Buddha's Guidance

There will come a day when I won’t need words to serve as reminders to the inner wisdom buried far below, but for now they help:

Knowing that sentient beings
All have a thousand desires
Gripping the depths of their minds,
The Buddha teaches them
In accordance with their characters
And conditions.
With stories, words, and skillful means
He teaches them the truth.

~ Lotus Sutra

Lost

Feeling quite apathetic at the moment.  Apathetic:  indifferent, uninterested, listless, droopy, unconcerned, lethargic, lazy.

Yep, that’s what it is alright.  I’m having a difficult time just slogging through my duties here at work.  I didn’t think the events from last week would affect me like this.  After all, I’m a guy right?  It didn’t happen to me, it happened to my wife. I know, I know; it did happen to me too, but I just didn’t think the effects would last this long.  I figured it would happen, greave the loss and move on.  Surprise, surprise, things never seem to work out as you think they should do they?

For now, my practice is to try and just feel what I feel and not try to escape the feelings by going to food for comfort.  I fear, that’ll be a tough task today.

blog day 2005

hey this does sound neat! international blog day 2005 is this wednesday, august 31st.  on wednesday post to your blog a recommendation to 5 new blogs.  spread the word about blogday2005 and have fun blog-hopping on wednesday!!

[found at a mindful life]

Drowning in the RSS stream

We are in charge of what we allow to become inputs into our lives.  The idea of a newsreader or aggregator seemed like I good one at the time, but since using it for a week, I’ve found that I’ve subscribed to over 40 RSS feeds ranging from Reuters and AP news feeds to the many blogs that talk to my heart in an online community I sorta belong to.  I just can’t keep up with all the new items being flung at me day in and day out.

I think escape was part of the motive behind downloading and playing with the aggregator tool.  It turned into a pretty mind-numbing exercise to just browse through feed after feed, post after post.  Sorta a different version of channel surfing I suppose.  Well, I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t all that spiritually healthy for me to be mindlessly absorbing the information stream for hours on end with no real interaction with the creators of the content (this is especially true of the blogs in my blog-o-sphere).  I’m missing the human interaction.  But then again, I really haven’t felt that much like interacting lately.

Has this ever happened to others out there?  What are your experiences?

The other shore

P8090057
Originally uploaded by jhsoper.

Just wanted to share a photo from our time in the Finger Lakes this summer. Also playing with posting a photo from within flickr. If you click on the photo it'll take you to my flickr site where you can see other photos of the vacation.

Thanks

Thank you to everyone in my blog-o-sphere who has offered their sympathies, prayers, thoughts and well wishes.  I really appreciate it.  My wife and I are still going through the process of dealing with the loss.  It hits me at odd times during my day; and with today being my first day back in the office, I feel inclined to just pretty much keep to myself.

I’m going to try and make the time to sit on my zafu in the next few days to try and let these emotions and feelings just settle where they may.  That’s about all I can think of to do to take care of myself.

Thanks again for all your support.  I’m truly amazed at the generosity of folks I haven’t even met.  Peace to you all.

Life

A life is started,
then 8 weeks later
it's ended.
Just like that.
Why?
Who knows.
All I know is...
this just fucking sucks!

Sitting

Sat zazen last night for the first time in a LONG while. I could tell it has been a while. My mind would just not settle down. I didn’t even have the patience to count my exhalations. This tells me I’ve been away from it for too long. I need to make a better effort to get to the zafu EVERYDAY, even if it’s only for 15 minutes. I could barely get through that last night. It’s funny, there’s very little negative self talk this time. It’s nice. The facts are the facts, I haven’t been sitting on a regular basis and when I do sit down and begin to quite my body-mind, there will be resistance. That’s it. No, "should haves" or "could haves", it is what it is.

You know, feeling this way is beginning to feel more natural. What I mean is, it used to feel "natural" to have all that negative self talk and self-flagellation over not meditating regularly, now it doesn’t. I like this way of living much better :-).

Being in the stream

Meditation is not just a rest or retreat from the turmoil of the stream or the impurity of the world. It is a way of being the stream, so that one can be at home both in the white water and in the eddies. Meditation may take one out of the world, but it also puts one totally in it...

~ Gary Snyder

Bye bye Avatar

Ok, I've decided that I didn't like the whole avatar concept. I'm going back to my real photo. Felt like I was hiding something. I live my life as openly and honestly as I can. I want that reflected here as well.

The Three Refuges

Whew! I've been back in the office for only 5 hours (after being on vacation for the past 9 days here) and my head is spinning like crazy!! So I thought I'd take a quick break and put up a post here at Dharma Path.

I've recently committed myself to learning the six basic chants that we use at MEZ and thought I'd share with you the first:

The Three Refuges

I take refuge in Buddha.
May all beings
embody the great way
resolving to awaken.

I take refuge in Dharma.
May all beings
deeply enter the sutras
wisdom like an ocean.

I take refuge in Sangha.
May all beings
support harmony in the community,
free from all hindrance.

Another Side of Me

Thought I'd share this OTHER major side to me as a person by letting you in on my other blog: John Soper's OPML Blog. My wife affectionately calls me her "little computer geek"! Can you see why? :-)

What is this true meditation?

It is to make everything: coughing, swallowing, waving the arms, motion, stillness, words, actions, the evil and the good, prosperity and shame, gain and loss into one single koan . . . with the principle of pure, undiluted, undistracted meditation before your eyes, attain a state of mind in which, even though surrounded by crowds of people, it is as if you were alone in a field extending tens of thousands of miles . . . if at this time you struggle forward without losing any ground, it will be as though a sheet of ice has cracked, as though a tower of jade has fallen, and you will experience a great feeling of joy.

~ Hakuin