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Amida Newsletter 24: Whispers from the Bamboo Grove - Beyond A Mother's Love Caring, Compassion & Amida's Light

Beyond A Mother's Love
Caring, Compassion & Amida's Light
 by Kusumavarsa Dawn Hart

For any new Mum it is an overwhelming experience, this coupled with the sudden unexpected news you are also going to become a carer for a disabled child and life can seem like a fragile existence.

At 38 I had quite a settled life, after 6 years of trying for a baby I had pretty much all but given up, throwing myself in to my work as a therapist and writer. When I finally got my head out of the toilet bowl after weeks of morning sickness I discovered that my rather severe response to the pregnancy hormones was as a result of carrying twins. I remember the moment vividly, after a night in hospital hooked up to a drip due to dehydration and constant vomiting, I lay on a bed as the woman scanned my belly and there they were, two little blobs of life. I burst in to tears with a mixture of joy and fear.

many tiny efforts....

You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.

 

~ Brian Tracy

 

 

Mary Oliver on a Life Well Lived and How to Be Fully Alive

by Maria Popova

“Do you need a prod? Do you need a little darkness to get you going?”

Few are those whose contribution to humanity — be it art, or music, or literature, or some other enchantment — fills the heart with uncontainable gratitude for their very existence. Mary Oliver — one of the greatest poets of all time, and perhaps the greatest of our time — is one such blessing of a writer. She, the patron saint of paying compassionate attention, has made a supreme art of bearing witness to our world — be it in her exquisite poems, or in the prose of that moving remembrance of her soul mate, or in her meditations on the craft of poetry itself.

In her immensely rewarding recent On Being conversation with Krista Tippett — triply magical because Oliver rarely gives interviews, and never ones this dimensional and revealing — she read several of her most beloved poems. While “Wild Geese” remains a favorite, I was especially taken with a four-part poem titled “The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac,” found in Oliver’s sublime 2014 collection Blue Horses: Poems (public library). It is partly a bow to her recent triumph over cancer, and partly a score to the larger tango of life and death which we all, wittingly or not, are summoned to dance daily.

Like so much of her work, it is an uncommonly direct yet beguiling love letter to vitality itself, poured from the soul of someone utterly besotted with this world which we too are invited to embrace.

THE FOURTH SIGN OF THE ZODIAC (PART 3)

I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.

So why not get started immediately.

I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.

And to write music or poems about.

Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.

You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime.

:: continue reading here

:: link to Mary reading this poem

a conversation with david brazier (dharmavidya)

: link

I receive an email from Tamuly Jung in France telling me that a neighbour of hers, David Brazier, is in Edinburgh for events organised by the Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace.  This is an events-led Scottish charity organising programmes to promote the understanding of spirituality, and of interspirituality and intraspirituality, and its diversity.  She tells me that he agrees to let me use excerpts from his latest book, Not Everything is Impermanent.

Dr David Brazier is the President of the International Zen Therapy Institute, Dharmavidya of the Amida Order of Pureland Buddhism, Zen master, psychotherapist and author of nine books.  David resides a couple of villages distant from Tamuly who is living in a commune, The Oasis of Long Life.  [See previous article, Many Roads, October]

He is staying at the Panda Villa guest house in Kilmaurs Road.  Everybody in my Buddhist Thinkers’ Group has heard of David except me.

Buddhism is a Religion: a guest post by Dr. David Brazier, Dharmavidya

:: link

Dharmavidya:

Buddhism is a religion. It has beliefs, rituals, altars, offerings, bells, candles, metaphysics, clergy, devotees, prayers, meditation, visions, visitations, celestial beings, other worlds, other lives, moral law, and salvation. All these are found in Zen Buddhism, in Theravada Buddhism, in Tibetan Buddhism, in Pureland Buddhism, in the other schools of Chinese and Vietnamese Buddhism, in fact, in all of Buddhism all over Asia. Buddhists probably burn more candles and incense than the Catholic Church. These are not degeneration or cultural accretions. The founder himself gave us robes, taught ritual and contrition, revealed other lives and worlds, and spoke with the gods. Secularised and rationalised variants of Buddhism exist, but it is these that are partial forms and cultural products of later derivation.

Sometimes it is said that Buddhism is scientific. This assertion would put Buddhism somehow within the frame of science, but Buddhism has much that would not fit into that frame. However, although we cannot really say that Buddhism is scientific, science is Buddhistic. Science is Buddhistic in that science is a way of knowing some things. Buddhism can accommodate everything that science perceives, but science can only perceive a fraction of what Buddhism encompasses, the fraction that appears within the frame that the restrictive rules of science impose. Distinct from science itself, there is also scientism, which is a modern philosophy. Scientism is not Buddhistic because it is the attempt to make the restrictive rules of science into the dogmas by which the whole of life should be governed. Scientism is a different religion and a rather narrow one and it would be a tragedy if Buddhism in the West were reduced to it.

2 of today's garden visitors

The word is getting around. So many birds are coming to the feeders now for nuts, seeds, fat balls and cakes.

Amida Mandala

there's a room to let at amida mandala

Satya writes:

We currently have a room free upstairs in our Pureland Buddhist temple Amida Mandala (:: photo) for a fourth resident.

We are looking for someone quite specific - someone who will be happy with our house rules (no meat, no alcohol), broadly sympathetic with our spiritual aims, and robust enough to deal with the building's use as a (sometimes busy) temple. We will suggest a month's trial (for both of us) for any potential residents.

The room is smallish and would suit a single person. It has a bath and toilet ensuite. We are charging £320 pcm including all bills and a weekly community meal on Friday nights. There are generous communal spaces - a shrine room, a dining room, a big kitchen, a living room and a library (and a beautiful garden). Our other residents Steve, Adam & James are all settled in now and enjoying living here, as are we. We also have three cats which roam the house! 

If you or anyone you know might be interested in talking further (please do forward this email to your friends), do let us know - hello@amidamandala.com.

Namo Amida Bu,
Satya & Kaspa
www.amidamandala.com

 

Gardening with M.E.: Getting Comfortable

Since moving to this lovely house, I have inherited a beautiful garden - terraced, full of shrubs and flowers and soft fruit. And it has a pond. So far all I've had to do is feed the birds but soon the snows will go, the ground will warm up and nature will get itself into gear. Which I'll need to do, too, if I'm not to be overwhelmed. I'm glad to have discovered this post:

With illnesses like ME, fatigue and pain as well as brain fog and concentration lapses are common. So, it's important to make sure that when you garden, you are as comfortable as possible to help keep symptoms at bay. With trial and error, you should be able to find an approach that allows you to focus on your hobby - even if just for a few minutes - instead of worsening your symptoms.