Returning to Fields and Gardens (I) by Tao Yuanming (Tao Qian) - Accepting transience

 Tao Qian

https://poets.org/poem/returning-fields-and-gardens-i

Returning to Fields and Gardens (I)

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Tao Yuanming

Translated from the Mandarin by Arthur Sze

When I was young, I did not fit in
with others, and simply loved the hills and mountains.
By mistake, I fell into the dusty net,
and before I knew it, it was thirty years!
The caged bird longs for the old forest.
The fish in the pond misses the old depths.
I cultivate land along the southern wilds,
and, keeping to simplicity, return to fields and garden.
Ten acres now surround my house;
it is thatched, and has eight, nine rooms.
Elms and willows shade the back eaves.
Peach and plum trees are lined out the front hall.
The distant village is hazy, hazy: and
slender, slender, the smoke hanging over houses.
Dogs bark in the deep lane, and a rooster
crows on top of a mulberry tree.
My house untouched by the dust of the world—
ample leisure in these bare rooms.
I was held so long inside a narrow bird-
cage, but now, at last, can return to nature.

From The Silk Dragon II: Translations of Chinese Poetry by Arthur Sze. Copyright © 2024 by Arthur Sze. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC, on behalf of Copper Canyon Press.

344 - Taking the backward step by John Fraser, april

 

https://glasgowzengroup.com/344-taking-the-backward-step/

We can’t hear the voices of all the myriad beings because we’re behind the glass of the self.

But, we can’t break that glass with our head.

Accordingly, Dōgen says that we must take the backward step ( eko hensho no taiho – turn the light inward, take the backward step)

What does that mean?

We can describe it, for example, in terms of the five skandhas.  

We cease to grasp this consciousness, this awareness as mine.   

We cease to grasp this mental activity as mine.

We cease to grasp these perceptions: this is me; here is the world; here are these feelings which I identify with. We cease to grasp in that way.

We cease to grasp sensation. The sensation is simply something which is arising within a whole lived world; arising and changing, not something that we are required to fixate upon or to specify in terms of feeling, without a fixed location or nature.

We ungrasp the body as an object.  Ungrasping in this way, we fall backwards into the actual body. That body is not separate from the body of all things.

In this way separation is gradually reduced; not in a transformative way; not in a mystical or heroic way, but in a natural way.  

No longer & not yet

Investigate: 'Mindful Awareness is not a technique; the way we approach meditation is a whole way of life.."

'Mindful Awareness is not a technique; the way we approach meditation is a whole way of life." (18:00:00)

Brother Phap Dung - #9: Practice Basics

https://youtu.be/RoS-zshhF2I?si=6-LRGta1Zxdoe98i&t=1026

17:06:00 to 28:29:00

..... and this is a part of our evolution to not see ourselves separate

17:06

so freshness okay waking up and then create that habit

17:11

so mountain so these are habits that we

17:17

train in -  besides sitting still touching peace feeling calm. these kind

17:23

of typical things that we normally associate with meditation but those things are also impermanent

17:30

and can create a lot of suffering if you strive just for that.  so this is something

17:37

you have to be careful about there's a lot of bad rap about meditation it's because people are

17:44

seeing it as a technique to de-stress to find peace to find happiness

17:49

so it becomes like a tool like uh to to how to do a startup it's

17:55

like this is how you get to peace and it doesn't work like that

18:00

and so here yeah we the way we approach meditation is a whole way of being a way

18:06

of life so that happens right when you wake up

18:12

so it's not in the meditation hall but it's an attitude it's a whole way of

18:17

looking at our place as a human being so it's a little more broad

18:24

than just the human drama like when things don't go our way right

18:30

so that's why kind of meditation fails because it's like in the box of

18:35

using it to get something and we're in the zen tradition you know and we say if you got it you

18:42

got to let it go that's it's terrible like you get it you know

18:47

you find peace and then you have to let it go come on

18:52

you know zen tradition is like that as soon as you get it yeah you you know the the saying you find the buddha

19:00

chop the head off that's the tradition of zen and it means uh you know even the object

19:10

of peace and happiness and peace and calmness and transformation healing all

19:15

that if you make that an object to grasp then you would just become

19:21

you know a you're applying the same thing the habit outside to meditation

19:30

so freshness mountain qualities of how you move through the

19:36

day okay and then another quality.     

CSL: Résistance’

Sitting this morning, I struggled with the sitting itself, struggled again with the intention to sit daily, struggled with the commitment to the practice. I notice my resistance was strong, as usual. I took a deeper look at the resistance. (This morning, I also started with a good feeling of wanting to share the sitting, this Thanksgiving morning, with my sangha friends.)

My resistance was manifest when I noticed I wanted get onto ‘the other things’. Those other things. For example, I reflected on the conditions of my life right now. One condition is my opportunity and practice of creating travel and travel excursions. I reflected on the irony of resisting this awareness practice at home daily, and wonder if the travel and the travel prep is an ego-inspired way to resist doing this practice  here daily And of course on other mornings when I may be elsewhere, what’s the likelihood I will sit to do this practice? The resistance to sitting practice will obtain no matter where I am located. What is the big deal with ‘elsewhere’?

This awareness practice offers me a possibility of habit change —> slowly altering the habit of reflexive thought, the habit of reactive thought. The ‘way in’ being the ‘way out’ from those store seeds of consciousness’ which form the basis of my afflictive emotions.

Noticing the resistance, acknowledging it as ‘one of the guests’, as Rumi may describe it, and welcoming it. Staying with the resistance as a way forward. It will change and transform, as all things do. 

lines below are from https://bitterootpatience.blogspot.com/p/like-dragon-in-water-what-can-we-when.html

Like a Dragon in Water

What can we do when our monkey minds pull us off the cushion? Simple, says Sensei Pat Enkyo O'Hara: Just practice.

Sensei Pat Enkyo O'Hara

...

And so it can be with our practice. Seeing our practice as our life, we just let go and do it. We just practice a steadiness in our daily meditation. Without expectations of any kind, we just practice, day in and day out, through the high points and the low. “I really doubt this practice is helping me. Okay, still, it is time to sit, right through this doubt.” Or, “Oh, I didn’t sit all week! Okay, right now I’ll sit for twenty minutes.” And each time we come back to our practice, we experience it as more inherent to our life. Maezumi Roshi, based in Los Angeles, would often use the Spanish expression for “little by little” to indicate this patient quality of practice: “Being one with the practice, you are transformed, poco a poco.”

This understanding of our practice is expressed by the great thirteenth-century Japanese Zen teacher Dogen, when he says that our meditation practice “is not step-by-step meditation; it is simply the dharma gate of peace and joy. It is the practice-enlightenment of the Ultimate Way....When you grasp this, you are like a dragon in water, or a tiger in the mountains.” ▼

Hugh Byrne - April 9

Live Session Summary, Sunday, April 9, 2023: It was good to be with you today for our Live session on ‘Five Steps to Free the Heart and Mind.’ Here is a summary of the key points, quotes and poems from today’s session: 

I highlighted the five steps that we began exploring today and will continue investigating in the next two Live sessions:

• First Step: Turn toward your experience with awareness

• Second Step: Open fully and wholeheartedly to what is present

• Third Step: Investigate and recognize when and how you are suffering

• Fourth Step: Recognize your own role in creating and perpetuating suffering—the ‘second arrow’

• Fifth Step: Seeing clearly into how we are creating suffering by clinging creates the conditions for letting go—and freedom. 

Exploring the first step—turning toward your experience—we discussed how much of our lives we miss and how much we can experience suffering (or, ‘unsatisfactoriness’) when we are acting out entrenched habits (e.g., eating/drinking/smoking/lost in online wandering/caught up in stress or anxiety); when we are caught up in craving or addictive behavior; and when we are on autopilot much of the time. 

Turning towards what is present here and now in body, mind, and heart brings us back to ourselves and to our life and creates the conditions for beneficial change. 

Moving from the habitual, from autopilot, from being swept up in a difficult emotion, mind state, or mental story into awareness is a move from unconsciousness to consciousness—from not being aware to being aware. This shift allows us to be present for our life and to make choices that lead to well-being rather than unhappiness and suffering.

 

I shared quotes emphasizing the importance of coming into awareness from Viktor Frankl, Carl Jung, and James Baldwin:

• “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space lies our ability to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” (Viktor Frankl)

• “What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.” (Carl Jung)

• James Baldwin: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

I also shared quotes from Thai forest meditation master, Ajahn Chah, and American psychologist, Carl Rogers:

• “If you let go a little, you’ll experience a little peace; if you let go a lot, you’ll experience a lot of peace; if you let go completely, you’ll have complete peace. Your struggle with the world will be at an end.” (Ajahn Chah)

• “The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” (Carl Rogers)

Poems I shared: “Clearing” by Martha Postlethwaite; parts of ‘The Guest House’ by Jellaludin Rumi; and ‘There was a time I would reject those…’ by Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi. 

I hope this is helpful and look forward to continuing the exploration of these five steps to greater freedom on Sunday, April 23 at 9 am eastern. 

I also want to let you know that Insight Timer has published a talk I uploaded on the four noble truths and a meditation on the same theme should be available on Insight Timer in the next day or so… 

Wishing you all a good week ahead and see you on Sunday, April 23 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🌻 💜 🙏🏻

Hugh Byrne - May 22

Live Session Summary, Sunday, May 22, 2022: The theme of today’s Live session was ‘Two Kinds of Thought.’ I spoke about how certain kinds of thinking—such as complaining, blaming, judging, clinging, worrying, etc.—lead to suffering, while thoughts of compassion, gratitude, generosity, loving-kindness, joy, and peace lead to happiness and greater freedom. 

Each kind of thinking becomes a habit of mind, but the first kind keep us locked in an illusion of a separate self and in suffering, while the second kind becomes a wholesome and beneficial way of living. As the Buddha said, ‘What a person thinks about and frequently ponders on, that becomes their inclination of mind.’ It serves us, then, to abandon or let go of the unwholesome thoughts and cultivate beneficial ones. 

I quoted from a discourse of the Buddha called ‘Two Kinds of Thought’, which highlighted how the Buddha, before his enlightenment, divided his thoughts into these two classes or categories. As he meditated and reflected on thoughts of craving, aversion, and cruelty, he saw the affliction they caused to himself and others and abandoned them. With thoughts of letting go, kindness, and non-harming, he saw they didn’t lead to harm, but rather led to happiness and freedom. These latter thoughts should be cultivated. 

His practice of abandoning the unskillful thoughts and cultivating the wholesome ones created the conditions for his awakening. Abandoning longstanding habits of mind is not easy, so we need a clear intention, wise effort, attention, and kindness to see certain thoughts and the harm they cause—and let them go.

I discussed how we can bring greater awareness to the kinds of thinking that keep our mind entangled or hooked—and working with them in meditation and daily life, we can choose not to fuel this kind of thought and, when they arise, to let them go. And we can choose to develop and nurture thoughts and intentions of kindness, gratitude, compassion, joy, etc., that enhance our well-being and help us abandon the unskillful thoughts. For example, consciously cultivating gratitude can shift the mind away from thoughts of self-judgment, anger, craving, etc., allowing us to appreciate what we have rather than being fixated on what is ‘wrong’ or what we lack. 

Poems I shared today included ‘There was a time I would reject those…’ by Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi (this is included in ‘Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems’, edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson); and Mary Oliver’s ‘I Worried’.

Have a safe and joyful week—and see you next Sunday, May 29, at 9am eastern. I’ll be teaching a workshop at Kripalu in Massachusetts and the session will be a little shorter this week. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏼 🌻

I worried by Mary Oliver

 

I Worried
Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?
Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?
Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.
Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?
Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

A Prayer for my Daughter by W. B. Yeats - Poems | poets.org

A Prayer for my Daughter by W. B. Yeats - Poems | poets.org

Once more the storm is howling, and half hid
Under this cradle-hood and coverlid
My child sleeps on. There is no obstacle
But Gregory's wood and one bare hill
Whereby the haystack- and roof-levelling wind,
Bred on the Atlantic, can be stayed;
And for an hour I have walked and prayed
Because of the great gloom that is in my mind.

I have walked and prayed for this young child an hour
And heard the sea-wind scream upon the tower,
And under the arches of the bridge, and scream
In the elms above the flooded stream;
Imagining in excited reverie
That the future years had come,
Dancing to a frenzied drum,
Out of the murderous innocence of the sea.

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking-glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

Helen being chosen found life flat and dull
And later had much trouble from a fool,
While that great Queen, that rose out of the spray,
Being fatherless could have her way
Yet chose a bandy-leggèd smith for man.
It's certain that fine women eat
A crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of Plenty is undone.

In courtesy I'd have her chiefly learned;
Hearts are not had as a gift but hearts are earned
By those that are not entirely beautiful;
Yet many, that have played the fool
For beauty's very self, has charm made wise,
And many a poor man that has roved,
Loved and thought himself beloved,
From a glad kindness cannot take his eyes.

May she become a flourishing hidden tree
That all her thoughts may like the linnet be,
And have no business but dispensing round
Their magnanimities of sound,
Nor but in merriment begin a chase,
Nor but in merriment a quarrel.
O may she live like some green laurel
Rooted in one dear perpetual place.

My mind, because the minds that I have loved,
The sort of beauty that I have approved,
Prosper but little, has dried up of late,
Yet knows that to be choked with hate
May well be of all evil chances chief.
If there's no hatred in a mind
Assault and battery of the wind
Can never tear the linnet from the leaf.

An intellectual hatred is the worst,
So let her think opinions are accursed.
Have I not seen the loveliest woman born
Out of the mouth of Plenty's horn,
Because of her opinionated mind
Barter that horn and every good
By quiet natures understood
For an old bellows full of angry wind?

Considering that, all hatred driven hence,
The soul recovers radical innocence
And learns at last that it is self-delighting,
Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,
And that its own sweet will is Heaven's will;
She can, though every face should scowl
And every windy quarter howl
Or every bellows burst, be happy still.

And may her bridegroom bring her to a house
Where all's accustomed, ceremonious;
For arrogance and hatred are the wares
Peddled in the thoroughfares.
How but in custom and in ceremony
Are innocence and beauty born?
Ceremony's a name for the rich horn,
And custom for the spreading laurel tree.

From Michael Robartes and the Dancer (Cuala Press, 1921)