Violon et Compotier (Violin and Fruit-Dish) 1924; Juan Gris 1887-1927

I spoke on the phone the other day with a dear friend I had not seen in 40 years. We talked about how similar we are– we both suffer from spiritual yearning. Then she told me of her stage four breast cancer.

She asked about teachers and online meditation groups. When I confessed feeling incompetent because I didn’t know what to say about her diagnosis, she made me feel at ease. There’s an urgency here, she said.

I was struggling with how to address that urgency in a helpful way. Yes, we all die, it’s all temporary, everything eventually falls apart.

As the Diamond Sutra teaches:

So you should view this fleeting world –

Like a tiny drop of dew, or a bubble floating in a stream;

Like a flash of lightning in a summer cloud,

Or a flickering lamp, an illusion, a phantom, or a dream.

Yes, of course, but as the 17th century Buddhist poet and priest Issa wrote after his first-born child died shortly after his birth:

The world of dew —

A world of dew it is indeed,

And yet, and yet . . .

And yet … there is a longing for stability, for protection, for refuge.

We all get the Buddha’s radical teachings on impermanence. But I feel for Issa at that moment, impermanence is not just a philosophical concept, but a real feeling of sadness and longing.

The poignant voice of “and yet, and yet…” also seems to suggest there is something else, something waiting for him to discover, something he feels is missing.

But that something else can’t be nailed down. As Ajahn Chah would say:

“You can’t make a permanent home in a sankhara”

There is no place to settle down in conditioned patterns. But you don’t really need to worry about it, he retorts, because it’s not your real home anyway.

Ajahn Cha continues:

When we come home to who we are in our entirety, not to some borrowed or imposed image, but to who we are, as we are here and now in the dynamic flow of impermanence, we discover we never left this place of true refuge and peace.

We have been pining for something that has been there all along -- a silent wakefulness that allows all our experiences to pass through effortlessly.

My yearning to come home, for this grand spiritual homecoming, was just a lot of craving that only led to more stress and confusion. Yet we need a modicum of skillful yearning to get the Dharma wheels turning.

This yearning is skillful as long as it doesn't pull you out of the present moment and point to something that's supposed to happen in some other moment.

As one of my teachers said, stopping me in my tracks:

There is no future enlightenment.

The poet Mark Nepo writes that this spiritual homecoming is not a destination but a song the human heart keeps singing, the way birds keep singing at the first sign of light, and the journey of becoming who we truly are never ends.

We don’t really arrive anywhere new; we just keep growing out of the flow of peace that's already here

As we blossom out from the timeless loving awareness we shift smoothly into what Ajahn Chah called the witness to all things.

It is a world of dew indeed. And yet, and yet…there still is a blooming in each passing moment.

As Thorreau tells us in Walden and Civil Disobedience:


There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hand. I love a broad margin to my life.


Our simple mindfulness practice reveals an ever-blooming peace within, just waiting for you, my dear friend.

A loving and comforting flow beyond the clutch of the thinking mind, untouched by any diagnosis or personal history.

With metta and aloha,

Tom

1. Meditating is watching and allowing with relaxed attention whatever pleasant or unpleasant experience is happening.

2. Meditation is learning from everything we encounter. We learn whether we desire, fear, or have no interest in each experience that arises.

3. It is staying present and alert, free of the past or future.

4. Relax, observe, and allow everything that is occurring.

5. Stay soft without rigidity, focused without straining, and sit straight without tension.

6. Neither try to create nor encourage any experience. Be with things just as they are.

7. Practice without expectation, and with the courage to open to every experience.

8. Meditation is not waiting for something to occur or waiting for something to go away. It is being patient with all things.

9. Meditation is being present for both pleasant and unpleasant experiences.

10. Know the attitude with which you meditate: are you resisting or wanting something? If so you are inducing stress into meditation.

11. Don’t be disturbed by the thinking mind. You are not practicing to prevent thinking but to recognize thinking when it arises.

12. What is the mind doing? Thinking or being aware?

13. What story is the mind promoting right now?

14. The object of attention is not as important as the observation. If the observing is done with the right attitude, the object will be the right object

This is the most destructive and potentially de-stabilizing military action taking place in Europe since the end of WW2. As Buddhists or Buddhism-curious people we stand by and helplessly watch this horror unfold in small sound bytes as they filter through to us.

While we can say there is nothing tangible we can do, I would differ and say we can offer our heartfelt metta thoughts to all who are suffering needlessly this moment.

In you are not familiar with this metta meditation, please consider setting aside 25 minutes to follow this guided meditation offered by Gil Fronsdal. When thinking of the well-being of others, you could choose to direct your metta thoughts to the people of Ukraine while following along the guidance offered here.

Guernica, Pablo Picasso, 1937.

We tell beginnings: for the flesh and the answer,

or the look, the lake in the eye that knows,

for the despair that flows down in widest rivers,

cloud of home; and also the green tree of grace,

all in the leaf, in the love that gives us ourselves.

The word of nourishment passes through the women,

soldiers and orchards rooted in constellations,

white towers, eyes of children:

saying in time of war What shall we feed?

I cannot say the end.

Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.

Not all things are blest, but the

seeds of all things are blest.

The blessing is in the seed.

This moment, this seed, this wave of the sea, this look, this instant of love.

Years over wars and an imagining of peace. Or the expiation journey

toward peace which is many wishes flaming together,

fierce pure life, the many-living home.

Love that gives us ourselves, in the world known to all

new techniques for the healing of the wound,

and the unknown world. One life, or the faring stars.

from Elegies, published by New Directions in 1949.

The publisher says that the poem were “written over a seven year period from the end of the Spanish Civil War, through World War II, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, to the start of the Cold War.” It is a poem about healing, and about peace.

Alice Walker, best known for the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple, once said “Muriel Rukeyser loved poetry more than anyone I’ve ever known. She also believed it could change us, move the world.”

This weekly newsletter offers personal reflections on the Early Buddhist teachings. They are merely the stray thoughts of a lazy meditator, nothing more. Authoritative commentary on Early Buddhist teachings can be found in our resources page. 

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