to live wisely, and able to love
This is our work: to live my life wisely, not in contention with anything, and able to love.
What does it mean to practice Dharma in the home stretch of 2023, with all the wars, hate crimes, refugee crises, and environmental catastrophes all over the world?
I would offer a short and simple response, quoting Sylvia Boorstein, great grandmother, psychologist and Dharma teacher since 1985:
I want to live my life wisely, not in contention with anything, able to love. This sounds ordinary as I write this, but I think it’s the fundamental goal of spiritual practice.
On-Being with Krista Tippett
This week, rather than bore you with my thoughts, I would like to present passages which speak to me directly about just how to live as Sylvia suggests, wisely, not in contention with anything, and able to love.
As we witness second hand the terrible events in the world, I feel guilty thinking it is also important to celebrate the beauty in my life, and express my gratitude for it.
The poet Rumi counsels us to “let the beauty we love be what we do.” Even if we are stuck doing what we don’t really love, our mindfulness practice has a magical way of melting the resistance and opening the door to the alchemy Rumi alludes to here:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Still Water Center
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
In many places people wake up empty and frightened every day because of the non-stop violence in their lives. What might it mean for me to “kneel and kiss the ground”?
The poet and essayist Mark Nepo shows the work of our mindfulness practice is a kind of kneeling down into the moment, and kissing the ground of our being, is a kind of self-cleansing.
Moving through my fears doesn’t mean I have to absorb or placate the demands of others. Facing my pain doesn’t mean I have to withdraw from what comes my way. On the contrary, I need to open the ancient door of my own making and let life kiss me on the forehead.
James Baldwin, the gay African American novelist, writes of how his struggles for legitimacy and authenticity in the 50s and ‘60s led him to hard fought inner grace, where:
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in a personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy, but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
This, then, is our work. To kneel down into the moment, to kiss the ground of our common experience, take off our masks in the process, and discover peace and joy in the shared nature of being as the mind settles down and the heart relaxes.
To live wisely, and able to love.
