February 25, 2009 at 9:18 am (Life, Spirituality)
Tags: Suzuki, Zen
When one ceases trying to be extraordinary, a quiet freedom descends.
One can even be dull,
and with relish.
Savor it.
Dull.
DULL.
Life comes to us ‘as is’, like a used car that might break down at any moment,
or travel for miles without hindrance.
To enter into the ordinary is to breathe Zen.
As Suzuki points out, “Wherever there is life-activity, there is Zen.”
Life-activity is organically unfolding,
even when nothing is happening.
February 3, 2009 at 8:45 am (Life, Spirituality)
We visit many sound booths each day.
Some reverberate with silence,
others pound noise,
or passing whatevers.
People spout opinions (sometimes it’s me!).
My own mental noise wanders on and on.
The sound of a boss, a friend, a lover, a parent:
perhaps they want something.
In each booth, a frequency holder listens, merely, to the passing energies, to oneself, as they thread themselves through the fabric of being.
In listening, without thought, no judgment abides, and freedom is offerred, like a gift.
October 20, 2008 at 11:31 am (Spirituality)
Tags: Seeds
As a seed, I am cracking open. It has started.
The energy has been pushing up against the inside walls, for a long time now.
It’s been necessary, this compressed tomb-living, creating the yearning for expansion.
Gifts, talents, strengths…
Visions of possibility form, still cloudy…
October 13, 2008 at 9:28 am (Life, Spirituality)
Sometimes stillness is enough.
Life stops making sense and the temptation to drink bitterness, resistance and opposition seems justified, righteous.
What’s the point? Who does it serve?
No one.
No
One.
The Presence has appeared in this fray, this messy mix-up to remind us that we are love.
We are.
Sink into it.
Let resistance dissolve into a muddy, smooth, lovely glue that holds joyous connection as its reason for being.
August 26, 2008 at 3:47 pm (Life, Spirituality, Work)
Tags: Gump, zazen
I’ve come to a rather sobering realization lately: considering my skills, talents and abilities, I am fortunate to be employed at all.
Really.
I have no marketable skills. Perhaps even more disturbing, I lack any interest or motivation in developing my skillset. How is it that I have managed to avoid being fired all these years?
I am good at one thing: sitting like an idiot. I am sure that Forest Gump and I are twin brothers separated at birth.
Of course, Forest Gump is an enlightened master, so maybe there is hope for me afterall.
August 7, 2008 at 11:05 am (Spirituality)
Tags: old geezer, zazen
With increasing frequency I find myself approaching my meditation chair. It sits in the corner, by a window, a firm, upright piece that was given to me by some nuns I know.
Sometimes I am not sure what to do with the next 15 minutes. So I sit in the chair.
My eyes remain open, my mind becomes a blank table.
I look around, seeing everything that is contained in that moment. I call it ‘toothless old geezer training.’
I don’t know for sure, but at the end of an aged life, I may find that I am a toothless old geezer. In an odd way, I kind of look forward to it.
July 31, 2008 at 3:05 pm (Spirituality)
Tags: What's next?
Just going along, spirit-floating.
Not a lot is happening, and I am not making things happen. They take care of themselves.
Coming and going, these micro-events, one here, another over there, wait, now over here again.
And so on.
Don’t identify. Detach. Be like a boat on the waves; let them take you. Agendas, expectations, plans, to-do lists, ambitions: they squeeze the “what’s next?” out of us.
Don’t you just want to see how it all turns out, not as a spectator but as a part of the whole?
July 28, 2008 at 10:49 am (Life, Spirituality)
Tags: stillness
I learn the way of listening, silence, stillness. The more I express myself through word and action, the more do people take issue with me. I don’t understand myself to be a ‘difficult person,’ but maybe I am one. I must be one. I have passed the week convincing, arguing, explaining or justifying things I have said. Why so difficult? What am I saying that is so challenging?
Today, in the quiet space of restraint, and then waiting, and then the soul-soothing rest, I discovered how the energy can turn, revolve, move, transform. Something larger than my own expressive striving arises, and it opens the way to true relationship.
July 14, 2008 at 1:10 pm (Spirituality, Work)
Tags: luther, tagore
“This frail vessel thou emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.” -Tagore
Martin Luther speaks of the ‘hidden God,’ Deus absconditus, dwelling silently within the mystery of brokenness, the cross. Doing paperwork at a desk all day, for most of the work week, demands from me an ongoing meditation practice, one that empties me again and again. I dissolve into the paper, the desk, the keyboard. If I had a guru, I would be told, “Become the mouse.”
All sense of will and choice is abandoned. It just is, this work. Constant. Unrelenting. The personality can either be driven into insane preoccupations with what “should” be…or it can go to sleep. In the nondual realm, however, the personality is not even needed, and peace follows upon peace, the gentle filling with fresh life.
I walk in emptiness, yet I am somehow able to keep showing up at this odd party.
July 11, 2008 at 8:04 pm (Life, Spirituality, Work)
Tags: identity, Work
I’ve been arguing with God today.
It’s one of those phases: my personality ignites and demands, like an impudent child, to know just what the hell is going on here.
God listens.
Sometimes, we find ourselves doing tasks that seem like a waste of our time, skills, gifts, abilities. And yet, we do them for reasons unknown to us at the time, perhaps as ways to teach us who we are. We observe ourselves, alive in these God-breathed contexts, surprised to meet some unexpected layer of identity.
