Category Archives: reflections

Unknown's avatar

stone unicorn

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This is a cat only a mother could love… and her “mother” is half a world away.  But I have to admit, even I was charmed by the little poser sitting on my dining table cuddling with the stone unicorn.  All sweet and adorable until she needs to wreak havoc on the other unsuspecting felines in the house.

This raises the question for me about competency.  I had a rather intense discussion with someone recently about the issue around work-related competencies and people-competencies.  We really weren’t getting anywhere because in his view, being competent with people was irrelevant to being competent at what you do for a living.  I am assured in his total wrong-headedness simply by virtue of the fact we were two over-educated head-docs having an argument with him being accusatory and me being smug as only an ego-inflated meditator could be.  Quod erat demonstratum.

Take the cat (please).  Very competent at being a cat as evidenced by her ability to pounce, scratch, use the litter box, and hunt insects (mice scare her).  However, she’s lousy at being a communal cat able to deal with the stressors of living well with others, as evidenced by throwing up when upset, beating up on the bigger cats, and in all other ways demonstrating poor emotional intelligence and the judgement of an inebriated mouse.

So now, I’m wondering: what is that edge between being good at what I do and being good at who I am?

What are the skillful means of the stone unicorn?

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

Unknown's avatar

drawing the line

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I promised Carol at ZenDotStudio that I would draw lines this weekend.  So I did.

It was surprising how difficult drawing a line can be.  I mean, it’s not just about getting up the energy to do something that may have gone by the wayside over weeks or months or years.  It’s not just about facing the what if’s and the if only’s that tend to haunt things-let-go-for-long.  It’s not just about the anger, resentment, sadness, depletion, oh-I-should-have-done-this-sooner.  It’s not just about anything real except maybe that heart-pounding moment before the brush kisses the paper and the mind shuts off and the hand becomes an alien.

It’s just about drawing the line.

Drawing it as “Yes.”

Drawing it as “No.”

Drawing it as “Oh, how I want this to be different but it isn’t going to be.”

Drawing it as “I thought I knew how to do this but not any more so start again.”

Drawing and seeing I’m outside the lines.

Drawing and knowing I’m out of line, at the end of the line.

Drawing down the page, the moon.

Ink

as teacher, dharma, and old friend,

showing me how to let go.

A poem:

The End of the Line

Carefully try to remember what
it is that you are doing.  “How
do you do?  How do you like
what you do?”  are you going
to continue in the same wasteful
and thoughtless fashion?

Philip Whalen in What Book!?  Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop, edited by Gary Gach