspective. And from an internal perspective, much of what is deemed admirable has been shaped by society. For example, much effort and thought have gone into comparing myself to the physical ideal put forth by the culture, which is a struggle since rising to the level put forth by the culture is not achievable by most. I am often left feeling inadequate or defective somehow. One never gets to arrive at that destination! That target is always moving and never quite achievable.

So now I am surrounded by this somewhat crumbling matrix of scaffold holding up the ego. And it seems to me an increasing folly to think in terms of keeping up the effort of maintaining this scaffold. The more sensible approach is to begin dismantling it bit by bit until it no longer exists; until the true immutable nature of pure mind, pure soul is revealed.

I vow to look carefully at how ego obscures the true nature of pure mind and prevents me from living in the moment, which diminishes true happiness by externalizing the idea of perfection.

We Are The Many

A voice for the 99%

Stage Directions: A meditation on beauty (WS)

Background:

Soft pink clouds floating by. The sunlight should diffuse through the cloud and accumulate in exquisite brilliance around the edges. All this against an almost indescribable blue. This seen through the lattice of gently swaying tulip poplar branches; upon which sseveral tenacious leaves still quiver. 

Action:

To and fro the small warm body of a squirrel gathers twigs for its winter nest. Each twig carefully examined for suitability, then delicately excised and carried into the crook of the tree below. Up and down tirelessly, collecting each twig with single mindedness, agility, and most of all, natural grace.  

Audience participation

It is intended that the audience become aware of the beauty that is innate in the mundane.

WZEN radio: Food For Thought

Click on the link for Zen Mountain Radio. The radio loop is 12 hours. There is an hourly program on various topics.

http://wzen.org/

Also check out Bioneers at

http://www.bioneers.org/

You can listen to the entire audio selection for 2011 by clicking on the "radio" button at the top.

Pushing into the light

Morning meditation

The imagination is always pushing against the confines of language just as the interior world of ideas constantly seeks to transcend the cultural limits of society. There is a never ending struggle on the frontier between light and dark, knowledge and ignorance, creativity and destruction. The uncovering of the soul is accomplished through this dynamic interplay of opposites, and it is always progressive toward God, however incremental it might seem.  (WPS)

Keeping A Good Heart by Choyki Nyima Rimpoche

A very well written essay about the essentially empty nature of phenomena. It takes a bit of time, but well worth the effort! Particularly well written for the western mind, which by nature arrives at understanding through a more anylaitic process.

An excerpt:

For people who grow up in a country where the Buddha’s teachings have flourished, Buddhist ideas have become second nature. For instance, these people just trust that there are consequences to one’s actions, and that they’ll form a part of their future lives; they don’t doubt that at all. For Westerners, on the other hand, this is unfamiliar ground, and they wonder, “Are there really repercussions to what I do? Does it really matter?” and also, “Have there been lives before this one, will there be more after?” Westerners are skeptical about these things. Because of their level of education in general, and because of their scientific methodology in particular, they like to intelligently scrutinize. Often, when they’re presented with the main view of the Buddha, which is shunyata—emptiness, or the essentially empty nature of phenomena—and dependent origination, which describes all phenomena in terms of conditioned causal relationships, they feel that they’re capable of understanding and accepting it precisely because it is consistent with their reasoning. The profound view of reality makes perfect sense to them. Then, implicitly, they begin to trust what the Buddha has said about other things. And, later, an understanding of what we call the Three Jewels—Buddha, Dharma, Sangha—comes slowly and as a side effect of that.




Follow the link:

http://www.tricycle.com/feature/keeping-good-heart?page=0,0

Meditation on a morning walk.

I know not how or why God has seen beyond the meager sum of my earthly parts and fills me with joy, but I vow to dwell in the light of gratitude, knowing that my devine nature is always present, always waiting to be revealed.

Alexi Murdoch: The Light

I see my brother he is walking in the sun

His back is bare, he carries no burden for anyone

I see the island, the silver line

Brother how you shine

And all around the light

And all around the light



Now I see my father, he's so small against the sky

The child, the tree, the shadow's on his eyes

He doesn't know who he's supposed to be

Father you are free

And all around the light

And all around the light



Now my mother she is crying on the stairs

Her hands are leaves, the light is in her hair

As she prays she thinks that no one heard

Mother you are a bird

Mother you are a bird

And all around the light

And all around the light

And all around the light

All around the light

Arising and Falling Away: Stream Meditation

Opening Up To Nature (Master Sheng Yen)

Since people might feel a bit lonely coming out into nature by themselves, they tend to go out in groups. But often they just transplant their own little world out into the big world, and they still feel separation: “I’m with these people, not with those.” We should not be like a snail that carries its house on its back and shrinks back into it when another creature comes along. It is better not to put people into categories based on your social distance from them, whether or not you know them. It is also good to feel intimate with creatures around you—the birds, butterflies, and so on. Just as smoke from a chimney disperses into the air, we should disperse our sense of “group” or “family” and truly participate in the life around us.

If we go out into the natural world and just talk about the same things we talk about all the time, we may as well have stayed at home. When we visit nature we should put down everyday small talk, subjective mental activity, judging and discrimination, and just open up and observe nature. Starting from the time of the Buddha, it was almost always the custom for those who had left home life to spend some time practicing in the mountains. Generally the hut they lived in was made so that it could be put up and dismantled very quickly, so that the person could move on to another place. The purpose was to live a life that would not foster a group mentality, but rather cultivate a holistic attitude where one would feel at one with all lives and the universe. Originally Shakyamuni Buddha did not set out to form a defined group or stay in any one place, because that would promote exclusive thinking, distinguishing between inside and outside, big and small, yours and mine.

On our outings we should experience the greatness of nature. If we can truly open up to nature and nature accepts us, then we will be as spacious as nature itself.



Adapted from “Opening Up to Nature,” in the Chan Newsletter, no. 16, September 1981.

Family Values

In the state of NC there is a vote on May 8 to further limit the rights of certain families. Basically, the new language (should the amendment pass) would remove any legal protections from civil unions and domestic partnerships. Long standing committed couples would suddenly see all of their legal rights removed, or what few they have. This is destructive of families. A family is about love and commitment. A family exists for the wellbeing of the children and creates a stable environment for their healthy development. Families also exist for the legal and emotional support of each person in the relationship. Anything that we can do to support that is worthy. This amendment is not worthy and should not pass because it hurts real families. Please vote to reject this amendment on May 8, 2012.

I have posted a few videos for you to watch if you are still unsure of how to vote.

Turning down the thermostat fo greed (Andrew Olendski/Tricycle)

Turn down the thermostat and cool the fires of our minds

“Everything is burning!” said the Buddha almost 25 centuries ago. “Burning with what? Burning with the fires of greed, hatred and delusion.”(Samyutta Nikaya 35.28) These words seem prophetic today, as our planet is slowly warmed by the fires blazing in our furnaces and engines, by the explosion of our bullets and bombs, and by the raging delusions around which our entire world seems to be organized. There is not a single problem we face as human beings— other than the tectonic (earthquakes), the astronomical (meteor strikes), or the existential (aging and death)— that does not find its origin in greed, hatred, or delusion, whether of people or their institutions.

Like a fire, greed is more a process than a thing. It is the state of combustion, the activity of consumption, the procedure by means of which organic resources are quickly reduced to a heap of ash. It is insatiable by nature, since the moment one desire is gratified another flares up, demanding also to be sated. Greed drives an unquenchable compulsion to consume, and as the guiding hand of our economic system, its reach is rapidly becoming global. As it burns it throws off a compelling light, dazzling us with the pleasure of its shapes and colors. We delight in playing with this fire.

Hatred is a hotter, bluer, more sinister flame. It seethes among the coals, preserving its heat over time, until blasting forth suddenly with a surge of the bellows. It can simmer as discontent, smolder as suppressed rage, or lurk hot underground as a molten river of loathing. When it does flare up, the fire of hatred scorches all in its path indiscriminately, often searing the innocent bystander with the ferocity of its angry flames.

Delusion is subtler. Like the lamp behind the projector or a reflection in a mirror, delusion shines with a soft light and illuminates indirectly. It shows things as other than they are— as stable, satisfying, personal, and alluring. Its optical tricks are endearingly creative, so much so that sometimes we hardly know where the light leaves off and the darkness begins. Delusion leads us to revel in wielding the fires of greed and hatred, oblivious of the harm inflicted both on ourselves and on those around us.

The Buddha identifies these three fires as the origin of both individual and collective suffering. Things do not become the way they are by chance, for no reason, or because a deity makes them so. It is the quality of our intention that shapes the world we inhabit, and our world is burning up because of the fires smoldering in our hearts. Resources are being depleted because people greedily consume them and lust for the money produced thereby. People are being killed, raped, tortured, and exploited because they are hated, because other people do not regard them as worthy of respect or basic rights. And the world blindly, stupidly, deceptively plods along this path to destruction because people do not know—or do not want you to know—any better.

And you know what? This is good news. Why? Because the causes of all the trouble have been exposed, and by knowing them we stand a chance of overcoming them. Just think if our problems were due to continental drift, or to an approaching meteor— then we would really be cooked. Fire is actually a very fragile phenomenon. Diminish its heat, starve it of oxygen, or take away its fuel, and it cannot sustain itself. In fact, it is entirely dependent upon external conditions; change these conditions, and it will go out. The Buddha put out the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion in himself and showed us all how to do the same thing. Perhaps we can use this knowledge to quench the fires that are heating our planet and devouring our world.

Something empowering happens when we begin to see these problems as internal rather than external. We have access to ourselves. We have the ability to make internal changes when the mechanisms for change are within our reach. A slight shift of attitude, a minor adjustment of priorities, an occasional opening to a wider perspective, the glimpse of a good greater than the merely personal— these all contribute in a small way to turning down the heat. And since we are faced not with a single enormous fire but with billions of little fires, each one ablaze in one person, miniscule changes in one mind here and one heart there can add up to a dramatic reduction of greenhouse defilements.

All it would take is a gradual increase in generosity and an incremental reduction of the need for gratification to begin to turn down the heat of greed’s fire. Planting a tree rather than cutting one down engages a different quality of mind, an attitude of giving rather than of taking. Appreciating when we get what we need, instead of demanding always to get what we want, removes fuel from the fire instead of stoking it. The flames of hatred are banked when we shoot a picture instead of an animal, when we fight injustice rather than our neighbor, when we include someone different in our circle, or even when we relinquish our hold, ever so slightly, on something that annoys us in a mundane moment of daily life. Just as heat is pumped into the system each and every moment through inattention, so also can heat be consistently and inexorably extracted as we bring more mindfulness to what we think, say, and do. A tranquil mind is a cooler mind, and the Buddha has described the movement toward awakening as “becoming cool” (siti-bhuta).

The solution to all our (nonexistential) problems is very close at hand. Look within, reach within, each and every moment—and turn down the thermostat just a degree or two. The fires consuming our world are not sustainable. If we do not feed the fires, they will go out.



Andrew Olendzki, Ph.D., is executive director and senior scholar at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies in Barre, Massachusetts. He is the editor of Insight Journal.



Image: Ephemeral Moments 06 4436, © David Gibson, archival pigment print on 100-percent rag paper, 24 x 16 inches

God weighs in on the state of life on earth.

Claremont School of Theology

The view from this place of theological study is refreshingly enlightened. The fundamental question is about how to put the human family together so that everyone feels valued and respected.


Beyond Inclusion: Sexual Diversity and Claremont School of Theology from Claremont on Vimeo.

Meher Baba and Khrisna Das

Acorn House

If you are looking for a beautiful place to stay in Asheville, NC consider Acorn House. This lovely 3 bedrom 1.5 bath house is available for short term rental with a 2 day minimum stay. Please visit the site by clicking on the title.

Occupy Wall Street

A naescent movement that gives voice to the frustrations about the direction of this country. Watch the video here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4vQDFYZuGg&feature=colike

DADT now history

This is what the end of discrimination looks and feels like!

Charter For Compassion

THE principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.


Itis also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.


We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

To sign the charter and add your voice gfollow the loink below

http://charterforcompassion.org/share/the-charter

Self Evident Truth Photo Project

Human Rights Campaign supported video project. One persons social action in support of equal rights for the LGBT community.


Self Evident Truths from Self Evident Truths on Vimeo.

Marriage Equality In North Carolina

Here is an interview to help sort out the issue. This vote will go to the NC people in October 2011. Please vote. (Sorry for the 31 sec commercial at the front)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The Human Planet

A beautiful collection of video footage on the majesty and struggle for survival of humans on this planet. Very inspiring from the BBC collection.

\http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HiUMlOz4UQ&feature=player_popout

Nothing to Fear

I came across this quote this morning while reading the responses to a talk by Gaylon Ferguson on fearlessness.

"Why is it that we are so afraid of just being with ourselves? What is it about this that makes us uncomfortable? What is it about this that makes us squirm and be in a state of perpetual motion of doing and accomplishing rather than just being? In looking inwards to my own mind, I realized that what I am afraid of is seeing my failures and shortcomings. I don't want to see those things blaring in front of me. I instantly judge myself and compare myself to others.

But then I have to remind myself that I am not my shortcomings. I am not my failures. Neither am I my successes! What I have at the core of my being is incorruptible Buddha nature. That's my essence. And if at my core I am made up of this clear, pure essence then what is there to be afraid of? This Buddha Nature is the source of my fearlessness."

Working with Fear

This article appeared in the Spring 2009 Tricycle magazine

EZRA BAYDA teaches that by truly knowing our fears, we can break their spell.

The Three Things We Fear Most

When things upset us, we often think that something is wrong. Perhaps the one time this is truest is when we experience fear. In fact, as human beings, we expend a huge portion of our energy dealing with anxiety and fear. This has certainly been apparent in the present economic upheavals and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We live with an everyday reality that is tinged with personal and cultural anxiety. Our fears are not just the product of global events, however—they go to our very core. On a day-to-day level, fear often motivates how we act and react, and sometimes even how we dress or stand or talk. But fear makes our life narrow and dark. It is at the root of all conflict, underlying much of our sorrow. Fear also blocks intimacy and love and, more than anything, disconnects us from the lovingkindness that is our true nature.

Even considering how prevalent fear is in our lives, it nonetheless remains one of the murkiest areas to deal with, in daily life as well as in practice. This may sound bleak, but what is really the worst thing about fear? Though it is hard to admit, especially if we see ourselves as deeply spiritual, the main reason we have an aversion to fear is that it is physically and emotionally uncomfortable. Woody Allen put this quite well when he said, “I don’t like to be afraid—it scares me.” We simply don’t want to feel this discomfort and will do almost anything to avoid it. But whenever we give in to fear, we make it more solid, and our life becomes smaller, more limited, more contracted. In a way, every time we give in to fear, we cease to truly live.

We’re often not aware of the extent to which fear plays a part in our lives, which means that the first stage of practicing with fear requires acknowledging its presence. This can prove to be difficult, because many fears may not be readily apparent, such as the fear driving our ambition, the fear underlying our depression, or, perhaps most of all, the fear beneath our anger. But the fact is, once we look beyond our surface emotional reaction, we will see that almost every negative emotion, every drama, comes down to one or more of the three most basic fears: the fear of losing safety and control, the fear of aloneness and disconnection, and the fear of unworthiness.

The first most basic fear is that of losing safety. Because safety is fundamental to our survival, this fear will instinctually be triggered at the first sign of danger or insecurity; the old brain, or limbic system, is inherently wired that way. This particular fear will also be triggered when we experience pain or discomfort. But in most cases, there is no real danger to us; in fact, our fears are largely imaginary— that the plane will crash, that we will be criticized, that we’re doing it wrong. Yet until we see this dimension of fear with clarity, we will continue to live with a sense of constriction that can seem daunting.

A central component of spiritual life is recognizing that practice is not about ensuring that we feel secure or comfortable. It’s not that we won’t feel these things when we practice; rather, it’s that we are also bound to some times feel very uncomfortable and insecure, particularly when exploring and working with our darker emotions and unhealed pain. Still, there is also a deep security developed over the course of a practice life that isn’t likely to resemble the immediate comfort we usually crave. This fundamental security develops instead out of the willingness to stay with and truly experience our fears. Isn’t it ironic that the path to real security comes from residing in the fear of insecurity itself?

Insecurity can also manifest as the fear of helplessness, often surfacing as the fear of losing control, the fear of being controlled, the fear of chaos, or even the fear of the unfamiliar. For example, nearly all of us have experienced the emotion of rage, which is like being swept into a mushroom cloud explosion. Think of the kind of day when nothing seems to go your way, or even just the last time your TV remote stopped working and no matter what buttons you pushed, you couldn’t get it to do what you wanted. The urge to throw the remote against the wall can feel like angry rage, but as we bring awareness to this experience, we can discover that the feeling of rage is often just an outer explosion covering over the quieter inner implosion of feeling powerless. Rage may give us a feeling of power and control, but how often is it an evasion of the sense of powerlessness that feels so much worse?

We all dread the helplessness of losing control, and yet real freedom lies in recognizing the futility of demanding that life be within our control. Instead, we must learn the willingness to feel—to say yes to—the experience of helplessness itself. This is one of the hidden gifts of serious illness or loss. It pushes us right to our edge, where we may have the good fortune to realize that our only real option is to surrender to our experience and let it just be.

During a three-year period in the early 1990s when I was seriously ill with no indication that I would ever get better, I watched my life as I had known it begin to fall apart. I not only lost my ability to work and engage in physical activities, I also experienced a dismantling of my basic identities. At first, it was disorienting and frightening not to have the props of seeing myself as a Zen practitioner, a carpenter and contractor (my livelihood), a husband and a father. But as I stayed with the fears, and particularly as I was able to bring the quality of lovingkindness to the experience, there came a dramatic shift.

As the illusory self-images were stripped away, I experienced the freedom of not needing to be anyone at all. By truly surrendering to the experience of helplessness, by letting everything I clung to just fall apart, I found that what remained was more than enough. As we learn to breathe fear into the center of the chest, the heart feels more and more spacious. I’m not talking about the heart as a muscle in our chest, but rather the heart that is our true nature. This heart is more spacious than the mind can ever imagine.

The second basic fear is that of aloneness and disconnection, which we also can feel as the fear of abandonment, loss, or death. Our fundamental aloneness, which is a basic human experience, ultimately must be faced directly, or it will continue to dictate how we feel and live.

It’s interesting that one of life’s most vital lessons is something we are never taught in school: how to be at home with ourselves. When I first began going to meditation retreats, where there was no talking or social contact for days on end, I would sit facing the wall hour after hour, and invariably an anxious quiver rose up inside me. Sometimes it was so strong that I literally wanted to jump out of my skin. But just sitting there, doing nothing, brought me face to face with myself, with my fear of aloneness.

Most people will almost instinctively try to avoid this fear. Many enter into relationships or engage in affairs. In fact, the extent to which people have affairs is often proportional to the urgency of needing to avoid feeling alone. However, the only way to transcend loneliness is to stop avoiding it, to be willing to face it—by truly residing in it. Further, if we wish to develop genuine intimacy in our relationships with others, it is crucial that we first face our own neediness and fear of aloneness. How can we expect to truly love or be intimate with another if we’re still relating to them from our fear-based needs?

Naturally, we still want and expect other people to take away these fears; we think that if we’re with someone who will pay attention to us, our loneliness will disappear. But if this particular deep-seated fear is part of our makeup, the mere act of our partner being engrossed in a book when we’re expecting attention will be enough to make us feel abandoned. We may try to deal with this by demanding or attempting to attract his or her attention, but even if that demand is met, our fear is unlikely to be assuaged for long.

Furthermore, getting the attention we desire does not necessarily mean we will experience intimacy. True intimacy comes instead when we’re willing to acknowledge the uncomfortable feelings of anxiety and fear that are part of our own conditioning; it comes when we can say yes to them, which means we’re willing to finally feel them. It may be uncomfortable to feel the fear of loneliness, but breathing that aching fear into the center of the chest and surrendering to it allows us to take responsibility for our own feelings. We no longer ask that others protect us from feeling these fears we had previously turned away from. We can discover that the more we face our own fear of aloneness, the more we experience true connection, and the more we can open to love.

The basic fear of aloneness may also include a related anxiety that is not usually recognized: the fear of disconnection— from others as well as from our own heart. This fear penetrates more deeply than loneliness and often manifests as a knotted quiver in the chest or abdomen. Remember, at bottom, the heart that seeks to awaken, to live genuinely, is more real than anything. It is the nameless drive that calls us to be who we most truly are. When we are not in touch with this, we may feel the existential anxiety of disconnection.

In a way, much of spiritual practice is geared toward helping us address our feeling of basic separation. How does this occur? First, we acknowledge our fear and see it clearly for what it is. We need to remember that the fear is, in fact, our path itself, our direct route to experiencing the lovingkindness at our core.

Then we must face the fear directly, saying yes to it. Essentially, this means we are willing to experience it—to sit with anxiety in the center of the chest and truly feel— rather than run away from it. When fear arises, in order to replace our usual dread with a genuine curiosity, we might ask, “Here it is again, how will it be this time?” As we breathe the sensations of anxiety into the heart, our familiar thought-based stories begin to dissolve. As we get out of our heads, we can experience the spaciousness of the nonconceptual: the healing power of the heart. No longer caught in fear or our sense of separateness, we are free to experience connectedness, which is our basic birthright and comes forth naturally on its own.

The third basic fear is that of unworthiness. This fear takes many forms, such as the fear that I don’t count, the fear of general inadequacy, of being unworthy of love, of being nothing or stupid, and so on. The basic fear that we’ll never measure up dictates much of our behavior; for example, for some, it impels us to continuously and forcefully prove ourselves, while for others, it might prompt us to cease trying. In either case, isn’t our motivation the same: to avoid facing the basic fear of unworthiness? We may fear the feeling of unworthiness more than anything.

In fact, we are often merciless in these self-judgments of unworthiness—not just when .we’re upset at ourselves, but as an ongoing frame of mind. Even if they’re not glaringly obvious, our self-judgments are always lurking under the surface, waiting to arise. For example, those who have stage fright, including the anxiety of public speaking, may feel the constant underground dread of having to deal with it. There’s a joke that people can fear public speaking so intensely that at a funeral they would rather be in the casket than give the eulogy. I can attest to the lurking dread of stage fright, as I had to face this particular fear for years. And yet ultimately giving public talks has been a very fruitful path.

Fear of public speaking triggers the dread and shame of public failure and humiliation. But what is really being threatened? Isn’t it just our self-image of appearing strong, calm, insightful, or whatever our own particular narrow view is of who we’re supposed to be? We certainly fear appearing weak or not on top of it. Why? Because that would confirm our own negative beliefs of unworthiness. Even though there is no real danger, isn’t it true that the fear of failing often feels fatal? Yet ironically, our very attempt to fight the fear is most often what increases it and may even result in panic.

There is a better alternative: We must learn to let it in willingly, to breathe the sensation of fear directly into the center of the chest. In other words, to say yes to the fear.


At one point in my life, when I was struggling with my fear of giving public talks, I joined Toastmasters, a group designed to help develop skills in public speaking. But I didn’t join to learn to give better talks, or even with the goal of overcoming my fear. I joined so that I could have a laboratory, a place to invite the fear in and go to its roots. In a way, I actually began to look forward to the fear arising so I could breathe it right into the heart, entering into it fully. Paradoxically, the willingness to be with the fear completely is what changes the experience of fear altogether. It’s not that fear will no longer arise; it’s that we no longer fear it.

Eventually, we all need to be willing to face the deepest, darkest beliefs we have about ourselves. Only in this way can we come to know that they are only beliefs, and not the truth about who we are. By entering into this process willingly, by seeing through the fiction of who we believe ourselves to be, we can connect with our true nature. As Nietzsche put it, “One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star.” Love is the dancing star, the fruit of saying yes, of consciously and willingly facing our fears.

When we can feel fear within the spaciousness of the breath and heart, we may even come to see it more as an adventure than a nightmare. To see it as an adventure means being willing to take the ride with curiosity, even with its inevitable ups and downs. Over the years, because I had to speak in public quite frequently, this situation provided an opportunity to tap into what was really important to me—to remember that my aspiration is to learn to live from the awakened heart. Whenever I remembered this right before giving a talk, it was no longer an issue of whether or not I felt the discomfort of fear. This allowed me to say yes to it and to willingly breathe the fear right in. In other words, when we connect with a larger sense of what life is, negative beliefs such as “I’ll never measure up” may still come up, but they no longer dictate who we are. Instead, we begin to use the fear as our actual path to learning to live from lovingkindness.

Remember, it’s a given that we don’t want to feel the fear of unworthiness, but at some point we have to understand that it’s more painful to try to suppress our fears and self-judgments, thus solidifying them, than it is to actually feel them. This is part of what it means to bring lovingkindness to our practice, because we are no longer viewing our fear as proof that we’re defective. Without cultivating love for ourselves, regardless of how much discipline we have, regardless of how serious we are about practice, we will still stay stuck in the subtle mercilessness of the mind, listening to the voice that tells us we are basically and fundamentally unworthy. We should never underestimate the need for lovingkindness on the long and sometimes daunting path of learning to awaken.

Please note that these three basic fears—insecurity and helplessness, aloneness and disconnection, and unworthiness— are not just mental. Scientists tell us that fear is written into the cellular memory of the body, particularly into a small part of the brain called the amygdala. That is why simply knowing about our fears intellectually will not free us from their domination. Every time they are triggered, we slide into an established groove in the brain. So until we can see our fears clearly, we will not be able to practice with them directly.

When I was a child, my father told me repeatedly, “The only thing to fear is fear itself.” Although his intentions were good, what I actually heard was that I should be afraid of fear! Fear thus became the enemy. We have to remember that fear is neither an enemy nor an obstacle; it is not a real monster. When we feel fear, we need to remind ourselves that it is our path; and when we truly understand this, we can welcome it into the spaciousness of the heart.

Interestingly, it is this nonconceptual experiencing of our fears that allows the grooves in the brain, which are preprogrammed to react to fear, to slowly be filled in. How this works is a mystery; it is no mystery, however, that unless we can clearly see our individual fears for what they are, it is unlikely we will overcome our habitual and instinctive aversions to them. The bright side of this is that once we are able to face our fears, once we willingly let them in, they become a portal to reality.


Ezra Bayda lives and teaches at Zen Center San Diego. He is the author of four books, including Being Zen: Bringing Meditation to Life. This article has been adapted from his latest work, Zen Heart: Simple Advice for Living with Mindfulness and Compassion.

Turtles All Te Way Down

This article appears in 20 Years, 20 Teachings: The Tricycle 20th Anniversary E-Book.



What is it like to do nothing? I mean, really do nothing, nothing at all—no recalling what has happened, no imagining what might happen, no reflecting on what is happening, no analyzing or explaining or controlling what you experience. Nothing!

Why would you even try? We struggle in life because of a tenacious habit of wanting life to be different from what it is: The room you are in is too warm, you don’t like your job, or your partner isn’t quite the person of your dreams. You adjust the thermostat, get a new job, or tell your partner what you need. Now it’s too cool, you are earning less money, or your partner has found some flaws in you. The more we try to make life conform to our desires, the more we struggle, and the more we suffer. The only way out of this vicious cycle is to accept what arises, completely: in other words, do nothing.

Paradoxically, such radical acceptance opens a way of living that we could hardly have imagined.

Years ago, I attended a three-week retreat in Colorado. I had done many retreats, including seven years in France during which I had no communication with the outside world. There the days were full. We started meditation sessions well before sunrise and ended late in the evening. We had daily and weekly rituals and much preparatory work and cleanup. We practiced different meditation methods, with set periods for practice, set periods for study, and a set number of days on each method. With so much to do and to learn, there was no free time.

This retreat was different. The only meditation instruction was “Do nothing.” “That’s it?” I thought. “I came here to do nothing for three weeks?” We met for meals, one teaching session in the morning, and one group practice session in the evening. We had a meditation interview every few days. The rest of the time was our own. Email, cell phone, text messages, all the usual means of communication weren’t available. With no practices to learn, no commentaries to study, no preparations for rituals, I had quite literally nothing to do except sit, lie down, or go for a walk.

My cabin was on a hillside that looked over a magnificent view of tree-covered hills, with a range of mountains just visible on the horizon. The silence was highlighted by the songs of birds, the wind in the trees, rain and thunderstorms, and the grunts, scuffles, or calls of animals in the dark. Every day the sun rose, crossed the sky, and set, with the moon and stars dancing in the night.

“What a relief,” I thought, “plenty of time to rest and practice.” But I soon found that doing absolutely nothing, not even entertaining myself, wasn’t so easy.

Ajahn Chah, one of the great Thai teachers of the 20th century, gave the following practice instruction:

Put a chair in the middle of a room.

Sit in the chair.

See who comes to visit.

One has to be careful with such instructions. I once gave this to a woman who came to see me and was surprised to learn that she put a chair in the center of her living room, sat in it, and waited for people to visit. When nobody knocked on her door, she decided that meditation wasn’t for her. Ajahn Chah was, of course, speaking poetically. Nevertheless, in some sense, all of us are like this woman, waiting for something to happen.

No shortage of visitors for me! Relief, peace, a deep sense of relaxation, joy, and happiness all paid their respects. “Good,” I thought. “All this will deepen, and wisdom or insight will come.” After all, I had read in many texts that as the mind rests, it naturally becomes clear.

Instead, the visitors continued, but with a difference. The more deeply I relaxed, the more I became aware of stuff inside me, stuff stored in rusting boxes in mildewed basements. Along came memories, pleasant and unpleasant, stories about my life, old desires, boredom, and a sense of futility. I kept pushing these visitors away, or analyzing them, trying to understand them so I could be free of them. I was back in the old struggle, trying to control my experience. The visitors became more disturbing, more demanding of attention. Some harbored hatred and a desire for revenge. Others cried with unfulfilled longing and yearning. Still others drugged me into a dull lethargy. They had no awareness of the beauty and peace around me. I began to lose hope that I would achieve anything in this retreat.

Hope is the one quality left in Pandora’s box, and it is not clear whether it is a blessing or a curse. T. S. Eliot, in Four Quartets, writes:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Wait without hope? The prospect seemed unimaginable. A chill crept down my spine, and I found myself slipping into hope’s counterpart, fear. Was I going to sit on the side of this mountain and have nothing to show for it? A consistent theme in the many texts I had read and translated was “No hope, no fear.” I had never thought of applying that instruction to my concern about achievement.

For most of us, the demands of each day keep us busy. Hope and fear come as reactions to specific situations—rumors about possible promotions or layoffs, our child’s first competition or performance, illness in a parent, and so on. The deeper hopes and fears remain, untended, forgotten perhaps, but there all the same. Again, from Four Quartets:

And the ragged rock in the restless waters,

Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;

On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,

In navigable weather it is always a seamark

To lay a course by: but in the sombre season

Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

One of my ragged rocks was hope for achievement. I feared an acute disappointment if, at the end of the retreat, all I had done was sit on a mountain and contemplate my navel. Slowly, I realized that to do nothing meant I had to let go of deeply cherished beliefs that I was just beginning to sense, the belief, for instance, that I had to achieve something.

Most of us are quite happy to do nothing for a few minutes, perhaps an hour or two, or, if we have had a particularly demanding stretch, for a day or two, a few days at the most. But to do nothing, to produce nothing, to achieve nothing for a month, a year, six years or more, is quite a different kettle of fish.

I thought of my own teacher, who had spent years in mountain retreats in Tibet. As he had told me himself, he would quite happily have stayed in the mountains, but his teacher had demanded (in the strongest terms possible) that he return to the monastery and teach training retreats. What was it like, I wondered, to be at peace with doing nothing day after day, month after month, year after year?

Then I thought about Longchenpa, the 14th-century teacher, whose text was the basis for this retreat. He had spent fourteen years in a cave near Lhasa. What had it been like for him to sit day after day doing nothing?

The depth to which these teachers, and many others like them, had let go of any concern with success or failure was like a knife in my heart. Here I was, practicing for a mere three weeks, worrying about whether I was going to achieve anything. Only now did I appreciate what letting go of hope, ambition, or achievement meant, and I found myself feeling a quite different kind of respect and appreciation for these teachers.

The classical texts have relatively little to say about the emotional turmoil that intensive practice often uncovers. Here too, these lines from Eliot apply, even though he was writing about old age:

…the rending pain of re-enactment

Of all that you have done, and been; the shame

Of motives late revealed, and the awareness

Of things ill done and done to others’ harm

Which once you took for exercise of virtue.

Then fools’ approval stings, and honour stains.

From wrong to wrong the exasperated spirit

Proceeds, unless restored by that refining fire

Where you must move in measure, like a dancer.

From the beginning of the retreat, space surrounded and permeated my experience, but I had been unable to relate to it. I had been completely caught up in trying to control my experience. Now I stopped ignoring it and just stared into space. My relationship with the emotional turmoil changed, subtly.


Space, I realized, has many dimensions. In front of me was the vast space of the sky. It didn’t depend on anything, and nothing depended on it. I watched the play of light and colors as the day passed. When the sun set and the sky lit up with shades of rose and yellow and blue, the space that let me see the sunset didn’t take on any color, yet it was not something apart. At night, it became an empty blackness, punctuated by a thousand points of light, but the panorama of stars was not separate from space. Likewise, thoughts, feelings, and sensations are not different from the space that is mind.

Silence is another kind of space. When everything is quiet and suddenly there is a noise, we ordinarily say the silence was shattered. But it’s more accurate to say that we forget the silence and listen only to the sound. I started to listen to the silence, around me and inside me.

Time is another dimension. Kant once said that time is the medium in which we perceive thoughts, just as space is the medium in which we perceive objects. Hopes and fears, projections into the future, regrets and joys are all thoughts that come and go in time. Because there was nothing to do with any of them, I began to experience them as comings and goings, like the mists that rose from the ground in the early morning, only to vanish as the day progressed. Some days, what arose was more of a thunderstorm, but, like the thunderstorms in the mountains, the turmoil came and went on its own, leaving the space as it was before and the ground and trees refreshed and rich with life.

I became aware of another dimension, an infinite internal space that had to do with my ability to experience my body. This dimension had more the quality of depth: it seemed to go down forever. There was no bottom. There was no me there. It was like looking into a bottomless abyss, except that sometimes I became the abyss. Years later, when I was discussing this experience with an aging teacher, he used the Tibetan phrase zhi me tsa tral, or “No ground, no root.”

Two young boys were playing together. One asked the other, “We stand on the ground and the ground holds us up. What does the ground stand on?” “Oh, my father explained that to me,” the second boy said. “The ground is supported by four giant elephants.” “What do the elephants stand on, then?” “They stand on the shell of a huge turtle.” “What does the turtle stand on?” The second boy thought for a long time and then said, “I think it’s turtles all the way down.”

Like the woman in the chair who waited for someone to knock on her door, I had been waiting for something to happen, some experience or insight that would make sense of everything, put all the ghosts to rest and silence the “thousand voices in the night.” For decades, I had held the belief deeply embedded in our culture: Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

“You have to be kidding,” I thought. “I have to let go of belief in truth?” Slowly, it was becoming clear to me that there is no truth out there—or in there, for that matter. There is only the way we experience things. To let go of this belief required a very different effort. Again, from Eliot:

Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the

dancing.

Here is where faith and devotion come into the picture. Devotion, whether to a tradition, a practice, a teacher, or an ideal, is the fuel for faith. I had practiced with devotion before, in the form of guru yoga, or union with the teacher. It’s a powerful practice, greatly valued in the Tibetan tradition, where there are numerous prayers with titles such as “Devotion Pierces the Heart.” The teacher at this retreat exemplified this. He felt such devotion for his own teacher that he could not talk about him without crying.

Faith and devotion do not come easily to me. Now, here, at this retreat, I felt a different kind of devotion for my teachers, and with that understood that there was nothing to do but to experience whatever came through the door.

We have a choice between two very different ways to meet what arises in experience.

The first is to rely on explanation. We interpret our experiences in life according to a set of deeply held assumptions. We may or may not be conscious of the assumptions, but they are there. Even when we explore our experience, we are usually looking for evidence that supports or confirms them. These assumptions are never questioned. They are taken as fundamental. A self-reinforcing dynamic develops that results in a closed system in which everything is explained, the mystery of life is dismissed, new ideas, perspectives, or approaches to life cannot enter and certain questions can never be asked. This I call belief.

The other way is to open and be willing to receive, not control, whatever arises—that is, not only allow but embrace every sensation, feeling, and thought, everything we experience. In this approach, we allow our experience to challenge our assumptions. Here, there are no fundamental or eternal truths, and some things cannot be explained; they can only be experienced. This willingness to open to whatever arises internally or externally I call faith.


This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

—Rumi

Early in the retreat, when difficult experiences arose, I would analyze them, trying to understand what had happened and why. I thought this would help to resolve them and then I wouldn’t have to be bothered by them. Sometimes I would be completely swallowed by emotions and sensations and only come to my senses a few minutes—or a few hours—later. Frequently, I just couldn’t face what was arising. I shut it down, or went for a walk. In short, if what arose didn’t fit my picture of what I wanted or needed, I would start doing something.

Gradually, I learned just to stare into space, in any of its dimensions—the sky, the silence, time, or the infinite depth in my own body. I recognized that the only way I could do nothing was, well, to do nothing. I had to receive whatever arose, experience it, and not do anything with it. I needed faith to experience powerful feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, despair, or shame, because I often felt I would die in the process. I recalled how many times my teacher had said this, albeit in different words: “Rest in just recognizing.” But no one had said that “just recognizing” might lead to pain so intense that I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. And I came to appreciate that all my efforts in previous practice had built the capacity so that I could now rest and just recognize.

When I did open to everything, there was no opposition— there was no enemy. I didn’t have to struggle with experience. At the same time, there was no truth, no state of perfection, no ideal, no final achievement. Years later, in a conversation I had with another teacher about this experience, he said, “Don’t worry about truth. Just develop devotion so strongly that thinking stops, and rest right there.”

Any concept of higher truth creates hierarchy, and with that, authority, boundaries, dualism, and opposition. What various religious traditions, including Buddhism, call truth is better described as a way of experiencing things. Such phrases as “All experience is empty” or “Everything is an illusion” are better viewed as descriptions of experiences: stories, in effect, not statements about reality.

What, then, do we make of all the teachings of various spiritual traditions and other forms of human knowledge? For me, God, karma, rebirth, emptiness, brahman, atman, heaven, hell, all of these are stories that people use to understand, explain, or give direction to their lives. The same holds for scientific views, astronomy, biology, quantum mechanics, or neurology. If we wish to be free of suffering, to be free of struggle, then the way to look at experience is to know “There is no enemy” and stop opposing what arises in experience. Is it difficult and challenging? Yes, but it’s possible. And the way to learn to do that is to simply do nothing.

“How strange!” I thought, as the retreat came to a close, “Who would have thought you could find a way of freedom simply by doing nothing?”



Ken McLeod is a translator (The Great Path of Awakening), an author (Wake Up to Your Life and An Arrow to the Heart), a teacher, a business consultant, and the director of Unfettered Mind (unfetteredmind.org), based in Los Angeles.



From the book The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition by Coleman Barks. © 2004 by Coleman Barks. Reprinted by the permission of Harperone, an imprint of Harpercollins Publishers.