Description
The immense vulnerability of being alive comes to the mother dropping off her children in Texas and everyone else, including you and me, particularly when we do something tender. In the Zen path our job is to be at peace, to offer refuge and sanctuary. That peace is infectious, other people will feel it and it will sustain them and those they meet.
These are the times we are given —John Tarrant
The immense vulnerability of being alive comes to the mother dropping off her children in Texas and everyone else, including you and me, particularly when we do something tender. I can’t flee what is impossible to bear, and I know that in the end I shall die. I can turn my head toward the huge actual beast and feel its shaggy hide with my own cheek and I’m not living the wrong life. The tenderness for life appears every time the mind stops.
If you can take action and change laws that is good to do.
In the Zen path our job is to be at peace, to offer refuge and sanctuary. That peace is infectious, other people will feel it and it will sustain them and those they meet.
People want a light and peace they have not been able to imagine. If we look for a light we won’t see it, but if we turn the light back towards ourselves, if we rely on the light it will be there, and a path will be there; it never dies. You too have your own light.
Here are some lines from the Pacific Zen Refuge Ceremony
The way things are is mysterious and hard to see. Not contriving reality for yourself is called the vow of not indulging in anger.
When knowing stops, when thoughts about who we are fall away, vast space opens up and love appears. Anything that gets in the way of understanding this is a cause of suffering and something to refrain from.
Moment by moment, thought appears, the earth appears, we appear. When we test each bit of life against the heart, we find we cannot reject any, for we are the only hands and eyes that eternity has. With our virtues, our failures, and our imperfections, this is the body we take refuge in; this is what we offer to the world.
By their nature, vows are not things we hold perfectly. Vows are the bridge we build between the spacious world and the things we do every day. They encourage us to follow questions when they arise, and underlying our vows is compassion for everything that has the courage to live.
This is a good time to sit together, for you, for me, for us all. —John Tarrant