liminal_luke

3bob, To the contrary, this story strikes me as very practical and directly applicable to the question at hand. If, however, you think maybe I´m living a "protected type of lifestyle" and not "dealing with the [real] world," well, you wouldn´t be the first. Liminal

The following is from Pema Chodron´s book...Comfortable with Uncertainly: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion. .................................................................................................................................................................... ‘There’s a Zen story in which a man is enjoying himself on a river at dusk. He sees another boat coming down the river toward him. At first it seems so nice to him that someone else is also enjoying the river on a nice summer evening. Then he realizes that the boat is coming right toward him, faster and faster. He begins to yell, “Hey, hey, watch out! For Pete’s sake, turn aside!” But the boat just comes right at him faster and faster. By this time he’s standing up in his boat, screaming and shaking his fist, and then the boat smashes right into him. He sees that it’s an empty boat. This is the classic story on our whole life situation. There are a lot of empty boats out there. We’re always screaming and shaking our fists at them. Instead, we could let them stop our minds. Even if they only stop our mind for one point one seconds, we can rest in that little gap. [...]. In this way everything we meet has the potential to help us cultivate compassion and reconnect with the spacious, open quality of our minds.’* .........................................................................................................................................................................

Manitou, I find your non-dogmatic and refreshingly humble openness to your own unfolding experience a little touching.

For now, I´m working on having harmonious relationships with family and friends. Once I´ve got that down I´ll tackle higher level spirit beings.

Great idea. It´s wonderful to experience ourselves as loving, compassionate, genuine. All those warm and fuzzy feelings. But sometimes "how we feel" is not the most important thing. Sometimes those feelings can even get in the way. My brother is a family-care doc who often refers patients who need surgery to surgeons who lack, shall we say, the best bedside manner. He warns them ahead of time not to expect cuddly consultations. These surgeons are expert technicians with less than top-notch people skills. Doesn´t matter. When you´re on that operating table you want someone who knows surgery, period. Being of service means you do what needs doing. Your feelings as you do it matter less than that the job gets done. Say I´m an elderly shut-in waiting for someone to deliver lunch. I´m hungry. Mostly what I want is for some one to bring me a meal. Whether or not they are a phony or a trickster or a wanna-be messiah with quasi-sociopathic tendencies, I really don´t care. If they get me some food and go on their way, I´m good.

May I suggest a little playfulness? I don´t think anybody "is" any of the archetypes. You might recognize aspects of your personality in the trickster, but it´s certainly not some sort of rigid identity that is forever sealing your fate.

yet how sweet how sweet "it is to be loved by you feels so fine, oh yeah..." quoted from James Taylor

Michael Winn includes Swimming Dragon in his DVD on sexual/kidney energy.

I suspect that a sufficiently skilled person could describe the experience of a banana with either language or mathematics. Maybe not perfectly, but good enough, as they say, for government work. Liminal

I agree with this, but think it´s very advanced viewpoint. Happiness may indeed be a choice that´s always available no matter what, for most of us it´s easier to arrive at this joyful state under some conditions than others.

Been to Boise once. A little too provincial and small-town for my tastes. Used to live in Portland, OR which is more cosmopolitan but also crazy expensive now, at least compared to what it used to be. I don´t know for a fact, but I imagine it´s hard to beat Boise for outdoor adventure.

Earlier today I wrote the following... May all beings use their analytic intelligence in a balanced way, allowing room for the sometimes paradoxical and not-always-strictly-logical wisdom of the heart. I won´t erase it now but there´s something I don´t like about the post. A certain look-at-me cleverness that seems ironic and out-of-place in a thread on metta. How much better it would be to have the purity of heart exhibited by that little boy in the video CT posted. That´s what I aspire to. Much of the conversation here at Taobums boils down to intellectual argument, and certainly our local Buddhists are not immune from this tendency. Nothing wrong, I suppose, with philosophical debate and verbal sparing. It keeps the mind sharp. It´s how some people have fun. But there are limitations to this kind of mental warfare: the egoic investment in being "right," an overinvestment in the logical abilities of our intellects and an underinvestment in the feeling capacity of our hearts. When we derive our sense of self-worth from besting others in argument -- and not all intellectuals do -- well, that´s something to be aware of. At it´s best, I think the practice of metta (and the other brahma-viharas) can be a corrective to this mindset. Not everyone who practices metta will become a master of compassion, anymore than all tai chi players become masters of that art. But it´s a step in the right direction. Liminal

I agree Seeker of Wisdom, and hope that my post above doesn´t come across as snide. It´s an interesting philosophical question whether all beings really could be happy simultaneously, or even whether that would be a good thing. But this kind of thinking can get in the way of simply practicing and allowing the practice to influence us. I think the point of the phrase is what happens to us when we say it, feel it, make this generous impulse a part of our lives.

May all beings use their analytic intelligence in a balanced way, allowing room for the sometimes paradoxical and not-always-strictly-logical wisdom of the heart.

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what will we give up gracefully, defeatedly when we too grow old?

Thinking I can change someone´s mind in one of the off-topic threads on Taobums.

One more thought. There´s not really such a thing as "society," in the first place -- at least not in the sense we mean when we´re worried about it like this. Just the other day, my partner said "Everybody thinks..." I interrupted him right there and said there´s nothing that "everybody thinks." People are remarkably varied in their thinking. Don´t believe me? Just open up one of the political threads in the Off Topic section. I´m often astounded at the diversity of opinion, and how often people think differently than I do. So while it´s true that people are often judgmental, it´s not true that everybody thinks a certain way.Years ago I was chatting on a dating website and this guy asked me what kind of car I drove. Well, I didn´t own a car. And just like that he was gone. In his mind lack of car ownership = loser, or at least that was my assumption. I´m sure I could find plenty of other people with similar ideas. But does it follow that "society" thinks I´m a loser if I don´t drive? I think not. There are probably plenty of other people who would praise me for not polluting the environment, or imagine that I get more exercise walking. There´s no way that "everybody" thinks. However you are, some people will find a reason to like you and others will find a reason to dislike you.

The experience of "caring too much about what society thinks of you" is generally not so pleasant. People who care like this are usually imagining society thinking the worst. No fun. Of course, the enemy here isn´t really society. It´s us. The person with the most bothersome judgments is almost always yours truly. So, first of all, I think it´s helpful to reword the question to something like "why am I being so hard on myself right now?" Just developing an awareness of our shame and self-loathing is very helpful, very healing. Facing it straight on. Sharing our experience of these feelings with a trusted friend or counselor. Writing about these feelings. Making art that expresses these feelings. And then asking how we can approach ourselves with more compassion. How can I be a better friend to myself?

I´ve never been a huge Obama fan, but if the best his detractors can come up with is lottery numbers and anti-gay slurs I figure he must be doing alright.

breaks the winter calm the hard-won and fragile peace a fist through the wall

balanced procession not to fast and not too slow learning how to walk

DreamBliss said... "I guess care taken in the process of choosing something, harvesting it and preparing it for use is my version of a ceremony." ................................................................................. I love this statement of yours and totally agree with it.

Oh exactly. Nothing shamanic, in the proper sense, about what we did. Nor did it qualify any of us to hang a shingle and do any kind of healing work for the public. It´s easy to dismiss such gatherings as New Age, but to me it had value. If we´d started imbibing hallucinogenic plants, however, we´d probably have got in over our depth.

My friend Debbie used to host drum circles. She´d smudge us with sage and we´d make a lot of noise. Angel cards were read and heartfelt stories shared. A whole lot more fun, and way less dangerous, than being thrown off a cliff.