Our Job

Another student was saying to me that in Practice Management they were talking about where they would like to work after graduation, but that the state of the world is so unstable that we may not have the choices we think we do. She re-opened my eyes to the job before us.

The problems she mentioned were global warming, rising sea levels, drought, starvation, impending doom and we agreed all these were traceable to human greed. What we didn't get to finish discussing because class started was that we CAN do something about this - when we change ourselves by practicing Generosity, Compassion and Wisdom the ripples that spread out change others and in this way we can and do impact the world around us, the layers of dimensional overlap that we experience, if not all those that exist at least those we experience.

The irony is that direct action is ineffective and only by creating those ripples can we actually do something. That's my understanding of Buddhist practice anyway. Of course part of the practice is to determine how best to cultivate and implement and then actually perform with Generosity, Compassion and Wisdom but starting on the cushion and taking it with us 24/7 is the job at hand.

Thinking there is no hope is not discerning the potential hidden from us by media manipulation of information and our own fear. We need to learn about and contemplate and support all the exciting developments in tech and community that are happening around the world that the media doesn't want us to know about because how we live and spend is valuable to certain corporations. We also have to focus right here where we live on being kind and having integrity and we can count on the ripples from that having an impact we may not see but will benefit from.

Sigh...

Life can be a grinding masticating horror. It can also be an exciting wonderful adventure. We make that choice each and every moment.

Over the past year the awareness of other overlapping realms intersecting and interacting with our paths has been ever present.

Yesterday another concept came to the forefront - that we also have many lifetimes concurrently running and this is only one of them.

So long as we keep returning to the principles of the Eightfold Path and stay in the groove of happiness, the ripples are beneficial to all.

Not Trying

This is the current challenge. Qi flows best without resistance, Dhamma practice is optimal when all resistance is minimized as well. The state of no resistance is being one with the Dao, balanced and in harmony, most of us experience this briefly from time to time, some of us are so intrigued and delighted with it that we develop a practice to nurture the potential for that to return or persist. Here is where not trying is essential, too much striving and it literally is chased away, too little and chances are we cannot even recognize it when it arrives.  Through out the Buddha Dhamma we see references to this, my favorite may be the Buddha's analogy of playing a stringed instrument - you don't want the strings too tight or too loose, they must be tuned just right for the music to resonate.