What can be so stressful in moments of change or challenge is feeling unprepared, caught off-guard, somehow out of control. But if we shift our perspective right in the midst of this falling and losing control, we can maintain our balance inside of us and touch the many resources we already have to meet the unexpected.
Kaira Jewel Lingo. We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption
Making Breakfast with Dolly
by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
Tonight I read
how Dolly Parton
always wears
high heel shoes
in her kitchen.
“Don’t you?”
she asks.
I don’t.
I wear old brown
wool slippers.
With orthotics.
I try to imagine myself
strutting into the kitchen
before the kids
go to school,
making smoothies
and scrambled eggs
in my yoga pants,
my long gray sweatshirt,
and my four-inch
lucite stilettos.
Click, click, click
go the heels
as I teeter toward
the tea cups.
Click, click, click
as I parade
with paper towels
to the place
where the cat
has retched.
Oh Dolly,
as I slip into
these high-heeled thoughts,
I thank you
for dressing up the day.
These glammed up ideas
two-step and sashay
through the morning chores,
while meanwhile,
my slippered self
marvels at the fun,
but shrugs—
she’s just so darn grateful
for her arch support,
for the rubber soles
that ground her
as she sweeps
up the crumbs,
as she wipes
the counters clean.
Grateful that when
those high-heeled thoughts
start to sing,
and damn, can they sing,
they invite her
to sing along.
An Aspirational Prayer to Avert Global Warming
May the blessings of the exalted sources of refuge— The Buddha, his teachings, and community, the Three Precious Jewels,
And the spiritual teacher, meditational deities, and protectors of the Buddhist teachings, the Three Roots—
Fully pacify the terrors of illness, famine, and war, Along with chaotic disturbances of the four elements:
The imminent and terrifying danger that the whole world will become a great wasteland,
As temperature imbalance causes the solid glaciers of snow mountain massifs to melt and contract,
Afflicting rivers and lakes, so that primeval forests and
beautiful trees near their deaths!
May the sublime endowments of good fortune and spiritual and temporal well-being flourish,
And may all beings nurture one another lovingly and kindly, So that their joy may fully blossom!
May all their aims be fulfilled, in accordance with the sacred teachings!
The Venerable Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, translated by David Karma Choephel, September 2007.
Any being that you love can inspire you to be more mindful, to take care of yourself. And by taking good care of yourself you take good care of your beloved.
Thich Nhat Hanh Opening the Heart of the Cosmos: Insights on the Lotus Sutra
By slowing down, choosing to rest back into the uncertainty rather than fighting it, I was able to touch into a sense of space, precisely in moments when it felt like there was no way to keep going and I would be totally overwhelmed.
If we can breathe in and out, putting our mind completely on our breathing, or feel our bodies and put all of our attention on the sensations in the body, we can create that space. We slow things down and let our nervous system recalibrate and center.
The external situation may not change, but we’ve changed in relation to our external situation.
If we can stop, we have the chance to touch into something deeper than overwhelm. This practice of pausing, or stopping, helps the seed of our question to mature and ripen into the guidance and direction we need.
Kaira Jewel Lingo, We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption
We must remove the landmines in our hearts which prevent us from making peace. The landmines in the heart are greed, hatred and delusion. We can overcome greed with the weapon of generosity; we can overcome hatred with the weapon of loving kindness; we can overcome delusion with the weapon of wisdom. Peace-making starts with us.
—Maha Ghosananda, also known as "The Buddha of the Battlefields"
“A world without empathy is a world that is dead to others—and if we are dead to others, we are dead to ourselves. The sharing of another’s pain can take us past the narrow canyon of selfish disregard, and even cruelty, and into the larger, more expansive landscape of wisdom and compassion.”
― Joan Halifax, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet
It is especially tempting in times of transition and challenge to abandon our homes, to leave our territory, in search of answers, perhaps by worrying about what will happen in the future.
This is precisely the moment when we need to return to the present moment, feel our bodies, and take good care of ourselves now.
Because the future is made of this moment.
If we take good care of this moment, even if it is very difficult, we are taking good care of the future.
Kaira Jewel Lingo We Were Made for These Times: Ten Lessons for Moving Through Change, Loss, and Disruption
“If you meditate in perfect peace and then flash someone an irritable look because they make noise or their child cries, you are entirely missing the point.”
― Khandro Rinpoche
“The fact that nothing is certain, and we therefore can’t hold on to anything, can evoke fear and depression in the mind. But it can also evoke a sense of wonder, curiosity, and freedom.”
― Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel, The Power of an Open Question: A Buddhist Approach to Abiding in Uncertainty
“Experiencing peace need not be an arduous journey of endless work but rather a moment-by-moment effort of resting in order to engage in loving intimacy with others. In this way, a deeply nourished life can take the direction of liberation by which production (labor) is not the measure of our worth.
A vow to rest is a vow for peace.”
― Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, The Deepest Peace: Contemplations from a Season of Stillness
We are each living in our own soap opera. We do not see things as they really are. We see only our interpretations. This is because our minds are always so busy...But when the mind calms down, it becomes clear. This mental clarity enables us to see things as they really are, instead of projecting our commentary on everything.
Tenzin Palmo, Reflections on a Mountain Lake: Teachings on Practical Buddhism
“The unique beauty and kindness of the Buddha’s approach is that it never suggests we need to experience anything other than what we experience. The Buddha never said that some thoughts are bad or wrong and we should reject them. Thoughts and emotions—all manner of occurrences—arise in our lives, and we can’t control them.”
Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel:The Power of an Open Question
Affection and love help us along the path of prajña and increase our energy of understanding. Understanding and love are interdependent. Love is made of understanding and understanding is made of love.
Thich Nhat Hanh. Opening the Heart of the Cosmos: Insights on the Lotus Sutra
Through endless ages,
the mind has never changed.
It has not lived or died, come or gone, gained or lost.
It isn’t pure or tainted, good or bad,
past or future, true or false, male or female.
It isn’t reserved for monks or lay people,
elders to youths, masters or idiots,
the enlightened or unenlightened.
It isn’t bound by cause and effect
and doesn’t struggle for liberation.
Like space, it has no form.
You can’t own it and you can’t lose it.
Mountains, rivers or walls can’t impede it.
But this mind is ineffable and difficult to experience.
It is not the mind of the senses.
So many are looking for this mind,
yet it already animates their bodies.
It is theirs, yet they don’t realize it.
~ Bodhidharma
Those who converse with hostility,
too sure of themselves, arrogant,
ignoble, attacking virtues,
they look for flaws in each other.
They rejoice together when their opponent
speaks poorly and makes a mistake,
becoming confused and defeated—
but the noble ones don’t discuss like this.
If an astute person wants to hold a discussion
connected with the teaching and its meaning—
the kind of discussion that noble ones hold—
then that wise one should start the discussion,
knowing when the time is right,
neither hostile nor arrogant.
Not over-excited,
contemptuous, or aggressive,
or with a mind full of jealousy,
they’d speak from what they rightly know.
They agree with what was well spoken,
without criticizing what was poorly said.
They’d not persist in finding faults,
nor seize on trivial mistakes,
neither intimidating nor crushing the other,
nor would they speak suggestively.
Good people consult
for the sake of knowledge and clarity.
That’s how the noble ones consult,
this is a noble consultation.
Knowing this, an intelligent person
would consult without arrogance.
From Kathāvatthusutta: Topics of Discussion
https://daily.readingfaithfully.org/an-3-67-from-kathavatthusutta-topics-of-discussion/
"We are not experiencing the end of the world, but we are experiencing the end of some provocative and desperately enduring lies we have told ourselves. With the end of lies comes the awakening of truth.
And so we are living in a period when we are confronting truth — truth about ourselves and our relationship to death and dying, to systems and institutions of violence, to transhistorical trauma, to the health of our planet, to capitalism, and, ultimately, to the fact that we can no longer continue living like we have in the past.
Real truth is unrelenting, like the sun piercing the clouds on an overcast day, and it doesn’t go away just because we can’t handle it. Truth uncovers everything — all the shit that we have spent our lives running away from. And when something is uncovered, even if it’s the most intense individual or collective trauma, it demands to be taken care of."
Lama Rod Owens, The New Saints
Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is a law eternal. - The Dhammapada
