Once Upon A Time
I just listened to what has got to be the most creative, most unusual, and maybe the wildest (in a good way) dharma talk I have ever heard. It was given by Greg Scharf on Halloween, at this year’s 3-month retreat at IMS (Insight Meditation Society).
The title of the talk is: Prince 5-Weapons and the Sticky-Haired Monster.
I’m not kidding.
It’s a hoot. Don’t miss it.
Click here to listen.
Marred, Lovely, and Flawed
Autumn Quince
by Jane Hirshfield
How sad they are,
the promises we never returned to.
They stay in our mouths,
roughen the tongue, lead lives of their own.
Houses built and unwittingly lived in;
a succession of milk bottles brought to the door
every morning and taken inside.
And which one is real?
The music in the composer’s ear
or the lapsed piece the orchestra plays?
The world is a blurred version of itself–
marred, lovely, and flawed.
It is enough.
“Yet”
My mentor Mirabai Bush has an article in the current issue of Mindful magazine, titled Passion Rules. It includes a set of mindful investigation practices aimed at clarifying values, identifying obstacles and developing skills for waking up to a more value-driven life. For example:
What really matters to you in your life?
Practice: Think of an object related to your values and how it might be utilized thorough a vocation or avocation. Sit quietly, breathe in and out, holding the object in your mind, and see what arises. Allow its story to unfold without judgment.
What is in the way of living in alignment with those values?
Practice: Contemplate that question. Listen for how to overcome these obstacles. When negative judgments arise — I can’t start my own business because I don’t have the skills — try using the word “yet.” I don’t have them yet.
What do you do really well, and is there space for you to do it?
Practice: Imagine yourself as a child. What did you love to do and what did you know you were good at? Let images arise. Remember how it felt. Ask: Is it still true? What else is true now? Then identify the skills you’ll need to bring that latent passion back to life.
How to Know Birds
How to Know Birds
by Gary Snyder
The place you’re in
The time of year
How they move and where in the meadows,
brush, forest,
rocks, reeds, are they hanging out
alone or in a group or little groups?
Size, speed, sorts of flight
Quirks. Tail flicks, wing-shakes, bobbing
Can you see what they’re eating?
Calls and songs?
Finally, if you get a chance, can you see
their colors,
details of plumage–lines, dots, bars
That will tell you the details you need to
come up with a name
but
You already know this bird.
2016
The Gift Your Life Requires
My treat for you this Halloween night is a link to the talk Jack Kornfield gave on the final evening of the Fall Insight Retreat. It’s titled: The Bodhisattva and the Power of Intention. It includes an invitation to craft a personal Bodhisattva vow and to take it out into the world.
Listen to the talk to the very end. Do what he suggests. Then look up at the stars.
“Know that you are not alone and that this darkness has its purpose. Gradually it will school your eyes to find the gift your life requires, hidden in this night corner, illuminating your heart.” — John O’Donohue
One of Those
I Want
by Mary Oliver
I want to be
in partnership
with the universe
like the tiger lily
poking up
its gorgeous head
among the so-called
useless weeds
in the uncultivated fields
that still abide.
But it’s okay
if, after all,
I’m not a lily,
but only grass
in a clutch of curly grass
waving in the wind,
staring sunward: one of those
sweet, abrasive blades.
At the Thai Temple
Bhikkhu Bodhi was in town last night to give a talk at the Thai temple in Florissant. Attendance was very sparse, which is a shame, but the talk was great. I don’t think it was recorded, which is another shame, but I can offer instead this sweet little talk he gave in California several years ago, which has a similar flavor. The title is Taking Delight in the Wholesome. Enjoy!
Not So Comfortable
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve started to expand a bit beyond my cultural comfort zone by reading more books by African-American authors. I am sad to admit that in the past I thought books by these authors — particularly books about the experience of being black in this country — had nothing to do with me. As if the everyday privileges I enjoy as a result of being white…including the privilege of remaining blissfully unaware of those privileges…were not given to me at the expense of others who are excluded from those privileges. (In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, pull up a chair and read this: The Case for Reparations.)
So I was delighted to hear yesterday that a black American, Paul Beatty, has won the Man Booker Prize for his novel, The Sellout. It’s definitely outside of my comfort zone, but I’m going for it. Here’s the opening paragraph:
This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I’ve never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I’ve never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowed bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly, pulled out my gigantic penis and masturbated to satisfaction with a perverted, yet somehow crestfallen, look on my face. But here I am, in the cavernous chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, my car illegally and somewhat ironically parked on Constitution Avenue, my hands cuffed and crossed behind my back, my right to remain silent long since waived and said goodbye to as I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn’t quite as comfortable as it looks.
No Thanks, I’ll Pass
Our KM group met last night to discuss the chapter on Renunciation in Joseph Goldstein’s Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening. The word “renunciation” has a lot of negative connotations, but in this case we’re not talking about depriving ourselves of joy and comfort and pleasure. We’re finding peace and ease by releasing ourselves from the “addiction” of habitual patterns.
Joseph talks about “the wisdom of no, when we recognize that some things are not skillful, not helpful, not leading to happiness. At those times,” he writes,”we can practice saying, ‘No thanks, I’ll pass.'”
But we are often so used to our habits — even our painful, stress-causing habits — that we forget they can be changed.
I like Stephen Mitchell’s take in Parables and Portraits:
“We tend to think of Sisyphus as a tragic hero, condemned by the gods to shoulder his rock sweatily up the mountain, again and again, forever.
“The truth is that Sisyphus is in love with the rock. He cherishes every roughness and every ounce of it. He talks to it. Sings to it. It has become the mysterious Other. He even dreams of it as he sleepwalks upward. Life is unimaginable without it, looming always above him like a huge gray moon.
“He doesn’t realize that at any moment he is permitted to step aside, let the rock hurdle to the bottom, and go home.
“Tragedy is the inertial force of the mind.”
Though She Would See
A Story
by Jane Hirshfield
A woman tells me
the story of a small wild bird,
beautiful on her window sill, dead three days.
How her daughter came suddenly running,
“It’s moving, Mommy, he’s alive.”
And when she went, it was.
The emerald wing-feathers stirred, the throat
seemed to beat again with pulse.
Closer then, she saw how the true life lifted
under the wings. Turned her face
so her daughter would not see, though she would see.