yesterday was a “weeds in a vacant lot” kind of day.

one of those days with a general haze of crumminess, where things just don’t seem to flow or work out very easily.

i had the urge to just put on my blinders, run the errands i had to run for my family, and then hide.

i didn’t want to sit with all of that, so i thought about not meditating, but then i saw this quote i had saved from a poem by Mary Oliver. i recalled my aspiration for meditation – to pay attention, to make friends with myself, to open towards all of life…not just the blue iris.

it’s not just the blue iris that calls for our attention, it is also the weeds in the vacant lot, the small stones. it’s the light, easy days, and it’s the dark, challenging days.

our attention is what we have available to offer to our lives. our attention is our presence. when we offer our presence, we are allowing space for gentleness, for openness, for possibility.

this is all we really have, when all else falls away, isn’t it? we cannot control or manipulate our outside circumstances (as hard as we try and strive to), but we can offer our attention. we can offer ourselves. we can offer our open heart.

when i did sit down to practice, grounded, lifted, with my attention on my breath, the thoughts and feelings of the day arrived as expected, but their assumed power was no longer so assuming. not so thick, not so solid, and they didn’t stick around.

we all have moments of feeling stuck, that our experience is quite solid and unchanging, but if we can allow some space and not feed the story, not continuously ruminate on the thoughts and feelings, we may see a bit clearer into the impermanence of these and into the ever changing flow and possibility of life.

~j

#BlueIris #weeds #thoughts #emotions #impermanence #life #attention #presence #meditation #path #practice #JinpaLhaga

our little lemon tree.
small and modest and yet it bears beautiful, beneficial fruit!

this is not so different from our meditation practice.
even a modest meditation practice, just 20 minutes a day, can bring benefit and bear beautiful fruit within our lives.
~j

#meditation #benefit #BearingFruit #nature #LemonTree #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga

life is constant movement and change. this can be incredibly exciting and can feel like great news when we are dissatisfied with our current situation and want it to change. this can also be upsetting news when we are really enjoying our current situation or experience and it comes to an end. if we don’t like change in any form and are resistant, this can also be uncomfortable and we may work awfully hard at avoiding any change altogether.

in all of these scenarios, we are bouncing around between grasping at what we like and attacking or avoiding what we don’t like. because life is constant movement and change, this can become really disorienting and exhausting.

we have another option though. we can learn to move with life. after all, we are life also. meditation practice can help us see clearly the movement and change of life, its impermanence (which one can also view as potential and opportunity and ever-opening) as thoughts, sensations, emotions, sounds, sights arise and fall away. meditation practice can also help us to see that it is possible to abide in awareness throughout without grasping or becoming aggressive or avoiding, and even deeper still, come to know or remember that we are abiding awareness itself.

~j

#awareness #life #flow #meditation #path #practice #JinpaLhaga

life has enough challenges, hurdles, and struggles.

so often we are our own worst critic throughout.

why not befriend yourself, along this journey?

remember yourself in your warmth and lovingkindness, and extend out toward others.

~j

#lovingkindness #warmhearted #OpenHeart #path #practice #meditation #JinpaLhaga

lives lost. lives that loved and are loved.

please read each name. allow them into your heart.allow the grief, the sense of failure, the anger. feel it.allow your heart to break open, so the insanity of such senseless and avoidable loss becomes clear.
this is our family.
may they be held in love.
may they be free.
may they be abiding in peace.may they be at ease.
~j

#GeorgiaShooting #ColoradoShooting #GunViolence #death #interdependence #metta #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga

a lot of unnecessary suffering and harm comes from not allowing ourselves to fully experience pain and grief. we ignore or push away these experiences and feelings, because they are uncomfortable, and horribly so at times. it’s completely understandable, but the cost can be high. we see the neurosis that can occur, the insanity and sometimes the violence from individuals who have not come to terms with life, with their fear, with their anger, their pain, their suffering. i heard it once said by (i think) Richard Rohr, “what we don’t transform, we transmit.”

but we could take even the smallest brave step toward meeting our life where it is. not just in the happy, easy moments, but also in the sad, tragic and challenging moments. we may find that out of our fully lived human experience, out of our tender, open heart, wisdom arises. the wisdom that arises may give us the insight, the ground upon which we can build more beneficially, remove that which is unskillful and harmful, and reduce suffering for ourselves and others.

~j

#OpenHeart #tenderness #wisdom #heal #transform #SkillfulAction #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga

someday a love for life and other people will outweigh attachment to fear, aggression, and a love for weapons, but it won’t happen without us embodying it so.

~j

#path #practice #OpenHeart #embodiment #love #JinpaLhaga

so many of us are ruled by our thoughts, but we don’t have to be.

thoughts are a bit like little bubbles that arise and fall away. they really are quite impermanent and passing if we can allow them to just be without pushing them away or grasping after them. the pushing and pulling are how storylines are created and then we return to these storylines again and again. the thought bubbles begin to solidify and we become ruled by the storylines. we can create a lot of suffering for ourselves and others.

but with meditation, we can learn to allow the spaciousness necessary to undo these storylines, these patterns of thought. it doesn’t matter the color, the tone, the taste of these thought bubbles. we just allow them to arrive and leave.

Suzuki Roshi’s quote is a perfect and humorous expression of this practice.

~j

#thoughts #meditation #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #Zen #JinpaLhaga

be you.

be love.

~j

#authenticity #BasicGoodness #buddhanature #love #LoveInAction #path #practice #EngagedBuddhism #RichardRohrQuotes #JinpaLhaga

there is plenty, too much really, of selfishness, aggression, and destruction in the world already. why add to it?

instead, we can live our life as an offering. we can practice relating to the world in an aware, abiding way. we can relate in a way that is not reactive, that isn’t grasping or aggressive. we can see clearly what is in front of us and choose to be beneficial in our words and our actions.

meditation practice can help develop this way of relating to the world and those around us.

~j

#meditation #path #practice #life #EngagedBuddhism #JinpaLhaga