Belonging: Random Tidbits

Cooking

It’s remarkable how pleasurable it can be to simply feel the knife gliding through the vegetables I am slicing to put into my stew. I never seem to tire of or cease to be amazed by the new shapes that emerge from the encounter between knife and vegetables as I cut them up.


Urban Buddhas

One evening, I went out on my balcony and sat in a chair to meditate. I had this most wondrous experience of feeling as if the skyscrapers, with their yellow lights glowing in the night, were like golden Buddhas, sitting right along with me.


Mind-body Connection

The body may follow the mind,
But I find the reverse is also true;
If you can get the body going,
the mind usually follows.

Beleaguered: Hell

One day, when I was having a Fibromyalgia attack, I fell to reflecting upon hell, perhaps because I felt as if I was in it. I also thought about Tara Buddha and how in my visualizations I sometimes felt as if she poured her compassion all over me until it was overflowing all over the floor. Hence, I imagined myself in hell, and I wondered if the demons would get annoyed because I was making such a mess of the carpet.

“You there! Stop that!” Exclaimed the Demon shift supervisor. Do you have any idea how much it costs to carpet the entire precincts of hell with fire proof carpeting of the exact shade of charcoal black that Lucifer prefers?”

“Who me,” I replied. “I’m not in charge here. It’s Tara. She just keeps pouring compassion on me until it overflows.”

Materializing immediately at the sound of her name, “Yes?” said Tara.

The demon repeated his complaint, to which Tara replied, “I’m not in charge of reality, I just work here.”

Just then, Satan, on one of his regular walk-throughs of the factory floor, noticing the state of affairs, called the demon on the carpet.

The demon explained. “We’ll see about this!” Satan roared, ascending to the waiting room and demanding to be seen by God immediately to lodge a complaint.

“There’s a particularly long line up, this century,” the concierge informed him. “You’ll have to wait.” Naturally the devil attempted to jump the cue, but the other petitioners would have none of it. “Get behind me, Satan!” each one responded to his attempts to cut in. Sullenly, the devil complied.

Several millennia later the dark prince finally got in to see the Most High, who listened sympathetically while the demon vented his ire.

“You’re the one who put me in charge of hell. So, am I still in charge of hell or what?” He ended.

“I don’t see the problem. Some of these Buddhists don’t believe in me; so, of course I have to send them to hell. Besides that, they don’t mind it and it makes you crazy!!!” The Supreme being’s laugh shook the heavens.

The devil fumed, but there was nothing he could do about it; so, shaking with rage he slunk away back to his domains.

Beguiled: Chains

When I meditate it seems as if I change the place from which I am looking. Nothing changes except my perspective, but that’s all I need. I don’t have to change anything, just my perspective.

Chaos is always here.
Harmony is always here.
Suffering is always here.
Liberation from suffering is always here.

I know suffering when I am suffering.
I know liberation when I am awake.

But what is it that changes my perspective?
Do I change it? Is it what I am doing/not doing that changes it?
Or, does it merely change by itself, and it’s just that I happen to be paying attention at the time?

Then again, there is also a kind of cause and effect involved, is there not?
Something causes this change (or does it?)

It is said that if you break free from this chain of cause and effect, you are free to act, but when you are free, how will you act then?

This is the fear.

Then again, what if we are never independent from conditions? Then, I think we can only act within the parameters of all the conditions; we cannot depart from that.

If this is so then why do we make the judgments we make about people?

Or, maybe that too is conditioned.