This weeks’ topic for reflection is change and impermanence. So let’s make this personal. What belongings did you have in your childhood? In your young adulthood? What do you have now that’s important? What will you have ten or twenty years from now? One hundred years form now, what will these possessions be like? Reflect on how what you have, changes throughout your life and beyond. Include in this how your body changes. Is there anything, anywhere that does not change like this?
This change is an expression of impermanence. Is there anything at all that is permanent? How are you uncomfortable and how are you comfortable with this changing situation and impermanence? Reflect about the ways change and impermanence create the opportunity for positive and negative things to happen. What are a few changes that happened in your life that put you in touch with impermanence?
What can you do to make a difference or change? A positive difference or negative difference? Don’t forget to apply this to yourself. Then apply it to others. It can be small things. Things near you that you can do fairly easily. I think most of us want to make a positive difference in the world. Perhaps it’s a matter of noticing more and choosing to do more.
The last ten years or so I have been regularly surprised about the changes happening in my country. It seems as though I have been viewing things through what I call Disneyland glasses. Like, “My country is wonderful and caring and everyone wants to be like us or at least live here.” My view was our form of democracy is wonderful and everyone believes in it and supports it. It turns out this is not true. Things are rapidly changing with the new administration and it’s effecting the entire world. I wonder if people are really changing that much or is it that suppressed points of view are just now being expressed more actively. I have not been seeing things clearly or accurately.
How do you see and feel about the current changes politically and culturally in this country and the world? Will these changes increase or decrease suffering? What can we do to increase or decrease suffering? Both our own suffering and for others. What are ethical ways of reaching out and sharing to encourage positive change? How do I want to be and need to be? I have a commitment to sanity. To see honestly and speak the truth as I see it. To keep growing and opening up my capacity to care and empathize with myself and others. Like I was recently told, “I see, I care. My hands respond.” I’m in favor of diversity, equity and inclusion and I try to correct myself when I fall short.
Everything will change. What we don’t know is how it will change. All choices no matter how small or large matter.
Please join us for morning Zoom zazen from 7:00 to 7:30 Tuesday and Thursday, in person zazen at the McNail Riley House Saturday morning from 9:00 to 11:00 and Sunday morning Zoom zazen and discussion of the topic for reflection blog from 8:00 to 9:00 Pacific Time. Here’s the Zoom link:
Meeting ID: 811 6100 3357
Passcode: 278259
Gassho,
Futai
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