Our practice continues off the cushion, not just in our contemplation, but in every action that follows. It reminds me of when I went to church as a kid and they would remind us that it wasn’t just a “Sunday thing”…True practice lives in every moment and so does the possibility of awareness and enlightenment.
~ j
“Letting go does not mean not caring about things. It means caring about them in a flexible and wise way.”
~ Jack Kornfield
…far from indifference, letting go is about being spacious and at ease, even as we are actively engaged with Life. i think it speaks to a trust of Life and Love as something vast. something that is the very ground upon which we stand. a place where we don’t have to be defensive or reactive, rather we can be in a state of mind where we can choose the way we want to act…hopefully without harming or adding to the suffering of this world.
namaste
~ j
so many angry
faces scrunched on the tv
but the moon still shines!
by jaysen matthew waller
©2012, Jaysen Matthew Waller
searching
searching
we all search
for Love
Wake Up!
Love is
the broken gift
in the corner
waiting
for you
to
make it Whole
by jaysen matthew waller
©2012, Jaysen Matthew Waller
a meditation ~
“Aware of your own breathing, connecting to each present moment. Breathing in, breathing out. These moments, each moment, is a reminder that we are alive. The person next to us is alive, the tree reaching for the sun is alive, the bird singing her song is alive, and we together with them are Life. Aware of that, we are also aware that we are never alone, but are always surrounded by Life.”
~ j
“Thinking about Joshu: One of the most beloved masters in early China was Joshu, admired for his economy and spirit. Zen Master Joshu was born in 778 CE and became a monk when he was 18 years of age. He stayed with his teacher Nansen for 40 years. When Nansen died, Joshu grieved for some years, and then, at the age of 60, after his grief had worn through, he said “I think I’m going to wander around for a while.” He spent the next 20 years traveling about China, visiting various Zen teachers and letting them check his mind. He was checking their minds too.
At the age of 80 he thought, “It’s time to settle down now,” and he became the head of a small temple, where students would come and go, and he would have quiet, pointed interactions with those who met him. It was said that a kind of light shown around his mouth, he was so direct, purified, simple, non-greedy about his own mind and his own practice. Modest and having submitted for so long, he became who he really was. He died at the age of 120, and thus he had the advantage, once he had settled down at the age of 80, to have another 40 years of discovery, enjoying peculiar and unmediated interactions with those who found their way to his modest temple.”
~ Roshi Joan Halifax
i don’t know that it is important to believe the specifics of this story, as some have questioned.
rather, the power for me is in the message of the story, the simplicity of purpose, the humility of spirit. i really connected with these.
i am always impressed by the amount of grief these stories expose of students when their masters/teachers pass. so beautiful, so human and sacred. the path of awakening is not something that helps us escape these heavy things in life, but the practice gives us the grounding to sit, to walk, and to live with it…and what we find is that we have this heart with an incredible capacity to hold Life.
thank you for sharing, Roshi Joan.
~ j
“What does refuge point to? What does it mean to come home, to be free from suffering, to be sheltered by a big and open sky? Thich Nhat Hanh once said that ‘the moment of awakening is marked by an outburst of laughter. But this is not the laughter of someone who suddenly acquires a great fortune. Neither is it the laughter of one who has won a great victory. It is, rather, the laughter of one who after having painfully searched for something a very long time finds it one morning in the pocket of his coat.’ This freedom is here within us at this very moment. Freedom then reveals the love that is also present and possible within our lives and between us.”
~ Roshi Joan Halifax
yes, yes, yes! friends, please read…
“If we attempt to explain the experience of ‘being the question,’ we can only talk around it. Because ‘being’ is an experience, and the moment we try to describe it we shut down around an idea. But perhaps we could attempt to describe it by saying that being the question has something to do with our ability to tolerate or bear witness to the full expressions of experience, rather than closing down around them and then reacting to them through our preferences.”
~ Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyal, “The Power of an Open Question”
The Metta Garden 