Tag Archives: senryu

Jan 14 – What Is a Sentient Being?

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Today’s senryu: What Is a Sentient Being?

Can we feel our pain?

Can we communicate care?

Are we sentient?

I sometimes wonder if all humans are sentient beings (i.e., able to care for self and others). Some human behavior can appear sociopathic (i.e., lacking empathy with little or no remorse).

I rarely wonder if other-than-human animals are sentient. Companion animals, especially, will often demonstrate a variety of feelings and they are able to communicate those feelings without words.

Below are five references I recommend for learning more about sentient beings and how we might be more sentient ourselves.

“A sentient being can feel, perceive and sense things. They have an awareness of surroundings, sensations, thoughts and an ability to show responsiveness. Having senses makes something sentient, or able to smell, communicate, touch, see, or hear. All sentient beings have an awareness of themselves they can feel happiness, sadness, pain and fear.” Jenni Madison, What Is a Sentient Being? @ naturesheart.org

“Humans have long insisted on believing that we are different from other animals, and somehow better. This idea, however, is slowly starting to change. Animals have moved into our homes as companions. We spend hours watching their antics on social media. We throw birthday parties on their behalf and spend millions every year on their care. And while our relationships with our pets are changing, research is also increasingly demonstrating sentience in nonhuman animals, challenging the idea that humans and animals are separated by an insurmountable gap.” Grace Hussain, https://sentientmedia.org/sentient-being/

Based on award-winning scientist Marc Bekoff’s years studying social communication in a wide range of species, this important book shows that animals have rich emotional lives. Bekoff skillfully blends extraordinary stories of animal joy, empathy, grief, embarrassment, anger, and love with the latest scientific research confirming the existence of emotions that common sense and experience have long implied. Filled with Bekoff’s light humor and touching stories, The Emotional Lives of Animals is a clarion call for reassessing both how we view animals and how we treat them. https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Lives-Animals-Scientist-Explores/dp/1577316290

Jan 13 – RESPONDING TO THE CALL AND …

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Animals, companion AND wild, teach us daily, if we take time to notice, to listen, to contemplate. In our interconnected world, we cannot survive without others; biologically or metaphysically.

This week, I reflected on our animal nature, mammal classification, omnivore eating habits, AND our ability to communicate AND be compassionate like fellow animals on this planet (see previous posts AND their references to birds, dogs AND a whale).

Individually, we are both special AND incapable of living without many other life forms in our biosphere. It “takes a village” to learn and grow … it takes an environment to be born AND live before we die.

One of our individual attributes is the talent or gift we uniquely possess to contribute to our environment AND our community. See today’s senryu AND daily meditation from Richard Rohr below.

Today’s senryu: RESPONDING TO THE CALL AND …

here I am, now what?

receiving AND giving back –

mammal relay race

Richard Rohr’s Daily Meditation

From the Center for Action AND Contemplation

Week Two: Responding to the Call

Surrendering to Our Soul Gift

For Father Richard, God shows us our soul’s calling through spiritual practice AND letting go of the ego’s drive:

Our age has come to expect satisfaction. We have grown up in an absolutely unique period when having AND possessing AND accomplishing have been real options. They have given us an illusion of fulfillment—AND fulfillment now—as long as we are clever enough, quick enough, AND pray or work hard enough for our goals or rewards. [1]

I am convinced that the Book of Jonah can best be read as God moving someone from a mere sense of a religious job or career to an actual sense of personal call, vocation, or destiny. It takes being “swallowed by a beast” AND taken into a dark place of nesting AND nourishing that allows us to move to a deeper place called personal vocation. It involves a movement from being ego-driven to being soul-drawn. The energy is very different. It comes quietly AND generously from within. Once we have accepted our call, we do not look for payment, reward, or advancement because we have found our soul gift.

I have met many people who have found their soul gift, AND they are always a joy to work with. It’s apparent they are not counting the cost, but just want to serve and help. Benedictines have a group they call oblates, which means “those who are offered.” To come with our lives as an offering is quite different from the seeking of a career, security, status, or title. Even the [retired head of the] Vatican’s office for bishops dared to admit publicly [his] worries about rampant careerism among bishops worldwide as they sought promotion to higher AND more prestigious dioceses. [2] It sounds like we still have James AND John wanting to sit at the right AND left sides of the throne of Jesus (Mark 10:37). Maybe young people need to start there, but we can see why Jonah has to be shoved out of the boat. Otherwise, he never would have gotten to the “right” Nineveh.

We must listen, wait, AND pray for our charism AND call. Most of us are really only good at one or two things. Meditation should lead to a clarity about who we are AND, maybe even more, who we are not. This second revelation is just as important as the first. I have found it difficult over the years to sit down AND tell people what is not their gift. It is usually very humiliating for individuals to face their own illusions AND inabilities. We are not usually a truth-speaking people. We don’t speak the truth to one another, nor does our culture encourage the journey toward the True Self. The false self often sets itself up for unnecessary failures and humiliations. [3]

[1] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Near Occasions of Grace (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993), 1. 

[2] See Michael J. Buckley, “Resources for Reform from the First Millennium,” in Common Calling: The Laity and Governance of the Catholic Church, ed. Stephen J. Pope (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004), 77.

[3] Adapted from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer (New York: Paulist Press, 2014), 82–83.

Jan 12 – A Sane Life

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Today’s senryu: A Sane Life

A Cadillac won’t,

maybe enlightenment will,

and dogs can teach us.

American Zen teacher, Charlotte Joko Beck, co-founded the Ordinary Mind Zen School and wrote three books:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joko_Beck

Beck also authored a keen article for Lions Roar magazine in August 2011 called A Sane Life; see https://www.lionsroar.com/a-sane-life/. I love her opening paragraph:

“My dog doesn’t worry about the meaning of life. She may worry if she doesn’t get her breakfast, but she doesn’t sit around worrying about whether she will get fulfilled or liberated or enlightened. As long as she gets some food and a little affection, her life is fine. But we human beings are not like dogs. We have self-centered minds which get us into plenty of trouble. If we do not come to understand the error in the way we think, our self-awareness, which is our greatest blessing, is also our downfall.“

Jan 10 – 3 Things to Know about Humans as Animals

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Humans are competitive, omnivores and violent BUT do we have to be?

COMPETITION in the world is seen as a natural aspect of our “struggle for existence” and a basis for natural selection. See Population Biology: Ecological and Evolutionary Viewpoints https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-642-74474-7

  • What is the competition between species? Food, shelter and water.
  • What is the competition within the same species? Food, shelter, water and mates.

And it was Sigmund Freud he reminded us of our sublimation: In psychology, sublimation is a mature type of defense mechanism, in which socially unacceptable impulses or idealizations are transformed into socially acceptable actions or behavior, possibly resulting in a long-term conversion of the initial impulse. Sigmund Freud 1926. Or in other words, we divert or modify our instinctual impulses into more socially acceptable activity. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimation_(psychology)

https://www.americanscientist.org/article/meat-eating-among-the-earliest-humans

OMNIVORES

Humans, as omnivores, (meaning they eat both plants and meat) may have developed larger brains as a result of meat-eating behavior. “Animals have been part of human diets for more than 3 million years” and “we do know that meat-eating was one of the most pivotal changes in our ancestors’ diets and that it led to many of the physical, behavioral, and ecological changes that make us uniquely human.” (See Briana Pobinar’s article https://www.americanscientist.org/article/meat-eating-among-the-earliest-humans)

VIOLENCE

“Some argue that humans are inherently aggressive, violent, and competitive, cooperating only for personal gain, while others believe that humans are inherently compassionate, peaceful, and loving, acting aggressively and violently only in unnatural circumstances or when they are afraid.

Isn’t it more reasonable to perceive humans as capable of horrific cruelty and violence as well as astonishing altruism and peaceful collaboration (and everything in between), and to notice that the great majority of the time? Humans can even be cooperative and competitive simultaneously. Think of team sports, in which we collaborate peacefully with our teammates to compete (sometimes violently) with another team.

But what remains true, no matter where one falls on the “What is humanity’s essential nature?” spectrum, is that we are capable of nurturing, reinforcing, and cultivating our more peaceful natures, and that we can also become violent based on the situations and systems in which we find ourselves.” Zoe Weil, co-founder and president of the Institute of Humane Education

(See https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/becoming-solutionary/201910/are-humans-naturally-peaceful-or-violent)

Today’s senryu: 3 Things to Know about Humans as Animals

we compete, eat meat

and kill each other – and yet

we can learn and love

Jan 8 – Humans Are Animals, Right?

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It’s the beginning of a new year so returning to basics, briefly, seems like a worthwhile exercise. I mean, I can spend a lot of time trying to answer questions like Who Am I and What Is My Life’s Purpose, etc. but I shouldn’t forget my biology, should I? After all, we are still dealing with mental and physical health, a pandemic, overpopulation and the Sixth Extinction, right?

So, I’m focused this week on our animal-ness, our basic living status and what that might mean when it comes to how we live our lives.

Here’s a question for you: why do we conveniently deny our animal nature? Below are a couple of thoughts to consider.

Question: Why is it, for some reason, that humans try to separate themselves from the animal kingdom when we ourselves are animals?

Response from Flavio Zanchi ·

Religion.

All religions hold that humans are special, created at separate times and under different circumstances from other animals. Some are even so arrogant as to say that humans were made in the image of some creator or another.

That is the problem.

Most, if not all, religions try to explain consciousness with the idea of a “soul” or a “spirit” – something other than the body. Those creeds that allow animals to have a soul, also believe that being an animal is but a stage in a human’s climb toward the essence of creation. So, the soul is human, after all, and the animal just a temporary learning stage for the sublime, divine spirit.

All rubbish, of course, but still at the very foundation of religion. After all, if your beliefs don’t make you special, why have them? If placing faith in such utter balderdash does not serve to at least unite you with similarly weak-minded imbeciles, why have faith at all?

This is the single most important difference between religion – any religion – and a scientific, realist view of the world.

See, if you can’t explain animals, or plants, put yourself so far above them that no explanation is required, except to say that they were made to serve you, either as food and clothing, or as faithful tame companions, or as a step up the ladder of enlightenment.

Repost of Quora Q&R (see https://www.quora.com/Why-is-it-for-some-reason-that-humans-try-to-separate-themselves-from-the-animal-kingdom-when-we-ourselves-are-animals)

Today’s senryu: Humans Are Animals, Right?

my mind is special

my body not so much – breathe

without air I die

Jan 5 – Imagine a River of Consciousness

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“In one of his most colorful teachings Thomas Keating describes (the Centering Prayer contemplation) process using the metaphor of boats on a river. The river, as he depicts it, is your consciousness – which is in fact a constantly moving “stream.” Down it floats boats, i.e., your thoughts …. on and on they float, down the river of your consciousness.” Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, (c) 2004 Cynthia Bourgeault, p.36

The metaphor continues by describing 5 types of boats or thoughts that will traverse your mind as you seek to reach deeper levels of awareness in your meditation practice. Thoughts will come and go “like clouds on a windy day”, Thich Nhat Hanh would say. That’s okay, just let them gently go.

Bourgeault continues, “The Art of Letting Go – the goal in Centering Prayer is not to stop the thoughts, but simply to develop a detached attitude toward them. As long as they are coming and going of their own accord …. this gentle, laissez-faire attitude toward the thoughts is reinforced through a simple formula called “The Four Rs“:

  • Resist no thought
  • Retain no thought
  • React to no thought
  • Return to (your) sacred word

Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, (c) 2004 Cynthia Bourgeault, p.39-40

Ultimately, contemplation, meditation, mindfulness is more about going with the flow of “stream of consciousness” rather than fighting with our ordinary awareness level.

Today’s senryu: Imagine a River of Consciousness

particle and wave,

matter and spirit, flowing

gently down the stream

Jan 4 – The Art of Awakening

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In my quest to learn more about mindfulness from an inter-spiritual perspective, I’m now reading Cynthia Bourgeault’s book Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening (c) 2004 via Cowley Publications with a foreword by Thomas Keating. In this book, Bourgeault describes in chapter 2: “Virtually every spiritual tradition that holds a vision of human transformation at its heart also claims that a practice of intentional silence is a non-negotiable. Period. You just have to do it. Whether it be the meditation of the yogic and Buddhist traditions, the zikr of the Sufis, the devkut of mystical Judaism, or the contemplative prayer of Christians, there is a universal affirmation that this form of spiritual practice is essential to spiritual awakening.” p.9

Also, as an appreciator of simple visuals, I enjoy the three-circle display of the levels of Awareness:

There is so much to mine in this treasure trove of a book that it will take multiple posts to share.

So, to begin, here is today’s senryu: The Art of Awakening

release the ego

getting out of our own way

silence is golden

Jan 3 – Contemplation – Mindfulness by Another Name

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This week I am focusing on mindfulness aka contemplation or meditation. Today, I focus on Richard Rohr‘s 90-minute video offering a Christian perspective of contemplation. Here are the top 10 key highlights for me:

  1. the quicker we let go of ego and move beyond a positive self-image, the quicker we realize that we are spiritual beings learning how to be fully human
  2. religion is both the best and worst thing in the world if we never transform beyond our ego
  3. Christianity is simply learning how to lose graciously; a Christian is someone who has met one
  4. We shouldn’t say prayers; rather we should be one
  5. it’s right relationship over correct performance
  6. move beyond limousine liberal imaging
  7. how you do anything (in the present moment) is how you do everything
  8. the first half of any contemplative sit is seeing our own “garbage” and hopefully the second half is letting it go to reconnect with present moment awareness
  9. to observe is far more effective than attacking
  10. the most radical thing we can do is contemplation

Finally, I especially appreciated Rohr’s summation that we should not confuse meeting attendance or group membership with transformation. The bigger picture of contemplation is not to get hung up on posture, process or programs. Contemplation is about reconnecting with our higher power and recognizing our relationship with everyone and everything.

Today’s senryu: A Rose Is a Rose …

no navel-gazing

let your ego go and then

reconnect with love

Jan 2 – Meditation Is Free(ing)

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If you’re looking for something new to help you focus and feel more peaceful this year, then consider mindfulness meditation. You don’t have to adopt a new religion to do this. Contemplation is something found across religions and secular psychological traditions and there are many simple ways to learn about this calming practice.

For example, check out the free daily teaching from Tricycle Magazine this month; find more information below.

Today’s senryu: Meditation Is Free(ing)

no navel-gazing,

simply calming down to live

this present moment

CYE Countdown – Dec 31 – Grateful for 2022

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Dear Friend,

Thanks to the generosity of many people like you who value the difference that grateful living makes in your life and in the lives of all sentient beings, please consider a gift to your local animal shelter or Humane Society International: https://donate.hsi.org/page/112649/donate . 

Your support today will truly help. Please join me with a gift of any size. Your support helps protect all animals—including those suffering in laboratories, on factory farms and those abused in the wild.

You can help stop animal cruelty. Please give today.

Today’s senryu: Make A Difference

make a difference –

if you can’t adopt a pet,

adopt a shelter

Please remember, together we can make a difference in our local community and for the planet as a whole.