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Category Archives: Wisdom
Our Thoughts Don’t Make It True
Am I separate from the gloating MAGA hat wearer?
Check out today’s post from the Center for Action and Contemplation: The Pain of Separateness (cac.org/daily-meditations/the-pain-of-separateness/)
Highlights include:
- “When we’re separate, everything becomes about protecting and defending ourselves. It can consume our lives.”
- “Whenever we do anything unloving, at that moment, we’re out of union.”
- “Whatever separates us from one another—nationality, religion, ethnicity, economics, language—are all just accidentals that will all pass away.”
- “Every time we do something with respect, with love, with sympathy, with compassion, with caring, with service, we are operating in union.”
How to Find Inner Peace – the Buddhist Way Excerpts
Statue of Buddha at Magnolia Grove Monastery – picture taken by Patrick Cole
Spirituality + Health online magazine has shared another helpful article written by Victor M. Parachin. Highlights can be found below. For the full article see: https://www.spiritualityhealth.com/authors/victor-m-parachin-m-div-c-y-t
How to Find Inner Peace—the Buddhist Way
“Buddhism identifies inner peace as a sense of emotional, mental, and spiritual harmony, even as life’s challenges arise. When inner peace is present, there are strong feelings of serenity, balance, tranquility, and calmness. Here are some Buddhist methods of attaining inner peace:
- Limit Desires
- Practice CPR Meditation – calm, peaceful and relaxed
- Don’t Gossip
- Accept Help
- Lighten Your Life, and
- Cultivate Countermeasures
The Dalai Lama notes that whenever negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, worry, or fear emerge, “We need some countermeasures to oppose them. For example, if we are too hot, we reduce the temperature, or if we want to remove darkness, there’s no other way than bringing light.”
When you’re feeling impoverished, practice gratitude; when you’re feeling sad, smile at every person you encounter; when you’re experiencing guilt, be extra kind to others; when you’re feeling discouraged, recall and savor what is good and right in your life.”
Don’t Cling, Condemn or Forget and Remember to Vote
In 20 days, another American election will take place. As always, there’s a lot of free-floating angst in our culture. How might we prepare for whatever outcomes arise?
Tricycle magazine offers a great article today on how best to deal with greed, hatred and delusion. It’s a summary of the twelve links of Dependent Origination written by Joseph Goldstein.
Remember to vote and check out these helpful and nonpartisan links below:
Teachers, Saviors and Personal Choice
My first father-in-law taught me how to fly fish. He never used the quote, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” He did, however, patiently offer suggestions and examples of how to do something if I was really interested in learning. No pressure, no expectations, just answering questions and role-modeling techniques. Maybe he was communicating nonverbally, “Come follow me, or don’t, it’s your choice.”
Two articles crossed my path today. Perhaps they will be as provocative for you as they were for me.
They are:
“Maimonides, a renowned philosopher and scholar, once wisely said, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.’ This timeless quote encapsulates the profound notion that providing immediate help to someone may alleviate their immediate needs but teaching them the skills to become self-sufficient will empower them for a lifetime.” http://www.socratic-method.com/quote-meanings-and-interpretations/maimonides-give-a-man-a-fish-and-you-feed-him-for-a-day-teach-a-man-to-fish-and-you-feed-him-for-a-lifetime
“When one is deluded, one thinks teachers take you, but when one has awakened, one realizes that one crosses over by oneself.” tricycle.org/article/nelson-foster-chan-buddhism/
Forgiveness and Mercy Recap
The Gottman Method speaks to looking at criticism as requests. One of their Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, their method helps couples recover from relationship challenges. See this link for more information: https://www.regain.us/advice/general/what-are-the-four-horsemen-of-the-apocalypse-gottman-and-the-signs-of-relationship-strain/
For another variation on the theme for improving relationships, the Center for Action and Contemplation offers a series of meditations on Forgiveness and Mercy. Below is an excerpt from this week’s summary. For the full recap see: cac.org/daily-meditations/forgiveness-and-mercy-weekly-summary/
Praying to Forgive
Brian McLaren identifies how prayers of petition help us to experience forgiveness:
Since being wounded or sinned against is a terribly common experience, I suspect we need to pay more attention to it. In fact, being wronged is directly linked in the Lord’s Prayer to the reality of doing wrong; we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
Father Richard Rohr says it well: Pain that isn’t processed is passed on. Pain that isn’t transformed is transmitted. So we need to process our woundedness with God, and that processing begins by naming the pain and holding it … in God’s presence:
Betrayed. Insulted. Taken advantage of. Lied to. Forgotten. Used. Abused. Belittled. Passed over. Cheated. Mocked. Snubbed. Robbed. Vandalized. Misunderstood. Misinterpreted. Excluded. Disrespected. Ripped off. Confused. Misled.
It’s important not to rush this process. We need to feel our feelings, to let the pain actually catch up with us…. I’ve found that it takes less energy to feel and process my pain than it does to suppress it or run away from it. So, just as through confession we name our own wrongs and feel regret, through petition we name and feel the pain that results from the wrongs of others…. We translate our pain into requests:
Comfort. Encouragement. Reassurance. Companionship. Vindication. Appreciation. Boundaries. Acknowledgement.
It’s important to note that we are not naming what we need the person who wronged us to do for us. If we focus on what we wish the antagonist would do to make us feel better, we unintentionally arm the antagonist with still more power to hurt us. Instead, in this naming, we are turning from the antagonist to God, focusing on what we need God to do for us. We’re opening our soul to receive healing from God’s ever present, ever generous Spirit.
Reference:
Brian D. McLaren, Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Words (San Francisco, CA: HarperOne, 2011), 118–119.
Prodigal Son – A Henri Nouwen Meditation
Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Zen Master, would introduce his meditations with simple phrases or Gathas to set the tone for what could follow. One such gatha goes like this:
“I have arrived, I am home in the here, in the now. I am solid. I am free. In the ultimate, I dwell.”
Below is a meditation verse from Henri Nouwen, a Dutch-born Catholic priest and American psychology professor. He uses the returning home reference from The Prodigal Son parable.
May we “return home” many times each day.
You Are Home
September 14, 2024
I have been meditating on the story of the prodigal son. It is a story about returning. I realize the importance of returning over and over again. My life drifts away from God. I have to return. My heart moves away from my first love. I have to return. My mind wanders to strange images. I have to return.
Returning is a lifelong struggle. . . . I am moved by the fact that the father didn’t require any higher motivation. His love was so total and unconditional that he simply welcomed his son home.
For more information about Henri Nouwen see:
henrinouwen.org/about
Excerpts from How to Break the Chains of Thought
Like dominoes falling, it’s interesting to see how one thought leads to another … or not.
Lion’s Roar online magazine shares a full article on How to Break the Chains of Thought. Below are a few excerpts for your consideration. For the full article, go to http://www.lionsroar.com/break-the-chains-of-thought
How to Break the Chains of Thought
When you study your thought process, … you see how it rules your life. In the breaks and gaps between thoughts, you can experience awakened mind on the spot.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche 8 September 2024
We are all citizens of the Information Age, when attention-consuming data is abundant and human attention itself is regarded as a scarce commodity. In the noise and chaos of this flood of information, how often do you notice where your mind is and what it’s doing? …
The starting point for discovering the true nature or reality of your mind is just this awareness of thoughts. When you can see these patterns clearly, that’s the beginning of discovering the sanity and wakefulness within your own mind. …
Chaos and sanity coexist—they depend on each other. Without insanity, there is no sanity. So please don’t worry about your thoughts and the chaos of your mind. They can serve as the basis of your transformation.
When you look at your thoughts and emotions, the starting point is very important. It’s like chaos theory, which looks at the dynamics of highly sensitive systems. A very small change at the outset or starting point of a motion makes the system behave completely differently, and that very small change can make a big difference after a while. An often quoted example in popular culture is the “butterfly effect,” in which a butterfly flapping its wings in the forests of Brazil could cause a hurricane in the East China Sea.
It’s the same with thoughts. You may have just a glimmer of a judgmental thought about someone. It seems so small and harmless. But that tiny thought has the potential to intensify and color your next thought, and the next, in the end triggering deep-rooted habitual patterns that have a big effect. …
The interesting thing here is that within the seeming chaos or randomness of our thoughts, there are patterns, including how our thoughts and emotions interact. … thoughts are viewed as always at play with our emotional energies, driving them one way or the other. …
We have so many thoughts—positive thoughts, negative thoughts, coarse thoughts, subtle thoughts—but when you look directly and closely at any thought, or any emotion, perception, or appearance of mind at all, what do you see?
The first thing you see is that the thought you’re looking at disappears. As soon as you think, “Oh, there is a thought, I am going to look at it,” it is gone. And after the thought is gone, then what do you see?
Between the dissolving of one thought and the arising of the next, there is a gap, an open space. When a thought arises, it’s there for just a moment, then starts to dissolve. When it dissolves, there is a clear, open space where there’s nothing happening until the next thought. If we can totally let go, rest, and relax, then that point where thoughts vanish is where we will find our natural liberation, our genuinely awakened heart.
With these momentary gaps, our chaotic thoughts are being quite kind, offering to give us a break and a chance for awakening. But usually we don’t take that opportunity. We run right over it. We are attached to our busy, workaholic pattern that keeps us moving on to the next thought, the next moment, the next experience. That’s one of the main patterns of our mind—to always be moving, instead of pausing and resting where we are, even for a moment.
Although thoughts are momentary, it feels like our mind is always thinking. That’s because we don’t notice the gaps. We create the illusion of continuity by linking thoughts together seamlessly, so they have a feeling of permanence and oneness.
... each momentary thought is like a link in a chain that connects to another link in the chain, and so on. Who knows where the chain began or where it will end? At some point, without even knowing it, we’ve created a chain that effectively binds us. We are a captive of our own thoughts. Positive thoughts we attach to may create a pretty golden chain, but we are still bound.
To accomplish our aims, it’s important for us to have a good understanding of our thoughts and how the patterns they form blind and control us. …
When you can see the full display and just let it go, there is liberation right there. Not liberation in a religious sense, but simple freedom from being controlled by your thoughts. You don’t have to take this on faith. You can discover it yourself. As you get closer to it, you can feel it, and then finally you can see it.
Most of all in this process, we need to have a genuine measure of compassion for ourselves and others. Even if it’s just a little, it can still have a profound and far-reaching effect, like the flapping of the wings of our butterfly. …
Seeing these patterns, we get to know our mind so that it works better for us and helps us to achieve our goals in this life. …
We see that thoughts are momentary, arising and then dissolving, and in the open space between them we can discover awakened mind on the spot.
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche is the author of several books including, most recently, Emotional Rescue: How to Work with Your Emotions to Transform Hurt and Confusion into Energy That Empowers You.
THREE GOODNESSES – Richard Rohr
“the great thawing of all logic, reason, and worthiness”
Below is today’s reminder of the power of forgiveness from Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Three Goodnesses
Among the most powerful of human experiences is to give or to receive forgiveness. When we forgive, we choose the goodness of others over their faults, we experience God’s goodness flowing through ourselves, and we also experience our own goodness in a way that surprises us.
We are still living in a world of meritocracy, of quid-pro-quo thinking, of performance and behavior that earns an award. Forgiveness is the great thawing of all logic, reason, and worthiness. It is a melting into the mystery of God as unearned love, unmerited grace, the humility and powerlessness of a Divine Lover.
Without forgiveness, there will be no future.
People formed by such love are indestructible. Forgiveness might just be the very best description of what God’s goodness engenders in humanity. [2]
Read this meditation on cac.org.
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern: Order, Disorder, Reorder (Cincinnati, OH: Franciscan Media, 2001, 2020), 155, 158–159, 162.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2019, 2021), 72.
Order, Disorder, Reorder – Richard Rohr
I have experienced three major disorders in my life, to-date. With each I have gone on to experience three reorders. I know, I know, I should have learned the whole lesson the first time, right?
Unfortunately, some of us, especially me, are slow learners. We need to learn life lessons the harder way, it seems.
Fortunately, Richard Rohr and the Center for Action and Contemplation have some helpful advice to offer. Below is today’s daily meditation.
May we all learn (or relearn?) a life lesson today.
Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditations – from the Center for Action and Contemplation
Order, Disorder, Reorder
Richard Rohr shares his paradigm for the transformative process of spiritual maturity:
It seems quite clear that we grow spiritually by passing beyond some perfect Order, through an often painful and seemingly unnecessary Disorder to an enlightened Reorder or “resurrection.” This is the “pattern that connects” and solidifies our relationship with everything around us.
ORDER: At this first stage, if we are granted it (and not all are), we feel innocent and safe. Everything is basically good. It is our “first naïveté.” Those who try to stay in this first satisfying explanation of “how things should be” tend to refuse and avoid any confusion, conflict, inconsistencies, or suffering. Disorder or change is always to be avoided, the ego believes, so let’s just hunker down and pretend that my status quo is entirely good, should be good for everybody, and is always “true” and even the only truth.
DISORDER: At some point in our lives, we will be deeply disappointed by what we were originally taught, by where our choices have led us, or by the seemingly random tragedies that take place in all our lives. There will be a death, a disease, a disruption to our normal way of thinking or being in the world. It is necessary if any real growth is to occur.
This is the Disorder stage, or what we call from the Adam and Eve story the “fall.” Some people try to return to the original Order and do not accept reality, which prevents them from further growth. Others, especially today, seem to have given up and decided that “there is no universal order,” or at least no order to which they will submit. That’s the postmodern stance, which distrusts all grand narratives, including often any notions of reason, a common human nature, social progress, universal human norms, absolute truth, and objective reality. Permanent residence in this stage tends to make people rather negative and cynical, usually angry, and quite opinionated and dogmatic as they search for some solid ground. [1]
REORDER: Only in the final Reorder stage can darkness and light coexist, can paradox be okay. We are finally at home in the only world that ever existed. This is true and contemplative knowing. Here death is a part of life, and failure is a part of victory. Opposites collide and unite, and everything belongs. [2]
At the Reorder stage, we come to that true inner authority where I know something, and the only nature of the knowing is that it is okay because God is in every moment no matter what happens. Nothing needs to be excluded. I can live and work with all of it because apparently God can. For some unbelievable reason, contrary to logic and common sense, everything belongs. [3]
Read this meditation on cac.org.
[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope for, and Believe (New York: Convergent, 2019, 2021), 247–249. See also “Disorder: Stage Two of a Three-Part Journey,” Daily Meditations, August 16, 2020.
[2] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (New York: Crossroad, 1999, 2003), 159.
[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, How Do We Get Everything to Belong? (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2005).
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