lotusinthemud

only love

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it...”

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

"Practice until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth, in the child starving, in the political prisoner. Continue until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket, on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop. Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. See and listen with the whole of your being. If you are fully present, the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness, and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding will appear as a beautiful flower."

~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Update to the Third of the Five Mindfulness Trainings: Plum Village Tradition

 

"As many of you know, the third of the five mindfulness trainings has been undergoing revision to support our inclusiveness and support our communities. We should be using the new version in our recitations, and it will appear on future transmission certificates. Here, then, is the updated training with main modifications in bold.

 

Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I am committed to cultivating responsibility and learning ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. Knowing that sexual desire is not love, and that sexual activity motivated by craving always harms myself as well as others, I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without mutual consent, true love, and a deep, long-term commitment. I resolve to find spiritual support for the integrity of my relationship from family members, friends, and sangha with whom there is support and trust. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct. Seeing that body and mind are interrelated, I am committed to learning appropriate ways to take care of my sexual energy and to cultivating the four basic elements of true love – loving kindness, compassion, joy, and inclusiveness – for the greater happiness of myself and others. Recognizing the diversity of human experience, I am committed not to discriminate against any form of gender identity or sexual orientation. Practicing true love, we know that we will continue beautifully into the future."

the great bell chant

 

 

May the Sound of this Bell

Penetrate deep into the Cosmos

Even in the darkest spots

Living Beings are able to hear it clearly

So that all suffering in them cease

Understanding come to their hearts

And they transcend the path

Of Sorrow and Death

The Universal Dharma Door Is already open

The Sound of the Rising Tide is heard clearly

The miracle happens

A beautiful child appears in the heart of a Lotus flower

One single drop of this Compassionate Water

Is enough to bring back the refreshing Spring

To our Mountains and Rivers

Listening to the Bell I feel the afflictions in me begin to dissolve

My mind calm, my body relaxed

A smile is born on my lips

Following the Sound of the Bell

My breath brings me back to the safe Island of Mindfulness

In the Garden of my Heart

The flowers of Peace

Bloom beautifully

buddha's dogs

                              Buddha's Dogs

I'm at a day-long meditation retreat, eight hours of watching my mind with my mind,
and I already fell asleep twice and nearly fell out of my chair, and it's not even noon yet.

In the morning session, I learned to count my thoughts, ten in one minute, and the longest
was to leave and go to San Anselmo and shop, then find an outdoor cafe and order a glass

of Sancerre, smoked trout with roasted potatoes and baby carrots and a bowl of
      gazpacho.
But I stayed and learned to name my thoughts; so far they are: wanting, wanting, wanting,

wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, wanting, judgment, sadness. Don't identify with your
thoughts, the teacher says, you are not your personality, not your ego-identification,

then he bangs the gong for lunch. Whoever, whatever I am is given instruction
in the walking meditation and the eating meditation and walks outside with the other

meditators, and we wobble across the lawn like The Night of the Living Dead.
I meditate slowly, falling over a few times because I kept my foot in the air too long,

towards a bench, sit slowly down, and slowly eat my sandwich, noticing the bread,
(sourdough), noticing the taste, (tuna, sourdough), noticing the smell, (sourdough, tuna),

thanking the sourdough, the tuna, the ocean, the boat, the fisherman, the field, the grain,
the farmer, the Saran Wrap that kept this food fresh for this body made of food and desire

and the hope of getting through the rest of this day without dying of boredom.
Sun then cloud then sun. I notice a maple leaf on my sandwich. It seems awfully large.

Slowly brushing it away, I feel so sad I can hardly stand it, so I name my thoughts; they
      are:
sadness about my mother, judgment about my father, wanting the child I never had.

I notice I've been chasing the same thoughts like dogs around the same park most of my
      life,
notice the leaf tumbling gold to the grass. The gong sounds, and back in the hall,

I decide to try lying down meditation, and let myself sleep. The Buddha in my dream is me,
surrounded by dogs wagging their tails, licking my hands. I wake up

for the forgiveness meditation, the teacher saying, never put anyone out of your heart,
and the heart opens and knows it won't last and will have to open again and again,

chasing those dogs around and around in the sun then cloud then sun.

~ Susan Browne

on spiritual bypassing and relationship

:: by John Welwood

Spiritual bypassing is a term I coined to describe a process I saw happening in the Buddhist community I was in, and also in myself. Although most of us were sincerely trying to work on ourselves, I noticed a widespread tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.

When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it. And then we tend to use absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and developmental deficits. I see this as an “occupational hazard” of the spiritual path, in that spirituality does involve a vision of going beyond our current karmic situation.

Trying to move beyond our psychological and emotional issues by sidestepping them is dangerous. It sets up a debilitating split between the buddha and the human within us. And it leads to a conceptual, one-sided kind of spirituality where one pole of life is elevated at the expense of its opposite: Absolute truth is favored over relative truth, the impersonal over the personal, emptiness over form, transcendence over embodiment, and detachment over feeling. One might, for example, try to practice nonattachment by dismissing one’s need for love, but this only drives the need underground, so that it often becomes unconsciously acted out in covert and possibly harmful ways instead.

I’m interested in how spiritual bypassing plays out in relationships, where it often wreaks its worst havoc. If you were a yogi in a cave doing years of solo retreat, your psychological wounding might not show up so much because your focus would be entirely on your practice, in an environment that may not aggravate your relational wounds. It’s in relationships that our unresolved psychological issues tend to show up most intensely. That’s because psychological wounds are always relational — they form in and through our relationships with our early caretakers.

an open letter calling for peace ~ plum village

Dear Human Family,

Watching the tragedy of war continue to unfold daily in Ukraine, we open our hearts to the suffering of people young and old. As an international community of Engaged Buddhism in the Plum Village tradition, we observe the war with pain and alarm.

In our Buddhist community, every Christmas we listen with great joy to the sound of Russian church bells, and we open our hearts to the rich spiritual heritage of Russia and Europe. Our teacher, the venerable Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, has said that “A bell is always a bell; whether it’s Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Buddhist, it is still a bell.” Listening to the bell, no matter what our cultural or religious roots are, we can have a deep encounter where we touch peace and a shared spiritual dimension. We all yearn for peace. We all need peace.

Our community’s own roots lie in the tradition of Engaged Buddhism in Vietnam, where more than three million people died in a war that lasted nearly 20 years and some two million fled as refugees. We know from our teacher that war is never a solution. It leads only to division and hatred that can last for generations.

Our teacher worked tirelessly for peace in Vietnam by never choosing sides. Instead, he appealed to adversaries to look deeply into each other’s pain, anxiety, and existential fear, and to consider the war’s horrific toll on all victims. Forced into exile, he became a spiritual leader of a global movement for peace, reconciliation, and disarmament.

"A Cloud Never Dies" biographical documentary of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

Teachings on Mindfulness & Gratefulness ♡ Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh & Brother David Steindl-Rast ♡

 

 

Finding Forgiveness

 

We teach what we have learned. We act as we have been acted upon. A person who is not loving has not experienced love. It is not his fault. Realizing this gives rise to forgiveness.

~ Guo Jun, “A Special Transmission”

Your Fluid Sense of Self

 

When we look carefully, we discover that the sense of self is not a particle that never changes, but rather a flow, a wave of thought and feeling that can increase and decrease and is therefore not permanent.

~ Shinzen Young, “Brief Teachings”