For Crying Out Loud! (Reprise)

“Crying is one of the highest devotional songs. One who knows crying, knows spiritual practice. If you can cry with a pure heart, nothing else compares to such a prayer. 

 Crying includes all the principles of Yoga.”

― Kripalvanandji

“All the books of the world full of thoughts and poems are nothing in comparison to a minute of sobbing, when feeling surges in waves, 

the soul feels itself profoundly and finds itself."
― Hermann Hesse, The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse 

Emmet Kelly 1898-1979

A couple of days ago I came across the above quote by Swami Kripalvanandji while preparing for a yoga class that I was going to teach later that day.  Amazed, I immediately emailed it to a dear friend of mine who was having a rough time.

She replied that it helped -- a lot.  She was heading out to her garden to have a good cry.

Growing up in today's society, most of us have learned to avoid crying like the plague.  Widely characterized as a sign of unacceptable weakness and frailty, we are conditioned to keep a stiff upper lip, to steel ourselves against this natural expression of heartfelt feeling.  As a result, our patterns of resistance to crying are pretty pervasive.  (Maybe Fear of Crying is a good title for another novel of self-discovery?)

That being said, I actually hesitated to plunge ahead here.  After posts concentrating on death, pain and sadness the past couple weeks, I thought that maybe I was being too much of a downer, that maybe I'd better "lighten up" a bit.  After all, isn't Buddha's Third Noble Truth the freakin' Cessation of Suffering?

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Sometimes the Snooze Button is Best

 “To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. 

You need to accept yourself.”
― Thich Nhat Hạnh

“The most fundamental aggression to ourselves, the most fundamental harm we can do to ourselves, is to remain ignorant by not having the courage and the respect 

to look at ourselves honestly and gently.”
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

After making multiple attempts over the course of the past few hours to come up with something to say for this week's MMM Courtesy Wake Up Call, I realized that I needed to hit the snooze button, roll over, and give it a rest --  again and again.

Finally, I knew it was time to just reset the dang alarm and make a new plan.
      
It's been a long week, full of activity and challenge for myself and for a number of my friends.  As well as spending time on a number of urgent volunteer efforts, I've spent a lot of time sitting with my own "stuff" and that of others.  

Now, I'm spent.  

So, at this point on Saturday evening, I thought that, perhaps, it would be helpful (to me at least) to do as I've done a number of times over the past couple of years.  I Ching style, I just randomly picked a previous post. 

Are you kidding me?! 
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The Rest is Easy

"So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it 

God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. 

-- Genesis 2:3

“Everyday we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: 

a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child - our own two eyes. 

All is a miracle.”
― Thích Nhat Hanh

Fall arrived on Sunday. 

It was three days ahead of schedule – if you’re paying attention to the conceptual structures and devices we humanoids create in our attempt to divide the seamless flow of reality into discrete and identifiable chunks of somethingness. 

Sunday, I wasn’t so inclined.
 
It was one of those days when any sort of box or label seemed dreadfully inadequate. Even words like Awesome and Astonishing and Sacred and Miraculous seemed way too tame. They paled in comparison to the Reality that gleamed outside the window.  There, a brilliant sun and crystalline blue sky soared over trees that danced and swayed wildly to the free-form music of a crisp northwest breeze.

As I sat for the first period of meditation at my bedroom altar, that same breeze whispered through the open window, “come out here.” When the bell rang (I time my sessions with an excellent laptop program), I donned long pants and a sweatshirt for the first time in ages, rolled up a makeshift zabuton, a blanket, and my zafu, and headed down to spend most of this week’s Day of Mindfulness outside. 

There, it once again became obvious: You don't have to die to go to Heaven!

Resting in Peace

​
If you've been following these meandering missives on mindfulness, you'll know that one of my Practice commitments for Fall Ango this year is to spend one day a week in Silence.  (See "'Tis the Season"and "Promises Promises"). Unplugged from the Matrix and it's various devices (even the printed word), from daybreak until the time I crawl away to sleep, the entire day is dedicated to the cultivation of Mindfulness.

I didn't invent this idea, of course.  
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Promises Promises

“Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.”

― Suzuki Roshi 

“Daily sitting is our bread and butter, the basic stuff of dharma. 
Without it we tend to be confused.”
― Charlotte Joko Beck

A Carmelite Monk and his Vows

There were quite a few of us back in the day that were first drawn to Zen because of its seemingly irreverent and iconoclastic tenor and tone.  To a bunch of us erstwhile hippies, peaceniks, and radicals, those ancient monks kicking over water jugs, writing poems lauding drunkeness, proclaiming Buddha was a "shit stick", etc., seemed like our kind of guys. 

Little did we know.

Once I actually connected with a teacher and a sangha, a different reality emerged.  I found that the foundation of Zen Buddhism, like that of other spiritual traditions throughout the world, rests squarely on a set of vows and precepts.  Rather than becoming a member of another tribe of free form hippies, I found out that engaging in formal Zen training with a teacher meant making a commitment to a set of clearly stated intentions: Taking Refuge in the Triple Gems, the Four Bodhisattva Vows, the Three Pure Precepts, and the 10 Essential Precepts was expected.  It was part of the deal.

WTF?  

Jeez.  In the Judeo-Christian world, we only had to worry about the ten commandments! Now? Do the math. This is twice as many.  So much for being hip and cool, for "doing your own thing!"

Or so it seemed. 
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