Living instructions

(I love this excerpt from Anne Lammot seen at Auntie Om’s.  Love it.) You will go through your life thinking there was a day in second grade that you must have missed, when grown-ups came in and explained everything important to the other kids. They said, “Look, you’re human, you’re going to feel isolated and afraid [...]

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Mary Oliver: Six Recognitions of the Lord

I lounge on the grass, that’s all. So simple. Then I lie back until I am inside the cloud that is just above me but very high, and shaped like a fish. Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place of not-thinking, not-remembering, not- wanting. When the blue jay cries out his riddle, in his [...]

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hope vs despair

  “To get through this life and see it realistically poses a problem. There is a dark, evil, hopeless side to life that includes suffering, death, and ultimate oblivion as our earth falls into a dying sun. Nothing really matters. On the other hand, the best side of our humanity finds us determined to make [...]

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Requiem for large and small

Whispers of the dawn drip from this pen a slow, hopeful spell delivered by collaborators we dismiss but know so well. Some of them are out there in the vast dreaming blue keening a deliberate chant intended for me and for you. It pierces us in our dreams for that is where souls meet; their [...]

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try to love one another, right now

I am seeing and hearing all around me an emergence of a hate dynamic.  There is an “us v them” mentality.  Democrat v republican, christian v muslim (or atheist, agnostic, hindu, whatever).  Pro-choice v anti-abortion.  Gay v straight.   White v all the lovely colors of skin. We pick sides.  Then we pick each other apart. [...]

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Bodhisattva Vows

  The Bodhisattva Vows are, to me, a way to bring my spiritual practice into my every-moment life.   They express my intention to untangle my knots for the benefit of all beings. Every person who awakens, or untangles their knots, or gains clarity…increases the total clarity in the world. A story about two monks:  one [...]

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the buoyancy of non-harming

“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living by its purely physical effect on the human temperament would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”  Albert Einstein  True attention is rare.  This is an unfortunate truth.  It’s hard to make the sacrifices needed to stand naked before your reality.  This has certainly been [...]

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the face on your plate

Isn’t man an amazing animal?  He kills wildlife – birds, kangaroos, deer, and all kinds of cats, coyotes, beavers, groundhogs, mice, foxes and dingoes – by the million in order to protect his domestic animals and their feed.  Then he kills domestic animals by the billion and eats them.  This in turn kills man by [...]

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embryonic compassion

Some interesting thoughts on pain and suffering from Norman Fischer: So this is what I learned…about the meaning of loss:  love rushes into the absence that is loss, and that love brings inspired action.  If we are able to give ourselves to the loss, to move toward it – rather than recoil in an effort [...]

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a reminder to seek peace from a young soldier

He looked like a young hipster, with his hat cocked jauntily and his bling.  His head was shaved close, but that isn’t unusual these days when anything goes with hair.  His manner was polite and engaging, his smile innocent and childlike.  We struck up a conversation as I served him his waffles and eggs.  He was [...]

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