1.I tried shoveling snow mindfully today which mostly meant not trying to finish up quickly and stopping occasionally to look around at the appearance. Mostly I concentrated on my work and stayed in the present.
2.Now that I have let myself watch the ceremonies for Thay, I have found them moving. I would not make it as a Buddhist monk though. I’ve come a long way since I was given the koan “Who is impatient?” but I am not patient enough for monk-dom.
1.I learned a new exercise in interbeing yesterday from one of the celebrations on the passing of Thich Nhat Hanh.
Breathe in, Thay is in you. Breathe out, you are in Thay.
2.Thay wrote about difficulties in understanding the dharma. Don’t fight it or try to hard. Thay said to think of the dharma as a gentle rain and yourself as loose soil absorbing the water.
This could apply to any new subject. The data needs to enter into the mind via sight or hearing. It is not usually those two channels that create the blockage. The obstructions are in the mind channel. It may be preconceived (mis)information. It may be the self objecting for various reasons including fear of what the mind perceives as threatening ideas. The fear might be that the mind simply cannot understand. Next time I will have try the loose soil approach.
3.Last night I reread Thay’s short story The Stone Boy. A boy comes down from a mountain to help a young girl in great distress in war torn Vietnam. At the end when the boy reverts back to being a mountain peak, the girl learns the lesson that the boy will always be a part of her, and she of him.
1.This morning I was running between the computer and the basement trying to find a replacement battery for the communications system when I clicked into a Facebook post from the Plum Village where they were singing a beautiful Avalokitesvara chant accompanied by a group of monks playing stringed instruments. It was Thay’s Namo Valokiteshvaraya chant from Plum Village in France (https://www.peaceinmotion.info/docs/dansbeschrijvingen/Namo_Valokiteshvara.pdf). The chant is intended to make one mindful of suffering in oneself and in the world. The large group of monks was sitting so still and so peacefully while singing. So I stopped and listened and now, here I am.
2.Last week I took a sudden turn into a Christian exploration. I told the story at Play as Being this morning.
Adams Rubble: I have been on a different journey the past few days
Riddle Sideways listens
Adams Rubble: A few days ago, at a whim, I looked into the saint for the day. I had never ever done that before
Adams Rubble: It turned out to be St Agnes
Adams Rubble: When she was about 12 or 13 she the prefect’s son wanted her to be his wife
Adams Rubble: She refused saying she was betrothed to someone greater
Adams Rubble: (who was Christ)
Adams Rubble: the son went home sick
Adams Rubble: so the prefect came to visit Agnes and she told him the same thing
Adams Rubble: Agnes was given a choice of becoming a vestal virgin or being sent to a brothel
Riddle Sideways: choice?
Adams Rubble: she couldn’t go serve a pagan god
Adams Rubble: so the prefect stripped of her clothes and had her dragged to the brothel
Adams Rubble: on the way, the angels took pity and and her hair cover her body better than any garment
Adams Rubble: at the brothel an angel gave her her a robe of pure white and her room was bathed in light
Adams Rubble: Now the prefects son and his buddies decided to go to the brothel and have their way with her
Adams Rubble: the legend varies here but in one version the buddies went first and were struck dead
Adams Rubble: the prefect’s son went to see what had happened and he was struck dead
Adams Rubble: the prefect came and told Agnes if her God were so great he should raise his son from the dead
Adams Rubble: so Agnes prayed and the son was restored to life and became a Christian
Adams Rubble: in one version so did the prefect
Adams Rubble: in any case someone decided she should die
Adams Rubble: so the decided to burn her but the flames would not burn her and burned some of the spectators instead
Adams Rubble: so the ruler had her lanced in the neck and she died
Adams Rubble: her family carried her to their tomb and buried her. A few days later they were there and Agnes and a host of heavenly hosts appeared and Agnes told them she was happy where she was and they should be too
Adams Rubble: a group of non-Christians gathered and began to throw things at the group around the tomb
Adams Rubble: a storm appeared and many of them were slain
Adams Rubble: late Agnes’ foster sister was praying at the tomb and a crowd came and stoned her and she was buried with Agnes
Adams Rubble: this all took place around 300 in Rome
Adams Rubble: A church was built over her tomb now called Sant’Agnese fuori le mura
Adams Rubble: the daughter of Constantine got leprosy and went to the church to pray
Adams Rubble: she was cured
Adams Rubble: She had a large covered cemetery built at the site and eventually a mausoleum was built that is now the church of Santa Costanza
Adams Rubble: as I began to remind myself about the church, I discovered a book about the church by a Canadian woman Margaret Visser
–BELL–
Adams Rubble: her book raised questions and introduced new strange facts that did not seem right
Adams Rubble: I researched further and much of what Ms Visser said was true
Adams Rubble: Then continuing my research I found that around 1500 some Netherlandish paintings appeared showing the betrothal of Agnes to Christ
Adams Rubble: most art shows St. Catherine in that role
Adams Rubble: St. Catherine appears with Agnes in many of those paintings
Adams Rubble: plus other virgins
Adams Rubble: Mary is holding the infant Christ who is reaching out to put the ring on Agnes’ finger
Adams Rubble: In other paintings, Agnes already has the ring and it is being given to Catherine
Adams Rubble: The next question is why there and why then
Adams Rubble: It turns out there was a movement of laity to try to get back to the original teachings of Christ
Adams Rubble: one group was at the Mount of St. Agnes
Adams Rubble: the appointed leader of this group was Thomas a Kempis
Adams Rubble: he wrote a group of 30 sermons and two are on St Agnes
Adams Rubble: I am going to read them today
Adams Rubble: so I am back to Thomas a Kempis again 🙂
Adams Rubble: The end for now
Adams Rubble takes a deep breath
Riddle Sideways: wow. a full circle
Riddle Sideways: with so many stringers
Riddle Sideways: off-shootings
Adams Rubble: yes
The Thomas a Kempis book is Sermons to the Novices Regular. In Sermon 26 Thomas talks about three garments given to Agnes by her spouse. Reading it reminded me of a Tibetan Buddhist empowerment with the description of her appearance. Sermon 27 discusses the three garlands of flowers about her crown. (I did learn there were relics of St. Agnes at the Cathedral Church of St. Martin in Utrecht at that time – I wonder if they survived the iconoclast). Having finished those two sermons I am quite perplexed. I have wondered whether this side exploration has just been a present distraction. It has been exciting doing some research. I also felt something a little mystical examining the church. Maybe I will find something else in the sermons.
3.The chant is still with me a half day later.
4.The following goes for this blog as well:
“I freely offer to the pious and devout to read. But if haply an ill-chosen word offend any one, I pray that my littleness be forgiven: and that what seems outwardly to sound ridiculous, be changed to something better.”
Thomas a Kempis. Sermons to the Novices Regular (Illustrated) . Aeterna Press. Kindle Edition.
1.This morning I had an old tree removed. As we prepared the ground for the tree around forty years ago, my two older children and I did an archaeological dig at the site. We dug up a few broken pieces of pottery and lots of ashes. Then they helped to dig the hole for the new tree. It was exciting watching it grow along with the little family.
The tree, a Ginalla Maple, is now on the “do-not-plant-list” for the State but none of that was know then. It is hard to believe because it has been such a good tree. It is a smallish tree that we planted close to the house. It provided great shade for the area both in the morning and evening. We used to have a picnic table set up underneath and enjoyed many suppers outdoors in the summer around the round table. One of the long branched grew very close to our bedroom window. I often sat at the window looking with my bird’s eye perspective of the leaves and branches.
A year ago we had one of three sections removed but left the rest for as long as we could. Last summer saw dust was falling out of a trunk from an insect nest, and the long cantilevered branch going by the window was losing its bark. I began to worry that a branch might fall in a snow or windstorm. I made the call and paid the men and now only some sawdust on the ground, and two big holes to the sky, remains. And I feel guilty for killing such a wonderful tree.
Somehow my mind wants to connect the tree and Thich Nhat Hanh. Thich said “I don’t see why we have to say “I will die,” because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations.” Thay touched many lives and it is easy to see. He is living in me. The tree also is living within me and in other members of the family. We were connected.
In the Spring we plan to plant a new tree. We may not live to see it grow very big but while we are alive it will get love and care arising from our connections to the old tree.
1.This morning I walked in the woods mindfully remembering Thich Nhat Hahn who passed yesterday. Step by step I focused on the frozen earth beneath my feet and my breath. I felt grateful for the teachings of this kind, compassionate man, left for us in his numerous books and videos. From my perspective nothing has changed. His presence is felt in his writings.
1.”We have to live in such a way that liberates our ancestors and future generations inside us. Joy, peace, freedom and harmony are not individual matters. If we do not liberate our ancestors, we will still be in bondage all our lives, and we will transmit our negative habit energies to our children and grandchildren….This is the teaching of interbeing. As long as our ancestors in us are still suffering we can not be at peace.”
Thich Nhat hanh, At Home in the World, p. 147
2.Some years ago after an exercise in Play as Being, I had a dream that addressed patriarchy. It was maybe the first time I realized the power of the ancestors living within me. In that case there was a conflict between values I had been taught. There is so much that has been passed down to us. Some of it is tribal. Thich has written that we all have prejudices and and have experienced prejudice against us. Some of it is the pain of events that took place before we were born. Someone was orphaned. Someone committed suicide. Hurt and fear from those events got passed on and live in us. Liberation takes place in the present.
1.I am not finding the little blocks of time to prepare and write these days. the following represents a few thoughts that have been inspired by the nightly readings. I am enjoying reading Thich Nhat Hanh’s Old Path White Clouds, a life of the Buddha from the Pali Canon sans miracles. It sometimes seems as if the Buddha is present teaching me. I mix that in with one or more of the entries in At Home in the World.
2.In At Home in the World, Thich wrote of the importance of coming back home to the present. That’s a nice way of remembering to just cease our mental wanderings. It also is good to remember when things are going south and despair is beginning to creep in. So much of mental anguish is in the past and future. It is peaceful in the present.
3.In Thich’s book on the life of the Buddha, the Buddha says that “the teaching is just a vehicle to see the truth”. It is not the truth.
“Clinging and aversion are both ropes that bind.”
4.In each of us is the victim of discrimination and the one who discriminates.” p. 75 At Home in the World.
1.Sitting inside through most of a rainy day.
I had been stuck on the web of past and the future
That this day brings.
Memories – a tradition broken.
Fears.
An arbitrary marking of time.
A week and half to late for the solstice
To early for the cold and snows of winter.
A day to remember what has been lost.
A day to worry about what will come or
Sadly mourn who is missing entering this new year.
Stepping outside.
Breathing deeply the cool damp air.
In and Out.
Cobwebs beginning to drop from my mind.
Back in the present.
Watching thoughts.
I remember there is something I need to write down.
2.Thich Nhat Hanh has me “walking in the footsteps of the Buddha in his Old Path White Clouds. Chapter 45 is “Full Awareness of Breathing” and recounts a practice the Buddha gave to 3000 followers:
Summarized from Thich Nhat Hanh, Old Path White Clouds pp.275-380.
First breath (in and out): a long breath mindfully.
Second Breath (in and out): a short breath mindfully.
Third breath (in and out): awareness of the body. Contemplate body; awareness of every part.
Fourth breath (in and out): making the body calm and peaceful.
Fifth breath (in and out): feeling joyful.
Sixth breath (in and out): feeling happy.
Seventh breath (in and out): aware of the activities on the mind in me.
Eighth breath (in and out): making the activities of the mind in me calm and at peace.
Ninth breath (in and out): aware of my mind.
Tenth breath (in and out): making my mind happy and at peace.
Eleventh breath (in and out): concentrating my mind.
Twelfth breath (in and out): liberating my mind.
Thirteenth breath (in and out): observing the impermanent nature of all dharmas.
Fourteenth breath (in and out): observing the fading of all dharmas
Fifteenth breath (in and out): contemplating liberation
Sixteenth breath (in and out): contemplating letting go.
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