in Buddhism, it is said there are three root causes of suffering. there is ignorance, there is attachment, and there is aversion.
aversion can also be understood as aggression, or pushing away. we find something uncomfortable, so we push it away – sometimes aggressively or violently. this can be especially true with painful experiences, but pain not healed or transformed can turn into hate and bring both us and others much suffering. and as Baldwin points out so wisely, with such aversion to our pain, we can then become attached to our hate, perpetually cycling suffering.
the Franciscan Priest Richard Rohr has said similar in his often repeated phrase, “What we don’t transform, we transmit.”
the good news is, love (which i’d define here as courage, generosity, and spaciousness) has the capacity to transform our pain. and the other good news is that we don’t have to go far to find it. it’s right here already, within our own tender heart.
my response to any theocratic nationalist movement, so called “Christian” or otherwise.
love is an open hand, receiving and giving away freely. love isn’t manipulative, controlling, or oppressive – those are the languages of fear, and where there is love, there is no fear.
so kiss the ground dear friends, embrace the path of love in its myriad ways.
may we remember our initial unity, our empathy, our compassion even amid the horror of that day.
may we remember that caught up in fear, we give rise to selfish individualism, anger, aggression and hate. these feed division and opportunity for unscrupulous people in power, people in our country currently bent on moving toward authoritarianism rather than preserving and flourishing our representative democracy.
if we truly want to honor the victims of 9/11, the lives lost since, and our humanity, we must reject ideologies of division, lies, aggression, cruelty and hate we are bearing witness to and perhaps even participating in.
may truth, open-heartedness, empathy, and compassion prevail.
hope and healing live on in the words and works of those who serve love.
the longest reigning monarch in British history, 70 years. a really incredible life. for all the ills and legitimate criticisms of monarchy (and all that comes with empire and colonization). she did, in her devotion to duty and service, within the structure she served, break barriers and transform quite a lot from the old to the new. plus i always liked her and wanted to give her a squeeze. maybe i will someday on the other side… may Queen Elizabeth II rest in peace in the Great Beyond, where luminous love holds all beyond structures and barriers, and hierarchy.
here is a recently commissioned original enso art i did for a memorial gift. 🙏🏻
message me (jmwartmeditation@gmail.com) for rates / if you are interested in commissioning an original enso for yourself or as a gift. i’ve made enso art with calligraphy for weddings, birthdays, holiday gifts, and thank you gifts as well. (please see additional photo examples)
Barry Lopez, shortly before he died, said we must not to be curtailed by a boundary, we must not be stopped by fear. The call many of us have heard has been to stand at the edge, so the boundless horizon becomes visible.
Later Lopez was to say:
“The effort of the imagination is to turn the boundary into a horizon, because there is no end for you.”
“The boundary says: Here and no further!
The horizon says: Welcome!”
So, Horizon, welcome…
~
Roshi Joan Halifax
no end. transitions and transformations. arising and falling, but no end.
because we see that things are impermanent, seemingly appearing and disappearing after some measure of time, we think their is an end. it appears so!
but if we look at nature, if we pay attention to nature, to life around us, as the mystics and scientists have, we see there is movement and transformation, not an end. this constant movement, constant change – sometimes subtle, sometime extravagant – arising and falling, this flowing IS.
it is within and beyond this moment, these challenges, these dreams, within and beyond ideas of life and death.
this is a hopeful message. impermanence, change, transition, transformation = possibility. and what is life if not possibility?
can we see ends as beginning?
can we engage such hope and participate fully for the benefit of all?
every atom in you (that makes all of what makes you up), is a marvel 💫💛🙏🏻
Posted @withregram • @thichnhathanh
“Many of us consider growing up as a kind of increasing, and getting old as a kind of decreasing. When we say that humans go from ashes to ashes and from dust to dust, it doesn’t sound very joyful, because none of us wants to return to dust. It is our mind of discrimination that thinks this way, because we don’t know what dust really is. Every atom is a vast mystery. We still have not yet fully understood electrons and nuclei; for scientists, a speck of dust is very exciting. A particle of dust is a marvel.”
Thich Nhat Hanh in ‘The Other Shore’ (Taken from an extract published on The Mindfulness Bell website, read it via the link in the bio)
The Metta Garden 