Nunsense

via Joe My God

Is easier than speaking.

See, it all started with the realization that Tassajara wouldn’t make me a priest. Your approval or being my teacher wouldn’t make me a priest, an okesa wouldn’t make me a priest. I either am or am not a priest already.

That gave way to a clear seeing of just how much approval I seek. I want an A in Zen. I think there is something to do to get it. From you, from someone else, from everyone else. Doesn’t really matter, because in the end, there is never enough approval. I compare myself to those folks currently sewing and can’t figure out what I am missing other than some imagined time in the never never land that is Tassajara. This raises the misconception that I am somehow deficient or broken.

I put this story down. Another story arises. “Being a Priest will fix me”. Again, nothing broken, nothing to fix.

I put this story down. Another story arises. “You don’t belong here”. No here, no there, no belonging, no inside no outside. Why I continue to struggle to get someplace (the inside) that doesn’t exists, I don’t know, but I do.

I put this story down, And I rest. I start to see this life, this time, this “me”, without the stories, and I see that there isn’t really anything to the stories, and I can see something clearly. There quiet in the dawn with no sound or sight, just moments or not moments, between thoughts and feelings is this breath. And with each breath, I am shown what it is that is out of focus, out of clarity, what it is I need to remember.

I just want to practice. I just want to sit beside folks as they die and experience that moment fully. I want to sit in this skin and be that fully. I want to know this karma and this mind fully. No more priest, No more Tassajara. No more approval or disapproval. Just this. In this place, with this body, with this mind, and this karma.

And then the bell rings.

When we meditate, we’re creating a situation in which there’s a lot of space. That sounds good but actually it can be unnerving, because when there’s a lot of space you can see very clearly: you’ve removed your veils, your shields, your armor, your dark glasses, your earplugs, your layers of mittens, your heavy boots. Finally you’re standing, touching the earth, feeling the sun on your body, feeling its brightness, hearing all the noises without anything to dull the sound. You take off your nose plug, and maybe you’re going to smell lovely fresh air or maybe you’re in the middle of a garbage dump. Since meditation has this quality of bringing you very close to yourself and your experience, you tend to come up against your edge faster. It’s not an edge that wasn’t there before, but because things are so simplified and clear, you see it, and you see it vividly and clearly.

Wisdom replaces ignorance in our minds when we realize that happiness does not lie in the accumulation of more and more pleasant feelings, that gratifying craving does not bring us a feeling of wholeness or completeness. It simply leads to more craving and more aversion. When we realize in our own experience that happiness comes not from reaching out but from letting go, not from seeking pleasurable experience but from opening in the moment to what is true, this transformation of understanding then frees the energy of compassion within us. Our minds are no longer bound up in pushing away pain or holding on to pleasure. Compassion becomes the natural response of an open heart.

I am on Retreat until July 31. Please don’t miss me too much.

See you when I return

If I loaned you my copy of the Angels in America DVD.. Please let me know.. I can’t seem to find it, and it was a gift to me.

THey aren’t all in yet, but here are some of my favorite photos I have found from the Parade

My friend Skip has a new online shop. I think the offerings are funny and cute. CHECK IT OUT

They are starting to chant this at Tassajara. I had to share it. For more info about the fires see Sitting with Fire

Peace
Loved
Fufilled
Loving
Open
Joyful

What better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

A sensation appears, then liking or disliking begins. This fleeting moment, if we are unaware of it, is repeated and intensified intocraving and aversion, becoming a strong emotion that eventually overpowers the conscious mind. We become caught up in the emotion, and all our better judgment is swept aside. The result is that we find ourselves engaged in unwholesome speech and action, harming ourselves and others. We create misery for ourselves, suffering now and in the future, because of onemoment of blind reaction.

But if we are aware at the point where the process of reaction begins–that is, if we are aware of the sensation–we can choose not to allow any reaction to occur or to intensify . . . in those moments the mind is free.

Perhaps at first these may be only a few moments in a meditation period, and the rest of the time the mind remains submerged in the old habit of reaction to sensations, the old round of craving, aversion, and misery. But with repeated practice those few brief moments will become seconds, will become minutes, until finally the old habit of reaction is broken, and the mind remains continuously at peace. This is how suffering can be stopped.

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I really loved this…

Yesterday was a day just like every other day, except for one thing. Yesterday human beings were uplifted one more step. Yesterday at 5:01pm Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (who have been together 55 years) were married for the second time in San Francisco. They were the only couple married on Monday, but dozens are already lined up outside City Hall this morning to get their licenses.

The pictures for this writing are from the SFGate article and were taken by Noah Berger for the Chronicle.

I am not a real believer in marriage. I think as an institution it’s an abomination, and creates power structures that seperate the “haves” from the “have nots”. You are okay if you are married or “involved” but not if you are single. That being said, I cried tears of joy this morning. I never in my 30 plus years of activism, and queerdom thought I would see a day when I felt such a faith in humanity, and in my government. I think part of my feelings about marriage are shaped by the fact that it was a road closed to me as long as I can remember. It’s hard to believe in something you don’t see as an option for yourself.

Today, as I sat in meditation, I realized that for the first time in history, I have something to celebrate. For years there have not been victories really, but small “advances” or moves forward. There has never been an outright reason to celebrate. Where there isn’t any pandering, or sacrifice, just equality. Today is a celebration of a victory. No holds barred.

With great joy I share with you some of my favorite images of a couple who inspire me. They inspire me to be a better man, a better feminist, a better queer, a better human being. For decades they have held on to each other as they fought to be together, as well as to be treated fairly. This morning they woke up as spouses for the first time after 55 years. My heart swells with tears of joy, and a sense of pride like I have never known.

Congratulations to all of humanity. Today we are one step closer to being truly compassionate and loving with each other.

Few people are capable of wholehearted commitment, and that is why so few people experience a real transformation through their spiritual practice. It is a matter of giving up our own viewpoints, of letting go of opinions and preconceived ideas, and instead following the Buddha’s guidelines. Although this sounds simple, in practice most people find it extremely difficult. Their ingrained viewpoints, based on deductions derived from cultural and socila norms, are in the way.

We must also remember that heart and mind need to work together. If we understand something rationally but don’t love it, there is no completeness for us, no fulfillment. If we love something but don’t understand it, the same applies. If we have a relationship with another person, and we love the person but don’t understand him or her, the relationship is incomplete; if we understand the person but don’t love him or her, it is equally unfulfilling. How much more so on our spiritual path. We have to understand the meaning of the teaching and also love it. In the beginning our understanding will only be partial, so our love has to be even greater.

I think the hardest concept for me to grasp in the practice of Zen is the need to go beyond my own thoughts and ideas. Partly because I am usually right (at least for my given situation) and partly because it is never clear which of my thoughts I really should give up and which ones I shouldn’t. Slowly over time I am figuring out a couple of these points.

First, It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s a practice of letting go of your ideas about right or wrong. It’s about going beyond your thoughts and ideas so that you might be able to make room for even more thoughts and ideas, which you may not have had access to in the past. If I continue to hold onto this thought, and think “I am right”, then … I am stuck just there, in that thought. But if I find a practice that over time teaches me to go beyond this thought, then I am not stuck anymore. I am able to move beyond and perhaps open up new territory.

When I asked my teacher “Which thoughts and ideas should I give up?” He responded very simply, “All of them”. Once I got over my desire to hurt him, I see that what he is trying to say is being stuck is being stuck. Even if it’s a “Good idea”, I still shouldn’t stick to it, what if there is a Better idea? See?

Just random things floating around my goo encrusted brain as I try to function with a sinus infection.

You got to love a doctor that will look at your mucus. I have had this sinus thing going on for about a month, and I finally mentioned it to Sponsor Dearest (who is also a doctor) and he just said, let me see it.

Hopefully I will be able to breath again soon.

This is a very good read. From New York Magazine.

I have no comment about it other than to say, if you don’t learn something from this article, you aren’t going to learn anything anyway.

I rarely have sat through the entire one of these things, but I was moved and inspired deeply. May you find it as liberating as I do.

JK Rowling at Harvard

Text as prepared follows.
Copyright of JK Rowling, June 2008

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates.

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the ‘gay wizard’ joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step towards personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called ‘real life’, I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticise my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathise may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
I wish you all very good lives.
Thank you very much.

So, a certain lizard pointed me towards what has become a bit of a distraction latley.

Come Join us… on Plurk (I think it means Play and Work, but who the hell really knows)…. You can be my friend and we can say silly things to each other.

But then again, this page is already like WAY behind in it’s rewriting.

I started examining this concept of identity sometime around the time I was seven or eight years old. My father would watch this show called “Wild Wild West”, and I loved this show. Not for the reasons anyone else in my family loved it, but because each week I could see Robert Conrad in those tight pants and the decidedly queer relationship between Robert Conrad’s character and the character of Artemis. I didn’t know what exactly those feelings I was feeling were, nor did I know what gay, or queer, or any of those things were, but I knew for certain that what I experienced watching that show was not the same as what everyone else in my family experienced, and it was not okay to talk about it. Thus began my exploration. I didn’t know what I was, but I knew something about what I wasn’t. I still don’t know what “I” am, but I know a whole lot more about what “I” am not.

In my life, this is the exploration of self in a nutshell. “I don’t know what I am, but I know it’s not that”. I have wandered through 30 plus odd years trying out things, and incorporating some of those things into a sense of integrated identity, and tossing out other things, as not quite fitting right. I have come to learn that I am not straight, I am not dumb, I am not uncaring, I am not unlovable, I am not normal, I am not abnormal, I am not psychotic, I am not criminal, I am not… this list goes on and on and on.

What is interesting about this exploration too, is that it has very little to do with what people say I am. Lots of people, of lots of sorts want to put “me” in a box of some kind, and say lots of things about what that box means. Over the long haul, I have learned that what they say that means, and what it means to me, are often two very different things. I have slowly learned over time, and through trial and error to put more faith in what something means to me, than what it means to someone else. See this is personal exploration, and it’s about personal integrity, and as much as I want someone else to do the hard work of it, it’s really something only I can do.

So now, I am a zen student. Okay, what does that mean? What does it mean to be a gay zen student? What does it mean to be a tattooed zen student? What does it mean to be a monk? What does it mean to be a monk who may or may not be ordained? Lots of questions have been floating around my zazen latley, and I can to tell you I have settled into them (as much as possible) , and reflected on them (as much as possible), and came to the following conclusions: I don’t know shit about this stuff.

I stopped wearing my rakasu lately, because I don’t really know who or what I am in regards to being a zen student, but I do know what I am not. I am not a lay person. When I took the precepts and vowed to save all beings, I did so in a ceremony called “Zeke Tukado” or Lay ordination. Taking the precepts without leaving home. I have left home. I don’t intend now to go “back home”. I intend to continue being homeless until such a time as I have fufilled this vow. Since my vows are in fact not really fufillable, I am likely to be homeless for a little while.

Okay so where am I going with all this? I don’t really know that either. Just random thoughts that seem to stream together in some sort of melody in my mind.

Taking refuge in the Buddha implies no personal guarantee that the Buddha himself will effect the arrival at the Goal of any of his followers. To the contrary, he says: “Surely by oneself is evil done, by oneself one becomes pure. Purity and impurity are of the individual. No one purifies another.” …According to the doctrine of karma, future happiness is a direct result or continuation of the maintaining of a satisfactory standard of conduct in the present.

My practice centers around the idea of turning towards everything. Yes, it’s easy to turn towards some things, like joy, and laughter, and well being. It is the other stuff, the less pleasant stuff that actually requires me to vow and practice more and more deeply.

Lately, I have been meeting my own judgements and jealousies. This isn’t pleasant, and I often find myself frustrated as I greet yet another manifestation of my pettiness. See, there is where the practice of patience comes in. Right there, in that spot of judgement you see in the word pettiness, the spot of impatience in the word “another”. That is all calling out for me to remember to just lovingly and gently put myself back on the cushion, take a deep breath, and let it all go again.

It is easy for one to get annoyed as progress happens, and then doesn’t happen and then happens again. BUt we aren’t striving for some goal here. We are uncovering our true nature, and facing what already is. No need to strive or “work at it”, since it will all present itself in due time. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Until then, just breath, cut yourself some slack, and lovingly return to yourself and your meditations. Life is good after all, even with “that guy” over there that we imagine is somehow separate from us.

Deep Bows

Someone asked me recently why I was posting other people’s teachings here, but not publishing my own. My response was full of excuses (the redesign isn’t ready, I am not a teacher, I am only in training, etc. etc.) and I eventually had to succumb to the fact that I didn’t really have faith.

I didn’t have faith in my ability to say anything, in my ability to write about it and/or that what I have to say is of any value to others. Interesting to note my stories about myself, and about what is or isn’t important, worthy, or of value. So I am going to start posting my own words again. I will still publish that which I find interesting, or informative from others, but I will be writing at least once a week on my own teachings.

The “redesign” will come eventually, so it’s not going to be pretty here for awhile. Given the fact that I am hoping to share my heart/mind here, it’s probably not going to be pretty after the redesign either. But hopefully my vow to write my own words at least once a week will be fruitful for someone besides myself.

When we trust with our open heart, whatever occurs, at the very moment that it occurs, can be perceived as fresh and unstained by the clouds of hope and fear. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche used the phrase “first thought, best thought” to refer to the first moment of fresh perception, before the colorful and coloring clouds of judgement and personal interpretation take over.

“First thought” is “best thought” because it has not yet got covered over by all our opinions and interpretations, our hopes and fears, our likes and dislikes. It is direct perception of the world as it is. Sometimes we discover “first thought, best thought” by relaxing into the present in a very simple way

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Dolly just makes me smile. THen you add in Amy Sedaris, and I couldn’t be happier

Giving and receiving are part of the same cycle, and we each give and receive in our own ways. But we can lose our balance when we try to be too controlling on either side of the cycle. On the receiving end, we may feel that we don’t deserve the effort made if what we gave was easy for us to give. But perhaps there is a different lesson there for us. We may be receiving not only gratitude, but a chance to see the world through the eyes of another. We may be learning that just because we gave easily, it doesn’t diminish its value. Or perhaps the universe is giving us an example to hold close to our hearts, to encourage us on some future day when our own generous act of giving is not met with a visible act of receiving. When we can allow ourselves to receive as well as give, we do our part to keep the channels of abundance open for ourselves and others. 

Sometimes we may find ourselves struggling to respond to others’ gifts in the same ways—like responding to an expensive present with something equally expensive, or feeling like we have to throw a dinner party for someone who has thrown one for us. But when these are done out of a sense of obligation, their energy changes from something that shares to something that drains. If this sounds familiar, we can decide next time to allow ourselves to receive with arms, minds and hearts open and simply say thank you. 

Accepting a person’s gift is a gift in itself. Sincere appreciation for their acknowledgement and their effort joins our energy with theirs in the cycle of giving and receiving, and nurtures all involved. If ever we find we are still having difficulty, we can decide to allow ourselves to be conduits for gratitude and accept on behalf of a loving, giving universe.

The emperor of China asked a renowned Buddhist master if it would be possible to illustrate the nature of self in a visible way. In response, the master had a sixteen-sided room appointed with floor-to-ceiling mirrors that faced one another exactly. In the center he hung a candle aflame. When the emperor entered he could see the individual candle flame in thousands of forms, each of the mirrors extending it far into the distance. Then the master replaced the candle with a small crystal. The emperor could see the small crystal reflected again in every direction. When the master pointed closely at the crystal, the emperor could see the whole room of thousands of crystals reflected in each tiny facet of the crystal in the center. The master showed how the smallest particle contains the whole universe.

True emptiness is not empty, but contains all things. The mysterious and pregnant void creates and reflects all possibilities. From it arises our individuality, which can be discovered and developed, although never possessed or fixed. The self is held in no-self, as the candle flame is held in great emptiness.

I am actually opposed to all marriage. I think it subjegates people, and sets up false expectations. But I am thrilled beyond belief at this decision.

Why? Cause it’s not about marriage. Yes it’s cloaked in that…. but read this.. my favorite quote from the decision:

“Finally Retaining the designation of marriage exclusively for opposite sex couples and providing only a seperate and distinct designation for same sex couples wmay well have the effect of perpetuating a more general premise - now emphatically rejected by this state- that gay individuals and same sex couples are in some respects “second-class citizens” who may, under the law, be treated differently from and less favorably than, heterosexual individuals or opposite sex couples”….

Today is my Freedom day. I am not a second class citizen in my state.

When you live with this awareness, there’s no fretting about making this or that happen or go away. Take, for example, sitting up in bed in the morning, putting on socks, and applying the same awareness to putting on socks as you give to following your breath on your [meditation] cushion. There’s just your arm moving, the feel of the sock pulling up over your foot, the arch of your neck as you bend over. Thinking of nothing at all, putting every bit of yourself into simply pulling on that sock. Suddenly the world opens up. There’s an enormous rush of joy for no reason at all. Everything outside you and inside you is swallowed up by that sock going over your toes. It all happens so fast, you can’t even say how long the moment lasts. There’s not even any sense of you pulling on the sock. It could just as easily be the sock pulling you on. You and your sock and your foot and your elbow and your neck have somehow all vanished into the act itself. It’s not that you physically disappear or go into some altered state; it’s just that you’ve dropped into the pure joy of closing the gap between yourself and the moment of pulling on your sock.