May I Take Joy

As for suffering I do not wish even the slightest;
As for happiness I am never satisfied.
In this there is no difference between others and me.
May I take joy in others' happiness.

~ 1st Panchen Lama

What the Day Gives by Jeanne Lohmann

What the Day Gives

by Jeanne Lohmann

Suddenly, sun. Over my shoulder

in the middle of gray November
what I hoped to do comes back,
asking.

Across the street the fiery trees
hold onto their leaves,
red and gold in the final months
of this unfinished year,
they offer blazing riddles..

In the frozen fields of my life
there are no shortcuts to spring,
but stories of great birds in migration
carrying small ones on their backs,
predators flying next to warblers
they would, in a different season, eat.

Stunned by the astonishing mix in this uneasy world
that plunges in a single day from despair
to hope and back again, I commend my life
to Ruskin's difficult duty of delight,
and to that most beautiful form of courage,
to be happy.

Crippled becomes whole

Tao te ching verse 22:

Crippled becomes whole,
Crooked becomes straight,
Hollow becomes full,
Worn becomes new,
Little becomes more,
Much becomes delusion.

Therefore Sages cling to the One
   And take care of this world;
Do not display themselves
   And therefore shine;
Do not assert themselves
   And therefore stand out;
Do not praise themselves
   And therefore succeed;
Are not complacent
   And therefore endure;
Do not contend
   And therefore no one under heaven
      Can contend with them.

The old saying
Crippled becomes whole
Is not empty words.

It becomes whole and returns.

~ from the superb English translation by Addiss and Lombardo

Leaving It To You

Leaving It to You 

by Wu Pen (Chia Tao) (779-843)

Self evident, truth mistakes no thing.

But my heart's a long way from there

and nothing's very clear.

Yellow gold is almost burned up

by my desire.

White hair grows beside the fire.

Bitter indecision: choose This, or maybe That.

Even the spirit speaks in riddles

and makes it hard to harvest

the essence of a single day.

Catch the wind while you tether shadows.

Faith, or a man who'll stand by his word, is

all there is. There is no disputing.

English translation by J.P. Seaton
from The Poetry of Zen
edited by Sam Hamill and J.P. Seaton

Out of These Branches the Path

"Conveyed from mouth to ear, there is no tradition, There are no textbooks. There is only direct meeting, direct experience. There is no practice without a teacher. There is no teacher without a community. There are souls destined to meet -- and free will and commitment, and loving-kindness and fellowship. And out of these branches the path."

~ Perle Besserman

Anyone can be a teacher

"Just as an acorn can only become an oak tree when it receives nourishment from the soil, water and sun, we need to be open to 'nourishment' from our teachers in order to receive the Buddhist insights. Anyone can be a teacher to us; the person I hate, the homeless person...everyone and everything everywhere nurtures me."

~ Taitetsu Unno

Lost in the Woods

If I'm wandering lost in the woods, but don't know I'm lost, that's ignorance.

If I've seen or been told that I'm lost, but won't admit the possibility, that's denial.

If I know I'm lost, that's clarity.

If I accept the fact that I'm a human capable of getting lost, that's humility.

If I'm willing to experience my confusion and fear, that's courage.

If I know and accept being lost and fearful, and am willing to do something in response, that's clarity and responsibility -- and freedom.

Value ignorance as much as knowledge

Offer yourself to the world—your energies, your gifts, your visions, your heart—with open-hearted generosity. But understand that when you live that way you will soon learn how little you know and how easy it is to fail. To grow in love and service, you, I, all of us, must value ignorance as much as knowledge and failure as much as success. I know this is ironic advice..., but clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life. So, cultivate beginner’s mind, walk straight into your not knowing, and take the risk of failing and falling again and again, then getting up again and again to learn. That’s the path to a life lived large in service of love, truth, and justice.

~ Parker J. Palmer, commencement address at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado, May 10, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaOFkumhcCU

The price of freedom

"[W]hile we offer the teaching freely, that doesn’t mean that it comes without a significant price, a steep one at that, and that price is the courage to place yourself inside an alchemical crucible of body and mind, to play with balance in the sitting posture for long hours, to confront the way in which you inhibit your breath, to relax your habitual patterns of resistance and undergo a profound process of transformation. Nothing could be more natural, but don’t think that shifting our patterns of body and mind 180 degrees is the proverbial piece of cake. Our mind is evidently far more drawn to continuing along in the groove of its confusion, and our body apparently prefers the familiarity of its holding patterns to the at times wild ride of relaxing and dissolving them. But when we’re able to make this shift, when we have the courage to face what we’ve been resisting for so very long, wonderful things can start to happen, and whatever we have to do to enact this shift in consciousness—from the unnatural back to the natural—is a price well worth paying."

~ Will Johnson, Embodiment.net

BGR Seattle events

Seattle Walk to Feed the Hungry with Bhikkhu Bodhi

October 16 - Public Talk

October 17 - Walk to Feed the Hungry

Buddhist Global Relief's annual Walk to Feed the Hungry highlights the important issue of global hunger. This year the Seattle Walk will take place on Saturday October 17.  

The Venerable Bhikkhu Bodhi, the founder of Buddhist Global Relief (BGR), is known around the world as a leading scholar-monk and translator. We are very happy that he will be attending the Seattle Walk to Feed the Hungry for the first time this year.

Bhikkhu Bodhi will also give a public talk on "Forging a Moral Vision in an Age of Crisis" at 7:00 p.m. on Friday October 16 at the Seattle Insight Meditation Society, 2729 - 6th Ave South. For more information visit seattleinsight.org.

Everyone is welcome to participate in the Walk to Feed the Hungry, a community event sponsored by Buddhist Global Relief and the Northwest Dharma Association. The Walk will begin at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday October 17, at Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. We'll walk a couple miles on Capitol Hill and then return to the Park, where Bhikkhu Bodhi will give a talk.

Even if you can't join us on the Walk, you can make a donation to Buddhist Global Relief’s work by visiting Seattle BGR's First Giving page.

Buddhist Global Relief was founded in 2007 as a relief organization dedicated to alleviating chronic malnutrition and hunger around the world. BGR's Walks to Feed the Hungry take place in cities across the United States and abroad. To date, BGR has supported over 70 projects in aid, education, and agriculture around the globe including Asia, Africa, Haiti, and the United States. For more information, please visit buddhistglobalrelief.org

BGR Media Contact 

Carla Prater, Assistant Director 

Email: cprater@buddhistglobalrelief.org

Cooperating

.
"[W]e are not struggling to become something we are not. We are learning to cooperate with what we always were."

~ John Makransky, Awakening Through Love
.

Empty compassion breath

The antidote to attachment is recognizing everything as empty (of permanence, solidity, independence, etc)

The remedy for emptiness is compassion, resting openly in whatever arises.

The breath is a reliable gateway to both.

Rest in just recognizing.

Free at last

Contemplative Living and Dharma Immersion

Contemplative Living and Dharma Immersion

IF YOU ARE A PERSON WHO

— Sincerely wishes to live in service to others and to the Dharma
— Yearns to support and deepen your Buddhist practice
— Desires to live and work in a small community of like-minded practitioners
— Is deeply committed to right speech and the ever-present challenge of honest and compassionate communication
— Can imagine living where the nearest movie theater is 40 miles away
— Enjoys deer grazing outside your window and coyotes yipping in the moonlight
— Loves a crisp winter snowfall, the scent of balsamroot and lupine in the spring, and the dry winds of summer

READ ON . . .

With its first Three Year Retreat planned to start on April 4, 2015, Kagyu Changchub Chuling (KCC) is searching for qualified, mature practitioners to live and work at its rural retreat center, Ser Chö Ösel Ling, to support the long-retreat. (For more information on Ser Cho Osel Ling, please see our website at KCC.org)

The primary practical responsibilities of the retreat team are:
1. Providing for the general wellbeing of retreatants, a group of up to 16 living in a cloistered environment of intensive dharma practice.
2. Attending to the dharma teachers who provide spiritual guidance for retreat.
3. Caring for the facilities, vehicles, equipment and natural landscape that make retreat possible. The positions require both autonomous decision-making and the ability to live and work closely with other stipend volunteers and with the retreat teachers.

People on the retreat team need skills or experience in two or more of the following categories: meal preparation and planning for 12-16 people, kitchen management, dishwashing and food prep, general administration and budgets, human resources. While we are primarily looking for people with kitchen and administrative skills, those with experience in construction and facilities management, vehicle and road maintenance, and land stewardship will also be considered.

A modest stipend plus and room and board are provided. Candidates who have long term, stable experience in a spiritual community, and willingness to do the hard work of evolving a stipend volunteer community at SCOL will be given high priority.

If you have appropriate skills or experience and appreciate what a precious opportunity it is to support those in long retreat, please submit your résumé and three references right away to:
Tim Campbell tcampbell@amerlotus.com & Linda Besant dancebuzz@soapstone.org

Don't stop thinking

Every practice is a medicine for a specific ailment.

Letting go is the medicine for clinging and grasping to things as solid and permanent.
Too much letting go, you'll lose your hygiene and community.
Crazy wisdom is a way of testing your attachment to conventional social "reality".
Too much crazy wisdom and you'll become an unethical monster.

The thinking mind's discrimination and planning are essential and wonderful.
Prajna is the discriminating sword, cutting the false from the actual.
But the thinking mind, disconnected from senses and heart, can fall into distorted perception.
Mind, heart, and senses are meant to work together.
The mind thinks it's the highest and believes it's in control -- obviously not so -- just lay your hand on a hot stove and the body will take charge.

Don't abandon any of your faculties.
Look into all perceptions and discern the false from the actual.
Learn to feel when the mind is racing and distorted, and bring body and heart back into awareness.
Beware ideas or emotions that tell you to abandon sense or sensitivity.

First, do no harm.
Second, intend to do good.
Third, purify perception.
This is the teaching of the Buddha.

Exaggeration

papañca: complication, proliferation, objectification. The tendency of the mind to proliferate issues from the sense of "self." This term can also be translated as self-reflexive thinking, reification, falsification, distortion, elaboration, or exaggeration.

~ from A Glossary of Pali and Buddhist Terms by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Right Here, Right There

You shouldn't chase after the past

or place expectations on the future.

What is past is left behind. 

The future is as yet unreached. 

Whatever quality is present 

you clearly see right there, right there. 

Not taken in, unshaken, 

that's how you develop the heart. 

Ardently doing what should be done today, for -- 

who knows? -- tomorrow death. 

There is no bargaining with Mortality 

& his mighty horde. 

Whoever lives thus ardently, 

relentlessly both day & night, 

has truly had an auspicious day: 

so says the Peaceful Sage.

~ from the Bhaddekaratta Sutta translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Things don't disappear

Things appear, and disappear, because they are dependent upon innumerable causes and conditions. Things don't disappear because we label them "empty." They are already empty of permanence and separateness, because they are utterly dependent. Things don't disappear, but our experience of them is transformed when we recognize that emptiness and interdependence are two aspects of the same nature.

Ruts

Recognizing that experience isn't really solid or permanent is the medicine for taking things too seriously.

Sensitivity to suffering (especially others' suffering) is the medicine for passivity and meaninglessness.

But emptiness is poison if it leads you to ignoring suffering, and suffering is unhelpful if it overwhelms. Falling into one of these ruts is not so good. But if you're lurching back and forth from one rut to the other, you spend at least some time on the road. The middle way is possible. We each have the ability to recognize the nature of experience and to ease the pain of living for ourselves and others.

BGR Walk to Feed the Hungry

Do you have enough to eat? Many people do not! 

Please help alleviate hunger by contributing online.

The point of cultivating awareness is to gain insight and clarity into the nature of suffering and its causes, and the end of suffering and its causes. Suffering arises internally, as painful sensations, emotional dramas, and mental struggle. And suffering arises externally as relational, social, and political conflict. One can debate and quibble over the meaning of "internal" and "external", but regardless of one's views and opinions, the suffering is there, and responding to it is the point of buddhist practice.

Bhikkhu Bodhi, one of the great translators of Buddhist sutras, founded Buddhist Global Relief in order to "provide direct food aid to people afflicted by hunger and malnutrition, to promote ecologically sustainable agriculture, to support the education of girls and women, and to give women an opportunity to start right livelihood projects to support their families." BGR is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, with admnistrative and fundraising expenses of less than 10% of its budget -- a remarkably lean and efficient organization.

Close to a billion people worldwide face hunger as a fact of daily life. Hunger and related illnesses claim some ten million lives each year, half of them children. The increasingly serious effects of climate change are making it ever harder on farmers and increasing the price of food. We may feel helpless in the face of so much need, but by joining together we can make a difference and make a gesture of care and compassion to express our commitment to helping those in need.

For the past three years, I've helped organize the annual Walk to Feed the Hungry event in Seattle. (There are also walks this year in Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, St. Louis, and other cities). This year the Seattle event is on Saturday September 6. Please join us. Check-in will open at 9 a.m., we'll warm up with some easy tai chi, and we'll start walking about 10:00 a.m. We'll walk down 15th to Madison, then up Broadway back to the Park. We will provide lunch for the monastics who will be with us, and everyone else is encouraged to bring a picnic and join us for lunch! 

Please join us by walking, raising funds, donating or volunteering. If you can't make it to the walk, donate and ask your friends to give to the cause of alleviating hunger around the world by contributing online. Large or small, your contribution will help relieve suffering. 

Thank you.

Three Doors

Inspiration, like any sensation or feeling, comes and goes. It is possible to practice every day whether one feels inspired or not. Intention is different than inspiration; intention depends on connecting with your own experience, directly and personally -- connecting, and caring, and taking responsibility. Much of practice is just that connecting and reconnecting, taking the practice to heart.

Buddhism is a huge collection of various methods and techniques. They can be helpful in focusing energy and dealing with obstacles, but we also need to find the essence of practice so that methods and techniques don't get in the way. One way to approach the essence of practice is through the Tibetan Shangpa tradition's three doors to freedom: insight, compassion, and faith.

Insight is seeing how things are. Perhaps the two most fundamental insights are that things are impermanent and interdependent. Everything is impermanent, constantly changing. And everything is interdependent: nothing exists by itself, separate from causes and conditions. Recognize the never-ending flow of experience and events. And recognize that everything is utterly and completely dependent on particular causes and conditions.

Such recognition is challenging, but it is possible, and doesn't have to be complicated. can be simple. Practice keeping a continuous thread of attention on the ever-changing flow of sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Whenever you lose track of the flow, just return to recognizing it. Eventually the interdependence of things also becomes apparent: this leads to this; that leads to that.

What arises when we don't recognize and appreciate the truth that nothing is permanent or controllable? Struggle and suffering. Compassion means recognizing, appreciating, and caring when struggle and suffering arise for ourself and others. We can't control our experience, but we can bring each instance of struggling to an end, and we can make our intention to live in ways that minimize suffering and tend toward balance and peace.

A direct and simple way to practice compassion: whenever suffering arises, recognize it, accept it, and care about it, regardless of whether anything can be done about it in the moment. Just recognizing and caring is profound and powerful -- allowing us to experience and respond to whatever arises. Faith is the third door: the ability and willingness to open to whatever arises, to let go of attempts to control, to let things be what they are.

The capacity to live with faith is partly a result of insight and compassion. When we see how things are, and when we care, we tend to have some confidence to proceed. And even when we lack confidence, if we're still willing to take refuge in what is good and true, and we can draw hope and inspiration from ever-changing, interdependent experience itself.

Faith can also be cultivated. Again and again, simply aspire to be able to open to whatever arises. Form an intention to open and respond to whatever arises, without blame, without excuses, without trying to control, without hedging your bets. Practice trusting your inherent, indestructible ability to know and respond.

The three doors of insight, compassion, and faith overlap. Each door leads to the others. When we see clearly that everything is impermanent, we gain confidence that we can experience and survive whatever arises. As we see how things don't just arise randomly, but are dependent upon causes and conditions, of which we are just one, then compassion arises for how we get caught up in cycles of reaction and suffering. As we clarify the causes of suffering, we gain faith in our natural ability to make choices that make a difference.

If we follow this path continuously, we will find ourselves moving through all three doors, but we tend to have more affinity and access to one or two doors at any particular time in our life or phase of our practice. Keep using the doors that are open to you; your freedom depends on it.

May everyone be safe, free of suffering, healthy and happy, at ease in the world.

3 marks

Sabbe sankhara anicca: "All conditioned things are impermanent."
Everything is changing; every experience or phenomenon, no matter how dear or pleasant or seemingly reliable, is impermanent; it doesn't last long. This is heartbreaking, but it's also freeing.

Sabbe sankhara dukkha: "All conditioned things are suffering."
No experience is ultimately or completely or forever satisfying. Once we know and accept this, we can be compassionate and responsive (responsible) to ourselves and others.

Sabbe dhamma anatta: "All things are not-self."
Nothing is separate or independent; everything is dependent on causes and conditions. We can influence situations, but we are not in control.

Know these three characteristics, and live from that knowing, and you're free. This is all "emptiness" is or means. There is no such thing or state as emptiness. Things are simply empty of the permanence and independence and ultimate satisfaction that we mistakenly project onto them. That's all, and that's everything.

Heart practice

Settle into a comfortable chair or cushion. Feel your body, its shape and weight, the sensations coming and going, the movement of breath in and out.

Feel the spaciousness in and around your body.

Recall and appreciate one or two of your positive qualities.

Gently breath in and out while inviting good wishes for yourself and others.

May I (you, they, we, all) feel safe and protected.

May I (you, they, we, all) be happy and peaceful.

May I (you, they, we, all) be healthy and strong.

May I (you, they, we, all) live with ease.

Dwell in each phrase for a breath or two at least, breathing softly with awareness, wishing well, at your own pace...

Gently, with warmth for yourself and others.

Abundance

Both abundance and lack exist simultaneously in our lives, as parallel realities. It is always our conscious choice which secret garden we will tend... When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that's present -- love, health, family, friends, work, the joys of nature and personal pursuits that bring us pleasure -- the wasteland of illusion falls away and we experience Heaven on earth.

-- Sarah Ban Breathnach

The endless chase

... the awareness and compassion needed to free ourselves from the endless chasing of meaningless pleasure and pain, loss and gain, praise and blame, obscurity and fame...