We look in the mirror to see ourselves, but

We see only our reflection, our outside, our superficial surface.

We see nothing of our inside.

To see our inside we need to look inside,

But the ego, the reflected self that we see in the mental mirror,

Blocks our view.

We must smash that mirror to see past it, and into ourselves.

Inside is a feeling that lies beneath the mirror.

To find liberation, to wake up, to activate our inner power,

We must smash the mirror.

How?

Through loyalty to truth,

Through the courage to feel the truth inside us,

Through humility and confession,

Through letting the ego go

Into the mists of nonreality, and

Acknowledging our flaws.

NBS  Daning, Beijing

June 6, 2017

 

Cathy and I have lived near Bell Rock for two years now. Some time ago our friend Simon introduced us to Peter, a frequent climber of Bell Rock. Peter takes people on a guided climb of the rock and I had always meant to call him, but we have been so busy that I hadn’t done it.

Yesterday we decided to hike around Bell Rock, and Cathy decided to wear her hiking boots instead of her ordinary tennis shoes. We walked from the Trailhead to Bell Rock. We decided to walk up the lower rock surrounding Bell Rock just to see where it might take us.

We managed to hike to the wall that climbs 600 feet to the top of the rock. As we crawled along a trail that went through trees, we heard voices. We came out of the trees and found ourselves up against the sheer wall of Bell Rock, when who should come along but Peter, leading a group of five to the top.

“Peter!” I exclaimed.  We shook hands and he asked us to join his group.  We gave it about 5 seconds of thought.  “Let’s go!” we said. Peter led us a little further on the trail that came to a point where we would have to crawl on all fours to climb the rock face.

There we began our ascent.  With Cathy in her good boots and me in my Costco tennis shoes we climbed, first with our walking sticks and then without them, as we were forced to leave them behind. There were a few challenges where Peter helped everyone with the right toe holds and handholds, as we navigated up cracks and across rock faces.

Soon we found ourselves on the top, where we could see the Sedona Valley to the north and the Village of Oak Creek to the south.  It was a windy day so we were a little extra careful on top as we ascended a few places where blocks of stone made platforms on which one could stand.

Peter took our photos for his FaceBook site.  He has now led more than 2000 people to the top of the Rock. Eventually we descended and walked back to the trailhead, a bit sore from the unusual muscular exertion, but happy. Our casual walk to Bell Rock had turned into a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

 

Not religious complications

Nor complex ideology;

Not a life of rules and regulations

Nor idiomatic phraseology

Provides satisfaction or emotional peace,

Self-acceptance or love,

Nor trouble’s surcease.

 

These things can only arrive from

Courage and humility,

Facing fear and staying alive, and

Accepting our status humbly.

 

Freeing the spirit and letting it wander,

Overcoming the chains that hold back our wonder;

These are the methods to heal our enslavement,

Transcend our limitations, and release our amazement .

 

The simple spirit of freedom is what we want,

To slip the chains of control and confront

The devil that demands our supplication and bending

In a life of dependency and obedience never-ending;

Or the psychological games we play inside us,

The maze with no exit that traps us like Midas,

With a golden touch that kills all around us,

A gift of wealth that becomes a curse,

The poverty of freedom that accompanies a bulging purse.

 

No, freedom is simple, its spirit around us.

Look to the stars for guidance, 

They’ve already found us.

The world of spirit, of information,

A medium of consciousness, of contemplation,

Forever exists, we just need to listen.

It’s there, it’s real; it beckons and glistens.

 

3-12-17

VOC, NBS

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fish lying in the mud, still moist,

Tail waggling back and forth,

Gulping air, and trying to live,

To reach the water and survive,

Is this not we as we live each day,

Work, work, work, work, and play, play, play?

The cash register sings, the doorbell rings,

Another customer buying things.

Rich people gambling, more dollars than sense,

While poor people amble, seeking recompense,

The folks in the middle struggle each day,

Making ends meet, looking for pay.

Even the monk, alone in the castle

Struggles to find God, and a life free from hassle.

To be alive is to struggle, from the baby’s first cry,

To the elderly couple about to die.

Expect it, embrace it, it gives life its meaning.

Without it there’s death, and no hope contravening.

3/12/17

NBS, VOC

 

We have been here a long time.

Before the wooly mammoths went extinct.

Before the dinosaurs.

Before the amphibians crawled onto land.

Before the trilobites.

Before the Earth formed we were here.

We are part of the Universe.

We have been here for 13 billion years.

We will be here for billions more.

We are all part of this one creation,

Our bodies rose from the cosmic dust cloud.

Our spirits animated by our sun,

But we are here,

In the rock, in the mountains,

In the oceans.

We are not leaving.

NBS

 

Merging into an Ocean of Being;

Stimulating the entire nervous system all at once;

Discovering one’s true nature;

Finding one’s Soul Mate;

The triumph of Truth and Justice;

Enlightenment.

 

NBS

VOC  1-31-17

The ripples of the mind first must settle,

For peacefulness and calm to be found.

Then all selfish desire must be banished,

Indeed all sense of gravity and ground.

 

When all the soul objects are forgotten,

In the moment, in the meditative state,

When the self becomes unencumbered with ambition

And possessions, the ego not so great,

 

Then something emerges from the bottom,

The root, the core, the basis of our being,

Something inside becomes active,

The ancient dragon known as kundalini.

 

Since kundalini propels one to another state of mind,

We can only sit back and observe

This ancient transcendental mechanism

Entering our minds, our brains, our nerves.

 

Thus we find the existential being,

The visionary state, the ecstasy

Of quintessential timelessness, extraordinary reality,

The purest sense of spirituality.

 

The self and the ego, entangled and intertwined,

Are like a larval state of being,

A caterpillar crawling on the ground,

Incapable of flight or visionary seeing.

 

Yet one day it will spin a cocoon,

A mold within which to hibernate,

And when transcendence comes a butterfly emerges,

To experience freedom and the enlightened state.

 

Sunday, January 22, 2017, Sedona

How many Zen Buddhists does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two, one to do it and one to not do it.

I am not a Zen Buddhist.  Yet I am a more regular visitor on Sundays to a Zen temple than any other church.  I was raised in the Christian Church, mostly Episcopal. I find the worship ceremonies abstract. When I go to a Zen temple I sit in meditation for 45 minutes and then about twenty minutes of chanting. I find this very invigorating and helpful.

Zen informs my way of being. Living in the eternal moment, increasing self-awareness, taking responsibility for all my thoughts, words, and actions. These things are not abstract – they speak to my spiritual side. Applied ethics one could say. Consistency, integrity, honesty – these things matter to me.  Not that other religions don’t teach these things, they do. I just find the simplicity and directness of Zen more useful and easier to practice and experience.

I find much to like in the New Testament. The Sermon On The Mount, for example, and many of the sayings of Jesus. I am an integrationist, someone who believes that the world must come together cooperatively, not drive against each other and focus on our differences. Just as we need to find our own inner integrity, the nature of human society and global ecology is that the integration of different peoples and species strengthens the overall society and ecosystem.

I don’t believe this is a radical idea.  In fact it has become mainstream.  Why do we war? Why is violence the choice among the many alternatives? Is it the history of hatred that has developed between conflicting sides? Is peace really so difficult to achieve? Doesn’t this come down to attitudes ultimately?

A Poem:

As Simon, Paul, and Lazarus watched,

Jesus instructed a group of followers:

“Seeing as God is within, then thought

Should be purified.  Be not a borrower

Of others’ meditations wise,

But rather dwell on your own Super Nature.

The sooner that you squint your eyes,

Look within, and meet your maker

The sooner will you be set free

From the binding chains of ignorance,

The deadly illusion, misery, and

False belief of self-importance.”

The master walked on in glorious youth,

Mindful of the coming age,

Focused on the inner truth

That all the world is a stage.

Neil Sinclair

From The Spirit Flies Free

This is the time of great sadness.

Walls topple into oceans and rivers.

Coral reefs die in warm waters.

Nations at war.

Polar Bears starve.

Species going extinct,

And still the humans burn like there’s no tomorrow,

Lost in a world without precedent, without history,

Minds wiped clean by information devices

Selling, selling, selling

Products and propaganda while

The superwealthy retreat into security and isolation

Behind electric gates and cameras.

Beauty everywhere imperiled,

Cultural traditions wiped out by

Ecommerce and beggars,

Sleeping in the streets, in refugee camps,

Killing for religion, but really for angst,

The disquietude and immorality of the masses.

This is the time of great sadness.

I started doing Tai Chi in 1986 in Santa Rosa, California. My teacher was a 65 year old Polish woman, Mivanwy Plank. I have now been practicing for 30 years.

At first I just wanted to learn the moves.  I was looking for an exercise that if done daily would lead to lifelong health. I thought maybe tai chi was the answer.

What I found was that there is so much more going on in the practice than just exercise. It is:

• A great wakeup. It takes around 15 minutes including a few minutes of warmup. When finished, one is fully awake and alert. It is so relaxing yet innervating even when I have not slept well, that it pulls me out of the cobwebs of sleep and dreams and places me in this world firmly.

• It is a great exercise for growing older. One learns to move with the knees bent and the back straight. It is not so much the 15 minutes of tai chi that improves health, although it does, but it is more a form of movement therapy. I found myself moving the tai chi way all day long, back straight, moving from one foot to the other rhythmically. At the end of the day I had energy and was getting thing done, much better than before.

• I practiced breathing with tai chi, inhaling when expanding my body and exhaling while contracting. This has since become an unconscious act.

• It is self-defense. The slow motion practice includes kicks, punches, and blocking moves that are useful in self-defense.  The slow motion helps one to develop a very calm sense of presence.  This is very helpful for grounding and calm, not panicking or losing control. In the last thirty years I have not been in a fight. I think part of this is because of increased physical confidence and a calmer demeanor.

Now I am realizing some lessons of tai chi that are related to Chinese Traditional Medicine. Part of the experience of doing tai chi is becoming aware of chi, or spirit, inside and around us. As I move now very slowly during my practice, I find that my awareness of the world of chi around us has become more precise. This is the world of Tao, as in the old Chinese philosophy.

As I move I am feeling where there might be any aches or pains in my body. By moving very slowly through the motions of the tai chi postures, I am actually healing those aches and pains. Slow motion uses much less power and is easier on the body. By focusing my mind on the injured parts where the pain is, one directs attention to those parts, and accelerates the healing process.

If one is lucky enough to find a good teacher, learning tai chi can improve one’s life all through one’s life. That’s all for now. Good practice.