memories of sky

Put a fish on land and he will remember the ocean until he dies. Put a bird in a cage, yet he will not forget the sky. Each remains homesick for his true home, the place where his nature has decreed that he should be.

Man is born in the state of innocence. His original nature is love and grace and purity. Yet he emigrates so casually without even a thought of his old home. Is this not sadder than the fishes and the birds?
-The Maxims of Master Han Shan

Your Moment of Zen

The Great Bell Chant from R Smittenaar on Vimeo.

Evening Chant and 5 mindfulness trainings.

I sang the evening chant at the sangha meeting last night. I had been practicing for weeks. It went better than I expected, only a few moments of anxiety, deep in my belly. My voice cracked on one note, the jump on "leaving", as I feared it might. I will practice that. But the acoustics in the room were great, and really made things sound better. Most of the group said thank you and they enjoyed it. I felt proud and shy at the same time. I haven't sung really since high school, not in a performance aspect, and surely not a capella.
I also noticed that I don't like the cushions facing each other. I feel like I am being looked at, or something. I don't like eyes on me! Isn't that strange? Or paranoid. I am not sure which.
We also went over and recited the new Plum Village 5 mindfulness trainings. Many people spoke of fear of dogma and 'thou shalt nots'. I felt the same way, but I also recognize that those are my own preconceived notions of what precepts are. Are they suggestion? Intentions? Rules? Laws? I fear and reject such things because of my own experience with dogma. What if they might help?
I am conflicted. I refuse to allow anyone to place spiritual rules on me, as I reject much authority on the matter. I take what seems right to me and apply it. I always found 'commandments' so childish. Why do you have to tell anyone that stealing is wrong, that you shouldn't lust so much it breaks up a family? It seems like common mores, but then I was raised in a judeo christian society, so I guess that is my baseline.
I feel that some of the older people in the group think they are supposed to be tied to the dogma. What does it matter really if you don't recite the mindfulness trainings? I see the need to remember them, to refresh them, but it is almost as if you are upsetting someone or something if you don't. I don't think Thich Nhat Hanh cares if you don't. It is you who are being upset, you who have guilt?
But I am being judgemental, thinking I know anything about anything. I do love having a full cup, and I keep refilling it!

Sat for 30 minutes last night. I hadn't been sitting more than 20 min lately so I am glad I made myself do it. At one point some embarrasing memories came up. Nothing at all bad, just times I probably should have worded things differently or kept my mouth shut. I tried to sit with them but I had a very strong reaction to them. I do tend to run from embarrasing memories when they pop in. I often make a noise or sing a song, or move quickly, I just have to stop the thoughts. None of these are horribly bad memories, or moments of outright humiliation, but they pop in at random times and mess up my attempt at stillness. This fear limits my willingness to take chances with other people. Fear of rejection or embarrassment. It give me social anxiety and a lack of social confidence. I wonder who else has this issue.

Tigers and roaches

I got a little bit of kindness from our mother raised tiger two days ago. She did not shift out when she should have, and so had to stay inside for a little bit in a 'time out'. She was mad that she didn't get to go out, and was whining, just like any kid who didn't do what they were told. So I went and sat with her. There was a lot of roaring and spitting at first, as she always does. But after a few minutes of my own quiet sitting and "grooming" myself, she calmed down. I put my head down on an exposed pipe, and pretended like I was resting. She came over and sniffed, and lay down by the mesh. Now this cat hates humans, to the extent that she wants nothing to do with us unless we have food. She roars, jumps at the mesh, growls etc if we are doing anything but feeding her. But this time she acutally rubbed against the mesh, a clear sign of camraderie and solicitation for attention. I tried to react slowly by talking, but that was too much and she started growling again, but rubbed against the mesh again. The poor girl doesn't know what she wants. But it just shows that a lonely creature wants companionship no matter the personality/aggression/or nature of the beast. Now, if there had been no mesh, I promise I would be dinner. But even then, our common beingness can still meet, shake hands, seek a hug, find commonality. Even when she wants to destroy me.The Buddha's first disciples were said to be a litter of reincarnated tiger cubs that had been saved by an earlier incarnation of the Buddha. The cubs and their mother were starving when the Buddha(in a previous life) happened upon them. He saw their suffering, and thought first of getting them food. Then realized that getting them meat meant killing another being. He could not make that choice. So he decided to sacrifice himself to the tigers so that they could live. These tiger cubs lived on, died, and much later reincarnated as the first disciples of the Buddha.
Here again the commonality of beingness, that you and i and birds and cats and tigers are all the same, made of the same stuff, have similar feelings, and can suffer. Now, this may be a radical example. But I completely understand his desire. As a person who has worked closely with a wide variety of animals, from crocodiles to giraffes, from raptors to great apes, I see that each and every animal has intelligence, feelings, and deserves respect and compassion. There is a spectrum to be sure, but who am I to determine what is better or worse, who am I to think that there could be a better or worse??  Is the fruit fly any less deserving of respect than the orangutan? Form is emptiness emptiness is form.
But as a lay person, those conflicts are unavoidable. It is all well and good to say that we should not squash a mosquito, but we put out traps for roaches, or have a bug zapper, or hit a bug on the windshield driving to an animal rights fundraiser. Or, in my very specific case, be mostly a vegetarian, but feed 75 lbs of horse meat to tigers every day.
But lately, I have been trying to be aware of the animals that gave their lives so that my tigers could eat, so that the public had animals to look at, so that I had a way to communicate to them about conservation and why we need to care about tigers, their ecosystem, and the people that live around tigers. I hope that this makes their deaths worthy. And my guilt be reduced. But perhaps this is all my pretty little delusion.

Bodhicattva

Not my cat, from Moose Country Garden.

Have you ever watched a cat for an extended period of time? My cat is a great bodhisattva. I just watched her lay here on the deck for 20 minutes, her one good eye half shut, gazing with kitty equanimity across my garden. Winged insect creatures alighting on roses, sunbeams stretching across the grass blades,  clouds humming along above fingertips of trees. And she just sits. Surveying her kingdom. Soaking in the tiny sliver of afternoon sun hitting the corner of the deck. Not disturbed by my oafish attempt to get her attention. Nor by the butterfly a leap away from dinner. Nor by the squabbling woodpecker crashing branches in the nearby tree. She slowly turns her head to look, curious, but not bothered.
Now kitty life is probably pretty easy. No boorish bosses, or drama filled personal relationships, no money problems or moral quandaries. But there is something about cats that gives them an air of acceptance. Yes, they have their moments of fear, frustration, violence, as does any being, but mostly they just sit. And watch. And play. And ask for scratches sometimes.
Of course, my Artemis did kill a rat the other day. I was so shocked. I have never seen her go for anything but the occasional bug, a rat snake, and to scatter the neighbor's chickens. Working with tigers daily at the zoo gives me great respect for the hunting abilities of my little tiger at home. She has a great power to be a great killer, and plenty of opportunities with the not so wary wildlife that live around my home. But she and the birds have come to an agreement it appears. They are flying to the bird feeder two feet away from her, seemingly undisturbed by her presence. Two taxa thrown together by human meddling, and they understand each other well. I have seen the same birds that do not fear her at all run from and even attack other cats from the neighborhood. But not Artemis. She has achieved inter-species respect. I can only hope to do the same.

Our actions ring like a bell through the cosmos,
each moment of life,
a peal in the song of wonder.
Each strike causes infinite concerts of interdependent arising.
The universe is a great carillion, of which you are
the bellringer,
the bell,
the striker,
the vibration,
the echo, and
the cessation.
What note will you strike next?
Will it be in harmony with existance?
Do not fret. You cannot sing wrong!

How can one destroy attachments as a lay person? We are steeped in the world of attachment, work, relationships, consuming, money, homes, cars, careers, selfing all. Is it even possible to find the light of the truth when so much clouds and colludes to keep it away, hidden behind pretty veils and bright lights?

In the same moment. With interdependence, with no self, with emptiness of all things, and the impossiblity of independent arising, perhaps it is all those things that MUST be here for awakening. What does it mean if you accept that you are the buddha now as you sit. What if you AREN'T flawed but perfect perfect now. Nothing more. And ALL of this, you I the table the cushion the wood floor the siren the wind are buddha, perfect in our perfection, honest in our chaos. Can be nothing other than what we are right now. And wholly are buddha. We cannot be not buddha!

Open open empty your cup. It does no good to with hold. Fear is nothing but future thinking due to dreams of yesterday. If there is no yesterday, there is no fear.

Morning before Retreat

I check in for a 4 day silent meditation retreat today. It is only my second retreat ever, and my second in 4 months. I found the last retreat transformative. I really did come out of the retreat with a sense of openness, a quiet knowing, and full of love.
But, as with all things, this too fell away. I wen't back to work, became cynical again, became frustrated with my relationship situation, fearful of my ticking clocks, time time time. And laziness appeared again as well.
But i also kept that tiny spark of oneness, that appears at strange moments. A recognition of our interconnectedness, compassion for the ones that irk me. So I suppose something stuck with me.
Zen masters always talk about letting goals and expectations fall away, and only then will you find enlightenment. Well I am not going for enlightenment, meditation is just cheap Adderall for me, and likely, no other retreat will ever be able to live up to that first intense experience of 3 days of silence and watching the mind. But I still ache for that feeling of secret peace, a knowing mind, that was so fleeting.
Maybe I will find something NEW, maybe something the same, maybe nothing at all. But I will try to be OPEN to it. 
Open to life, the universe, and everything.

pat on the back

Day three of thirty and so far I am keeping to my vow.
Day 1: 30min went incredibly fast. Like a blink. I actually thought someone texted me when my cell buzzed as a timer.
Day 2: The cat (who was hiding under the bed when thought I closed out the animals) decided that my half lotus lap was the perfect spot for a curl up. I think she actually helped me through the 45 minute sit. I guess sangha can come in many shapes.


I am dealing with some doubt and insecurity about my path the last few days. It comes in many shapes. I was feeling like the 'weird' one today at work when talking about going on retreat, and a woowoo character on a show was being mocked about her meditation and yoga classes at Sedona. 
Am I just being one of those sad people who goes through divorce and 'turns to God'? That I need to find myself because my only identification was with my marriage?
I guess it just points to the similarity of human experience. That people who go through similar change seek similar medicine. And that my judgement of those people only points to my selfishness, and seperateness.
I just hope I am not losing myself further in my attempt to 'find' myself. I mean, it isn't like I went anywhere. I am here right now, perfect right now. Why am I seeking? I cannot be anything different than I am right now. So why the pit in my stomach?

The Long Sit

I, A, with confidence in the benefits of a regular practice of sitting meditation, do hereby commit, for myself and no one else, to practicing at least one session of sitting meditation, for as short or as long a period of time as I am willing and able, for each of the next thirty days.

Dying-places are ordinarily in homes or in hospitals, but this poor fellow has neither a home nor a hospital in which to die.    We are here in a vacant space near the river—a sort of common littered with refuse and scavenged by starving dogs.    It has been named the Dying-place, because poor, starving, miserable outcasts and homeless sick, homeless poor, homeless misery of every form come here to die.    The world scarcely can present a more sad and depressing spectacle than this field of suicides; I say suicides, because many that come here come to voluntarily give up the struggle for existence and to die by sheer will force through a slow starvation.    They may be enfeebled by lingering disease; they may be unable to find employment; they may be professional vagrants; they come from different parts of the city and sometimes from the country round about.    They are friendless; they are passed unnoticed by a poor and inadequate hospital service; they become utterly discouraged and hopeless and choose to die.    Their fellow natives pass and repass without noticing them or thought of bestowing aid or alms, and here it is not expected; they have passed beyond the pale of charity; it is the last ditch; they are here to die, not to receive alms.

This far-gone case of destitution and misery is not the only one in this last retreat of human agony; you see another in the distance, probably a new arrive, as he yet has the strength to site erect.      

~James Ricarlton

Via Pruned

We are all like cut flowers

gorgeous in our blooming

a quick cut

a plunge into an artificial world

where forces within and without

strive to replicate and to extend

the hummingbird beat of time before wilting, fading

but the flower never asks for this

never questions

simply is

and blooms and blooms

in changing hues and shapes

dancing in slow death

until the last petal

and a dark branch

naked and open

 becomes a house for bugs

image

Nightmare

What does it mean when one has a horribly vivid nightmare, about terrorists and fire and mass death and crashing planes. And you are the passenger in a fleeing vehicle as planes and buildings fall around you. And your dream self closes her eyes to the terror and begins sending metta to all beings. With a foreknowledge of imminent death, and with fear very present, my dream self could only send metta, to the terrorists, to her family, to the victims, to all beings everywhere.
Now, in a dramatic analysis, I could say that we are all these passengers, flying toward our deaths, there is no way to change or control our destiny with a hopefully peaceful, but possibly sudden, violent, or painful death. It is inevitable. And yet we calmly plod along, I will sit tomorrow, I will send out metta later, I can't send her metta she is a bitch, I am too pissed off for metta today. I suffer from all of these maras as well.
Here again I am pointed to the quote "practice like your hair is on fire". Why is it I see this, I hear this, I smell this everywhere, and yet I struggle so much with  laziness?

Heartcore Dharma

Photo from the ID Project

I am participating in a distance learning Interdependence Project 10-week class called Heartcore Dharma. As part of the class, I am making a vow to commit to daily meditation practice, making a vow every 7 days. I have struggled the past month with consistency in daily practice, and I am glad to have something concrete, and an anchor of a weekly podcast/class to help recommit.
I just downloaded the first podcast and am looking forward to learning. I love the ID project weekly podcasts, and Ethan Nichtern's outlook on Buddhism in the 21st century. I often wish I lived somewhere that had a larger dharma community, with places like the ID Project!

Opening

There is a moment when in zazen when I sense that I am not the one looking through my eyes, or hearing with my ears. That the universe is looking through me. Perhaps this is pretentious, but it is a physical knowing and I can't shake it. I have been trying to probe this lately, and just keep coming back to this same knowing. I wonder if anyone else senses this.
I makes me think of the mice in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Mice are really just the smallest manifestation in this dimension of huge multidimensional beings. Like their toe is the only bit that dips into this universe, and it happens to take the form of a mouse. These beings are using Earth as a computer to explain life, the universe and everything.
So in those fleeting moments, when I feel the universe looking through, I sometimes feel a bit like a mouse, just barely sensing my multidimensional iceberg body. Or maybe as a byte in this existential computer.  Or maybe just 42.
It points back to the interdependent, interconnectedness of the universe. This has been a recurring motif in much of my insights. It feels a bit like someone hitting me over the head again and again, or waving one of those lightsabres they use to direct planes. Wake up, you fool, the universe is non-dual. Form is emptiness, emptiness form.  And yet... and yet....
But right now, the cat is determined to put her input in, despite my efforts to dissuade her from walking on the keyboard. Maybe she will have an insight. Cats usually do have an opinion about mice, no matter the dimension.

yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyggkjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjnl.k,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,nnlpppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
Thanks for the post, Artemis.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
Buddha

Post from the Past: Diving in Hippo Shit

Diving the hippo pool today. About once a month I am assigned a dive day in which I get into the hippo pool with scuba gear and suck up hippo shit with big hoses. It was a very cold day, but the water was 72 so not too bad.

Lately, I have been focusing on mindfulness. Being aware of my surroundings, and inevitably, the beauty and connectedness of things. And so, I tried to be mindful that I was starting my day diving with more fish then I would see on a reef, turtles and the clearest water possible. Sunbeams gleamed through the freshly scrubbed glass, illuminating and making transparent the stained glass of fish fins.

So despite the 3 feet of hippo shit, I was pretty happy. I am not sure if it was that forced kind of happiness though. Like ‘now I am a spiritual person so I am going to smile and be happy at my new spiritual nature. See how clever I am to be happy about sunshine in glass and fishies!’ It seemed real, but I always question myself. I suppose that is the essence of mindfulness.

Being mindful is the opposite of putting on rose colored glasses, and ignoring the reality of the world. I never forgot that I was literally swimming in hippo shit. But swimming in the sewer of hippos also has sunshine, and fishes, and ripples on the surface, and being alive, breathing underwater. And I think that is the point. At least that is how I understand it.
  _____________________________________
I remember one of my coworkers asking at a dive meeting “Why don’t you just stop putting hay in the water?” Everyone laughed.
Hippo shit is very recognizable as hay. That hay has passed through the hippo’s broad mandibles, down the throat, through the stomach, fermented in the gut and passed out the other side. It just happens to still be mostly hay. Thus her mistake.

I remember reading in a zen book once. The question was “ What is the Buddha?”
The answers were koan in nature. Things like “if you see the Buddha, kill him’, ' I am the Buddha' 'Three pounds of flax' and the like.
But the answer that always made me laugh was “Dried shit-stick”.

I was in my mystic phase and was coming aware of the non-separateness of things. That the grand tree is the human is the beaten dog is the discarded food wrapper is the shit stick. And thus, is the Buddha, or spirit, or god, or universal energy or whatever.

We are all hippo shit. And even closer, human shit.. I am a food body. I am a dying mass. I am a meat popsicle. I am a shit machine.

But I am also the lotus flower, and the kite with many tails. I am the sun, and the atom. I am dark matter. I am Buddha.

__________________

Speaking of hippo shit. Khalil Gibran writes about love treating you like a head of wheat, reaped by the beloved, ground on the stone of love, hulled, kneaded and baked, until we no longer resemble ourselves, but are still the wheat, that captured sunshine and rain and earth, but changed by the force of love.

And let me tell you. That hay is still hay. Even after being loved so greatly by a hippo.

"We are all given a divine invitation, and no one can refuse. Will you come dressed for dancing? Or will be you be delivered on a stretcher to truth's ward?" ~Hafiz

A Dream

I had a dream last night that I was leading a group of my friends and some strangers in a meditation session. A woman was there who was the dharma teacher, and she passed the bell to me. I was worried about getting everything right, and kept dropping the bell, and its random attachments. I was worried about messing things up, and proving myself to the teacher. The dream was very long, and most of it was me trying to gather people in the right place, picking up the dropped bell, worrying about screwing up, etc. And when I actually started ‘teaching’ I woke up talking, saying what I wanted to say in the dream. It was weird.
But in hindsight, this is often how go about meditation, and many things in my life. It is a lot of ‘well, I will do it later when I can get everything perfectly right’, or ‘I can’t devote the time it needs now, so I will put it off’. I procrasinate or not do things all together because it isn’t the exact right time. From laundry to meditation.
But there will ALWAYS be dust bunnies in your meditation corner. Or animal fur on your zafu. Or fat on your body. Delaying meditation/love/change for the perfect situation will always delay happiness. The quote ‘sit like your hair is on fire’ could apply here. Every minute delayed cleaning your bathroom or finding the right incense is another minute your scalp burns, another minute your life ebbs away forever.
So waiting until some perfect time to dedicate myself to practice, or giving into love, is futile, and attachment to perfection. I don’t need the permission of perfection to find happiness. I have a right to be peaceful, a right to care for myself, right to be happy.
Finally! Permission to just act! No need to decorate myself in false perfection, in imagined shining emperors clothes. To just be! As I am. Just fine. Right now.

May ALL beings find happiness

This will be a journal/blog following my journey as a student of meditation, the dharma and a senior zookeeper at a large zoo in Florida. I am only a beginner on this path, but the animals I work with teach me more about the dharma than any teacher possibly could.

I have a few random writings from the past that I have saved and will post occasionally, so things may be out of order chronologically.

Peace, Love and Enrichment.