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it reaches beyond life

I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.

Love Begins in Winter, Simon Van Booy


if you'd like to learn more about this author, please check:
http://simonvanbooy.com/

picture above from Max Richter's site on his composition, 24 Postcards in Full Colour. To listen to this wonderful music, please refer to:
http://www.24postcards.co.uk/

That's what I'm reading, that's what I'm listening to, that's what nourishes me.

on interbeing

the Buddha in a cup of tea

Too worldly for a monastery,
I find Buddha in a cup of tea:
Up with the sunrise,
I sit alone in my cabin,
Mind washed by simmering water
Sound, like wind in the pines.
This is my solitary quest,
Buddha under the Bodhi Tree
Meditated for seven days,
Until a beautiful sunrise
Made him give up
The futility of revealing
What was never hidden.
I prefer a simple cup of tea,
Seven minutes to boil water,
Much easier than seven days.
Complete, unexcelled Enlightenment:
Of course, only if
You are paying attention!

The Four Noble Truths
First, suffering exists:
Why else would we drink tea?
A daily taste of paradise in the everyday.
Second truth: suffering caused by tanha--
“Self-centeredness, grasping, and greed;”
Drink tea and be ego-free;
Self dissolves in service to the holy leaf;
Guests arrive and Buddha meets Buddha.
Third truth: suffering can cease
The tea cup is a raft between
Nirvana and Samsara,
Neither shore more holy than the other.
Fourth truth: there is a way to end suffering,
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Right view: the beautiful leaves, the color of the brew.
Right intention: prepare a delicious cup and enjoy.
Right speech: no yesterday or tomorrow in the tearoom.
Right conduct: spontaneous morality needs no rules.
Right livelihood: honest, forthright, a good example.
Right effort: delight in details: gong fu cha!
Right mindfulness: care for another cup?
Right concentration: nothing but tea, yet tea includes all.

All of this called
The Middle Way,
No extremes:
Neither asceticism nor hedonism
Greedy people make insipid tea.
The overly patient brew it
Too dark and bitter.

Elaborating on obvious truths
Tea Buddha also teaches
Anatta—no self,
How can I know I,
Since I’m the one doing the knowing?
I am not I, and tea is not tea!
And anicca, impermanence,
The same guests, like the same moment
Never return—one time, one meeting.
Tea changes: white, green, oolong, red, pu erh.
Today’s Long Jing is different from yesterday’s.
And tathata—suchness, the beingness of Tea:
What is tea? Just this, just this, just this…


Kenneth S. Cohen


to read more please check:
http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/236-buddhist-geeks/episodes/52961-buddha-cup

reflections

Objects of mind
Subject of mind
Reflections on the surface of water
Different, not the same
Yet who can separate them?


Gary Palen

the preciousness of every single moment

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs, and the tigers are getting closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump pf grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it into her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.

Tiger above, tigers below. This is actually the predicament that we are always in, in terms of our birth and death. Each moment is just what it is. It might be the only moment of our life, it might be the only strawberry we’ll ever eat. We could get depressed about it, or we could finally appreciate it and delight in the preciousness of every single moment of life.



Pema Chödrön, The Wisdom of No Escape (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 2001)

someday, he'll come along

it's Mr. Yorke's birthday today.

thanks for all the beauty, shared with so much generosity over the years.

thank you for being on this planet.

feel all the love and gratitude from so many people you've been inspiring all along.

Happy Continuation!

koan

No one at home – yet no vacancy!


Soen Nakagawa


Endless Vow – The Zen Path of Soen Nakagawa (Shambala Publications, Boston/London, 1996)

what am I doing?

Do you think I know what I’m doing?
That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?
As much as a pen knows what it’s writing,
Or the ball can guess where it’s going next.


Rumi

Open Secret: Versions of Rumi

Que Será, Será - Plum Village version

When I was just a little girl,
I asked my mother what will I be?
Will I be pretty?
Will I be rich?
This’s what she said to me:

Que Será, Será
Whatever will be, will be?
The future’s not ours to see
Que Sera, Sera,
What’s will be, will be.


When I was just a novice monk
I asked my teacher, what will I be?
Will I be enlighten?
Will I be free?
This’s what Thay said to me:

Que Será, Será,
What ever will be, will be?
The Sangha will let you know,
Within ten years or so.


When I was just a novice nun
I tried my best to be near Thay
But everybody did the same thing,
How could I be near to Thay

Sit next to me my child,
Every Thursday at lunch,
Love your brothers and yours sisters,
You’re always close to me.


I’ve been a nun for 5 years now,
I ask my teacher, where is my (Dharma) Lamp?
I’ve tried my best, done everything.
Will I get it this time?

Sit, stand, talk and walk,
Do everything in mindfulness
And have a pleasant smile
The light will shine from there.


I’ve been a monk for 10 years now
I ask my teacher, what should I do?
Should I go out?
Have a temple of my own,

Que Será, Será,
Whatever will be, will be.
Be a river my child
Don’t be a drop of water.


Photo: Plum Village Novice Brothers and Sisters during Winter Retreat 2008.

http://www.plumvillage.org/

a child learns to stand

In spite of the scientific knowledge that is steadily growing, the people of the world are restless and racked with fear and discontent. They are intoxicated with the desire to gain fame, wealth, power and to gratify the senses. To this troubled world still seething with hate, distrust, selfish desire and violence, most timely is the Buddha's Message of love and understanding, the Noble Eightfold Path, leading to the realization of Nibbana. A mere knowledge of the Path, however complete, will not do. In this case, our function is to follow it and keep to it.

The path is indeed difficult, but if we, with constant heedfulness, and complete awareness, walk it watching our steps, we will one day reach our destination. A child learns to stand and walk gradually and with difficulty. So too have all great ones moved from stage to stage through repeated failure to final success. It is a Path leading to the realization of Ultimate Reality, to complete freedom, happiness and peace through moral, spiritual and intellectual perfection.

From this brief account of the Path, one may see that it is a way of life to be followed, practised and developed by each individual. It is self-discipline in body, word and mind, self-development and self-purification. It has nothing to do with belief, prayer, worship or ceremony.


The Path to Supreme Bliss, in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom, The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, 1996

love is real

e.s.t. - Esbjörn Svensson Trio´s song Believe Beleft Below, lyrics by Josh Haden, with the Schleswig Holstein Chamber Orchestra, Pat Metheny on guitar and sung by Nils Landgren.

I dedicate this tune to Maria Silvia Ferraz de Camargo, the greatest love of my live. Together with Esbjörn Svensson and others R.I.P.

some people don´t die, they stay in the marvels they left passing by (dfuse)

this inner enemy is easily vanquished

When we investigate carefully, we cannot find something, some powerful enemy, called negative emotion. In reality, there is nothing there. For example, when we experience aversion or attachment, these emotions are not located in the ugly or beautiful object that causes them, nor are they located in our minds, nor are they to be found anywhere else. When we look more closely, we realize that it is through the coming together of causes and conditions that these emotions have such power – they do not have any power of their own. They are simply a nexus of factors that we identify and label. In fact, the emotions are entirely dependent on other things. The harm they do to us is due to illusion. If we really understand this, the negative emotions cannot harm us. […] For negative emotions are actually impotent, based as they are on ignorance, which itself has no strength. This inner enemy is easily vanquished with the weapon of discriminating wisdom, which knows the true nature of the emotions.



Commentaries by The Dalai Lama taken from “A Flash of Lightning in the Dark of Night” (Shambala Dragon Editions, 1994)

the belly of God

Do you want to know what joy is? Do you really want to know? Then listen. It’s nighttime, it’s raining, I’m hungry, I’m outside, I knock on the door of my house, I say it’s me, and they don’t let me in, I spend the night at the door of my house, in the rain, famished. There it is, that’s joy. Let whoever can understand understand. Let whoever wants to hear hear. Joy is never again being home, being always outside, weakened by everything, hungry for everything, being everywhere in the out-of-doors of the world as in the belly of God.


Christian Bobin, The secret of Saint Francis of Assisi (Shambala Publications, 1997)


photography ©Annie Griffiths Belt

a purpose

Although there is no specific purpose in a man's existence, yet man is free to have some purpose in life.


in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom, The Corporate Body of the Buddha Educational Foundation, 1996

isn’t it?

[…] “everything in the realms of the lower, middle and upper heavens is engaged in spiritual training. All at some point or other become bodhisattvas, so that the title bodhisattvas is unnecessary. If all are becoming Buddha and bodhisattva, surely there is no reason to make a distinction between ‘Buddha nature’ and all living creatures? At this moment you, us, and the ground we are treading on, all of us are in a process of striving and growth. The very motion of the whole universe is a process of profound spiritual growth. All change, all life and death, loving and hating, all is training and growth. Isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

Ko Un, Little Pilgrim, Parallax Press, Berkley, 2005

spiritual maturity

For the psychologically mature person, the ills and injustices of life are handled by counter aggression, in which one makes an effort to eliminate the injustice and create justice. Often such efforts are dictatorial, full of anger and self-righteousness. In spiritual maturity, the opposite of injustice is not justice, but compassion. Not me against you, not me straightening out the present ill, fighting to gain a just result for myself and others, but compassion, a life that goes against nothing and fulfills everything.

[…]

The best answer to injustice is not justice, but compassion, or love. You ask, “But what am I to do in this difficult situation? I must do something!” Yes, but what? Always our practice must be the basis for our actions. And appropriate and compassionate response does not come from a fight for justice, but from that radical dimension of practice that “passeth all understanding”. […] Let us not adopt some facile, narrowly psychological view of our lives. The radical dimension I speak of demands everything we are and have. Joy, not happiness, is its fruit.


Charlotte Joko Beck, Nothing Special – Living Zen (HarperCollins, 1993)

leaves

The grape leaves outside my window are curiously beautiful. "Curiously" because it comes upon me as strange, after the long darkness of self-absorption and fear and shame in which I have been living, that things are beautiful, that independent to our catastrophes they continue to mantain their casual precision, the effortless abundance of inventive "effect", which is the hallmark and specialty of Nature. Nature: this morning it seems to me very clear that Nature be defined as that which exists without guilt. Our bodies are in Nature; our shoes, their laces, the little plastic tips of the laces -- everything around us and about us is Nature, and yet something holds us away from it, like the upward push of water which keeps us from touching the sandy bottom, ribbed and glimmering with crescental fragments of oyster shell, so clear to our eyes.

[...]

The grape leaves where they are not in each other's shadows are golden. Flat leaves, they take the sun flatly, and turn the absolute light, sum of the spectrum and source of all life, into the crayon yellow with which children render it. Here and there, wilt transmutes this lent radiance into a glowing orange, and the green of the still tender leaves -- for green persists long into autumn, if we look -- strains from the sunlight a fine-veined chartreuse. The shadows these leaves cast upon each other, though vagrant and nervous in the wind that sends friendly scavenging rattles scurrying across the roof, are yet quite various and definite, containing innumerable barbaric suggestions of scimitars, flanged spears, prongs, and menacing helmets. The net effect, however, is innocent of menace. On the contrary, its intricate simultaneous suggestion of shelter and openness, warmth and breeze, invites me outward; my eyes venture into the leaves beyond. I am surrounded by leaves. The oak's are tenacious claws of purplish rust; the elm's, scant feathers of a feminine yellow; the sumac's, a savage, toothed blush. I am upheld in a serene and burning universe of leaves. Yet something plucks me back, returns me to that inner darkness where guilt is the sun.


excerpt from Leaves, short story by John Updike in The Music School, First Vintage Books Edition, 1980


Photo ©Richard Small

a stroke of an insight

2 words

The secret of Soto Zen is just two words:

not always so.

Shunryu Suzuki-roshi




found this pearl of instant enlightenment on http://www.stevenkharper.com, where there was also the link to this picture of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, where my mind pictures my beloved friend and brother Arnold, his toes being kissed by the fish in the Tassajara river; to see more please refer to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/surharper/sets/72157600290243490/