Water my Practice:Dharma, Sangha and Meditation

I have found a home, or rather a home found my path. I think. I had joined the People of Color Sangha last year, and though a joyful and enriching experience I did not feel particularly at home there. My practice continued as it had from the beginning, taking form from the rich readings, discussions with friends and my trial and error at meditation. Knowing that the Shangha constitutes a pillar of the practice, I continued to contemplate the intention of finding a Sangha, a home. Acting on such intention, I visited yet another amazing community, The Sweet Water Zen Monastery near the border with Tijuana. I bought the beginner’s manual and started the inquiry for getting on the waiting list for those who want to move to the residential community. Then I suddenly had to move again. I’d been thinking about going back despite the longer drive now from my new home. I had not yet. As I write this, I contemplate the beauty of the experience that first time at the center, the energy in the small meditation hall, the teachings of Zazen, and the warm smiles of the sentient beings that met me that morning. My last experience seeking a Sangha came as I learned and have sat now twice now, of the new World Beat Center Sangha. This, as the first People of Color Sangha, follows the teachings of Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese sweet, cool, brilliant Monk. This Sangha, and I think of this as brilliantly confirming, meets exactly after the Africa Dance class I take and exactly at the same place.

Both, the WBC and Zen Sanghas, each with their own set of rituals and following a given set of teachings and tradition, offer a river, a flower and a mountain. I ought to send an email to the Nun at SDSU asking for her guidance as to finding. I must follow up with this in the next two or three days. In any case, I’m finding a home… :)

Impermanent are all compounded things.
When one perceives this with true insight,
then one becomes detached from suffering;
this is the path of purification.

Dhammapada 20.277

When he breathes in a long breath, he knows, ‘I am breathing in a long breath.’ When he breathes out a long breath, he knows, ‘I am breathing out a long breath.’ When he breathes in a short breath, he knows, ‘I am breathing in a short breath.’ When he breathes out a short breath, he knows ‘I am breathing out a short breath.’

On right concentration: one stage of the eightfold path, leads to an awareness and deep observation of the object of concentration and eventually to awakened understanding…

Thich Nhat Hanh

a recitation for walking meditation:

“The mind can go in a thousand directions,
But on this beautiful path, I walk in peace.
With each step, a gentle wind blows.
With each step a flower blooms.

Time to sit down:

Sitting here
is like sitting under the Bodhi tree.
My body is mindfulness itself,
entirely free from distraction.”

Transformation and Healing: Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh

My readings (Shambala, Buddhadharma and Trycycle)

“with this strategy, we get invested in the control and manipulation of others and in trying to use people as antidotes to our own anxiety.”

“Curative fantasy of autonomy”

“Detachment=Acceptance of impermanence”

“Our being in practice is not about finally getting to a place where we are going to escape but about creating a container that allows us to be more and more human, to feel more and more.”

“As long as we are afraid of feeling unlovable we will react and our defenses will kick in.”

“instead, contain and feel both; that allows us to feel neediness without clinging.”

Commentary: being compassionate and loving from within cultivates that container that allows me to feel needy without plunging into the habit of clinginess. It helps tremendously too that I’m cultivating friendships with sentient beings that currently also cultivate their own containment gardens. In this new experience the manifestation of neediness flows as thus, a human experience and not a formula for drama. In other words these are friends that don’t take my being for granted, or as antidote to their own anxieties. Our friendships then become a communal container that allows us to be more and more human, to feel more and more loving and compassionate.

IS NOT (at least for me)

• A way to escape
• A path to cultivate my “spiritual ego”
• Easy
• A routine

WHAT MEDITATION IS (at least for me)

• skill, practice to cultivate stillness
• skill in practice to cultivate loving kindness-compassion-awareness
• Available right here, right now

I know that I sit the dark clouds, funny faces and stings of flying mosquitoes thus are. Yet I also know that in finding the stillness of middle ground I will see the dark clouds, the funny faces and flying mosquitoes for what they are…

Above, across or back again,
wherever he goes in the world
let him carefully scrutinise
the rise and fall of compounded things.

Itivuttaka 4.111

Wonderful it is to train the mind,
so swiftly moving, seizing whatever it wants.
Good is it to have a well-trained mind,
for a well-trained mind brings happiness.

Sitting peacefully on a cushion day and night seeking to attain Buddhahood, rejecting life and death in hopes of realizing enlightenment, is all like a monkey grasping at the moon reflected in the water.

-Shoitsu

It’s not what we may do that’s
important,
it’s the doing of it…

we’re not concerned with the content
of our experiences
touching or being touched…
we are concerned with being…

what we’re exploring
is not the body
but the body’s awareness…

our being is not less or more
complete
when touching
another person

or when standing alone…

we’re not concerded
with the body

we’re concerned with
being present…

=======================

Just standing
nothing else

when one is
just standing

anywhere
with respect to what…

when you walk
by the door you may take
one of the numerous shoes there

you may walk carrying
one shoe

just be walking
with one shoe in your hand

walking as slowly or
as fast as you like

walk

we walk like this
not for the shoes
not for us

but to question our need for meanning

if we look for
meanning in everything
we’re concerned with meanning
not with experiences
not with life

just be walking
with the shoe in hand

Again and again, and again….

Tricycle, Winter 2007

For me I do it without shoes at all and on a wodden dance floor! When I dance I meditate.