Month: March 2024

Is walking with friends half the journey? No, it is the whole journey.

Evolution is opportunistic. While evolution processes are constantly in motion, the evidence of evolution occurs when a niche occurs that evolution can fill. Adaptations to changes in the environment are indicators that evolution has been happening and it has siezed the opportunity to be expessed in a changed situation.

Evolution steps into the gap when extinctions occur. This has especially been true after major extinctions have taken place. When the world of the dinosaurs was changed by a huge rock from space, the dinosaurs were mostly destroyed. Only the survivors were able to advance into the new age, and they rapidly filled the newly created void when the large dinosaurs disappeared. The mass extinction was an opportunity for evolution to show its power and the amazing variety of animals that emerged from the catastrophe filled all the newly created niches.

There is some thought that we have entered a time of massive extinction. This could be an opportunity for evolution as the old assortment of living beings disappear and new niches appear for a regenerated planet. The future, post extinction planet will suvive and the life forms that populate it will be the products of the powerful forces of evolution.

I wonder what future form of humans will show up. Will a future world be populated by humans who have adapted to the changed environment? I think there is an emerging population of more aware, more adaptable humans showing up in the current population. My hope is that these humans with highly developed mindfulness will be the face of humanity in a post-extinction world.

Evolution will have its way, especially after a massive extinction. Perhaps the modifications of the planet will make way for a more highly evolved and aware presence of humans.

I don’t think I have been on a certain path. There has never been a time when I felt I knew where I was going or even wanted to go. The path beyond the step I was taking at that moment has mostly seemed vague and undefined. Even when I tried to give my path dimension or direction, it has surprised me again and again.

Even when I made promises and plans, my path hasn’t always somplied with my sense of direction. I’ve made vows, laying out a path of certainty. But things haven’t turned out as I anticipted or even planned. Most recently, my planned long-term relationships have shifted and the path I was on dissolved or certainly changed.

I thought my life of a monk was on a path of apparent certainty. From the age of 13, I knew where I was headed and what the path would look like. All I had to do was follow it. Even that path evolved and I discovered that the path I was on was much deeper and ill-defined than the clear path of a monk in robes. What I discovered while following the path of a monk, was that the path slowly, even subtly took me in a direction I and those around me scarcely anticipated.

Rather than living in a community of monks and teaching the tenants of religion, I found myself living on my own and generally outside the realm of religious teaching. Instead I found that the path I had been on had been secretely preparing me to run the State’s major water pollution control program with insights gained as a monk. I went on to run an environmental program for Dakota County, still walking the path of a monk though no longer resembling a monk.

No longer looking like a monk, I was in fact walking the path of a monk in a secular environment. It was a path not at all foreseen, planned or anticipated. It was not a path my superiors in the monastery had in mind for me. In many ways, it was a path that chose me, not a path that I deliberately chose.

For a time, my unplanned path took me into the community of St. Stephen’s Church where I was one of the forces and architects who reshaped the liturgy. It was a clear departure from the plans of the Catholic Church. But it had all the savor of the life of a monk who walked in the present, making each step real and genuine. I had no notion at all where it was leading, but even then I knew when it was time to step away and follow a changing path that beckoned me elsewhere even while it was unclear.

Soon after putting aside the robes of a monk, I was no longer walking in an alone and solitary way. I have found myself walking along side several close companions. We have supported one another and I often drew on the depth of awareness taught me in the monastery. I have learned that even in relationships, a promised future path is something of an illusion. I have learned that my enduring commitment has been to be fully present, to be real, to be genuine. While I am clear that I can be kind, honest and gentle with each step on the path, I can be less certain what the future holds for the path I am on.

Perhaps, it is simply futile to try to figure where my path is leading. I am not even sure that my path is going anywhere. I am simply on the path, and I have no path to follow. There is no path of the past or of the future. I cannot know where the path leads, nor is it useful to try to figure that out. I want to be aware as best I can of where I stand at any moment. I want to feel the full exprience of each step I take. But I don’t aspire to know where the next step will fall. I just know that I want to be fully there.

The path, perhaps, is real, but only in the sense that it exists beneath me. I know that I am on a path. Where it goes is not of great importance to me. It is important that I deeply feel the presence of the path on which I stand at any given moment. It is important to me that I am aware where my path is, not where it is going. I have no path to f0llow.

Knowing gives shape to most of my days. It is knowing that creates the appearance of the world around me. Knowing helps me to plan and gives form to my memories. It gives order to the progression of time and offers a framework to make sense of what I encounter. Knowing gives me a solid world of self and makes me see myself as distinct and unique. But it is feeling that opens me to the wide universe of infinite possibilities.

When I let go of what I know, I can relax into an experience that has no form or framework. I can divest myself of all the confining notions that give appearance not only to my surroundings but also to my sense of self. If I undress the world from what I know, I am able to experience a world without restrictions. If I undress myself, I lose the sense of self. My experience broadens, and I experience how I am connected to all that surrounds me.

Knowing gives me a sense of living in time. And when I let go of knowing, I am able to enter an experience of no-time. All that I imagined as shaped by time and given a defined dimension suddenly becomes an all-encompassing now. Not-knowing gives me an opening to an expanded experience of a fresh universe. Not-knowing divests me of my sense of self, and I blend with a vast world, I experience a connection to all things.

Knowing is a useful tool that helps me navigate my days. But by relying on feeling, by relaxing into a realm of not-knowing, I am allowed to plumb my experiences in an expansive way. The world becomes a more exciting place.

This is an outline of a talk given at the Blooming Heart Sangha on February 29, 2024.

A Cosmic Interbeing plunge.  

Thay came up with the word “interbeing”, and it is something I have struggled with.  

I now think that when Thay spoke of “interbeing”, he was doing more than teaching us a concept.

• He was giving us a way of plunging into a deep cosmic reality of which we are a significant part. 
• He was guiding us into an experience of our involvement in a vast cosmic event that is 13.8 billion years old 
• I want to share with you what it has meant for me to take a plunge into that cosmic event, guided and facilitated by what Thay has taught.

First, Join me in blowing into the palm of your hand.

• Feel the movement of the air, the energy of lungs pushing air out your mouth.
• This is energy that originated in the Great Fireball, 13.8 billion years ago in what we often call the Big Bang.
• This energy of our breath originated in the Fireball that erupted out of a field of infinite possibility,
• This breath is a part of the vast cosmic event that continues to unfold, shape and reshape everything around us, everything we experience.
• We experience the dynamic urging of the Fireball when we blow on our hand.  
• It is the energy that moves and shapes the whole world around us and inside us. 
• This push from the Fireball shapes and reshapes everything we experience.
• The evolving Fireball energy allows me to experience the substance and fabric of interbeing from the largest planetary body to the atoms you see in the tip of your finger.  
• Guided by Thay, Note the fabric of interbeing in your breath, in the tip of your finger. 

I like Science.  Science tells me that there is nothing in the tip of my finger and in today’s world that was not there at the first instant of the Fireball.

• Physicists, cosmologists, poets and biologists constantly tell me how this is so, and how that original pulse of energy continues to form and reshape the whole cosmos.  
• Science tells me how the energy of the Fireball moves and shapes every object, every presence, every interaction.
• Science constantly reminds me how all around me, in raccoons, in trees and in rocks, there is the living, energetic presence of the throbbing Fireball.  
• But it is Thay who has given me the notion of interbeing and the means to experience it. 

Mindfulness, as taught by Thay, takes me and my awareness into a deep plunge into the Cosmos, into my engagement with the Fireball.

• Without mindfulness, my awareness and interaction with the cosmos is validbut superficial.
• Without mindfulness, I see the world as I imagine it to be, not as it is.  
• Mindfulness allows me to plunge into interbeing, not just as a scientific concept but as a timeless, dynamic experience.
• Mindfulness allows a sense of wonder and awe to arise out of the universe.
• Mindfulness allows me to know what it means to be human, to see my relation with all other beings, to see my true dynamic relationship with the Fireball.  
• Mindfulness allows me to dispel the notion that I am a separate self in the Cosmos.

 Self-aware: Perhaps, the mindfulness I experience is actually the Cosmos reflecting back on itself, of being self-aware.

• That is for me, the deep meaning of interbeing as taught by Thay.
• Through mindfulness, I see that I am not a separate self, but I see that I am connected to all things.
• I think that humans may be uniquely capable of self-reflection, of being aware of our cosmic relatedness to all things.
• As an expression and manifestation of the Fireball, we are capable of self-awareness,  of self-reflection.   
• We are the universe being aware of itself. 
• We are an essential part of a great cosmic journey, that is the deep meaning of interbeing.
• Thru mindfulness, as taught by Thay, we recognize that we are not stowaways on that cosmic journey, but we are active agents of this evolving cosmos.

For me, interbeing is more than science, more than a simple concept of interconnectedness.

• It is more than a linear view of clouds becoming rain, more than seeing fungi making plants possible, more than understanding how the microbiome in our bodies allow us to live.
• More than the physical entanglement so evident in our world.
• Interbeing is a deep timeless plunge into the origins and unfolding of all things, a deep plunge into a web-like fabric of the cosmos, a deep plunge into no-time.
• We, and all the world around us, were there at the origin of the Fireball and we are there now.  
• We continue and experience that primal connection throughout all time, through no-time.  We have a way of stepping out of time.

Thay’s notion of interbeing, through mindfulness, brings us face to face with the cosmic dynamics.

• We see ourselves not just as witnesses to the dynamics of the universe; we are its self-reflective expression.
• Through mindfulness, we can experience the elements of the Fireball in us.
• Through mindfulness, we see that we are the individual presence of the Fireball, filled with its energy and its urgent purpose. 

The End:  This is the gift of Thay.   When we experience the air we blow on our hands, we experience the energy, the force of the cosmic Fireball.

• We experience the Fireball in the tip of our finger.
• We experience the Fireball that was there at the beginning, is here now, and will be in all the actions we choose to take.   All guided by mindfulness as taught by Thay.