Monks and Bodhisattvas

This is a 4 minute audio clip of Thomas Merton. It may just change your life. Do you have 4 minutes?

The Awakened Heart

This is a talk of Jack Kornfield from November 2008 about pointing the compass of our heart. It is 64 minutes. Do you have an hour? It may change your life.

The Bodhisattva Leader 

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

Last night was another of tossing, anxiety, doubt, embarrassment and shame. For I have been pressed to relive moments of the past in the light. At 2:36 am rose out of bed. Trying to calm my head by resting in love. I sat before the fire place and had a tremendous urge to pray. I crumpled in prayer not really knowing what to say or ask but when I reached in my heart I asked with God to help me find His love. Tears began to pour forth as I finally let go of my will and sincerely asked for God to give me His grace. I asked for Jordon too. I asked that He give us all His Grace. Quickly the tears subsided and I went back to bed. I felt relaxed and relieved. This morning I woke to these words. "Surrender your will and your life to the care of God". I came to my room and pulled the Bible out of the box it has been in since I received it last summer. Wanda's mentioning Corinthians the other day spoke to me and so I looked in the index. There are two books. Which do I choose? Surrendering my will I landed upon 2 Corinthians and this is part of what I read:

All praise to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the source of every mercy and the God who comforts us. He comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort others. When others are troubled, we will be able to give them the same comfort God has given us.

Today happens to be the feast of St. Patrick. St. Patty's Day. Thank you to all who have helped me.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I have been thinking of my early recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. I found my spirituality through AA, a higher power, God. I truly came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I have been having a resurfacing of doubt partly because my Buddhist rock has been shaken by the strong yearning to know God. The other part is that of my sensitivity to others suffering and doubt which makes me feel hopeless, which make me want to fix them and when I have shared in deep personal ways makes me think that the only way to connect with someone is through sexual intimacy. Desperation, turns to despair, which turns to hopelessness, which is now turning to sexual desire. Another level of escape. I am seeing too though how this is just another play of the ego. The urgency to fix the feelings. Finding the way, the answers. Always searching. Anyway, I remembered in meditation this prayer which I carried with me for a long time when I was introduced to it by Father Tom Weston at a LGBT AA Retreat in Los Gatos. It is called the Prayer of Trust and was written by a Jesuit priest to a young student:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God

We are, quite naturally, impatient in everything

to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

We are impatient of being on the way to something new;

and yet it is the law of all progress

that it is made by passing through

some stages of instability -----

and that may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.

Your ideas mature gradually ----

let them grow, let them shape themselves,

without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on,

as though acting on your own,

you will make your own tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit

gradually forming within you will be.

Give him the benefit of believing

that his hand is leading you,

and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself

in suspense and incomplete.

~Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Isn't that just wonderful! Trust in the anxiety of feeling in suspense and incomplete. Trust in groundlessness.

Henry David Thoreau

Reflecting on my session with my therapist and the emotions that came with a follow-up email from him, this mornings meditation brought the memory of when I first heard the words of Thoreau. I was a junior in high school. I'm not sure if my grandmother had died yet or not but it was the first time I heard the truth about how I was feeling. It was the first time I read it in black and white. The thoughts that were crawling through my teenage brain suddenly were affirmed. What if the hokey pokey is all it is about?

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

~Walden (1854), Henry David Thoreau

The comments post email communications between my therapist and myself over the course of some pretty emotional days for me.

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

Chögyam Trungpa

Last night I awoke at 1:49 am delighted by all the insights I'd been getting. The new sense of being with and perceiving myself and others in the context of love. A feeling as if the whole world is my messenger. Not just in pleasant but unpleasant situations. The feelings of resting in the space of neutrality. And the new strength and bravery I have in my willingness to sit with the uncomfortable, sticky, discomfort, the background hum. I am finding the words of Chögyam Trungpa understandable down to my toes. I was seeing all my teachers. I do not have one teacher. I have many. I have my dreams, Sharon Salzberg, Pema, Jack Kornfield, Chögyam, Amida Schmidt, nature, art, De Mello, Merton, Bear, my mom, my dad, Philip my co-worker, Ellen, all of them, everything, all the time teaching me.

Here is a recent post to Shambhala SunSpace Blog, "The Warrior Tradition: Conquering Fear," by Chögyam Trungpa

Here is just one of messages messages within the text of the article:

"The path of fearlessness is connected with what we do right now, today, rather than with anything theoretical or waiting for a cue from somewhere else. The basic vision of warriorship is that there is goodness in everyone. We are all good in ourselves. So we have our own warrior society within our own body. We have everything we need to make the journey already."