Unknown's avatar

do the ordinary

by

I was listening to a podcast about a group of medical professionals from a Catholic (Jesuit) university who went to Haiti a few days after the earthquake.  The lead physician explained his motivation to help was rooted in one of the tenets of the Jesuit Order: do what no one else is doing.  My first reaction was to think, “So typical!  The Ego needs to stand out.”  Then it sank in.  Sure, at one level it can be a self-focused need to stand out, to do what no one else has thought of doing.  It can also require deep insight to see what no one else has seen about the situation.  When I took the competitive and comparative elements out of my interpretation, another level of understanding that is even simpler and yet more profound arose.

Sometimes what needs to be done is the ordinary.  Not because no one thought of it, or no one wants to do it.  Simply, the ordinary needs to be done because it isn’t getting done.

When I get my head and, therefore my ego, out of the mix, it really is quite profoundly simple.  In the face of the difficult and the unwanted experiences that I meet, what is the most ordinary thing that is required?

Hakuin, in his autobiography Wild Ivy (transl. by Norman Waddell)  writes of Myocho Daishi who sat in meditation while being confronted by brigands who threatened to kill him.  They relented in the face of his steady sitting and Myocho wrote this poem:

Hardships still come
one upon the other
enabling me to see
if my mind truly has
cast off the world or not.

Hard to remember in the tumult of our messy lives that refusing to respond to the self-in-the-world is the most courageous.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

Unknown's avatar

thanks giving

by

It’s one of the most beautiful Fall seasons I can remember and one filled with so many sensatorial gifts. The colours are unrelenting and, despite the equally unrelenting rain, it looks like we will have a great show for a few more weeks.  The earth smells thick and rich as leaves and plants fold back into it, a nutritious decay.  Geese, loud and exuberant, curve across the sky and the beating wings of hundreds of starlings rising from the corn fields sound like the ocean surf.

The baskets of produce in the kitchen speak to a summer spent tending the garden well.  That there are  friends who still want more produce speak to years of cultivating joyful relationships of give-and-give-enough.  Frank is totally chuffed by the hot chillies he managed to coax out of our short growing season and he attributes it to mindful coercing.  I’m thrilled that the roses we transplanted from my mother’s garden continue to bloom; their fragrant scent fills the zendo and the altar is alive with their colour.

There are many lessons emerging from these days which I’ll unpack over the week.  Gratitude, of course, is a typical one this time of year as we savour the Summer’s bounty of carrots, beets, apples, and pumpkins.  For added spice, today is Thanksgiving here in Wild North.  Oddly, gratitude is a feeling I take for granted because I connect with it as something that arises when good things happen.  Then I received a post from  a friend which showed me the secret ingredient in gratitude.  She wrote: Happy Gratitude Attitude! How neat to see something special planted deep inside the word!  Gratitude becomes relational, an attitude we can cultivate towards our experience.  More important, for me, it becomes a stance to my experience that is independent of the experience itself.

Thank you for practising,

Genju