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

#HappyStPatricksDay friends! 💚🍀

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind be always at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face and the rains fall soft upon your fields.

it is interesting how similar this Irish blessing is to the words used in the practice of Lovingkindness:

May you be safe

May you be healthy

May you be happy

May you be at ease

well wishes from a warm heart ring true across traditions and cultures.

since late adolescence and early adulthood i’ve been drawn to celtic imagery and spirit. my second tattoo is a trinity knot. so imagine my surprise when a couple of years ago, after a lifetime of thinking my ancestry was basically German and Italian, my DNA revealed the majority of my ancestry being Northern England, Scotland, and within that, Northern Ireland. no wonder the heat gets to me!

anyway, no matter where we or our ancestors are from, we can take some inspiration from the beautiful art and symbolic interdependence of celtic knots – all is connected, which means all of us are connected. let’s embody that truth with our open hearts and love.

~j

#StPatricksDay #interdependence #CelticKnots #ancestry #Irish #JMWart #photography #BWphotography