Zen?

A friend asked me this...

...do you know anything about the concept of Satori?

It's a Zen Buddhist mode of awareness...

...a "flash" of awareness...sudden realization.

I responded...

It's a word I know... but I haven't thought of it or read of it for a while...  It is roughly translated as enlightenment.

I will speak only from my current understanding right now... it isn't probably going to be as Zen as it is going to be just me.

In A Course in Miracles the term miracle can mean simply to understand something in a new way.

From The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, I remember a bit about the importance of being able to change one's perspective about something long held as truth.

Related to healing, I will quote myself from about 10 years ago.

The true role of the healer is not to cure but to help a person redefine what it means to be healthy. The person must change what they understand about dis-ease and find a way to move forward in a paradigm of their own making.

So, to me, it's not only about bringing light to a situation but to bring it in a new way or from a new angle.

The light has been there all along. How am I able to redirect it so that the shadow concealing my wellness is removed?

Satori describes the moment that the shift happens. It is the state of directing the light always present to me and to others just right so that clarity is the result.

That is wellness.

Him...

Nice. I like how you put it.

Me...

Thank you for asking. It is good for me to think in this direction right now. :)

Him...

Any images come to mind when thinking about it...?

...the concept of it?

or colors?

Me...

There is this story that I heard a long time ago and so the details are lost to me but... as a boy, this man found part of a mirror and he polished the edges until it was a smooth, round mirror. For some reason...

he kept it into his adulthood in his wallet. He is someone famous, who I can't recall, and his work was that of a humanitarian... of one who brings aid.

At any rate, he was on a bus one day riding through some lands foreign to him to do his work and he was fidgeting with that mirror, reflecting sunlight streaming through the windows such that it shone under the seats.

Suddenly he realized that had been his life all along. He was simply there to shine that Light into the places it couldn't get on its own.

That is the image that comes to mind.

Him again...

beautiful.

that is very helpful

More from me...

Satori may happen spontaneously, however, it does not happen of its own accord.

My own Buddhist practice is dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings. The entirety of Kabbalah is the desire to receive in order to share with others.

It takes desire AND it takes the work of many doing their part, conscious or not, reflecting the Light where it can not get on its own.

None of us reaches enlightenment without the other enlightened beings doing their work to support us. 

In my understanding, all beings are enlightened masters and it is my work to remove the obscurations I have within my own mind until I recognize that.

So, I keep an eye out for the Light being shone upon me.

He then asked...

You would catergorize Satori not as an individual act, perse, but as a collective reliant on each individual to do their part?

After a moment I responded...

I might actually say that Satori depends not only on us doing our part but recognizing and accepting that all those around us are doing their part and that our inability to see that is not their responsibility but our own.

We must accept that their every act is designed only to bring us to enlightenment for that is the only option whether it is in this lifetime or another.

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Thanks to friends who ask the questions that make us think. Thanks to facebook for the IM function. Thanks to Blogger for a place to put it. Thanks to Twitter for a way to tell people we did it. Thank you for reading.

Harness the Wind

Yesterday Frank and I drove to Chicago and when we were driving by the wind farm in Northern Indiana I thought those tremendous, turning turbines seemed to me the most peaceful things in the world. I felt like everything was quiet as I looked at them even though nothing had changed.

Tonight Frank and I drove back from Chicago and when we were driving we saw a vast area of land that went on for a very long time with red lights that flashed in unison. It was the wind farm at night. It was mesmerizing. It seemed to be timed with the music we were listening to. The song, unbeknown to us at the time because it was on my shuffle, was "Shine On" by ATB. It was beautiful and it made the quiet just like the first time.

Investments

Since I started dating Frank I've continued working on weight-loss through diet and have added CrossFit to my world. It's not the most natural thing for me. I have put plenty of thought, as you might expect, into ferreting out why that is. Part of the reason I feel like it's important to know why it's not in my nature to do something is so that I can build a good case for shifting behaviors.

What I've come to is that my familial culture was not one of investing in health. I happen to come from a people who are somehow relatively healthy early in life but who don't put work into staying that way. My Dad's side of the family seems to stay healthy for a pretty long time except that he had a heart attack in his early 50's. The rest of his family, as far as I know, seem to do pretty well into their 70's and 80's when they get cancer or suffer from heart disease. That's just how it's been. Pretty strong teeth too, I might add... something I obsess about. My Mom's family is similar except that things fall apart a little earlier with diabetes and heart disease. I have always accepted that you lose your health when you get old. I actually thought all old people had their teeth pulled and got false teeth when they got to some certain age and was fairly terrified at how much that must hurt!

Because of this, I used to always say I just didn't want to get old. A few years ago I heard myself saying this and suddenly realized a couple of things. First was the fact that I was going to die young if I kept saying I didn't want to get old. It's just how it works, right? Self-fulfilling prophecy. Secondly, I realized it just wasn't true. It wasn't that I didn't want to be old. In actuality, there was just a certain kind of old I didn't want to be. Realizing that, there was suddenly this plan emerging that would include me doing the things that I could do, within my control, to invest in a healthy old age.

With that in mind and coupled with my realization that my ability to do karate had turned to utter shit with the addition of extra weight, I started dieting, met Frank, continued dieting, and started CrossFit. I will not tell you that I enjoy CrossFit. I'm fighting against a culture that taught me it was normal to fall apart and to not exercise. My people do not exercise. CrossFit is the hardest exercise I have ever done. If it weren't for the constant improvement I see, I would probably have stopped already. My family doesn't, save for a small group of exceptions, consistently use mindful decision making as a basis for nutritional intake. My people are smokers and tv-watchers. I love these people and I recognize that doing what they do will lead me to exactly the state I don't want to be in.

Is my decision to continually beat up my body and not eat cake based solely upon my commitment to aging gracefully? Hell no! I want to be hot! I want to look good naked. I want to be better at karate and, by extension, better at teaching karate. I want to be stronger and faster and did I mention hot? Regardless, the pure intentions and the less than pure intentions are succeeding so far in keeping me at it. It is making it possible for me to balance body, mind and spiritual matters as well. I attach a lot more to my body than I should. It is difficult at times. Doing things to make my body more functional helps with those issues.

Investments... The best one I have going right now is my decision to not passively watch my body turn to shit. I'm happy about it. Thanks, Frank. Thanks, CrossFit. Thanks, Darren. :)

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"Your body is precious. It is our vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care." ~Buddha

Amazing Animation!

Recognition

I have noticed lately that I'm becoming more and more like my parents. There was a time that this would have petrified me into agoraphobic tendencies. As it is, I'm adult enough to recognize not only that I could have done a lot worse with parents but that in most ways, I was actually very lucky. With that as a frame of reference, noticing their proclivities as being my own isn't so bad.

I think I can trace my wanting to grow food and the like to my Dad. My Mom taught me my way around the kitchen. They taught me to look at kids who are playing with something and say, "Don't break that," as if the kids' are plotting the destruction of that which they control. They probably aren't.

When I was a kid, my Mom seemed to me to be waiting on my father hand and foot and I promised myself that I would never make anyone do that for me. It was early enough in my life that I didn't have a model for what my own family would look like and I thought this was just some husband and wife pattern that I wouldn't repeat.

While Frank is more than willing to cook, I happen to like my cooking better than his and he seems pretty fond of my wicked-mad-dinner-cooking skills. One of the things my Mom always did that made me bugnutzcrazy was give my Dad the best piece of meat, the biggest serving of vegetables... he got the top picks even over what she served herself. It made me crazy and, I think, put a brick or two in the wall that stood between my Dad and I that we've only recently begun dismantling.

Lately I've realized while making dinner that I give Frank the bigger cut of meat and a larger portion of side dishes and if something's over-cooked or just not quite right, that's mine. It struck me all of a sudden that the reason my Mom always did these things was because she loved my Dad that much. I thought it was something he made her do somehow or that she felt she had to do for some reason other than that she just wanted to. Suddenly I realize that it's really the thing she wanted to do more than anything else just like it's what I want to do for Frank.

What I know is that putting all of this together has opened the door to my recognition of the kind of love I'm in. It is a love like my parents in the best ways that they have loved each other. It is a good thing and I'm very thankful to have experienced it. I am even more excited to see how it continues to unfold.

Thank you for giving.

For my birthday gift to myself, I laid on my glasses and broke them. I went pretty quickly to the eye doc and got an updated Rx but wasn't able to pick new frames because I am picky as well the fact that I was grossed out by the cost of frames. As many know, what I did was ask for donations for my birthday. I thought it was a great idea. I thought that I would surely get more than enough to pay for the glasses, so my plan was to use part for glasses and the rest I was to loan through Kiva.org.

Between my 100+ friends on Twitter and 550+ friends on facebook the results were not what I expected, however, I still got more than enough to buy the glasses and to make some loans through Kiva. Some of the response to the asking was great and some was not what I thought. There was commentary by one person about the fact that I had asked for a birthday gift. What I asked for was $5 through paypal. I thought about this person's comment for a while and decided that I need to change a society in which asking for what one needs is not seen as acceptable. I was simply asking someone for their Starbucks' money for one drink. Others thought it was a great idea and some gave well over the requested amount. It was a good experience.

As far as the glasses, I found the frames I wanted again and again but they were $500 and all I could think was how many people I could help with that much money. I couldn't do it. So I researched and measured and asked around and finally found a frame online that I liked and was the right size. I ordered, got my glasses back in a few weeks and they are pretty swell. I paid less than $65 for the glasses. They are so similar to the ones I was lusting over at the $500 price point that I am so happy I took the leap to buy online! I was gifted, minus the paypal fees, about $160 from friends. So, the $95 balance has been loaned out through Kiva.org and will continue to be re-loaned as often as it is paid back.

It's a pretty amazing world.

So, here are the glasses. Thanks for your help!

On becoming...

Sometimes I feel like I blog about the same thing over and over. I guess that's life. Perhaps this time I will find a new angle.

I'm still working on imagining more clearly who I'm becoming. I am coming to the realization that owning a home has seemed like self-imprisonment to me for a long time. After several days of emotional upheaval because the friend who I rent from set loose the raper of all things green upon the house that is not mine but that I have called home, I realize that owning a home ties one to a place on some level but also offers the freedom to make long-term commitments. Chickens and gardens and bees make more sense in a place that I can call mine and a place that doesn't include asking permission to do what I want to do. I am already checking with a couple banks/credit unions to see if my self-employment is still a hindrance to getting a mortgage. If it is, I'm at a point to find some other way to get into a house with a big yard and space for fruit trees.

This is just one of the dreams for my becoming that is emerging/re-emerging. Piggybacking on my urge to reinvigorate my spiritual life and work as a teacher is my re-reading The Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk. I'm remembering the call to study healing arts that I felt and followed more than a decade ago. A bit of massage training and certification as a Reiki Instructor were my answers to the call then. That opening up to spirituality is what lead me to ministerial training. I'm feeling drawn towards more, now. In the book there is this amazing blend of spirituality and science that is utilized for wellness. In moving towards sustainability through an urban homestead, I realize that I'm looking for ways to be more responsible for my own health in general. I also want to have more tools available to me that will help others find that space as well. I am not opposed in total to allopathic medicine. I do believe there are other ways. I do believe that no amount of health reform could replace the simple fact that we have a lot more power over our own wellness than we believe. I am open to finding the next best step in empowering myself to empower others. CrossFit with Frank has been a part of this awakening. The way we eat has been huge as well. It has been a great journey thus far and I am excited to keep growing alongside this person who has pushed me to ask new questions about what I'm capable of.

In the big picture, I know that I will be an eccentric guy with lots of answers and more questions who loves to bring a bag of fruits and veggies from my yard to folks who eat too much junk. I want to be the old, wise person in the neighborhood who you ask about the rash on your arm, the hurt feelings from a breakup, or what the best herbs are for a tisane to calm your nerves at the end of the day. It's what I have always wanted to be, I think. The Church Within and the training I received there to be an ordained minister taught me how to connect on a very deep level with people to approach spiritual work. Broad Ripple Martial Arts put me in my body in a way I'd never experienced so that I could be present in that way with others. CrossFit and the nutritional plan that go with it are helping me move forward in that direction. Now I want a broader set of solutions to offer folks and the confidence that comes with good training. I am remembering to be open to my intuition again. It is all connected... still.

No matter what happens in the world, we all just keep on becoming.