Tag Archives: bloggers

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this, that & guest post on Jizo Chronicles

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I’ve been trying desperately to get to the part of the computer that deals with blogging.  However, the realities of running a business that is teetering on the edge of change yet again and a cat with a bandage around its neck  – who, by the end of the day, looks like Jacob Marley in the Christmas Carol – have got the better of my time.

Change can be fun.  I enjoy re-inventing myself every five years or so and it’s a year early but what the heck.  Of course, re-inventing myself means letting go and we all know how great I am at that!  Before the re-tooling however I’m taking time to notice that all this started with a surge of connections in my professional and spiritual community.  Good thing.  The drought has been going for a while.

Building sangha is tough, spiritual or professional, and when the two overlap, it’s even tougher.  Sitting one morning, I had the sticky thought, “It’s apples and oranges.  You can’t mix them – even in fruit salad, it’s still bits of apples and oranges.”  So for this week, this has been my practice: honouring the appleness and orangeness of my communities, even as a mix.

Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up this weekend too.  All these threads weaving together.  So let me say I am so grateful for all of you.  By your presence, you have supported this little space.  I’m particularly grateful for my dharma pal, Maia Duerr, author of the awesome Jizo Chronicles and Upaya Zen Center Chaplaincy Director.  Maia has a way of bringing me into just what is needed in this moment.  Last week, she invited me to write a piece for TJC on the Saffron Revolution, the monks’ protest in Burma in September 2007.  You can read the post on today’s Jizo Chronicles.  Writing it really brought home for me that sometimes it’s not about the apples or the oranges.

What can we make of that?

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theoblogger challenge: god in 100 words

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Patheos is a fascinating site offering a “balanced view of Religion and Spirituality.”  Debra Arca Mooney of Patheos contacted me about 10 days ago and offered a “theoblogger” challenge:

Who/What is God?

In 100 words or less

A previous challenge had been issued to a selection of Christian writers.  As a result of the responses to that challenge, bloggers across a variety of faith traditions were asked to participate.  As a Buddhist, I wondered how to even begin since Buddhism didn’t carry a premise of “God”.  Yet, there is an experience of the sacred – at least as I comprehend it in my own limited mind.  If nothing else, participating has forced me to struggle with the slip-sliding nature of language in trying to articulate the experience, result, and outcome of practice.

My response:

The concept of a singular God is not in found Buddhism.  There is only practice as Buddha, which means “One who is Awakened.”  An adjective, Buddha describes our capacity to cultivate joy, love, compassion, and equanimity.  Being Buddha means full engagement in life without preference for something different to be happening for or to us.  It is practicing authenticity and the courage to live ethically.  It cultivates living fiercely, fearless of the crucible which transforms our greed, rejection, and disconnect to generosity, open heartedness, and wisdom.  Then, we see sacredness in the ordinary: a cup of tea, a falling leaf.

It, along with the other featured bloggers, can be found here.  Please visit Patheos to read the variety of responses.  Also share your response – here and there – to the question (in 100 words or less!).

Thank you for practicing,

Genju