|
Why do I consider it so crucial to balance the outer aspects of nonviolence and compassion with the inner support of contemplative practice? Because in the end, all politics are local, and we cannot love life and humanity if we do not love each other, one on one. ~ Lama Surya Das |
In all likelihood, the environmental crises we will encounter in the coming decades and probably centuries will bring great upheavals and immense suffering. It is all so hard to wrap one’s mind around because the problem is unprecedented in magnitude. At the same time, we have the whole history of human wisdom to draw upon in making our choices and taking action. The defining question of our age will be how we meet the calamities we will face, and how we will act to mitigate them and find our virtue in confronting them. The stakes couldn’t be higher, yet as human beings, we are not only expert in creating misery, we are also expert in working to resolve it. Both legacies, and the ability to choose which to follow, belong to us.
– James Shaheen, “Choosing Wisdom in the Face of Peril”
sometimes
it is all i can do
to just sit
here in this naked moment
this uneasy
space
my heart broken open
how else can all of this Love pour out?
~j
…here i sit. at present words fail me, so i have pulled from words assembled in the past, reflecting a moment then, to reassemble them here in the present, reflecting this moment now.
i hesitate to use the word “lost” when regarding the passing of a friend. love is never lost, never gone nor diminished. love just transforms herself and continues her lovely dance into the next hall where her beauty can continue to grow and delight. how can the great work of love ever be done? nevertheless, in this transitory life we call home, when a friend continues their journey it is we who can feel lost.
i hold these uncomfortable feelings, these feelings of sadness for all who are suffering in this “loss.” i hold these feelings with tender care. allowing them to grow this heart in love and teach the bravery that is openness.
Lori Miles Rubino is a bright light, who has embodied bravery and openness, a gift to all who know her and have the privilege to call her friend. kind, compassionate, encouraging, funny, open and loving. a daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, coach, friend, artist, photographer, and writer. her life has been one of great love, the work of a bodhisattva, as is so evident in the amazing family she has raised and of whom i am so grateful and adore.
in honor of her bravery, her openness, and her beautiful talent as a writer i want to invite and encourage you to read her blog One Toe Over the Line Sweet Mary. her most recent entries will shake you, wake you up, make you laugh and open your heart. do yourself the great favor and gift of reading her words. chew them, reflect and meditate on them. especially her entries, Forgiving and Dying among others. i was so moved in reading the latter – it was our final correspondence in the first week of January 2015 beyond mutual Facebook “like”ing more recently. i cherish it.
the rawness, i attempt to express in my words at the top of this page – is so deftly brought to life in Lori’s essays. i will be reblogging her work, here, to share.
love you, dear Lori, and so grateful for the gift of your love. i look forward to watching how it continues to grow in the hearts of all who know you and love you. rest in peace, kalyanamitra.
namasté
~j
01.21.15
with a 24 hour news cycle that often puts a spotlight on what can be negative and destructive results of human choice and action, it is important to also open our eyes and draw attention to our beauty. a beauty manifest from what can be great bravery in harrowing circumstances, drawn from the compassion that lives in our hearts. these photos do show some of the ugly – but the majority bear witness to the beauty that arises from courageous souls connecting to our humanity, making a different choice, to end suffering.
~j
dearest friends ~
i write to you this New Year’s Eve with a heart full of gratitude for the year that has past and abundant optimism and faith in our ability to grow in Love in the year ahead…impermanence is a good thing. so much potential ready to manifest given the right circumstances. and i feel like the circumstances are chomping at the bit – ready – waiting – for us to open and surrender to Love. to let go, to let be into Love.
on one hand Love can and will do what Love can and will do…but Love is all about relationship and Love is extending a hand to a dance partner willing to dance. are we willing to take that hand?
i feel like this past year, i have had this growing aspiration to extend my hand in return. and this year i plan on honoring that more fully. for me this means, to do so in my art and writing – to be more disciplined and generous with my time to those areas of my life. for me this means, to do so with my meditation practice – getting up earlier (which means going to bed earlier) to secure that time for such devotion and practice. for you, it may mean something else entirely. perhaps based in your religious tradition or practice, or perhaps not if you do not have one. perhaps your practice in opening to Love will be through your work, or your family.
Love is calling us to dance. we may not be the ones to find a cure for cancer or some other disease – but we may hear Love call us to the bedside of a loved one, friend, or even a stranger. we may not be the one to save a life through some epic act of heroism, but we may hear Love call us to smile at a stranger, share a kind word with someone who is hurting, to open our hearts towards those outside of the majority – those targeted, those rejected by religion, state, or other powers. we may not be the ones to put an end to war, but we may hear Love call us to end our own battles and wars within our own hearts. we may hear Love call us to embody peace with our patience, our calm, our gentleness and capacity to allow life to simply be.
and it can change day to day…
a couple of days ago, it was connecting with my friend Mario who answering Love’s call shared with us the Love Button campaign to spread Love. it is such a simple, yet awesome idea. please read all about it, by clicking on the link.
and sometimes the call can surprise us. today i woke up to snow – for those that don’t know, i live in a little rural area north of San Diego, called Hidden Meadows. this area hasn’t seen snow in 47 years. i’m not talking about a light dusting – i’m talking about full on snow…for us, anyway.
this was exciting and when it calmed down a bit and some had melted away under the midday sun, i decided to take advantage of the opportunity to practice what i mentioned above and i began some walking meditation. the walking meditation out in the cold crisp air, while i was all bundled up, was exquisite and peaceful. as i walked, feeling my feet kiss the ground (as Thich Nhat Hanh has said), feeling the air fill my lungs and hearing the distant laughter of children playing in the snow, i decided to begin with some metta (or loving-kindness meditation)
may all beings be happy, be peaceful and at ease
may all beings be free from fear, from anger, from attachment, from suffering
which led into some chanting under my breath of the Tibetan compassion mantra Om Mani Padme Hum.
and then i saw it. a worm. a worm struggling on the drying cement driveway under the warming midday sun. are you rolling your eyes? well, hold off, this story gets more worthy of eye rolling. it was instantly clear to me, and convincingly so, that i could not pass the worm and ignore its perilous situation. it was clear on a profoundly simple yet concrete level that i was the worm and the worm was me (go ahead roll ’em). so…i found a little blade of dried grass to assist me in grasping the worm who would have otherwise been further tortured by my fumbling fingers. i scooped up the little me and found a shady area under a bush with some soft muddied dirt.
there. my work was done and kind of felt good about it all.
then, i saw another worm in a similar predicament, though this one looked a little worse for wear. but it isn’t my place to judge whether it was close to death or not. this new little me had movement and well, at least it could die in the shade of that bush next to the first little me, if that was its destiny. why leave it to bake? so, i followed the same protocol as i chanted Om Mani Padme Hum.
and i have to say at this point, that what happened next gave me pause. as i turned from rescuing the second little me, i saw oh so many more worms. at least a dozen. now my eyes were open. and now with my eyes open i could not close them to the suffering in front of me. are these worms any less divine? is their life any less sacred? probably not, but my hands were freezing at this point – so i got to work. slipping the blade of grass beneath the wiggly, if not writhing body, into my hand and onto the muddied dirt. then i would dip my hands under the drainage pipe for a scoop of water to keep the dirt moist…eventually covering all these little “me”s with some watery mud, giving them what i hope was a second chance at life. here are a couple of pics of a few of them partway through this effort.
i wonder what the neighbors were thinking as i walked around, up and down the driveway and road, back and forth. but it doesn’t really matter. we don’t know how, when, where, or why Love will call – and it very well may seem insignificant or silly. our only choice really is whether we answer the call or not. answering the call is honoring the soft spot in your heart, the seed of love – bodhicitta. devoting yourself to answering is the act of a Bodhisattva – one who devotes their practice, and their life (even over many lifetimes as some believe) to ending suffering.
my aspiration for 2015 is that i learn to stop, to open, and to listen a bit better. compassion is Love in action. to have compassion is to suffer with – even if the one who is suffering is a little worm, a little Buddha to be.
here below are some wonderful tools for opening up and practicing a compassionate life, from the wonderful Pema Chödrön:
THE SIX WAYS OF COMPASSIONATE LIVING
~Generosity. Giving as a path of learning to let go.
~Discipline. Training in not causing harm in a way that is daring and flexible.
~Patience. Training in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed. If waking up takes forever, still we go moment by moment, giving up all hope of fruition and enjoying the process.
~Joyful enthusiasm. Letting go of our perfectionism and connecting with the living quality of every moment.
~Meditation. Training in coming back to being right here with gentleness and precision.
~Prajna (or transcendent wisdom). Cultivating an open, inquiring mind.
wishing you all a year filled with growth in Love. may your year be surrounded in friendship and peace as we journey forth together practicing compassion in this ever-changing, always beautiful life.
bows of gratitude for your friendship and for being – Happy New Year!
~j
12.31.14
i have been waiting. allowing myself to feel this discomfort, this sadness and disappointment, this anger. giving space to what is heated within, finding its balance with what is sane and centered in the heart – compassion, kindness. waiting to respond with thoughtfulness – choosing to act rather than react. this is my practice after all, the practice of Buddhism. to keep the heart open in the face of what is uncomfortable, painful, ugly. to be with it. allowing it to teach and reveal.
this has been difficult, not reacting, not feeding the fire as i have read comment after comment these past few days on social media. most of these comments from friends. so many quick to react with declarations which at their least harmful are only minimally informed, are over-generalized, and over-simplified – and at their most harmful are cynical, dishonest, cruel, bating, aggressive and i’ll say it, racist in some respects and over all bigoted in other respects. racism referring to discrimination solely based on race and bigotry referring to discrimination based on personal opinion which can include anything from race to gender identity, sexual orientation, class, profession…you get the picture.
you see, racism and bigotry today whether personal or systematic, are like anger – most people don’t want to admit that they angry and aggressive, neither do most people want to admit that they embody racism or bigotry. that’s part of the problem. what we are not willing or able to see, we are not willing or able to transform and heal. it’s insidious in that it barely surfaces in the open…thriving where it can’t be seen. poverty is insidious as well…perhaps this is why the two make such comfortable companions.
so as i read comment after comment about how this 18 year old deserved to die, got what he had coming to him for breaking the law (“if he had only not robbed that liquor store”), or how rioters didn’t steal any work boots (inferring they are jobless? lazy? not sure), or how all cops are pigs, or how justice was served, or how the Grand Jury was completely fair and just (from people who no doubt didn’t read the evidence – which hadn’t been released yet)…i found myself in a bit of despair. we have so much work to do as a country – still not having faced fully/willingly the sins of our past…something that desperately needs to be done if we want to be truly healed and transformed – and we are reducing this opportunity to name calling, finger pointing, riots and looting? when we reduce the dialogue to half-truths and generalizations, to bating and name calling, when we reduce our actions to rioting, looting and causing more harm – we miss the bigger story of what is going on and we miss our opportunity to create change, to transform ignorance and pain, we miss the opportunity to reduce suffering and heal. let’s not miss this opportunity, no matter how uncomfortable or painful it may be.
i worry for my nephews and nieces – all beautifully diverse in ethnicity and color. but i worry most for my nephews. the stares they will receive, the unwarranted fear and suspicion people may have, just because they have dark skin. it’s true, it already happens…the staring part, just recently at Disneyland. perhaps they were just staring at me, wondering what this bald white guy was doing holding this beautiful dark skinned toddler. my bald head was shiny due to sun-block, perhaps they were staring at that. i don’t know, but on multiple occasions people just looked like they didn’t understand what they were seeing, until they noticed me looking back smiling, which provoked at least a partially cracked – maybe slightly embarrassed smile on their face.
so i keep my heart open, because this is the practice and despite all the ugliness i’ve been reading and seeing these past few days, i still believe that all people without exception – even the most hatefilled, ignorant, angry, and nasty in their words and actions – at their core are good and have the ability to have their hearts open in love, transform their lives, and benefit the world rather than add to its suffering.
i keep my heart open, so that my nieces and nephews see what that looks like in the face of sadness or anger. i keep my heart open so that compassion can find a home and love can find a way to flow into service for others that they may benefit.
perhaps we all should at some point in our lives, experience a bit of oppression, a bit of bigotry towards us, a bit of feeling marginalized. perhaps this mud of being on the bottom is fertile ground to grow empathy, understanding and compassion. perhaps then we will see that it is possible to name what is ugly without becoming ugly ourselves. it is possible to point to what is harmful without adding to it with our words and actions…perhaps then we can be a people joined in our predicament of suffering, learning how to love and heal together.
in closing, below is one of my favorite poems from my teacher, Thay. Thich Nhat Hanh wrote this poem in 1965 having been surrounded by violence, death and suffering during the Vietnam War. i share it with all of you and i hope you hear it. but i share it especially for all who have been or are oppressed, victimized and marginalized – all who have suffered and are angry or in despair. i share it for my nephews and nieces, whom i hope will grow into a world where perhaps they will not experience bigotry or racism, but if so, will find their ground in compassion and love.
on the eve of this 2014 Thanksgiving, even in sadness, i can say i am grateful. grateful for my beautiful family, for my practice, for our capacity to love and grow, for so many that inspire me to love better and open my heart more, and even to those who challenge that very heart to close up – you are my teachers. because of you, i grow in compassion and i thank you.
~j
Recommendation
by Thich Nhat Hanh
Promise me,
promise me this day,
promise me now,
while the sun is overhead
exactly at the zenith,
promise me:
Even as they
strike you down
with a mountain of hatred and violence;
even as they step on you and crush you
like a worm,
even as they dismember and disembowel you,
remember, brother,
remember:
man is not our enemy.
The only thing worthy of you is compassion –
invincible, limitless, unconditional.
Hatred will never let you face
the beast in man.
One day, when you face this beast alone,
with your courage intact, your eyes kind,
untroubled
(even as no one sees them),
out of your smile
will bloom a flower.
And those who love you
will behold you
across then thousand worlds of birth and dying.
Alone again,
I will go on with bent head,
knowing that love has become eternal.
On the long, rough road,
the sun and the moon
will continue to shine.
I hold my face in my two hands.
No, I am not crying.
I hold my face in my two hands
to keep the loneliness warm –
two hands protecting,
two hands nourishing,
two hands preventing
my soul from leaving me
in anger.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
(written after the bombing of Ben Tre, during the Vietnam War)
“There are people who advocate and practice compassionate listening, there are those who embrace voluntary simplicity, who remove the calluses from their hearts and keep them open to feel the pains of others. Seek them out, I urge you, and join them in their compassion.”
~ Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalom
Awake in the world
What is this meditation?
Dirt beneath these nails
~j
“A long time ago in China, a Zen student asked if any of the sages had ever fallen into hell. His teacher answered that they are the first to go there! The shocked student asked, ‘But if they are enlightened, why would they fall into hell?’ The teacher looked at the student and with a smile said, ‘If I didn’t fall into hell, how could I help you?’ Do you see what he is doing here? He completely reverses the student’s problem, saying this is not about the student’s idea of purity, but about helping and caring. That is what’s important. He’s saying that you have to get your hands dirty; you have to dig right in. Just as you are, without some special robe or degree or twenty years of meditation practice. Just as you are, you can help.”
~ Roshi Pat Enkyo O’Hara
from the chapter “Living In The Suffering World”
from her book, “MOST INTIMATE: A Zen Approach To Life’s Challenges”
“I hold my face in my two hands. No, I am not crying. I hold my face in my two hands to keep the loneliness warm – two hands protecting, two hands nourishing, two hands preventing my sould from leaving me in anger.”
“…remember: man is not our enemy…the only thing worth of you is compassion – invincible, limitless, unconditional. Hatred will never let you face the beast in man.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh
December 14th 2013
here we are. a year later.
my heart is still clinging to the lost lives of 20 innocent children. see their faces. know their faces. children who someday may have been artists, doctors, teachers, scientists, or parents with children of their own. what inventions have we missed out on? how many discoveries will have to wait? how many inspired dreams will look to find a new home – a new vehicle of birth into this world?
questions, we’ll never know the answer to.
6 innocent adults died that day as well. see their faces, know their faces.
bodies beyond recognition.
and a lone gunman also lost, even it seems before his horrific actions of that day. see his face, know his face.
such a tragedy, such a dark moment. 27 lives lost, and how many more disturbingly wounded?
and here we are a year later with not much more than our grief, our frustration, and a polarized people frozen in their views. aren’t we better than this?
we must get to a place where we can listen – listen. where we can dialogue without scapegoating the mentally ill, without scapegoating the media, without scapegoating responsible gun ownership. we must open our awareness to recognize that the issue of violence in our culture runs much deeper than any vehicle in which it is carried out. we must open our awareness to recognize that the issue of violence in our culture is much more subtle and therefore insidious than quick quotes or talking points that serve as distraction from the deep listening, the deep looking, the deep contemplation that is needed to bring healing and wholeness to our broken attempts at problem solving and our inability to find balance between privileges and rights. we must be open to seeing how violence lives not only in our actions, but in our words and thoughts…we must look to where this violence is born and how it feeds.
we must come to a place where the news of 20 massacred children at an elementary school stops us cold in our tracks, convicting our hearts into a response so urgent, so necessary that it calls upon our betters selves to deep reflection that motivates us into action. not action out of reaction and fear or hatred or bitterness, but action out of empathy, out of interdependence and sense of community. it must be action out of compassion to end suffering at all costs, not perpetuation through the same deluted ideas and philosphies. action that says – these lives, our children’s lives – life itself – is worth more than the pitiful energy we have given them so far.
if we can’t get to this place, this place of necessary coming together, this place that recognizes the shared responsibility we have in honoring what we so often and emptily claim as sacred – life, then i do believe more is at risk than any rights or privileges. i do believe we are at risk of not only losing the very heart and soul of this country, but what is the unique manifestation of the divine that is us – our humanity.
life will go on, of course. it always goes on.
but if we fail to rise to this challenge, to open our wounded hearts, to stand in the face of violence, to look into the eyes of fear –
life very well may look to another vessel with which it can share love, seeing no vacancy in hearts that already have a love affair with violence.
and then we will finally know what it is to be in hell, because we will have chosen to hold it in our closed hearts.
~j
The Metta Garden 