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#1827 - Sunday, June 13, 2004 - Editor: Gloria
It's the birthday (6/15) of Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa, born in Kashiwabara, Japan. Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827) was one of the most prolific of Japan's haiku poets, leaving thousands of one-breath masterpieces for the world to enjoy. Only a small fraction of his life's work has been translated into English. This website offers an archive of 5,200 of Issa's haiku.
"The summer night
so brief, so brief!"
people and blossoms agree
home village—
my summer grove is small
but it's mine!
http://webusers.xula.edu/dlanoue/issa/
What makes an authentic
monk? I think clarity of mind and sight, simplicity of life and
gratitude in the heart. In short, what Brother David calls a
"listening heart."
It takes self-knowledge and freedom from projection to render the
heart a listening one. The monk listens.
(p.xi from Introduction by Matthew Fox to A Listening
Heart, The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness,
book by Brother David Steindl-Rast, c. 1983, 1999)
Atwater
Kent
Late nights the world flooded our dark house
in a dim throbbing from a glowing little box, velvety
sound hovering from horns, or Cab Calloway
far in a night club stretched all the way to Kansas.
Maybe rewarded with popcorn or fudge, maybe
just exhausted by the day, we sprawled on the living room
rug and were carried above our house, out
over town, and spread thin by a violin.
Once from Chicago Enio Belognini
civilized with his cello a whole
hemisphere, and we were transformed into Italians
or other great people, listening in palaces.
Rich in our darkness, we lay inheriting
rivers of swirling millions, and the promise of never
a war again. It all came from the sky,
Heaven: London, Rome, Copenhagen.
William Stafford, from The Way it Is. © Graywolf Press
DharmaG ~ Daily Dharma
SHOP FOR FREEDOM AT THE GAP
"In the ordinary mind, we perceive the stream of thoughts as
continuous,
but in reality this is not the case. You will discover for
yourself that
there is a gap between each thought. When the past thought is
past, and
the future thought has not yet arisen, you will always find a gap
in
which the Rigpa, the nature of mind, is revealed. So the work of
meditation is to allow thoughts to slow down, to make that gap
become
more and more apparent."
~Sogyal Rinpoche
From the book, "Glimpse After Glimpse: Daily Reflections on
Living and
Dying," published by Harper
A portion of The Accidental Buddhist
can be found on the Random House website:
http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0299/moore/excerpt.html
"Moore's hilarious and sometimes irreverent look at Buddhism
is a perfect primer for the budding Buddhist" --
Publisher's Weekly excerpt of chp
1: http://tinyurl.com/yt8d8
from Amazon "inside the book": http://tinyurl.com/29862
Al Larus
To see
what's given in this life
for sure
did cut the easy slice
Still enough
is left
to pray, one day
I'll pass
unnoticed like a reed
or see: http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/reed.htm
Robert Cooper ~ Daily Dharma
START NOW
"As we begin to practice
shamatha-vipashyana meditation, following our
breath and labeling our thoughts, we can gradually begin to
realize how
profound it is just to let those thoughts go, not
rejecting them, not trying to repress them, but just simply
acknowledging
them as violent thoughts, thoughts of hatred, thoughts of
wanting, thoughts
of poverty; thoughts of loathing, whatever they might be.
"We can see it all as thinking and can let
the thoughts go and begin to feel
what's left. We can begin to feel the energy of our heart, our
body, our
neck, our head, our stomach-that basic feeling that's underneath
all of the
story lines.
"If we can relate directly with that, then
all of the rest is our wealth.
When we don't act out and we don't repress, then our passion, our
aggression, and our ignorance become our wealth. The poison
already is the
medicine. You don't have to transform anything.
"Simply letting go of the story line is
what it takes, which is not that
easy. That light touch of acknowledging what we're thinking and
letting it
go is the key to connecting with this wealth that we have. With
all the
messy stuff; no matter how messy it is, just start where you are
- not
tomorrow not later; not yesterday when you were feeling
better-but now.
Start now just as you are."
~Pema Chodron
From the book, "Start Where You Are", published by Shambhala Publications.
Taking Life's Final Exit By Valerie Reitman Times Staff Writer
PHILADELPHIA — My brother took more trains, planes and automobiles in the last week of his life than he had taken in months, perhaps years. Those journeys were all the more surprising because they occurred in an intensive-care unit at the end of his three-year battle with bone marrow cancer.
Bedridden after being rushed to the hospital for what would be the final eight days of his life, Kenny casually mentioned that he was visiting Detroit. It was a rather odd place for him to be traveling — even if only in his imagination — because the hospital was near home in suburban Philadelphia and he didn't have any ties to the Motor City.
But it was near a border, a border he seemed intent on crossing, be it real or metaphoric.
"How far is it to Canada?" he wanted to know. "Where's the map?"
Though very weak, Kenny, 45, intermittently recognized and chatted lucidly with family gathered by his bedside. But he would drop in news of his varied travels: He had gone skiing one afternoon in Australia, he told us, stopped by North Carolina another day, and more than once had been "stuck in passport control."
At first, our family dismissed these journeys as confusion; we would laugh through our tears about the various places and modes of transport he had been taking. It must be the painkillers, we thought. Or maybe hypoxia, the oxygen deprivation in the blood that often contributes to delirium in sick people. Or that the cancer now was destroying his mind, just as it had racked his body.
But then our cousin Lynne mentioned that her parents had done a lot of similar traveling in the last days of their cancer battles. Uncle Larry (Lynne's father) had insisted that his passport and fanny pack be kept by his bedside; he was intent on keeping an imaginary 3 p.m. appointment with the emperor of Japan, where I was living then and where he had hoped to visit. He too had asked for a map — of Japan. Aunt Lois, who had died four years before, had talked about needing to catch a train, asking Lynne to buy her a ticket.
There seemed to be a pattern. A nearby bookstore turned up a 1992 title that offered some clues: "Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs and Communications of the Dying."
Its chapter titles were uncanny: "Where's the Map?" and "I'm Getting Ready To Leave." Authors Patricia Kelley and Maggie Callanan, longtime Washington, D.C.-area hospice nurses, had heard similar talk so often from their dying patients — conveying this sense of moving from one place to another, of being in transition — that they concluded it must be a special language the dying have to communicate what is happening to them.
"It would be easy to say it's just coincidence, but when you see it over and over, there has to be something there," Kelley said in a telephone interview. "I do think people experience something we can't describe."
The authors termed the phenomenon "nearing death awareness" — a state they think reveals what dying might be like and what a person needs to die peacefully.
more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=1&u=/latimests/takinglifesfinalexit
A Reader's Letter to Editor
Hi Gloria,
Thanks to
Mr. Hassine and deepest thanks to you for running the excerpt
from Steven Hagen's powerful, intelligently written book. ("Buddhism
Is Not What you Think") I purchased it a few weeks
ago and have reread it twice since. I had been thinking of doing
a review for NDH but, if I may, would just like to offer my few
comments here
There is
only one slight problem with this publication. the subtitle,
" Finding Freedom beyond Beliefs " actually would
have been the perfectly descriptive title. This slender volume
has more to teach us about living in awareness and freedom than
any 10 books, taken together, I have seen in the 35 years I have
been reading such material.
Although
Hagen is a zenmaster in Minneapolis, successor to his teacher,
the late Dainin Katagiri, there is no religion ( in the ordinary
sense ) in this book. Aside from his quotations of various zen
masters and teachings, he does not burden the reader with
lessons about Buddhism or its doctrines. In fact, he discards,
almost in passing, the notion that the Buddha taught
reincarnation.
What this
book really teaches is a way to wake up and live in the
truth of the present. " ..without taking hold of any thought
or thing, just realize what's seen directly, before you make
anything of it. This is to know Truth. It has nothing to do with
belief." (p.23)
This is
not a work for the fainthearted or those seeking a magical path.
It is truly about living in Awareness, but without the dross that
permeates so many works in that line. In fact, Hagen points
out that no one can expect to be aware 24 hours a day, frankly
admitting that he cannot do it.
Reading
this book is surely educational in itself. But to truly
incorporate its teachings into your life takes real effort
and sincere commitment, in my view. In fact, if your are to
commit sincerely to the path he reveals you would have to give up
your usual beliefs, judgments and attachment to various values or
views.
I am sure
that those who can follow these teachings will truly live in more
freedom than they ever could have hoped. For myself, I am still
weighing whether I can surrender my lifelong devotion to views,
judgements and critical thinking ( as some readers may have
noticed) I cherish the truth of these teachings too much to
simply pretend to follow them.
My hope is
that some of you who may be less set in your ways will seek
out this little volume and allow this master to show you a
genuine path, without any religious trappings or tiresome
prattle. I should note, in closing, that Steven Hagen manifests a
strong background in science and mathematics which certainly have
helped him, I think, to express his unique approach to truth so
wonderfully well.
Earl
McHugh