Digestion

A person is wise when skilled at digesting.

There is a material food, but also spiritual food.

How do you allow your body to process conversations? the movies you watch?

Do you sometimes allow your body to "throw up" what is toxic?

What is your "diet"?

After a feast of music, do you know how to properly rest your "digestive system"?

Please do not hold on to the food you swallowed. Let the opinions you formed go through your intestines. There is absorption and then defecation. Are you constipated?

Know your body. May you digest well.

Plantes en accéléré

vie des plantes par supervielle

Practice

I would summarize my practice the following way :
Iyengar Yoga is adjusting and tuning the antenna.
Zazen is receiving the signal clearly despite interference.

The antenna is the body. The signal the sensations. The interference is stressful mental activity.

Yoga is union/connection as opposed to alienation/disconnection.

May you be peaceful.

I Beg You

I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer…

-Rainer Maria Rilke

Content

And how is a monk content? Just as a bird, wherever it goes, flies with its wings as its only burden; so too is he content with a set of robes to provide for his body and almsfood to provide for his hunger. Wherever he goes, he takes only his barest necessities along. This is how a monk is content.

"Kevatta (Kevaddha) Sutta: To Kevatta" (DN 11), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, 8 June 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.11.0.than.html.

Virtue

Protecting oneself one protects others;
Protecting others one protects oneself.
And how does one, in protecting oneself, protect others?
By the repeated and frequent practice of mindfulness.
And how does one, in protecting others, protect oneself?
By patience and forbearance, by a non-violent and harmless life,
By loving-kindness and compassion.

Samyutta Nikaya

L'Invitation au voyage

Mon enfant, ma soeur,
Songe à la douceur
D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!
Aimer à loisir,
Aimer et mourir
Au pays qui te ressemble!
Les soleils mouillés
De ces ciels brouillés
Pour mon esprit ont les charmes
Si mystérieux
De tes traîtres yeux,
Brillant à travers leurs larmes.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Des meubles luisants,
Polis par les ans,
Décoreraient notre chambre;
Les plus rares fleurs
Mêlant leurs odeurs
Aux vagues senteurs de l'ambre,
Les riches plafonds,
Les miroirs profonds,
La splendeur orientale,
Tout y parlerait
À l'âme en secret
Sa douce langue natale.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

Vois sur ces canaux
Dormir ces vaisseaux
Dont l'humeur est vagabonde;
C'est pour assouvir
Ton moindre désir
Qu'ils viennent du bout du monde.
— Les soleils couchants
Revêtent les champs,
Les canaux, la ville entière,
D'hyacinthe et d'or;
Le monde s'endort
Dans une chaude lumière.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,
Luxe, calme et volupté.

— Charles Baudelaire

Why do people feel they have to be in love when they can simply love?

Questions

Are you becoming a person who is less in conflict with the world or with yourself?
Are you becoming more loving? more accepting?
Are you no longer getting in the way of reality flowing through you?
Are you becoming more concentrated?
Are you becoming freer? Are you becoming wiser?

Duck

Thank you Acouphene

Please Call Me by My True Names

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow --
even today I am still arriving.

Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.

The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his "debt of blood" to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

-Thich Nhat Hanh

A man who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways.
Wendell Berry

Ordinary Heartbreak

She climbs easily on the box
That seats her above the swivel chair
At adult height, crosses her legs, left ankle over right,
Smoothes the plastic apron over her lap
While the beautician lifts her ponytail and laughs,
"This is coarse as a horse's tail."
And then as if that's all there is to say,
The woman at once whacks off and tosses
its foot and a half into the trash.

And the little girl who didn't want her hair cut,
But long ago learned successfully how not to say
What it is she wants,
Who, even at this minute cannot quite grasp
her shock and grief,
Is getting her hair cut. "For convenience," her mother put it.
The long waves gone that had been evidence at night,
When loosened from their clasp,
She might secretly be a princess.

Rather than cry out, she grips her own wrist
And looks to her mother in the mirror.
But her mother is too polite, or too reserved,
So the girl herself takes up indifference,
While pain follows a hidden channel to a deep place
Almost unknown in her,
Convinced as she is, that her own emotions are not the ones
her life depends on,
She shifts her gaze from her mother's face
Back to the haircut now,
So steadily as if this short-haired child were someone else.

David Levine

Alfred Deller - Bach - Mass in B minor Agnus Dei

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sun rise.
-William Blake

What is Buddhism?

"'Dukkha should be known. The cause by which dukkha comes into play should be known. The diversity in dukkha should be known. The result of dukkha should be known. The cessation of dukkha should be known. The path of practice for the cessation of dukkha should be known.' Thus it has been said. In reference to what was it said?

"Birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, death is dukkha; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are dukkha; association with what is not loved is dukkha, separation from what is loved is dukkha, not getting what is wanted is dukkha. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are dukkha.

(Definitions of sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, despair, association with the ubeloved, separation from the loved, not getting what is wanted)

"And what is the cause by which dukkha comes into play? Craving is the cause by which dukkha comes into play.

"And what is the diversity in dukkha? There is major dukkha & minor, slowly fading & quickly fading. This is called the diversity in dukkha.

"And what is the result of dukkha? There are some cases in which a person overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, grieves, mourns, laments, beats his breast, & becomes bewildered. Or one overcome with pain, his mind exhausted, comes to search outside, 'Who knows a way or two to stop this pain?' I tell you, monks, that dukkha results either in bewilderment or in search. This is called the result of dukkha.

"And what is the cessation of dukkha? From the cessation of craving is the cessation of dukkha; and just this noble eightfold path — right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration — is the path of practice leading to the cessation of dukkha.

"Now when a disciple of the noble ones discerns dukkha in this way, the cause by which dukkha comes into play in this way, the diversity of dukkha in this way, the result of dukkha in this way, the cessation of dukkha in this way, & the path of practice leading to the cessation of dukkha in this way, then he discerns this penetrative holy life as the cessation of dukkha."

— AN 6.63

"The First Noble Truth: The Noble Truth of dukkha", edited by John T. Bullitt. Access to Insight, May 26, 2010, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sacca/sacca1/index.html

The Story of Cap and Trade

Wendell Berry : civil disobedience at age 75

The Buddha's Guide to Answering Questions

"There are these four ways of answering questions. Which four? There are questions that should be answered categorically [straightforwardly yes, no, this, that]. There are questions that should be answered with an analytical (qualified) answer [defining or redefining the terms]. There are questions that should be answered with a counter-question. There are questions that should be put aside. These are the four ways of answering questions."

First the categorical answer,
then the qualified,
third, the type to be counter-questioned,
& fourth, the one to be set aside.

Any monk who knows which is which, in line with the Dhamma, is said to be skilled in the four types of questions: hard to overcome, hard to beat, profound, hard to defeat. He knows what's worthwhile & what's not, proficient in (recognizing) both, he rejects the worthless, grasps the worthwhile. He's called one who has broken through to what's worthwhile, prudent, wise.

"Pañha Sutta: Questions" (AN 4.42), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight, June 7, 2009,

See you soon Daniel!

A more articulate farewell...