How To Make Peace

I received this lovely little peace card from fellow blogger, Suki whose aim it is to send messages of peace out into the world one little card at a time. And the card is as beautiful as the idea. It reminded me that we change the world in tiny ways by our actions. Receiving the card brightened my day, making it I imagine brightened Suki's and might have been a meditative act. And then there is the simple pleasure of generosity.

As we are often reminded in practice, we change the world one person at a time, that person being ourselves. We are really the only person we can change and that change radiates outward into the world. We may think things like friendly chit chat at the coffee shop are small and inconsequential but what if everyone did this, all day long, might the world be a different place? Yesterday the young woman at the cash desk in the local health food store said to me: "Remember when you gave us a ride (lots of hitchhiking still happens here on the island) and we were talking about Vipassana, we went home that night and signed up to do another 10 day Goenka retreat." A simple case of we never know what the other person will do as a result of our interaction. Also a sobering reminder when our exchanges are fueled by anger or greed.

It is easy to think that sometimes our meditation practice isn't going anywhere. The mind still wanders, our early expectations about practice have been tossed aside in favour of no expectations at all. But when we look at the small differences in how we relate to the world we can see the impact practice makes on our lives. Over the years we may find we choose our words more carefully or even choose to say no words at all sometimes. Maybe we are not in such a hurry all of the time or we are kinder to our sister-in-law who drives us a bit crazy. It is the many small actions that make up our day and ultimately our lives.

In "Being Peace" Thich Nhat Hanh says: "Every day we do things, we are things, that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our lifestyle, our way of consuming, of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment we are alive, the present moment. When we pick up the Sunday newspaper, for instance, we may be aware that it is a very heavy edition, maybe three or four pounds. To print such a paper, a whole forest may be needed. When we pick up the paper, we should be aware, If we are very aware, we can do something to change the course of things"

What Are Prayers?

Prayer Tree

Mixed Media with recycled prayer flags

8" x 8" matte, image size 3.75" x 4.5"

$25 including shipping in North America

This little piece has bits of recycled prayer flags.  Is this kosher?  I never quite know what to do with my prayer flags when the strings break and they are hanging all crazy.  I know they are sending their little threads of prayers off into the world but at some point the tattered bits need to come down off my city balcony and be replaced by new ones.  So I hit upon using the left over weathered bits in art work.  I mean you can't throw your unused prayers in the garbage, can you.  No, it doesn't seem quite right.  So they go out into the world again in pieces of art.

So tonight when I looked at this piece I wondered to myself.  Self I said, what are prayers?  And the answer came back that prayers are an asking for help.  We are just asking out in the universe, out there into the mysterious unknown.  We might ask for help for someone who is having troubles, or someone who has died, or  help for the world in general or some direction for ourselves.  We can pray for anything really.  My Zen teacher has talked about asking for help.  It was such a foreign concept to most of us when we first heard it.  "What is it good to do?"  is a question she suggested we use if we were having trouble in some situation.  And then she would say that the answer would come to us in various forms.  And that we might not always recognize it when it comes.  One of her suggestions is that we ask for help and then sit quietly for a bit.  If we are not hearing an answer she suggested we ask 3 times.

What we are listening for is the still small voice.  But the answer can come as a chance meeting, a phone call, an article that appears in the paper.  We must be ready and open to hear the answer.  And we must have faith that the answer will come and trust ourselves enough to know when the answer appears.  That always was a favourite question of us students.  "How do we know it's the answer?  How can we tell a real answer from something that we conjured up in our head?"  We didn't really trust that much and our hearing skills were not very good.  We were like people with really bad eye sight and cotton batting stuffed in our ears.  We were "answer challenged" types.  And patiently our teacher would say, "If you listen long enough and get  enough practice, you will know when the answer arrives."  Sometimes I hear my answer when I ask and sit and sometimes it takes a while.  It may arrive several days later when I'm in the shower.  The shower is kind of like an answer magnet for me.

And many of our prayers don't require answers.  We are wishing safety and comfort, safe passage and an absence of suffering for some sentient beings or part of the natural world.  Fascinating research has been done suggesting that people who are prayed for fare better in medical situations, even when they are prayed for by strangers from afar and even when they don't know they are being prayed for.  It kind of boggles the western, logical scientific mind, the whole idea of prayer.  But there it is....  Another one of those things that can't be understood with the head.  It is the heart, the authentic self that really understands... and it understands it in a way that doesn't easily translate into words.  Excuse me I have some listening I have to do.

Shadow of the Buddha

Here's my Sunday Shadow Shot, taken on Saturday.  Yesterday was a day of protest here in Victoria, and I assume around the world to bring increased recognition to the situation in Tibet.  So the little shot here is Buddha on a table with the shadow of some Tibetan prayer flags waving in the background.  The prayer flags are a shadow but reflected in the French Doors on the other side of the bedroom, if that makes any sense.  Check out all the great shots by linking through to Hey Harriet's blog.