Captain Reynold's Zen

From the end of Joss Whedon's movie Serenity, Malcolm Reynolds teaching Summer the lesson of flying the ship Serenity:

"Love. You can learn all the math in the 'verse but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turn of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought to fall down, tells you she's hurting before she keels. Makes her a home."

The earth is our boat. All her inhabitants our crew. Love and listen.

Emerson's roses

"These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God today. There is no time for them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. But man (sic) postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to forsee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

(nufsaid)

Whatever we do is a mistake

From a Joan Sutherland interview in the recent issue of Buddhadharma magazine:

"From the koan perspective, that means understanding that whatever we do will in some way be a mistake. There's no right way, so we choose the mistake we feel the greatest affinity with, the one we think is most beautiful or seems like it might help the most. Then we watch and see what happens and we correct and change, based on what we notice. I find it very helpful to hold that idea of everything I do being a mistake. It's provisional and subject to change."

Save the Cheerleader for Starters

"Save the cheerleader, save the world."

If you watch the tv show Heroes you'll know, if not it's too complicated to explain and the details don't matter anyway. (Heroes is now the only tv show I get excited about. Used to be Lost. Used to be X-Files. All are poor replacements for Buffy.)

But it's not that complicated.

• Be generous to those in need - more generous than you know you can be.
• The karma of our actions reaches wide and deep - we impact on the present and all future presents through our thoughts, words and deeds now, so be disciplined.
• Finally, remember the lesson learned from The Wind in the Willows: Be a good friend and be brave.

Change Your Mind Day

On June 10 Cleveland will have its own second annual Change Your Mind Day event. Ten different local Buddhist sanghas (practice communities) will present different practices: sitting meditation, walking meditation, chanting, teachings, and music. We will also create a sand mandala throughout the day - at the end of the day the sand will be collected and strewn in Lake Erie.

Change Your Mind Day is from 12 to 5 at Lakewood Park, at Lake and Belle in Lakewood, on Lake Erie. Potluck begins at noon and the program starts at 1:00. Come to all or part of the program.

Our mind is our sixth sense. Open it up to a Buddhist practice that guides it to change the world.

Find out more on the Cleveland Buddhist Peace Fellowship website: http://members.cox.net/bpfcleveland/

Learning in the Dirt is Cool Change

I worked on Bobbi's garden yesterday, apprenticing to my son in creating raised beds.
What a great experience to learn by doing what Peter told me to do. He imparted his new found knowledge by telling me, "Dig this deep down, turn it over this much deeper, don't bring up the clay, etc." New found because he researched it and used it for his own new "organic intensive" garden.

So I learned why this was a good way to garden: Allowing the roots of vegetables to go deeper, not having to turn the soil as deep for the next three years, and looking cool!

It was also so cool to get dirty while learning from my son. We got dirty together a lot when he was younger. Then we didn't. Then yesterday we did again. Change = cool, huh?

Discipline and Inspiration

My best friend and I were talking about writing for my blog. I was dismayed that I was not writing every day. She thought that unrealistic, observing that inspiration may not come every day. My response is that discipline unveils inspiration.

What discipline? The discipline to be present to what's going on. The discipline to not get caught up in judgment and whining. The discipline to drop limiting concepts.

Inspiration is hidden, not hiding, always. Breathing calls her out. Hello.

Intention to Show up and Sit

At our Southcoast Zen sitting group last night I shared that having the intention to show up for sitting on Monday nights has me make choices and take actions in spite of feelings or circumstances that make for easy excuses to not show up.

It was true for everyone there - flat bike tires, resucing persons with flat bike tires, work schedules, leaving projects in mid-course, finding the Zendog for the first time.

How curious that the intention to show up and sit silently on a cushion would be so powerful in our lives.

As another Zendogite put it - Why don't we bring the same intention to the seemingly more important commitments in our lives?

You and me

If my life is an adventure to discover joy and create love, what does that make you in my life?

Hasselhof vs. True Peace

While I was in the hotel gym this morning CNN "news" was on the television. The formation of the new power-sharing government in Northern Ireland got 30 seconds of coverage. David Hasselhof's drinking problems got 2 minutes. I now wonder how many Americans even know that there is a Northern Ireland. I'm sure that 50% of us are taking delight in a celebrity's problems. I'm doubting my faith in evolution here.

So - here is some short coverage from www.Earthtimes.org of the incredibly historic, joyful and optimistic event in the north of Ireland. (It references 40 years of conflict - the conflict between Ireland and England is almost 1,000 years and running.)

"Belfast - There were smiles and tears of emotion when almost 40 years of bitter conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland were sealed with the formation of an historic power-sharing government in Belfast Tuesday. The hardened men of Northern Ireland politics, Ian Paisley of the staunchly pro-British Democratic Unionists, and Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander, were seen relaxing over a cup of tea and standing shoulder to shoulder shaking hands of well-wishers. These were pictures, everyone agreed, that would have been unimaginable not so long ago."

Life's circle

In the airport today I watched as a woman held her newborn grandbaby for the first time. Wow.

Haiku string - my family gone

(I have not posted for a week. Life out of balance. Here is a haiku string written on an airplane flying to St. Louis this last Tuesday.)

Missing my father
in the early days of May.
First beers outside back.

Wanting my mother.
Her little one's little ones
miss her this Springtime.

Dear little brother:
You left in early Summer
Not March as they say.