Category Archives: reflections

Unknown's avatar

women ancestors

by

Today is International Women’s Day. A heartwarmed cheer to all of you who take the time to share your insights!  May you feel honoured today as you so deserve!

Over the weekend, I have been reflecting on the various women in my life who have influenced – some only by nefarious comparison – not only my choices but also my way of being.  Growing up equally willing to climb trees and play with dolls, I never really thought of gender as a defining aspect of my life.  Some time in my educational path, someone pointed out that my unresolved feelings towards my mother underlay my love of all things unconventional for females.  “There are things unconventional for females?” I asked.  “Whoddathunk.”

But seriously.  I admit a penchant for strong, uncompromising women.  Coming from a matriarchal lineage of such types, it is not surprising that my first role model was a professor called the “Tasmanian Devil.”  Others have been equally powerful and relentless in their determination to stand up for their values and never apologize for their standards.  If all this sounds too harsh, I’ll freely admit, it can be and has been.  I learned many lessons at their feet; some I’ve modified a tad because apparently, it’s not de rigeur to bring grown men to tears, even in the cause of saving the world. For the most part, I feel a measure of success in taking what was good in their teachings.

I also feel a measure of failure.  There are still times when I desire community so much I will sacrifice common sense.  Times when exclusionary tactics trigger a cloying “oh please let me in.”  Times when I want to be that limpet in the front row, sighing at the dharma teacher, exuding “save me!”  In a recent email exchange with a Zen Woman, I was asked pointedly if I really did not desire “the Good Daddy” to make this spiritual path “all better.”  The truth?  I don’t anymore – if I ever did.  Certainly, I’ve been caught in the games of emotional vampires who demanded adoration in exchange for protection, who baited the hook of their needs with morsels of dharma.  And, I’m proud of the scars left from tearing out the hooks they embedded deep in my being.

So, on this one day of honouring my women ancestors, I remember some of the most important teachings.

I am not just this bent and sometimes broken creature,who can only be saved through dependence and subversion.

I am more than any one person can see through their own needs.

I am strength beyond words, weakness beyond cries, concepts extinguished so absolutely that I can only be met in a gaze that sears all guile.

As are you.

So, on this day of honouring my women ancestors, I invite you~

To walk away from all that keeps you too small for your world.

To see yourself as beyond labels and injunctions.

To take what is truly you, in all its power and surrender, and throw it into the face of what holds you back.

To know that you are not the first to be told you will be someone’s saviour, someone’s salvation, someone’s cause – even if you are in this one instance.

To see that refusing to be a Saviour, bring Salvation, be a Cause, is to keep yourself for what is far more challenging: an honest relationship.

To understand that turning away from sainthood is turning towards your humanity.

To be wary of anything that elevates you up from the solid ground into which your roots are driven.

To be open to all things that make your eyes widen with awe and wonder – especially if it’s your reflection in the clarity of your actions.

To be your own best friend, lover, and partner to the last moments of that marathon, that walk, that day, that breath.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

Unknown's avatar

vast spring water

by

Finally, you will come to a vastness that is like spring water endlessly coming up out of the earth… From where does this spring water come?  Not from anyone’s small, individual territory.  The water that comes from your territory is limited, not deep.  The original nature of your life, or of your study, or of your personality or character is the spring water that comes up from the vastness of the earth.  This is where you have to sit down.

from Returning to Silence by Dainin Katagiri

The second time I felt a deep inexplicable connection was during an all-day sitting at a zen center nearby.  It was my first all day sitting and I was very scared about my ability to get through it.  The first rounds of sitting were fine and then we settled in for the dharma talk.  The teacher sat on a raised platform in the middle of the room and his attendants worked around him to set up the microphones, podium and his papers.  He simply sat, letting it all happen without directing the push and pull of wires, tables and tablets.  When it all seemed almost ready, his personal assistant moved in and gently began to arrange the folds in the teacher’s robes.  He straightened the pleats, layered the material around his teacher’s seat and legs, and smoothed the wrinkles of the robe along his back.  The teacher sat unmoving, surrendering with complete trust to the ministrations of his assistant.  I felt a huge swell of emotion rise from the depth of my body, so intense I thought it would emerge as a gasp or a cry and shatter what had become a thick silence.  In dokusan, I tried to explain what I had felt but it was beyond words.  I think I only managed to say something about wanting to be “in service like that” to which the teacher replied that it took a lot of time to become a teacher’s personal assistant.

I wasn’t sad or disappointed that he failed to hear what I was trying to say.  I’ve come to understand that often in trying to verbalize our experiences of connection, we can convey a neediness, an ambition or a greed.  Where before I used to feel offended, now I’ve tried to listen carefully and direct my self-inquiry to clarify my intentions without diminishing the experience itself. The truth is I don’t even think I knew what it was I experienced in these connecting moments.  And, delusions are numberless.

I went on to practice in other centers and with other teachers, watchful for these “spring water” experiences.  It remains as a marker that there is a vastness beneath the concepts and formulations of practice.  Although I’ve not been blessed with the same intensity of connection, in the years of practice which include experiences of deep joy and profound anguish, one thing has remained from both experiences.  There is a connection that transcends the gaze and there is a move into service that is beyond any act, singular or collective.  Experiencing it cannot be forced through any form of practice.  It will not adhere to any rules of engagement.  But its presence is always available and always absolute.

Thank you for practicing,

Genju

Next: Friday