Expansive, Unlimited
Here’s another quote from the collection we were given at the Exploring the Nature of Awareness retreat I just attended. We were encouraged to continue our practice at home by reading, re-reading, and reflecting on one of the quotes each day.
For today I chose this one, from Intuitive Awareness, by Ajahn Sumedho:
“With intuitive awareness we are taking our refuge in awakeness, which is expansive, unlimited. Thought and mental conception create boundaries. The body is a boundary; emotional habits are boundaries; language is a boundary; words expressing feelings are also boundaries. That which transcends all of this, we begin to recognize through awakening.
“Even if what I’m saying sounds like rubbish to you, be aware of that. Open to the fact that you don’t like what I’m saying. It’s like this. It’s not that you have to like it: it’s starting from the way it is rather than you having to figure out what I’m trying to say.”
It’s Like This
At the retreat I just returned from, the focus was on turning our attention from whatever thoughts/sensations/emotions we are experiencing and noticing, instead, the presence of awareness itself. We were given a handout with quotes from various teachers on the nature of awareness and were encouraged to continue our practice at home by taking one of these quotes each day and reflecting on them.
Here’s the quote I’m using today, from Intuitive Awareness, by Ajahn Sumedho:
Awareness is your refuge:
Awareness of the changingness of feelings,
of attitudes, of moods, of material change
and emotional change.
Stay with that, because it’s a refuge that is
indestructible.
It’s not something that changes.
It’s a refuge that you can trust in.
This refuge is not something that you create.
It’s not a creation. It’s not an ideal.
It’s very practical and very simple, but
easily overlooked or not noticed.
When you’re mindful,
you’re beginning to notice:
It’s like this.
The Gravity of Our Lives
The retreat was great and I have a lot I’d like to share from it, but I haven’t quite gotten through my emails and other must-dos just yet, so for today let me post this poem, written by one of our sangha members:
Our Little Differences
by Dave Wilson
We all want the same thing — well not exactly, not precisely — and surely not in the same way.
But against the face of all there is and isn’t, our little differences have no say, hold no sway.
So often it’s easy to miss just how much there is, especially when there is so much made of so little.
So little looks so much until the same thing is no longer the same, and you can’t tell the ends from the middle.
It’s the gravity of our lives that weigh us down, pulling us away from each other, daring us to run away from its weight.
It seems so heavy around the moment, but in the moment, there is no pull — gravity wanes and forgets itself — if only we sit and wait.
Let’s give in to the ends and their ends
And try turning every way the middle bends.
And Yet….
Once again my days are filling up. I leave for retreat on Wednesday, Dec 9 and won’t be back until the wee hours of the morning on Thursday, Dec 18. There is much to be done between now and Wed, so today will be my last post until after I get back…so check back again on Monday, Dec 21.
In the mean time, I leave you with this selection from my always-to-be-consulted-before-traveling guide book: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.
Hidden Cities 2
In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they walk in the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the river and press their fists to their temples. In the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins. At the workbenches where, every moment, you hit your finger with a hammer or prick it with a needle, or over the columns of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants and bankers, or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of the wineshops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim gaze. Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter to learn this: in the summer the windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes.
And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, “Darling, let me dip into it,” to a young serving-maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: “Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.”
Let None Wish Others Harm
The December homework for the CDL (Community Dharma Leader) program has just arrived. The focus this month is on what Sharon Salzberg calls our Four Best Homes…the four Brahma Viharas, also translated as the four Divine Abodes: Metta (Loving Kindness), Karuna (Compassion), Mudita (Joy in the Happiness of Others) and Upekkha (Equanimity).
One of our assignments is to do a formal practice for each of the Brahma Viharas for one week during our sitting practice. That is: each day for a full week, do Metta practice during one entire sitting period. Then move to Compassion, then Joy, then finally Equanimity. As a support for this, the teachers sent the text of the Metta Sutta in its original Pali (the first language used to record the Buddha’s teachings) along with an English translation that’s slightly different from the one I heard the first time I encountered these teachings. I like it a lot. So I offer it here, for your welfare and benefit:
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness
Having glimpsed the state of perfect peace,
Let them be able, honest and upright,
Gentle in speech, meek and not proud.
Contented and easy to support,
With few duties, and simple in living.
Tranquil their senses, masterful and modest,
without greed for supporters.
Also, let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Let them cultivate the thought:
May all be well and secure,
May all beings be happy.
Whatever living creatures there be,
Without exception, weak or strong,
Long, huge or middle-sized,
Or short, minute or bulky,
Whether visible or invisible,
And those living far or near,
The born and those seeking birth,
May all beings be happy.
Let none deceive another
Or despise any being in any state;
Let none wish others harm
In resentment or in hate.
Just as with her own life
A mother shields her child,
Her only child, from hurt
Let all-embracing thoughts
For all beings be yours.
Cultivate a limitless heart of goodwill
For all throughout the cosmos,
In all its height, depth and breath —
Love that is untroubled
And beyond hatred or enmity.
As you stand, walk, sit or lie,
So long as you are awake,
Pursue this awareness with your might:
It is deemed the Divine Abiding — here and
now.
Holding no more to wrong views,
A pure-hearted one, having clarity
Of vision, being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
Remember the World
For today, this poem, by Joy Harjo (from her collection How We Become Human):
Remember
by Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
I met her in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn,
that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth
how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life
who all have their tribes, their families,
their histories, too.
Talk to them, listen to them.
They are alive poems.
Remember the wind.
Remember her voice.
She knows the origin of this universe.
I heard her singing Kiowa war dance songs
at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people
and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe
and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion,
is growing, is you.
Remember that language come from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.
The Workings of the Mind
Every-other Monday night I play a Dharma Seed talk for any of my dharma buddies who want to come over and listen. (So far, only Thomas has taken me up on the offer, but all are invited! Send me an email here, if you’d like to come.)
Anyway, the talk we listened to last night was given by Winnie Narzarko at the Forest Refuge a few weeks ago. It’s titled: What’s Going on in the Teacher Meetings? I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone give a whole talk on the intention and the dynamics of those one-on-one “teacher interviews,” which are a standard part of all the longer-than-3-or-4-day meditation retreats I’ve ever been on.
It was a terrific talk, especially for anyone getting ready to go on retreat (which is me!). But even for those who aren’t in that particular situation, I’ll offer this quote, which really caught my attention. Winnie was saying that the teacher/student meeting could be summed up as “a two-person joint dharma inquiry” and that the “main purpose of the meeting from the perspective of practice” is an investigation — done as a joint enterprise — of the workings of the mind, which leads to wisdom and insight.
So here’s the quote:
“Having established mindful connection with experience, the mind begins to notice how it creates suffering and how it can release that suffering.”
Exactly! That, right there in a nutshell, is what the practice is all about.
May It Be So
At yesterday’s Sunday Sangha Sitting Group, Thomas led us in a Metta Meditation (also know as Lovingkindness Meditation). He used a slight variation on the traditional phrases, so I thought it would be good to post them here:
May all beings be safe and feel protected.
May all beings be healthy and strong.
May all beings be happy, just as they are.
May all beings live with ease in the world.
Precious Human Life
It is true that to be born into this world brings with it the inevitable fact of aging, sickness and death. Yet it’s that very fact — and the acceptance of it — that makes the experience so precious.
I am thankful for this precious human life. And for all the precious human beings I share it with…including my father, Daniel, (age 88) and my grand-nephew, Ethan (age 3 months).
May all beings be safe, well, and happy.
Travel & Memory
I’m leaving early tomorrow morning for a pre-Thanksgiving visit with two of my brothers and their families who live in Chapel Hill. I won’t return until late on Monday, Nov 23 and won’t be posting while I’m gone, so check back later…maybe on Wednesday, Nov 25.
In the mean time, I leave you with another selection from the “travel” book I always consult before departing: Invisible Cities, by Italo Calvino.
Cities & Memory 5
In Maurilia, the traveler is invited to visit the city and, at the same time, to examine some old post cards that show it as it used to be: the same identical square with a hen in the place of the bus station, a bandstand in the place of the overpass, two ladies with white parasols in the place of the munitions factory. If the traveler does not wish to disappoint the inhabitants, he must praise the postcard city and prefer it to the present one, though he must be careful to contain his regret at the changes within definite limits: admitting that the magnificence and prosperity of the metropolis Maurilia, when compared to the old, provincial Maurilia, cannot compensate for a certain lost grace, which, however, can be appreciated only now in the old post cards, whereas before, when that provincial Maurilia was before one’s eyes, one saw absolutely nothing graceful and would see it even less today, if Maurilia had remained unchanged; and in any case the metropolis has the added attraction that, through what it has become, one can look back with nostalgia at what it was.
Beware of saying to them that sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices’ accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old post cards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.