Rowdy Abundance

new abstract "If Trees Were Mountains" 11"x14"

I am still gulping in this season of rowdy abundance that has thrown itself at my doorstep. The sun gets up early and stays up late and somehow I try to keep up.  The settling darkness laughs at my foolish tag along attempts as I fall into bed exhausted. I don't want to miss a minute.  I am full of energy for all that needs to be done, for sipping in the deliciousness of the greenness and the savouring the occasional tepid breeze. The grass is waist high in parts of the meadow. The tent caterpillars have consumed the leaves from entire trees giving them an eerie silvery glow. They are cocooned in in a tangle of emptiness. Soon their little moth selves will bump against my windows at night like little winged zombies.

The birds dart about in frenzied feeding. Even the tiny woodpecker comes to tap at the plastic feeder hoping to find something to his liking. The quail keep look out for each other as they eat, this seems so endearingly sweet, but of course it is merely a survival behaviour. The hot pink hawthorne tree who showed no sign of blooming last week is tosses it hot pinkness into the sky, even in the distance. In my human way I am constantly reading meaning into the natural world where there is none, or at least not my imagined stories of sweetness or worry or delight. They have their stories but not the ones I stitch together for them, charged with my own hope and fear.

And I  have been plunged into this radical abundance, feeling the energetic pull to be part of it. The lazy slow days of hibernation have disappeared into the drawer with the wool socks. The stack of books I am reading is as tall as the grass. There is "In Buddha's Kitchen" and "Gardening At Dragons Gate", both written by women Dharma practitioners.  Wendy Johnson gardens at Green Gulch Zen Centre in California, Kimberley Snow cooks at a Tibetan Centre in Northern California.  As I read these books at different times over the days the stories seem to merge together and I weave one book out of two. But as I travel deeper into the books  their roads of similarity diverge with the writing and story of the gardening book emerging stronger and more vivid. And so the stories separate and the reading of one increases and the other falls quietly into the background.

New Buddha 16"x20"  heading off to Norway this week

Also traveling  from bedside to coffee table are: "Long Life" and "Why I Wake Early" by Mary Oliver, "Pilgrim" by David Whyte, "Broken Open" by Elizabeth Lesser, "Journey In Ladakh" by Andrew Harvey, and "Collage Discovery Workshop" by Claudine Hellmuth. I am living in the waist tall grass of my reading list, sometimes feeling overwhelmed and sometimes simply picking up what I fancy and reading a bit. I imagine the birds and dear (ha, ha, good typo, deer), must feel this sense of lush madness each day as they make their way through the world.

And between reading list and my infatuation with the outdoor world there seems little time left for virtual living. I read the odd blog. I watch Jeane broadcast from the shed, check a few emails but this is the stuff of colder seasons or rainy days. I suspect many of us have the same inclination, torn from our screens by the the energy of growing things, of warm breezes, a world that offers us so much for so little.

How about you? How has the energy of the season tangled and mixed with your life creating a new you? I am reminded of a quote attributed to the Buddha that I have used on a painting: "Each day we are born again. What we do today is what matters most."

Reading The Self

I am having a lovely quiet morning and noticing the 2 stacks of books I have lying on the very deep window sill of my bedroom. I have often thought it would be fun to write a novel that consisted only of people's shopping lists, to do lists and the stacks of books left lying around the house. It would work in terms of characterization, but I'm not sure how action packed it would be. I suppose the "to do" list for each day could provide the action and movement, the climax, denouement and final resolution? Perhaps the difference between the "to do" list and what actually got stroked off at the end of the day would move it forward?

But I digress, as the mind so willingly loves to play and dart about. Here are my 2 stacks of books, piled near the bed, for reference, as books I hope to pick up again, as books partly read, none of these completely abandoned as yet

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One stack contains: "No Time To Loose" by Pema Chodron on the bottom, meant for revisitng. On top of this sits David Sedaris', "Holiday On Ice" lent to me by a friend and partly read while I had the flu, hilarious is all I can say. On top of that is "Pipi Longstockings" by Astrid Lindgren, an old favourite of mine, Pipi is kind of my patron saint, in a strange way and I mean to do a post about the dharma of Pipi. Next up is Thich Nhat Hanh's "Peace Is Every Step", an early Dharma book of mine and well thumbed. I used to read the part about how to eat an orange to my daughter when she was young. I think this book is out because there's quite a buzz on the west coast about his August visit to Vancouver. And topping off the pile is "Light Comes Through" by Dzigar Kontrul Rinpoche, a delicious little book read a while back and there for leafing through when the urge strikes. You can never have too many books by your bed!

Pile number two has Jack Kornfield's "A Wise Heart" , revisited not too long ago as the meditation group I am now sitting with is associated with Spirit Rock, which Kornfield is part of. Next up is "True Perception" by Chogyam Trungpa. It's about art, but while there are some gems in it, I have always found him a hard read, so this one has been read in fits and starts, as my mother would have said. Next up is "All About Colour", by Janice Lindsay, a fascinating book about the history and psychology of colour. I read it at intervals. I love it but it is a bit of a dense read for me. Next up is a very old Dharma book of mine, set out because a friend recently mentioned it as the first Dharma book he read (on my recommendation). It's "Open Heart, Clear Mind by Thubten Chodron. And topping the stack is "Creative Authenticity" by Ian Roberts, read once quite greedily when first received and now waiting for a more contemplative pass through.

What's in your reading stack? On your "to do" list, either stroked off or still waiting? Can we know ourselves or others through these tidbits? Is there a self to know, that ever moving changing creature? Perhaps our lists can tell us about our longings, our aspirations, our inclinations or our state of mind at some point in time, like a little snap shot?

Are You A Bookstore Buddhist?

Today over lunch several friends and I were discussing, what else but Buddhist practice.  One friend said, "you know I've been reading a lot of books on Buddhism lately and I find it doesn't really do it for me.  I don't really understand things until I experience them for myself."

Ah, a sentiment so near and dear to my heart.  For years I was what I jokingly refer to as a Bookstore Buddhist, until I met my teacher.  I mostly just read about Buddhism.  And while there are lots of wonderful books out there (I have a bookcase full of well thumbed volumes)  I could never actually put it together in a way that made a real difference in my life. It always seemed hard to convert  the teachings, no matter how pragmatic, from those thin tidy slices of paper to the messy trenches of life.

Even  Dharma talks ... no matter how inspiring they are, I have found that to really have an "ah ha moment" I need to encounter the teaching  in my life.  I need to experience the idea or principle to convert it from the head to the "blood & bones" level of understanding.  Like the idea that no one can make me angry, that I make myself angry through my thoughts and reactions to the other persons action.  It wasn't until the gazilionth time I was recounting "what my mother did" that I realized that it was me who was stirring this pot.  She wasn't there, she wasn't doing anything, yet I was still railing on about her.  Now, I had heard the Dharma talk before.   I heard the lovely story about the monk who carries the woman across the stream and puts her down only to have a fellow monk mention it hours later.  And of course that classic reply of "I put her down hours ago, but you are still carrying her."  I had to finally hear my own angry words echoing into the phone before  "the penny finally dropped," as my teacher would say and I realized I was very tired of carrying my mother around.  For such a tiny woman she was very, very heavy.

So while the Dharma talks and the books can be wonderful inspiration and fingers pointing to the moon, there is no substitute for doing the work in everyday life ... the difficult, sometimes thankless, frustrating work of looking at what we do, getting to know ourselves and our little games and tricks and habitual tendencies.   And then doing the work that needs to be done.  

I thought I would just put up this little picture collage cover of a spiral bound journal.  Here's the place to record all your musings and rantings and tidbits as you get better acquainted with yourself.