DEATHLY HALLOWS: A LOVE STORY

MEDITATION: WAKING UP TO REALITY

"Meditation is not about creating any particular feeling. Meditation is about awareness, about waking up to Reality. Some people try to use meditation like a drug, as a way to escape from life or distract themselves from Reality. But anything that draws us away from Reality is deception." (Steve Hagen)

THE SPIRIT, NOT THE WORDS, OF THE BUDDHA

THE MIND AND BODY WORK TOGETHER FOR GOOD HEALTH

For years now around the world there has been a growing understanding of the correlation of mind and body, and of the link between ill health and the way we cope with stress and our emotions. Just as distressing states of mind can cause disorders, so positive, uplifting states can promote good health: states such as peace of mind, optimism, confidence, humor, companionship, joy, love, kindness, compassion, and devotion. (The Spirit of Buddhism The Future of Dharma in the West by Sogyal Rinpoche)

AT CHUANG YEN MONASTERY

Click here for another video from Chuang Yen Monastery.
Check out my photo album on the right for even more images.

MEDITATION

Generally we waste our lives, distracted from our true selves, in endless activity; meditation, on the other hand, is the way to bring us back to ourselves, where we can really experience and taste our full being, beyond all habitual patterns. Our lives are lived in intense and anxious struggle, in a swirl of speed and aggression, in competing, grasping, possessing, and achieving, forever burdening ourselves with extraneous activities and preoccupations. Meditation is the exact opposite. (Sogyal Rinpoche, Meditation)

WHAT IT'S ALL ABOUT

To lose yourself in another's arms, or in another's company, or in suffering for all men who suffer, including the ones who inflict suffering upon you--to lose yourself in such ways is to find yourself. Is what it's all about. Is what love is. (Frederick Buechner)

THE THANK YOU BUDDHA

FROM AN ANGEL RIDER

Thanks to Nancy for sending along this poem. She says the Angel Ride made her think of this poem by Marge Piercy.

To be of use

The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half submerged balls.

I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.

I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who stand in the line and haul in their places,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

SPEAKING OF FAITH: 'THE NEW MONASTICS'

I encourage you to tune into this Sunday's NPR program Speaking of Faith about a growing movement of people called the new monastics. These are ordinary people who nurture virtues like simplicity and imagination and who are engaging the great contradictions of our time— beginning with the gap between the churches they were raised in, the needs of the poor, and the "loneliness" they find in our culture's vision of adulthood. The program will feature author Shane Claiborne, who says on his website:

Each of us is created for community, and in the image of community. And yet everything in the world tried to rob us of this Divine gift. The life of the simple way is the story of that struggle to love and to be loved. The most radical thing we do is choose to love each other... again and again. If you are a seeker of the Way, may our story feed you hope... or at least keep you from making all the same mistakes.

Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett is public radio's conversation about religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas. Each week, Tippett probes the myriad ways in which religious impulses inform every aspect of life and culture, nationally and globally. Speaking of Faith fills an important and neglected need in American media by addressing the intellectual and spiritual content of religion head-on, illuminating the ideas and practices that form the headlines from the inside

Click here to find a channel near you.