Yesterday, I learned that the neighbourhood stores Frank and I love to hang out in burned down spewing toxic smoke into the area.  No one was hurt but the devastation, emotionally and practically, is huge.  I am so grateful that the 120 elderly people in the senior’s residence behind the stores were evacuated safely, that the employees were unharmed, that the only material loss were the contents of the stores and a few historic paintings by the Group of Seven.

Then I learned that a 4.7 magnitude earthquake shook Eastern Ontario and caused some damage to buildings in Ottawa.

We are a long way off from home, from Japan, from Afghanistan, Iraq, China, Ecuador, Chile.  Not just a long way off physically but mentally too.  I’ve been finding the constant flow of tragic pictures and information bytes about tragedies, large and small, intense.  In a conversation today with a colleague, I felt challenged to figure out how we practise the bodhisattva ideal without falling forward into panic.

How is it now?  I will be ever grateful to Barry of Ox Herding for teaching me this simple and profound practice.  How is it now?

Nathan has a terrific post today on this that pushed me out of my stuckness.  You can read it here.  It’s a tough practice to say “It just is” without sounding flippant or taking the spiritual bypass.  The issue for me is not only that lives have begun, endured, and ended for millenia.  It is also that I am, more and more, being asked to bear witness to it in a way profoundly different from before.  Before what, you ask?  Before I realized that stepping into the fire is not about burning up in the drama.

Stepping into the fire is letting the heat cook me in the dharma.

Last night this moon shone overhead… and everywhere.

Thank you for practising,

Genju

Recently, I had a chance to invite a few demons to tea.  Don’t you find it interesting that the people who walk into our lives are not as scary as the mind-creations of what they represent?  About a month ago I agreed to step out into the wider sangha after a number of years of keeping a discrete distance.  The back story is pointless – or as a friend would say, “affaire classée” – case closed.  What matters is that in the month leading up to the Great Event, I was challenged to a full body contact with my emotions and an opportunity to dig deep.  There were some interesting observations:

(1) I hate hating.  It’s a waste of time.  So, economically-speaking, I do have to wonder why I invest so much in doing it.

(2) I get angry about being angry.  It’s a vicious cycle.  So, calorically-speaking, I do have to wonder why I consume so much of it.

(3) I love my suffering.  No one’s suffering is more important than mine.  So, priority-wise, I wonder why everyone else doesn’t set down their woes to make room for mine.

(4) I am co-dependent with my demons.  We’ll be attending a local chapter of DA (Delusions Anonymous) as soon as the least delusional of us figure out how to start one.

And on the day itself:

Practice transcends all the bull shit.  It always boggles my mind.  No matter how tattered and worn the threads of my emotional life are, if I’m just willing to sit with the tangled mess in my lap, it begins to weave itself together into some coherence, some centered core from which the most appropriate response arises.

Thank you for practising,

Genju