.
guidance and suggestions around the practice of acceptance
[There are may "ways" and throughout ALETHEUS I will refer to several from different traditions. Eventually one or another will resonate for you - will touch your heart in a manner that no other practice or method has.]
The Buddha taught us that hatred can never be overcome through hatred, but only through love. Perhaps one of the most difficult lessons for humanity to learn is that of compassion. Compassion arises when we have insight into 'way things are' - the Dhamma. Before we can see clearly, we have to accept life in a way that is free from reaction. People sometimes think that one will be totally ineffectual if one just 'accepts'. However, compassion is not necessarily 'weak', actually it is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. The following meditation is offered to help us work more consciously on this quality of acceptance.
Light some candles and incense,And then read this slowly to a friend ...
Accept all beings without the desire to change, dominate or manipulate them.
Stop for a few moments, sit quietly with a straight back and gently close your eyes. Feel the rhythm of the breath as it enters ad leaves the body. Allow yourself to let go of the sense of past and future, and come into the present moment, being exactly with the way things are - now.
Bring your attention to the body. How does it feel? Accept - with kindness - the feelings and sensations in the body and thoughts in the mind, just the way they are. Breathe in deeply, feeling a sense of trust and well being. Breathe out, allowing any tightness and holding to dissolve. Do this for a while, breathing in a sense of well being and on the out breath - letting go into the space, silence and support of each moment. Allow the body to relax and the mind to calm. When different feelings, sensations and thoughts arise within yourself, just note them, allowing yourself to be fully at peace with their flow. Don't struggle to hold on or push away, just witness - seeing all things as Dhamma, as a part of nature.
Now find a place within yourself where you can totally accept all aspects of your own being with kindness and love.... Your personality, the things you like about yourself and the things which you judge as 'bad'.
As you move deeper into this place, allow yourself to accept fully all the people you know. The ones you love and trust and also the ones you find difficult or have bad feelings towards. Just allow yourself to accept the reactions that different people bring up in your mind, without judgement. Accept all beings without the desire to change, dominate or manipulate them. Contemplate the thought -May all beings be truly enlightened, may their hearts be at peace.
Being at ease with each moment, allow your attention to stay with the flow of the breath - with no force - breathing very gently and fully. Open your mind and heart to a sense of wholeness. There's nowhere to go, nothing to get and nothing to get rid of. All beings are a part of your own mind and share the same essence as you. Just be at peace with the way life is. Extend this sense of love and understanding to all beings as if they were your children - seeing the potential in them for enlightenment.
As you sit and breathe, bring to mind a sense of connectedness with the Earth. Extend a feeling of peace and gratitude to this ancient and powerful planet who nurtures and takes away life. Your body has arisen from the four elements and in its own time will return to the four elements, it belongs to nature. Accepting the way of nature, allow yourself to feel protected, supported and at ease. Trusting the perfection of the way things work out, see that you are not this body or mind, these are conditioned and must unfold according to the Laws of Karma. In this sense of acceptance, allow yourself to trust in the refuge of Dhamma.
Turn your attention to the breath, feel the life force bringing you energy and love. When you breathe in - breathe in a feeling of acceptance for all that is painful - breathing out - breathe out peace. Let the sense of peace expand outwards, without limit, allowing the sense of 'me' and the 'world' dissolve into the stillness of the present moment.
Stay with the breath for a while, and when you're ready, and in your own time, slowly open your eyes.
PEACE
by Sister Thanissara, Forest Sangha Newsletter
http://www.fsnewsletter.amaravati.org/html/11/accept.htm
Holding On?
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We humans can become attached to anything – material objects, people, ideas, thoughts, or actions. Americans living in a highly commercialzed society rife with “reference anxiety” (keeping up with the joneses) are especially prone to attachment. We are told from our very earliest years what we “need” in order to be liked, respected, to get ahead, to succeed, to please others and so forth. These are stories imprinted in our psyche. It takes effort and work to identify our attachments, assess them for appropriateness to the vision we have for our lives, and to divest ourselves of them.
The Buddhist concept of attachment is defined as "the desire that arises through the contact between a sense organ and its corresponding object. It is the cause of craving and thus of suffering; it binds sentient beings to the cycle of existence (samsara)"
We tend to live as if things we love are permanent—it’s more comfortable that way. But this approach to living gets us into big trouble. We fall into what the Buddhists call attachment. We want things or people to remain as they are, so as not to inconvenience us or deprive us of pleasure. But attachment leads to disappointment and frustration, even despair. For you see, in addition to the pain we experience in life—and we all experience pain—we add onto that pain, needless suffering. We suffer because we don’t understand the nature of reality: that things will and must change. The glass shouldn’t break, but it will—the glass of my young, healthy body; the glass of my satisfying job; the glass of the love relationship I thought would last forever.
W.H. Auden captures much of the way we live our lives in these few lines of poetry:
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.
We "climb the cross of the moment" when we give up our illusion that everything holds, that nothing changes; when we are willing to trust an unknown future. Unless we are able to loosen our grasp, and look to see how the circle of life is turning, we will die many times over before our death. Life will reduce us to fearful, fretful creatures who will not engage very fully in the adventure that life is.
Some monks in the Eastern tradition create beautiful sand pictures, intricate mandalas, sometimes spending months creating these pictures. Then one day the master will come, and with one swoop of his hand destroy their work. It is a lesson they must learn. The glass is broken? So what? It was never meant to last.
In the throes of attachment, we tend to control our lives as much as we can and often try to control the lives of others. We become pre-occupied, in order to stave off our anxiety. Do you ever have the feeling that you are just marking time? Just filling your hours? There are many ways of being pre-occupied—working, accumulating and caring for goods, racing from activity to activity, worrying about the future, regretting the past. All the usual addictions. Anything, rather than being present to the moment. But living this way leads to a dispirited heart, for we can never be filled. We are running, but we are running away, so we can never experience the joy we covet. We begin to long for freedom from this pattern of breathless, meaningless living, and we begin to want to break out of this pattern to something more meaningful. But how?
There is an old Sufi story about a man who was walking down the dark side of a street when he dropped his keys. He crossed the street where there was a lamppost and began looking there. When a friend asked him why he was looking there instead of where he lost his keys, he said, "I’m looking here because here there is more light."
Looking for answers where they can’t be found. Sticking to our old habits, though they have failed us over and over again. This Sufi story reminded me of a conversation I had recently. I was talking with a woman who seemed to have it all. She was attractive, successful in her career, and had a lovely family. She began telling me how busy her life is, and how busy, in fact, everyone in the family is. Looking around at her beautifully appointed home, and gesturing, she said, "We have all this—but are we happy? Are my children happy? They go to the right schools, they have the right tennis shoes—but are they happy?" The intensity of her voice rose as she spoke. She gave way to tears. "Have I got my ladder up the wrong wall?" she asked.
It is in the dimension of the ultimate that we come to understand that we have already arrived, that we can cease our constant striving. When we give up our preoccupation with being this or having that, and give ourselves to the moment, give ourselves to experiencing what is, we see that we have all we need for happiness.
There is a Buddhist story about a monk who was boasting about the prowess of his master. He said to another monk, "My master is so much greater than yours. Do you see that great river? Why he can perform miracles—he can walk across that river." And the second monk responded, "For my master, the miracle is this: when he is hungry, he eats; when he is thirsty, he drinks."
Could it be that simple? For all of us, could it really be that simple? Can we find peace within by giving up our ambition, our competing, our radical separating one from the other, and just simply live in the moment? Joy isn’t something we have to search for; it’s simply what rises up in us when we are not preoccupied. When the moment is enough.
We in the Western world divide, separate, judge, and we call ourselves discerning. We create elaborate boundaries and distinctions and call ourselves wise. But if everything that is, is connected, is in fact one, then all distinctions vanish. The constant is change, but the compensation is oneness, a sacred unity, the place where all contradictions are explained, all opposites reconciled, all suffering healed, all that we have lost, restored.
Let us not weep over the past nor fear the future, let us not be impatient with the present. All is in movement, and we can never hold and keep anything. And life is good. Our breath comes and goes, comes and goes, teaching us the nature of existence. We receive, and we let go. We are full, and we are empty, that we might again be filled. Birth and death are partners—no terms are final. May we rest in this circle of life, and as we move through our days, may thanksgiving fill our hearts.
Thanks to Marilyn Sewell - Portland, OR
The Abnormal Is Not Courage...
poem by Jack Gilbert, MonolithosThe Poles rode out from Warsaw against the German
Tanks on horses. Rode knowing, in sunlight, with sabers,
A magnitude of beauty that allows me no peace.
And yet this poem would lessen that day. Question
The bravery. Say it's not courage. Call it a passion.
Would say courage isn't that. Not at its best.
It was impossib1e, and with form. They rode in sunlight,
Were mangled. But I say courage is not the abnormal.
Not the marvelous act. Not Macbeth with fine speeches.
The worthless can manage in public, or for the moment.
It is too near the whore's heart: the bounty of impulse,
And the failure to sustain even small kindness.
Not the marvelous act, but the evident conclusion of being.
Not strangeness, but a leap forward of the same quality.
Accomplishment. The even loyalty. But fresh.
Not the Prodigal Son, nor Faustus. But Penelope.
The thing steady and clear. Then the crescendo.
The real form. The culmination. And the exceeding.
Not the surprise. The amazed understanding. The marriage,
Not the month's rapture. Not the exception. The beauty
That is of many days. Steady and clear.
It is the normal excellence, of long accomplishment.
Note on surrender in Karma Yoga by Sri Aurobindo
a
.The progressive surrender of our ignorant personal will and its merger into a greater divine or on the highest summits greatest supreme Will is the whole secret of Karma Yoga. To bring about the conditions in which alone this vast and happy identity becomes possible and to work out the lines we must follow to their end if we are to reach it, is all the deeper purpose of this discipline.
The first condition is the elimination of personal vital desire, for if desire intervenes, all harmony with the supreme Divine Will becomes impossible. Even if we receive it, we shall disfigure its working and distort its dynamic impulse. To give up all desire, all insistence upon fruit and reward and success must be renounced from our will and all vital attachment to the work itself excised from our nature; for attachment makes it our own and no longer the Godhead's.
The elimination of egoism is the second condition, not only of the rajasic and tamasic egoisms that twine around desire, but of the sattwic egoism that takes refuge in the idea of the I as the worker. The ordinary consciousness of man cannot accept this difficult renunciation or, if it accepts it, cannot achieve this tremendous change. The human mind is too ignorant, narrow and chained to its own limited movements, the human life-instincts too blind, selfish, obscure, shut up in their own earth-bound pursuits and satisfactions, the human body too clumsy and hampering a machine. There is here no freedom, no large and infinite room, no willing and happy plasticity for the greater play of the Divine in Nature. A certain half-seeing and imperfect subordination of the personal will to an ill-understood greater Will and Power, a stumbling and occasional intuition or at best a brilliant lightninglike intimation of its commands and impulsions, a confused, clouded and often grossly distorted execution of the little one seizes of a divine Mandate seems to be the uttermost that the human consciousness as it is at its best seems able to accomplish. Only by a growth into a greater superhuman and supramental consciousness whose very nature is to be attuned to the Divine can we achieve the true and supreme Karma Yoga.
This transformation is only possible after certain steps of a divine ascent have been mastered and to climb these steps is the object of the Yoga of Works as it is conceived by the Gita. The extirpation of desire, a wide and calm equality of the mind, the life soul and the spirit, annihilation of the ego, an inner quietude and expulsion or transcendence of ordinary Nature, the Nature of the three gunas and a total surrender to the Supreme are the successive steps of this preliminary change.
Only after all this has been done, can we live securely in an infinite consciousness not bound like our mental human nature. And only then can we receive the Light, know perfectly the will of the Supreme, attune all our movements to the rhythm of its Truth and execute perfectly from moment to moment its imperative commandments. Till then there is no firm achievement, but only an endeavour, seeking and aspiration, all the stress and struggle of a great and uncertain spiritual adventure. Only when these things are accomplished is there for the dynamic parts of our nature the beginning of a divine security in its acts and a transcendent peace.
(Circa 1927)
.The progressive surrender of our ignorant personal will and its merger into a greater divine or on the highest summits greatest supreme Will is the whole secret of Karma Yoga. To bring about the conditions in which alone this vast and happy identity becomes possible and to work out the lines we must follow to their end if we are to reach it, is all the deeper purpose of this discipline.
The first condition is the elimination of personal vital desire, for if desire intervenes, all harmony with the supreme Divine Will becomes impossible. Even if we receive it, we shall disfigure its working and distort its dynamic impulse. To give up all desire, all insistence upon fruit and reward and success must be renounced from our will and all vital attachment to the work itself excised from our nature; for attachment makes it our own and no longer the Godhead's.
The elimination of egoism is the second condition, not only of the rajasic and tamasic egoisms that twine around desire, but of the sattwic egoism that takes refuge in the idea of the I as the worker. The ordinary consciousness of man cannot accept this difficult renunciation or, if it accepts it, cannot achieve this tremendous change. The human mind is too ignorant, narrow and chained to its own limited movements, the human life-instincts too blind, selfish, obscure, shut up in their own earth-bound pursuits and satisfactions, the human body too clumsy and hampering a machine. There is here no freedom, no large and infinite room, no willing and happy plasticity for the greater play of the Divine in Nature. A certain half-seeing and imperfect subordination of the personal will to an ill-understood greater Will and Power, a stumbling and occasional intuition or at best a brilliant lightninglike intimation of its commands and impulsions, a confused, clouded and often grossly distorted execution of the little one seizes of a divine Mandate seems to be the uttermost that the human consciousness as it is at its best seems able to accomplish. Only by a growth into a greater superhuman and supramental consciousness whose very nature is to be attuned to the Divine can we achieve the true and supreme Karma Yoga.
This transformation is only possible after certain steps of a divine ascent have been mastered and to climb these steps is the object of the Yoga of Works as it is conceived by the Gita. The extirpation of desire, a wide and calm equality of the mind, the life soul and the spirit, annihilation of the ego, an inner quietude and expulsion or transcendence of ordinary Nature, the Nature of the three gunas and a total surrender to the Supreme are the successive steps of this preliminary change.
Only after all this has been done, can we live securely in an infinite consciousness not bound like our mental human nature. And only then can we receive the Light, know perfectly the will of the Supreme, attune all our movements to the rhythm of its Truth and execute perfectly from moment to moment its imperative commandments. Till then there is no firm achievement, but only an endeavour, seeking and aspiration, all the stress and struggle of a great and uncertain spiritual adventure. Only when these things are accomplished is there for the dynamic parts of our nature the beginning of a divine security in its acts and a transcendent peace.
(Circa 1927)
Poem: I Must Go to Hephaestus (a Sestina)
Athena Scorning the Advances of Hephaestus ca. 1555-1560
Paris Bordone (Italian-Venetian, 1500-1571)
Oil on canvas (61.78) Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia
Oil on canvas (61.78) Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Missouri-Columbia
.
.
I Must Go to Hephaestus (a Sestina)
I try to find comfort for myself
not only with words in private
but, by howling from the ashes:
a raven from dust.
Not with words in private,
but to go boldly as I tell my tale
of a raven from dust;
knowing how one can surely wish to die.
I go slowly as I tell my tale
of how she chained my heart away –
I know how one can surely wish to die.
She had all my love, and betrayed it.
She chained my heart away,
it hung to dry in my belly;
She had all my love and betrayed it –
the wailings now burst in flame.
Heart hung to dry,
I carry my head, as a quiver
full of the wailing burst to flame.
Now you have seen a flower between my ribs.
I carry my head as a quiver…
shoot down every advance…
but you have seen the flower between my ribs.
Every advance shot down
lay in a circle iron around – No more!
I will seize this chance like prey,
destroy this cycle inbred, bound.
In a circle iron round
many voices, not my own
echo the cycle inbred bound –
No more! I must go to Hephaestus.
My voice my own
reaches from mud thick molten rust
for Hephaestus, his art:
Craft of shifting shame to sterling.
I reach through thick molten rust
my tongue, flames for his fire –
to shift shame to sterling, the silence broken;
raven from dust risen.
My tongue, flame, flower
freed, from chain and iron
to raven now rising, risen
heart with no wish to die.
Freed from chain and iron
I come from Hephaestus,
with heart and lung
and no wish to die.
by Mark Hannan, from After Many Years Absent, © Studio Press 1993
About the Painting:
In this elegantly choreographed work, Bordone has created a titillating play of dominance and submission between Hephaestus (Vulcan) and Athena (Minerva). Hephaestus is the aggressor in his attempted restraint of Athena, but his gesture is also one of palpable desperation. His exposed backside and his unstable pose make him appear vulnerable, more so perhaps than the armored goddess. She looks down with apparent displeasure, drawing her arm back in an ambiguous gesture that can be interpreted as self-protective withdrawal and perhaps as preparation for a backhanded swipe.
Sing, clear voiced Muse, of Hephaistos, renowned for his inventive skill, who with grey-eyed Athene, taught to men upon earth arts of great splendor, men who in former days lived like wild beasts in mountain caves. But having learned skills from Hephaestus, famed for his work and craftsmanship, they now, free from care, peacefully live year by year in their houses. Be gracious, Hephaestus, and grant me excellence and prosperity! --Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus
Hephaestus, the master artisan, broke the silence, Out of concern for his ivory-armed mother: "This is terrible; it's going to ruin us all. If you two quarrel like this over mortals It's bound to affect us gods. There'll be no more Pleasure in our feasts if we let things turn ugly. Mother, please, I don't have to tell you, You have to be pleasant to our father Zeus So he won't be angry and ruin our feast. If the Lord of Lightning wants to blast us from our seats, He can - that's how much strong he is. So apologize to him with silken-soft words, And the Olympian in turn will be gracious to us... I know it's hard, mother, but you have to endure it. I don't want to see you getting beat up, and me Unable to help you." Iliad I: 603-21, Lombardo translation
A thorough history of Hephaestus: www.webwinds.com/ myth/hephaestus.htm
For poetry buffs, here’s a description of the Sestina form:
History:
I try to find comfort for myself
not only with words in private
but, by howling from the ashes:
a raven from dust.
Not with words in private,
but to go boldly as I tell my tale
of a raven from dust;
knowing how one can surely wish to die.
I go slowly as I tell my tale
of how she chained my heart away –
I know how one can surely wish to die.
She had all my love, and betrayed it.
She chained my heart away,
it hung to dry in my belly;
She had all my love and betrayed it –
the wailings now burst in flame.
Heart hung to dry,
I carry my head, as a quiver
full of the wailing burst to flame.
Now you have seen a flower between my ribs.
I carry my head as a quiver…
shoot down every advance…
but you have seen the flower between my ribs.
Every advance shot down
lay in a circle iron around – No more!
I will seize this chance like prey,
destroy this cycle inbred, bound.
In a circle iron round
many voices, not my own
echo the cycle inbred bound –
No more! I must go to Hephaestus.
My voice my own
reaches from mud thick molten rust
for Hephaestus, his art:
Craft of shifting shame to sterling.
I reach through thick molten rust
my tongue, flames for his fire –
to shift shame to sterling, the silence broken;
raven from dust risen.
My tongue, flame, flower
freed, from chain and iron
to raven now rising, risen
heart with no wish to die.
Freed from chain and iron
I come from Hephaestus,
with heart and lung
and no wish to die.
by Mark Hannan, from After Many Years Absent, © Studio Press 1993
About the Painting:
In this elegantly choreographed work, Bordone has created a titillating play of dominance and submission between Hephaestus (Vulcan) and Athena (Minerva). Hephaestus is the aggressor in his attempted restraint of Athena, but his gesture is also one of palpable desperation. His exposed backside and his unstable pose make him appear vulnerable, more so perhaps than the armored goddess. She looks down with apparent displeasure, drawing her arm back in an ambiguous gesture that can be interpreted as self-protective withdrawal and perhaps as preparation for a backhanded swipe.
Sing, clear voiced Muse, of Hephaistos, renowned for his inventive skill, who with grey-eyed Athene, taught to men upon earth arts of great splendor, men who in former days lived like wild beasts in mountain caves. But having learned skills from Hephaestus, famed for his work and craftsmanship, they now, free from care, peacefully live year by year in their houses. Be gracious, Hephaestus, and grant me excellence and prosperity! --Homeric Hymn to Hephaestus
Hephaestus, the master artisan, broke the silence, Out of concern for his ivory-armed mother: "This is terrible; it's going to ruin us all. If you two quarrel like this over mortals It's bound to affect us gods. There'll be no more Pleasure in our feasts if we let things turn ugly. Mother, please, I don't have to tell you, You have to be pleasant to our father Zeus So he won't be angry and ruin our feast. If the Lord of Lightning wants to blast us from our seats, He can - that's how much strong he is. So apologize to him with silken-soft words, And the Olympian in turn will be gracious to us... I know it's hard, mother, but you have to endure it. I don't want to see you getting beat up, and me Unable to help you." Iliad I: 603-21, Lombardo translation
A thorough history of Hephaestus: www.webwinds.com/ myth/hephaestus.htm
For poetry buffs, here’s a description of the Sestina form:
History:
The name Sestina is derived from the Italian sesto (sixth).
Historically, the Sestina is a French form. It appeared in France in the twelfth century, initially in the work of Arnaut Daniel. He was one of the troubadours or court poets and singers in the service of French nobles.
Troubadours were lyric poets. They began in Provence in the eleventh century. For the next two centuries, they flourished in South France, East Spain, and North Italy, creating many songs of romantic flirtation and desire. Their name is from the French trobar, to "invent or make verse".
The Sestina was one of several forms in the complex, elaborate, and difficult closed style called trobar clus (as opposed to the easier more open trobar leu).
Form:
Form:
In a traditional Sestina:
The lines are grouped into six sestets and a concluding tercet. Thus a Sestina has 39 lines.
Lines may be of any length. Their length is usually consistent in a single poem.
The six words that end each of the lines of the first stanza are repeated in a different order at the end of lines in each of the subsequent five stanzas. The particular pattern is given below. (This kind of recurrent pattern is "lexical repetition".)
The repeated words are unrhymed.
The first line of each sestet after the first ends with the same word as the one that ended the last line of the sestet before it.
In the closing tercet, each of the six words are used, with one in the middle of each line and one at the end.
The pattern of word-repetition is as follows, where the words that end the lines of the first sestet are represented by the numbers "1 2 3 4 5 6":
1 2 3 4 5 6 - End words of lines in first sestet.
6 1 5 2 4 3 - End words of lines in second sestet.
3 6 4 1 2 5 - End words of lines in third sestet.
5 3 2 6 1 4 - End words of lines in fourth sestet.
4 5 1 3 6 2 - End words of lines in fifth sestet.
2 4 6 5 3 1 - End words of lines in sixth sestet.
(6 2) (1 4) (5 3) - Middle and end words of lines in tercet.
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