Dharma Talks from Prarie Zen Center (Joko Beck)

Dharma talks from The Prarie Zen Center (Charlotte Joko Beck) given by Elihu Genmyo Smith who is the current abbot of the center. These various talks are in text format.

Finding Patience

By accepting the agreeable and disagreeable aspects of life, we are no longer limited by our longing for life to be different than it is. We have all the time in the world, in the spaciousness of every moment.

Follow the link:

http://www.tricycle.com/onpractice/finding-patience?page=0,0&offer=dharma

Feeling More and More

We bump up against the fact of change and impermanence as soon as we acknowledge our feelings or needs for others. Basically, we all tend to go in one of two directions as a strategy for coping with that vulnerability. We either go in the direction of control or of autonomy. If we go for control, we may be saying: “If only I can get the other person or my friends or family to treat me the way I want, then I’ll be able to feel safe and secure. If only I had a guarantee that they’ll give me what I need, then I wouldn’t have to face uncertainty.” With this strategy, we get invested in the control and manipulation of others and in trying to use people as antidotes to our own anxiety.


With the strategy (or curative fantasy) of autonomy, we go in the opposite direction and try to imagine that we don’t need anyone. But that strategy inevitably entails repression or dissociation, a denial of feeling. We may imagine that through spiritual practice we will get to a place where we won’t feel need, sexuality, anger, or dependency. Then, we imagine, we won’t be so tied into the vicissitudes of relationships. We try to squelch our feelings in order not to be vulnerable anymore, and we rationalize that dissociation under the lofty and spiritual-sounding word “detachment,” which ends up carrying a great deal of unacknowledged emotional baggage alongside its original, simpler meaning as the acceptance of impermanence.

We have to get to know and be honest about our particular strategies for dealing with vulnerability, and learn to use our practice to allow ourselves to experience more of that vulnerability rather than less of it. To open yourself up to need, longing, dependency, and reliance on others means opening yourself to the truth that none of us can do this on our own. We really do need each other, just as we need parents and teachers. We need all those people in our lives who make us feel so uncertain. Our practice is not about finally getting to a place where we are going to escape all that but about creating a container that allows us to be more and more human, to feel more and more.

Follow the link for the complete article in Tricycle.

http://www.tricycle.com/magazine/columns/relationships-no-gain?offer=dharma

Everyone we Know

It’s easy to feel goodwill, compassion, and empathetic joy for people you like and love, but there are bound to be people you dislike—often for very good reasons. Similarly, there are many people for whom it’s easy to feel equanimity: people you don’t know or don’t really care about. But it’s hard to feel equanimity when people you love are suffering. Yet if you want to develop the brahma-viharas ("sublime attitudes"), you have to include all of these people within the scope of your awareness so that you can apply the proper attitude no matter where or when. This is where your heart needs the help of your head.

Follow the link for the complete article in Tricycle magazine

http://www.tricycle.com/feature/head-heart-together?offer=dharma

The Cause of Suffering: Addiction to Negative Emotions

A wonderfully funny and insightful teaching on the cause of suffering given by Gelec Rimpoche. I love that Gelek comes from a very ordinary human place. We are all suffering no matter what our station or condition is in life and the cause of that suffering is addiction to negative emotions such as fear, hatred, jealousy, self loathing, depression, etc. The list is long but behind these emotions is the ego. Ego gives us the idea that we must be better than another, and certainly different and therefore in need of protection from the onslaught of all the other separate egos out there who also have the same idea based in ignorence.  If we could cut out the ego or at least reduce its hold on us by understanding how it works in our lives negative emotions would be less likely to arise and suffering would be reduced. Follow the link for the teaching in pdf form from Tricycle magazine.

http://www.tricycle.com/files/images/webexclusives/Chapter%204.pdf


You can also download 2 free teachings from Gelek Rimpoche by going to the following link for Jewelheart, his retreat center in Michigan.

http://www.jewelheart.org/tricycle/?utm_source=tricycle&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=newsite

Soul Force (Satyagraha)

Buddhist monk Claude AinShin Thomas said: “As a Buddhist, I cannot think myself into a new way of living, I have to live myself into a new way of thinking.” If we hope to end war and violence, Thomas noted, “we must simply stop the endless wars that rage within.”

The following article was taken from Tricycle magazine archives and illustrates this point with the life of Martin Luther King and his contant commitment to the principles of satyagraha

Follow the link:

http://www.tricycle.com/special-section/satyagraha-special-section-blueprints-freedom?offer=dharma

A Teaching on Dying by Ram Dass

A beautiful teaching on how to die with utter assurance and conciousness of the on-going song of the soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S57Gc8PSIO8&feature=player_embedded