It’s been such a busy week. My nose is running all over the place. I watch the clouds skid across the sky as day seems to be drawing to a close more quickly than ever.
The need to stand from my desk and go grows, due to worldly obligations. The funny thing is, I have to rush off to go sit and « do nothing. »
Skidding like the clouds
About the Author: zenscribe
Enseignante Zen et poète, Sensei Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell est née et a grandi à Minneapolis, aux Etats-Unis. Arrivée en France en 1981 pour étudier la littérature et l’histoire, elle y est restée, s’installant à Paris, où elle élève ses deux enfants et gagne sa vie en tant que journaliste.
The Zen teacher and poet Amy “Tu es cela” Hollowell Sensei was born and raised in Minneapolis, but came to France in 1981 to study literature and history and has lived in Paris ever since, raising her two children and making a living as a journalist.
Calling it a judgment is judgmental?
What judgments are there in things as they are?
One judgment certainly is “nonsense” and maybe I should briefly explain why I judged the Lama’s explanation about “Buddhist medicine”.
From what I understood, he said that Buddhist healthcare is all about making good karma.
So just do the vows and make the bows. Help other people. That’s the way to become and stay healthy.
When I told a colleague about this he summarized it – with a grin on his face:
“So if a Buddhist has a headache he gives an aspirin away.”
is stress a judgement?
Interesting discussion, folks. And all from just what is at hand.
Delusion is enlightenment.
Here’s a shot at it:
Fighting stress is stressful.
Not fighting stress is relaxation.
Practice always seems to come down to this same thing: to give up rejecting what is here and now. Relating self-evidently and non-problematically to what is. Opening up to reality. Waking up to it.
This is how “The nature of all things is liberation” .
The true nature of stress is liberation.
what is the relation between
relaxation – stress
and
the still point in which opposites are just both sides of the same coin?
but still:
what is this thing that we call stress?
what is going on then?
In this instant I thought the Lama was inconsiderate.
People may need some sleep before they get up again in time for work. Some people may have to bring home the baby-sitter.
When you’re a famous Lama you can afford to change the program all the time and let everyone else change their plans for you?
But of course I don’t really know what he was thinking and if he was thinking at all!
He was in other words totaly absorbed in Indian concentrationmeditation style??? so not aware??????
What is stress?
Squeezing too much activity in too little amount of time is stressful.
And it happens a lot.
I don’t usually feel stress when I simply work (at the office, or at home) but I feel instantly tired when someone starts mentioning all the other stuff that really also needs to be done right now, or actually should have been done already. And often I protest and tell people to get off my back.
On the meditation-mat there is no squeezing. There is an ocean of time and nothing needs to be done.
Taking that with me when I get up, I could try to live every moment with the same notion of abundance.
Once we looked up a famous Lama to receive some kind of initiation into some kind of buddha.
The Lama however decided last minute to switch from one buddha to another. We went back to the library to get some information on this other buddha that was on the menu now (the medicine buddha).
The talk started hours too late and I don’t know how long it lasted. After two hours of half-English mumble (and the parts I could understand were a lot of nonsense) we left. It was the middle of the night.
They told us this Lama had no sense of time. He was beyond that.
I suppose he had no stress.
But we did!
The funny thing is, I have to rush off to go sit and "do nothing."
exactly!
oten "practice" and "reality" seem so different – unintegrated…
in this way we make "practice" "something"… ??????
we keep stressing as allways… – as if relaxation has no importance at all…
what is this thing that we call "stress?" – what is this "rush of"?
why don’t we just say "i am going quickly" etc…?
That IS funny..
Rush off and rush in.
To go and leave to discover where the one that never leaves.