Aloha Sangha

ancient wisdom for crazy times

Category: pandemic teachings

thank you, nonetheless
Buddhism offers us a path to decolonize the mind, thankfully. It not only teaches inclusion, it points out the shared insanity of separateness that causes so much suffering.
Lama Thubten Yeshe was one of the first Tibetans to teach Buddhism to Westerners. I went to see him in Nepal, but he had just left to teach in the USA, where he died from heart disease in 1984, at age 49.
Several of his Western students recount that whenever he met anyone, he would always bow, and with sparkling eyes say “Thank you, thank you.”
This is coming from a person who witnessed the destruction of his beloved Buddhism in his native soil and the near genocide of his people. Yet, his response to the world was thank you, nonetheless.
Back then I had no idea why he would always be saying be saying thank you.
Thanksgiving in the pandemic
It is Thanksgiving Day here in the USA. A big holiday where families gather, eat hearty food, and share their stories. But with the pandemic, we refrain from family gatherings and follow the CDC guidelines for physical distancing.
In some parts of this country, it’s also a Day of Mourning.
Colonization, so much a part of the historic Thanksgiving tradition, brought about another near genocide–of Native peoples and their cultures. And it’s not over.
Yet, we meditate.
We meditate with our minds shaped in no small measure by these brutal cultural forces.
Gratefulness is a Buddhist practice
And we practice gratefulness; like Lama Thubten Yeshe, we say thank you, nonetheless.
Buddhism offers us a path to decolonize our own minds, thankfully. Mindfulness, insight, and metta directly counter the harm of erasure many people of color feel in these post-colonial times.
Buddhism not only teaches inclusion, it points out the shared insanity of separateness that causes so much suffering.
When I meditate and reflect on the teachings, I feel a little like what Thoreau might have felt when he wrote in his journal:
I am grateful for what I am and have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite, only a sense of existence. … O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it, for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.
When I reflect on the teachings handed down from person to person for over 2600 years, I am stunned. Writing did not develop until about 300 years after the Buddha’s death.
Gratitude to the lineage of teachers
To think of all the care, time and dedication it demanded for hundreds of people to commit to memory, in an organized fashion in dedicated teams of “reciter-monks”, what today occupies 43 volumes of the Buddha’s oral teaching, is simply mind-boggling.
I feel gratitude to all those nameless folks, and to my own teachers, who dedicated their lives to practice deeply so they could teach me.
I am grateful to my wife and children who offer me emotional support when I need it.
I am grateful for all who wear masks, who deliver the food to the stores, and to all essential workers.
And I am grateful to you all for creating this Aloha Sangha, where we meet every week for silent meditation and share our experiences with each other in this intimate space.
Sensing the fragility of life, I am grateful for one more day.
The challenge in these post-colonial times
So this is our challenge in these post-colonial times–to allow gratitude to touch our hearts and minds without coming apart by feelings of fear, anger or loss.
To just say thank you, nonetheless.
Maybe this is what Lama Yeshe was teaching us all along.
11/26/2020
check the lining of your own mind
Just when I thought things couldn’t get more dreadful, they did.
Yes, I know pandemics happen. Evolution hurts sometimes, I guess. Writing in the New York Times on September 23rd of this year, the epidemiologist and physician Dr. Amitha Kalaichandran observed
Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye.
We just passed 200,000 deaths here in the USA attributed to Covid-19. Yes, in our Civil War and in World War II, more of our citizens perished.
But so many of these Covid deaths could have been prevented.
Last week our liberal Supreme Court Justice and champion of women’s rights, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, passed on. Not an hour after this tragic loss, US Senate Republicans were scheming to get a conservative Justice confirmed to replace her before our presidential elections in November.
And yesterday I learned another innocent Black life taken by police gunfire will go unpunished. Say her name.
I don’t know if I can take any more. But I get up and go to work each night, like I always do.
There is a story from early Mahayana Buddhism I sometimes remember when I feel numb inside, like I do now.
A young person wished to go off and explore the world on an open ended journey. The night before the departure, a good friend, who came from a well-off family, sewed a valuable gem into the lining of a warm jacket chosen for the journey.
Many years later, the traveler returned, looking haggard, not well, and wearing rags for clothes. The good friend asked how the journey had gone.
“Terribly,” the friend replied. “I ran out of my supplies in a short time, and could not afford even one meal a day all this time.”
“But you had that valuable jewel I had sewn into your jacket the night you left–you could have sold it for all the food you would need, and then some,” the good friend answered.
That’s the end of the story. Yeah, it’s not the best ending.
But what uplifts me is recognizing we all have this valuable jewel sewn into the lining of our very existence, in the fabric of our being.
You know I’m going to say it now, after this build-up, right?
As you pay mindful attention to your everyday life, the priceless jewel sewn into the fabric of your own mind allows you to regulate your emotions and helps you ride the waves of their intensity.
The late, great Indian yoga innovator and teacher, Swami Satchidanada once remarked that while we can’t stop the waves, we can learn to surf.
The heart of our mindfulness practice is this–that although the waves of fear and grief triggered by this pandemic may not stop any time soon, our heart and mind can become so open and balanced, that we can hold the turning of the world in a quiet place of stillness.
That we can relate to ourselves and others with kindness, warmth and compassion. Our mindfulness practice teaches us to hold our restlessness with a little kindness.
And it this turning world starts to settle down on its own. Then you see you can do this. Whatever happens, you can be with it with kindness.
Psychologists call this widening the window of tolerance. Dan Siegel calls this sailing on a river of well-being.
When we are outside of our window of tolerance, our nervous system goes into survival mode – fight, flight or freeze. We get overwhelmed and go into freak-out mode, or go numb, as I have gone these past weeks.
Also writing in the New York Times, this time back in the early pandemic time of April, 2020, the prominent mindfulness teacher and former Buddhist monk, Jack Kornfield wrote:
The Japanese Zen poet Ryokan Taigu wrote: “Last year, a foolish monk. This year, no change.” We need to acknowledge our humanity. Your feelings are your organism trying to handle things.
And we are trying as best we can manage under these extraordinary circumstances. Mindfulness can help. But we practice gently and progressively, one step at a time.
As the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reminded us about enduring social change, the alchemy of mindfulness similarly manifests its miracles slowly, patiently; she once said:
Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.
Perhaps we can well honor her legacy of wisdom by practicing the slow burn of kindness and patience in these troubling times. The jewel of mindfulness clearly illuminates this path.
If the turbulence in your life obscures the path, check the lining of your own mind.
read another?
[wp_show_posts id=”24118″]
10/10/2020
now more than ever
The suffering in the world is overwhelming. But the whole mess looks differently when we have a rested, settled mind.
Everyone is frazzled. Covid-19, politics, racial and economic disparities, police shootings, school shootings.
That’s why it’s really important to sit down and do some formal meditation practice.
Every day.
It’s too easy to get lost in the news, social media and yes, Netflix, but just be careful.
When there is this much collective anxiety, it only takes one person to tip the balance in a room in favor of cool, rational thought.
That would be you, the mindfulness meditator!
Because in your mind there is less friction. You don’t easily fall into the irrational rabbit holes, extreme views and fixations abounding everywhere.
yes, you can meditate every day
Because you put the tush to the cush. Every day, if you can.
And, oh yes. You always can.
I can understand not wanting to sit down and down to do formal meditation practice right now. You might miss something important on the news.
it’s never easy, get over it
It’s not an easy time to be sitting quietly at home, honestly. But it really never is easy. Just necessary.
Now more than ever.
The suffering in the world is overwhelming. But the whole mess looks differently when we have a rested, settled mind.
Even watching clips of this week’s “debate” after a session of sitting meditation — is bearable. You just feel so much compassion!
We need to make space for this vital, daily, life changing habit.
Now more than ever.
During these times, it’s especially OK to be sad.
our precious vulnerability
With mindfulness, our sadness becomes our strength, through our vulnerability. Our humanity. Our “calor humano” as we say in Spanish.
It’s a strength that lets our heart break open. Over and over.
Now more than ever.
I often read poems written by dedicated Buddhist practitioners of old. So many Buddhist poems are I read as invitations:
To be transformed on the spot,
To connect deeply with others in our common sufferings,
To open to new ways of seeing our shared human experiences,
To welcome mystery, and wondrous beauty, and pain of our own lives and the many forms of life that surround us, and
bearing witness to what touches us deeply
To bear witness to the passing away of what touches us deeply.
Now more than ever.
Ryōkan (1758-1831), the Japanese Sōtō Zen monk who spent much of his life as a hermit, once wrote a poem to a friend he could not reach, which I find points to our collective socially distanced experience coupled with the wonders of technology…but still evinces a bitter-sweet taste in our mind:
Your smoky village is not so far from here
But icy rain kept me captive all morning.
Just yesterday, it seems, we passed an evening together discussing poetry
But it’s really been twenty windblown days.
I’ve begun to copy the text you lent me,
Fretting how weak I’ve become.
This letter seals my promise to take my staff
And make my way through the steep cliffs
As soon as the sun melts the ice along the mossy paths.
I feel Ryōkan’s wish to “to take my staff/ and make my way” to my dear friends, but not yet. Maybe when a Covid vaccine is widely available.
We called called to develop a mind like the earth, as in the Buddha’s advice to Rahula, to his adult son, as recorded in the Majjhima-nikaya (verse 62). Rahu;a complained that there were just too many dispute, grievances, and ill-will around him that he could not meditate; here is what his Dad said to him:
Rahula, develop meditation that is like the earth, for then agreeable and disagreeable sensory impressions will not take charge of your mind. Just as when people throw what is clean and unclean on the earth—feces, urine, saliva, pus, or blood—the earth is not horrified, humiliated, or disgusted by it; in the same way, agreeable and disagreeable sensory impressions will not take charge of you mind when you develop meditation like the earth.
Good poetry and pithy Dharma teachings invite us into the simple beauty of our human world, and allows us to listen to the richness of our present moment experience.
Just as our wondrous mindfulness practice does.
Now more than ever.
10/01/2020
it’s just nature, my dear
The Burmese meditation teacher Sayadaw U Tejaniya on how a meditator can practice mindfulness during the pandemic.
His response was “practice as usual.” OK, really?
His dry answers to the questions posed by the Western interviewer stewed in the back of my mind for a few days.
Don’t practice to make something happen or for something to go away
“There’s almost a mantra in the way I teach,” Sayadaw says.
We’re not practicing to make things happen in the mind, such as equanimity, or to make things go away, such as fear or uncertainty. Rather, we practice observing things as they are happening, and to understand how things are from this close observation.
OK, but do you experience anxiety or fear? He is asked.
His response drives the point home for me.
It’s not that I don’t have anxiety or fear … I see it as this is just what happens in the mind. I cannot prevent the mind from having fear or anxiety. They will arise. But my view is that is is natural for the mind in this situation.
The worst thing that you could do, he says, is to think:
Tropical Forest with Monkeys (1910) by Henri Rousseau.
OK, but how do we practice mindfulness in the pandemic?
His approach to mindfulness in the pandemic is simply being with nature. The virus outside is nature. The virus inside is nature. That fear or anxiety arising in the mind is also part of nature.
“If the mind accepts that this as just nature at work, it settles the mind so much,” he says.
It just seems so … impersonal
But many of us rebel as seeing our inner life as just part of nature. It seems so impersonal. Our sense of being a special, clever, well-read human with a fascinating life story feels somehow downgraded, being simply a part of nature.
Yet Sayadaw insists:
“A great release and relief comes from seeing and understanding one’s experience in this way.”
He is going for the jugular now:
If a strong sense of self becomes entwined in noticing the mind and body.. fear, anxiety, worry, reactivity, and all the other unwholesome mind states will become predominant.
Really experiencing this in our bones, rather than understanding this intellectually, takes time.
Sayadaw U Tejaniya was asked how to practice mindfulness in the pandemic
Tiny moments
Meanwhile, he advises us to take strength “from tiny moments.”
I recall the line from Jon Kabat-Zinn:
“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”
My old teacher Shinzen Young used to say these tiny moments can be:
“Micro hits of mindfulness.”
The touch of your hands on the steering wheel, or holding a cup of coffee; the sensation on your shoes as you walk to your car in the parking lot at work. This is just mindfulness in the pandemic.
Is that all there is?
But, hey, just pay attention to the sensation of my shoes on the pavement. Is that all you got? My mind protests.
Sayadaw hits back:
“Yes, even noticing which arm goes through your T-shirt first!”
Noticing these mundane details continuously and seamlessly throughout your day — this noticing “is the territory of wisdom,” he explains. Yeah, this is just mindfulness in the pandemic.
Only when the mind trains to see things in detail, can it see causes and effects, such as what thoughts and actions give rise to wholesome mind states. The point is seeing the habitual patterns of the mind and body and to not following patterns unconsciously, but choosing wisely.
Choice is also a “territory of wisdom”, he adds.
“When we are not seeing the details of our life as they unfold moment to moment, everything is on automatic pilot and delusion is the boss.”
It’s all about making wise choices
I am finally getting it now.
When we train our mind to track the fine details of our life, he says, “we are giving the mind consciousness, and consciousness has a choice.”
“When there’s a choice, the mind is no longer deluded.”
Coming back to our first question, how to practice mindfulness in the pandemic, I see behind the question is feeling these times differ from other times.
Well, they do; but in the tiny moments of mindfulness, they are not so different. In those tiny moments we deal with what’s happening on a case-by-case basis.
Sayadaw has the last word this week:
It’s never a question of how to practice “if this happens or that happens.”
It’s always, “How do I practice now?“
That’s how you always practice.
When I was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, I didn’t practice any differently than before. Whatever comes, I’m practicing.
Things are fine, I’m practicing. Things are not fine, I’m practicing, always in the same way. The practice never changes.
OK, now I am feeling the touch sensations of my fingertips on the keyboard.
And in these tiny moments, I am feeling rather happy.
Naturally.
Want to read another one?
[wp_show_posts id=”24118″]
09/13/2020
mindful dishwashing
When I do catch the mind moment, in mindful dishwashing, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty.
A few folks have asked me if I am feeling any lingering effects from my recent Covid-19 illness. Not really; but I do I find mindful dish-washing in the kitchen sink to be much more fulfilling.
I used to find myself wondering, pre-Covid-19, if washing dishes until kingdom come was getting in the way of my life. If it was a big interference in other plans I had.
That it was lost time. But now it’s different.
Mindful dish-washing
Mindful dish-washing, doing the dishes mindfully in the in the kitchen sink, the old-fashioned way, IS my life in the moment.
It’s all of me, sudsy and slippery, saluted by dishes and lunch containers and knives, forks, spoons, tumblers, pots, pans, all inviting me to go deeper inside this sink, to roll up my sleeves.
It’s just THIS mind moment.
One lunch container dyed red from pasta sauce.
One sticky fork.
If I don’t catch the mind moment, it seems like the sink and the dishpan and the surrounding counter spaces seem so crowded with dish things I can’t see a beginning or an end.
But when I do catch the mind moment, in mindful dishwashing, the most ordinary things take on inexpressible beauty. I take in the look of those myriad dish things, like anxious puppies at the Humane Society, waiting to be taken home.
Mindfully doing the dishes is meditation practice
When we cultivate simple, mindful awareness as a formal sitting or walking practice, we call it meditation. When we cultivate it in our home life, we call it the dishes, the laundry, or the yard full of un-raked leaves since that last windy spell we had.
This is the heart-essence of mindfulness, noticing and engaging fully with what is right in front of us. Mindful dish-washing is paying attention to what is right in front of me.
I chose that phrase “right in front of me” because it elicits an argument scholars having been having for millennia about just what the Buddha meant when he taught his followers to meditate.
In the ancient Pali literature, the Buddha instructs the meditators of his day to follow his example (in Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation):
I collect some grass or leaves that I find there into a pile and then sit down. Having folded my legs crosswise and straightened my body, I establish mindfulness in front of me.
The disagreement centers on just what the Buddha meant by establishing mindfulness “in front of me.” Some contemporary Buddhists, choosing to elevate one technique over another, often quote this passage as validating their own views of the correct way to meditate.
One group will say “in front of me” means placing ones attention on the sensation of breath at the nostrils, another will say, no, he meant on the abdomen, and yet another will claim that the others are wrong, that the whole body is what was in front of him.
Folks in the old days practiced mindful dishwashing in their own way, I’m sure.
The dishes are what’s right in front of me
I would rather take a cue from Michelle Obama and take the high road: in mindful dishwashing the dishes are what’s right “in front of me.” When balancing my checkbook, my checkbook is right “in front of me.”
And I just give myself wholeheartedly, as best I can, to just these dishes, or this checkbook. When I notice I am being half-hearted, wandering off into thinking about what I will do with my tax refund, I just come back to just what’s in front of me.
I hope the Buddha would approve.
By attending to just what is in front of us with gentle good humor, openness and full engagement, the mind carries these wholesome qualities into the next thing to come before us.
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Then sixteen year old Shuku Maseda, of Kyushu, Japan wrote wrote some years ago about the deep impression he felt reading Thich Nhat Hahn’s marvelous book The Miracle of Mindfulness. He explains:
I had read the part “Washing Dishes,” and these lines swept away my dull ideas about dishwashing. “The idea that doing dishes is unpleasant can occur only when you are not doing them.” This first line astonished me.
The further I read on, the more deeply I thought. The author said the reason for dishwashing is not only to have clean dishes, but also just to do the dishes, to live fully in each moment while washing them. If we wash dishes lazily, thinking about other things, we lose and spoil the time.
I was astonished, as this is just how I felt when I practiced his instructions!
But it’s hard for us sometimes to believe that simple mindful attention is all there is to it. We complicate the matter with our judgment, putting down the ordinary as insignificant and idealizing and pining after the spiritual.
Never fully realizing they are the same thing. Never fully realizing the consequences of my mind states and my actions.
As I scrape off the leftovers or gently place vegetable scraps in the compost bin, I wonder – what new life will sprout?
read another?
[wp_show_posts id=”24118″]
08/26/2020
not knowing in Buddhism is just fine
Anything can happen at any time. This is called not knowing in Buddhism. And it’s precisley because anything can happen that we can also experience freedom from stress, grief, and burnout.
It’s amazing to reflect how much we don’t know. And how consequential our open questions are. When, and how, will this pandemic end? How many more will die? Will any of our loved ones die?’
Will I die from this illness?
In Honolulu, our mayor just announced a lock-down for two weeks. But it could last longer if we don’t get the current surge in new infections under control.
Will it?
At work, we admit many patients daily from our local jails and homeless shelters. How many will be Covid positive when I show up to work tonight?
Will I be their nurse?
Will I get infected with Covid a second time?
Who will win in November? And will the loser concede?
impermanence
Buddhism makes a big deal out of impermanence, of knowing that things are constantly in flux, not just intellectually, but in our hearts.
Anything can happen. Yes, on the surface, that can feel ominous, especially in these times. But it is precisely because anything can happen that allows us to experience freedom from stress, grief, and burnout.
Because impermanence also implies openness; whereas it’s opposite, permanence, implies a closed system where positions are fixed, and opinions solidified.
beginner’s mind
Not-knowing is actually a practice in some Zen circles, where it is sometimes also called “beginner’s mind.” In the well known book by that name, Suzuki Roshi, who brought Zen to the USA in the early 1960’s, explains an excerpt in her field may know a subject deeply, but may also be closed to new possibilities or ways of viewing old problems.
Some folks come to Buddhist practice seeking answers to the big questions, and may be disappointed at a lack of clear answers.
not really about the answers
If folks stick around long enough, and develop a mature meditation practice, they appreciate Buddhist practice is not so much about answering the so called big questions of life and death, but rather about dissolving the angst around the questions themselves.
Suzuki Roshi often said this not-knowing doesn’t mean you don’t know; it means, rather, that you are not limited by what you think you know. That you are open to the essence of mutability, of change.
Because you never know how things will turn out.
a heart that is ready for anything
U Pandita Sayadaw, a Burmese meditation master I had the good fortune to study with, taught a very strict and austere form of practice. He would often admonish his students to have a heart that is ready for anything, and that everything is workable.
Meditation allows us to discover a way to be open in the midst of the chaos of confusion of these times. When we notice we have been going over the same thought like hearing the same tune on a top 40 radio station, we learn to let it go into freshness, into an open and delightful space.
Eventually we get it–there is really no place we arrive at in meditation.
Because just like reality itself, there are no fixed spaces, not even any absolute truths. As one contemporary Zen teacher put it
It’s a crazy balancing act all along the way.
This balancing act takes courage to do whole-heatedly, which is a hallmark of our practice. We learn to be intimate with our fear, sadness and grief, as well as with our joy and happiness, and not spin out in any direction.
suchness
We stay present with what is on a profound and fundamental level. We don’t mistake “knowing” for reality-as-it-is, for what Buddhists sometimes call suchness.
In this way we stay in touch with the world and ourselves in a very intimate and sweet way.
In this way we are touched deeply by the world, and respond with a balanced mind suffused with compassion and loving-kindness.
Be well.
08/12/2020
lotus blooms in fire
I got it that while I talked Dharma, I wasn’t walking the path during this illness very well.
OK, that post title is a bit of click-bait. But you’re here now. So let me explain how the 13th century Japanese Zen master Dogen’s phrase is the title of this post.
Some of you reading this know I tested positive for Covid-19 on July 9. At present five co-workers on the same shift on the unit in the hospital where I work also tested positive.
just fatigue and brain fog
I am fine now. No worries. I came out of 13 days of isolation yesterday, to join my family on our 25th wedding anniversary.
For those who knew this about me, the subject line might seem like I had some crisis (a fire) during which my “enlightened nature” blossomed (like a lotus).
Sorry to disappoint you.
While my initial symptoms whacked me with malaise for three days in bed, the rest of my time in isolation I just dealt with fatigue and brain fog. No raging life-threatening fire.
Mostly I struggled with the fear I would ever regain my energy and mental clarity. And die.
could I bloom within the fire of fear?
The image from the 13th century Zen teacher Dogen of the lotus blooming in fire kept my hopes up that yes, I could bloom within the fire of fear, fatigue and brain fog.
The Devil Speaks (1921) by Paul Gauguin,from The Art Institute of Chicago.
The blue lotus blooming at the time of flames
Dogen encouraged his students to practice meditation as a way of cultivating:
The blue lotus blooming in the midst of fire and at the time of flames.
Reading Dogen’s teachings in isolation touched me deeply.
Let things come and abide in your heart, and let your heart abide in things.
Like the children at play in their burning house in the famous parable from the Lotus Sutra my preoccupation with the trinkets of samsara, e.g., my Android apps, and Netflix queue, quickly faded.
I got it that while I talked Dharma, I wasn’t walking the path during this illness very well.
Suffering and the end of suffering
“All my teaching,” the Buddha is reported to have said, “is about suffering and the end of suffering.”
But he also said to escape the burning house of conditioned existence, you must first acknowledge that you are living in one. Dogen made may references in his teaching carer to this burning house we find ourselves in.
forced isolation-> go deeper into Dharma?
That’s when I realized this forced isolation was a chance to go deeper into Dharma practice and contemplation. One I might never have again.
But, this little voice in my head kept saying, I am too fatigued to meditate. I think I should just lie in bed and veg out. My doctor did say I need rest!
These words from Ajahn Chah, one of the most revered meditation masters of the last century, came to mind:
My way of training people involves some suffering, because suffering is the Buddha’s path to enlightenment. He wanted us to see suffering and to see origination, cessation and the path. If you don’t go this way there is no way out.
The inner complainer
Yeah, I sighed, he was right. He said that back in the mid 1950s. A disciple of Ajahn Chah, Luang Por Pasanno, wrote a couple of years ago, reflecting on what it felt to practice in Thailand on really, really hot days:
Often we deal with imperfect conditions by getting in touch with our “inner complainer” that’s whining away, going on and on about how miserable we feel.
When the mind is complaining about the circumstances, we observe how this simply perpetuates suffering.
Instead we’re facing reality and being honest with ourselves. At the same time, we understand that simply because circumstances are less than ideal, they do not also have to be a source of complication or oppression.
The point is to distinguish between the direct, physical experience and the layers of mental complication we add to that experience. When we do that, it gives us an inner refuge, allowing us to be comfortable in any circumstance.
That’s one of the magical things about Dhamma practice. We can be at ease and clear in any circumstance if we’re willing to direct our attention in a skillful way.”
Spot on, brother!
Slow mindful walking meditation
While my breath awareness practice was too difficult when whacked out with fatigue and brain fog, I found the slow mindful, walking meditation energizing and refreshing.
Then my breath awareness practice miraculously improved!
Speaking of walking meditation, I’ll end this with another Zen saying helps me find the Middle Path within confusion and difficulty.
Walk straight by winding along
Toward the end of his life, the Japanese Zen Master Genshu Watanabe (1869-1963) called a young disciple to his bedside and posed a question.
“How can one go straight,” he asked, “on a steep mountain road of ninety-nine curves?”
The disciple was baffled, so Watanabe Roshi answered the question himself:
“Walk straight by winding along.”
It’s just that simple.
Walk straight, winding along the “ninety-nine curves” of your life just as it is right now.
read another?
[wp_show_posts id=”24118″]
07/23/2020