Refuge Prayer

As I sort through papers this morning, I run across the beautiful Refuge Prayer that was given to me long ago. This is a joyous reminder of one of my first Buddhist teachers –Thich Nhat Hanh ( pronunciation: Tik · N’yat · Hawn). By his students he is affectionately known as Thay (pronounced “Tay” or “Tie”) , which is Vietnamese for “teacher.”

Thay holds a very special place in my heart for it is with his writings and poems that I first fully embraced and then embarked upon the path of the bodhisattva. Following his teachings in mindfulness has given a great sense of inner peace. His words and presence continue to engender well being and gratitude.

Refuge Prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh

At the foot of the Bodhi tree, beautifully seated, peaceful and smiling, the living source of understanding and compassion, to the Buddha I go for refuge.

The path of mindful living, leading to healing, joy, and enlightenment, the way of peace, to the Dhamma I go for refuge.

The loving and supportive community of practice, realizing harmony, awareness, and liberation, to the Sangha I go for refuge.

I am aware that the Three Gems are within my heart, I vow to realize them.

I vow to practice mindful breathing and smiling, looking deeply into things.

I vow to understand living beings and their suffering, to cultivate compassion and loving kindness, and to practice joy and equanimity.

I vow to offer joy to one person in the morning and to help relieve the grief of one person in the afternoon.

I vow to live simply and sanely, content with just a few possessions, and to keep my body healthy.

I vow to let go of all worry and anxiety in order to be light and free.

I am aware that I owe so much to my parents, teachers, friends and all beings.

I vow to be worthy of their trust, to practice wholeheartedly, so that understanding and compassion will flower, and I can help living beings be free from their suffering.

May the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha support my efforts.

Breathe, you are online

One of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, poet, and peace and human rights activist, Thich Nhat Hanh has led an extraordinary life. Born in central Vietnam in 1926 he joined the monkshood at the age of sixteen. The Vietnam War confronted the monasteries with the question of whether to adhere to the contemplative life and remain meditating in the monasteries, or to help the villagers suffering under bombings and other devastation of the war. Nhat Hanh was one of those who chose to do both, helping to found the “engaged Buddhism” movement. His life has since been dedicated to the work of inner transformation for the benefit of individuals and society.

In Saigon in the early 60s, Thich Nhat Hanh founded the School of Youth Social Service, a grass-roots relief organization that rebuilt bombed villages, set up schools and medical centers, resettled homeless families, and organized agricultural cooperatives. Rallying some 10,000 student volunteers, the SYSS based its work on the Buddhist principles of non-violence and compassionate action. Despite government denunciation of his activity, Nhat Hanh also founded a Buddhist University, a publishing house, and an influential peace activist magazine in Vietnam.

After visiting the U.S. and Europe in 1966 on a peace mission, he was banned from returning to Vietnam in 1966. On subsequent travels to the U.S., he made the case for peace to federal and Pentagon officials including Robert McNamara. He may have changed the course of U.S. history when he persuaded Martin Luther King, Jr. to oppose the Vietnam War publicly, and so helped to galvanize the peace movement. The following year, King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Subsequently, Nhat Hanh led the Buddhist delegation to the Paris Peace Talks.

In 1982 he founded Plum Village, a Buddhist community in exile in France, where he continues his work to alleviate suffering of refugees, boat people, political prisoners, and hungry families in Vietnam and throughout the Third World. He has also received recognition for his work with Vietnam veterans, meditation retreats, and his prolific writings on meditation, mindfulness, and peace. He has published some 85 titles of accessible poems, prose, and prayers, with more than 40 in English, including the best selling Call Me by My True Names, Peace Is Every Step, Being Peace, Touching Peace, Living Buddha Living Christ, Teachings on Love, The Path of Emancipation, and Anger.  Plum Village

May you be happy and with peace.

In celebration of the blessings of the Buddha, the Dhamma, the Sangha and of interdependence on this 4th of July, 2011 from Berkeley, California.

Toward Liberation

The beautiful poem Sweet Darkness by David Whyte (from his House of Belonging) speaks eloquently of Buddhist meditation practice and the inner path toward liberation and true love.

Photo Courtesy of Mark Baskett

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

–David Whyte

Imperfection

IMPERFECTION

I am falling in love
with my imperfections.
The way I never get the sink really clean,
forget to check my oil,
lose my car in parking lots,
miss appointments I have written down,
am just a little late.

I am learning to love
the small bumps on my face
the big bump of my nose,
my hairless scalp,
chipped nail polish,
toes that overlap.
Learning to love
the open-ended mystery
of not knowing why.

I am learning to fail
to make lists,
use my time wisely,
read the books I should.

Instead I practice inconsistency,
irrationality, forgetfulness.

Probably I should
hang my clothes neatly in the closet
all the shirts together, then the pants,
send Christmas cards, or better yet
a letter telling of
my perfect family.

But I’d rather waste time
listening to the rain,
or lying underneath my cat
learning to purr.

I used to fill every moment
with something I could
cross off later.

Perfect was
the laundry done and folded
all my papers graded
the whole truth and nothing but.

Now the empty mind is what I seek
the formless shape
the strange  off center
sometimes fictional
me.

–Elizabeth Carlson

O Sweet Irrational Worship

O SWEET IRRATIONAL WORSHIP

 

Wind and a bobwhite

And the afternoon sun,

By ceasing to question the sun

I have become light,

 

Bird and wind.

 

My leaves sing.

 

I am earth, earth

 

All these lighted things

Grow from my heart.

A tall, spare pine

Stands like the initial of my first

Name when I had one.

When I had a spirit,

When I was on fire

When this valley was

Made out of fresh air

You spoke my name

In naming Your Silence:

O sweet, irrational worship!

 

I am earth, earth

 

My heart’s love

Bursts with hay and flowers.

I am a lake of blue air

In which my own appointed place

Field and valley

Stand reflected.

 

I am earth, earth

 

Out of my grass heart

Rises the bobwhite.

Out of my nameless weeds

His foolish worship.

 

~Thomas Merton

In the language and wisdom of Zen Buddhism, what remains hidden to reason may be known to rapture. In O Sweet Irrational Worship, the speaker is the undifferentiated self that identifies with nature. He has relinquished dualism and ego-separateness to bask in the inherent oneness (and wholeness) of life. By doing so, he has ceased to question what is and allows what is to be. This act of “irrational worship” generates deep connection and rapture.

The poet has joined, and is flowing with Source, by a poetic and mystical identification or cosympathy with creation. In doing so, he discovers in its mystery the illusoriness of the empirical self and the irrelevance of the “I.”

Finally, the poem proclaims the liberating vision of the wholeness of the life force. This liberating vision, however, must be sought in solitude and in the emptiness that solitude may bring. Merton spent his lifetime in retreat and knew the value of being in solitude.

Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and prolific writer, was a longstanding student of Zen and possessed great insight. “O Sweet Irrational Worship” is from his 1963 volume of verse, Emblems of a Season of Fury. Merton wrote many poems that expose an exquisite Zen tonality and wisdom. He also wrote Mystics and Zen Masters and Zen and the Birds of Appetite, as well as the posthumous collection Encounters: Thomas Merton and D.T. Suzuki.

How To Be Alone

Being alone

on retreat

in solitude

wandering inner landscape

with Source as companion

flowing Inner Love

is one of the greatest pleasures

of this life!

Watch this beautiful video: How to Be Alone, by Andrea Dorfman & Tanya Davis

Walking the Tight Rope

A sister coach in my Retreat Coaches Network asked a question on our e-list yesterday: Where is the balance between giving of ourselves and our expertise for FREE with still needing to earn a living while running a business practice? (paraphrased)

It’s a great question and has engendered many good and interesting responses. It’s something I think about often as I walk the tight rope between holding the vision of a gift economy future and the reality of our mainstream, capitalist economy. I don’t have answers, although Femme Fire Productions is a grassroots gift economy incubator. The conversation is worthwhile.

It’s clear to me that it will take a collaborative, cooperative joining of many minds / hearts / energies and learning to share resources well and with grace to manifest a sustainable, life-serving age. Each contributor holds a key part of the answer; there are many keys… many pieces to the puzzle of how to get from where we are now to where we want to be — from this Great Unraveling, Great Turning that has begun to a Sustainable, Life-Serving Future.

I have given my professional services away as a volunteer and community-builder for much of my adult life. It has become a type of spiritual path — to serve others, to serve intentional community, to serve my Femme Fire vision and a mission. It’s been an activist’s life, and walking that talk has thus far meant embracing a very simple and frugal way of life… one that brings many qualitative rewards that are challenging to quantify, sometimes hard to even see, name, and be fully conscious of within the busy-ness of the day-to-day. What many have called “The Good Life.”

For me, there is a mystical, spiritual, essential and energetic flow in the process of having an idea (or vision) and then bringing that idea into manifestation into the material plane of our reality… so it can be seen, sensed, held in some way. This is the work of the artist within, and we are all made of this creative star-stuff that flows from Source energy.

When I give, it is always best when done from a place of love, abundance, flow… meaning that I’m taking good care of myself and my connection to my Inner Source. I am then able to hear and also trust my intuition and what my gut tells me. When there is confusion and I don’t hear a clear resonance one way or the other within, I breathe… contemplate… seek connection and guidance until clarity is found.

Then when I give from the place of truly wanting to give a gift of time, energy and/or resources of some type, I almost always find that I am giving to myself at the same moment. This is true: something always comes back to me in return! In that way, I grow and flourish… at the same moment the larger community expands and benefits. In the action coming from a centered heart-mind, I become the vision so to speak, and there is a sense of effortlessness, of ease and flow. Sweet timelessness, of eternity and deep connection are wonderful outcomes. This is priceless.

If I am unsure or wondering what and how much I will receive in return for my giving, I am not truly in the flow with Source and with my Heart of Love. Because Source gives without any thought about it… like the flower that exudes its fragrance freely without care. There is a rhythm and purpose behind the effortless, giving magic… the flower wants to be pollinated by the bee, but it doesn’t “know” this consciously.

In the practice, one grows patience, faith and trust. Patience that, despite setbacks, one is on the right track in terms of one’s spiritual-life quest. Faith that there are universal forces at work in the process that cannot be seen nor understood, but that everything is nevertheless interconnected and intertwined — that there is pollination happening. Faith that to do good and follow one’s higher light and inner truth will ultimately be the right and best choice. Trust that, no matter what happens, one has the inner strength and resilience to meet the challenges. And that regardless of outcome, one has done one’s best and made the right choice for the situation. There are no regrets in this course.

What is in my future ultimately? Old age, illness and death. I accept this and remind myself regularly of this truth. I could go in any moment. These lessons are all around us every single moment of every single day. Sometimes a hurricane, tsunami or nuclear meltdown takes many of us humans in a flash of an instant.

Taking up my moments in worries about money and whether I am receiving as much as I am giving ultimately takes more energy than I wish to expend. What matters is that my needs are met, and that’s a big subject – needs. And to be a good business woman, one must be fully aware of money, finances, inflows and outflows of energy, time and everything else, too.

As a woman in business as well as someone who naturally wants to nurture, comfort and build empathy and compassion within myself and thus with others, there are personal boundaries to be set and maintained around appropriate giving, in order to run a successful business practice so that my little venture boat is tight and not leaking energy. The word “appropriate” is very important in this instance.

Some important questions to ask in any situation, business or otherwise:

• Is this something I truly wish to give?
• Will the giving help me to grow myself in the ways I want to grow right now?
• Is this giving something that is truly needed and wanted?
• Do I have this to give? Is there a surplus? Can I afford to do it?
• Am I willing to wait for the possible manifestation… say if I am giving a free workshop or free coaching?
• Am I willing to be okay if I can’t see any manifestation because it may be of an unseen, mysterious type of connection that I never know about.
• Am I willing to embrace the fact that the manifestation may not look anything like what I might want or imagine? That it may be something completely unforeseen, unexpected, a possibly challenging growth opportunity coming into my field as a result of my actions?

Suffice to say that if my needs are met well, I have a whole lot more to give. The gift is given wholeheartedly then from a place of surplus and abundance. Yet, sometimes (often?) it is the poorest of the poor who are the most charitable of heart, spirit and material gifts… for it is they who have nothing to lose in the giving. It is a question of perspective. What is your own personal lens or economic filter that you peer at the world through? Is this an area you want to grow in yourself? If so, how will you go about doing that?

With this, we go far beyond money and the material plane of existence. As Professor Ron Howard shared in a recent talk with a CharityFocus meditation group, when we are looking at the questions of giving and economy in this way, we are now venturing into the “red” part of life and far from the “black”… we are venturing into realms of spirit.

Ultimately, it’s all about balance and personal choice … for today, I’ll call balance a pink azalea blooming in springtime ….

While we may simplistically reduce the principle to, “people will value what they pay for,” and there would be some truth in such a reduction, deeper explanations are possible, and may be discovered with questions like, “What is the X-factor that would render pricing irrelevant to customer behavior?” One explanation is that of intention and reciprocity. When we come from a space of scarcity, we are always trying to hold on to and manipulate things. That rubs off on people, regardless of whether our offerings are free or priced. People sense the vibration of desperate need and respond to it in kind, by withholding their own abundance. Tons of low-priced, high-priced and free offerings fail all the time when they come from this space.

When we instead come from a space of abundance, we tend to develop an openness to possibilities and find value in all sorts of ways without having to hold on to things. That also rubs off on people, regardless of whether our offerings are free or priced. People sense the vibration of abundance and respond to it in kind, by opening up their own abundance. Tons of low-priced, high-priced and free offerings work incredibly well when they come from this space.  ~Somik Raha

The Great Sea of Joy

www.dreamstime.com

The great sea

has sent me adrift,

It moves me as the weed in a great river,

Earth and the great weather move me,

Have carried me away,

And move my inward parts with joy.

~From an Inuit Shaman Woman

 

 

Learn to Love Yourself from the Inside Out

Does the question “what’s wrong with me?” secretly shadow your life?

Much of the focus of Femme Fire Productions is on helping women (and men) to become fully empowered and effective change-agents to make the world a better place. Our first step is often learning to fully love ourselves, and we use a variety of tools to inspire and grow us on our path.

Patricia Lynn Reilly wrote a beautiful poem Imagine A Woman that truly speaks to our process as women-loving-ourselves-as-women. As we grow in self-love, we awaken to possibility, along with clarity about our purpose and passions.

Claim your FREE membership to Imagine a Woman Worldwide Circle.

Love Yourself.

Rock Your World.

Imagine A Woman

Imagine a woman who believes it is right and good she is a woman.
A woman who honors her experience and tells her stories.
Who refuses to carry the sins of others within her body and life.

Imagine a woman who trusts and respects herself.
A woman who listens to her needs and desires.
Who meets them with tenderness and grace.

Imagine a woman who acknowledges the past’s influence on the present.
A woman who has walked through her past.
Who has healed into the present.

Imagine a woman who authors her own life.
A woman who exerts, initiates, and moves on her own behalf.
Who refuses to surrender except to her truest self and wisest voice.

Imagine a woman who names her own gods.
A woman who imagines the divine in her image and likeness.
Who designs a personal spirituality to inform her daily life.

Imagine a woman in love with her own body.
A woman who believes her body is enough, just as it is.
Who celebrates its rhythms and cycles as an exquisite resource.

Imagine a woman who honors the body of the Goddess in her changing body.
A woman who celebrates the accumulation of her years and her wisdom.
Who refuses to use her life-energy disguising the changes in her body and life.

Imagine a woman who values the women in her life.
A woman who sits in circles of women.
Who is reminded of the truth about herself when she forgets.

Imagine yourself as this woman.

–Patricia Lynn Reilly, Imagine A Woman International

http://www.dreamstime.com

Live the Questions, Rainer Maria Rilke

In the great silence of these distances, I am touched by your beautiful anxiety about life, even more than I was in Paris, where everything echoes and fades away differently because of the excessive noise that makes Things tremble. Here, where I am surrounded by an enormous landscape, which the winds move across as they come from the seas, here I feel that there is no one anywhere who can answer for you those questions and feelings which, in their depths, have a life of their own; for even the most articulate people are unable to help, since what words point to is so very delicate, is almost unsayable.

But even so, I think that you will not have to remain without a solution if you trust in Things that are like the ones my eyes are now resting upon. If you trust in Nature, in the small Things that hardly anyone sees and that can so suddenly become huge, immeasurable; if you have this love for what is humble and try very simply, as someone who serves, to win the confidence of what seems poor: then everything will become easier for you, more coherent and somehow more reconciling, not in your conscious mind perhaps, which stays behind, astonished, but in your innermost awareness, awakeness, and knowledge.

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within you the possibility of creating and forming, as an especially blessed and pure way of living; train yourself for that — but take whatever comes, with great trust, and as long as it comes out of your will, out of some need of your innermost self, then take it upon yourself.

–Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Letters to a Young Poet”

Mothering in the 21st Century

Another Mother’s Day has come and gone and brought with it a great subject for contemplation. Think about that word “mother” for a moment. It can bring up a wealth of thoughts, feelings, memories, social and gender conditioning, and expectations, yes? And what does it mean “to mother” in this 21st Century?

This is an era when many of us choose, create, and live within chosen families. Does one need to parent a child in order to be a mother? Does one need to be born a female?

“To mother” is “to nurture.” In my worldview, any being who nurtures is being a mother to another. One can mother children, animals, plants, projects, a home and/or garden, organizations, and so on. I like to take these types of roles beyond the limitations of gender and biology because it is liberating to do so for all of us.

I also know women (and men) who mourn that they have not experienced motherhood by limiting “motherhood” to biology and a personal story, so I invite and encourage them to consider this alternative angle. At the same time, I honor and celebrate all that is intrinsically female (and thus feminine) in our world.

Gift Economy and Nurture:  To give a gift, without thought of return or exchange, is to nurture, to mother another. The Gift Economy is fundamentally based upon nurture and our mothering roots. Genevieve Vaughn speaks eloquently about the links between economy and nurture:

The shift in perspective offered here is to re view everything in terms of nurturing, or to phrase it another way, in terms of gift giving. The thread of gift giving and receiving begins in every life in the unilateral need satisfaction provided by mothers. As time goes on in the individual life and in the existence of institutions and social structures, this thread is altered, turned back upon itself, moved to different levels, used for domination, used metaphorically. The thesis here is that almost everything from nature to culture can be viewed as gift-giving in some form.

…

The gift paradigm has the advantage of restoring mothering to its rightful place in the constitution of the human. What has been wrongly proposed in the construction of gender, with devastating effects such as the promotion of the values of dominance, competition and hierarchy (which are non nurturing values), can be countered by re introducing gift giving as a social value and interpretative key. Both male and female human beings are basically nurturers. One gender is not the binary opposite of the other. If we reintroduce the gift paradigm into our interpretation of the world, we will find our ‘gift giver within’ which will then be validated. Women, as those who have been socially designated as the nurturers, will be rightfully restored to their place as the norm, and men can be reinterpreted in this light as those who have been socially dispossessed of that norm-al behavior but who can re acquire it by espousing nurturing values. Institutions are usually organized around the exchange and dominance paradigm, but they can be reorganized to satisfy needs. The rewards which accompany dominance can be eliminated and gift giving can be affirmed and promoted.  Introduction to the Gift Economy, Genevieve Vaughn

Celebration of the Mother with a Mini-Retreat: For Mother’s Day this year, I celebrated mothering in a few different ways and on a few different days. I now firmly hold the belief that it would be wise to celebrate motherhood every day of the year. There are a lot of good reasons for this, and you’re invited to ponder the idea.

Anyway, on the designated Mother’s Day, I desired to honor nurturing, the Mother Goddess, and Gift Economy by sharing lunch at Karma Kitchen and by giving to a friend and one who mothers. Afterward, we took a little mini-retreat by the water in Emeryville at a friend’s beautiful condo (where I happen to be housesitting and doing a Feng Shui decluttering project). We nurtured (and mothered) one another by sharing:

• Smiles and Laughter
• Personal Herstory and Emotional Intimacy
• Authenticity and Honesty
• A Lovely Manicure, with Hand Massage
• Rest and Relaxation
• Celebration of Beauty in Our Lives
• Gratitude for Our Friendship

A Retreat to Focus on Mother and Gaia Connection: My daughter (16) and I also shared our first intentional Mother-Daughter Retreat this year. We share and hold a vision of co-leading Femme Fire Mother-Daughter Retreats in the future. In my next post, I’ll share more about our vision of Mother-Daughter Retreats and the wilderness connection.

We journeyed to Joshua Tree National Park and shared five solid days of much-needed rest, relaxation and mutual nurture. She is my daughter, and she also is a mother, although she has not given biological birth. She has given birth to many creative babies already through  her art and writing, and she clearly nurtures naturally.

We enjoyed time spent in close proximity to Gaia Mother in the Mojave Wilderness with camping, hiking, and meditation. Emma experienced her first two driving lessons in the campground and its horse arena — a fun rite of passage! A lot of our time was spent simply eating, gazing at our surroundings, including the majesty of star-studded night skies, or sleeping… and more sleeping… .

I leave you with a poem that I love by Billy Collins that is also about mothering.

The Lanyard

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

~Billy Collins