Practice on A Well-Lit-Path

A Ceremonious Tea

Mon, 11 Dec 2017 00:00:00 +0000

With a few simple changes in habit, adding a heaping spoonful of quiet attention, the act of taking tea may be transformed from ”drink" to “oasis”. Perhaps in the end, it is a medium for mindfulness, simple, profound… where repeated action with awareness is infused with ritual, is elevated by stages above the mundane.

Carefully choose ingredients

Attention to the tea you use is attention to your being. This plant was cultivated for medicinal and other uses before the first written reference, in the third century AD; there are many cultivars and nuances of flavor, character, and levels of caffeine. Your choice of leaf affects your experience in the moment and the continuation of your day.

Welcome 4 – Harmony

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 00:00:00 +0000

What is the conversation between the them, in the silence at the center of things? They would speak it if they found it; they would find it if they did not look for it:

— The world is moving inside of me.

— I see the world moving inside of you.

— I am becoming a new, multiple me. The heart is growing toward every horizon. When I stretch toward one, I am pulled by the others. I am fuller than I have ever been. You cannot see all of me.

Welcome 1 – The Midday Wind

Mon, 10 Aug 2015 00:00:00 +0000

The mind is like the body in that it settles over time: these joints, my joints, supple yet some of their spring is past; I dare say the arc of my body has moved beyond its height; and I find my thoughts these days are as informed by a personal history as they are by the all-possible present, gravity being the agent of change.

These thoughts. They are gently urged to earth, so that what was once a bright green fancied flight flutters down to a slightly darker summer tone, or to September’s dust, not somber yet but… sobering. I knew (when first I stood) that gravity pulled on my frame, but hadn’t yet understood how the gravity of time, experienced and therefore set in the stone of my bones, made New in my eyes less likely, almost an act of will: I refuse to allow the prevalent physical violence of Brazil to invade the relative peace of Barcelona, and I resist – to the best of my abilities – the psychological violence of the United States, as it places the beautiful circle of my family and friends under siege.

stillness assembled

Mon, 05 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

The “In Box” always occupied a particular flat area of my desk, a particular field of view just in front of my mouse, where I could (and would) clearly see it fill and the mound of papers build, day after day.

Sort-of to-dos – those important enough to stay in my awareness, but not quite important enough to handle immediately – would land on the top of the pile, be buried by the next falling document, and never leave. This became my Pile of Disappointment, and I did eventually empty it, once a month or so; but in that month, oh what an emotional toll it took. It’s little lash reached out to lick my hand several times a day.

Carnavalesque

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

It is beautiful to acquire skill – through meditation, through prayer or patience – to simply live with emptiness when it arrives. To inhabit your wisdom like a good father or a good mother, not become fragile and frantic like the little boy whose mother has left the room, like the little girl who doesn’t yet know her mother will return, a moment later, with a smile and something sweet, with her warm arms security, with nourishment.

every meal weaves miracle

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Every meal weaves Miracle; water, sun and soil are its threads.

Though my knife could end a creature’s life to continue mine, I have chosen a gentler line.

The heart on its hinge swings in the wind; bangs open, bangs closed, welcomes you in.

I eat with silence as though silence were my kin.

Together, or alone, a meal weaves Miracle; water, sun and soil the moment’s thread.

Panch Ratan “Five Jewels” Dal A home-made dal is food for a king, or queen (and you are worthy of the crown)

The Standing Desk [β] - Day 40

Sun, 03 Jun 2012 00:00:00 +0000

The inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent liked the number forty. There are a couple of dozen references to 40, measuring days or years, in those ancient teaching scripts and histories that we’ve collected into the Judeo-Christian Bible. Forty days of rain, forty years in the wilderness, forty days on the mountain; forty years old, forty sons, forty cubits, forty baths, forty days’ fast.

Other than the numeric connotation (and the fact that everything is related to everything else), there was nothing biblical about the “Alpha” trial period for my standing desk. There was a flash of insight in the form of a worrisome news article, and a half-hour’s work shifting my office from the window that overlooked the garden and the apple tree at its center; the rest was riding out the alpha wave, waiting for a sign that would tell me to: a) land my standing desk in a more permanent place, b) take it apart plank by plank, or c) keep on waiting.

The Standing Desk [α] – Day 14

Fri, 11 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Physically, I feel good getting up to work in the morning. I think it’s because I don’t get up just to sit down again. My body feels energized most of the morning, mind alert, and my frame moves around while I type up the morning’s correspondence. Two weeks in, I remain happy with the switch to a standing desk, and am considering when to build my “Beta” version, levitating my old sitting desk one-half-person into the air on a hand-designed scaffold.

The Standing Desk [α] - Day 7

Sat, 05 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

There is a certain volume of accumulated human knowledge — a kind of Encyclopaedia of Safety — that is based on the trial-and-error successes of generations. One entry in that tome might be as quaint as “don’t shit in your bed” (Any argument…?) Our Australian friends have several: “Don’t introduce species into an ecology with no known predators.” (oops), or “Don’t irrigate your desert with a limited aquifer.” (oops)

There are others:

a dance in the dark

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Except in my imagination, I don’t pretend to understand the permanent blackness of those who have lost their sight. Even less, those who were born without that faculty, and so have no access to even the memory of color: to sense red, they must feel red on their skin, the subtle variation in frequency from one hue to the next.

In the landscape of the never-sighted, I imagine certain words lose their texture, deprived as they are of connotation. When I say “red”, I see flowers; I see blood; I smell the perfume of a rose, or feel my pulse quicken with desire, or deflate in despair; I see a red balloon, recall a single frame from a French film; I smell the stink of post-War fear, I hear the ruffle of Chinese banners over some Premier’s visit to Harvard Square; I see her body where it blushes with life, and from that color, her scent.

as slow as spring

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Late last night I arrived home after looking for Home: here the footprint, here the small harvest, here the collected years of living; there (wherever There is), the path leading on, the planting for spring, the arrow’s arc.

I see that, as experiences accumulate, the urgency of a moment is softened slightly. Or, if I am the agent of my change and not the world, I take ownership of the softening: I begin to mistrust urgency. So many use emergency as proof for arguments that have no basis… when it’s only another mask for fear, and one that we don’t often recognize. It’s only a fear of time, when time defines us.

sparrow's flight

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

She lay like fallen leaves. As if a breeze brushed them, her wings fluttered odd angles; and I watched them reach for my breath, through the glass she thought was air.

The sound of her impact had stopped my work. Odd sound: where had I heard it before…?

…?

Oh… ? Oh… oh, no: the unexpected crush of accident, as the sound of two cars colliding at some distance, muffled by the safe walls and windows of your home. Muffled by the fog of trauma, an uneasiness slowly rises in the heart; it becomes urgent as the memory becomes clear.

"An Intimate Dance"

Sun, 18 Sep 2011 00:00:00 +0000

For me, Contact Improvisation as a dance form isn’t concerned with how it looks to move – en pointe, arabesque, step step turn! – but how it feels to move. It is not about the surfaces of the body in movement, but the spirit that moves the body, as though under the skin and behind the ribs you could watch the heart beating toward and away, opening and closing, rising and falling to the earth, while the limbs and the torso follow that sprite where its delight might take it.

August 7th, 2011: A Day of Silence

Sat, 30 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of years back, Amherst architect Tullio Inglese spoke to our ecovillage group about ways to build greenly: these materials, that insulation, this heating source, those solar panels.“But,” he said, “pouring money into a system that gobbles energy doesn’t solve a thing. You have to begin by USING LESS.”

Not a new idea, and wonderful to hear it again and again. One reason we are protagonists in war is our hyper dependence on oil. One reason we are leaning over an economic precipice, and our poor human non-heroic legislators are hog-tied and unable to affect change, is because We the People are arguably (and measurably) the most materialistic and consumptive culture the world has yet produced.

Building a True Home

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

There is an assumption that we hold as we approach relationship. Or: an assumption that holds us, often so deep inside that it seems to be the fabric of our lives, woven into us, inextricable. Perhaps it arises from our earliest days after birth, when what we need is provided for us: our food, our shelter, our warmth and clothing - for most of us, all provided, after some fashion or another, by our mother and our father. Being nurtured is a “given”.

Thich Nhat Hahn and the Energy of Anger

Sat, 23 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

In 1995, one of America’s respected spiritual leaders, Ram Dass, interviewed Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh about anger, about violence, and about the simple ways (not easy, but simple) in which each of us may live better, supporting a peaceful home, peaceful neighborhood, and peaceful nation. While it lasts, the interview from YouTube is linked below. I have transcribed the text, which can be found after the video.

RD You spoke the other day about holding anger, and emotions like that, in a tender way. Could you speak a little bit more about that?

voices

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Arriving at the far end of the day
the passengers who had not stepped from the train
composed their books and closed their eyes
and sighed: we have arrived.

as quickly as our sight is shuttered
the blank horizon of the mind is lit
as though a sky inside, through sudden sunset
brightens with those quiet constellations
that seed the canopy of inner night

We survived the challenges of day
- those who, lost in thought, collided
- or, lost in fear or sickness, were derailed
and reassure ourselves that we were right
in all we did: we have arrived.

Jazz

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Recently someone asked me about the form of dance I practice – the form I aspire to, really; and like all good forms it is small enough for me to wrap my arms around, large enough to contain my curiosity, lean enough that an evening costs a few dollars and yields a fortune, full enough that I think I will never find the end of it.

I talked about the improvisational “jam”, the coalescence of a couple of dozen movement artists, with no talking, no music, only the sound of sliding or shuffling, running or slowing feet, deep breath… sometimes spontaneous laughter, sometimes spontaneous stillness, deeper because it is shared. My friend tried to imagine that space for a moment, as much as one can really imagine it, foreign as it is, and asked “How can you dance without music?”

Chai

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

We ate little at Ramana Maharshi’s ashram: certainly little compared to the standard American Diet. Steamed, fermented rice cake (which I grew to adore and now make at home); a splash of some pulse - a lentil or a dal; a dusting of some spice, poured over a plate of sewn leaves. That was breakfast, that was lunch. I think it was dinner, too, or something similar.

It was wonderful. I have never been overweight, and yet the weight of all those calories flowing through me was palpable in its sudden absence. My mind was lighter (yes, India and jet-lag had something to do with that; but the affects continued for a month at least), and my physical frame was lighter.

Our Daily Dance: An Intention

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I returned late last night from the annual Dance New England summer camp near Lake Ossipee in New Hampshire, and woke this morning with dancing tape still on a couple of toes, the echo of taut and trained muscle still in the sinews, and the ache of separation from that vibrant and affectionate community of dancers already wringing out some sighs.

A beautiful family event that has been going on for some 30 years, DNE Camp attracts top-quality teachers and chefs and musicians from all over, offering the best of what they have to upwards of 800 participants. The cost of classes, food and lodging is all part of the modest fee. This year, like most years, there were community elders in attendance, and adults who at one time were babies born to this once-a-year village; there were newly-inspired youth from all over the States and abroad; and toddlers to teens who arrived with their parents for this summertime camp.

The Lovers (Notes on a Zen Tarot)

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 +0000

As metaphor (if you will) in the ancient system of Indian chakras, we humans wander through our days - some due east or due west, others in a sinuous trail to all the compass points - with a multiplicity of selves, meeting each event with मूलाधार survival instinct, स्वाधिष्ठान creative drive, मणिपूर reaching willpower, अनाहत passion and love, विशुद्ध communication and connection, आज्ञा wisdom, and सहस्रार relationship to the divine.

news from this end of the road

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Finally.

This morning, March 31st, marks the beginning of an eight-month daily practice of yoga asana, meditation and spiritual study, in preparation for an even more intensive certification program to attain teacher status. I have walked along any number of similar roads, most often to some form of completion, as they led on to bigger ways or to smaller, more arcane ways… in all cases the next way. It have been a wonderful, challenging, art-filled life. I am excited about the next challenge.

Hug a tree

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Why did you reflexively contract when you read that title? Does it go back to the conservative’s 70s sound-bite, “tree huggers”, a term used (as usual) not to increase knowledge and understanding, but to ridicule and demean, the fear-response of a bullying child? Were you tainted by the bully’s threat?

Or does it touch on a sense of propriety which tragically - I have to use the word tragically here, because I imagine you as a child, reaching as a child does into a world of wonder and delight, opening all of the flavors and colors and textures and sounds and smells it offers - tragically, was some bleak “sense” of propriety laid over your heart, like a “black curtain over the windows of your soul”, that the brief and agreeable experiment in hugging a tree causes the heart to contract, and inhibition and embarrassment to crowd your mind?

the revolution of darkness

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

– What if…

She opened a drawer in the kitchen, the one beneath the silver that held everything and nothing, like a purse, and dug about for a moment. She was sure it was there, just the sort of thing she would never throw out, and would never use. Half-empty blocks of twist-ties, a few clothes pins, the dull pair of scissors whose blades were loose, two corks, cheesecloth, three batteries as many years old (she took these in her hand). Her fingers reached deeper than the drawer would open, and aha! found the sticky-soft edge of a candle-stub lined up against the back wall, where the tide of shifting objects had rolled it and left it. She lifted it out, and closed the drawer.

No Drug Required

Tue, 10 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It is wonderful to sit out the sleepless night, which the fire of anger has lit! Like watching the full moon rise over a lake, or sun ignite the ocean: a little light comes, then more and more, until a new whole landscape is revealed, in spite of yourself.

In the case of rolling and turning in your covers, your sheets tying you in a knot, or if not your sheets, your thoughts: when you have practiced the art of watching, and watching becomes a habit as opposed to effort… then the mind’s parade, illuminated, entertains, exasperates, troubles, triumphs. A blaring, dancing dream of possibility and otherworldliness, each idea capers in, accompanied with sense, each sense cradled in a rivulet of heat, at its heart an explosive charge: as one draws near its features clarify and colors smear, its sweat and power reek and roil, its face approaches, flares, then rears and turns away; another steers into your line of wonder, blunders into this and that, falls flat, lifts itself and shivers dust motes from its hat, winks, and thunders past; the smallest steps so softly it’s a whisper in the din, imagines invisibility and it within, its sound is thin, as if to hold it would draw finger into thumb, then what have you, what have you; a great volume of water crashes to the ground!; a paper figure passes, flicks your finger, catches tinder, touches flame to each encounter, makes a word a cinder, becomes a sheet of little substance, if it holds you leaves you empty, more crashes, this time ashes; then the brass; then drums; then drumming heels; then humming ears; echoes like ghostly fears; empty tears; farewells; stories left to tell; quelling; quiet; quit.

Clouds in the Mirror

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The light from the sun is everything - no reason to doubt the cultures who held it as Deity, or one of a pantheon of gods whose hand in our lives was blindingly evident.

Tonight the sun filled the sky, received by the full face of its consort moon, reflected with an anthropomorphic smile through the winter branches and from the winter snow, touching what was deepest darkness two weeks past, to brightest blue-washed avenues and fields, long vistas, shadows of night creatures sharp along the paths, and our steps revisited the moment we laid them, cups of snowcap, milky way, yesterday’s echo.

Matins

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Eight inches of the whitest snow changed the landscape overnight. For those of us who revel in the New, winter is a wonderful season in New England, with a Wyeth palette and frequent face-lifts to keep the mind moving and the heart – like a child’s, still a child’s – smiling at the constant Christmas arrival of gifts.

I suppose you have to see them as gifts to feel them as gifts. I exercised before breakfast by clearing a path from door to drive, for myself and my cabin-fever cats. As I worked, the blurry wake-up thoughts began to drift (like morning mist under the influence of sun and breeze, I think), and what remained came into focus as though, with shovel in hand, I had rubbed my eyes and looked around: cool breeze throwing spinnets of flakes from the rooftop behind me, a murder of crows shouting something from the other end of the cornfield, two cats watching my work from two windows, sweat beginning in the warmer parts of my body, a small opening being cut from the white, in squares, like cake, like ice-cream, like quilt battening, like ash.

Happiness and the Art of Being

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Michael James, on the practice of Sri Ramana Maharshi. From the Introduction to Happiness and the Art of Being.

Happiness lies deep within us, in the very core of our being. Happiness does not exist in any external object, but only in us, who are the consciousness that experiences happiness. Though we seem to derive happiness from external objects or experiences, the happiness that we thus enjoy in fact arises from within us.

Whatever turmoil our mind may be in, in the centre of our being there always exists a state of perfect peace and joy, like the calm in the eye of a storm. Desire and fear agitate our mind, and obscure from its vision the happiness that always exists within it. When a desire is satisfied, or the cause of a fear is removed, the surface agitation of our mind subsides, and in that temporary calm our mind enjoys a taste of its own innate happiness.

Happiness is thus a state of being – a state in which our mind’s habitual agitation is calmed. The activity of our mind disturbs it from its calm state of just being, and causes it to lose sight of its own innermost happiness. To enjoy happiness, therefore, all our mind need do is to cease all activity, returning calmly to its natural state of inactive being, as it does daily in deep sleep.

Therefore to master the art of being happy, we must master the art and science of just being. We must discover what the innermost core of our being is, and we must learn to abide consciously and constantly in that state of pure being, which underlies and supports (but nevertheless remains unaffected by) all the superficial activities of our mind: thinking, feeling and perceiving, remembering and forgetting, and so on.

The art of just being, remaining fully conscious but without any activity of the mind, is not only an art – a practical skill that can be cultivated and applied to produce an experience of inexpressible beauty and joy – but also a science – an attempt to acquire true knowledge by keen observation and rigorous experiment. And this art and science of being is not only the art and science of happiness, but also the art and science of consciousness, and the art and science of self-knowledge.

The science of being is incredibly simple and clear. To the human mind, however, it may appear to be complex and abstruse, not because it is in any way complex in itself, but because the mind which tries to comprehend it is such a complex bundle of thoughts and emotions – desires, fears, anxieties, attachments, long-cherished beliefs and preconceived ideas – that it tends to cloud the pure simplicity and clarity of being, making what is obvious appear to be obscure.

The End of Summer

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

From “cannot imagine” to “will not accept”; from “will not surrender” to “can never forget”. The layers and levels we uncover in meeting this life challenge our small comforts. If we meet the surface, and draw it aside like a curtain that veils our senses, we reveal richer colors to our sight, intensify the sensation our exploring fingers find, satisfy the brightest/broadest savoring, remind us of a scent that drew us outward and upward, and make the dullest word with renewed connotation charge the mind.

Frame and Flow

Wed, 14 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

One of the great strengths of the human psyche is its ability to create structures where there appears to be chaos, to build shelter in a storm of metaphorical proportion, and raise walls in the perceived world which are duplicated in physical form around us. The walls of our houses go up, and we count on them to protect us. Lines are inscribed around social circles - a church, an activity group, friendships - and we rest in the circle of their arms. We discover what works within the flow of work and daily living, and by repetition create patterns of behavior that demand less and less of our attention, that we lean on as we lean against a tree or feel solid ground beneath a footstep. Rote is rest, allowing us to give energy and strength to the challenges of the day.

Rooms

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

My daughter called this evening; in fact, she called several times today. I miss you, Daddy, her words said. I am sad, said her voice. And that textured, tangible pain somewhere deeper within her rose up and troubled her mind, and she began to speak of things that aren’t, and imagined things that never were.

She is not alone in that practice, just as she is not alone in her passage, whether her trajectory is from one day to the next, or one self to the next. This morning she came from the house when I asked, fed the rabbit and gave it water, gathered her things to go to her mother’s house. She waited in the driveway as I finished shovelling away last night’s snow. You’re so good, my words said. She seemed surprised: I am? her words said. You just turned off the computer and got ready and came out, you took care of your pet; your teachers know how good you are, and your coach, and probably your friends. You are loved and your are enough, my voice said. She stood in the driveway, arms hugging her clothing and her books, and smiled.

Edges, Ledges and the New Frontier

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

A phrase often heard in physical training programs, from triathletes to bicyclists to climbers to yogis, is “working your edge.” No matter what level of experience we have attained in a given sport, there is always a level of activity or mental acuity beyond that which we are familiar. There is always a more open or more human experience waiting, just outside of our comfort zone. Sometimes the highest experience is far outside that comfort zone, in fact.

Invisible

Sat, 03 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

By heaven and the night star! And what shall teach thee which is the night star? The piercing star. Over every soul there is a watcher…

We find ourselves through an effort of discovery. That we are all born into this life, with years of uncovering to follow, is simple, and fact. The events in which we play part or which come upon us are the mirror, and our senses and our eyes, through the effort of discovery, open to all that is being reflected. Until we find the strength to open and see the good and the bad, until we look and see our failures and our graces, the glass is blank; the name is unwritten; and the night star, your night star, is for you invisible.

Pain as Teacher

Mon, 09 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Many Buddhist traditions share a specific practice for opening the eyes, opening the eyes of the heart.

If you follow the path of enlightenment that Gautama Buddha walked, one who wishes to be free of entangling thoughts and desires – desire for the next and better car, the other better house, a different and better partner – makes an active attempt to embrace impermanence. Meaning: one does everything in his or her power to realize that this life passes with the snap of the fingers, that much of our effort comes to no result, and that in our hurry we often miss opportunities for seeing what truly has value.

the white box

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The human spirit and the human body seek to be refreshed. Seek to find: the human body feels movement in the cells, a one-way current of life through life, source to sea. The human spirit opens wider and wider as waves of experience crash against its sand and stone; we are carved into bays and bars by the tide.

We seek, at a conscious or subconscious level, to be refreshed, and apparent refreshment appears at our reaching fingertips. We scarcely need to make an effort. A student of mine brings a passage from a book she had been reading… on her telephone. A man or a woman walks down the street, slim wire running from ear-buds to hip, while at the hip a small white box contains hours or days of favorite music, presented in the order or disorder desired, at the highest fidelity.

The conversation of touch

Thu, 03 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

In our naturally egocentric way, we consider our senses channels of information that bring the world to us. We scan the horizon to identify threat or opportunity, we read; we listen to what is hidden or to what is spoken, what is sung; we are drawn to scents and repelled from odors, and we delight in the flavor of what is pleasing, disgorging what is foul; we feel heat and cold, abrasion and softness.

The Language of Touch

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The effort it takes to communicate with words…

A single picture is worth a thousand of them; and a single touch is worth a thousand pictures. If we have practiced all with good attention, then words become the lowest form of communication, they are heart and mind thrown at a distance to perhaps be caught, perhaps be dropped: certainly they paint only one-thousandth of a picture, or one millionth of a touch.

Sunreturn

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I can feel nothing but joy with the gentle return of Spring weather, and today the breezes are away, the clouds hesitant, so the sun embraces you, unveiled and unrestrained.

If you stand for a moment – and we rarely stand for even one moment – the whole of the reawakening world flows around and into you. The heat on closed eyelids and lips warms the skin, and somehow penetrates more deeply, as though the frequencies of light soothed and charged the cells of the body equally, from the outside in and from the inside out.

A circle begins where it ends

Fri, 30 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday we finished another 8-week series in our Moving Into Balance awareness program. It is such a blessing to be able to offer small words, and have the hungry heart make of them great meals. Look at these amazing people: you toss out a few lentils, a few peppercorns, and with the human ability to create art from clay, at the end of a few weeks play, those lentils are the finest fare, the most satisfying, the most delicately flavored…

Harmony

Sat, 24 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The heart is torn by wind. When the heart-wind rises, true words are taken and replaced with falsehoods. That is the way of the wind. It is harder for the one afflicted, even, than it is for those he or she accosts: the heart is torn by wind, and the words and deeds which proceed from that turbulence further nothing.

Some words that helped me tonight…

“Being in harmony does not mean that we do not disagree or make mistakes and miss opportunities to understand one another. It means that we are doing our best and there is no division or split within the Sangha. We are sincerely practicing the way of liberation and peace for ourselves and for each other. We never forget our commitment to each other, our commitment to ourselves to practice mindfulness night and day, dwelling happily in the present moment. That is the teaching of the Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Live Alone. Harmony is our daily practice; it is our most essential practice.”

~ Thich Nhat Hanh, Joyfully Together

Consuming Anger

Fri, 09 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

We tell ourselves that what we experience in a moment’s time, also passes in a moment’s time. We step out into the street, for example, and while crossing a car ignores the red light, and you are nearly hit: whew! That was close. And now it is history.

That is a mistaken impression, however. We have trained our eyes on our next paces, or we laughingly pick up the thread of conversation from before our scare, and move on as though nothing had happened; but something has happened, and we engrave the events of our physical lives in the same way a tree writes rings into its body for every hard winter, or an animal writes scars into its flesh and into its spirit for the threats it has narrowly avoided.

This Life's Riches

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

When the eyes are open, all of Creation is reduced to surfaces… imagine the poverty in a world of surfaces. As though all that an ocean offered us was its waves! As soon as the eyes open, the interiors begin to close, the interiors of everything that sight obscures from us, the interior of our selves as well.

Eyesight is the sense of abstractions and of interpretation; we interact with the world at a distance, when our other and more proximate senses cannot give us their information. To close the eyes, one is taught, is to live in darkness; but to close the eyes with awareness, to be listening with your being, invites light – so much more than one can imagine.

Practice

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The earth turns toward the sun, the wake-up alarm rings; the cats begin to mill about the bed, waiting for their food; traffic begins to burn its way toward places of employ; a day begins.

The first moments of one’s day are the moments before the universe was created: all of life is waiting to be defined. In sixty seconds, or one hundred seconds, you are with the Creator, and invite the day to become what it will be.

Another cat story

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The real significance of a pet staying out of doors much longer than anticipated – a cat or a teen, let’s say – is in remembering that the whole of this one short life is taken in through five (or more) senses and played out inside of our own being. It is the interplay of electrical and chemical energy in the cells of our bodies that is the magic of our existence, and a lost cat…

The Archer's Aim

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

The archer strengthens the bow arm, grips the leather, nocks an arrow, and bends the sinew to the corner of the mouth. Breath enters as the bow is drawn, breath is stilled as the arrow is poised for flight, and all is released together. Release.

And the arrow, willed to its destination strikes home.

Meditation is the arrow on the string, and the fingers which hold it; it is the arrow in flight, and the fingers which let it go; and it is the arrow arriving at the heart of the archer.

Prayer flags on the winds of thought

Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I received a gift from a student, Brian, who recently concluded our Moving Into Balance health and awareness program. Every participant brings such gifts to the group – each brings the gift of him or her Self, all the challenges they face, and all the victories they achieve; but here was a special gift, a book about the Prayer Flags of Tibet.

One passage struck me, that I wished to share: with a gentle pen it draws the line between structure and freedom, where the flow of grace is all-important, while the form through which we are accustomed to meeting that grace is perhaps less so:

Good ideas

Thu, 18 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

While staying at the Verite Guest House, in Auroville, we were able to practice intentional small-footprint living. That “footprint” is more than where we physically step and leave a trace, but the cumulative and extended affect of our living, from food consumption and by implication food production and distribution, to energy consumption and its similar chain of delivery from source to our hands, to the consumption or acquisition of goods, whose origin is more likely than not an Asian city.

Parables for Cats

Fri, 12 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

When diving under the bedcovers for a place to snuggle in warmth and security, be sure you don’t crawl through a tiny opening in the duvet slipcover instead. Think lobster trap.

When exploring, if you jump into a kitchen cabinet where the plates and cups are kept…

… should you jump into a kitchen cabinet – perhaps should is a better conditional here – at head height of an adult human, quiet as a cat, and the door to that cabinet should somewhat surprisingly close, don’t just sit there. Make a little noise. People are looking for you.

One Thing Sacred

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

If you do not meet the sacred in yourself, you will not meet the sacred in anything; if you meet the sacred anywhere, even in the smallest thing, you will have found the sacred within yourself.

That is the first lesson, before all others. If you have not learned this lesson, reaching for another will reveal nothing of permanence, will move you further from the truth, and questions will be answered with questions.

To Walk the Razor's Edge

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I return from such a short time away, what might have been a short time away, to find that the leaves have all flown, and the slate skies of winter have taken their places at the edges of each branch and twig. This morning the wind rose up in the north, like a great wave coming ashore, and its voice spoke louder and louder in the woodlot behind the house. It’s word was cold.

Moonrise

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The french doors which open onto the veranda have been open all night, and the sound of the breakers on the blackstone promenade where alternately lulling us to sleep and calling us out of it. Either the waves or the rain, which greeted us on our arrival in Pondicherry and has come in sheets and drizzles since then – last night at least two good downpours swept west off the ocean and past us toward Tiru and Bangalore.

Energy

Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Manny Muros:

Today we climbed the mountain located behind the ashram. In 1900 a 16 year old local seeker climbed that mountain and stayed for 17 years in a cave. Then moved to a second cave for 6 more years. When he came down his followers created what is now the ashram where we are staying…. Ramana Maharshi had found out that he was not “this body” and achieved freedom from life as he had know it.

Life in the Ashram

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Two days into the trip and, as I previously mentioned, two years of living done. You know how to live longer? Travel, make yourself new, open up to new sights and sounds and people. You may pass away at the same second of the same minute of the same hour and day and year as you would have otherwise have died… but your life will have been immeasurably longer, and maybe you die knowing you had really lived.