I just want to sit at the feet of the master
and weep.
I just want to sit at the feet of the master
and weep.
I just want to sit at the feet of the master
and weep.
Archive for August, 2008
And so I do, I do, I do
Sunday, August 31st, 2008Life is Short
Thursday, August 28th, 2008
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
-Rumi, of course.
Calling a Spade a spade
Monday, August 25th, 2008
I corresponded with a famous rabbi
but my teacher caught sight of one of my letters
and silenced me.
“Dear Rabbi,” I wrote him for the last time,
“I do not have the authority or understanding
to speak of these matters.
I was just showing off.
Please forgive me.
Your Jewish brother,
Jikan Eliezer.”
(From Leonard Cohen’s Book of Longing, p. 5)
No rhyme, no reason
Sunday, August 24th, 2008
Hope, oh so ever poisonous
hope:
Why did you come to visit today?
A dish at a time
Saturday, August 23rd, 2008
It’s not the kitchen I’m cleaning when I’m cleaning the kitchen.
It’s my insides I’m cleaning.
And that feels like crying.
Count on it
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
Wanting to connect
I die to myself.
I can’t tell if that’s a bad thing
but it doesn’t matter.
And that’s a good thing.
Meditation and The Work in the San Francisco Bay Area
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
I want to tell you about a retreat I am putting together together with my dear friends at BKI in the San Francisco Bay area on December 12-14th. It is called The Work and Silence and it combines periods of sitting meditation with doing The Work with a partner. Silence will be observed between sessions throughout the entire retreat. It will be a weekend of silence, stillness, deep listening and open ended inquiry.
The retreat will take place at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, 40 minutes north of the San Francisco Airport, in a valley that opens out onto the Pacific Ocean. It is a beautiful venue with hiking trails that lead to the shores of Muir Beach in only a few minutes. Green Gulch hosts a community of Buddhist practitioners that year round devote themselves to the study and practice of Zen as they care for an organic farm and garden, a guest house and a conference center.
We held this retreat for the first time at Green Gulch in March 2008 and it was a beautiful, intimate experience. I learned a lot and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible there. If this interests you, I strongly invite you to consider attending. Scholarships will be available.
Inviting dread
Friday, August 8th, 2008
The ultimate turnaround is to begin again, to forget what I’ve learned, to stand there, naked, hands to the side, and allow the fire to burn. I notice it burns anyways (sometimes). Resisting that only makes things worse (it seems).
But, wait. Why would that be a good idea? “I don’t ever want to suffer like I did before” turns around to “I’m willing to suffer like I did before” and “I look forward to suffering like I did before.” Isn’t it so that a sane mind doesn’t suffer, ever? Something doesn’t add up here, it seems.
Except for when it does. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running away from my thoughts, and I notice that I still do that, sometimes. So practicing being willing and looking forward to the worst that can happen allows me to catch up with myself, to recognize the parts of me that I sometimes miss. Once seen, they can be met with understanding. It doesn’t matter what it is: if it’s part of me, I want to love it. And what would escape the world of what’s for me to love?
Besides, I’m not superstitious. Inviting dread doesn’t bring it to my life. It just means I’m open to it, and when this is so what appears to be dreadful is simply not so. The whole thing is pregnant with paradox:
Resisting dread is dreadful in the extreme
So I welcome it, open to it
Then I can’t find any
Even as it comes and swallows me alive pinching my every nerve
I look around and it’s all open space.
What is there to fear?
As I write this my computer interrupts me to inform me that “new processes have been scanned” and that my computer is hence free from adware and spyware.
For now 
