Let God Play

But does that trust require that we be blind to other people’s motives or, indeed, to our own? Not at all; this would be folly. Most certainly, we should assess the capacity for harm as well as the capability for good in every person that we would trust. Such a private inventory can reveal the degree of confidence we should extend in any given situation.

As Bill Sees It, p.144

Daily Reflections

 

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Whenever we’d see someone acting up a friend used to make me laugh by coyly commenting, “There goes God again.” At another time she would have said, “Let God play on a rainy day.” It is one of those Namaste principles in action causing me to see the god in other people. This can be a particularly disturbing notion if our ideal of God within us is as perfect as mathematical certainty. I've heard it said that, when a Navajo rug is woven, a stitch is dropped in humility so as to not mock the perfection of the Creator. The rug loses no value because of this flaw. Truthfully, it has value because of the flaw. If I drop a stitch now and then the fabric of my life doesn't entirely unravel. I once looked hard for any reason to doubt... if I found one defect of character; or, more often than not, a defect I didn't like, I’d completely dismiss the person or idea. This comes from taking life too seriously and expecting everyone to act rationally; at least, according to my logic. Most of the time, in fact, my logic has a dropped stitch somewhere. It is this image of perfection I try to project that leaves me secretly feeling like a hypocrite because I come nowhere near my ideal of perfection. This is as suffocating to the spirit as locking a child indoors on a rainy day. In other words… I am better off if I just watch God play regardless of the weather.

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Forgiveness

Imagine vividly a situation where you have acted badly, one about which you feel guilty, and about which you wince to even think of it.

Then, as you breathe in, accept total responsibility for you actions in that particular situation, without in any way trying to justify your behavior. Acknowledge exactly what you have done wrong, and wholeheartedly ask for forgiveness. Now, as you breathe out, send out reconciliation, forgiveness, healing, and understanding.

So you breathe in blame, and breathe out the undoing of harm, you breathe in responsibility, breathe out healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

This exercise is particularly powerful and may give you the courage to see the person whom you have wronged, and the strength and willingness to talk to him or her directly and actually ask for forgiveness from the depths of your heart.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

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The forgiveness principle is the most powerful meditation principle to practice I know of. It is powerful because I know I have neither the willingness nor the courage to humble myself in such a manner but, time and time again, I have been relieved of the burden of guilt by simply breathing it in and breathing forgiveness out. I now have a situation that requires of me to let go of an ages’ old resentment. Yet, I can’t. Even to think of it roils old passions. I have been forgiven and forgave years ago; but, Father’s Day brought it all up once more the past two years. I can’t ask forgiveness and I can’t forgive.

         I can’t stand myself for feeling this way and I also feel like such a hypocrite when I sit to meditate or when I try to express anything along spiritual lines. The situation is such that even to try to ask forgiveness face to face would appear to be stalking and there are laws against that.

So I breathe it in… the responsibility for my part… no blame or justifications… and breathe out healing, forgiveness, understanding, and recognize that I don’t even want reconciliation at this point. I just want the suffering to go away... to stop.

            The message I get from this sitting is a simple one: “Walk through it… the Heart of Compassion is always with you through the valley and shadow of death.”

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Deception of Beliefs

LEARN MORE

THAN THOU TROWEST

Have more than thou showest,

Speak less than thou knowest,

Lend less than thou owest,

Ride more than thou goest,

Learn more than thou trowest,

Set less than thou throwest,

Leave drink and thy whore,

And keep in-a-door,

And thou shalt have more

Than two tens to a score.

The Fool

From the Tragedy of King Lear

By William Shakespeare

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Oh, to be as wise as a fool… I had to look up the word, trow, in my Random House: trow (trӧ), v.i. archaic, to believe, think, or suppose… a belief suggested in my Webster as mental acceptance without directly implying certitude on the part of the believer. King Lear remains one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s tragedies… more so than Hamlet because King Lear was deluded by his own perceptions by favoring flattery over the true devotion of his daughter, Cordelia. Her mistake was being faithful to the truth while her sisters’ ambitions resorted to deception. He easily bought it as have I when my desires are opposed by my values. It seems so simple to see the error of judgment made by King Lear but, for myself, to be deluded is another tale of woe. As King Lear went insane, and in that insanity was redeemed in mind at great cost and loss, can I find respite in the midst of the chaos my own suppositions? Can I learn more from the disasters caused by my beliefs? It takes time but I have time for that… what else is there to do?

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Pain: As It Is

Whatever you do, don’t shut off your pain; accept your pain and remain vulnerable. However desperate you become, accept your pain as it is, because it is in fact trying to hand you a priceless gift: the chance of discovering, through spiritual practice, what lies behind sorrow.

“Grief,” Rumi wrote, “can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”

Glimpse After Glimpse,

Sogyal Rinpoche

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Accepting pain takes a good deal of self-appraisal and curiosity to delve into because most of my adult life has been devoted to pain avoidance… especially emotional pain. Feeling challenged by my powerlessness over it, anger is but one of my default responses. I lash out with careless words or plain old mindlessness, sinking further into it… dwelling on it in a downward spiral… replaying the tape over and over… thinking of reasons and what I would say if I could confront her over again. At the gates of a self-made hell, depression greets me with an embrace that becomes chains… a smothering hold on my heart. By the time I get to this point I have no power of my own to break out of it. It is then, in a prison of my own making, that the idea of seeking the Heart of Compassion seems most distasteful and I usually reject that which can be my only salvation. This is the point where pain becomes a teacher that gives me a choice: either stay where I am, or get the help I need. Getting the help I need comes from the compassion that drives forgiveness… I can accept that I am unwilling to forgive but I am willing to be relieved of suffering? This is where it is as it is today but tomorrow is another day. I've been here before and I can’t, I won’t, stay long.

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Letting Go

How can I write about “letting go” when inside of my heart I can’t let go of resentments from wounds inflicted decades ago? I have to confess, as I examine the deeply felt anger and the blunt-force pounding of a broken heart, that they still revisit me now and then. The truth is that it never goes away. I’d be the worst kind of hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I am incapable of forgiving of my own volition. I can, if I allow self-pity to surface, attempt to cause harm by my words and I have done that as recently as yesterday. Not only that, but, my heart refuses to apologize. When I kneel, and sit to pray and meditate, I feel like I am a worse hypocrite than mentioned already. I carry the burden of suffering like it is the host to the altar of sacrifice. There, I lay it down before the Heart of Compassion and I try to do my best to cause no further harm.

 geo 5,379

Fathers Day Tribute

Dad playing his harmonica that
he carried with him everywhere.

The standard-brand paint religions, whether Jewish, Christian, Mohammedism, Hindu, or Buddhist, are --- as now practiced --- like exhausted mines: very hard to dig. With some exceptions not too easily found, their imagery, their rites, and their notions of the good life don’t seem to fit in with the universe as we now know it, or with a human world that is changing so rapidly that much of what one learns in school is readily obsolete on graduation day.

Alan Watts

The Book, p. 5

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The traditional role of the father and the nuclear family appears to be almost obsolete, today, at the beginning of this century. At least this is true in the West. So many of us seem to have little or no idea of what it is to “Man-Up”.

“The Book” was written by Alan Watts in 1966 to pass on to his son … that era is history for most of us now. After all, my perception is that anything that happened around twenty years before I was born is history (i.e., before my mother and father were born). I remember watching the annual Lilac and Apple Blossom parades (in Spokane and Wenatchee Washington), when I was a kid. There were still a few WWI, Spanish American War, and even Civil War veterans marching, or riding along in convertibles. WWII vets were from the era I was born into but the rest was just in the history books. Ancient history began somewhere vaguely before the Revolutionary War. The laptop on which I type this reflection out on was history years before I bought it even though I tried to buy the most recent model.

            To the young, today is present time; but for some of us in our sixties, today was already history before we ate breakfast. It is a perception of time tempered by age and the passing, or soon to be passing, of those who sired and gave birth to us. Today is a day put aside in which I honor my father and show a token of gratitude for the sacrifices he made on his children’s’ behalf. For others it is perhaps a day to forgive his failings or to see our own part in the context of our failings.

            My dad isn’t likely to read this because he has been around for over ninety years and his eyesight is failing. But I honor him because he gave me life… taught me standards… showed me what it is to be a man. I regret that I didn’t completely follow his example but, what I did catch on to, has been so much a blessing… I like to brag him up while I have the chance. I will call him today to tell him... "I love you Dad."

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Coffee Karma

My day started out with clicking the on switch button on my coffee maker. It is old and I have already ordered a new one… should be coming today or Monday. Getting ready to sit and meditate while the coffee is brewing, I looked at the machine and saw that 6 cups of water was no longer in the reservoir and none… nothing… zip was in the carafe. Well… well, I thought. It took me a nano/second to figure out that the water had to be going somewhere before I heard a dripping… then a flow onto the other side of the counter that divides my kitchen from the living room… right onto my beautiful restored Remington!!!! I quickly sentenced the old machine to the sink and mopped and dapped up what had already soaked the living room carpet (it is amazing how much water a ten cup carafe holds when you see it spilled on a floor!). I then proceeded to pour a carafe load into my old trusty water boiler... tea kettle... and then the hot water into the filter holder of the old machine.

            Well now, a reasonable man would suppose that my coffee karma would be over at this juncture… but no. I made up my usual full cup of coffee and creamer... put it on my desk... fired up

my laptop and walked away. It was then I heard the fan of the cooling pad under it making a strange noise. I put the computer to the side (thank GAWD) and the picked up the cooling pad as though I would know what to do from there. My coffee cup had other ideas because it tipped over, spilling its content on my desk and then it spread rapidly under a brand-new wireless mouse I'd just bought last Wednesday. Now the mouse doesn't work and I have to use this wild/card built/in keyboard mouse that strays the cursor (or curser!) around the page if I pass a hand within an inch of its surface.

            I will sit and meditate now: let the peace of the cosmos still my raging monkey mind.

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P.S.

Bonnie is doing fine: she had a catheter put up her leg to have a look-see for any possible blockage in her arteries and to see whether it will be a mitro-valve repair or replacement (She has mitro-valve regurgitation going on there in the ole blood pump). The good news is that there is no blockage but the docs are going to wait for surgery to figure out what is going on with the anemia bit she has been going through since last Nov.