Being Slow

I have a wound I am healing with right now and it requires much attention and care.  I am being with each movement as it lives.  As I open the door I put my carrying items down and open the door.  I am gathering back these items, reconnecting with them and moving through the doorway, slow-ly.  I am inhaling and experiencing it like friendly conversation because I am sl-ow.   What good good friends my breaths are.  For now I am so fortunate to be able to count on them.  

I was sitting eating dumplings, slowly, one and then dipping and then chewing and placing the fork and plate down.  Then picking everything up and starting again.  I was cross legged on the couch staring at our family's dog as he was blindly staring at me eating (he is blind).  I was chewing, breathing, chewing and staring.  I was resting in who I am and at the same time feeling no different than our dog in a way.  When I felt our interconnection I was giggling and sitting still, giggling.  

In slowness there is a scrumptious ability to communicate directly without honey-coating, as the slowness softens the edge and widens time to speak through the heart both inward and outward.  I have been working with my personality trait of being a "people pleaser".  I often push myself in little ways assuming my actions are making somebody else more pleased with me.  (How self conscious I am!)  I am recognizing when I am moving towards acting for this reason and when I act genuinely.  I spent all evening with a dear friend and we practiced experiencing how refreshing and pleasing it was to receive such direct heart.  We could say exactly what we wanted to say, nothing attached to our words, no expectations or assumptions and it was accessible because it was heartful.  Communication and simply being in this space is energizing and effortless.  The effort stems from remaining mindful as to where the words arise out of and then joyfully let { } be/flow.  Whether the joy is expressed through a sense of toughness or joy is expressed through aromatic rose petalled words is not what matters.  

What matters is truly being.  

Simply be what you are, be the master of the situation.  If you will just "be", then life flows around and through you.  This will lead you into working and communicating with someone, which ofcourse demands tremendous warmth and openness.  If you can afford to be what you are, then you do not need the "insurance policy" of trying to be a good person, a pious person, a compassionate person.

 Cutting through Spiritual Materialism, CTR.

Slow Fact, Cattle Style:  Did you know that a cow raised on good pasture chews about 30,000 bites
That is many chews of rhythm and presence.  

Ekajati

This is a timely moment to reflect on Ekajati.  For those unfamiliar with the deities and dharmapalas of buddhism, they are not separate solid beings that we look at or reflect on.  These manifestations are our projection.  Projections as to what is possible and how deep and bountiful the mind is.   When we call Ekajati, we call a part of ourselves and in turn we are awakening what already exists in us.

In my first conscious meeting with Ekajati, I connected with her emanation of power, primordial insight*, one-pointed vision, fearsomeness, her physical manifestation and her basic radicalness for the benefit of all beings.  These aspects of my mind and heart immediately caught fire.   

Ekajati is a dharmapali, a wrathful deity, a mahakali, a protector of the truth, of the dzogchen tantras.**  

Ekajati is dark blue in color.  She has one turquoise lock of hair, one eye with primordial awareness, one fang cutting through obstacles and one breast feeding the milk of practitioners.  Her clothing is of tiger skin wrapped around her waist representing her fearlessness towards realization.  She decorates herself with bone and a skull crown.  These ornaments of the charnel ground symbolize that negativities and emotions are both liberated and destroyed, then worn.  She carries a bleeding heart in her right hand representing confused practitioners that have strayed.  One hundred iron wolves spring from her left as her attendants and she is equipped to direct the complacent and the irreverent.  Often times Ekajati is depicted surrounded by flames, representing the indestructible energy of compassion and wisdom, this energy expressed through intense anger, but anger that does not contain hatred.  It is certain, true and cutting.

Ekajati outwardly is wrathful, like all dharmapli, but the root is of compassion, compassion that cuts through and stomps on ego.  Enabling practitioners to see clearly, and to not be obscured by both inner and outer hindrances.  

May all beings be free from suffering

May all beings kindly share heart with fire and truth

And May all beings be liberated

* awareness and intellect without reference point, without beginning or end.
**the highest level of realization in the Nyingma buddhist tradition

Gratitude for Farm Work.

Fresh Crisp Air & Brisk Movement Really Does Wonders

Here is the walk the farm took me on.

Stop Fighting. Be Patient

The force behind transcendental patience is not driven by premature impulse nor by anything else of that nature.  It is very slow and sure and continuous, like the walk of an elephant.  Patience also feels space.  It never fears new situations, because nothing can surprise the bodhisattva*--nothing.  Whatever comes--be it destructive, chaotic, creative, welcoming, or inviting--the bodhisattva is never disturbed, never shocked, because he is aware of the space between the situation and himself.  Once one is aware of the space between the situation and oneself, then anything can happen in that space.  Whatever occurs, does so in the midst of space.  Nothing takes place "here" or "there" in terms of relationship or battle.  Therfore transcendental patience means that we have a flowing relationship with the world, that we do not fight anything.  -Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

I read this last night and had a moment of A Ha!  I went to bed peacefully, without any reason to debate my thoughts against my thoughts.  Here is a quick visualization:  We are all sitting lively in our regal and comfortable chairs, whatever that may be for you, (mine is a lilac velvet), and we are experiencing our breath, experiencing the environment and all of the details including the changes in air and fragrance.   No matter what flutters in our vision we can see it for what it is and value it and then choose how we will partake in the fluttering of it's existence.  After choosing our part, we are still in our posture of queens and kings and we are not lost.  We are experiencing crazy and tranquil, like and dislike as the same, with just a pinch of a different flutter.


*Bodhisattva: Sanskrit term often associated with an ordinary person on the path to awakenment.  Or a someone that is on the path to awakenment to reality for the benefits of all beings and in Mahayana buddhist waits to become awake until all beings have as well.  "Bodhi" often translated as awakening.  "Sattva" often translated as existence or reality or purity.

Being Courageous to Listen

We have countless interactions and conversations each day and so much of our on-going thoughts come from responses to these passings with people.  I've started investigating how to enjoy the most out of these powwows and let me tell you that learning how to converse is joyfully lightening on the body and the heart/mind.  My investigation is in the quick conversations on the supposedly benign, the general but more full conversations with a B, M and E, to the conversations we keep in a leather sack, tied tightly and aggressively.   

Being available to all communication takes courage.  

For those everyday heys, I'm putting attention into seeing and breathing.  Seeing you for a moment as you ask for a pen, or as you hand me a receipt, or as I pass you a crate of rutabaga and I am seeing you and breathing.  It is simple and satiating.  

Full conversations with friends and strangers I can drift in and out.  My new modo is, be there, allow space and then be spontaneously honest. What is coming up out of the space without being pre-planned.  What exists in the mind that we are not recognizing because we tend to grab onto the familiar, or the predetermined thoughts?  On those scattered days begin first with synchronizing the body-mind/heart and then move towards presence, space and expression.

Oh and ofcourse those dark conversations require more details to expound upon...

Drive all blames into one

Often we put off those purposely sequestered conversations because we are scared, we do not want to bother or hurt someone and for any reason you can think of put that here                                                                  .  What I am learning is that, yes I am scared to bring certain topics up with certain people, but often times it is mainly because I do not want to hear what they have to say.  I want to be able to express myself and want to continue my story about what happened or why I am right.  I do not want to have to acknowledge my part in the relationship/situation.  

I have been testing this out.  I begin with requesting a time to talk.  I offer up the conversation taking ownership of some part of the topic or issue at hand.  In my first experiment, the conversation began well and then started to become fiery and tight.  It drifted into habitual communication and I quickly realized that my ego was certainly being stroked but my heart was in pain.  After some minutes of quiet, I let go of my need for protection.  I realized that words do not actually hurt me.  I can hold them and listen to not just the words but the heart they are coming from.  As I lifted the words and peered into the emotional being expressing them, I responded to that place, not to the literal words.  I heard them and as I sat with their heart I felt mine as the same.  I felt the struggle they were experiencing.  When I finally spoke again what came out without my own knowing, was that I heard them.  Holding both of our hearts, I expressed my need in the relationship and reconfirmed their need once more.  Then we moved on with good full breaths and openness, knowing that by allowing ourselves to change our patterns of communication and response with the help of listening from spaciousness and spontaneity, we can no longer expect the outcome of our meetings.   In that, each moment of life is meaningful as it is not predestined and dull but fresh, unknown and alive.  

As my compassion and love grows for another, it grows for myself.  As self-love grows, it too is synonymous for my love for you and you being synonymous for all beings.

May we truly listen and see all Beings, Earth and Cosmos as one.  

*Drive all blames into one, Chogyam Trungpa:

Drive all blames into one means that all the problems and the complications that exist around our practice, realization, and understanding are not somebody else's fault. All the blame always starts with ourselves.

Being in the Present & the Future

 the ultimate implication of the words "peace on earth" is to remove altogether the ideas of peace and war and to open yourself equally and completely to the positive and negative aspects of the world.  It is like seeing the world from an aerial point of view: there is light, there is dark; both are accepted.  You are not trying to defend light against dark... The problem we seem to be facing is that we are too involved with trying to prove something, which is connected with paranoia and the feeling of poverty.  When you are trying to prove or get something, you are not open anymore, you have to check everything, you have to arrange it "correctly."  It is such a paranoid way to live and it really does not prove anything.  One might set records in terms of numbers and quantities--that we have built the greatest, the biggest, we have collected the most, the longest, the most gigantic.  But who is going to remember the record when you are dead?  Or in one hundred years? Or in ten years? Or in ten minutes? The records that count are those of the given moment, of now--whether or not communication and openness are taking place now.     -Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism CTR

Moving towards darkness is light-filled and expansive.  The hours of farm tending are fewer and I am left with time to research and plan for next season and for creativity, practice, and kinship.  I am so thankful that the farm forces me to move in the cold air to keep my spirits bright and so relieved to have time for other parts of my nourishment.  

The other day, I nestled into my napping corner with my notebook filled with the goodness of life.  Pink ink in hand, I wrote up a dreamy schedule for the high and low season.  After writing it up, I realized that this could be reality.  I'm not saying I want to live my life by a schedule, but I am saying that it helps to put on paper to see what slight adjustments can be made to the present passings to fit in something that seems impossible.  For instance, I am practicing in the morning for an hour an a half.  I am so grateful to have this time and it is so possible.  So yes, this time in my life involves a lot of future visioning and it can be filled with impatience and jealousy.  It is the activity of salivating to be in a situation I am not because I am excited.  The feeling of excitement is energizing but then I am not here and I am not open to here.  And here is an ultimately splendid setting.  Here is perfect.  It is!  This excitement is also an attachment to something that is specifically light and fixed.

I do not want to push away the darkness as without it it, light could not exist and darkness is where I am challenged most to ripen.  I also want to be alive.  And that can not exist in a plan.  My thoughts are not living.  It is the moments of daily connection.  The low light of a late autumnal afternoon shining above the river and through the trees.  It is the red cardinal fluttering and flying quickly from branch to branch and for a moment sitting on my window sill sharing space together.  It is the warmth of a complete embrace.  When I step outwards and rest here, I realize that I can hold visioning and presencing.  It does take attentiveness and for me, the re-cultivation of attention. Onward! heaven & earth-awareness.  May we hold it all gracefully and happily.  It is possible.

dedicated to danika.

What I am Doing

In honoring the notion that one can hold all the rays of the sun, I have been simmering with my multidirectional path.  Two parts of this are actively engaging with the needs of this world, while recognizing the necessity for the change to stem from inner action and understanding.

Activism Part I

I am writing one day after the "Sandy"storm hit our Eastern coast.  Deep in my belly I know this storm to be the voice of Earth, asking to be heard, asking for her power to be appreciated and her needs to be met.  In this year's presidential election, there has been no mention of climate change.  Yet the health of our society relies on the well-being of our natural ecosystems, which holds our bounty:  our resources for energy, our sanity, our nourishment, our guidance on design and progress, and our connection to balance and magic.

Our current world is a distracting scene: from the media of our minds telling us how we and others should be,  to the news of the world around us selecting what they want us to consider truths.  Clouds of chaos seem to me to be the outcome.  Instead of allowing these clouds to coat our view, what if we let these clouds settle? What if we just stopped, and tenderly listened to our own hearts?  We would honestly know our next step, and I do not doubt for a moment that our steps would move with our natural world.  When I am quiet and open, I am in line with what is good for the sentient and non-sentient world.  

May our steps be directed from the winds and the sun of existence and may our actions not walk into the storm, but with it, in reverence and curiosity.  We are as much the leaf of a faded iris, as we are traders on Wallstreet.  However we identify ourselves, in the end the power of nature is what cradles our world together, and the state of our minds and hearts will dictate how long our clouds of chaos may persist.

***  

Part II

We pay attention with respect and interest, not in order to manipulate, but to understand what is true.  And seeing what is true, the heart becomes free.  Suzuki Roshi

Most of my thoughts have been trained to manipulate.  The alive moment is deeply colorful, textured, potent, simple, time insensitive, infantile, gone, liberated.  This alive moment travels along my neurotic pathways and is womanly handled into the categories I've created over my years of being human and before.  Some of these categories can begin with "should" and can relate to: happiness, feeling, good or bad idea, success,  comparison, vocabulary, sentence formation, body, use of time, living forever.........................

Recent studies have expressed that 10 full breaths of one intention redirects a single neuron's pathway, which also supports the truth that the brain is always changing.  And so right now I am paying attention to honesty and actuality and not habit.  And it is true that each time I pull my sensual experience out of the tiny categorized hole it jumps into, and just actually experience it, I would attribute the word freedom with my response.  I feel roomy breadths of satisfaction.  Now.                 Now.                    Now.