It was wonderful to see a number of new faces at our Sangha
gathering Wednesday, May 18, 2016.
I shared at the beginning of our time together that at the
previous Saturday’s Walking Meditation in Hickory Hill Park, about ten of us
walked mindfully for 45 minutes through the woods on a day that seemed to span
the four seasons, warm and sunny one moment, cool and almost wintry the next.
And that at one point an off-leash dog, gregariously bounding along the path,
stopped to stare at our silent, slowly moving group and cocked its head, unsure
what to make of us.
I said I suspected many of the humans who encountered us had
the same reaction, and that mindfulness can look strange in a world addicted to
busyness and speed, to endless talking and doing. Meditation practice, by
contrast, can help us to calm down, settle the interior dust storm of emotions,
and help us connect with our natural wisdom and peace. Which is why we gather
every couple weeks as a Sangha, to support one another in our practice. I
quoted Ram Dass, who said: “We’re just
walking each other home.”
Before our meditation, I quoted Joan Tollifson, from her
book Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking up
from the Story of my Life: “Meditation is listening. Listening to everything.
To the world, to nature, to the body, the mind, the heart, the rain, the
traffic, the wind, the thoughts, the silence before sound. It is about
questioning our frantic efforts to do something and become somebody, and
allowing ourselves to simply be.”
Touching on how we should contend with thoughts and stories
and other distractions that inevitably arise in meditation, I quoted Sogyal
Rinpoche, from his book The Tibetan Book
of Living and Dying: “Whenever you find yourself thinking, let that thought
rise and settle, without any constraint. Don’t grasp at it, feed it, or indulge
it; don’t cling to it and don’t try to solidify it. Neither follow thoughts nor
invite them; be like the ocean looking at its own waves, or the sky gazing down
on the clouds that pass through it. You will soon find that thoughts are like
the wind; they come and go.”
As our meditation came to a close, I quoted part of a poem
by the Sufi mystic Rumi:
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the
prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone
suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You’re covered with
thick cloud.
Slide out this side.
Die,
and be quiet.
Quietness is the surest sign
that you’ve died.
Your old life was a
frantic running
from silence.
The speechless full
moon
comes out now.
For the Dharma Talk, we again heard from Sogyal Rinpoche’s The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.
Before the reading, I explained that Rinpoche refers to bardos. In the Tibetan
Buddhism tradition, bardos are periods of transition, pregnant with
opportunities for radical transformation and rebirth in all kinds of ways if we
navigate them mindfully. There are six bardos, including the one we’re all
inhabiting right now: the liminal space between birth and death.
The reading:
“One of the central characteristics of the bardos is that
they are periods of deep uncertainty. Take this life as a prime example. As the
world around us becomes more turbulent, so our lives become more fragmented.
Out of touch and disconnected from ourselves, we are anxious, restless, and
often paranoid. A tiny crisis pricks the balloon of the strategies we hide
behind. A single moment of panic shows us how precarious and unstable
everything is. To live in the modern world is to live in what is clearly a
bardo realm; you don’t have to die to experience one.
“This uncertainty, which already pervades everything now,
becomes even more intense, even more accentuated after we die, when our clarity
or confusion, the masters tell us, will be ‘multiplied by seven.’
“Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a
constant state of suspense and ambiguity. Our minds are perpetually shifting in
and out of confusion and clarity. If only we were confused all the time, that
would at least make for some kind of clarity. What is really baffling about
life is that sometimes, despite all our confusion, we can also be really wise!
This shows us what the bardo is: a continuous, unnerving oscillation between
clarity and confusion, bewilderment and insight, certainty and uncertainty,
sanity and insanity. In our minds, as we are now, wisdom and confusion arise
simultaneously, or , as we say, are ‘co-mergent.’ This means that we face a
continuous state of choice between the two, and that everything depends on
which we will choose.
“This constant uncertainty may make everything seem bleak
and almost hopeless; but if you look more deeply at it, you will see that its
very nature creates gaps, spaces in which profound chances and opportunities
for transformation are continuously flowering--if, that is, they can be seen
and seized. …
“...It is in moments of strong change and transition
especially, the teachings make us aware, that the true sky-like, primordial
nature of our mind will have a chance to manifest.”
Finally, at closing, I shared to additional quotes.
From Rinpoch again: “Everything can be used as an invitation
to meditation. A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower
growing in the crack of a cement pavement, a fall of rich cloth in a shop
window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Be alert for
any sign of beauty or grace. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments, to
‘the news that is always arriving out of silence.’ Slowly you will become a
master of your own bliss, a chemist of your own joy, with all sorts of remedies
always at hand to elevate, cheer, illuminate, and inspire your every breath and
movement.”
And from Brother David Steindl-Rast:
“You think this is just another day in your life. It's not
just another day; it's the one day that is given to you today. It's given to
you. It's a gift. It's the only gift that you have right now, and the only
appropriate response is gratefulness. If you do nothing else but to cultivate
that response to the great gift that this unique day is, if you learn to respond
as if it were the first day of your life, and the very last day, then you will
have spent this day very well.”
Our next gathering is scheduled for 7 p.m. Tuesday, May 31,
2016, in Iowa City Public Library Room A.
Offered humbly,
Stephen
No comments:
Post a Comment