Being Real

With palms together,

Good Morning All,

 

This past Wednesday evening we had one of our Zen Center members who lives in El Paso arrive with his daughter. She is a delightful young lady, smart as a whip, and just a joy to practice with.  I invited her to be my assistant and ring the small bell at the appropriate times during the evening.  We say together and then we studied a story of the Buddha together.  She served our tea before the Dharma talk.

 

Having children at the Zen Center is a real delight. Children bring a very special energy, as well as a wonderful perspective, to our practice. I have found that children are often very interested in being present, perhaps because they live their lives that way. We can reinforce this and learn from it ourselves by being in the presence of These great teachers.

 

But first we need to get off our adult high horse.

 

How? Zazen teaches us that all things are our teachers when our self drops away. Being willing to drop away our self importance goes hand in hand. Books such as "The Little Prince" and "The Velveteen Rabbit" are really bodhisattvas who lead us to important realizations.

 

Be well. 

 

 

 

Be well.

 

 

Team Zen:

Rev. Harvey So Daiho Hilbert, Ph.D. 
May All Beings Be Free From Suffering

On the web at:

http://www.zencenteroflascruces.org
http://daihoji.blogspot.com/

and http://360.yahoo.com/buddhist99

 

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Walk Softly

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

My apologies for missing yesterday. I am just a little overwhelmed with Yahoo 360, Zen Center, and buying a new house. Our apartment complex, a beautiful gated community, has been sold and is being converted into condominiums. We have the choice of buying or moving at the end of our lease. So we have been looking about for a house and weighing the pros and cons of purchasing the unit we are in.

Yahoo 360 has been a real ride, as they say. I get a ton of messages, requested to be friends, and the odd assortment of very strange messages like "What kind of crack did you smoke as a kid!" Hmmm. What I am impressed with is the sincere nature of most of the comments and questions. The heartfelt requests for assistance in dealing with life's issues. I have been deeply humbled by these.

So, lately, I am spending much time quietly trying to address the suffering, the questions, and the odd thoughts that this Internet experience seems to be evoking. Our world clearly is getting immediate and intimate. Quick IM conversations with Chinese, Iraqis, Iranians, Thais, Japanese...longer conversations with Westerners seeking some sort of assistance with the challenges of their practice, and the occasional solicitation for romance has kept me quite busy. I am grateful for this opportunity to be of service.

In the end, I am reminded just how similar we all are. Each of us, regardless of country or spiritual path seems to be seeking similar things. We seek happiness. We seek peace. We seek a sense of safety and security. And we seek prosperity. This is common ground. May we each walk upon it softly.

Be well.

The Senses

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

There are some sounds that are very comforting. The sound I hear right now is Pepper's breath as he sleeps by my feet. The sound yesterday was the laughter of good friends enjoying a serendipitous meal together. Sounds are a true picture of the nature of things, We cannot hold onto them. And memory is pale in comparison. Yet there they are in our experience. Direct, they lift us up, yet leave us just instantly.

All of the senses are like this.

We suffer when we try to keep them close. We suffer when we value one over another.

So, regardless of the sound, hear it; regardless of the sight, see it. Appreciate the moment.

Be well.

No Chicken Little Here!

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

The sounds of early morning are delightfully few and far between. Stillness. After the dogs go out, they curl up to nap. I sip my coffee and read the morning news. It seems the world always appears to be falling apart. I close that screen and open another.

Our world, in spite of everything, is not falling apart. People care deeply for one another. For every act of violence, there are countless people there to care for those injured. For every disaster, human beings come together to pickup the pieces and rebuild. Billions of us live together, most with scarce resources, and yet each day we demonstrate our true nature as compassionate beings. In truth, the news stories, the pictures of death and destruction, these are the oddities. We must keep that in mind.

As we go through our day today, lets keep our hearts open. Embracing the world is a wonderful way to embrace yourself.

Be well.

Open Societies

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Mt alarm clock, in the form of furry friend, Tripper's tongue, woke me at 5:30 this morning. What does a dog know about weekends? So, I got up and made the coffee. Opened the laptop and began to read the morning mail.

A couple of messages from someone who thought I expelled them from my group went off on me. I had no idea what she was talking about. I rote her back asking her to explain herself. Some other messages from friends who were concerned about the issues I brought up in yesterdays note. I am sitting with those. And a lot of support for sharing my feelings. It is apparently very important that people who are perceived to be religious leaders be real and open with their experience. I believe this is true.

As a therapist, I was struck by the work of a psychologist who wrote a book called the Transparent Self. In this work, he talked about the notion that self-disclosure was essential at getting to the truth in an interview with a patient. Now, to some extent, our society has been riding on the self-disclosure wagon and everyone seems to be playing a game of king on the mountain as regards war stories. But this is not genuine self-disclosure.

Being open mean being willing to receive as well as give. To receive, one must be willing to set aside self and really listen to another. This means listening without processing an answer. It means self-disclosing for the sake of intimacy and closeness and thus is done judiciously and with purpose.

In Zen we self-disclose to acknowledge our realization of deep interconnectedness with each other. We learn that we are all one in the same beings, buddhas seeking to crack out of the shell of delusion.The light that shines forth from the disclosures of our struggles can be heart-warming.

The sharing of self in public or private is directly related in my opinion to the nature of the organization. The more rigid the organization and tighter the hierarchy, the less public disclosure and the more private disclosure (in the form of quiet gossip). The less rigid and more open the organization the higher the level of public disclosure and thus the more open the rancor. In very orthodox institutions there are very strict rules for deportment. Thus our need to disclose is forced underground so to speak. Restricted to small circles, gossip spends its time with coffee spoons. In more liberal and open institutions, roles and rules are more relaxed, everyone is seen as having validity and a voice and, well, there you have it: a room full of experts!

We hope in liberal settings that people will behave themselves. Most of the time they do. Frankly, I vote for open societies regardless, but is does mean we must learn how to be human together.

Be well.

On Being and Becoming, Sorta

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Most of the time we are not buddhas, but rather, buddha wannabees. We buzz around with our nice thoughts and wonderful words strung together ever so easily, likes colored beads on a string. And then we wash the dishes, watch television, and have an live with our spouses and children.

At Zen Center, we can be the buddhas we think we are, but at home, the clothes come off and a whole other person arises. Is this so?

If we are pretending to be something we imagine to be "Buddhist" then we are not buddhas. On the other hand, if we are annoyed or angry or afraid or lonely, this does not mean we are not "Buddhist" either, and if we are genuinely these things, aware that we are these things, then, in fact we are buddhas.

Buddhas are nothing if not authentic in the moment.

Last night I had occasion to feel tremendous hurt, anger, sorrow, humiliation, and compassion, in that order. We attended a service at the synagogue after having supported a local poet at a reading at a local bookstore and having just returned from the mountains. A small group in attendance. None of the people we typically attend with were there. A long time Temple member was leading the service as the rabbi is on sabbatical. This person used the d'var Torah (sermon time) to comment on hospitality. Good. But then she brought up the divisions in the congregation, the rancor at the annual meeting from months ago, and essentially chastised those "new members" who caused such a hurtful stir. My wife and I were two of those members.

So, I sat in the synagogue and heard what she had to say. I decided that rather than react to my hurt, I should open myself as much as I could to her and her point of view. She was hurt by the conflict in the synagogue and hurt creates a kind of personal fundamentalism, as Pema Chogrin beautifully pointed out. When we are hurt, we close ourselves and begin immediately to mount a counter attack to stop the hurt. We blame the person hurting us for our pain.

What this does is close us off even further and we no longer hear the person, nor do we want to. Instead we either want to fight or flee.

Since getting up and leaving in the middle of a person's talk would be rude and very disrespectful, fleeing was not an option.

This offered me an opportunity to practice. And I witnessed my body tense, my reptilian mind emerge, and duck for cover as I swatted it away with my beads which were getting pretty warm in my fingers. I saw and felt her hurt, her anger, and her sense of righteousness. I saw that it was necessary for her to do this. I hope it helped her. I felt great compassion for his often brittle woman who uses her intelligence and vitriol to defend herself.

We came home directly, My Little Honey did not want to stay for the Oneg (a joyous snack party after the service for fear she would "say" something. It was just as well. In the car I drove in silence and processed much of my feelings. At home I entered my zendo, lit a stick of incense and sat on my cushion until it was ash.

Be well.

Vote!

With palms together,
Good Morning All,

Today is the day for us in the United States to decide as a group who will represent us. It is very important that you participate in this election. As we have seen, elections are often won or lost on the basis of voters choosing to come or not come to the polls.

While I cannot endorse a candidate or a party, I can ask you to vote in a way that clearly reflects our values as followers of the Buddha Way. So, in the voting booth, vote as the buddha you are.

Be well.