Blessing

With palms together,

Good Morning Everyone,



Reader Michele wrote:


Harvey can you provide me with some insight on blessings. I need balance. I keep hearing from people that they are blessed because they were not part of the Haiti tragedy. I get sooo angry when I see or hear this...I know since I am not in the neutral zone upon hearing "I am blessed," I am not perceiving something......HELP. Please post. Thanks and apologies for the intrusion...




I replied briefly: No one is blessed by not being harmed when others are. If one blade of grass is harmed we are all harmed. Second, try to use your anger to energize you into action. The best way to deal with such things is to do something about them.





It is a human experience to feel relief that we slipped out of harm's way. It is delusion to believe that because you have, you are somehow one of God's "elect". A long time ago, people seemed to dwell obsessively on the question of where they resided in God's eye. Calvin put forth the notion that some of us were, indeed, God's "Elect". How to know? Well, it was easy, those who prospered were the elect, those who didn't weren't. It was the ultimate in dualistic discrimination.



From a Zen perspective, to be blessed is not something we are granted, it is something we experience. The Infinite does not, in our view, parcel out this or that, the Infinite is just that, Infinite. To feel blessed, on the other hand, is to feel gratitude.



All of life is a blessing, that is, an opportunity to experience deeply. We are blessed even in suffering, as suffering is like cold water on the skin on a hot day. Or the sound of an unexpected thunderclap. Suffering demands something of us. First, that we wake up to its existence and second that we experience it in a way that will release it.



On the other hand, none of are special in our experience. And no experience is better or worse than any other It is all life. To assign a meaning to a "good"experience is just as deluded as assigning a meaning to a bad experience. Experience is nothing other than itself.



When someone feels blessed for having escaped destruction, be happy for them. When someone feels special as a result, care for them.



People like Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh are suffering. If we respond with anger, we are not helping. Better to take the energy of anger and turn it into a source of power of transformation. In order to do this, though, we must examine it's source within ourselves.



Being open is a challenge,a it requires a degree of vulnerability we are not accustomed to, yet it is this precisely, which allows for the possibility of intimacy, something tragically missing in our culture.



Kannon taught, "the Bodhisattvas live this deepest wisdom with no hindrance in the mind, no hindrance therefore no fear.." In order to be intimate with each other,we need to feel safe. But most importantly,to feel safe we need to realize our True Nature Practice.



Be well.