With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The sun has once again risen and warmed the desert air. The coolness of the night evaporates quickly and we are left with hot, dry air. Where can we go to escape the heat?
What is the nature of unbearability? When we suffer and say "this is unbearable!" what do we mean? Our mind is intruding, demanding an alternative to the feelings experienced by our bodies or hearts. In some ways this is a good thing. Pain is an flag that causes us to look and act to be safe or well.
Yet all of these are mental formations, constructs that have no independent existence. They come and go like the breeze or the sun. We suffer in direct proportion to our desire not to suffer. The more we imagine non-suffering and compare that imagined state to that which we abide, we suffer.
When it is hot we wish to be cool. When we are cold, we wish to be warm. All of this wishing separates us from our present moment experience. It creates a gulf between us and reality.
Our practice is to not rant against the heat, but simply be. We can move to the shade, without thinking about escaping the heat. We can enjoy the heat. We can recognize that heat and cold are relative states to us, the subject. We can join the heat and in so doing allow it to lose its power.
And so it is with life.
Be well.
Organ Mountain Zen
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Stillness
With palms together,
Good Afternoon All,
Some of you have asked me to elaborate on the teaching of stillness. Let's try this: Create stillness right now. You are obviously at your computer just now.
Notice your breath. Where does it come from? Where does it go? Feel it as it enters and leaves your body.
Notice your eyes. Watch them as they move across the monitor.
Notice your mind. What it is up to? Questioning? Yawning?
Notice sound. Can you hear your computer? The sound of the refrigerator or air conditioner? Do you hear yourself swallow?
Notice what your mouth feels like inside. Is it moist? Dry? Where is your tongue? How do your teeth feel?
Notice your eyes blinking. Just witness them open and close.
Do nothing with anything you notice. Just let whatever is there be there and feel the stillness in your body. You do not have to immediately hit the delete key or the reply key or any other key.
When you are in the presence of others, you can do this as well. There is no law that says you must reply immediately. Take a few moments and witness yourself.
The most important aspect of this practice is attentive non-engagement.
When we practice this way, we should notice the need we seem to have to "do" something. Be careful of this need, it will usually lead to no good.
Be well.
Good Afternoon All,
Some of you have asked me to elaborate on the teaching of stillness. Let's try this: Create stillness right now. You are obviously at your computer just now.
Notice your breath. Where does it come from? Where does it go? Feel it as it enters and leaves your body.
Notice your eyes. Watch them as they move across the monitor.
Notice your mind. What it is up to? Questioning? Yawning?
Notice sound. Can you hear your computer? The sound of the refrigerator or air conditioner? Do you hear yourself swallow?
Notice what your mouth feels like inside. Is it moist? Dry? Where is your tongue? How do your teeth feel?
Notice your eyes blinking. Just witness them open and close.
Do nothing with anything you notice. Just let whatever is there be there and feel the stillness in your body. You do not have to immediately hit the delete key or the reply key or any other key.
When you are in the presence of others, you can do this as well. There is no law that says you must reply immediately. Take a few moments and witness yourself.
The most important aspect of this practice is attentive non-engagement.
When we practice this way, we should notice the need we seem to have to "do" something. Be careful of this need, it will usually lead to no good.
Be well.
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
What's to fear?
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
How many of us can make a mistake without fear? Do we feel comfortable out of our comfort zone? Can we hear criticism and allow it to just lay there?
Most of us, perhaps all of us, cannot. We each have a strong need to be valued, appreciated, esteemed. Interaction with others (and sometimes even ourselves) makes this a challenge. Our culture is habituated toward critique.
Valuation is our livelihood. Discrimination our currency.
A statement suggesting what we say is off base or inaccurate invite rebuttal. If the rebuttal comes from fear, big problem. Fer creates defensive posturing. Fear closes us off from even looking at the merits of the suggestion: so strong is our need not to be wrong.
Why?
I am wrong often. I speak before I have the facts. I believe I know what someone is thinking or saying as they are speaking and formulate replies before they have finished their thought. I guess I think I'm a mind-reader or something. My father always charged me with being stupid and incompetent. I filter through his judgment. And just as surely as he is dead, so am I if I continue in this way.
Our practice is to be in this moment. Being in this moment requires courage as it demands we are open. Being open is a challenge when we are afraid. Yet our practice teaches us there is nothing to fear. There is no self to be abused, no feeling that will last forever (unless we keep it tightly stored and ready to use, and even then, it will die with us sometime).
It is a good practice to just be present without acting. In this practice allow yourself the luxury of not responding. Make a concerted effort to free your thoughts and let them float away. Those around you might be mystified, this behavior will be a small challenge for them, but I believe at some point this practice will bear fruit.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
How many of us can make a mistake without fear? Do we feel comfortable out of our comfort zone? Can we hear criticism and allow it to just lay there?
Most of us, perhaps all of us, cannot. We each have a strong need to be valued, appreciated, esteemed. Interaction with others (and sometimes even ourselves) makes this a challenge. Our culture is habituated toward critique.
Valuation is our livelihood. Discrimination our currency.
A statement suggesting what we say is off base or inaccurate invite rebuttal. If the rebuttal comes from fear, big problem. Fer creates defensive posturing. Fear closes us off from even looking at the merits of the suggestion: so strong is our need not to be wrong.
Why?
I am wrong often. I speak before I have the facts. I believe I know what someone is thinking or saying as they are speaking and formulate replies before they have finished their thought. I guess I think I'm a mind-reader or something. My father always charged me with being stupid and incompetent. I filter through his judgment. And just as surely as he is dead, so am I if I continue in this way.
Our practice is to be in this moment. Being in this moment requires courage as it demands we are open. Being open is a challenge when we are afraid. Yet our practice teaches us there is nothing to fear. There is no self to be abused, no feeling that will last forever (unless we keep it tightly stored and ready to use, and even then, it will die with us sometime).
It is a good practice to just be present without acting. In this practice allow yourself the luxury of not responding. Make a concerted effort to free your thoughts and let them float away. Those around you might be mystified, this behavior will be a small challenge for them, but I believe at some point this practice will bear fruit.
Be well.
Monday, May 8, 2006
Morning Light
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
So it is morning once again. I count on morning light. It is a blessing we should each savor. Some years ago, when I was 19 and just shot in the head in the middle of the night in the middle of the jungle, I lay in muddy water waiting for the morning light. In the morning the light streamed in through the canopy of trees revealing a smokey mess of human beings in great pain or dead in grotesque positions.
I pray none of you ever suffer mornings like that, nor that your sons or daughters do.
Each morning I recite a short prayer, "As I open my eyes I vow to see the universe clearly and not forsake a single being." In Jewish thought, we are happy to see that our soul has been returned to us by God. In each case we see that we are able to take a fresh step, essentially born new in the world. What was is no more. What is is here just now. It is our choice exactly how we meet this moment.
What is your choice today? I hope you choose peace.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
So it is morning once again. I count on morning light. It is a blessing we should each savor. Some years ago, when I was 19 and just shot in the head in the middle of the night in the middle of the jungle, I lay in muddy water waiting for the morning light. In the morning the light streamed in through the canopy of trees revealing a smokey mess of human beings in great pain or dead in grotesque positions.
I pray none of you ever suffer mornings like that, nor that your sons or daughters do.
Each morning I recite a short prayer, "As I open my eyes I vow to see the universe clearly and not forsake a single being." In Jewish thought, we are happy to see that our soul has been returned to us by God. In each case we see that we are able to take a fresh step, essentially born new in the world. What was is no more. What is is here just now. It is our choice exactly how we meet this moment.
What is your choice today? I hope you choose peace.
Be well.
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Like Ash
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
Multi-tasking is the great illness of the contemporary world. This disease is a result of attempting to do more with less and not being aware of doing any specific thing at all. It is a prescription for automated sleepwalking.
As workplaces demand more, people rise to the task, or so they believe. They pride themselves in being able to work on several operations at once, believing this will increase productivity and bear fruit in their lives. At home we multitask and fail to be present, not enjoying, just doing more for less.
The value of multitasking is a lie just as sure as the one told by Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman.
In fact, people who multitask do not task at all. They are non sentient robots going through a set of motions and sometime they wake up to discover their lives have all but disappeared, their children are grown and their spouses have found love and comfort elsewhere. Just as Willie Loman did.
Multitasking kills awareness. It anesthetizes the present moment. We do not truly live in this world of splintered attention. We splinter with our attention and become fragments of the human beings we are capable of being.
An old Zen teaching: There is wood, there is combustion, there is ash. It is a mistake to think of these as the same thing or part of a process. Wood is not turned into ash. Wood is wood. Ash is ash. Fire is fire. When we see process, we fail to see what is there before us, just as when we balance a checkbook while washing the dishes and attending to the children fails us from each: we are doing neither of these.
Choose to do less and accomplish more. Be present in your meeting, attend to your child, wash the dish: in each case establish a full presence in the situation. If this requires you to adjust your life, then perhaps less is more again.
In the end, how do you wish to be remembered? The person who was really there or the blur that could not be still?
Be well.
Good Morning All,
Multi-tasking is the great illness of the contemporary world. This disease is a result of attempting to do more with less and not being aware of doing any specific thing at all. It is a prescription for automated sleepwalking.
As workplaces demand more, people rise to the task, or so they believe. They pride themselves in being able to work on several operations at once, believing this will increase productivity and bear fruit in their lives. At home we multitask and fail to be present, not enjoying, just doing more for less.
The value of multitasking is a lie just as sure as the one told by Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman.
In fact, people who multitask do not task at all. They are non sentient robots going through a set of motions and sometime they wake up to discover their lives have all but disappeared, their children are grown and their spouses have found love and comfort elsewhere. Just as Willie Loman did.
Multitasking kills awareness. It anesthetizes the present moment. We do not truly live in this world of splintered attention. We splinter with our attention and become fragments of the human beings we are capable of being.
An old Zen teaching: There is wood, there is combustion, there is ash. It is a mistake to think of these as the same thing or part of a process. Wood is not turned into ash. Wood is wood. Ash is ash. Fire is fire. When we see process, we fail to see what is there before us, just as when we balance a checkbook while washing the dishes and attending to the children fails us from each: we are doing neither of these.
Choose to do less and accomplish more. Be present in your meeting, attend to your child, wash the dish: in each case establish a full presence in the situation. If this requires you to adjust your life, then perhaps less is more again.
In the end, how do you wish to be remembered? The person who was really there or the blur that could not be still?
Be well.
Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Responsibility
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
The morning newspaper reports that the investigation of the drowning of a child in our apartment complex will be ruled an accident. This stops any criminal procedings. Eyes now shift from criminal prosecution to civil responsibilities and compensatory damages.
An event such as this can create an opportunity for reflection on the many aspects of living and dying, as well as our sense of ethics, its extent and limits.
I believe we are a responsibility-adverse culture. No one willingly assumes responsibility for much of anything from war to peace, from love to hate, from conspicuous consumption to poverty. And I have often wondered why.
My sense is that we have created this situation by refusing to use a balanced and broad enough understanding of cause and effect. Moreover, we have a primitive need to punish those responsible for their part in whatever. So, which turkey wants to raise their head at the turkey shoot?
One of the most valuable teachings I received in graduate school and in life as a social worker was the lesson that all things are connected within systems all interacting in some way and on some level with each other. Complexity is the very essence of life. Zen Buddhists understand this complexity on an experiential level through our practice.
Correction should not be synonomous with punishment. A punitive attitude coupled with a punitive course of action causes us not to accept, enables us to put up a wall, protecting ourselves from further assault. Rather than building more courthouses, more prisons, more armies and weapons, wouldn't it make more sense to invest in treating the conditions which give rise to the problems we face in the universe?
As a priest and former therapist my work is to assist people in coming to terms with their responsibilty in life's choices. Overcoming an individual's fear of punishment is the first and most challenging task. The walls must come down in order for the mind and heart to do its work.
Fear is not a healthy emotion.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
The morning newspaper reports that the investigation of the drowning of a child in our apartment complex will be ruled an accident. This stops any criminal procedings. Eyes now shift from criminal prosecution to civil responsibilities and compensatory damages.
An event such as this can create an opportunity for reflection on the many aspects of living and dying, as well as our sense of ethics, its extent and limits.
I believe we are a responsibility-adverse culture. No one willingly assumes responsibility for much of anything from war to peace, from love to hate, from conspicuous consumption to poverty. And I have often wondered why.
My sense is that we have created this situation by refusing to use a balanced and broad enough understanding of cause and effect. Moreover, we have a primitive need to punish those responsible for their part in whatever. So, which turkey wants to raise their head at the turkey shoot?
One of the most valuable teachings I received in graduate school and in life as a social worker was the lesson that all things are connected within systems all interacting in some way and on some level with each other. Complexity is the very essence of life. Zen Buddhists understand this complexity on an experiential level through our practice.
Correction should not be synonomous with punishment. A punitive attitude coupled with a punitive course of action causes us not to accept, enables us to put up a wall, protecting ourselves from further assault. Rather than building more courthouses, more prisons, more armies and weapons, wouldn't it make more sense to invest in treating the conditions which give rise to the problems we face in the universe?
As a priest and former therapist my work is to assist people in coming to terms with their responsibilty in life's choices. Overcoming an individual's fear of punishment is the first and most challenging task. The walls must come down in order for the mind and heart to do its work.
Fear is not a healthy emotion.
Be well.
Monday, May 1, 2006
Good People, Bad Things
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
Yesterday afternoon there were several police cars and emergency vehicles practically blocking the place. People were milling around talking and watching and waiting.
A five year old boy was found dead at the bottom of our complexes hot tub. There were lots of people swimmming in the pool adjacent to it. Attempts by several residents failed to recuscitate him and he was pronounced dead 45 minutes later at the hospital just a couple of minutes away.
The morning newspaper reports that there is a criminal investigation in progress.
My sense is that this investigation will focus on parental neglect as the mother was heard asking if anyone had seen her child and she was at the pool with him. We must, it seems, have someone to blame when such things happen.
My heart goes out to this family. Not only have they suffered the loss of a child, but now will suffer an investigation, public opinion, and possible criminal prosecution.
On one hand, this was a senseless and preventable death. Hot tubs are dangerous as the shift blood pressure and people can suffer injury in them as a result. Young children should not be allowed to "play" in them, and certainly not without close and immediate supervision.
On the other hand, holding a parent responsible for not watching a child every moment, or an apartment complex responsible for not having fences and signs and all manner of safeguards, is also a dangerous matter. Both create situations where someone must be held responsible always. Our legal system is flooded with such actions, both civil and criminal.
Left out of the equation often is the indivdual within situation, as well as a good and balanced sense of what the limitations are for us all in protecting each other from ourselves. Children are by their very nature curious and playful. They do not understand risk and have limited capacities for evaluating dangers. Many adults suffer the same or similar limitations. We do things without reading the labels, climb ladders with tons of stuff attached to out bodies, act as if we were flying squirrels and die, then our families sue. There should have been a warning about carrying two six packs, a hammer, a box of nails, a four 2x4s up an unopened step ladder braced against the wall of a house.
As faith based people, inclined toward a moral and spiritual path in life, we must focus our compassion on all concerned. Blame can be, but is not always, compassionate, although action to prevent further harm is. Shoulds and oughts are fine for the sake of discovering ways to prevent another injury, but do no real good in terms of correcting what has already happened. Judgement will not help us here. Good sense and an open heart will.
Our belief is, as insane as it is, that we should somehow be able to prevent every mis-step imaginable and if we don't then somehow we are remiss to the point of criminal culpability. When bad things happen to good people, and we are all good people, we must embrace each other with loving kindness and work hard at letting the judgements go.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
Yesterday afternoon there were several police cars and emergency vehicles practically blocking the place. People were milling around talking and watching and waiting.
A five year old boy was found dead at the bottom of our complexes hot tub. There were lots of people swimmming in the pool adjacent to it. Attempts by several residents failed to recuscitate him and he was pronounced dead 45 minutes later at the hospital just a couple of minutes away.
The morning newspaper reports that there is a criminal investigation in progress.
My sense is that this investigation will focus on parental neglect as the mother was heard asking if anyone had seen her child and she was at the pool with him. We must, it seems, have someone to blame when such things happen.
My heart goes out to this family. Not only have they suffered the loss of a child, but now will suffer an investigation, public opinion, and possible criminal prosecution.
On one hand, this was a senseless and preventable death. Hot tubs are dangerous as the shift blood pressure and people can suffer injury in them as a result. Young children should not be allowed to "play" in them, and certainly not without close and immediate supervision.
On the other hand, holding a parent responsible for not watching a child every moment, or an apartment complex responsible for not having fences and signs and all manner of safeguards, is also a dangerous matter. Both create situations where someone must be held responsible always. Our legal system is flooded with such actions, both civil and criminal.
Left out of the equation often is the indivdual within situation, as well as a good and balanced sense of what the limitations are for us all in protecting each other from ourselves. Children are by their very nature curious and playful. They do not understand risk and have limited capacities for evaluating dangers. Many adults suffer the same or similar limitations. We do things without reading the labels, climb ladders with tons of stuff attached to out bodies, act as if we were flying squirrels and die, then our families sue. There should have been a warning about carrying two six packs, a hammer, a box of nails, a four 2x4s up an unopened step ladder braced against the wall of a house.
As faith based people, inclined toward a moral and spiritual path in life, we must focus our compassion on all concerned. Blame can be, but is not always, compassionate, although action to prevent further harm is. Shoulds and oughts are fine for the sake of discovering ways to prevent another injury, but do no real good in terms of correcting what has already happened. Judgement will not help us here. Good sense and an open heart will.
Our belief is, as insane as it is, that we should somehow be able to prevent every mis-step imaginable and if we don't then somehow we are remiss to the point of criminal culpability. When bad things happen to good people, and we are all good people, we must embrace each other with loving kindness and work hard at letting the judgements go.
Be well.
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