Friends of Amida - Spiritual Networking -
Searching for Spiritual Roots, Trying to Balance Different Practices, and Asking for Help
I'm wondering lately if in order for me to move forward spiritually I need to find one path to root myself in, or if it's better to actually give up on trying to find one path or set of ideas and practices that I can believe in completely. The truth is, I've found truth and beauty in a variety of traditions, from Tibetan Buddhist to Congregationalist Christian to Pure Land Buddhism to Theravadan Buddhist to Thich Nhat Hanh's Zen Buddhism to Toni Packer's non-sectarian Zen-influenced practice. I can honestly say that in each of these systems I've tasted something true and so deeply helpful that I can't imagine giving it up. And I can say that in all of them I have found areas of experience that seemed to be either overlooked or less focused upon, areas that I didn't feel I could imagine giving up on in my daily life. I feel able neither to give up on praying to God, on nembutsu, on choiceless awareness, on Thich Nhat Hanh's gathas, on tonglen meditation practice, on the beautiful depictions of the bardo presented in the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, in the beautiful presentation of human limits and the compassion that naturally holds us as depicted by Shinran, Saichi and Dharmavidya, on the value of not-knowing and discovering for oneself as presented in Toni Packer's writings, or on the beautiful stories of Jesus Christ experiencing the suffering of humanity in order to unite beings in compassion and express a vision of love and justice without boundaries. And no more could I give up on the Buddhist sutras, especially the Four Noble Truths, which has been as valuable a guidepost as any in living my daily life.
Most spiritual teachers recommend that at a certain point you just decide to stick with one thing and that this is necessary in order to actually get anywhere on a path. I wonder if there's another way. I wonder if it's possible to practice simply based on what works. I know that tonglen works for me. I know that body scans work. I know that the Four Noble Truths help me understand my experience. I know that nembutsu works, that prayer works, and I know that approaching the world with an attitude of not-knowing works as well. Can I hold all of these things in this spirit of not-knowing? Can I simply practice based on what brings greater compassion to my life and helps me be more available to others? Does searching for truth really help? Don't all of these practices point to aspects of the truth? What is the perspective I could engage them from that could hold all of them without engaging in a kind of contradiction?
I'm thinking of something that Dharmavidya wrote in "Who Loves Dies Well". It was to the effect that from the Pure Land perspective, one may wish to engage in meditation practices as ways of opening up or developing parts of the self, but that there's an underlying understanding that it isn't a practice of perfecting the self. There is already perfect realization as embodied by Amida (or what Amida represents, depending on your interpretation). Its not something we could gain by striving - in fact, it can only be experienced by giving up this striving. All of this matches my experience.
I think what's most confusing to me these days is how this relates to Toni Packer's approach as well as to Christian prayer (Toni Packer founded a non-sectarian meditation center called Springwater in New York state and guides people in the practice of choiceless awareness, for those who don't know of her). How can it be that when I pray for help answering a question or pray to be held in love, these prayers are almost always answered in some way? If I can pray in this way, how could I restrict myself solely to the nembutsu? And if I find that bringing non-judgmental awareness to my experience in an attitude of not knowing gives rise to spontaneous feelings of being loved and of insights into my mind, how could it be that be that I could rely solely on prayer or nembutsu to seek experience and understanding on the deepest levels, or that I could imagine this love and understanding as emerging from a certain source that I must try to connect with? How can all these paths lead to that place of feeling loved and to the arising of spontaneous insight? Do I really know what's going on when this state arises? I can't say I know whether it emerges from inside myself, from outside of myself, or from both. I tend to lean toward the outside, and yet intellectually I imagine that distinctions between inside and outside really dissolve at the deepest levels of insight.
All of this is kind of an intellectual exercise right now, isn't it? And yet I have to give voice to these struggles. Somehow this has been paralyzing me lately. To what exactly am I praying when I decide to do so? Why does it seem not to matter if I know, in terms of whether my prayers are responded to in some way? To what or whom am I saying the nembutsu when I say it? Does it matter whether I say it or just feel it? Why does it sometimes lead to an opening to light and love and sometimes doesn't? How can I both pray and say nembutsu and at the same time engage it all form the perspective of not-knowing - all aspects of my spiritual life I feel I can't give up on?
I'm not sure there's really a big contradiction here. It seems quite possible to pray sometimes and say the nembutsu others when it feels right, and to just hold the perspective that I don't know where these practices are directed toward and if there really is a God or Amida or an energy of infinite love and light or what the mind really is and yet all of these practices can work in the sense that the experience they lead me toward is one that isn't really intellectual at all. And yet the lack of intellectual consistency seems to be causing a contorting pressure in my chest, throat and head these days that I'd really like to find a way to loosen.
Am I afraid to approach these practices from the perspective of not knowing? Am I afraid that I'm missing the true path, that if I don't devote myself to one path fully and deeply that I'll miss experiencing the depth of any of them? What's so hard about giving up on any one of these practices and modes of understanding, and choosing to follow one approach alone?
As I sit here in the confusion, it occurs to me that Toni Packer's approach also constitutes a kind of prayer, as do all meditation practices, when seen in their essence. They are all ways of trying to give up on figuring things out, ways of letting go of the intellectual grasping that grips and tightens body and mind, ways of opening to something greater. Toni Packer doesn't name what this greater thing is, and yet in her approach there's still definitely this aspect of being aware and questioning until you realize you really aren't in control of your body-mind, and that there's really no need to be in control. She often writes that being present is the change, that there isn't any other kind of change one really needs grasp after.
Isn't this what prayer and nembutsu are also about? Granted, when I pray, I want a certain outcome. And yet I am giving up on trying to create this outcome in some way (and I also only pray either for love or understanding, not for particular outcomes regarding a job or something like that). When I say the nembutsu, I am also giving up on trying (although of course the times that I truly give up are rare, which probably accounts for why it often seems not "to work", because it is coming from this place of trying to effect a certain outcome). The truth is, my mind always turns everything into something it would like to control. It would like to have a certain practice it could repeat with a definitive result. It would like to know that that practice was the most reliable of all, that there's no way there could be another practice more effective. It would like to find a way to figure this problem out, of how to find that fleeting sense of being held and loved and of understanding what this life is, of how to hold onto that sense and reproduce it. In this way, it often tries to find some way of being good, of doing the right things, in the hopes of being held this way always.
But maybe there are no right things. Maybe there is only giving up. And giving up comes in many flavors. Or it can be accessed through many doors. It's all the same giving up, though. Where else is there to go but into that emptiness? The emptiness of division, of anything that I really am doing, in the sense that it's not really ever me doing these things, it's just a set of conditioned behaviors and thoughts endlessly churning, endlessly bouncing off the world.
Who cares how you get there, right? Having a path and practicing diligently doesn't necessarily do it, as far as I can tell. It's seems possible that for some this can lead to developing more ego and more fixed ideas in this process. And yet bouncing from practice to practice may not help in the long run either, because it becomes a kind of distraction. Really giving up is a terrifying thing, I'd say. Like a view of the ocean from on top of a sand dune lit by the moon at night, its vastness stretching to a dark horizon and its waves seeming to crash all around, something is both beautiful and terrifying about giving up. Like the sunset exploding into colors one instant and darkness surrounding the next, there's a sense of death permeating this giving up. How can I give up to dying? To not being able to hold onto one moment, one person, one thought, one sense of who I am, one molecule of my body? It's beautiful one instant and terrifying the next. Or it's terrifying up front, and there's some attempt to control this terror, to finally find that one thing that does last, to encapsulate the love and be able to carry it around and take it out at any moment. I think the love is lasting, but it's not lasting in the sense that I could take it out of a jar I was carrying around like the fireflies I caught as a kid (that were always dead the next morning). I think it's lasting in some other sense, though I can't pretend to say I know what that is, but I think it goes beyond how I can perceive the world, which is through the lens of time and the sense of a separate me relating to other separate things and growing and changing in some methodical way.
I just went back to read over what I've written tonight with a sense of pride, a sense that I've figured something out. It seems I can't overcome that demon. Of course the second I create a new thought system it will dissolve again as I try to make it work to effect a certain outcome. There's no thought or system to really hold onto, it seems to me, even a system espousing emptiness. And yet in the spirit of devotion there's at least the recognition of this helplesness, of bombu nature, and an asking for help.
Most spiritual teachers recommend that at a certain point you just decide to stick with one thing and that this is necessary in order to actually get anywhere on a path. I wonder if there's another way. I wonder if it's possible to practice simply based on what works. I know that tonglen works for me. I know that body scans work. I know that the Four Noble Truths help me understand my experience. I know that nembutsu works, that prayer works, and I know that approaching the world with an attitude of not-knowing works as well. Can I hold all of these things in this spirit of not-knowing? Can I simply practice based on what brings greater compassion to my life and helps me be more available to others? Does searching for truth really help? Don't all of these practices point to aspects of the truth? What is the perspective I could engage them from that could hold all of them without engaging in a kind of contradiction?
I'm thinking of something that Dharmavidya wrote in "Who Loves Dies Well". It was to the effect that from the Pure Land perspective, one may wish to engage in meditation practices as ways of opening up or developing parts of the self, but that there's an underlying understanding that it isn't a practice of perfecting the self. There is already perfect realization as embodied by Amida (or what Amida represents, depending on your interpretation). Its not something we could gain by striving - in fact, it can only be experienced by giving up this striving. All of this matches my experience.
I think what's most confusing to me these days is how this relates to Toni Packer's approach as well as to Christian prayer (Toni Packer founded a non-sectarian meditation center called Springwater in New York state and guides people in the practice of choiceless awareness, for those who don't know of her). How can it be that when I pray for help answering a question or pray to be held in love, these prayers are almost always answered in some way? If I can pray in this way, how could I restrict myself solely to the nembutsu? And if I find that bringing non-judgmental awareness to my experience in an attitude of not knowing gives rise to spontaneous feelings of being loved and of insights into my mind, how could it be that be that I could rely solely on prayer or nembutsu to seek experience and understanding on the deepest levels, or that I could imagine this love and understanding as emerging from a certain source that I must try to connect with? How can all these paths lead to that place of feeling loved and to the arising of spontaneous insight? Do I really know what's going on when this state arises? I can't say I know whether it emerges from inside myself, from outside of myself, or from both. I tend to lean toward the outside, and yet intellectually I imagine that distinctions between inside and outside really dissolve at the deepest levels of insight.
All of this is kind of an intellectual exercise right now, isn't it? And yet I have to give voice to these struggles. Somehow this has been paralyzing me lately. To what exactly am I praying when I decide to do so? Why does it seem not to matter if I know, in terms of whether my prayers are responded to in some way? To what or whom am I saying the nembutsu when I say it? Does it matter whether I say it or just feel it? Why does it sometimes lead to an opening to light and love and sometimes doesn't? How can I both pray and say nembutsu and at the same time engage it all form the perspective of not-knowing - all aspects of my spiritual life I feel I can't give up on?
I'm not sure there's really a big contradiction here. It seems quite possible to pray sometimes and say the nembutsu others when it feels right, and to just hold the perspective that I don't know where these practices are directed toward and if there really is a God or Amida or an energy of infinite love and light or what the mind really is and yet all of these practices can work in the sense that the experience they lead me toward is one that isn't really intellectual at all. And yet the lack of intellectual consistency seems to be causing a contorting pressure in my chest, throat and head these days that I'd really like to find a way to loosen.
Am I afraid to approach these practices from the perspective of not knowing? Am I afraid that I'm missing the true path, that if I don't devote myself to one path fully and deeply that I'll miss experiencing the depth of any of them? What's so hard about giving up on any one of these practices and modes of understanding, and choosing to follow one approach alone?
As I sit here in the confusion, it occurs to me that Toni Packer's approach also constitutes a kind of prayer, as do all meditation practices, when seen in their essence. They are all ways of trying to give up on figuring things out, ways of letting go of the intellectual grasping that grips and tightens body and mind, ways of opening to something greater. Toni Packer doesn't name what this greater thing is, and yet in her approach there's still definitely this aspect of being aware and questioning until you realize you really aren't in control of your body-mind, and that there's really no need to be in control. She often writes that being present is the change, that there isn't any other kind of change one really needs grasp after.
Isn't this what prayer and nembutsu are also about? Granted, when I pray, I want a certain outcome. And yet I am giving up on trying to create this outcome in some way (and I also only pray either for love or understanding, not for particular outcomes regarding a job or something like that). When I say the nembutsu, I am also giving up on trying (although of course the times that I truly give up are rare, which probably accounts for why it often seems not "to work", because it is coming from this place of trying to effect a certain outcome). The truth is, my mind always turns everything into something it would like to control. It would like to have a certain practice it could repeat with a definitive result. It would like to know that that practice was the most reliable of all, that there's no way there could be another practice more effective. It would like to find a way to figure this problem out, of how to find that fleeting sense of being held and loved and of understanding what this life is, of how to hold onto that sense and reproduce it. In this way, it often tries to find some way of being good, of doing the right things, in the hopes of being held this way always.
But maybe there are no right things. Maybe there is only giving up. And giving up comes in many flavors. Or it can be accessed through many doors. It's all the same giving up, though. Where else is there to go but into that emptiness? The emptiness of division, of anything that I really am doing, in the sense that it's not really ever me doing these things, it's just a set of conditioned behaviors and thoughts endlessly churning, endlessly bouncing off the world.
Who cares how you get there, right? Having a path and practicing diligently doesn't necessarily do it, as far as I can tell. It's seems possible that for some this can lead to developing more ego and more fixed ideas in this process. And yet bouncing from practice to practice may not help in the long run either, because it becomes a kind of distraction. Really giving up is a terrifying thing, I'd say. Like a view of the ocean from on top of a sand dune lit by the moon at night, its vastness stretching to a dark horizon and its waves seeming to crash all around, something is both beautiful and terrifying about giving up. Like the sunset exploding into colors one instant and darkness surrounding the next, there's a sense of death permeating this giving up. How can I give up to dying? To not being able to hold onto one moment, one person, one thought, one sense of who I am, one molecule of my body? It's beautiful one instant and terrifying the next. Or it's terrifying up front, and there's some attempt to control this terror, to finally find that one thing that does last, to encapsulate the love and be able to carry it around and take it out at any moment. I think the love is lasting, but it's not lasting in the sense that I could take it out of a jar I was carrying around like the fireflies I caught as a kid (that were always dead the next morning). I think it's lasting in some other sense, though I can't pretend to say I know what that is, but I think it goes beyond how I can perceive the world, which is through the lens of time and the sense of a separate me relating to other separate things and growing and changing in some methodical way.
I just went back to read over what I've written tonight with a sense of pride, a sense that I've figured something out. It seems I can't overcome that demon. Of course the second I create a new thought system it will dissolve again as I try to make it work to effect a certain outcome. There's no thought or system to really hold onto, it seems to me, even a system espousing emptiness. And yet in the spirit of devotion there's at least the recognition of this helplesness, of bombu nature, and an asking for help.
Add a Comment
-
Comment by Ben Ross on March 25, 2009 at 12:02am -
I'm just able to get back to my computer after a trip to Puerto Rico with my family (planned before the economic crisis) and am so moved to read peoples' comments here. It's almost overwhelming to feel that people were sparked by my wandering confused words to have such a powerful and nourishing discussion.
I don't know where to start with responding to what people have written, though I think it wasn't all directed at me but at everyone thinking about how to balance these practices in a world of so many faiths jostling and weaving together. I really appreciate the perspective you offer, Richard, about the promptings of the heart being most important. I think I often get caught up in my mind, needing to find a way to make all the systems of thought and faith that I am drawn to fit together into one map of reality that I can follow with some degree of certainty that it will bring me to a place of love, peace, and meaning. Sitting here now, I can feel that part of this emerges from the face that my heart is quite broken these days, and has been for quite awhile. It can be scarier to be with my heart than to pursue abstract philosophical concepts. I feel how deeply I'm frightened of being abandoned by whatever there is in the universe that offers love and acceptance, and I can feel how angry I am at this universe, and how much sadness I'm carrying from all the small hurts and disconnections that have built up over a lifetime. I'd like to find something more reliable even than the heart, I think.
I'm really struck by Dharmavidya's little poem, as well. It's so nice to be playful with all this, and the message resonates for me as well. I get a sense that Dharmavidya trusts that truths will weave together because he's connected to his heart, and able to see the heart involved in all the different practices. The heart isn't so much concerned with what Buddha one is devoting oneself too. Although at the same time there's some need for structure. I think for me this comes up in part because I want to be able to connect with others. I want to talk about my experience. I want to know that I'm sharing my devotion in a sense, and have a communion with a larger community. When I chant "Namo Amida Bu" it's so good to know how many others are doing so, how this essential longing is shared.
I appreciate you sharing your experience with surgery as well, Richard, and Susthama sharing about her friend's experience with chemotherapy. I'm moved to see how these experiences could become openings for people, ways of connecting more fully with the universe. I'm hoping to connect to my own experience of chronic illness (which is not immediately life-threatening) in such a way that I can find a deeper trust in the essential heart of the world, rather than becoming more embittered and mistrustful. I think also dealing with grief these days (my mom died suddenly of a stroke a year and a couple months ago) is also effecting my perspective. This seems to be the texture of life, though. What you love the most will leave one day. It makes me very angry at times. And yet maybe there's a way to bring this, too, to Amida, or to God, or to the universe? How does one pray with a heart full of anger?
I look forward to getting to know people better and communicating more, on this blog or elsewhere on this site!
Namo Amida Bu
-
Comment by richard meyers on March 17, 2009 at 6:31pm -
Thanks Joan,
What appeals to me the most about this practice (I say this as a relative newcomer to it) is that it is Heart based, at least this is how I see it. Having spent years striving to stay mindfully focussed and somehow without actively trying to achieve something, somehow achieve something! It is so refreshing to be able to admit quite happily that I failed thoroughly in my efforts. What counts is the heart and staying true to its promptings. Namo Amida Bu - is one means whereby we may express our love. I read a book recently in which prayer is described as being 'transtemporal', existing beyond time. The nembutsu seems the same and this is what makes it so powerful. I had been berating myself for not working harder. Many years ago I read the words of Dogen to the effect: "Life passes swifter than an arrow, do not waste time!" Shin Buddhism welcomes me back to the Buddha's teachings, a bit like the Prodigal Son story, with open arms and the knowledge that I have not been wasting time!
Namo Amida Bu
-
Comment by Joan McCann on March 17, 2009 at 10:45am -
I've just started reading this blog and really appreciate your comments on illness & spiritual practice Ben & Richard. I also have an illness (parkinsonism) and find that it is helping me to see what is most important in life. I really like your comment Richard "What really counts in life is love, making that connection and I think finding the means whereby we can express it."
Namo Amida Bu
-
Comment by richard meyers on March 16, 2009 at 9:46am
-
Beginning to feel a bit sheepish about waffling 'knowledgable'. I'm here basically because there's nothing I'm sure of. Like most other people I'm stumbling along looking for inspiration and clarity. I'm here to learn from others. I'm certainly not trying to sound like an 'expert'. Over time I've grown wary of 'opinions' especially my own!
Namo Amida Bu
-
Comment by richard meyers on March 15, 2009 at 2:25pm
-
Thanks for your comments, Susthama and Ben, I look forward to you getting back to your computor!
What does Amida bring to help us in distress through loss or illness? What is it about the 'boundless' that offers us respite? This is basically 'the' question. Do I really have an answer?
I don't, but I still try to reach an understanding even provisionally.
I think it is about what we ourselves bring to the table: prayer and nembutsu, the lighting of a candle and an incense stick. As we bow, we gain a perspective on our lives not otherwise apparent.
My feeling is that it is not a 'seperate' Buddha that liberates us. As one of the Christian saints (I forget who) said it "We are Christs arms in the world". The Compassion of the Buddhas is our instinctive response to the suffering of others. Namo Amida Bu calls that compassion to the side of all, including myself. The 'Boundless' allows us unrestricted access. Getting out of the way is the challenge, which is why bowing (for me) feels so right. I've spent a lifetime trying to figure it out. From time to time I'm able just to enjoy a walk in the woods!
-
Comment by Susthama on March 14, 2009 at 8:50pm -
Hi Richard,
your hospital scene where you and prayed reminded me of a friend of mine who is going through chemotherapy at the moment. She is held and supported by many people of different faiths and complimentary/alternative therapies. She has shown so much love and positivity to all of her friends walking their respective paths during this extremely painful and difficult time when her body is fighting against her and has embraced it all so lovingly and graciously.
Why limit and narrow oneself to just one chant, one prayer, one activity is what I've learned from her, I feel that Ben's and your own experience validates this - and for me it's still fits with the paradigm of 'other power'.
-
Comment by richard meyers on March 14, 2009 at 8:17pm
-
Dear Ben,
Love Dharmavidya's little poem!
Just to touch on what illness has brought to my spiritual life: this is how I see it. When we get sick with a life threatening condition we have no time for the superfluous or ornamental. The first thing I was told prior to my operation is that I could die during it (& there I was thinking how well it was going to make me!). This sort of thing is brilliant for focussing your mind. What counts in this situation is the Heart. For me it was about finding what is essential. I sought metaphores for what was most essentially myself, in order to relate to myself on a deep level. I did a ritual with a spiritual director I have been seeing for many years, with music and poetry to mark each decade of my life. I created a sort of labyrinthe with stations at which I stopped and read my poems and listened to the music prior to moving on to the next stage. It was about achieving sort of closure for myself and family, my wife Ruth accompanied me on this journey. My heart was being operated on so I would become more 'open-hearted'. I found animal friends in the main through dreams, such as the Wren (Troglodites troglodites - meaning cave dweller) this bird is one of our tiniest, yet it has the most incredible song, energetic and beautiful. In my imagination the wren and I were in some way intimate and I still feel this to be the case. It was also about paring down to what it meant to be a human being. I took to prayer like I hadn't for many years. I no longer felt I had to be on the side that was intellectually sophisticated and just went where my inner promptings took me. If I had one thing to say to someone facing a serious illness it would be this - don't waste time on what is not important. What really counts in life is love, making that connection and I think finding the means whereby we can express it. So poetry has been really important to me. I have no illusions about being TS Eliot, but I write regularly and my main subject is the natural world. I suppose learning to bow to woodlice has been a great teacher! Having said all this I'm still angst ridden and fear filled and ratty etc. but I think I have a deeper sense of what is valuable in life as a result of the surgeons knife!
Sorry if this is a bit garbled.
Namo Amida Bu
-
Comment by Dharmavidya on March 14, 2009 at 1:56pm -
Any Buddha you know will do!
Yet we all need some structure, too.
From the heart of 'Namo Amida Bu'
I find myself loving each of you.
Mary, Moses, Buddha, Shiv,
We're all learning how to give
Truths will all together weave
In silence we'll learn how to live.
-
Comment by Ben Ross on March 14, 2009 at 2:22am
-
I really appreciate peoples' comments and find it hard to know where to begin with responding. Diane - I think there's truth in what you're saying, that I tend to overthink things and live from my head, and that this contributes to anxiety. And yet I think my questions are still ones I feel a burning need to answer, and it seems to me the only option that's authentic to my need for some clear sense of path is to go through the confusion.
Susthama - I'm really not sure what my answer is to your question. Ultimately, I think any sense of moving forward on a spiritual path could be an obstacle, in the sense that spirituality seems to emerge from a kind of nowness that is somehow beyond time. I feel I've glimpsed this, but again I'm mostly talking from a concept of the spiritual. I think in light of this it makes me wonder what the desire I'm trying to fulfill is. I think there are a lot of needs floating around for me - needs for structure, needs to know I'm following the good and right path and that I will be loved and protected in return, needs to feel my life is grounded in something true and beautiful that is utterly reliable and beyond the daily superficiality of most of my experience. And yet I hope there's something deeper than seeking to fulfill needs. I think at core I share a basic impulse toward spirituality that I think all people feel, and that I seek to fulfill this impulse because it feels so much more real than anything else I yearn toward. And yet when I go down any one path, I think tremendous fear arises, fear of a kind of dying of my ego, fear of being rejected in some way by the universe. And at the same time any system I begin following seems to me to show only part of the truth. And I wonder if the system being followed is beside the point, because it seems truth is just what is when concepts drop away. Yet this again is more coming from thought than experience. It gets to be a maze that I run through, but where I come out is a sense that the moment of surrender is always the crucial moment for me, and in that way Other-power tends to resonate most for me. And yet I struggle somehow to accept that. Great question!
Richard - I can't tell you how relieving it is for me to read that on your bedroom shrine you have so many icons from various traditions sharing space, and that you've found a way to feel true to them all and to grow in the midst of that multiplicity. I think a fear for myself is wondering if I might need to devote myself more fully to one kind of practice ad way of seeing things in order to really get anywhere on the spiritual path. And then of course I wonder where it is I'm trying to get to. I think you hit it on the head for me though when you say that it seems to you to be ultimately about faith in where you are and trust in yourself. I think these are very hard things for me.
I want to say also that I experience chronic illness as well, chronic Lyme Disease, in particular. I'm curious to hear more about how your approach has simplified due to illness - I feel my own experience has simplified my life in terms of finding what's really important, and yet spiritually I feel quite confused these days. What you write about trusting that the universe is benign and that we will be held as and when we fall is beautiful and is something I yearn to find more of my connection to. I'd love to hear more about your experience (though I'll be out of the country this next week and I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have, so it may take me some time getting back to you if you do respond!)
Thank you so much to people for reading and writing such thoughtful responses!
Namo Amida Bu,
Ben
-
Comment by richard meyers on March 13, 2009 at 2:05pm
-
Hi Ben,
I appreciate your question and in many ways I can relate to it: Christianity as a root spirituality, Zen Buddhism with a teacher in my 20's, sat till my head hurt for years; later getting into Gestalt psycotherapy attempting to sort out a big sack of angst; later still into Creation Spirituality via Mathew Fox' Original Blessing' - a really inspirational read for 'recovering Catholics'! Later still the writings of Toni Packer and her approach of choiceless awareness - she is so spot on, giving you nothing to hang onto. Anyway a long story with much left out and I'm taken to the path of Amida - which I had been walking all along, no doubt.
I think it's about an openness to ones own truth that allows us a breadth of perspective.
There is nothing more natural than prayer and so at times I pray - in the hospital awaiting open-heart surgery I prayed to Jesus, Tara, Kuan Yin and Mary. I had monks chanting for me at Sami Ling Tibetan monastery in Scotland, an Anglical Minister offered up services for me and a Druid friend did rituals with my recovery in mind!
I suspect it's about honouring where we are - whenever and wherever we are. Faith (Trust) in whatever practice might feel appropriate. I think we all want to be safe and this is not really possible, we are totally vulnerable beings and along with this Amida's Vow rings true, essentially the Universe is a benign place. I have alway felt this and that we will be held as and when we fall. I love your beautiful apt image of fireflies in the jar but dead by morning.
My approach to things has radically simplified, largelly down to illness and recently a major dose of Samsara stretching my nervous system to the limit! I've taken to reading the Dhammapada - something I overlooked as a bit boring years ago, in favour of the hipper writings of such as Alan Watts. The sanity it contains has proved a great guide. Just to share a bit of my own ecumenism: on my bedroom shrine - I have an image of Amida, A simple Greek Icon of Christ, an old statue of Mary holding the Christ child, a beautiful rock I found on a hillside overlooking the Temple to Athena ( a total ruin, but still imbued with the Feminine) in Sounion, Greece, a line drawing of Tara done beautifully by a friend of mine and a picture of a lynx that I love. I believe at depth there is no argument between them.
I hope this helps if only in a small way.
Best Wishes,
Richard
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Kaspalita on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
You need to be a member of Friends of Amida to add comments!
Join this social network