I only want to meditate, I thought, when I went to my first all day sitting at a zen center. But there wasn't just sitting, there was chanting, work practice, walking meditation, and oryoki meals. It took me many years to come to appreciate the full practice and embrace it. Chanting was the worst. I never liked my voice. Earlier when I would hear my voice on my answering machine, I would cringe at the slowness of my words; part of a leftover southern drawl. Now when I hear myself on a taped teleclass that I teach, I hear a voice of umms, likes, and cliches- oh, so California now.
In a large zendo your voice blends with others as you chant, either slowly or quickly. Here in my own apartment by myself, there was just one voice chanting, and as awkward as that my seem, it was quite refreshing, (although I had a hard time quieting my inner critic).
We have the ability and the responsibility to choose to direct our
actions on a virtuous path.
When we weigh a particular act, to determine whether it is moral or
spiritual, our criterion should be the quality of our motivation. When
someone deliberately makes a resolution not to steal, if he or she is
simply motivated by the fear of getting caught and being punished by the
law, it is doubtful whether engaging in that resolution is a moral act,
since moral considerations have not dictated his or her choice.
In another instance, the resolution not to steal may be motivated by
fear of public opinion: "What would my friends and neighbors think? All
would scorn me. I would become an outcast." Though the act of making a
resolution may be positive, whether it is a moral act is again doubtful.
Now, the same resolution may be taken with the thought "If I steal, I
am acting against the divine law of God." Someone else may think,
"Stealing is nonvirtuous; it causes others to suffer." When such
considerations motivate one, the resolution is moral or ethical; it is also
spiritual. In the practice of Buddha's doctrine, if your underlying
consideration in avoiding a nonvirtuous act is that it would thwart your
attainment of a state transcending sorrow, such restraint is a moral act.
-- by the Dalai Lama, edited by Nicholas Vreeland, from "An Open Heart:
Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life"
"Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions."
- from the third Zen patriarch
Well, I am home from the hospital, not exactly in the condition that I thought, but that is how it is.
With new medical problems and a new home, I feel somewhat reborn. There is a sense of deja vu but also a sense of fresh start. There is a lot of energy here and good fresh air. Ah!!
Not a lot else I need.
I am forever grateful to be able to look into those hazel eyes and feel that soft hair that curls in between my fingers and rub against that warm body next to mine.
Funny how something so ordinary so everyday becomes so precious when it is not there for you -even if only for two weeks.
Luminosity is the sense of celebration that comes with the sense of
humor.
Humor and celebration are indivisible at this point: celebration means
sense
of humor. Celebration means a sense of delightfulness, an uplifting
quality.
We could use all sorts of jargon, but fundamentally speaking,
celebration is
a sense of earth, actually celebrating the earth, and a sense of earth
and
space making love together. Humor comes from space, or sky, and earth
is the
celebration. When the earth begins to celebrate, space begins to make
love
to the earth -- that's the meeting point of earth and space....Earth
blossoms and sky begins to pay attention to it. Sky begins to shine all
kinds of light over the earth and accommodate it with its space to grow
flowers or trees, to maintain rocks, waterfalls, skyscrapers, and
highways
-- whatever we have on this earth. We don't have to be particularly
romantic
about it. We're not just talking about nature, we're talking about
reality.
-Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche