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