Meditation Guidance

"Here's what I want you to do: Find a quiet, secluded place so you won't be tempted to role-play before God. Just be there as simply and honestly as you can manage. The focus will shift from you to God, and you will begin to sense God's grace."
--Matthew 6 (The Message)

"Early Spring"

"Early Spring"

--a poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I.

Once more the Heavenly Power

Makes all things new,

And domes the red-plow’d hills

With loving blue;

The blackbirds have their wills,

The throstles too.

II.

Opens a door in heaven;

From skies of glass

A Jacob’s ladder falls

On greening grass,

And o’er the mountain-walls

Young angels pass.

III.

Before them fleets the shower,

And burst the buds,

And shine the level lands,

And flash the floods;

The stars are from their hands

Flung thro’ the woods,

IV.

The woods with living airs

How softly fann’d,

Light airs from where the deep,

All down the sand,

Is breathing in his sleep,

Heard by the land.

V.

O, follow, leaping blood,

The season’s lure!

O heart, look down and up

Serene, secure,

Warm as the crocus cup,

Like snowdrops, pure!

VI.

Past, Future glimpse and fade

Thro’ some slight spell,

A gleam from yonder vale,

Some far blue fell,

And sympathies, how frail,

In sound and smell!

VII.

Till at thy chuckled note,

Thou twinkling bird,

The fairy fancies range,

And, lightly stirr’d,

Ring little bells of change

From word to word.

VIII.

For now the Heavenly Power

Makes all things new,

And thaws the cold, and fills

The flower with dew;

The blackbirds have their wills,

The poets too.

"Lily"

"Lily"

--a poem by William Blake

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn,

The humble sheep a threat'ning horn:

While the Lily white shall in love delight,

Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

Self-transformation

A "meditation" by Lao Tzu:

"If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself; if you want to eliminate the suffering of the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation."

"A Just and Moral Society..."

"A just and moral society cannot be erected on a premise that some human beings are subhuman or perverted, not on the basis of their doing but on the basis of their being. It matters not what any source of ancient wisdom has previously declared. The Bible, for example, was once quoted to support slavery, to oppose science and to prevent women from achieving equality. On every one of those issues the Bible was quite simply wrong. To quote it now to uphold the evil of homophobia is no less wrong. These efforts will fail as they always do."

~Bishop John Shelby Spong

Finding Non-duality (Unity)

An excerpt from Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict by Tsultrim Allione


"Normally we empower our demons by believing they are real and strong in themselves and have the power to destroy us. As we fight against them, they get stronger. But when we acknowledge them by discovering what they really need, and nurture them, our demons release their hold, and we find that they actually do not have power over us. By nurturing the shadow elements of our being with infinite generosity, we can access the state of luminous awareness and undermine ego. By feeding the demons, we resolve conflict and duality, finding our way to unity."

Great interview with the author is found here:

http://www.befriend-your-fears.com/page8.htm

The Challenge of Awakening

Excerpt from Hakuin Ekaku's Talks Given Introductory to Zen Lectures on the Records of Sokko, 1740:

"Buddha means 'one who is awakened.' Once you have awakened, your own mind itself is Buddha. By seeking outside yourself for a Buddha invested with form, you set yourself forward as a foolish, misguided man. It is like a person who wants to catch a fish. He must start by looking in the water, because fish live in water and are not found apart from it. If a person wants to find Buddha, he must look into his own mind, because it is there, and nowhere else, that Buddha exists.

"Question: 'In that case, what can I do to become awakened to my own mind?'

"What is that which asks such a question? Is it your mind? Is it your original nature? Is it some kind of spirit or demon? Is it inside you? Outside you? Is it somewhere intermediate? Is it blue, yellow, red, or white?

"It is something you must investigate and clarify for yourself. You must investigate it whether you are standing or sitting, speaking or silent, when you are eating your rice or drinking your tea. You must keep at it with total, single-minded devotion. And never, whatever you do, look in sutras or in commentaries for an answer, or seek it in the words you hear a teacher speak.

"When all the effort you can muster has been exhausted and you have reached a total impasse, and you are like the cat at the rathole, like the mother hen warming her egg, it will suddenly come and you will break free. The phoenix will get through the golden net. The crane will fly clear of the cage...."

(As found in The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin, trans. by Norman Waddell. [Boston: Shambhala, 1994].)