Monday Notes

With palms together,
Good Afternoon All,

This morning's streetZen went well. It was delightful outside. Colette and I were sitting alone, but a woman came by and decided to join us. She had been to the local showing of the short Yee film about me and Street Zen and decided to come by. Such good things happen when just sitting.

During the first sitting period I was visited by a spider. After the others left, I stayed for awhile and was soon visited by a curious roadrunner. The spider crawled onto my head, the roadrunner just walked behind me.

This afternoon I have a Study Group meeting at my residence at four. A delightfully diverse group of participants create a truly wonderful atmosphere. If interested, please join us.

Be well.

Winter

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Winter gets a bad rep. In some places, such as Cleveland, deservedly so. Yet, there is something of value about the winter regardless of where we are. The day opens slowly in the winter. A good way to begin any day actually.

"Slow" is rarely encountered and certainly not appreciated today. "Slow" is too often experienced as a hindrance. We so want to 'get there'! Yet, "slow" assists us by allowing moments of thoughtful deliberation to occur, as well as time to appreciate each moment itself. And due to our own expectations of what a reasonable pace is, to go slower than that expectation offers us a teaching about ourselves.

So, I know when I am in a hurry, I have taken to slowing down a bit. Attention to breath, slowly in, slower out, reside in the center. While I am clearly not always successful, as I do not always practice what I preach, I am always successful when I do practice.

Be well, be slow.

Living Zen

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

This morning I would like to talk a little about what it means to follow the Buddha Way. It's a deceptively simple path to nowhere. It's a path where the path itself is the end and the beginning. It is a Way where, "Are we there yet?", is a meaningless question.

More BabbleZen? Put your hands on the table you are sitting at. Take in a breath and release it slowly and deeply. Where are you? No BabbleZen, just being there.

When we are 'there', that is to say, 'here', we are able to experience nothing more or less than 'here.' When we realize 'here' is the whole enchilada then we are free to be completely present and eat it. We release the thought of the next moment and the last moment. We release the grip of feelings, knowing they have very short lifespans and are simply reflections of thoughts and discriminations.

No planning? No dreaming? Not so. We have our thoughts and our feelings, but we do not hold them tightly. We practice knowing these things are present moments activities and we do them wholeheartedly. What we don't do is allow let them lead us around by the nose.

Living Zen is living now.

Be well.

Is Knowing Enough?

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

From the Soto Zen meal blessings, Gokan No Ge:

First, innumerable labors have brought us this food
We should know how it came to us.

The new farm:

"Find a sheet of printer paper and imagine a full-grown bird shaped something like a football with legs standing on it. Imagine 33,000 of these rectangles in a grid. (Broilers are never in cages, and never on multiple levels.) Now enclose the grid with windowless walls and put a ceiling on top. Run in automated (drug-laced) feed, water, heating, and ventilation systems."

Free range? Make a small opening in the wall, enough for one bird to squeeze through to a 5 x 5 foot dirt patch. This qualifies the mass of birds to be labelled "free range".

Now, after killing, the chickens are placed in a refrigerated water tank, thousands at a time. Referred to as 'fecal soup' by the Government Accountability Project, clean birds are cooled with dirty ones. Hot birds have open pores and absorb the water and "the (new) law of the land allows for slightly more than 11 percent of liquid absorption." (Quoted from "Eating animals" by Safran Foer.)

So its not just the labels that are apparently just 'full of shit'.

Consider not trusting a word, not a single word, of anything written on food packaged in the United States.

Be well.

Opportunity to Help

From a friend:

Hi Harvey

I hope you're doing well this holiday season. The Fresh Air Fund is looking for runners and sponsors to join our Fresh Air Fund-Racers team for the NYC Half-Marathon this coming March 21st and I was hoping you might be able to post something about it on Clear Mind Zen to share with your readers. This is a great way to participate in NYC's premier summer road race while helping Fresh Air Fund children.

Over the last year, support from friends like you helped us give nearly 10,000 inner-city children country experiences that they're still talking about! We rely on donations this time of year to keep our programs strong for the summer months, and helping children is a cause that I'm sure your readers would be interested in. Please feel free to repost anything from our news site here:

http://freshairholiday.org

Being one means?

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

On Face Book yesterday I posted a bit of whimsy, "A universe of one means we are all related." Last night I caught the last half or so of Julia Sweeney's "Letting Go of God", her one woman autobiographical play on her conversion from Catholicism to atheism. I set my DVR to record the next offering of this show (Sho3, 12/10 @ 5:55 AM MT) as it was a marvelous presentation. So these two points are rolling around in my heart/mind this morning.

Too often when atheists talk about religion, they are addressing a religion with a God framed in dualistic terms. Its a straw man thing. And when we talk about "oneness" we too often talk from with a human centered point of view.

Trouble is, God is no thing we can name. If our argument is with God it must rather be, with our understanding and conceptualization of God. Likewise, if we talk about Oneness we must include everything in that oneness and know that there is no rank order in the One. Just one.

There are profound and extensive implications of this point of view. Regards God, we cannot say anything. Regards oneness, we must consider everything we do as a doing to ourselves and others: Evil and good are one; killing and protecting are one; loving and hating are one.

Why not kill? Why not hate? Why not chose evil? We could and clearly do, but because we are one and our oneness makes us depend on each other, to do so is suicide on all levels. It is this interdependence that is my moral and ethical foundation. The extent that we realize this is the extent of our fullness as a being. Step outside of that realization and we harm ourselves and all other beings. Its an existential thing.

Be well.

Windy

With palms together,
Good Afternoon Everyone,

We have a very windy day here in southern New Mexico. The swing on the back patio was lifted and thrown against the house, creating a small hole in our wall. Looking out, looking in. Meditation and Ygoa at TBE at 4:00 today.
_____________


Wind

Tumbleweed
create a sangha
in the walled corner,
gathering
near Buddha
like so many disciples.

Dry and lifeless
stiff and prickly.
This is how they roll.

Is this what it means
to be aimless?

No.

Look within and see
the seed
grasping to earth
in a flow
as a handless wand
spreads stardust.

A breath.



Be well.