mountain home
April 15, 2010
big box love
April 13, 2010
I try to relate the Dharma to 21st-century human beings. As Einstein said, we human beings utilize only five to ten percent of our brain’s capacity. In the same way, we use only five to ten percent of our heart’s capacity to love and feel kindness.
Instead of boxing in our hearts, loving only me, me, me—the smallest box—we must try to slowly expand that box till we’re able to love all humanity, all sentient beings. When we use our maximum intelligence to access these deeper levels, to go beyond the material, then we become wise.
We realize interdependence and the transitory nature of existence—this is how we free ourselves from suffering. Then we can bring a lasting peace and happiness to the world.
– Nawang Khechog
the hurdle of conceit
April 8, 2010
The conceit of self (mana in Pali) is said to be the last of the great obstacles to full awakening. Conceit is an ingenious creature, at times masquerading as humility, empathy, or virtue. Conceit manifests in the feelings of being better than, worse than, and equal to another. Within these three dimensions of conceit are held the whole tormented world of comparing, evaluating, and judging that afflicts our hearts. Jealousy, resentment, fear, and low self-esteem spring from this deeply embedded pattern. Conceit perpetuates the dualities of “self” and “other”—the schisms that are the root of the enormous alienation and suffering in our world. Our commitment to awakening asks us to honestly explore the ways in which conceit manifests in our lives and to find the way to its end.
– Christina Feldman
right speech
April 7, 2010
If you propose to speak, always ask yourself, is it true, is it necessary, is it kind.
– Buddha
these four walls
April 6, 2010
My body is like an illusory flower:
No way to touch it;
The window and the moon of its six windows
Contain clear emptiness.
It looks like something
In the midst of nothingness,
But its four walls are beautiful,
I stay there for a moment.
– Naong Haegun (1320-1376)
every day magic
April 5, 2010
So this, should I be so bold as to use the word “discipline,” of meditation or Za-zen lies behind the extraordinary capacity of Zen people to develop such great arts as the gardens, the tea ceremony, the calligraphy, and the grand painting of the Sum Dynasty, and of the Japanese Sumi tradition. And it was because, especially in tea ceremony — which means literally “cha-no-yu” in Japanese, or “hot water of tea” — they found in the very center of things in everyday life, magic.
In the words of the poet Hokoji, “marvelous power and supernatural activity, drawing water, carrying wood.”
– Alan Watts
understanding
April 4, 2010
Understanding is like water flowing in a stream. Wisdom and knowledge are solid and can block our understanding.
In Buddhism, knowledge is regarded as an obstacle for understanding. If we take something to be the truth, we may cling to it so much that even if the truth comes and knocks at our door, we won’t want to let it in.
We have to be able to transcend our previous knowledge the way we climb up a ladder. If we are on the fifth rung and think that we are very high, there is no hope for us to step up to the sixth. We must learn to transcend our own views. Understanding, like water, can flow, can penetrate. Views, knowledge, and even wisdom are solid, and can block the way of understanding.
– Thich Nhat Hanh, from “The Heart Sutra”
wishful thinking
April 3, 2010
Not knowing its strength,
The mosquito sucked too much blood to fly.
Don’t covet what others value.
You’ll pay for it someday.
– Naong Haegun (1320-1376)
the real net
March 30, 2010
The human behavior that we call perception, thought, speech, and action is a consistency of organism and environment of the same kind as eating. What happens when we touch and feel a rock? Speaking very crudely, the rock comes in touch with a multitude of nerve ends in our fingers, and any nerve in the whole pattern of ends which touches the rock “lights up”. Imagine an enormous grid of electric light bulbs connected with a tightly packed grid of push buttons. If I open my hand and with its whole surface push down a group of buttons, the bulbs will light up in a pattern approximately resembling my hand. The shape of the hand is “translated” into the pattern of buttons and bulbs. Similarly, the feeling of the rock is what happens in the “grid” of the nervous system when it translates a contact with the rock. But we have at our disposals “grids” far more complex than this – not only optical and auditory, but also linguistic and mathematical. These, too, are patterns into whose terms the world is translated in the same way the rock is into nerve patterns. Such a grid, for example, is the system of co-ordinates, three of space and one of time, in which we feel that the world is happening even though there are no actual lines of height, width, and depth falling all space, and though Earth does not go tick-tock when it revolves. Such a grid is also the whole system of classes, or verbal pigeonholes, into which we sort the world [our experience] as things or events, still or moving; light or dark; animal, vegetable, or mineral; bird, beast, or flower; past present or future.
– Alan Watts, from “Psychotherapy East and West”
guard the gate
March 28, 2010
Pavarti emerged to find Ganesh decapitated and flew into a rage. Even though he was immensely powerful Shiva was upset with Pavarti’s rage. He swore to make amends by taking the head of the first living thing he found to replace Ganesh’s head. The first animal he came across was an elephant. Accordingly he took the head from the elephant an placed it on Ganesh’s body.
