bodhidave

@bodhidave.bsky.social

1101

Posts

humanistic psychodynamic Buddhist deconstructionist ... and all-round sweet guy

interested in cross-cultural parallels in meditation traditions and contemplative practice

particular interest in Zen and the West's Via Negativa

Posts Replies Media

1:2 I recently had occasion to note my playfully serious view that: *If we take religious language literally, we're not taking it seriously enough.* I just learned that the first Old English poets didn't use the Latin-derived word "create," but instead the word which we now have as "shape."

Episode 39: Not Lost in Translation | The History of English Podcasthistoryofenglishpodcast.com

1_2 In tonight's #meditation there was a sense for how the instructions "do not think good or bad," "do not judge right and wrong," and "do not get caught up in like or dislike"* — are in the service of, as it were, allowing an embrace from the way things are. __ *(like in Dōgen's *Fukanzazengi*)

1.2 Many #meditation traditions include instructions that we inculcate calm, and inner quiet, and peacefulness, and equanimity. These days it's very much my sense that allowing and fostering such states is mainly in service to one thing — that we just not make stuff up,

#Zen In tonight's sitting a realization arose: the feeling that nothing very special is going on is ... rather remarkable. 🙂 🙏

A pleasant last day of Pride Month. 🙏 ❤️ 🌈 This was the view outside my home this evening.

daughter and momma groundhog outside my kitchen window this morning

good morning good morning from my kitchen window just now ... :)

1.2 I was on a Zen retreat this week. Took this picture of a moth on a window. Images search says it's a Tulip-Tree Beauty moth and a member of the "geometer" family. It hadn't occurred to me "geometry" means "to measure the earth." Those moths are so named bc their caterpillars are inch-worms. 🙂🙏

1"2 The anonymous Christian author of *The Cloud of Unknowing* spoke of contemplative practice as "a naked, blind feeling of being." The Buddhists, especially in #Zen, speak similarly of practicing "thusness" or "suchness."

1`2 For me these days #meditation is about "what's going on." Not so in the sense of what's the content of my experience — that is, it's not so much about "what am I experiencing" — and more in the sense of the fact of experiencing. The fact of experiencing as what's going on.

1.3 In my life I've had a number of the sort of experiences that, in William James' phrasing, "forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality."

1- the view outside my kitchen window this weekend 2- the view outside my kitchen window yesterday 🙂 (I see that the terms for baby groundhogs [a.k.a. woodchucks, a.k.a. whistlepigs] include kits, pups, cubs ... and chucklings)

1/2 "Confession" isn't a word I use often, but in tonight's #meditation it sort of fit. Just how to describe what it was like, though, isn't so straightforward. "An honest confession of the way things are" seems too dualistic for the experience.

1'3 Going into tonight's #meditation I felt restless and sleepy. I didn't much want to do it. And I was reminded of a practice suggestion I once heard from Jack Kornfield....

1\2 The kind of #meditation I mostly do typically entails a fair amount of calm and relaxation. For that sort of calm and relaxation to arise, I typically need not to try too hard to make it happen. And not trying too hard can often include ... not knowing what I'm doing. 🙏 🙂

1-2 I make comments about #meditation here. Not so much to proclaim or preach anything, but because I've been at it for a while and find it valuable, and I share notes in the idea that they might be useful to someone.

1,2 #meditation I had a little lucid dream earlier. And that reminds me how I like to say, "There's a miracle going on, there really is, and it's everything." I've sometimes been told to maybe not use the word "miracle" when I say that, since that can sound too heavy and it can "stop the flow."

I fell asleep just now sitting in my chair ... and I dreamed I was sitting in my chair, looking at my knee ... but I thought there was a good chance that it was a dream ... so I made an effort to open my eyes ... and I was not in fact looking at my knee. :)

In tonight's #meditation ... the sense of "me" and "mine" as an expression of the present moment ... the sense of "me" and "mine" as a generated part of how things appear ... the sense of "this is me" as an event — an event that comes from somewhere — rather than the starting point of things

1-2 In tonight's #meditation, as I got quiet & came to rest in the fact anything at all is happening, some bliss arose. It was nice. And I've done techniques before (namely, the Old School #Buddhist jhāna absorptions) that entail a marked quality of bliss and pleasantness (*piti* and *sukha*)....

1.2 so... i'm finally improving... but i've been sick for the past two weeks, with my first cold in a couple years... my sense is my immune system had perhaps forgotten how to deal with viruses... it has included a bad, protracted cough... such that when I stand up I tend to have a coughing fit...

In tonight's #meditation there was the sense that awakening will have less to do with something I know, and more to do with something that's happening ... and, ultimately, that anything is happening.

I've been away from home for a few days. It was nice to be greeted by this blooming rose vine when I got back moments ago. #BloomScrolling

There's a #Zen story in which, when told by a government official, who was a fan of Buddhism, his excitement in reading in a philosophy book that all things ultimately share the same root — his Zen teacher, Nanquan, took him by the elbow and introduced him to a peony. (*Blue Cliff Record,* 40)

And fading fast… but such is the beauty and nature of a peony.

#AuroraBorealis I'm getting a bit of a visible roseate tint to the skies here tonight ... outside #Asheville, NC ... but, as i saw suggested online earlier today, my iPhone camera is picking up the colors.

The "han," sounding board for marking the beginning of meditation periods, at Tassajara Zen Monastery.

In tonight's #meditation, a simple, but for me helpful, sense: the feeling of "this is me" is not the starting point of things — it's an experience.

1/9 I came across a saying attributed to Heraclitus that could be paraphrased: "Conceptual thinking is a kind of sacred disease, like epilepsy." [Diogenes Laertius *Lives of the Eminent Philosophers,* bk 9] "Sacred disease" was a Greek way of referring to epilepsy; so I've used both terms here.

Reposted by

bodhidave

Reply to

Visio Smaragdina

In an ritual Q&A after an intense Zen retreat in Berkeley, I once asked the abbot, Mel Weitsman: "Zen master Nanquan said, 'If you try to approach it, you'll miss it.' So what are we to do?" Mel said: "Don't try so hard." That was helpful to me. I smiled and I bowed. And Mel said, "Like *that.*"

Reposted by

bodhidave

If life is a dream, mystics are lucid dreamers. #witchsky #occultsky #pagansky #spirituality