This week’s topic for reflection is the first Great Bodhisattva Vow, Beings are everywhere, may we be free.
First pause. In order to realize beings are everywhere it is important to pause. Let go of whatever you are doing and return to this moment. Then see, hear, taste, smell, feel and notice. Notice what is around and inside you. Notice the different types of things and individual beings. Plants of all kinds. Animals of all kinds. Air with floating clouds. Breeze moving trees and leaves and grass. Water flowing, standing still, providing a home for innumerable creatures. Notice the beings all around. Without labeling, notice. There are spirits all around, here with us, without substance or bodies. It’s all larger and more complex than we can sense or understand with our bodies and thought. Beings are everywhere.
May we be free. Actually what’s more true to the point is may we be free from self clinging. Self clinging is at the core of our problems. I can’t think of a single problem that cannot be traced back to this. Fear of death, fear of loss, fear of not enough, fear of too much, fear of having or not having something, all are created by clinging to an idea of being a separate self. The problem is not the idea of a self. Ideas have no substance or lasting existence. It’s the clinging to the idea and believing the idea, that’s the problem. Self clinging gets in the way of seeing what is. Self clinging gets in the way of caring. Self clinging gets in the way of responding in a way that is helpful.
Imagine beings everywhere and no self clinging. Bodhisattvas freely and effortlessly serve all beings because there is no self clinging. Nothing is lost and nothing is gained. As John Lennon sang, “Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”It’s such an effort to maintain and cling to this fictional self that each of us creates. Not clinging does not mean free to be irresponsible. It opens us to caring. We can be free to respond to what is needed in a helpful way. An empty mirror is full of potential. Full of everything as it is, together.
Please join us on Zoom for morning zazen from 7:00 to 7:30 Tuesday and Thursday, in person Zen meditation in Eugene Saturday morning at the McNail-Riley house from 8:30 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
Freely opening
Become-ings are everywhere
Flowing through us all
Kent
Reading this mornings op-ed by Jamelle Bouie in the N.Y. Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/09/opinion/trump-illiberalism-american-history.html, I see I hold a liberal Buddhist view of inclusion. My question is how does this view include those with an illiberal view of exclusion. Is it appropriate to see my view point as wisdom and theirs delusion? Is there a more inclusive way to hold them? May "we" be free. If I'm judging them and not fully welcoming them or including them, I need to look at that. How to see and work with delusion.