With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The rain clouds are hanging over us this morning here in the desert and I see it is 66 degrees. I have my running shorts on and am about to go out for a run/walk with the dogs before going to Zen Center for morning zazen.
Going out before the sun rises is a delicious thing. In this way we get to experience the arrival of a new day. Such things are always attended by fresh scents, clean air, and refreshed lines of thought.
I have been considering this whole notion in our culture that we should somehow place our focus on enjoying our lives. While it is a good thing, I am sure, to enjoy our life, we should not want to place that enjoyment in front of other things. What other things?
Well, the suffering of others, the need to take care of our loved ones, the demands of our planet to name a few of the bigger examples. Some things are much larger than we are and when we place our attention on those things it seems our own pleasures diminish in value. On the other hand, to place our attention on increasing the value of our pleasure, we seem to diminish the value of those around us. Those around us become in-service to our pleasure. Not such good inverse relationship.
The Bodhisattva Way charges us to consider the world first and ourselves second. Yet, as we come to realize through our practice, there is no "world" and "us" difference. So, it is important to use our wonderful minds to attain perspective on such things. Today we call this 'balance.' In another age and with a different slant on it, it would be called 'practice realization.'
Be well.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Monday, August 28, 2006
Living in a Cartoon
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The 5:00 AM bell seemed to come right on time this morning. Awake, I hit the floor and dressed for a morning walk with My Little Honey and the pups. Off we went before the light came over the mountains. I did a power sort of walk ahead with Tripper who seems to run standing still. We did 1.8 miles. A quick shower and off to Zen Center for morning zazen. Vicky was there with me and the Center was so blissfully quiet.
From there to home. I fixed a problem with our sutra book and will print new inserts for both the Heart Sutra and the Hanya Shin Gyo pages (larger print and a bell placement). A trip to the gym for a chest, back, and ab workout, then breakfast of a protein shake and two slices of whole wheat toast with a small glass of V-8 juice completed my morning.
Now, its time to blog.
We had a nice turn out at Zen Center yesterday and a great lunch afterwards. Thank you everyone.
Whoops! Out of the corner of my eye the top of the kitty litter box scrambled in a panic across the hall! It seems Tripper, the ever eager litter eater (yuk!) got himself caught inside the box, freaked, and ran with the top over him. Goodness.
What a morning.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
The 5:00 AM bell seemed to come right on time this morning. Awake, I hit the floor and dressed for a morning walk with My Little Honey and the pups. Off we went before the light came over the mountains. I did a power sort of walk ahead with Tripper who seems to run standing still. We did 1.8 miles. A quick shower and off to Zen Center for morning zazen. Vicky was there with me and the Center was so blissfully quiet.
From there to home. I fixed a problem with our sutra book and will print new inserts for both the Heart Sutra and the Hanya Shin Gyo pages (larger print and a bell placement). A trip to the gym for a chest, back, and ab workout, then breakfast of a protein shake and two slices of whole wheat toast with a small glass of V-8 juice completed my morning.
Now, its time to blog.
We had a nice turn out at Zen Center yesterday and a great lunch afterwards. Thank you everyone.
Whoops! Out of the corner of my eye the top of the kitty litter box scrambled in a panic across the hall! It seems Tripper, the ever eager litter eater (yuk!) got himself caught inside the box, freaked, and ran with the top over him. Goodness.
What a morning.
Be well.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
Our Mindfull Bell
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
This morning I am so sleepy. I thouht of the story about Suzuki-roshi training himself to literally jump out if bed each morning. Sometimes life is like that. It demands our attention in spite of ourselves. So few of us seem willing to snap to it, though. Our tendencies are to give in to our body's base urges: eat more, sleep more, exercise less, park as close to the store entrance as possible, eat fast foods, anything to avoid doing that which we do not feel like doing. Oh terror.
No wonder others see us as a soft bunch.
One of the qualities of awakened living is having the discipline to be awake. And to be awake means most directly to be present, even if, especially if, we don't want to.
So, maybe that is what we need in our lives, an internal mindful bell that rings and sometimes gently, sometimes demandingly, brings us to attention. But for what?
What is the "so what? of our practice?
Why be awake when we so naturally wish to be asleep? Fit when we would rather be unfit?
Our answer is precisely in the question.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Saturday, August 26, 2006
Mr and Mrs Buttinsky, Our Neighbors
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
I went to the synagogue last night. There was a young man on his way to graduate study at a rabbinic school. He gave a talk. Big Mistake. He chose to talk about the Ways of Rebuke. Now, imagine a congregation full of people much older than you and you are telling them how to rebuke their neighbor. Either in one ear and out the other or a rebuke in itself. He could have cast the talk in much more positive terms by suggesting we consider rebuke to be correction or assistance or counsel or whatever, but no. He stuck to the old, archaic term, rebuke...of course, its a Hebrew word and rabbis, as well as rabbinic students love to talk on the derivations of terms. I can't blame them, I do the same with Zen words. Such talk makes us feel as though we are in the know, you know.
I was struck, however, with the history that rebuking our neighbor is a positive commandment and is considered a good thing to do. This commandment places all of us in a position of being the hall monitors at school, the crossing guards, and the parents of the world around us. It sets us up to be the experts judging our neighbor's behavior and then demands we become a buttinskies on top of it! Oy.
Yes, we should aproach those who we feel are injuring us or the world. Yes, we should attempt to repair the damage, assist them and ourselves in healing, but rebuke? I'm not so sure.
The Buddha taught that teachings must be specific to the situation and needs of those within the situation. He knew that not all of us are smart, nor are we all artistic or mechanical. Each of us needs to be approached in a careful way, a way appropriate to our ability to understand. This requires a great knowledge of our neighbor. Sadly, few of us bother to get to know our neighbors well enough. And fewer still have the skill to rebuke with care and compassion.
So, I wonder about this commandment and am left thinking it better to address oneself before addressing the flaws of others.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Thursday, August 24, 2006
Can You Not Hear a Pin Drop?
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
My disciple, Rev. Gozen, did his Teisho last night on "Buddhism Lite." Another student of mine, a budding Buddha, asks during mondo period if Zen is not "Buddhism Heavy."
I sat silent.
If the hall is empty, any sound is like a trumpet.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Tuesday, August 22, 2006
What's Your Message?
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
Consider your every movement, your every words, thought and deed are teachings. What is their essence? If, as was once said, the medium is the message, what is your message?
I see our children wearing t-shirts that suggest they are selfish or sex toys. I see parents not paying attention to much of anything but what's on their table. I see people equating prosperity with election (to use an old Calvinist sort of thought).
Yet, this obsession with the pleasures of the self noticeably leaves us feeling both empty and oddly angry. We seek fulfillment (a spiritual sort of meal) in Church or Synagogue or Mosque or Zendo and are angry when we leave still craving. Not understanding that seeking is a sort of sickness in itself. We blame the form or the Teaching or the Teacher. Sometimes we hold the Universe responsible. It is rare that we really get into it, though. Rare that we look at our own medium and assess or own message.
Perhaps it it time we considered rethinking the notion of looking "the other way" and saw that "way" as our own life.
Be well.
Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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Monday, August 21, 2006
Calm Abiding
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The presentation at Unity Church of Mesilla Valley went very well yesterday. We expected 25-35 people. I made 50 handouts. We ran out!
People always seem to enjoy hearing about Zen and the Dharma. They seem to feel calmed by the message. Yet, so many resist the practice. My sense is that some of people fear letting go of the thoughts and feelings they have, even if they are the causes of their suffering, as those same thoughts and feelings are so very familiar.
The thing is, Zen will not remove thoughts and feelings, nor will it stop pain. It will only alter our relationship to them.
The whole notion of "calm abiding" a phrase often used in Buddhist texts, is about relationship. If we are in a small boat in the middle of a stormy sea, our practice of Zen will not calm the sea. What it will do is calm our relationship to the storm itself. We will do what is natural and necessary to do in order to stay afloat. We will notice the high water. We will notice our fear. We will notice the wind. And we will bucket out the water, take down our sail, and make sure all our things are tied down.
Within the storm and the things to be done, we are calmly abiding.
Now, if we shift our perspective, we see that there is no storm. We see that storm is a word we apply to a set of circumstances and that such a word arouses thoughts and feelings.
So, where is the storm?
Calm abiding is the Zen of relationship to everyday life.
Be well.
Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. May All Beings Be Free From Suffering
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