Ch-ch-ch-changes
In a post, follow-up to another asking about the nature of change and our ability to affect change in the world, chalip of Zen Under the Skin delves deeply into the issue in a post "Always Ripe for Change," making use of earlier feedback. She leads off with this sentiment, "I'm still trying to figure out how to carry the dharma into my daily life with consistency. I'm still trying to figure out how to bring my meditation off the cushion. Who am I to say what other people need to do when it is all I can do to stumble through my own attempts at right action? I've also been of the opinion that such attempts to consciously sway a person... to get them to do a certain thing or be a certain way... are often futile."
By the end of her post, after filtering through the offerings of others, feelings of futility have lifted:
The world is always ripe for change. The world is always responding to who we are and what we are doing. And so are people and everything else in the world. This is what Thich Nhat Hanh's word Interbeing is pointing to. Everything exists because of everything else. As subtle changes happen in one person, subtle changes happen everywhere. This may be hard to quantify. Everyone may not cause the global impact that Buddha, Ghandi, or Martin Luther King, Jr. did in the world... but everyone can have the same impact right where they live.Jeb of Wonderings on the Way writes about extending gratitude to “the entire milieu of existence” in a post titled "The Ecology of Gratitude." He begins by looking at gratitude from our in-the-house animal friends and the prefunctory “thank you”s of our grudgingly civil society, and then expands the vision multidimensionally. Following are words from the middle of a wonderful post:
Whether one is talking about life sciences and their extremely complex interactions, or physics with its Bell’s Theorem and quantum entanglement, the conclusion is that we live in a world where interconnections far exceed our ability to understand them. ... We are gradually learning not to be as naive as primitive man about destroying things we don’t understand. In a larger sense, I can reach a conclusion that all of existence is worthy and somehow is not separate from my own existence or sustenance. I can reach a conclusion of reverence for life – all life.Fogueira of foot before foot is up to many changes this week. One post, about reversing her decision to not purchase a spiffy camera begins, “I reserve the right to change my mind about just about anything. The mind, after all, is the most impermanent conditioned thing there is.” But it is the positive effects of her healthy diet that get the most attention in posts titled “Quality of Life Report,” and “Ch-ch-ch-changes.” Fogueira now eats healthy, natural foods and is a committed vegetarian: “I could never cry enough or ask pardon enough to every animal for every minute I spent exploiting them. To eat animals to me would be like murdering my family, literally. … I have to admit it's wonderful to do the right thing and literally feel great doing it. … May all beings experience such a phenomenon.”
A real ecology of gratitude begins to arise when one begins to understand that even those things or people or groups one does not like are an integral and valuable part of existence that sustains us all.
Cliff Jones of This is this finishes [for now] his one-post-per-year, number-of-words-equaling-the-age-he-is-in-each-post autobiography. Here is the last chapter, The Sum Of All Years - 33:
Bad things happen - they'll bother you more if you're always holding out for the good stuff. What you want will come and go, but what you need will find you in the end.
"The girl" who blogs auspicious coincidence wrote a post this week called "change." In it, each of the seven paragraphs begin with these words: "Some people say that people don’t change..." The first six paragraphs reference herself, but the final one is a global observation: "Some people say that people don’t change, but I think that they just want to see the world as constant and unchangeable because it makes life simple. Let’s face it, we are who we are, not who we were or who we want to be. We just are."
The 11th Century Vietnamese poet Van Hahn wrote of changes. At the moment of his death, he wrote a poem -- presented by Amadeus in his blog dharma vision. Please, please follow this link to read the translation Amadeus has and has presented so wonderfully. Following is a different translation of Van Hahn's words, found at the online site of Boston Review:Our life is a lightning flash, here and gone
Spring plants blossom, to be bare in fall
Mind not the rise and fall of fortunes
They're dewdrops twinkling on the grass
Political Stuff
Amadeus is a political researcher and consultant residing in Oregon. This week, in his blog dharma vision, he tackled the issue of Politics and Hatred. “Lately, I have begun to again study the notion of hatred.” he writes. “It really is a hard thing to understand. We often hold such deep feelings about issues that they could sow seeds of hatred within us. I know mine sometimes do and although I have become a little better at recognizing it, I still have a long way to go.”
Mumon of Notes in Samsara writes about Bush's miscues in Japan, where he is slashing back at domestic critics of his war, bumfuzzling his hosts. [In one stop on the island nation, Bush insisted he wasn't there speaking for the US government, while at another stop, he thanked the prime minister for sending troops to Iraq.] "Nixon [could handle diplomacy]; he was venal but talented." observes Mumon. "George W. Bush, miserable failure that he is, is venal but not talented."
Congressman Duncan Hunter's fake cut-and-run legislation, written in an effort to undermine Congressman Murtha's stern assessment that the war isn't going at all well, is rebuked by James of Genius of Insanity: "This resolution introduced by House Republicans is a sham, a typical smear ploy, dirty politics and a political stunt."
Ruby Sinreich, of lotusmedia consultants in North Carolina’s Orange County [the other OC], blogs lotusmedia 2.0 [formerly, Ruby’s Rants and Randomness]. In a post this week, “Blog to Congress,” she has a bead on code [currently just for Bloxsam] to turn blog entries into letters to congress. She is eager for the code to be written for additional blogging software/platforms.
DID YOU EVER WONDER WHAT 2000 LOOKS LIKE? At his blog Dharmavidya Web, in a post titled “November 2005: Iraq Item,” David Brazier has links to a short flash video every American should see.
Buddhist Stuff
In a fascinating post, titled “Buddha Statues – Imagining Buddha,” Gareth of Green Clouds tells us, firsthand, of steps involved in the ritual preparation of a Buddha statue for its place on a shrine. An early paragraph explains what is expected …
Within [my] tradition, and others I think, the statues are filled with dried (and blessed) rose petals, mantra rolls and precious objects. The statue can then be painted and dressed, if wished, and set upon the shrine. Before the statue is filled, it needs to be checked for flaws and repaired, and washed down and rinsed with saffron water.… but unexpected challenges are encountered!
Dave Bonta of Via Negativa passes out the mid-term on his way out of town. [I am not sure if the test is meant for congressfolk, Buddhists or alchemists.] There are five questions. Here’s #2
2. From dreaming about salamanders, can you remember how it felt to breathe through your skin & listen with the bones in your feet? Use both sides of the paper if necessary.Iain Sinclair’s blog Jinijik is an always-fascinating virtual lobby to the museums and the salvaged crumbling texts of our religion. Finds this week are (1) an article, “Conservation and Digitisation of Rolled Palm Leaf Manuscripts in Nepal” and (2) the new website of The Research Institute of Sanskrit Manuscripts & Buddhist Literature based in Peking University.
In a post called MR. ANGRY, Brad Warner of Hardcore Zen writes about a longtime crazy-mad student of his teacher. Here is a central paragraph, after the teacher advises the unhappy student that one of his options is simply to leave:
Lotsa people ask me how to recognize a real Buddhist teacher. You can recognize them by this attitude. A real Buddhist teacher never tries to draw you in or convince you of anything. He (or she, but I'll stick w/ male pronouns) just says what he says. If you like it, you can stay and listen some more. If you don't like it you can go away.
The girl who writes auspicious coincidence has written a true-to-life tanka that come with a burst of steam. Go read.
Blog Harvest
Jeb of Wondering on the Way filed his fifth Blog Harvest at the end of this week, titled "Chump Change." He recommends the following blog posts and miscellany:
- The post "Always Ripe for Change" in Zen Under the Skin, with especial kudos for its emphisis on personal change.
- The movie Dead Man Walking, where the condemned man takes direct responsibility for his actions
- The post "Going Beyond Belief" in Green Clouds, "because it speaks to the willingness and courage to look at one’s own mind and beliefs"
- The post "alternatives" in Jack/zen which touches on problems with forms of engaged Buddhism
- The post "Rumi, FLOW and Love" in FLOW, here again, because the post touches on problems with forms of engaged Buddhism.
- The organizations Greyston Foundation, Human Kindness Foundation, and Human Impact for their better methods of addressing changes in society
Truth, Revealed
We close with a quote this week offered by the delicious whiskey river:
“We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed.”
--Rabindranath Tagore in his 1917 book Personality.
