Build Your Nest
As many of you know, one of our sangha members (Thomas) is currently sitting a month-long retreat taught by Ajahn Sucitto at the Forest Refuge (in Barre, MA). I’ve been listening to the talks from that retreat, which is a great practice in itself.
At the end of one my favorites of these talks, Sucitto says this about instructions to ‘place your attention’ in meditation:
“Generally we associate doing things with ‘doing it to get it done’ and ‘doing it to get good results’ and ‘doing it because you are to be measured and assessed in terms of how well you did it.’…
“Those attitudes are disastrous. [laughs] Truly disastrous. And if you keep putting that into your body, repeatedly [heavy sigh], it’s going to be pretty painful. It’s not a cooperative mode, if that’s what’s understood by the instruction to ‘place attention’.
“Attention is a natural faculty of mind. It’s one of the inevitable faculties. However erratic it may be, we always have attention. What we need to do is to get that little bird of attention to rest on something suitable. If you create the right nest and put the right food in it, that little bird’s gonna sit there, ‘cuz it likes it. [delighted laughter]
“So you just…Build your nest. Put the food in the nest with devotion. And then…may it be!”
***
Click here to listen to the talk. It’s a keeper.
Without Which You Have No Reason To
I’m not sure why today, of all days, I feel like posting this poem.
Maybe it’s because my cats got into another fight this morning. (Nothing serious. But a definite setback in the peace-making process.)
Or because I was at the hospital with my sister most of the day yesterday. (A routine preventative procedure. But still.)
Or maybe it’s the accumulative effect of reading the newspaper again and again.
The News
by Tony Hoagland
The big country beat the little country up
like a schoolyard bully,
so an even bigger country stepped in
and knocked it on its ass to make it nice,
which reminds me of my Uncle Bob’s
philosophy of parenting.
It’s August, I’m sitting on the porch swing,
touching the sores inside my mouth
with the tip of my tongue, watching the sun
go down in the west like a sinking ship,
from which a flood of sticky orange bleeds out.
It’s the hour of meatloaf perfume emanating from the houses.
It’s the season of Little League practice
and atonal high-school band rehearsals.
You can’t buy a beach umbrella in the stores till next year.
The summer beauty pageants are all over,
and no one I know won the swimsuit competition.
This year illness just flirted with me,
picking me up and putting me down
like a cat with a ball of yarn,
so I walked among the living like a tourist,
and I wore my health
like a borrowed shirt,
knowing I would probably have to give it back.
There are the terrible things that happen to you
and the terrible things that you yourself make happen,
like George, who bought a little red sportscar
for his favorite niece
to smash her life to pieces in.
And the girl on the radio sings,
You know what I’m talking about, Bawhoop, awhoop.
This year it seems like everyone is getting tattoos–
sharks and Chinese characters,
hummingbirds and musical notes–
but the tattoo I would like to get
is of a fist and a rose.
But I can’t tell how they will fit together on my shoulder:
if the rose is inside the fist, it will be crushed or hidden;
if the fist is closed,–as a fist by definition is,–
it cannot reach out and touch the rose.
Yet the only tattoo I want
is of a fist and rose, together.
Fist, that helps you survive.
Rose, without which
you have no reason to.
Aware of the Suffering
At yesterday’s Sunday Sangha, I read from Thich Nhat Hanh’s 5 Mindfulness Trainings — his modernized translation of the 5 Precepts (training practices from the time of the Buddha). Given the social environment we find ourselves facing right now, I focused mainly on the second precept, traditionally understood as the practice of “abstaining from taking that which is not given.”
Here is Thich Nhat Hanh’s version:
“Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I am committed to practicing generosity in my thinking, speaking, and acting. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others; and I will share my time, energy, and material resources with those who are in need.
“I will practice looking deeply to see that the happiness and suffering of others are not separate from my own happiness and suffering; that true happiness is not possible without understanding and compassion; and that running after wealth, fame, power, and sensual pleasures can bring much suffering and despair.
“I am aware that happiness depends on my mental attitude and not on the external conditions, and that I can live happily in the present moment simply by remembering that I already have more than enough conditions to be happy. I am committed to practicing Right Livelihood so that I can help reduce the suffering of living beings on the Earth and reverse the process of global warming.”
***
I undertake this Precept. Which, in my understanding, includes taking action — political action — to oppose the social injustice I see gaining power in this country and around the world.
Let Me Keep Company Always
Mysteries, Yes
by Mary Oliver
Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous
to be understood.
How grass can be nourishing in the
mouths of the lambs.
How rivers and stones are forever
in allegiance with gravity
while we ourselves dream of rising.
How two hands touch and the bonds
will
never be broken.
How people come, from delight or the
scars of damage,
to the comfort of a poem.
Let me keep my distance, always, from
those
who think they have the answers.
Let me keep company always with those who say
“Look!” and laugh in astonishment,
and bow their heads.
It Takes Courage
“We’ve been training for a period like this for a long time,” Jack Kornfield says, in the talk he gave at Spirit Rock the week after the election.
It’s a terrific talk. And it’s not just Jack… Thanissara is there with a plea to join the Native American protests against the pipeline in North Dakota, and it ends by playing a little Leonard Cohen. (“Even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song, with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah!“)
As a reminder of our training, and as a way to move forward, Jack offers this from the teachings of the Buddha:
“Others will be cruel; we will not be cruel. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will kill or harm living beings; we will not harm beings. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will be greedy; we will not be greedy. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will speak falsely, maliciously; we will speak truthfully and kindly. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will be envious; we will not be envious. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will be arrogant; we will not be arrogant. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will be unmindful; we shall establish mindful presence. Thus we will incline our hearts.
“Others will lack wisdom; we shall cultivate wisdom. Thus we will incline our hearts.”
***
Jack talk ends the talk with this quote by Thomas Jefferson: “One person with courage is a majority.”
Click here to listen.
I Do Not Let My Mind Shut Down
*** Note: I have a writing project due tomorrow and then I’m leaving town on Tuesday and Wednesday for a visit with Mirabai, so I won’t post again until late next week, or maybe not till the following Monday, so check back then. Or better yet, sign up to get these posts delivered to your email by subscribing to the blog (see side bar). ***
Last night I listened to a talk by Ajahn Sucitto, titled Keep Calm and Carry On, which he gave last May at the end of a long retreat about “going back out into the world.” He talks about taking a pause in the middle of difficulties — even just for 10 seconds — to touch into our own place of fundamental goodwill by recalling:
I do not let my mind shut down with fear.
I do not let my mind shut down with resentment.
I do not let my mind shut down with impatience.
It’s a very helpful talk. There’s a bit of untranslated Pali and some references to topics he’s been talking about with this group for almost a month (so it’s a little like dropping into the middle of an on-going conversation) but don’t let that put you off. It’s a great support. Click here to listen.
I Would Skip This Part
Catechism for November
by Tony Hoagland
In the movie theater one night, you whispered,
“It is easier to watch than to live,”
and on the street outside, you thought,
“If this was a book, I would skip this part.”
Remember when you opened the fortune cookie in March?
It said, “Ideology is bad for you.”
Remember when you called Annabelle
“an encyclopedia of self-perpetuating pain?”
On Tuesday you said, “I’m a small wooden boat,
adrift in the space between storms,”
and on Wednesday you said, “I should go back to the park more often.”
Then you killed the spider with the heel of your shoe,
and said, “I can’t take care of all sentient beings!”
But when the girl with pink hair brought her sniffles to class,
you found a Kleenex in your purse for her.
This is how it happens: One at a time,
the minutes come out of the box where they are hidden:
the witty ones with yellow feathers;
the thick gray ones with no horizon.
But once you swore, “I want to see it all, unsentimentally.”
Once your wrote in your green notebook,
“Let me start in the middle, again.”
***
OK. So what do we do now, folks? If I could, I would skip this part. But that won’t help. So I’m just trying to feel the feelings, one at a time, without giving in to fear or despair. It’s not easy. Which is why it’s important to start again. And again. Right where we are. In the middle of it all.
Possibility
“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke