Month: May 2024

I acknowledge the ancestral nature of this place and I acknowledge all those ancestors with whom I share this space.   

I acknowledge the land beneath me that rose from the ocean more than two and a half billion years ago.

I acknowledge the ancestral ice that has covered this place many times since this land appeared.

I acknowledge the simple organisms that first inhabited this land and from whom we have all descended. 

I acknowledge the dinosaurs who lived here for millions of years and breathed the same air we now breathe.

I acknowledge all the mammals who have occupied this land. 

I especially acknowledge our human ancestors who have lived here for thousands of years and with whom we now share this ancestral land. 

I sit in the embrace of all our ancestors who sit here with me.

I place myself in the presence of all ancestral beings with whom I share this space.  

My culture wants to make love safe. Love gets all wrapped up in cultural norms to make me feel safe and secure. I am told to wear a life vest to reduce the risks and uncertainty of love. The future is made to seem predictable and without chance of loss and pain.

There is no certainty in love. Love is not focused and constrained. Love is by its nature wild and free. It has all the expansive vibrancy of the universe. It does not want to be tamed or put securely in cultural cages.

Love is not in me as a tidy package, enclosed in appropriate wrappings. It is not secure and contained in promises about the future. It is mine to choose daily with all its risks and uncertainties.

I must become unprotected and vulnerable to the future and the unpredictable unfolding of what is to come. It is mine to choose with all its risk and uncertainty. I choose to be vulnerable to the unknown future and the unknown expansiveness of love.

I choose to yield to the expanding life force of the universe, and I am uncertain where it will take me or how it will affect me. Love makes no promises. It only invites me to live courageously. Love is not safe.

This is a talk never given. It points out how my actions are all part of the unfolding of the Cosmic activity initiated at the time of the Fireball. I stress my role in determining the future of the evolving universe.

A Cosmic Interbeing plunge.  2/29/2024

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.   

Every day, I want to cultivate a sense of being. I will come back to that feeling of connection with something or everything. I will cultivate the experience of awareness throughout my whole body. It may be something simple, like touching a chair and losing my cosmic body in everything. I will cultivate my sense of being throughout the day.