meditations

love is it…

~ jaysen ~ Leave a comment

The message of Christmas is so much more radical than the welcome and beneficial sentiments of warmth and familial love.

That a small refugee infant with parents trying to find safe haven in a foreign country, fleeing from their home and the danger there, poor and homeless, would become a symbol of divine and sacred love, a messenger of peace and generosity of heart, speaking truth to power, standing up for the vulnerable and powerless, giving space and attention to the outsider, the outcast.

An incredible message and life changing if we open our hearts to it.

We need this Christmas message today.

May it strike our hearts at their core, opening us to love all, including and most especially the refugee, the homeless, the foreigner, the poor, the vulnerable and outcast.

May it be so.

And may you and your family and friends have a Merry Christmas.

Wishing you all that is beautiful and beneficial today and everyday.

May you be happy, may you be safe and at ease, and may you be free from suffering.

~j

12.25.17

#Christmas #NoBansNoWalls #TheLongArc #PlantingSeeds #LoveWins

Zen…

~ jaysen ~ Leave a comment

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while peeling potatoes. Zen is just peeling potatoes.”

~

Alan Watts

i love this quote. i suppose it can be perceived as a bit provocative. some may shutter a bit when first reading it. it shakes you loose a bit, as Zen often does.

but what is provocative about recognizing the sacred in the ordinary?

if we cannot find the sacred in peeling potatoes, in washing the dishes, in sweeping, then where can we find it?

it is easy to find the sacred in what we perceive as beautiful, but what about the things we perceive as mundane? can we find the sacred there as well?

in Zen monasteries, novice monks are given toilet duty, cleaning the toilets. can we find the sacred in cleaning a toilet? there is a reason some Zen Masters continued to do it even in old age.

in the Khuddaka Nikaya, the Buddha stated, “In your seeing, there should be only the seeing. In your hearing, nothing but the hearing; in your smelling, tasting, and touching, nothing but smelling, testing, and touching; in your thinking, nothing but the thought.”

so the question remains, can we be with our life as it is right now? in Zen, that is sacred, not some other place, being some other person, doing some other thing. it IS here and now. it is in the doing, in the being, it is the journey.

when we open to this, when we are aware of the freedom and responsibility of this, we find our balance, we see our interconnection, and we open further and further, embracing this fleeting world and our fleeting relationships with love.

~j

12.24.17