In Edward Espe Brown’s wonderful book, No Recipe–Cooking as Spiritual Practice, he writes:
“We could do well to study how we do what we are doing—what is the most important point?—because as Suzuki Roshi mentioned, “If I tell you something, you will stick to it, but it is not always so. When you stick to something that I say, you will abandon your capacity to study and investigate for yourself (page 63).”
So, if you really want a more fulfilling life you need to discover what that means for you. Try things out, practice, evaluate, and learn, and then decide if you want to stick to it or not. I’ll bet it hasn’t been long since someone told you what to do and how to do it and maybe even when and why to do it. I can see you shaking your head right now, I can hear you saying, “Yes, just 5 minutes ago!” Like he or she knows how to do it better than you do!?
Edward does not want us to get caught in what he calls, “the realm of thinking” rather than observing for yourself how things happen in your experience and using that information to possibly make better choices for yourself. I hear the little cogs in your brain turning around and around right now thinking of that last conversation you had with your boss, significant other, or coworker telling you how to do something. You listen and begin to think it could be faster, quicker, more accurate and much more effective, or fun—if you didn’t do it that way!
I love what Edward says next, “When you observe closely how things happen in your experience, change comes from you, out of your experience, rather than being implemented top down from your thinking. ‘Don’t put another head over your head,’ is a Zen saying (page 64).”
Or are you like Bartholomew in Dr. Seuss’ book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins creating the same old hat over and over! Are you sitting in the same old chair with the same old ideas one on top of the other over and over?
I can see myself right now in the mirror with a giant pile of hats from large to small, from fancy to plain filled with my own creations, thoughts, ideas, and plans. I don’t want to be like Bartholomew with the same old hat over and over 499 times! Once I “observe myself closely” I see myself doing the same old worn out thing over and over again. Only then can I throw away that plain old hat and create something new, innovative, exciting, and adventurous!
Maybe at onetime in the past “it was always so” but now—not so much! Now I might need to make a better or different choice for myself. What hat are you wearing today? What hat do you wish you were wearing today?
Annie decides to ask to be picked up to lay in my lap and listen to me read aloud. I guess that is why “dog” is “god” spelled backward! She knows the hidden treasure when she hears it. But me, sometimes I must hear it and read it and see it many times over before I catch the drift of its meaning and move with it as I walk through my daily life. Oh, if I was just as cleaver as Annie!
Beyond Prayer 9…Metta: goodwill and loving-kindness
Posted in administrators, bombing airplanes, Buddhaghosa, campus unrest, cause and effect, chant, death, discrimination, diversity, education, Ethics, extinct species, fears, happiness, hate speech, human race, Kazuaki Tanahashi, love, meditation, Metta, Metta Prayer, oppression, planet earth, prayer, prison system in America, protesters, religion, sexual assault, Shambhala, Zen Chants Thirty-Five Essential Texts with Commentary on November 13, 2015| 2 Comments »
Kazuaki Tanahashi, in his book, Zen Chants Thirty-Five Essential Texts with Commentary, writes this:
As we watch the news each evening and see the students on campuses around the country protesting for things that I thought would not still exist in 2015: hiring discrimination, race discrimination, hate speech, unresponsive administrations, sexual assaults, and more. Each of these protesters want for themselves the list of things we recite in the first verse of the Metta and they also want it for everyone else on planet earth. And thus, we chant for them in the second verse.
We can add those in the prison system in America and those in the Middle East who are being killed and bombed in their countries and homes, and in airplanes flying through the air after a family vacation. As a human race we need to work at learning how to live together with our diversity and cultures and religions or we will soon be an extinct species and all that will be left are the birds, the bees, and the trees.
Besides chanting this verse each and every day with love and passion, what can you do each day in your families, homes, workplaces and communities? Think small or think big but please think and then act. You just may save someone’s life. You never know.
May you be happy and find ways to share your happiness with everyone you meet.
In gassho,
Shokai
[1] Tanahashi, K. (2015) Zen Chants Thirty-Five Essential Texts with Commentary. Shambhala: Boston & London
[2] Ibid.
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