Sensei John Pulleyn, Co-Director of the Rochester Zen Center, offers a provocative explanation of why and how to let go of what others think about you. Learning to let go of social approval gives us the freedom to be who we are and let other people be who they are.
A couple of highlights from the article, The Big Man Can’t Shoot, are:
It isn’t easy and it’s not comfortable to turn our back on the values and conventions all around us, especially when they’re unexamined.
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For most of us, the approval or disapproval of others is an overwhelming force. We’re conditioned and accustomed to reading the crowd, to devoting a significant amount of our mental energy to understanding where we stand in the gaze of others.
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(As) Anthony de Mello points out, “Being president of a corporation has nothing to do with being a success in life. Having a lot of money has nothing to do with being a success in life. You’re a success in life when you wake up! Then you don’t have to apologize to anyone, you don’t give a damn what anybody thinks about you or what anybody says about you. You have no worries; you’re happy. That’s what I call being a success.”
Todays repost reminds us of the importance of healing ourselves as well as others. Two, no make that three, highlights from the article below are:
The exterior work of social justice is only as strong as the interior work that births and fuels it.
We can’t heal as a community if we do not concern ourselves with healing our inner lives.
We help solve our community’s problems when each of us faces our own sorrow, authentically and creatively.
The Foundation Is Contemplation
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Reverend Liz Walker is the founder of the Can We Talk… network, which creates safe spaces for people to connect through sharing their stories. She describes the importance of contemplative, healing practices to support the work of social justice:
We trust that whatever needs to be healed will be healed by the Spirit of a creative God who works in and through us….
Dr. [Barbara] Holmes writes that the civil rights movement was born through the contemplative spirit of the Black church.
By lovingly joining our neighbors and sharing our painful stories in the interest of finding peace within our own souls, we are taking seriously the interior work necessary for our collective healing.
The exterior work of social justice is only as strong as the interior work that births and fuels it. We can’t heal as a community if we do not concern ourselves with healing our inner lives.Storytelling, listening, movement, and music all represent the gentle, interior healing necessary to empower the hard work of social change.
participate as truth seekers, unashamed to process their own pain. They show us that authentic joy is reached through a healing process. We help solve our community’s problems when each of us faces our own sorrow, authentically and creatively.
There’s a new Tricycle article titled Education and Work that call outs the false messages we receive from both educations systems and corporate bureaucracy. Here are a few of the very provocative points made:
Education turns human beings into commodities.
People should exist not as interchangeable parts of an economic machine
When people are alone, they’re not so bad. However, when a group forms, paralysis occurs; people become totally foolish and cannot distinguish good from bad.
People live relying on groups and organizations, drifting along in them like floating weeds without roots.
“An organization man is an employee, especially of a large corporation, who has adapted so completely to what is expected in attitudes, ideas, behavior, etc., by the corporation as to have lost a sense of personal identity or independence.”
Suffering arises from our narrow concept of I, combined with our insatiable greed.
Check out the full article at the link provided below. I’d enjoy hearing your thoughts on this assessments of modern-day society.
Lynn J Kelly regularly shares wisdom and compassion in her blog posts. The one linked below is especially helpful to me today. I hope you find it helpful as well.
I have sought comfort in faith traditions and psychology my entire life; sometimes for healing and sometimes for hiding. Below is a repost of today’s daily meditation from Richard Rohr of the Center for Action and Contemplation. As he often does, Rohr helps me better understand how to heal myself versus hide behind the fantasy of my own little relationship with an imaginary Lord Protector.
But first, here’s a quick definition of the term spiritual bypassing:
Spiritual bypassing is a “tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks”. The term was introduced in the mid 1980s by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist.” (See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiritual_bypass)
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Contemplation: A Path to Compassion
Friday, March 28, 2025
Father Richard reminds us that regular contemplative practice is not an end in and of itself, but for the sake of solidarity with the suffering of the world:
One of the main works of contemplation is detaching from the ego, from the self, from impure motivations of success or power, money or control. That will never stop, but it isn’t really that meaningful unless that detachment is accompanied by an attachment. What do we find after all the months and years we’ve been practicing some form of contemplation or meditation? Do we have an increased attachment, sympathy, empathy, and compassion for what I call in The Tears of Thingsthe suffering of the world? For the women of Gaza, the children of Ukraine, the starving people of Africa, the poorest of the poor, and all those marginalized in the United States and around the world? If the emptiness of “letting go” is not pretty soon filled up by “holding on” to some kind of deep solidarity with the suffering of the world, I don’t know that it’s Christian contemplation or even meaningful contemplation at all. It seems we’re simply back into private spirituality again.
We’ve spent much of our history of contemplation seeking individually pure motivation. That’s a real temptation, but are we really going to spend the years ahead seeking only to be motivated to love Jesus on some private level? What does it even mean to love Jesus? What is the positive act of love? When we are in silent meditation or prayer, that’s what we’re praying is growing inside of us. As we let go of false motivations, and false, ego-based concerns, we’ve got to pray, hope, and desire for an increase in compassion, in caring, in solidarity with human suffering.
I believe that’s what the cross means. The raised arms of Jesus are an act of solidarity and compassion with the human situation. So, as we sit in silence this morning and every morning, let’s pray that’s what we’re praying for: an increase in compassion by letting go of false purity codes and agendas, which we think make us holy or worthy of God’s love. It doesn’t matter if we have perfect motivation or a perfect practice. What is motivating us? Instead of perfection, let’s look for growth. Ultimately, we only see that growth over time as we grow in communion with those who suffer, grow in solidarity with human and beyond-human pain, and with the tears of things. cac.org/daily-meditations
Sumi Loundon Kim, a Yale University chaplain, weighs in on seeing and communicating clearly in love and marriage.
Just as with the spiritual path, when we let go of control, we learn to love the person for who he or she is, flaws and all. That’s the beginning of true love.
We imagine a kind of perfection
But after a few years or a few decades or maybe a few lifetimes of dedicated striving, we start to get the sense that our progress is terribly slow, given all the effort we’ve made. There are even times when we completely lose it, when anger or fear overtakes us even after all that practice. It’s disappointing.
When we let go of needing that person to be a certain way, when we let go of control, we find that as we do so we learn to love the person for who he or she is, flaws and all. That’s the beginning of true love, authentic love with another.
the key is in accepting ourselves and our partners for who we are.
as we learn to ease up on our demands and needs from others, we learn that love is not about fulfilling a need—a need to change what we don’t like about ourselves, for example—but about letting go of needs altogether.“
Sumi Loundon Kim is the Buddhist chaplain at Yale University and founder of the Mindful Families of Durham. She is editor of the anthologies Blue Jean Buddha and The Buddha’s Apprentices, from Wisdom Publications, and the author of Sitting Together: A Family-Centered Curriculum on Mindfulness, Meditation, and Buddhist Teachings.
The Center for Action and Contemplation offers daily inspirational messages. Today’s is especially helpful to me. I hope it brings good news to you as well.
“O God of Love, Power, and Justice, Surprise us with the discovery of how much power we have to make a difference in our day.” —Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes
In this practice, inspired by the words of the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, we are invited to remember the power we have to make change in the world.
We invite you to slow your breathing and make space to recognize our capacity to make a difference. As we rest in stillness, we observe how even small actions—offering kindness, speaking truth, seeking fairness—can ripple outward in ways we may not yet see.
Join us to journal or record your responses to the following questions:
What small action can I offer today as a small act of kindness towards another?
What small action can I offer today as an act of speaking truth to myself?
What small action can I offer today to bring fairness to a situation where I see it lacking?
“I undertake the training rule to abstain from taking what is not given.”
This is a higher standard than “not stealing,” Lynn J Kelly explains with reference to Gil Frondal’s teaching of the second precept in her blog post link below.
Lynn J Kelly provides us with another “pearl of wisdom” with her post below. As she says:
“We want to train ourselves to avoid acting (or speaking) when we are angry or displeased. The mind state comes before the action and can be worked with before any harming occurs. The Buddha put this practice first on his list of guidelines for training laypeople because it may be the primary way we harm ourselves and others.”
May we avoid harming ourselves and others more skillfully today. _/\_
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