We just completed our winter retreat. So beautiful and amazing to spend time with my teacher, Swamiji. As part of the events Lama Wangdu Rinpoche consecrated Laura Santi's recent painting. The consecration was completed with Lama Wangdu placing his handprints on the back of the painting. Here are some close-ups and pictures of Laura explaining the painting. In Chod you let go of all your attachments. Can you see anything that she included in the imagery that you are attached to? Maybe football or your pets? It is an amazing painting!
'Mercy has a human heart. Pity a human face: And Love the human form divine, And Peace the human dress.' ~ William Blake. ________________________ "If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?" ~ Dogen ________________________ All of us human beings, need compassion and growth. My aspiration is to wake up, open my heart and touch yours.
Monday, January 1, 2018
Rare Beast
"The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare. When this barrier is dropped, or at least you start to tell yourself, "I really don't know if my belief that awakening is difficult is true or not," then everything becomes instantly available to you. Since this is all that exists, it can't be rare and difficult unless we insist it is. The basis of all this is not theoretical, it is experiential. No one taught it to me, and no one can teach it to you."
~ Adyashanti
Emptiness Dancing
http://bit.ly/1OTVryx
Great Doubt Great Enlightenment
"Many years ago, the great deity of the Kasuga Shrine appeared to Gedatsu Shōnin of Kasagi. "Since the time of the Buddha Kuruson," he told him, "every wise and eminent priest who has lacked the Mind of Enlightenment has without exception fallen into the paths of evil."
For years, these words weighed on my mind, greatly troubling me. I couldn't understand it. Wasn't a shaven head and monk's robe the Mind of Enlightenment? Wasn't reciting sutras, mantras, and dharanis the Mind of Enlightenment? Not to mention all those wise and eminent priests throughout the past: the idea that such men could have lacked the Mind of Enlightenment seemed incomprehensible to me. Yet here was a sacred utterance from the august lips of the great deity of Kasuga. It certainly could not be dismissed lightly.
I first began to have these doubts when I was twenty-five. They remained with me until my forty-first year, when I at long last penetrated into the heart of this great matter. Suddenly, unexpectedly, I saw it — it was as clear as if it were right there in the hollow of my hand. What is the Mind of Enlightenment? It is, I realized, a matter of doing good — benefiting others by giving them the gift of the Dharma teaching.
I pledged that I would from that moment forth drive forward the wheel of the Four Great Universal Vows. Now I am more than eighty years of age, but I have never been remiss in my effort to fulfill that pledge. I go wherever I am asked. Fifty, a hundred leagues — it doesn't faze me in the least. I do everything I possibly can to impart the Dharma to people. How strange it is that nowhere in the Buddhist teachings or in the records of the Zen patriarchs have I seen any clarification of the Mind of Enlightenment. How fortunate it was for me that the great deity of Kasuga, in an oracle of a few short sentences, succeeded so wonderfully in transcending all the sutras and commentaries. My joy could not have been greater."
~ Wild Ivy: The Spiritual Autobiography of Zen Master Hakuin
A fiery and intensely dynamic Zen teacher and artist, Hakuin (1685–1768) is credited with almost single-handedly revitalizing Japanese Zen after three hundred years of decline.
"WITH GREATEST respect and reverence, I encourage all you superior seekers in the secret depths to devote yourselves to penetrating and clarifying the self as earnestly as you would put out a fire on the top of your head. I urge you to keep boring your way through as assiduously as you would seek a lost article of incalculable worth. I enjoin you to regard the teachings left by the Buddha-patriarchs with the same spirit of hostility you would show toward a person who had murdered both your parents. Anyone who belongs to the school of Zen and does not engage in the doubting and introspection of koan must be considered a deadbeat rascal of the lowest kind, someone who would throw aside his greatest asset. As a teacher of the past said, "At the bottom of great doubt lies great enlightenment ... From a full measure of doubt comes a full measure of enlightenment."
Concerned but not Worried
"Now what is important is what my teacher Mumon Roshi often said. "Be concerned but don't be worried'
Being caring or concerned means to take care of every thing that comes to you; these things cannot just be ignored, we take care of them as they come.
But we must not over worry things. we should not makeup problems for ourselves.
...
Being caring or concerned means to take care of every thing that comes to you; these things cannot just be ignored, we take care of them as they come.
But we must not over worry things. we should not makeup problems for ourselves.
...
Do not think of what has not happened yet, or to be overly concerned about what has already passed; instead to be like a mirror which just sees things everything as is, with no "then what' or "what if?"
This is Zen.
If we don't do this we give birth to endless thinking, we do zazen to sharpen our concentration so that we can do this. To not escape from the actuality, to face it squarely, but to not add on any thoughts at all, this is the important fulcrum for living, and to do this we need concentration. Sussokan is the best for this, as well as the Naikan way of Hakuin Zenji."
~Harada Roshi Sept 2017
This is Zen.
If we don't do this we give birth to endless thinking, we do zazen to sharpen our concentration so that we can do this. To not escape from the actuality, to face it squarely, but to not add on any thoughts at all, this is the important fulcrum for living, and to do this we need concentration. Sussokan is the best for this, as well as the Naikan way of Hakuin Zenji."
~Harada Roshi Sept 2017
Turn your Light Way Up
"IN TIMES OF DARKNESS, TURN YOUR LIGHT WAY UP!
When someone calls you names, reduces you to a thing,
When they offer advice you didn’t ask for,
When they blame you for their pain,...
When they do not listen to you, and endlessly talk about themselves,
When they compare you with others,
When they ignore, invalidate, judge or ridicule your thoughts and feelings.
When someone calls you names, reduces you to a thing,
When they offer advice you didn’t ask for,
When they blame you for their pain,...
When they do not listen to you, and endlessly talk about themselves,
When they compare you with others,
When they ignore, invalidate, judge or ridicule your thoughts and feelings.
Stop. Breathe.
Know it’s their pain, not yours.
Know they are dreaming the only dream they can dream until they wake up.
Know that they don’t know you, only their fantasy.
Perhaps they find it hard to love themselves.
Perhaps they seek their worth externally.
Perhaps they are disconnected from their breath, their bodies, their precious aliveness, their true calling.
Perhaps they live in a dualistic world of good and bad, right and wrong, success and failure.
Perhaps they have forgotten the simple joy of being.
Perhaps you understand this.
Perhaps you have been where they have been.
Don’t try to change them now. They may never change.
Don’t try to fix them. They aren’t asking to be fixed.
The more you push, they more they’ll push back.
Don’t get entangled in their web of sorrows.
See clearly, even have compassion, but don’t push.
It’s okay that they are upset. It really is.
Give them space to be upset.
It’s okay that they are disappointed in you.
Give them space to be disappointed.
It’s okay that they judge you. Make room for their judgements too.
Make room for your own thoughts and feelings!
Allow yourself to feel sad, angry, guilty, doubtful.
Let all these precious energies wash through you.
They will not harm you, as you allow them to move.
Yes, you will meet many gatekeepers on this journey.
Walk your path anyway, and allow others to walk theirs.
You don’t need to justify your path, or defend it.
Stay close to yourself in these challenging times.
Do not fight the darkness; it has no power anyway.
Simply turn your light way up."
- Jeff Foster
Know it’s their pain, not yours.
Know they are dreaming the only dream they can dream until they wake up.
Know that they don’t know you, only their fantasy.
Perhaps they find it hard to love themselves.
Perhaps they seek their worth externally.
Perhaps they are disconnected from their breath, their bodies, their precious aliveness, their true calling.
Perhaps they live in a dualistic world of good and bad, right and wrong, success and failure.
Perhaps they have forgotten the simple joy of being.
Perhaps you understand this.
Perhaps you have been where they have been.
Don’t try to change them now. They may never change.
Don’t try to fix them. They aren’t asking to be fixed.
The more you push, they more they’ll push back.
Don’t get entangled in their web of sorrows.
See clearly, even have compassion, but don’t push.
It’s okay that they are upset. It really is.
Give them space to be upset.
It’s okay that they are disappointed in you.
Give them space to be disappointed.
It’s okay that they judge you. Make room for their judgements too.
Make room for your own thoughts and feelings!
Allow yourself to feel sad, angry, guilty, doubtful.
Let all these precious energies wash through you.
They will not harm you, as you allow them to move.
Yes, you will meet many gatekeepers on this journey.
Walk your path anyway, and allow others to walk theirs.
You don’t need to justify your path, or defend it.
Stay close to yourself in these challenging times.
Do not fight the darkness; it has no power anyway.
Simply turn your light way up."
- Jeff Foster
Nobodyness
"If you start playing the game of being an "enlightened somebody," the true teacher is going to call you on it. He or she is going to expose you, and that exposure is going to hurt. Because the ego will be there, standing in the light of Truth, exposed and humiliated. Of course, the ego will cry "foul!" It will claim that the teacher made a mistake and begin to justify itself in an effort to put its protective clothing back on. It will begin to spin justifications with incredible subtlety and deceptiveness.
This is where real spiritual sadhana (practice) begins. This is where it all becomes very real and the student discovers whether he or she truly wants to be free, or merely wants to remain as a false, separate, and self-justifying ego. This crossroad inevitably comes and is always challenging. It separates the true seeker from the false one. The true seeker will be willing to bare the grace of humility, whereas the false seeker will run from it. Thus begins the true path to enlightenment, granted only to those willing to be nobody. Discovering your "nobodyness" opens the door to awakening as beingness, and beyond that to the Source of all beingness."
-- Adyashanti
-- Adyashanti
Awakening is not Rare & Difficult
"The biggest barrier to awakening is the belief that it is something rare. When this barrier is dropped, or at least you start to tell yourself, "I really don't know if my belief that awakening is difficult is true or not," then everything becomes instantly available to you. Since this is all that exists, it can't be rare and difficult unless we insist it is. The basis of all this is not theoretical, it is experiential. No one taught it to me, and no one can teach it to you."...
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