Leaving Home

With palms together,
Good Morning Sangha,

This morning there are clouds in the sky over the desert. Yesterday was another windy day. My hope is that this afternoon will be beautiful and sunny with a clear sky, but if it isn't, well it will be beautiful as it is and I will appreciate it.

Each day offers itself to us as a partner in our experience in this process of life. Our practice is to be open to this process and receive its teachings.

What does this really mean?

Partly it is about leaving home. This means leaving what we believe we know at our bed as we rise and enter the day. If we go through our day knowing then what are we learning? What sort of room is there in our heads for something new and different?

Leaving home is scary. It requires courage and faith. Courage to face things without a shield, faith that what we receive will not harm us.

We are life's students. Adult learners who have immense capacity for both enlightenment and delusion. One requires a shedding of self, the other grasps the self. When we shed our self: our assumptions, our beliefs, even our self-proclaimed values, we are truely open to learning by direct experience.

So, today, please practice this sort of openness. Have faith that the process is what it is and in the end you are one with it. Have courage to be there, present in each moment. A buddha.

Be well.