Tag: dailysuccesshabits
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Everyday ceremonials
Around the time I began writing these essays, now more than sixteen years ago, I also wrote a poem by the same title: ONE TIME, ONE MEETING Picking up the phone to call my son,I entertain the thought that every act,No matter how familiar or banal,Might be construed as unrepeatableAnd all of life as ceremonial.What…
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Hosts & guests
“Receive a guest,” advised the Zen master Soyen Shaku (1860-1919), “with the same attitude you have when alone. When alone, maintain the same attitude you have in receiving guests.” Zen masters’ pronouncements are often enigmatic, but this one is particularly baffling. For one thing, it seems to blur, if not collapse, the distinction between social…
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I am not free
There are a few things I need to fill you in on. First, I am not free from fear. I am terrified. Second, I am not free from anger. I am furious. And third, I am not free from greed. No, I am furious and terrified that I will never see a penny from Social…
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the whole of the world is blooming
There is a grapefruit tree in my front yard that isn’t the picture of a grapefruit tree, at least not anymore. It has been old and sick-looking for all of the 27 years we have been here, and perhaps for many decades before. Its shrunken trunk is pitted and scarred. The bark, mostly gone. The…
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96. Buddha Nature Is Not A Thing
Oftentimes in Zen literature, qualified teachers will make a sincere effort to provideclear direction by using words like emptiness, silence, calm, serenity , stillness,tranquility, simplicity, quiescence. The sixth ancestor additionally gave encouragement by adding that we shouldcultivate an openness of “not being moved around by anything” while also “notattaching good or bad (judgements) to our…
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95. When Doubts Arise, Simply Say Not Two
The Third Ancestor Hsin Hsin Ming’s now famous Trust In Mind is quoted in it’s entiretyelsewhere on this website. Towards the end, the ancestor states:“To come directly into harmony with reality.Just simply say when doubts arise, not two.”In this “not two” nothing is separate, nothing excluded.No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.”…
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Learning to be Intolerant
Acceptance is a big deal in Buddhist circles. We’re told that we must accept suffering, accept mistreatment, accept the opinions of others. We’re told to be like the ocean, which accepts all things and rejects nothing. Much of this thinking is rooted in a slavish dependence on the absolute. This is especially true in Zen…
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Lost Cats and Buddhist Love
As I write this one of our cats, Finn, is sprawled across my lap. He is an all-white, American short hair with blue eyes and below average intelligence. I’ve watched him carefully plan his leap onto the bookshelf only to jump headfirst into the wall. And he regularly gets lost wandering through our house; meowing…
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still here
I had already waited three months for the approval that was supposed to take 30 days. My Social Security application was in some kind of paper purgatory. It was understandable. Thousands of employees had been fired. Offices, closed. The phone system was jammed and the computer system was down. As DOGE tore deeper into the…
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here for you
For a few months I’ve been hearing this phrase—here for you—in unlikely places. The words have stayed with me like a thrum beneath the sickening roar of our civic dismantling. Someone is here for me. Someone is here for me in my forsakenness; someone stands ready to help. It started in the still, small quiet…