Ruminating On Rumi

As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.

~ M. Rumi

Saturday, November 29, 2014

This Practice

Yes, this practice of zazen, seated meditation, has its challenges.  The chattering monkey mind. The not so limber body sitting straight and steady. The ever bubbling up emotions. However, when the rubber of the practice meets the road of this experience, this moment, this response, as it is, this is the meeting place.

As Rumi penned,
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase "each other" doesn't make any sense."

It doesn't make sense, we can never be prepared for what may happen because the experience of being human is that we truly don't know.  We can only bask in its fullness and respond to its senselessness, the senseless beauty and the senseless horror with what is appropriate in the moment.
And that is the practice.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

It is So


It's not that any "thing" is ordinary or extraordinary; it is only perception that makes it so. 

Here, the crash of an old, yellow "Brown Betty" tea pot laced in fine cracks, wrinkles, tea wisdom, crashes to the kitchen floor in a hundred possibilities of waking up. 

Here too, the recycling truck outside my doors beyond the gate and up the driveway opens up and accepts the leftovers, two weeks worth of packaging and then with a gulp and roar moves on. 

And here, the whirlwind, whizzing blur of hummingbird wings, compact, aerodynamic body with long beak sips a sugary offering on grey, dampish autumn day. 

Before now, when young, I used to "try" and look at "things" from a different point of view. Lying with head over the edge of the bed, getting up high and looking down, squinting, tilting head from side to side, one eye open, sensing that all was not as it appeared. 

Ahhh, look outside, the hummingbird has settled, resting on the perch of the red feeder, its beak dipped into the nectar. No questions asked. 

Monday, November 24, 2014

Coming Full Circle

Memorized in flesh; etched in bone.
When does a sad heart turn to stone.
Whispered yearnings, unspoken fears.
Clever weeps its angry tears
Voices speak yet ears don't hear. 

--ON this go round
This day on earth
Sad beginnings


A backass birth. 


There is a time for letting go. 
Winter's heart, cold, hard like frozen snow
Bitter, breaks and does not know 
With spring's tentative revealing 
Warm salve of light begins the healing.

When an arrow strikes the mark
Ignites the flame that wisdom starts
Love overflows and soon reveals
This is where ALL this heals. 



Sunday, November 23, 2014

Now what?!

Now what?!

I've deFaced myself (deactivated my Facebook account) for now. That "for now" is a little bit of a safety net. I am hoping I will bolster the courage to cut the cord completely.  I'm not against technology or a Luddite. I am enthralled how my devices can communicate. I positively adore their usefulness and, at the same time, realize the great capacity for distraction. I savor the word processing program Pages. I delight in clicking, hovering, using mouse, keyboard, all the tools of the trade. 

Somehow though, something is lost. Perhaps that sense of intimacy. At times, I forget how to write by hand, certainly my hand writing muscles have atrophied. But oh how I savour something handwritten. Among my most cherished written possessions, a letter written from baby me by my mom to my young first time father, a letter from my Dad to me, and a beautiful, long birthday letter on Gumby letterhead paper from my dear sister, still kept in the bedside drawer. I cherish the printings and early writings of my children.

On the other hand, how astounding that we can change fonts, add colour, pictures, symbols to create, personalize, a written project, letter, report, what-have-you into a unique expression.  And blogs! Web-logs, a diary, journal, travelogue that, if we so wish, can be shared with others. 

Alas, I have many beautiful paper diaries started with enthusiasm or, as is a tendency, written in pencil or not written in at all. As if pen on paper is too permanent, too close to the heart. 

Let me unpack, tease out the main reason why I am attempting to break the Facebook addiction. Yet, I'm still very capable of distracting myself from present moment.  However, the pondering is perhaps in the quality of the distraction. If it somehow enhances life for self or others can it still be labelled a distraction? Or does it even matter? All I know now is that has been a number of days since the deactivation.  I'm okay without Facebook.  I'm savouring time often wasted on triviality. I'm still finding distractions. Best of all, I've rekindled passions. This one. 



*Thanks to M.C. Escher & Wikipedia for the image. 

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Distraction Attraction

I have been pondering this, why am I so attracted to being distracted from what is right before my very eyes? Like salmon spawning upstream, I have let myself be swept along in the collective consciousness of distraction. I am minimizing what I am experiencing, how I view the world is not as meaningful as how others see it  

Instead of taking shared wisdom with as is said, a grain of salt,  I am swayed more by the status of others, those deemed successful, the shakers and movers, celebrities and the comings and goings, contrived, exaggerated, opinionated on Facebook (read here social media). In other words, I have lost touch with the “real” world and am mesmerized by a world that is filtered through another’s vision or belief. 

Please, don’t get me wrong here.  There is a lot of value from hearing, seeing other’s impressions of this every changing existence. The problem, as I see it, is when we stop trusting our own experiences, our innate wisdom of body, mind and soul because of a feeling of wrongness or less than or of being swayed by a standard that is set elsewhere.  

I am also more and more aware that this tendency is also how we can be manipulated by the Bigs. This lack of confidence is a gold mine for Big Politics, Big Media, Big Business, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Fashion, Big Money, add your own. When our belief systems and opinions of self are so malleable by what is presented as trending or the way it is we become pawns to a greater agenda. An agenda where who we are matters less than feeding our insecurities with a need for more distraction, be it food, more stuff, fast stuff, expensive stuff, the latest stuff. The need for this stuff helps to feed with our energy and attention the agenda of the Bigs, to get Bigger.  All this stuffing distracts us from what really matters, this present moment, the experience of all of this with all of us, all sentient beings, a unified consciousness of harmony and co-existence. 

Which leads me to, in a very round about way, what has compelled me to  write this, this will be my last visit on Facebook for a while. (Kudos to friends and family who have taken a fast from other “habits” Facebook included.) Although I will continue to ponder on this blog, the Pigasus Project, my association with Facebook will take a hiatus. For how long, I don’t know.  If you would like to continue reading the Pig, join this site. I will focus closer to home, writing, yoga, zen, to my own healing. Perhaps, this will be of benefit to others.  If you would like to get in touch through other means and you don’t know my e-mail address, private message me through Facebook.  I will keep the account open until this evening. 


Gasho. Nine bows. 

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Awake

3:00 A.M.

Still sitting; sitting still.
Present, there really only is the inescapable now.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

On This Day Of Remembering

War is a messy business.  Yet, still I honour the sincerity that men and women of past present laid their lives down on the lines. We still hold the naive belief that war will bring peace. I also honour those who have given their lives, both literally and figuratively, for peace. We all know what happens when we let our beliefs define and divide us. Let us collectively, in a spirit of celebrating all life, come together and seek solutions.

I offer this from what I call the "Olden Days Words"






The War Chronicles

My heart weeps.
I bought myself a rose yesterday.
I am reminded of an old reprint, my mother’s, called “The Weeping Rose”
Its head bending down from the vase,
A few petals fallen.
Soon my rose will suffer the same fate.
Age and time will take its toll.

A mother’s head is bent over,
Her child is dying.
Petals falling.
She weeps like there is no tomorrow.
Her child dies because someone from somewhere else is
Liberating her country.
She is not asking for liberation.
She is only asking for the life of her child.
Those who have never wept for a dying child
Say it is the price of freedom.
I ask you if she were asked to choose lives of her family to pay the price
Who would she choose?

My heart weeps.
I resolve to keep my rose
Until all its petals have fallen.

Monday, November 10, 2014

All Ways A Letting Go

Lighten the load.  Widen the footstep.  Step out beyond the usual comfort zone. Sometimes going back to go forward.  Sitting in meditation, this morning the discomfort of this churned in belly.  I sat with it. Breathe in. Breathe out, one. Breathe in. Breathe out, two. I listen to my gut. I tremble both in fear and excitement. It is time.  I feel this deep to the very core. Time to move away from the same old used to be. 

This sameness of the past five-six-seven years ~ the years of building a safety net at first comforting now enmesh me, feel constrictive and unyielding. The false sense of security begins to strangle like a safety line slowly tightening. Tentatively emerging from a cocoon, not yet sure of wing span or ability to fly but with the sense of leap or fly, I must. 

A cycle comes to an end, another slowly, indiscernable at first like the tail of yin or yang, growing to finally emerge into it’s own fullness. 

I am reminded of a verse from Lorin Roche’s “The Radiant Sutras”.

Enter these turning points,
Where the rhythms of life transform
Into each other.
Breath flows in, filling, filling,
            Then surrenders to flow out again.
In this moment, drink eternity.
Breath flows out, emptying, emptying,
Offering itself to infinity.
Cherishing these moments,

Mind dissolves into heart,
Heart dissolves into space,
Body becomes a shimmering field
Pulsating between fullness and emptiness.




And here, now. As I fondle the possessions, the memories, some loved, some weathered beyond recognition, one by one, turn them over in my hand/mind. This to pass on, this to keep, this to trash. Let go.  Over and over again, I am reminded, it is always a letting go. 

Sunday, November 9, 2014

A Year Of Change

As Charles Dickens penned, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair..."

Yes, all this and more.  And yet more to come. All ways, the best of times, all ways the worst of times; all ways something in the middle.  The middle way, the path that I have, at times, reluctantly set foot on. The path that in my heart, I feel/know/intuit is the only road. This way beckons me to look at what is present before me, now. This path invites me to engage with what is in this very instant as no other. Not to turn away from past as passed.  Indeed it is gone, but to forget what was learned is folly as well.  Nor to never turn to the future for brief glimpses of what may be is to grope around in the dark when the light switch is within reach.

I reach backward for the hands of elders and the wise who
have gone before me. I look forward to the fresh vision of youth and seers alike. Now, I live here, open eyed, open hearted, open to all this.