I took a first step on the path towards undertaking Jukai today.
Jukai is a ceremony in Zen Buddhist practice where you commit yourself to the sixteen precepts. The process is a not a short one, nor one that is anticipated as coming to an end. For the next six months I’ll be working through the precepts with Roshi Susan Murphy and a group of fellow Zen students. I’ll be taking the precepts formally at Sesshin in April. From that point it’s a moment by moment practice of wrestling my understanding of the precepts into embodiment for the rest of my life. So, today was a big day!
My friends, let’s grow up.
Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here.
Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice.
Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost.
It’s simple – how could we have missed it for so long?
Let’s grieve our losses fully, like human ripe beings.
But please, let’s not be so shocked by them.
Let’s not act so betrayed,
As though life had broken her secret promise to us.
Impermanence is life’s only promise to us,
And she keeps it with ruthless impeccability.
To a child, she seems cruel, but she is only wild,
And her compassion exquisitely precise.
Brilliantly penetrating, luminous with truth,
She strips away the unreal to show us the real.
This is the true ride – let’s give ourselves to it!
Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage -
There isn’t one anyway, and the cost is too high.
We are not children anymore.
The true human adult gives everything for what cannot be lost.
Let’s dance the wild dance of no hope.
Sculpter Paige Bradley describes the process of making this beautiful piece as one of letting go:
“I took a perfectly good wax sculpture – a piece I had sculpted with precision over several months – an image of a woman meditating in the lotus position, and just dropped it on the floor. I destroyed what I made. I was letting it all go. It was scary. It shattered into so many pieces. My first feeling was, ‘What have I done!?!’ Then, I trusted it would all come together like I envisioned.
“We cast all the pieces in bronze and assembled the pieces so they floated apart from one another. Then I brought in a lighting specialist and we built a crazy lighting system to make it glow from within. It turned out even better than I thought. And the best is that the image of Expansion means so much to so many who see it.”
I stumbled upon audio of singer Lhasa De Sela explaining the story behind her song ‘Soon this space will be too small’. It was so perfect. So beautiful. It felt so absolutely true. And it was so unexpected – as if while I was walking down the hall, God appeared before me – that a shiver passed all over me.
And so I felt compelled to share it with you:
“This is a story about my father, because my father is a very philosophical man and he always has an idea going ‘round and ‘round and around in his mind and each idea that he has, its orbit takes several years to go around.
And when he’s really gone all the way through, then he has a new idea
These days he has a new idea
His idea is that when we’re conceived we appear in our mother’s womb, like a little. Tiny. light. Suspended in immense space and, there’s no sound it’s completely dark, and time doesn’t seem to exist. It’s like an ocean of darkness…
And then, we’re growing and we keep growing and growing and as we grow… slowly we begin to feel things touch things and, touch the walls of our world that we’re in
And then we begin to hear sounds and feel shocks that come to us from the outside then as we get bigger and bigger the distance between ourselves and that other outside world becomes smaller and smaller
And this world that were inside that seems so huge in the beginning
And so infinitely welcoming, has become very uncomfortable
And we are obliged to be born. And my father says that birth is so chaotic and violent that he’s sure that at the moment of birth we’re all thinking ’This is it. This is death. This is the end of my life’
And then we’re born and it’s such a surprise because it’s just the beginning..
And in the beginning we’re very small and the world seems infinitely big and time seems infinitely long,
Then we keep on growing and we learn how to use our senses. We learn how to touch one more time the contours of the world that we’re in
And sometimes mixed in with the sounds and sensations of this world, we hear sounds and feel shocks that come from yet another world.
And that other world follows us our whole lives long, as if something is happening on the other side of a very, very thin wall
But we can forget about it for a long time, and then all of a sudden it comes again, and then at the end of our lives…
we’re obliged to die
And at that point, my father says that then we think we’re really smart, and we think- this time, we know for sure that this is death and that this is the end… because everybody knows that.
But my father thinks that, that’s not the end either…
It’s just the beginning of something else. “
You can listen her telling the story here:
Lhasa de Sela (September 27, 1972 – January 1, 2010)
Give me a candle of spirit
As I go down deep into the core of my being
Show me the hidden things
The creatures of my dreams
The storehouse of my forgotten memories and hurts
… Take me down to the spring of my life
And tell me of my nature
And my name.
Give me freedom to grow
So that I might become
That same self
The seed of which you planted
At my making
Show me
What I need to look at.
My last post was about walking, so it is probably not so surprising that I have been remembering my experience on the Dharma Yatra in southern France.
It’s a silent group walk through the countryside with Dharma teachings at night and the focus on walking mediation “in the beauty and simplicity of Nature, being together as Sangha, a spiritual community making an outer, and an inner spiritual journey together”.
In a yatra, they write:
“We walk together making a spiritual journey. The goal of Pilgrimage is in walking one step at a time, one breath at a time, allowing an intimacy with the Here and Now, a contact with the immediacy of life, deepening in our contact with and our understanding of the world around and within.”
I had also had the great fortune to spend four days hiking through the pristine wilderness of Torres de Paine in Chile earlier in the year. It was simply amazing; nature brings me to remember myself.
And it left me inspired to do more walking holidays. So, I’ve started considering walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route in Spain next year. I think it is time for a pilgrimage.
I found the blog post below in my email drafts. I have no idea why I didn’t post it at the time, twelve months ago, but its sentiments are deeply consonant with the current events of my life.
As I was walking home through the park one afternoon last week I became aware of myself moving through space, in a trajectory with the rise and fall of scenery appearing and dropping away, moment by moment. This directly recalled my experience of the Dharma Yatra: a week long meditation walk through the French countryside led by Buddhist practitioners. And it struck me that this was true of my life; that I’m on the road (still); a long walk of continual arising and passing away, sometimes with companions and sometimes not.
………………………………………………………….
Fantastic quote by Father Richard Rohr who I just discovered this week (via Sounds True’s wonderful podcasts):
The most simple spiritual discipline is some degree of solitude and silence. But it’s the hardest, because none of us want to be with someone we don’t love. Besides that, we invariably feel bored with ourselves, and all our loneliness comes to the surface.We won’t have the courage to go into that terrifying place without Love to protect us and lead us, without the light and love of God overriding our own self doubt. Such silence is the most spacious and empowering technique in the world, yet it’s not a technique at all. It’s precisely the refusal of all technique.Adapted from Radical Grace: Daily Meditations, p. 106, day 114
(Note: I have to translate God to Source or some such language to feel fully comfortable with this)
I’ve come out of a relationship recently and into direct confrontation with solitude and silence.
To make sure that I am inside my commitments: that i am meditating every morning, that I am eating well, that I am journaling every day, that I am recording my dreams, that I am eating well (organic goodness), that I am exercising (yoga or walking), that I’m going to see my wonderful therapist, that I am doing focused reading, that I am writing, that I am working on projects that are intimately related to my life goals, that I am spending immersive time in the natural world (drinking in the winter sun, the ocean breeze)
Journaling practice (alongside the meditation, and the meditative practices of walking and yoga) has been playing a very important part of learning how to play with the cycles of moods: with frustration, with loneliness, with restlessness
I’ve been learning to play with this. To feel restlessness in my body and take myself for a walk.
When I felt restlessness inside me tonight I took myself for a walk, and again felt a surge of restlessness - “What am I doing alone? What is the purpose of my walk?” – until I gave away the need for a goal and just let my body find its own rhythm. Let myself sink into a stride that was going nowhere but just adventuring in being, just wandering along the sand next to the waves, and it was delicious.
I keep finding these moments of just being with myself. Its so wonderful finding that center that it often bursts into an ecstacy…. from which there is then often a fall. But the actual experience of pleasure in being isn’t ecstatic. Its just very simple and good.
Two things have really inspired me to work on my intentions for 2011.
The first is being in a relationship where we are trying to consciously build a mature crucible of relationship together that is a reflection of integral living, or self actualisation-in-togetherness. To do this we’re in a process of examining each aspect of our lives and working out how to make them more healthy and more mature. Its a big, complicated, messy task that feels deeply fulfilling and right on track.
The second was watching Brian Johnson’s video on intention setting. It provided some simple inspirational perspectives that I’ve been drawing on.
I’m working on a list that covers body, psyche, mind, soul, my love relationship, parenting, career and finances. During 2010 I came up a list of personal commitments (which you can see on this post) that I’ve now revised and expanded below with specifics for 2011:
I commit to developing self respect by practicing consciously living in integrity. That is, by deepening and articulating my understanding of my values, and living authenticity in alignment with them.
I commit to the ongoing exploration of wise speech: to expressing myself (and listening to others) honestly and thoughtfully through the practice of NVC and exploration of Buddhist precepts.
I commit to honestly encountering my fears, defensiveness and contractions with the desire and intention to move towards braveness, receptivity and openness.
I commit to understanding relational space and to practicing loving kindness towards others and myself inside it
I commit to consistent practice of core aspects of mind/body/spirit health:
meditation
at least twenty minutes a day
self reflection
daily journal writing
journal writing pre & post therapy
exercise
yoga, swimming- and/or walking at least three times a week
