Category: Uncategorized

I am trying to become more localized in my attention, my actions, and my presence. So much of my expansive human environment can be a ready source of anxiety, and there is little I can do about it. While I am generally aware of the broad community, I am drawing closer to the community immediately available to me. I am becoming localized.

I have several small groups in which I am interested in seeking refuge and support. These are the same groups into which I am putting more energy and attention. There is the assortment of neighborhood people who come into my garden. I encourage people around me to share in my garden and I go out to meet them when they venture into the back yard. I am in several book groups, and I put energetic attention into the time we spend together. In each of them, emphasis is placed on our experience as well as on the content of what we are reading.

I have a small group of Master Gardeners that I stay in close touch with. We share our common interest in plants, but we also focus on one another. I meet regularly with a small group of parents who have trans children, and we share our experiences and support one another. My sangha is a place of refuge and shared experience. My two kids are an on-going point of attention and engagement.

There, of course, are more intimate individuals, those people to whom I am drawing closer and closer as I localize. I find I am more generous and receptive in the sharing of hugs. Drawing closer and localizing includes being physical.

I am convinced that even while I am localizing, I am mirroring kindness, intimacy and benevolence into the wider more expansive community. What happens in my small groups actually radiates out into the whole world around me. While my emphasis may be on becoming more attentive to small communities, the effect is beyond localization. Perhaps it is an antidote to globalization.

For me, concentration is not the same as mindfulness. It seems that while concentration may actually be a prerequisite for mindfulness, it is only an initial step. My mindfulness includes an embodiment of the object of concentration. Concentration is a focus of my attention, an activity of my mind. Mindfulness is a focus of my whole being, my whole body and all that is involved with me being me. Mindfulness is for me a full body/mind engagement, an experience, more than a simple mental activity.

It has been a struggle for me to understand the practice of reciting the 5 and the 14 Mindfulness Trainings, also traditionally called Precepts. The recitation alone is not an engagement, and does not seem to be connected to mindfulness. I can see that mindfulness might lead to, even be a precondition for the Precepts. But focusing on the Mindfulness Trainings or Precepts is not mindfulness. It is more like checking a box that a task has been well completed.

Concentrating on the meaning of the Precepts may inspire ethical behavior. It may, more importantly for me, be a check whether I am behaving in an ethical manner. But focusing, reciting and concentrating on the Precepts is not an exercise in mindfulness.

I have for many years paid attention to improving my skill of concentration. That skill still serves me well. More significantly, I am now learning to fully engage my body/mind in frequent acts of mindfulness. Sometimes, the experience of mindfulness goes on and on. It is not an isolated engagement but a continuous engagement. It is so much more than concentration.

On my shrine, there is a card that I once made and sent out to friends. It has this quote:

“So are we all called to be lovers, to bear one another’s burdens and share each other’s joys.”

That aspiration has been a guide and attitude for fifty-six years. It continues to be a backdrop to my daily commitment. I have not always lived by it, but my intention has remained the same. My experience of what it means has deepened as my heart opens up in a loving way more and more frequently.

When I sent out that card, I had no idea that it would remain with me and be a part of my life. It is more than a memory. It is a reminder of who I am, who I have become.

Why all this fuss over whether someone considers themselves male or female? Everyone has both a masculine and feminine element in their nature. There is even a time in our physical development that even sex is indistinguishable. We all get to decide which, if either, we want to express. We decide which, masculine or feminine, we want to emphasize. I and everyone else have both, and neither exclusively.

For me to not embrace both would be to resist, frustrate and contradict who I am. This is true of all of us. I refuse to be entangled and constrained by the delusions of our culture.

I will be both male and female. I embrace and encourage each aspect in me. I choose wholeness, not division or separation. While I may mostly wear the trappings of a male in our culture, the female is alive and active within me.

I relate to the female in others. I am aware of the female and relax into it. I enjoy it. I don’t need to try to possess it because the female is already mine and part of me. I choose the manner I will identify with the female in me and in others. The same is true of the male in me. I choose the degree to which I embrace maleness in me and others. I want there to be my balance. I want both.

I relax around both masculine and feminine elements around me. I accept both, I do not feel threatened but enlivened by what I experience. I embrace and absorb what I see. I do not choose either. I choose both.

This is an outline of a talk I gave at the Blooming Heart Sangha on June 27, 2024.

There is no room for stowaways in our evolving, emerging cosmos.

• As  humans, we all have a special role to play in the evolution of our home planet earth, our mother Gaia.
• We can’t sit on our hands; no slouching allowed. 
• We are not an isolated self, we are an intimate part of it all, we can’t avoid our dynamic role.
• We swim with the current, not float along with it.
• Thay told us this when he taught about interbeing. 

When Thay spoke of ‘interbeing’, he did far more than teach a concept.

• He was giving us a way of actively plunging into a deep cosmic reality of which we are a dynamic part.
• He was guiding us into an experience of our active involvement in a vast cosmic event.  
• Interbeing is not about passive involvement.   It is not just an awareness;  it is also about action.
• Remember the fifth remembrance: our actions have consequences.  

While Thay made “interbeing” a commonly used word, especially in Lion’s Roar, the notion is not new.

• Interbeing is an expression of ancient wisdom, ancient from a time before Buddhism.
• Interbeing, the deep experience of connection and experience with the universe, has been in North America for thousands of years, and is still there if you listen to the voices of indigenous nations.

Thay’s Interbeing reminds us: our actions have consequences.

• It is ancient wisdom that what we do is not only connected to the universe, but has consequences.   
• Humans have long believed that they could have an impact on the surrounding world.
• Many modern minds have lost this sense and experience of connectedness.
• But Science hasn’t.   Today’s science seems to be turning to an ancient wisdom and shedding the materialism that has been so dominant.
• Today’s science is reminding us that our actions have consequences.

Scientists, physicists, cosmologists, are all telling the story that we are all connected.

• They insist that we are all connected and share the same energy and intelligence that was there at the Big Bang, the Big Fireball, the Big Breath.   
• There are multiple ways of expressing that first moment of our cosmos.   
• All tell me that all around me, in rabbits, in flowers, in rocks and me, there is the throbbing, evolving presence of the Big Bang, the Fireball, the Breath. 
• It is with us, in us, us.   
• Science tells me how the whole cosmos is united in the energy and intelligence that drives everything to evolve toward greater complexity.
• We are not only an effect of this evolution, we have a role that allows us to further the progress of evolution or thwart it.
• For us there is good news:  It is no mystery.  We know how to do this, our role is guided by our consciousness, by our awareness.
• We are guided by our mindfulness.

Thay teaches us how to know our role in the cosmos: by mindfulness.

• Without mindfulness, my interaction with the cosmos is superficial or misaligned.
• I cannot know the guiding intelligence of the cosmos without mindfulness.
• Without mindfulness, I see the cosmos as I imagine it to be, not as it is.   
• Mindfulness allows me to plunge into interbeing, not as as a concept but as a dynamic experience.
• Without mindfulness, I am less aligned and connected with the intelligence of the cosmos.
• With mindfulness, I am in touch with my interior compass that gives me direction.

I think many humans struggle with this notion of alignment and  connection.

• Many humans have forgotten the ancient wisdom of being connected and having an intimate role in the cosmos.
• There are some writers like Joyce Carol Oates who remind us that we are caught in a myth of the isolated self.
• Of course, Thay, like Joyce Carol Oates, reminds us in many ways, like in the Diamond Sutra, that the notion of self is an impediment.
• But humans forget that all is connected; they forget that we are joined in a universal consciousness, a cosmic intelligence. 

This “not being mindful”, not being aligned with the cosmic intelligence has disturbing and disastrous consequences

• This is blatantly apparent when we see that the climate chaos is a direct result of our ignoring that we are an integral part of the living earth, of living Gaia.  
• In the US, the division between persons seems to be widening.
• I experience my own difficulty when I observe what looks like a veritable house of horrors in the minds of some people, especially the MAGA crowd.
• People mistake representation for reality.
• Rather than align with cosmic intelligence, many choose a divergent path. 
• The evolutionary process, Gaia’s future and ours seems upended.
• For me, the way out of this mess is in.

I have the sangha and I have mindfulness.

• Both help dissolve my shell of separation.
• Most important to me, mindfulness and the sangha show me how to act consistent with interbeing.
• Mindfulness and the sangha allow me to practice acting in a way consistent with interbeing.
• I learn how to have the experience of connectedness.
• In Sangha and mindfulness, I can no longer experience myself as a separate self entity.   
• I am no longer a stowaway but an active participant in the vast dynamics of the cosmos.

And then there is my garden.

• My garden gives me an experience of connectedness.
• I no longer experience myself as a separate entity
• My garden is an experience of interbeing.
• In my garden, I experience the flow of energy that comes from the Big Bang, the Fireball, the Big Breath.
• In my garden, I know how to interact;  I learn how to relate to my neighbors and bring them into the garden.
• I learn how to relate to the rabbits and squirrels.
• As a gardener, I am no longer a stowaway but I become an active participant in the intelligence of the Cosmos and the evolution toward greater engagement and higher evolution.   

How do you go about experiencing what your role is in the unfolding of the cosmos.

• What engagements give you the experience of connectedness?
• What are your touchstones with the cosmic intelligence?

How do I want to live in a fear-based world? I want not only to survive in such a world, but play a small part in releasing the world from the grip of stiffling fear. Fear has served humans well. Fear has protected my ancestors from dangers and has helped them to overcome the perils of scarcity. Humans have managed to control the basic dangers of living and we have created an abundance capable of sustaining us all.

However, fear prevails. Some humans have hoarded the plenty we have managed to create, and have created an illusion of scarcity. Demagogues create the illusion of peril and fan the fear of loss. Our news media broadcast their messages of fear, creating a fear-based environment all around me.

My antidote to fear is to embrace the power of love within me. I have the energy of the universe within me and it manifests itself in the dynamics of love. The more I am mindful of this powerful source of love, the more I am able to contradict the stifling force of fear. By embodying love, I become a radiating source of healing energy to the world around me. I want to embrace everyone and everything close to me and beyond. I want to share the energy of love that resides naturally in me.

Fear has been a natural part of the human condition. But we have evolved to a level that fear no longer serves us or our future. We all have the power of love in us, a trait we share with the whole universe. I choose to embrace, use, and extend that power within me. I choose to no longer be an agent of caution.

The age of fear has passed. Fear is out of step with the evolutionary plan for the world.  We are in a new age when the love response is more in tune with the progress of humans, and those who grasp at fear are a relic to be put aside.   Those who spread and cling to fear belong in the past, not in the future. I refuse to be guided by fear and the perpetrators of fear. I choose to be a change agent that frees the power of love into the world. I refuse to live in a fear-based world.

There is order in what I experience The old tired notion of a random universe is being abandoned by science and the view of ancient humans is once again coming back into focus. There are no chance accidents, only convergence. Minds come together naturally, and they share similar thoughts.

What happens in my life has meaning and purpose. I do not live in disordered chaos. I live in a well-ordered and intentional occurrence of events. There is no chance meeting along my sidewalk but a pattern of converging events. What seems random, even serendipitous, is determined as meaningful, not accidental. There are no accidents, only convergences.

As time goes on, I see that I seem to be connecting more and more with ancient wisdom. The reference to an ancient way of understanding the world repeatedly shows up. I am reminded how the growth of trees the blooming of plants, the ebbing of winds, and the waves are all connected. And I am connected to them all. This is not a new idea.

There was a time when the kinship of humans with all the energies of the cosmos was routine. It was a time when the consciousness of humans was linked to the intelligence of plants, animals, and planets. Kinship with the world was a daily experience.

“Interbeing” may seem to be a new expression in my language, but it is ancient in how it reveals the deep kinship I have with all things. Many indigenous people have preserved and practice the experience of kinship. It has become a common experience of mine when I walk through my garden. It is a small but difficult thing to routinely experience kinship with other humans. But it is slowly growing beyond my small circle of intimates. For me, it is becoming a deeper and expressive matter to enter into a living kinship with all else in the world.

The notion of interbeing may be an open door to see the deep reality in which I am kin. To me, the idea of interbeing has felt rather static. What I want is a dynamic experience of kinship with all the world around me. I am getting a taste of what that kinship actually is.

I see that I am part of a huge drama in which I have an important role. Everything around me is being guided by an intelligence that directs the movements of all the players. The smallest items, the largest galaxies are all part of that consciousness, and so am I. This is the ancient wisdom that reminds me that I am part of a cosmic drama. I am self-reflecting and so I have a splendid connection with the guiding intelligence, with the consciousness that constitutes it all.

This is the ancient wisdom revealed in the experience of interbeing. It is a relationship of kinship in which I act and necessarily interact. I am not a stowaway in this ancient drama, I am not an observant stagehand. I am a critical partner in all that unfolds. I am not an observer of interbeing. I am an engaged participant.

I am learning not only how to connect with the intelligence of the cosmos. I am learning how to play my part in the cosmic kinship.

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.