by Kenn Duncan
A dharma talk given December 3, 2024

As we fast approach the end of yet another year, there is a lot of contentiousness, and division in our world. And along with that, a lot of worry or insecurity about our future, depending on your outlook. Politically, socially, environmentally, many of us find the direction of our world filled with uncertainty.

This storm, this deluge, can flood us with emotions. I have many friends who are questioning everything, and really want to know answers now. It’s said that when asked questions about enlightenment, or what happens after death, or, or, or… Ajahn Chah would smile and say “It’s uncertain, isn’t it?”

I was remembering the uncertainty we all faced just a few years back with the pandemic and how it became an opportunity for us to befriend our fears, be compassionate with them, and radiate this compassion to those around us. And many people did just that, and many of us have this opportunity once more.

We can only work with and make decisions in this moment, only with the information that we know and understand. We have to let go of the worry of what could be or what might happen. The world is changing around us, always has been, always will be and it can be a little scary for us all.

by Kenn Duncan
A dharma talk given November 26, 2024

We have this holiday coming this week, something I’m reminded constantly by my good friends from England that we only celebrate here in the U.S.  It’s a bit of a strange holiday when you trace it’s origins, and it’s become a time when some people do take the time to stop (just before the deluge of the next holiday, Christmas, and all that brings) and share thankfulness, gratitude.

I like the name of this holiday — Thanksgiving — because it sort of holds the idea of both giving and receiving. 'Thanks' and 'Giving' carry this sort of wonderful mutuality of giving and receiving. It's an expression of appreciation and even an expression of kindness, to give thanks and to be thanked.

There's a story about Siddhartha Buddha, after he was enlightened, that he spent a lot of time gazing day and night the Bodhi tree under which he was enlightened, in gratitude of the tree. The protection and the support it gave him for this amazing experience of freedom and presence that he discovered. The Buddha didn't teach much about gratitude specifically, but it is said that he made the statement that no one is injured in feeling gratitude. This idea that no one is injured, that you won't be injured in feeling gratitude is a wonderful thought.

I started something with my daughter when she was little, especially after a rough day. After she would share her difficulties or struggles, I’d ask her to share something that may have happened that she was happy or grateful for.  In a short time we’d just start sharing with each other things we were grateful for pretty much every day.  
I’ve taken this with me to this day. At the end of the day, usually my final meditation includes a run down of all the things that may have happened that lifted me up, or made me smile, or made me feel good or grateful.  The idea of doing this is not to do it forcefully or pretend things are better than they are. The idea is to really reflect on what we genuinely appreciate.

By Rev. Dr. Grace G. Burford
Quad City Interfaith Council annual Celebration of Thanks
Nov. 21, 2024


One time a student asked her Zen teacher, “What is the gate of Zen?”
The teacher replied, “Generosity.”

The early Buddhist scriptures are full of accounts of the Buddha teaching his followers about giving [dāna]. He teaches them when, where, what, and how to give, so that the giving benefits the giver as well as the receiver. For example, he says one who gives beneficially is “joyful before giving”; “has a calm, confident mind in the act of giving”; and “is elated after giving.” [Anguttara Nikāya III, 336]

Why is giving so important in Buddhist practice?

To give something, we have to let go of it. It’s not really giving if we give and then try hold on to what we gave.

This connection between giving and letting go is embedded in the early Buddhist word for generosity [cāga]. This term has two meanings: in some contexts, it refers to the attitude that leads us to give, in other words, what we would call “generosity.” In other places, it means to “let go.” Letting go of clinging to things and people and experiences—to anything, really—is a central aim of Buddhist practice, because clinging leads to suffering for ourselves and others.

So, for Buddhist practitioners, giving beneficially and often, cultivating generosity, contributes directly to the reduction of suffering for all.

Just as we can enter through a gate, we can also go out through it. We enter the gate of spiritual practice by being generous, and we emerge back out into the world being generous.

May we spread generosity to all beings as we move through the world.
May all beings be put at ease by our generosity.
May all beings feel safe in our generosity.
May all beings be happy, experiencing our generosity.



Rev. Dr. Grace G. Burford

Quad City Interfaith Council annual Celebration of Thanks

Nov. 21, 2024

by Carol Russell
This essay is adapted from a talk given at the Tuesday night sangha gathering on November 12, 2024

I want to begin by acknowledging the deep feelings many people are experiencing right now as our country has just gone through an intense election season, whether or not the results went the way you were hoping. You may be experiencing fear, worry, anger, or despair, or you might be feeling relief and gladness.

Tonight, we will be exploring the states of expansion and contraction. I am using the term openness alongside expansion, since it captures a certain quality that is important. First, we will look at what might each of these experiences be. How are they valuable? And then we will explore how they work together. It is my hope that spending some time broadening our understanding of these two qualities that are part of our human experience might bring some understanding and solace for the times we are in.

Contraction

One view of contraction is the experience we have when we are living in own narrow view of life. We are up in our head ruminating on our own little world. It can feel like we have fallen in a well; that contracted feeling is our own personal well. It is constricted and isolated. There’s a little patch of light up there, but it casts a dim light. It becomes so normal to us to live within this narrow view that we don’t realize we are in it. This is all so very human.

As practitioners of mindfulness, we begin to have a different experience. There’s a quality of mindfulness that allows us to take a step back and open to a broader view. In our mindfulness practice, we find there is a kind of back and forth, from softness, openness, and expansiveness to being lost in a story where all there is in the experience of the story and all its papancca or proliferation, as the story spins out in our minds, and then back to the open state of being mindful. This back and forth can be very revealing about the possibilities of our own mind.

by Kenn Duncan
A dharma talk given April, 2024

A practice mostly known from the Zen tradition, but making its way into the western practices, is the practice of not knowing. A not-knowing mind, or sometimes referred to as a beginner’s mind.

It is the mind that is innocent of preconceptions and expectations, judgments and prejudices. A mind that is just present to explore and observe and see “things as they are.” It’s kind of like facing life like a small child, full of curiosity and wonder and amazement. “I wonder what this is? I wonder what that is? I wonder what this means?” Without approaching things with a fixed point of view or a prior judgment, just asking “What is it?”

I heard notes of this practice first from Gil Fronsdal, and explored a little bit some of the teachings of Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, but dug deeper a few years back after a Frank Turner concert.

Frank Turner:
“Today’s day and age and with all the new social media craze - we spend a lot of time disagreeing with each other and holding our ground no matter what we really know or don’t know…"
He suggests that we try using this expression “I don’t know”…  “as we get older we start to realize that we don’t really know anything about anything and neither does anybody else.” 
Secondarily, “I’ve changed my mind”, letting go of what we think we know to open ourselves up to a new understanding or way of thinking. 

“Take a Breath, try these for size…I don’t know, I’ve changed my mind, between life and death we’ll find the time to get it right”.
– Frank Turner from “Get It Right”

Suzuki Roshi notes in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s there are few.”

Not knowing, we meet our experience with a mind that simply doesn’t know, that is open to possibility, that has some wonder, that is not demanding a situation to be a certain way or a person to be a certain way, not requiring ourselves to be a certain way, not putting limits on things, not contracting with our thoughts. A not-knowing mind can be relaxed with how things are, and is spacious and relaxed.

by Carol Russell
A dharma talk given May 21, 2024

This is something I have been considering lately.  The Buddha seemed very interested in working with what it is to be a human being. After he encountered the four sights as a young man (old age, sickness, death, and an ascetic person), what he saw sent him on his spiritual search After his ascetic phase, in which he had so mortified his body he nearly starved himself, he realized this way of denial was not leading to the end of suffering. In his realization, he no longer sought to transcend the human body. The teachings he brought forth recognize humanness, the human condition. After his liberation, he brought his teachings right into this conventional everyday muddled human life. He illuminated the middle way as a way to liberation from dissatisfaction: not indulging and not denying.

We eat, so instead of getting rid of eating, which didn’t go well for him, he brought in teachings around eating. Teachings we now have of self-care, of non-harming, of mindful eating.

He recommended we seek out quiet spaces to practice. But instead of insisting on total silence, and having aversion to the inevitable noise, he taught how to incorporate sound into practice. Through this we learn that nothing is outside of mindfulness.

Humans are talkers, so he made recommendations for how speech might be used that is mindful and appropriate to the situation. This is the subject of tonight’s talk. Wise speech.

In fact, mindful speech holds a prominent place in these teachings. This is surely a reflection of how important the Buddha regarded communication. In the Noble Eightfold Path teachings, a wholistic practical summary of the path, wise speech is singled out as one of the eight keys of practice leading to liberation. Wise speech gets its very own place

By Carol Russell
A dharma talk given April 2, 2024

From Anguttara Nikaya Sutta 9.3 With Meghiya

[In February I was on a week-long retreat with Brian Lesage & Diana Clark. Over five of the retreat days, they gave five dharma talks that corresponded to this teaching. Some of this talk comes from my notes from that retreat, some from my own thoughts.]

The story of Meghiya begins as many Buddhist stories do: so I have heard.

The Buddha is staying near Calika. Meghiya was the Buddha’s attendant. One day Meghiya goes up to the Buddha and asks to go to the nearby village for alms. The Buddha agrees.

So, in the morning, Meghiya robes up, takes his bowl, and goes for almsround. On his way back, he walks along the shore of the river and comes upon a mango grove. He thinks:

“Oh, this mango grove is lovely and delightful! This is good enough for striving for someone wanting to strive. If the Buddha allows me, I’ll come back to this mango grove to meditate.”

When he got back to the Buddha, Meghiya asks if he can go to the mango grove to meditate. The Buddha asks him to wait, since there’s no one else there to help out. He asks that Meghiya wait until someone else shows up to take Meghiya’s place.

A bit later, Meghiya is impatient and says, Hey, there’s nothing else to do. How about now? Can I go to the mango grove to meditate? Again, the Buddha says, We’re alone Meghiya. Wait until someone else comes.

A third time Meghiya asks: “Sir, the Buddha has nothing more to do, and nothing that needs improvement. But I have. If you allow me, I’ll go back to that mango grove to meditate.” The Buddha says, “Meghiya, since you speak of meditation, what can I say? Please, Meghiya, go at your convenience.”

Meghiya goes to the mango grove, plunges deep into it, and sits down at the root of a tree for the day’s meditation. But while he is meditating, he is beset by three kinds of bad, unskillful thoughts, namely, sensual, malicious, and cruel thoughts.

by Carol Russell
A dharma talk given October 18, 2022

Gratitude for the inspiration for this talk goes to David Loy, Buddhist scholar, practicing Zen Buddhist and one of the founders of Rocky Mountain Ecodharma Retreat Center, and to Joanna Macy, PhD, Buddhist scholar, systems thinker, activist, and root teacher for the Work That Reconnects.

----

Philosopher and social commentator Noam Chomsky recently said, "We’re approaching the most dangerous point in human history." He includes the potential for climate catastrophe, the threat of nuclear war, as well as the rise in authoritarian governments and the decline of democracy around the world, as the most pressing and threatening dangers to the world at this time.

What does Buddhism offer us in these times? Are we here to ‘wake up?’ Does that mean our own personal salvation journey or are we here to wake up to what is happening in the world?

Maybe less so now, in Western Buddhism, but historically, there has been an interpretation that the goal of practice is to transcend this world – not being reborn is the ultimate attainment. This can lead to a kind of indifference to and withdrawal from the threats to the world. Why be concerned with fixing the problems of the world if the goal is to get out of here?

Joseph Campbell, author and scholar of religion and mythology said:
Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble.

Is this true in Buddhism?

I wanted to start tonight's talk with a poem:
The Buddha's Last Instruction, by Mary Oliver

“Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
It thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire -
Clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

Sunday I worshiped in the tradition of my family at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. The preacher, who was a child during the Cold War, remembered practicing “duck and cover” at school, the fear that arose in her with the loud and shrill ringing of sirens, images that played in her mind of victims from the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan. In 2018 she was visiting Maui when, you may remember, there was a false missile alert. The alert stated that there was an incoming ballistic missile threat, advised residents to seek shelter, and concluded: "This is not a drill". The preacher commented that once again she was paralyzed with fear. She wondered what had become of her faith. And she contrasted standing strong in faith and hope to a state of fearful paralysis. There is a really huge gulf between those states of being, isn’t there? I think this is at the heart of our spiritual practice--the good news that draws us to this practice like a moth to the light. It’s the message of a cross-stitch sampler that hangs on my wall and reads, “Fear knocked on the door, Faith answered. No one was there.”

In a recent dharma talk on Dharma Seed, Brian Lesage described the spiritual journey in the following way: Exploring what can help our hearts to be here fully for this journey--this spiritual journey from birth to death, a journey that I hope this practice brings us more depth, kindness, love and wisdom. So we can have a wholeheartedness to our journey.

Howie Cohn has been teaching our Prescott Insight Fall Retreat for, I’m not sure, something like 16 years, so he’s an important guiding teacher for our Sangha. So, when I saw a link to this short interview on the registration page for an upcoming in-person retreat, I decided I had to pass it along!
I share it with you here with his permission. No one is sure when or with whom the interview was conducted (it must have been over 12 years ago now – he’s been leading his Mission Dharma sangha for over 35 years).

I think you’ll find this to be an interesting and elucidating read!

Q: What originally drew you to meditation practice and who were your first important teachers? Also, who do you consider your primary teacher these days (if you have one)?

HC: I was a competitive athlete in my younger years, and I was always interested in the mind and body connection. I developed some homespun theories about how to live one’s life in a relaxed way based on what I was learning from sports. I probably irritated a few people with my theories about life when I tried them out. The real spark was meeting my freshman college girlfriend. Her brother was part of the original cadre of teachers that spread Transcendental Meditation in the Western world. I became interested in learning about it. Our romance didn’t last, but my interest in meditation did. 

Some years later I went to a Ram Dass retreat and met Stephen Levine, who was offering vipassana practice as part of the retreat. I soon moved to Santa Cruz to sit in Stephen’s weekly sitting group. Within several months, I sat my first 3-month retreat, followed by many more 3-months retreats. 

I consider Joseph Goldstein to be my root teacher in vipassana. He was such an inspiring guide for me on those early 3-month retreats. I still carry his depth of wisdom and commitment in my heart.  In 1985, I became part of Jack Kornfield’s  first teacher training group along with James Baraz, Sylvia Boorstein, Anna Douglas and Sharda Rogell. Jack has been such a wonderful teacher and mentor for me and my gratitude is boundless.

Yesterday morning I was on a hike and I ran into an old acquaintance, a local artist, someone I hadn’t seen in years. I was excited to see him, hear how his life has been, and connect. An interesting, although in retrospect maybe not uncommon, thing happened. He told me how well his life has been going, how the Pandemic hadn’t really changed anything for him; he was still making art. At some point I mentioned I hoped that the Pandemic was teaching us some things about working together to solve bigger problems that are causing suffering in the world. That set him off on a series of thoughts that made it clear that he and I had very different ideas about many things and he was eager to let me know his point of view. In the midst of it all I shared a few of my own contrasting views, which seemed to increased his opposition.

The conversation was friendly enough, but I walked away from the conversation without the experience of ‘connection’ that I had anticipated when I first saw this person on the trail.

What is this experience of connection that can happen between people? And not just people, but also the experience of connection that transcends the person-to-person relationship. Like what we sometimes sense when we are connecting with an animal, or walking in nature, or looking at the starry sky, or deep in meditation.

Buddhist literature abounds with contemporary writings about the illusion of separation that clouds our experience of our true nature of an open, connected, boundless heart. In Sharon Salzberg’s book, Lovingkindness- The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, she writes:

by Carol Russell
A Dharma Talk given February 23, 2021

We are embarking on an exploration of the core of the Buddha’s teachings, the four noble truths. Our sangha’s founding leader, Carol Cook, had a tradition of beginning each year with an immersion into this subject, because it is utterly central and foundational to our practice. Carol has inspired us to take it up.

Our plan is to take the four truths, one noble truth at a time, and for four weeks each of us will offer an exploration of the truth of the month. This should be especially interesting because of the fact that there are endless ways of examining such a profound teaching: historic, contemporary, esoteric, practical, psychological, experiential, scholarly, and on and on. We are hoping for some interesting conversations amongst all of us in these explorations. Whether it is the first time you are studying these truths or you are circling back for the hundredth time, we know there is always more to understand.  We hope you will take the Buddha’s profound teachings into your daily life and share your fresh discoveries and insights when we meet on Tuesday nights.

Simply put, the four noble truths are:

There is suffering.
There is a cause of suffering.
There is an end of suffering.
The remedy is the eight-fold path.

Did you ever wonder why these are called the ‘noble’ truths? Some say it is because these are the truths which cause nobleness. Of course, we are dealing with translations from the Pali language and a great deal of time passing, and the fact that the teachings were oral for some time, but I recently found this explanation: that it may be more accurate to say, the nobles’ truths, or the truths possessed by the noble ones.  The dictionary definition of noble is: Having or showing qualities of high moral character, such as courage, generosity, and integrity.  So, we are establishing a connection between acknowledging, understanding and freeing ourselves from suffering and these natural and noble qualities of courage, generosity, and integrity.

The First Noble Truth, the truth of suffering. In Pali, the word is dukkha. The truth of dukkha. Sometimes dukkha is translated as ‘dissatisfaction.’ I like that word because it includes more than the overt times of suffering in life, it includes that background feeling that we all have at times that things aren’t reliably satisfying. No matter how great a life you have, this human life is bound to include stress. It may be those underlying existential questions like, what are we doing here? What is it all about? Dukkha is not personal, and it’s ubiquitous in the world of form and incarnation. Everyone has the experience of dissatisfaction.

By Mark Donovan
A Dharma Talk given in August, 2020

Note: This piece is primarily a synthesis of two talks on Dharma Seed with text borrowed directly: Spiritual Hope by Tara Brach and Hope, Hopelessness and Equanimity by Jill Shepherd.   

I suppose I wanted to investigate hope to cheer myself up.  I felt like I got clobbered over the head last month with a long bout of insomnia that threw me off balance.  My mood was unstable with high anxiety related to lack of sleep, personal issues, and the background clamor of the pandemic and politics.  I suffered.  I was also aware that I wasn’t in this alone, that humanity as a whole is suffering at this time as the pandemic disrupts lives and livelihoods.  And I appreciated the expressions from my doctor, and the director of the clinic where I work, who reminded me that many, many people are going through exactly what I was going through.  Our suffering is universal.

This time of massive transformation and uncertainty is both scary, with many of our old moorings loosened or lost,  and also cause for new hope that a more fair and just world will emerge.  Rebecca Solnit, in her essay “The Impossible Has Already Happened: What Coronavirus Can Teach Us About Hope,” writes “I have found over and over that the proximity of death in shared calamity makes many people more urgently alive, less attached to the small things in life and more committed to the big ones, often including civil society or the common good.”

I imagine that some of you watched the televised funeral for John Lewis.  Listening to stories from his life I felt great hopefulness.  What a remarkable man, known for his “moral clarity,” a conscience backed by tireless action that for 60 years worked for equality and justice.  A man who lived by his motto of “making good trouble,” civil disobedience, putting his body on the line as he led 600 people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 for civil rights.  He suffered a fractured skull, but that did not lead him to hate his attackers, but to continue making good trouble through non-violent means.  Lewis said, “We must be bold, brave, courageous, and push and pull until we redeem the soul of America and move closer to a community at peace with itself, where no one will be left out because of race, color, or nationality.” He recently expressed pride as he watched his legacy in action: a new generation of activists fighting for equality.  Lewis’ example of living into the promise of greater equality gives me inspiration and hope.  Tara Brach would call this “spiritual hope”, this growing into a greater potential, the hope of what’s possible.

By Carol Cook
A Dharma Talk given February 15, 2020
At Layne and Neera's

So, Mara!  Who is this Mara? And why would we invite him/her to tea?  I realize, you may already know the stories about Mara from Buddhist, Hindu and other traditions, and Mara may not sound like someone you would want to invite to tea.

I decided to google a bit to see how Mara shows up on the world-wide net, and Mara does appear in many traditions — both spiritual and otherwise.        
                                                    
-Mara is the highest-ranking goddess in Latvian mythology,
-A Hindu goddess of destruction, death, winter, and the moon.
-Of Hebrew origin, the word Mara means is "bitter" or “sorrow.”
-In the Bible, Naomi, mother-in-law of Ruth, claimed the name Mara as
    an expression of grief after losing her husband and sons.
-In Gaelic - the sea, seen both as a destructive force and a source of life.

My most surprising discovery was Mara’s appearance in Dr. Who. I couldn’t even remember who Dr. Who was — maybe the name of a band?  (And I realize that any sci-fi buff might think I’m illiterate.)  But I also learned that the Mara in the Dr. Who episodes seemed to be lifted from Buddhist literature along with two phantoms named “Dukkha” and “Anatta.”
At least two of the writers of these episodes are reported to have had interests in Tibetan and Zen Buddhism.

Mara has also been featured as a demon in a video game series, Megami Tensei.

I decided to stop here — I was supposed to be writing a talk.

So, as for the Mara in Buddhism, among the many supernatural beings found in Buddhist literature, Mara is unique. He/she is one of the earliest non-human beings to appear in Buddhist scriptures.

In traditional Buddhism, Mara is seen in four metaphorical forms:
Mara as the embodiment of all unskillful mind states, such as greed, hate and delusion.
Mara as death.
Mara as metaphor for the entirety of conditioned existence.
Mara as the deva of the sensuous realm, who tried to prevent Siddhartha Gautama (later known as The Buddha) from awaking on the night of the his enlightenment.

From Insight Meditation Center, Barre Mass.
February 2019 Newsletter

Early Buddhism is a living spiritual tradition based on the original teachings of the historical figure known as the Buddha, or Awakened One, who lived in northern India in the fifth century BCE. The term can also refer to the doctrines and practices taught by the Buddha, including understandings such as the Four Noble Truths, guidance on conduct such as the Five Precepts, and meditation practices like insight (vipassana), mindfulness, and lovingkindness. Today in Asia the followers of Early Buddhism are found primarily in Burma, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. Many IMS teachers trained in these countries before bringing the teachings to the West.
Until recently the tradition of Early Buddhism was more commonly known as Theravada, or Way of the Elders. In fact, IMS originally considered itself to be a Theravadan center. However, modern scholarship has revealed that Theravada is just one of some eighteen schools of Early Buddhism, each with its own views and foundational texts. Early Buddhists today agree that the discourses of the Buddha (collectively, the Dhamma) and his monastic code (the Vinaya) are authoritative. The Theravadan school also considers the Pali Abhidhamma and commentaries such as the Visuddhimagga to be authoritative, while other Early Buddhists may not. Hence Early Buddhism and Theravada are not synonymous, although there is much overlap.

By Kenn Duncan
A Dharma talk given September, 2019

 “It is better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring” - Carl Sagan

Delusion is said to be the most dangerous of the 3 poisons, it’s described as confusion, ignorance, illusion, bewilderment, misperception of reality.  Believing something which is not true and acting on this belief, one of the problems with delusion is it believes it’s true.  Delusion can lead us to ignore the facts and cling to our views and opinions, it creates a loss of connection with reality.  It can take us into the illusion of our thoughts and misperceptions and these inevitably motivate unskillful actions.  

Further, we start to build stories around these delusions, you’re by yourself one day = I don’t have any friends, see someone on TV = I think that person is cool, or that person is not cool, I will never get old, never go bald, but the reality is we don’t know, is that person cool?  Will I go bald? We don’t really have control.  Delusion is trying to have control or fool us into thinking that our beliefs are real and true.  We also form ideas about ourselves that limit us, by making stories of ourselves, I can do this, I can’t do this, I’m this way… I’m not that way.  

Buddhism gives us a great view of delusion and that is that you shouldn’t take it personally or as a failure when it’s recognized or seen, by yourself or by others.  It just comes with being a human being, our mind will work towards delusion, maybe as a protection.  So rather than being judgmental about it or embarrassed about it, be willing to be transparent with it, talk about it, recognize it, know it.

By Carol Russell
Her first dharma talk, given July 9, 2019

There is a well-known saying: In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.

We admire those who are experts, accomplished in their field, who have spent many years honing a skill or knowledge of their subject, who break new ground in creativity or research or scholarship or athletic ability or spiritual wisdom. And they deserve our admiration.  We seek guidance and inspiration from such accomplished people.

Once, a long time ago, there was a wise Zen master. People from far and near would seek his counsel and ask for his wisdom. Many would come and ask him to teach them, enlighten them in the way of Zen. He seldom turned any away. One day an important man, a man used to command and obedience came to visit the master. “I have come today to ask you to teach me about Zen. Open my mind to enlightenment.” The tone of the important man’s voice was of one used to getting his own way. The Zen master smiled and said that they should discuss the matter over a cup of tea. When the tea was served the master poured his visitor a cup. He poured and he poured and the tea rose to the rim and began to spill over the table and finally onto the robes of the wealthy man. Finally the visitor shouted, “Enough. You are spilling the tea all over. Can’t you see the cup is full?” The master stopped pouring and smiled at his guest. “You are like this tea cup, so full that nothing more can be added. Come back to me when the cup is empty. Come back to me with an empty mind.”

By Jack Kornfield
Originally published at jackkornfield.com, January 27, 2017.

The problem with the world is that we draw our family circle too small.
— Mother Teresa

Many of us wrestle with our response to the sufferings of the country and the world. What can we do in the face of poverty, disease, war, injustice, and environmental devastation? With the torrent of news, it is easy to despair, to become cynical or numb. Our psychologies tend to treat this as a personal problem, but it is not. We are all affected by the suffering of the world and need to find a way to work with it. This is a pressing problem for psychology. The Buddhist approach to this collective suffering is to turn toward it. We understand that genuine happiness and meaning will come through tending to suffering. We overcome our own despair by helping others to overcome theirs.

We might hear this and become afraid of being overwhelmed. Or our response might be confused with guilt, unworthiness, and our need for personal healing. Still, even though our motivation is mixed, we have to respond. And we can. It is simple. Each of us can contribute to the sanity of the world. We can tend to ourself and we can tend to others. In doing so we discover the role of the bodhisattva.

— Jack Kornfield