This is a note on my fridge. A loose quote from Shantideva. It is to remind me that when I suffer (feel uncomfortable in a wide range of feelings), I better take a close look and see how I got there. Mostly I can see that I Got There. It didn’t come up on me.
We’ve had a bit of a heat wave and of course all the small talk revolving around weather and to some degree (pun intended), the whole issue of Climate Change. In our community which sits in one of the six richest soil districts in the whole world. We are in the area known as the Palouse in Eastern Washington State, a mile from the Idaho border; definitely farm country but not hardscrabble by a long shot. Wheat, Peas and Lentils dry farmed. These farmers have it real easy, but not to hear them tell about it. In the ten years I’ve been here I have never heard a farmer express satisfaction with the weather. It’s just not in their genetic make-up. Anyway, one thing I do like about all the weather talk is that it is one topic that usually promotes agreement and consensus in opinion.
Some things we agree on.
Sure is a hot one today!
Yep! But good sleepin’ weather.
They say it’ll cool of come
Friday. Yeah! That’s what
I heard too, maybe even some
Rain by Monday. We sure
Can use it. Can’t hurt, long
As it’s not gullywashers
From a Buddhist perspective the agreement on all things constantly changing comes in just a few forms that we repeatedly see and often misinterpret. Weather, aging, health, wealth, jobs and children and neighbors and friends and enemies. the mis-interpretation begins when we assign outside conditions and causes to the observable phenomena of change; rather than looking at the phenomena in how it presents itself within us, throughout the day and throughout our lives.
In other words, there is no outside to the universe. We are all in it. Completely.
Had lunch today at the Mexican restaurant at the St. Maries, ID golf course. Good food and good company. Went with a good spiritual friend (that I’ve grown close to for the almost 10 years I’ve lived in this area), who has offered teaching, advice, solace, ceremony and stillness, as needed; and is just a joy to know and be around. In a few weeks I’ll be leaving the area and want to visit with friends as much as time will allow. He is a Buddhist monk of 34 years as a monastic and lives very quietly in this small rough little logging/outdoor sports town and quietly helps a small sangha that is spread from Sandpoint, ID to Tekoa, WA (my town), down to Santa and Moscow, ID; with the odd visits into Montana and small groups there.
This is how the dharma spreads. Quietly. Thank you Reverend Master, for your teaching and presence (presents).
Three hours to the south of us in Joseph, OR. another couple of monks are quietly teaching the Dharma to a small dedicated congregation. Both are female monks and in just this one big circle we have the actuality of the Noble Fourfold Sangha; Lay men and women and Monastic women and men. In noparticular order of hierarchy or preferment. Just the four forms of training. Wonderful and inclusive; yet, I must remember that all religion is composed of volunteers.
Life is truly good.
I think I’ll go sit quietly
In the downstairs meditation
And ceremony hall.
Todays struggle was to not spin out. Just keep doing that which seems good to do and not let expectations arise in a form that is not helpful. So far so good. I put to rest a yearning when I learned that there was no way for it to be realized. So far so good.
I am reading a book called “Blowing Zen” by Ray Brooks about his journey to Zen through taking up the Japanese bamboo flute called Shakuhachi. Very good read and informative. I’ve been listening at night to an album of Zen Shakuhachi healing music, that I had originally played for Linda during her last decline and now I listen to it as I fall asleep. The cat and dog both like it as well. I do have my cat available for adoption, but no takers yet. She’s a truly great cat and I’m getting a little worried. We’ll see.
My karma and my cat’s karma are like her gravity and my gravity.
The same and similar in many ways, but experienced differently.
When I board an airplane, I am in a planeload of people with whom
I share some karma; If that plane crashes, it’s still that karma, and,
Very different; yet, the same and similar in many ways.
The next ten days or so will have us in the high 90’s every day. Real Summer. I have given myself ’til the 21st to have everything packed and stored so that the tenant can move into the house while I finish preparing for the move to the Bay area. I’ll be living at one of our temples for a time.
My wife died last January and I never took the time to slow down and take stock of this massive change in my way of being and doing. I got involved in ramping up an old smoldering friendship and desire that felt very grown-up and involved a friend of ours. Nothing was ever acted on in my wife’s lifetime but the desire pump was certainly primed. Anyway, things went too fast and that has all burned down to the waterline. So, now I have to take the time to see who I was, what I was doing, and why?
There were mistakes made because of not seeing things the way they actually were, and there were mistakes made because of a shared delusion. Very old karma that needed help. It may have gotten some help or it may have been fertilized and nurtured; and there may be more to this in other ways and days.
For now, however, there needs to be a time to settle down and strengthen the practice and be in an atmosphere of training and support rather than wishing and hoping and contention. Two things are sort of operative…
There’s no Fool
Like an Old fool.
And, it’s never, ever,
Too late to Wake
Up! and step
Forward into the
New day. Just
Ahead. Of us.
Contemplative Space 