Friday cat blogging!

Sweet Iris

Photo by Sally Lloyd

Great teachings on compassion

I want to share with you some more from Marcus Borg's book, Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. First I want to give you the introduction by Borg to his chapter on Compassion. Then I'll give you a sample of the sayings.

Most striking of all the parallels between Jesus and Buddha are those dealing with love. Both teachers invoked the Golden Rule of treating others as you want them to treat you. Many of Jesus' most famous sayings - turning the other cheek, loving your enemies, and the idea that one who lives by the sword will die by it - are mirrored in the words of the Buddha.

"The moral teaching of Buddha," Oxford scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter noted, "has a remarkable resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount." A further similarity lies in the fact that Jesus' words from the Mount represent his most important teachings, just as the Dhammapda, which closely parallels the Sermon, is the central book in Buddhism. It was reputedly compiled in the Pali language from an oral tradition that began with Buddha's initiates just as the Sermon on the Mount and other parts of the four Gospels are attributed to the early followers of Jesus.

Now here are a couple of samples of parallel sayings:

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

-- Jesus (Luke 6.31)

Consider others as yourself.

-- The Buddha (Dhammapada 10.1)

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.

-- Jesus (John 15. 12-13)

Just as a mother would protect her only child at the risk of her own life, even so, cultivate a boundless heart towards all beings. Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world.

-- The Buddha (Sutta Nipat 149-150)

The diamond meditation

Here's another sample from 1,001 Meditations by Mike George:

Like a diamond, the spirit has many facets which radiate light into the world. Each facet is an essential quality - for example, love, peace, compassion, acceptance and patience. During the course of a week choose one essential quality each morning and meditate upon it, allowing it to shape your consciousness. Each evening reflect on how that facet of your spirit expressed itself during the day.

The above meditation can be enhanced by doing a written reflection process on each of the qualities named. For example, we could have a question like this: How can I cultivate the quality of compassion in my life today? Work with the question in a spacious way on paper. Reflect on the other qualities in the same manner. Then at the end of the week, examine all the reflection papers together and see what you've learned about yourself.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

The benefits of being joyfully poor

I want to bring you another couple of passages from Marcus Borg's book, Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings, about the benefits of voluntary poverty or simplicity:

Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

-- Jesus (Luke 6.20)

Let us live most happily, possessing nothing; let us feed on joy, like the radiant gods.

-- The Buddha (Dhammapada 15.4)

How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

-- Jesus (Mark 10. 23 & 25)

Riches make most people greedy, and so are like caravans lurching down the road to perdition. Any possession that increases the sin of selfishness or does nothing to confirm one's wish to renounce what one has is nothing but a drawback in disguise.

-- The Buddha (Jatakamala 5.5 & 15)

I think what all this is saying is to make sure you have your possessions and that your possessions don't have you.

Understanding suffering

I had the wonderful opportunity today to attend a seminar by meditation teacher and psychotherapist Shelly Young. Here's something she said that we would all do well to remember:

"It doesn't matter what arises; it's how you relate to it."

Of course, at that point she was talking about what arises in one's meditation. But we could also say that it doesn't matter what happens in life; what matters is how we relate to what happens. And that is very good news. Because we cannot always choose what happens but we can indeed always choose how we relate to what happens. All it takes is training and practice. And that's what mindfulness meditation is all about.

Monday meditative picture blogging

Photo by Cynthia Burgess

"to let it go"

Ah, here's another Mary Oliver poem. Enjoy:

In Blackwater Woods


Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.

Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river
of loss
whose other side
is salvation,

whose meaning
none of
us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do
three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your
bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.

Isn't that a perfect last line? That's what we are about: learning to let it go, whatever "it" is.

Teaching and learning gratefulness

I found myself perusing the Gratefulness.org website today and I came across Br. David Steindl-Rast's answer to the question of whether it is possible to teach gratefulness. The questioner thought a person is either grateful or not grateful. Here's Br. David's answer:

Well, it is true that some people may seem less gifted with regard to being grateful. The reasons could be that they’re just generally less alert to life around them; or they may feel a strong need for independence; or they may be emotionally scarred.

It takes a certain level of alertness to recognize the gift character of any situation, person, or thing. Recognizing isn’t even enough. We must acknowledge our interdependence with others before we can genuinely enjoy the give-and-take which sparks gratefulness. We must also be emotionally ready. If we have been made to feel rejected and left out, it may be difficult to truly celebrate gift giving and receiving.

But there is good news: Yes, it is indeed possible to teach and learn gratefulness. A good starting point is surprise. We can cultivate surprise at waking up to another day, surprise at whatever the weather happens to be that day, surprise that there is anything rather than nothing! How come? And how come we don’t think to ask “how come” more often?

Children have a natural ability to marvel. They are little philosophers in this respect, for, as Plato said, all philosophizing starts with wonderment. It is easy to encourage children to look at the world with amazed eyes. For teaching and learning gratefulness, a magnifying glass can be an invaluable tool. Another teaching aide is a simple soap bubble blower, which contains several thousand incentives for wonderment.

Of course, in order to be taught, it is necessary to want to learn. But who would not want to learn, once they see that the smallest act of gratefulness triggers immediate feedback.

Gratefulness unlocks joy. Nothing that we take for granted gives us joy. Yet the smallest surprise, received gratefully, yields a harvest of delight. As a teacher, you can look for moments of wonder, multiply moments of wonder, to share with your students -- children or adults -- so that even the crustiest and most hardened among them suddenly catches on to the fact that whatever there is, is pure gift.

In Daniel 12:3, we read, “Those who show many the way to life will shine forever like the stars in the firmament.” What better way to a fuller life than teaching gratitude? I can just see the eyes of children light up like stars as gratitude takes hold of their hearts. And to think that this multitude of stars will sparkle forever!

I like the idea of being surprised by ordinary things and framing that as a positive - as something for which to be grateful. Try being grateful also for your meditative practice. Give thanks at the very beginning of your daily sitting that you are about to meditate and for the training in meditation that you have received. This is a wonderful routine to establish and we will find that we are more easily made grateful by all sorts of little things.

Transformation

Well this is certainly worth pondering:

You seek too much information and not enough transformation.

-- Shirdi Sai Baba (1856-1918)

Maybe the reason is spiritual laziness. Collecting information is easy; transformation involves hard work.

Friday cat blogging!

This picture of Apollo was sent to me by Sally Lloyd.

Look at the tip of his tail!

Secret histories

The meditative tradition encourages us to view our enemies as "precious teachers" because without them we would never learn tolerance and patience. Here's a way of thinking about our enemies that is very skillful and consoling too:

If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each person's life sorrow and suffering eneough to disarm all hostility.

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We just don't know. We just don't know what they've been through. And if we had the same genetic make up as our enemy and the same upbringing, would we not behave as he or she does? It's really helpful to ponder this.

One more on gratitude

I think this is very true:

To speak gratitude is courteous and pleasant, to enact gratitude is generous and noble, but to live gratitude is to touch Heaven.

-- Johannes A. Gaertner

The importance of words

Linda Cole sent me the following passage from the works of Henri Nouwen:

Words are important. Without them our actions lose meaning. And without meaning we cannot live. Words can offer perspective, insight, understanding, and vision. Words can bring consolation, comfort, encouragement and hope. Words can take away fear, isolation, shame, and guilt. Words can reconcile, unite, forgive, and heal. Words can bring peace and joy, inner freedom and deep gratitude. Words, in short, can carry love on their wings. A word of love can be the greatest act of love. That is because when our words become flesh in our own lives and the lives of others, we can change the world.

I love that sentence saying that words "can carry love on their wings." What a beautiful image. Let us also have words of love for ourselves. The words we use in self-talk are very important and can bring happiness or inner conflict. Let us choose happiness.

Wednesday life form blogging

Photo by Bill Miller

Our real treasure

I want to bring you another sample from Marcus Borg's book, Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. This teaching has to do with our values and the recognition of that which cannot be taken away from us:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.

-- Jesus (Matthew 6.19-20)

Let the wise man do righteousness: A treasure that others can not share, which no thief can steal; a treasure which does not pass away.

-- The Buddha (Khuddakapatha 8.9)

I used that first quote in one of my handouts for the Foundations in Meditative Practice course. It's intended to encourage us in our practice so that we don't pour all our energy into material things that don't last all the while neglecting our spirit. Let us all value our true treasure!

Oh, this is wonderful!

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

-- The Talmud

Two great teachers

Some months ago I got a book edited by Marcus Borg, one of my favorite theologians writing today. It's called Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings. The Detroit Free Press called it "An eloquent overview of the similarities between Christianity and Buddhism."

Here is a sample that includes what I think is the central koan of the Christian religion:

Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.

-- Jesus (Mark 8.30)

With the relinquishing of all thought and egotism, the enlightened one is liberated through not clinging.

-- The Buddha (Majjhima Nikaya 72.15)

Both of these teachings are about the imperative of letting go if we want to be whole and free.

Monday meditative picture blogging

Photo by Bill Miller

Grow a life here

Sally Lloyd sent me the following poem which is truly an exercise in contemplation:

Flowering

Grow a life here.

At the ruins of the Seven Churches Inishmore

Pick a crevice,
a homey gap
between stones
and make it
your own.

Grow a life here
from wind
rain
and the memories of ancients
embedded in limestone.

The bees will use you
for their sweet honey.
The rock will soften under
your touch.
You will draw moisture from fog
and hold it.
Your presence
will build soil.

This is all we have
in this life
all we own:
a flowering
an opening
a gap between stones
for tiny tender roots.

By Linda Buckmaster
Spring 2006 2.15.06