In one of his poems Leonard Cohen writes, “The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and it has overturned the order of the soul.” More and more people are feeling the pressure and stress of a world turned upside down. Major world views held for centuries crumble all around us as we try to keep some sense of sanity in the midst of chaos, confusion, and hope for a better tomorrow. How do we muster the courage to make it through these kinds of cataclysmic changes?
The men and women of ancient times from the various disciplines and faith-based religions, were people of great dignity. Whether they were monastic's, priest, nuns, sages, or lay-persons, merchants and business persons, they devoted their lives to making the world a worthwhile place to live, teaching and passing their wisdom down from generation to generation. Today our world has turned sour, we find ourselves living with many global problems. The devastating human conditions that existed before this recent crises; genocide, poverty, decease, crime, and injustice, which many fought and gave their lives to end over the past five decades, have escalated to an almost insurmountable existence. Over the past three decades while noble men and women continue to oppose the forces of greed, hatred, and ignorance, our society became seduced by physical, psychological, and spiritual materialism. Our world is corrupted.
"A life is either all spiritual or not spiritual at all. No man can serve two masters. Your life is shaped by the end you live for. You are made in the image of what you desire."
- Thomas Merton
Someone once wrote, "You are what you eat." I suppose this is true since we desire food for one reason or another. I suppose then it would be true to also say, "We are what we desire.", and so it goes that our life's circumstances, situations, and results (content), "is shaped by the end we live for". (This certainly does not negate the influences of external factors over which we have no control; however, we are always reshaping the effect of those influences by what we do with them (reaction), which is a function of - "what we live for".)
The following was written the day after the shooting in Paradise, PA...
The sound of the horses hooves were heard across the cornfields as they pulled the carriages carrying the Mothers and Fathers, Sisters and Brothers, Aunts and Uncles, and fellow neighbors of the Amish Community of Paradise Pennsylvania making their way to the funeral of the man who, just two days ago, senselessly murdered their daughters. “They had already forgiven him.” the press wrote that morning, and now they were on their way to console the wife and children of this man, and to stand at his gravesite and pray that he would find the peace in death that he could not find in life.
Just days before all across the nation Americans heard once again the news of an unknown gunman who entered the “one room schoolhouse”, after sending the young men on their way, before ending the lives of their sisters, cousins, and nieces. I remember thinking that it was as if we were able to shoot and kill angels. I imagined seeing their wings dropping to their sides before their small bodies struck the wooden floor in the “one room schoolhouse”. Even now as I write these words I am unable to hold back the tears. Once again we were all left with the unanswerable question as to how anyone could tie the hands of, and line up little children, only to bring to a sudden end their short lived lives. How could anyone kill “Amish children” I thought. I tried to imagine the horrific confusion these little girls must have felt, having never before witnessed violence or the threat of violence, while the gunman began shooting from once side of the blackboard to the other until he finally turned the gun on himself.
The first Americans fighting against tyranny declared that the inalienable rights of all people are, “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Two hundred and thirty years later Americans everywhere have embraced the right to “Pursue Happiness” wholeheartedly, yet seem to have completely forgotten to live “Life” in a way that they are truly “Free” and not enslaved by the “Pursuit of Happiness”. Everywhere you go people are in “pursuit of happiness” but hardly alive and certainly not free.
Whenever we misunderstand or forget what we should be doing with our lives, we are led astray by the desire to pursue happiness, which always takes the form of the pursuit of some kind of sensual gratification. And so we set off on an endless journey away from the real source in search of more, better, or different. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, material or spiritual, whenever we go anywhere searching for something, someone, or someplace, or trying to become someone other than our True Self, there will be suffering.
Americans like other westerners seem to be obsessed with the idea of the “content” of their lives as the solution for everything. You ask anyone you pass on the street and they will tell you that their life would be much better if only they had “more” of “some thing”. I often ask them how long they have been collecting or consuming things, or pursuing this idea and, “How’s that working for you?”
Today some Americans, and only out of necessity due to the current global financial situation, are considering the idea of “simplicity”, living a more simple life, scaled down, less consumption. Good idea and I really mean that, however simplicity is not only about less rather than more, it’s about “context” as opposed to content.
The Buddha taught, “All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.” Here the word “thought” means “context”. The context of one’s life determines the content in ones life, as well as the results or the things and circumstances that show up regularly in one’s life.
The sensationalism as well as the individualism which continues to dominate the news these days has certainly reached the level of the pathological.
Regularly we hear about the “town hall meetings” where the people come out in numbers in pursuit of there own happiness, at the expense of other Americans, patriots of an ideology of greed, anger, and ignorance. We certainly do not look like citizens of the “United” States. We have come to expect our politicians to behave this way, with few exceptions, these American’s “who love America, but hate American’s.”, whose representation of the people is often nothing more than “sound and fury signifying nothing.” With the degeneration of our institutions including government, legal, religious, as well as the press, “the people” continue to be our last hope. Yet the lyrics of an old folk song from the sixties plays in my head, “Has anybody here seen my old friend…can you tell me where he’s gone?”
You are invited to dialogue directly with Seijaku Roshi, about Zen, Spirituality, Practice, etc. Seijaku will post his reply within 24 hours of your post.
How to Meditate 101
1. Sit in a posture that is comfortable for you.
2. Whether in a chair or on a cushion…
3. The spine should be held by gravity in a gentle s-curve above the base. One approach to positioning the spine is to thrust forward from the diaphragm while pulling the head back and tucking the chin so the eyes are slightly downcast and the nose is in line with the navel. In this position, the spine is given a gentle stretch and the chest is kept open.
4. The arms and shoulders should be kept as relaxed as possible. Let your arms fall into the lap with palms up one on top of the other. The ends of the thumbs are touched together making an ellipse. The arms should be positioned so that the shoulders are completely relaxed with the shoulders neither held up nor bent forward. Each of us has a different arm length, and this effect’s where we position our hands to keep our shoulders tension-free.
5. Touch the lips together without pressure, and touch the tongue lightly to the roof of the mouth.
6. Keep the eyes relaxed, unfocused, and preferably open. Open and close the eyelids several times, and then let them fall where they may. Usually this is slightly open. The eyes eventually should be as if you are gazing or daydreaming.
7. Take a few moments and experience the body and its sensations directly just as they are without describing what is happening, commenting on it, or making any judgments.
8. Now bring your attention to the breath. Steadily breathe in through the nose, down to the diaphragm into the area we refer o as the hara, and out through the nose without any tension. Do this several times, and then let the breath breathe itself.
9. Experience briefly the body, breath, and sensations just as they are without descriptions, opinions, or commentary.
10. Soon you will begin to notice thoughts and other body sensations. Do not attend to them. Normally we interact with these thoughts and emotions by either amplifying and enhancing them or truncating and suppressing them. In either case, we pump energy into them. This energy constantly creates and maintains our life-world, the world of the self I call myself. (In our practice we neither amplify nor suppress our thoughts and feelings. We simply experience them as they are, letting them arise, grow to maturity, and dissipate without interacting with them. We do not name them, describe them, make judgments or form opinions about them. We do not tell stories about them. The energy we normally spend in this manner remains in the present. We open our minds up, and let go of any distinction between the aware subject, the process of being aware, and the object of awareness. We remain totally in the present just as it is without leaping into the past or future. Our mind naturally turns what is here into things. Do not attach to and reinforce the thing-making spasms of the mind. Simply let these come and go. Stay in the present just as it is without "thinking it up." Relax and become awareness!)
