Merton Buddhist

I didn't want to say I was a Buddhist Catholic because I'm not Catholic. What I have found with Thomas Merton however, is a new connection with God which seems entirely Buddhist to me. So in honor of the Lententide Season, I am abstaining from certain things in the next 40 days. My focus and desire is to work with the stillness while continuing my lay daily, family and other obligations but will be mindful of idleness. I want to apply mindful eating by trying to have two small meals and one main dinner and no snacking. I have been feeling that my voracious reading appetite needs to be quelled. I have been reading in hopes that just one more chapter on one more book will give me the answers to cure this groundless state I have been skirting and avoiding. Because of this I can only read the Catholic Mass readings, A Book of Hours by Thomas Merton and my daily Tricycle reading and accompanying article. This will leave more time which I often spend when not reading, surfing the net. I have been avoiding writing because staring at that blank page is like sitting in that groundless space. So I am only allowed to write. No TV. Only 1 hour of internet and it is only for this blog or checking personal email (only 1 per day). If I have nothing to do I will either do meditation, walking meditation or the practice of just sitting with my eyes open but doing nothing or shamatha.

The next 40 days will be a quest.

Find inspiration from this Tricycle online "Calm Abiding" by Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche

Letting Go

Heaven may close my eyes

so I need to build my bridges.

And the other voice said,

"Then let go."

The Gifts of Easter Sunday

Morning meditation and prayer.

A run in the park and communing with the space.

A walk with Lynton. Warm talking and friendship in nature.

An amazing email from Bill that affirmed both Buddhist and Christian traditions in a way for me to embrace whole heartily.

An afternoon with the ladies complete with Easter Egg hunt and potluck.

Sweet intimacy with Bear

Popcorn

Evening Meditation & Prayer

It doesn't get any better than this

Thank you.

Trinity

Form, Breath, Love
Father, Mother, Child

Buddha, Dharma, Sangha

Father, Son, Holy Spirit

Red, Blue, Green

Earth, Air, Space

Making the Fortress-House into a Home

The title is words from J. Denosky (who is an enigma, but has numerous site on the web with regard to supernatural and metaphysical phenomena). I believe I read it in the story "The Life of Kira". But this sums up my transformation this past two weeks. Really coming to grips with ego attachment and how the habit of Fortress-House has been perpetuated in my mind. The release of ego by asking for God's grace is now a felt sense. One I was not previously aware of. My noble efforts to "figure out" what makes me tick, were in vain. I was trying to find God, Buddhanature, the Christ within which is an impossible task. One that can make you literally crazy. But perhaps it was the way for me because now after reaching complete surrender I was able to relax into letting Love help me. I had hammered, clawed, bitten and strained trying to find God, all to no avail. It was the surrender that allowed me to feel the grace, love and emptiness of a moment. Fleeting as it was in memory, there remains the bodily memory which shall sustain me and keep me open and willing to strive in the direction of the Awakened Heart or Home. The grasping Fortress-House of ego is now tame. Pain, love, happiness, sadness - all things are free to come and go from the Home. This is who I truly am.

Lord show me the way

Keep me safe in mind and body

Your greatest gift to me

has been free will.

May I continue to receive your grace

turning my will over to you

until it is yours

May you know that I yearn to

share with others

so they too may come to dwell in the

Home of Awakened Heart

Thomas Merton

Within the last 2 weeks, I have had a yearning to discover more about God. I thought I had given that up. Buddhist psychology seemed to have given me a new spiritual foundation  that I have been definitely finding refuge in. Last night I started part II of Thomas Merton's, The Seven Storey Mountain and it was unbelievable. Here is a quote that got me totally excited:

"There is in every intellect a natural exigency for a true concept of God: we are born with the thirst to know and see Him, and therefore it cannot be otherwise."

Helen Reddy

In the eighth grade, unlike the other kids who were into Led Zepllin, Elton John and the Bee Gees, my idols were Neil Diamond and Helen Reddy. I loved them. Secretly, I loved Helen Reddy more. My two favorite songs, ironically, Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show and I Am Woman. Kind of where I am today torn between the Christ and the Buddhanature. Where did this memory come from? I awoke this morning and these lines were streaming in my head:

Oh yes, I am wise

But it's wisdom born of pain

~Helen Reddy

Judas and the Butterfly

The story of Judas as the betrayer had me riled up this last week. As Pema would say I was completely hooked. In the story of Jesus, from the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, I was pretty much enjoying the correlations I was finding between my learnings and understandings found in Buddhism and this Christian story. But as I read further, I became irritated and angry with Jesus. His insistence on faith, his abandonment of John the Harbinger and finally he actually told Judas to go kill himself. I know it is just a story, but too many people on this earth believe in this story. We have wars, discrimination and fear over this story; it is taken as absolute truth. I don't get it. How can people not question this story? Even I believe that God loves us all as his children and would not tell any of us that we are so wrong that we should go kill ourselves.

I too am feeling anger over my unanswered prayers as a child. A child's unanswered prayers, are an atrocity in my book. My prayers never made it past the ceiling. Reading this story made me remember my anger with God, with my parents, my teachers and doctors. No one was willing to step up to the plate and address the abuse. All turned a blind eye. This created a deep penetrating sense of abandonment and isolation...a sense that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. This despair turned inward for me. I was not an exploder, I was an imploder. At the age of 12 I held a gun to my head but it was my brothers voice that brought me back. At the age of 20, razor blades but I was too drunk and passed out. And at 45 pills but collapsed in a heap and was checked into a hospital. To me Judas was the brave one. He did it. I was the coward. I never had the nerve to make the final cut (Pink Floyd song).

So this silly story really got to me. It brought up a bunch of stuff. Yesterday, I met with Bill and we talked a little bit about the cognitive side but we didn't really get the the emotion. Before I left he gave me the story of the young girl who finds a cocoon and sees inside a butterfly struggling to get out. She wants to help and tears open the cocoon to let the butterfly out. But it keels over and dies. He said you see the butterfly survives because of its struggle to get out. The fight to get out strengthens its wings so it can fly. This is the only way it can live. A very good story don't you think. But I left his office raw. Which brings me back to why Buddhism has become my source of inner strength. It has given me something I have never had or perhaps I should say I could not find. It is pushing me to reclaim my innate buddhanature within. I am seeing the habitual thinking patterns and I am gently practicing renunciation. And I am touching that love for the first time. I really really down to my toes am touching this love that is who I am. And I cry and let go and at the same moment I want to share that love but wonder why it is so damn hard to find and feel hopeless and angry. Why does it have to be so hard.

But I digress. What I wanted to say is that after leaving Bill's office I felt raw. I was still wondering why Jesus and God guilted Judas into killing himself. And then it came to me ever so gently. Not like a smack upside the head but this gentle settling in of a smile. Judas did kill himself. I didn't. I was saved by my own love for myself. What I have always felt was cowardice for not going through with my plan was really my buddhanature coming forth. I had chosen love each time. Living with suicidal thoughts is perhaps the most harrowing thing I have ever done and it came to me that this is the bravery that Pema and Trungpa talk about. That each time Mara presented me with doubt, fear and anxiety, I have been able to say "Mara I see you." And when Mara says, "Who do you think you are to deserve this love?" I have reached to the earth as my witness. The earth is my witness that I am worthy, I am brave, I am on the path.