Quote of the Week #83 - Zen Perspective on Gardening

Nevertheless, the flowers fall with our attachment, and the weeds spring up with our aversion. --Dogen

Quote of the Week #82- Intoxicated Joy

But the Jewish tradition also contains something else, something which finds splendid expression in many of the Psalms, namely, a sort of intoxicated joy and amazement at the beauty and grandeur of this world of which man can form just a faint notion. This joy is the feeling from which true scientific research draws its spiritual sustenance, but which also seems to find expression in the songs of birds. --Albert Einstein

Quote of the Week #81 - Chakras and Sefirot

According to the science of Yoga, beneath a human being’s physical frame is a subtle field of energy centers. These centers infuse the physical form with life and consciousness. In Sanskrit these centers are called chakras.

In the Kabbalah, the mystical teachings of Judaism, we find a similar description of a network of energy centers…In Hebrew, these energy centers are called sefirot…The centers, or sefirot, have two major functions. First and foremost they are conduits for the passage of energy. Every living thing is composed of energy. There is a dynamic exchange of spiritual power flowing back and forth all the time. Everything is emanating and absorbing the life force at every single moment. Each sefirah is composed of a particular energy, and this energy is of a grosser or more refined nature depending on our state of evolution. Our goal in life is to develop our centers until they are composed of pure spiritual force. We then become effective instruments for the distribution of this refined energy into the greater world around us. The second function of the centers, or sefirot, is to establish the nature of our consciousness.

--from Walking the Path of the Jewish Mystic, by Rabbi Yoel Glick

Quote of the Week #80 - The Great and Only Real Heresy

 The great heresy and the only real heresy is the idea that anything is separate, distinct, and different essentially from other things. That is a wandering from natural fact and law, for nature is nothing but coordination, cooperation, mutual helpfulness; and the rule of fundamental unity is perfectly universal: everything in he universe lives for everything else.

--Gottfried de Purucker, Golden Precepts of Esotericism

Quote of the Week #79 - The Result of Studies

Studies taught me the only thing they could, namely, that the truth is one and that some respect and love are enough to discover it in the depths of our consciousness.

--O.V. de L. Milosz

Quote of the Week #76 - Close to the Ground: The Secret of Abiding Joy

I’m sitting, watching Parker perform her first dance masterpiece. Its baseline is a collection of moves from her gymnastics class. She has layered on top of these most of the components of the sun salutation as well as some ferocious wing fluttering and shimmying. Periodically she stops cold for a few beats—a two-year-old’s interpretation of a Philip Glass composition. Her grin couldn’t be bigger. Sometimes it explodes into a giggle of pure happiness. I am thrilled for her.

Parker’s great fun is reminding me of an important Zen teaching that often gets swept under our meditation mats: that our job is to dance with life. We seem to be forgetting this aspect of the tradition, even though it is woven into many of the classic stories taught by our teachers. A favorite of mine has to do with the great Zen Master Hakuin and one of his students. Hakuin was known for his seriousness and ferocious personality. At the same time he also had a sweet spot in his heart for the ordinary people living in the villages around him. As a result they would often visit him, even though many a formal Zen student feared his presence.

One of Hakuin’s many visitors was an old woman who apparently had been chanting Buddha’s name for years but couldn’t quite slide into complete awakeness. He encourages her to keep practicing by looking into her own heart. She goes off and chews on his words like a dog with a bone. At night she practices. In the mornings she practices. She practices while she is doing her chores, walking, washing, and going to the toilet. She even practices in her sleep. Finally, one morning while she is washing the dishes, all the falsehoods of her life drop away and she is completely and utterly awake.

Thrilled, she rushes to see Hakuin, telling him that her whole body is filled with Buddha and that all of the mountains and rivers, forests and fields are shining with great enlightenment.

He looks at her. “Oh really?” he says. “And is this great light also shining up your butt?”

Even though the old woman is tiny, she pushes him over, shouting, “Well, I can see you still have work to do yourself, old man!” They laugh themselves silly and are so happy that they dance and dance and dance—awakeness meeting awakeness.

There is no question that we live in a broken world. As I write, all of Eugene is abuzz with trepidation about a probable earthquake that could happen in the coming years. It is expected to be a big one, possibly so big that many will be killed. Meanwhile, many of us are realizing, maybe for the first time, that this great democracy we call home has some horrific undertones, starting with a history of building itself on the backs of our brothers and sisters. The laudable, honorable aspects of the Islamic tradition have been caught in the undertow of a radical militarism that is holding the world hostage. Many of us are learning how to live on way less than we ever thought possible, thanks to a government that has lost its way and a great recession that has never let up in some quarters. And don’t get me started on the prison system.

And yet.

In my many years of teaching I’ve watched many students achieve the quiet of emptiness. And each time my hope is that they will keep going, keep training, keep studying, because there is so much more. When I see them start to cry easily, unapologetically, when something is even a little sad or sweet, I continue to hope they will keep going. Why? Because they still have waiting for them the great gift discovered by Hakuin’s old woman—great, abiding holy-shit-I-wouldn’t-believe-it-if-I-weren’t-feeling-it joy. This isn’t loud joy. It is a quiet, pulsating, porous, “it’s OK” joy that feeds us and gives us the energy to continue to be of service to the world as it is. Without expectations. This is the joy that gives us the courage to speak truth to power. To protest. To climb flagpoles that need climbing. To apologize for a history of unspeakable abuse. To clean up. And to dance. To dance with our whole breath, our whole body, the whole world, the whole universe.

Because that’s our job.

--Geri Larkin, Spirituality and Health Magazine, Nov.-Dec. 2015 Issue

Quote of the Week #75 - The Proper Teaching

The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you’ve always known.

-- Frank Herbert

I Am an Empty Shell

I am an empty shell.

Therefore, I am full.

--Steven J. Gold

Quote of the Week #73 - Magic

The world is its own magic.

--Shunryu Suzuki

Quote of the Week #72- Pefect Doctrine/Dogma

[Student:]

If only it were possible to find understanding. If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anywhere. Everything can be interpreted one way and then again interpreted in the opposite sense. The whole of world history can be explained as development and progress and can also be seen as nothing but decadence and meaninglessness. Isn’t there any truth? Is there no real and valid doctrine?

[Master:]

There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of  yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.

-- Hermann Hesse, Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game)

Quote of the Week #71 - Religion

Religion. It’s given people hope in a world torn apart by religion.

--Jon Stewart