OTHER PAGES ON THE LEAFLET
JUST HORSING AROUND-1
We have just passed the Western New Year date of January 1, and are approaching (January 31) the Chinese New Year. I like to use this calendar designation because the Chinese system overlaps with zodiac signs, all animals, which point to a theme for the year. We are just moving out of the Year of the Snake into the Year of the Horse. What might this suggest to us?
Horse are primarily modes of good and quick transportation, so is a symbol of traveling, but also a because they get you to where you want to go, sign of speedy success. Horses are also symbols of competition. The pursue freedom, passion and leadership. Horses are social animals, with the herd, l but also in company of humans both as transporters and military collaborators.
Chinese wouldn't let horse to the farm work. Instead, all the farmland jobs go to the ox. This is because Chinese have higher expectation on horses. Horses can help human to reach a goal or win the battle. Horses are intelligent but still needs to be trained to become useful to human.
For us then, we are alerted this year to themes of:
• transportation and travel, getting swiftly to our destinations
• learning more to live together and protect and promote our “herd”
• demonstrating leadership
• engaging in brave endeavours in support of ourselves and others
• displaying our intelligence and being open to training and discipline
More on this to come.
Yours in the Dharma,
from Akashaloka,
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/ask-the-religion-experts/index.html
THE WINTER BLAHS
As we pack up our gifts, decorations and lights, we enter into that extended period of winter, which, for some, promises ski trails and snowmen. For others, it ushers in a long and dark season, full of physical and/or emotional hardship. Statistically, we know this is one of the most difficult times of the year for all ages. This was brought home to me, just before the Christmas break, when so many lives in my work location community were shattered in a young woman’s deeply desperate act of self destruction. I’m always astonished at how wide are the ripples from such loss and pain.
Sometimes those of us who are bringing Dharma practices into our lives lose focus on the real purpose of our practice. Ours is a practice of attention and compassion. We are dedicated to the relief of suffering in the world. It is especially important for us to attend to those close to us at this time of year and be sensitive to how they are doing. This can be catching up with that person who we didn’t quite connect with over the past few weeks. It can be taking a few extra moments to listen attentively to someone who wants to share something personal with us. It can be taking an extra breath before reacting to the person who cuts you off in traffic or who blunders past you in the grocery store.
We refer to the Three Obstacles (kleshas) in our human lives - passion, aggression and stupidity. These characterize everyone’s life and behaviour. It is these tendencies which keep us locked into the cycle of suffering and scarcity we feel. Its never too difficult to see these at play in the lives of others, and dismiss them. Our practice calls us to recognize that such behaviour is our own behaviour too. It is recognizing our shared entrapment that allows us to bring our compassion and loving kindness into our lives and make it available for others.
Yours in the Dharma,
from Akashaloka,
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu
Check out this week's Religion Expert column at
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/ask-the-religion-experts/index.html
ANNUAL INTENTIONS GUIDE QUESTIONS
Each year we set time aside for a backward and forward consideration of our lives, individually and as a community. In December, we shared our reflections on how we have contributed to our own, our family and the community’s progress for the passing year. Now, around the time of the Western and Chinese New Years, we look ahead and consider how we will contribute to our own, our family and our community’s prosperity.
Here is a framework of guiding questions for the New Year Intentions reflection.
1. WISDOM
This question invites you to reflect on your coming efforts to cultivate knowledge and understanding in yourself and for others.
- How will you cultivate knowledge for yourself? (Reading, study, training, hobbies)
- How will you contribute to and foster the knowledge of others, including the larger community?
- In what ways will you balance the emotional and intellectual sides of your life?
2. PRACTICE IN ACTION
Practice is both the formal practices we apply in our lives, but also the many ways we bring our growing practice skill to everyday living.
- What practices will you work on this year?
- How will you apply your formal practices to your everyday life?
- In what ways will you develop your power of concentration?
- In what ways will you develop your capacity to pay attention to your life?
- In what ways will you strengthen the practice environment of the Red Maple Sangha?
3. ETHICAL LIVING
Knowledge and practice remain private experiences unless they are applied to everyday living. Our teaching recommends we focus on the wholesome expression of our practice, on actions which fulfill what we are learning in our practice and what we come to understand through study.
- How will you express your practice, in language and purposeful action?
- How will practice impact and shape your work situation?
- How will practice shape and impact your home life and relationships?
- How will practice shape your relation to the immediate and world-wide community within which you live?
LOOKING OUT, LOOKING IN
For most of us, the threshold between years is like Janus, the Roman’s two-headed protector-god of the entry-way, an experience of looking out and looking in. We reflect on what we have done, and not done, how we have changed and not changed, and what possibilities lie before us. A fine symbol for this time of year is Akashaloka, the Realm of Infinite Possibilities, the name for our mini-temple, here at the Old Schoolhouse . This reminds us that, regardless of what has happened in the past twelve months, we are entering something new, something pregnant with unimaginable possibilities.
It may feel uneasy to allow such breadth of possibility, yet when we look at our lives of the past year - sudden deaths, locations to new homes and tragic-comic events in our public sphere - possibilities are infinite indeed.
Our Dharma faith is characterized by an assumption that our lives are nested within and flowing along with the activity of the Buddhas. This assumption likewise presumes that outcomes are not within our control, but are rather the fulfillment of the Buddha vows. Therefore, as we prepare for the coming year, we need not become obsessed with specific accomplishments or goals, but rather sustain our commitment to the aspirations of wholesome living that constitute our practice.
This is not to promote a throwing up of hands and “let go and let God”, as they say in A.A. We cannot sidestep our own responsibilities for action. Our faith is directed at awakening and this is not about waiting by the sidelines. We don’t cause awakening, ours or anyone’s, this is prideful and mis-informed. We are instead called to harmonize our actions and choices with the activity of the Buddhas, because we already and always are the dynamic and unfolding activity of the Buddhas. When, from the perspective of this threshold, we cast our eyes down the decreasingly clear vista of 2014, we ask ourselves how and what will this year be. We are invited to do so from the Dharma perspective of infinite possibilities; to direct ourselves at what actions and intentions will fulfill the commitment to all sentient beings.
Yours in the Dharma,
from Akashaloka,
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/ask-the-religion-experts/index.html
WINTER AND WHITEBOARDS
It was a wonderful celebration of our year-end last Saturday. Friends and family from all over the Valley came by to practice and share together -deep bows to all. We schedule a formal service hiatus now, in part because of typically unpredictable weather and, in part, because of the obligations of Christmas among our community. When we next meet, it will be on the other side of the shortest day, the end of one year and the unfolding of a new one, and the start of our second decade of practice.
This time of hiatus and passage was reflected earlier today when I was out pushing some of the tons of fresh snow in our yard. I recalled the dazzling red, orange and green diversity we enjoyed only a few months ago, a multi-coloured world now replaced by little other than white on white on white. One of our family visitors actually looked up at the white wall in the Jizo garden and said it looked like a “snow-nami” about to swamp us with some giant wave of whiteness. This time of year has that quality to it - wiping clean this year, like brush across a white board, so that we stand ready to write our future year. Our pack of multi-coloured markers lies open, waiting for each of us to add some new line, shape and colour to this landscape.
Yours in the Dharma,
from Akashaloka,
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu
Read the Religion Experts for this week at:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/ask-the-religion-experts/index.html
Jodo-e
With all of the fuss and political correctness about what to call or say at this time of year, those of us on the Dharma path can remember that our important date occurs early in December, usually around the 8th. Bodhi Day celebrates the enlightenment of our historical founder, Shakyamuni Buddha, some 2500 years ago. It is an important date all over East Asia, a key celebration on the Buddhist calendar.
In many countries Bodhi Day or, as we in the Tendai tradition call it, Jodo-e, includes marking the event with coloured lights and candles. This provides us with an opportunity to re-interpret some of the familiar Western/Christian celebration traditions in a way which speaks to us. We can likewise display such lights, and understand them as symbols of the moon and morning star which figure so prominently in the Buddha’s awakening narrative.
It is crucial for us to find such ways to make our faith resonate with our present context. We ought not merely imitate what happens in Japan or Korea, as if this is the correct way. All symbolic activity arises from what speaks to practitioners in our own time and place.
May this Jodo-e period remind all of us of the remarkable event of the Buddha’s awakening and call us to find ways to make that present in and through our daily lives.
Yours in the Dharma,
from Akashaloka,
Innen, doshu
om namo amida butsu
Check out my column in the Ottawa Citizen
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/ask-the-religion-experts/index.html
VIEWING AND REFLECTING
In the past few weeks I have been asked what I thought of my experiences in Japan. This proved impossible for me to answer until just a few days ago. I found I was so immersed in the experience and in the experiencing that I was not able to shift into any reflective mode. All my senses and cognitive capacities were set on absorb, so the mechanisms of meaning-making were idling. In fact I deliberately avoided engaging in such reflection. It seemed out of place to be doing so while the experience was still unfolding. Now, with a week or so between me and the direct experiences, I can start to ask some questions and consider some metaphors to make sense of it all.
Coincidentally, our community is set to engage in our annual reflection. During this time we look back over the past 12 months and review what we have done to fulfill the intentions we set for ourselves last January. In our January gathering we will present the intentions for 2014. This review is an essential aspect of how we practice.
On my travels I read the new book, Scarcity, (Mullainathan and Shafir) a radical new proposal for how we can understand how the human mind works. Although the theory is pure Western psychology, it is entirely compatible with Buddhist ideas about the human sense of lack, what we call dukkha. They suggest that we are poorly served when we become “captured” by short-term shortages. We tend to narrow our perception and behave in ways which re-create the same distortions of life which we are caught up with. They emphasize the need to step back from urgencies of life, to look at what our long term aspirations may be. When we do this, we make better decisions and are less likely to become overwhelmed by our lives. In short, we need to shift between pure experience and the reflection of what such experience might mean for us.
om namu amida butsu,
Innen, doshu
