The Sun My heart --> Giving our emotions a wide pasture.--> Not make our minds a battlefield

 after meditation this afternoon during meditation this afternoon I took notes on one suggestion coming from the sending from the information in excerpted from the book called The Sun my heart.

you can hear about not making our mind the battlefield. learning to use the Sun the light of awareness to illuminate what is trance coming coming through her in our minds example I mentioned fear and I was thinking about the fear of Death Cure blindness fear of deafness all coming at the same time dying alone.

well I didn't say these things I wasmy concern about the fear and letting emotion being overwhelmed be overwhelming

Our teacher had a beautiful way of suggesting that quoting Suzuki that we simply give our emotions very wide pasture I best way to control things is the ways we control things first we try to push it away and then we try to control it and then we try to the best way is to observe it

Friendship v. control

True friends and healers do not limit your options; They expand them. ~ Alan Cohen

Angelou

“You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.”  -- Maya Angelou

On control

"Our anxiety does not come from thinking about the future but from wanting to control it." ~Kahlil Gibran

Our True Nature is Awareness - Warren Lang

Warren offered this poem tonight.  He said "Our true nature is awareness"....  He wrote this wonderful poem:

Breathe and breathe
Again.
Observe the mind.
Never leave this seat.

And his 'explication de texte', of his own text, is helpful:  Let the thoughts and feelings and other phenomena 's'evanouissent'.  See the ephemerality of phenomena.  This is liberation.

See how the process of 'identifying with suffering' only increases suffering or said differently, it keeps the suffering in the perceived domain of 'permanence', more ego-delusion. 

Identifying with suffering engenders actions that often increase suffering. No thought or condition is permanent. 

Our true seat is the seat of awareness; our true home is the awareness that we always have available.

....

from Verse 1 of Hakuin's Chant in Praise of Zazen: :

From the beginning all beings are buddha
Like water and ice, without water, no ice.
Outside us, no Buddhas.
How near the truth, yet how far we seek.
Like one in water crying 'I thirst',
Like a child of rich birth, wandering poor on this earth,
We endlessly circle the six worlds.
The cause of our sorrow is ego delusion. 
From dark path to dark path, we've wandered in darkness.
How can we be free from this wheel of samsara?

from Verse 2 of Hakuin's Chant in Praise of Zazen: 

The gateway to freedom is zazen samadhi,
Beyond exultation, beyond all our praises,
the Pure Mahayana.
Observing the precepts, repentance and giving,
the countless good deeds and the way of right living
all come from zazen. 
Thus one true samadhi extinguishes evil,
It purifies karma, dissolving obstructions. 
Then where are the dark paths to lead us astray?
The pure lotus land is not far away.
Hearing this truth, heart humble and grateful,
To praise and embrace it, to practice its wisdom,
Brings unending blessings, brings mountains of merit. 

from Verse 3 of Hakuin's Chant in Praise of Zazen:

But if we turn inward and prove our true nature
That True self is No self,
Our own self is no self,
We go beyond ego and past clever words.
The gate to the oneness of cause and effect is thrown open, 
Not two and not three, straight ahead runs the Way.
Our form now being no form,
In coming and going, we never leave home. 
Our thought now being no thought,
Our dancing and songs are the voice of the dharma

A discussion too about being a grumbler, a natural tendency to attempt to problem solve, to not relinquish control;  the ego desperately wants to maintain control of situations.  Desperately wants the world to be a 'certain way'.  But each moment offers a new beginning, a new reality...not one whose conditions will ever be what we can imagine.  "Rest your frontal lobe.'' 

The grumbler will benefit from 'the mindfulness practice' ...that awareness that is always present.  A samadhi can be sourced through Zazen samadhi but also dishwashing samadhi, driving samadhi, etc.

Warren ended with a prayerful meditation from Glimpse After Glimpse, April 17:  

Rest in natural great peace. 
This exhausted mind 
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves 
In the infinite ocean of samsara.

Rest in natural great peace. 

NYOSHUL KHEN RINPOCHE


Warren offered how the breath connects inside with outside...two dimensions of the same abiding moment.  One without the other is not possible.