Thank you for the sweet support after yesterday’s post!  I’ve been reading various posts around the internet and it may be that we, as a community, are falling into a low biorhythm.  One or two other bloggers are stepping back and taking that in-breath.  Who’s to know how many have just silently folded their tents and walked into the night for a while. 

I think we forget what it means to try and be the barrier between good and evil.  That may not be the exaggeration it appears at first read.  Form and emptiness aside, we do conceptualize the world as good and the impingement of unskillfulness on it as evil.  Maybe in our strong moments we can see that it is a flow of intentions and actions.  But mostly, I think we are always defending against the potential of “what-might-happen-if” intention and attention waver at a here-to-fore-unknowable critical moment.

And that’s the weight, isn’t it?  We can’t ever know what will happen – regardless of our intentions.

I’m struggling at the moment with a case of the “Lucy’s.”  You know the Peanuts cartoon riff where Lucy holds out the football and Charlie Brown debates about her intentions.  It’s such a model of testing our faith in Ultimate Goodness in the Other.  Inevitably, Chuck opts for embodying that faith in Lucy.  Inevitably, Chuck also gets to embody the sensations of being supported by the solidity of the earth beneath him as he lies prone on his back when she pulls the football away at the last moment.

Ironically, despite Chuck’s unending pessimism, he’s the eternal optimist when it comes to his fellow humans.  What he isn’t doing (or modelling for us so we will) is trusting the Eternal Goodness in himself that is alerting him to his investment in an outcome.  He truly believes that his relentless engagement in Lucy’s game will manifest Ultimate Goodness in her. 

We can always talk ourselves into trusting that there is Ultimate Goodness in the Other.  At least, I can… and do.  I don’t believe there is anything wrong with that.  I really don’t even need to talk myself into it.  The problem is – and this is the sticky part of my practice – I assume behaviour will manifest that is congruent with that Ultimate Goodness.  The reality?  Behaviour often takes many light years to arrive after the initial burst of pure light.  Worse, I sometimes believe that my engagement in the process will bring about Ultimate Change in the Other.  And there’s the “not-knowing” bit.  It may or may not be up to me to be the last step leading to change.

So, as I lie here on my back, having had that ego-football yanked out from my enthusiastic rush at it, please remember to remind me of this insight … again and again.

Leftover ink enso. 

My brain is frozen from spending the weekend and all day Monday in an office whose temperature hovered between 58°F and Hell Freezing over.  It seems the computer that controls the air conditioner of the building has gone into an infernal feedback loop and the a/c thermostat is trying to regulate itself to what it thinks is Hades outside.  It’s hard trying to sustain attention and muster up compassionate, appreciative inquiry when you’re hypothermic.  But I managed and the drive home in a hot car revived me somewhat.

I think my brain is also frozen in other ways.  Topics for the daily posts are eluding me.  There are flashes of insight and inspiration.  But they quickly evaporate and I find myself at a loss.  I wondered if it was because of my brief and rather sordid affair with G+.  Or perhaps because I’ve been immersed in left-brain activities like correlations, and sums of squares, and two-tailed tests of significance of paired samples.  Or – and most likely – I’m enthralled by the Food Network’s Top Chef – Just Desserts melodrama.  Will Seth be kicked off before someone frappé’s him in the quest for a dessert that is based on a water park theme!?

However, I didn’t know I was in trouble until I explained to someone that the difference between shamatha and vipassana meditation is one is up your nose and the other is under your belly button. 

To be kind to my poor over-fried and mis-firing neurons, I am probably trying too hard to perform two very different modes of writing.  On the one hand, I’m reading and assimilating stacks of papers and books to build and buttress a Buddhist theory of spiritual incongruence for my chaplaincy project.  On the other, I’m trying to find relevant material to put out on the blog that is, at once, useful and playful.  And tie it all together with an enso.

I fear I have to officially declare my brain is frozen and when the obvious is obvious, skillful means noticing.  So I will apologize in advance for languid posts and lapses in posting.  Nevertheless, I shall fly past you the mal-formed and likely warped thoughts on aspects of Dharma as they arise from this vast matrix array of work, family, ripening tomatoes, and one more round at Upaya coming up in three weeks.

At the very least there will be an enso each day.  Zen Rorschach!  Sometimes just going around in circles mindfully is all that is necessary!