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Saturday, September 17, 2011

Bodhisattvas in the Trenches: A Zen Priest at the Tar Sands Action


Excerpt from Jizo Chronicles:


Leaving Washington after ten days in front of the White House, I ride the train through hills and mountains – Maryland, West Virginia? I look out on trees, rocks, river as: wide river, shallow with rocks, winding, here and there a small island;  now an old stone building, a wide field, a farm; now trees again, roads, farms. “Beautiful,” I think. There’s a bit of mist, now turned to rain streaming down the windows. Across the aisle a baby is entertained by his mother.

This is what it is about: that life should continue.

Perhaps I should say, life as we now know it. The teaching says, “Accept what is offered,” but I am not yet able to accept the end of human life, the end of trees, of rain, of deer. I am worried at the loss of insects. Suddenly I remembered that ten, twenty years ago, driving a car in the summer meant a windshield splattered with insects, frequent scrubbing and cleaning of their dead bodies – and this is no longer true; the insects are nearly gone. What else is lost, will be lost every day in this great extinction? How can I come to terms with it?...

Read the full piece here.  

1 comment:

  1. So lovely isn't it; organized religion at its best, perhaps religion form the east will be more wholesome...Buddhism...more authentic, dealing with oneself, indeed it should be shouldn't it? That would really create love, compassion and peace in the world; skinned knees that are talked about realistically, hmmm but no, the truth is so boring really, although it would give a better teaching. You honorable monk, adulteress, abandoning your own children for your desire, self righteous afraid of his own reflection but an elegant speaker at best, indeed one of the best! Too bad authenticity is missing. Perhaps who could blame him really, his so called honorable bishop, fired from two jobs for sexual mis-conduct, an adulteress affair with a female student who was unaware for two years he had a wife. Funny how we live on misconception as reality...it is the teaching of Buddha at its finest, desire, wanting to believe when in all actuality it is simply disillusion, tied up in a pretty package to look like something you seek to make you whole. Don't grasp..sit, breath find your own path, for to believe in the path of another is not only deception and perhaps the wrong reflection. But a total delusion of oneself trying to seek it in another...an unspoken truth. a simple desire that we all seek to feel like we matter. It is hilarious actually, because what we are seeking is not without but simply within where we are most fearful to look. A mirror and an exhale that is all within our own breath.........Author: just a buddha who chooses to sit, breath and reflect in their own reflection, authentically. May all beings be free.

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