Special bows for today:
- Please offer bows for Lisa McCrossen, Dainuri Rott’s niece, who is recovering from COVID-19
- Please offer bows for Michael Tieri Ricaud, Dainuri Rott’s brother, who is suffering from MS
- Please continue to offer bows for Jeff Ghazarian and his family; Jeff was a friend of Lilliana Mendez-Soto’s nephew; he died on March 19th at the age of 34 from COVID-19
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Carmen Ibanez, Lidia Luna’s mother, who had a successful surgery yesterday for sciatica
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Rev. Les Kaye, Misha’s Zen teacher, who is recovering from surgery on March 18th for bladder cancer
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Brendan, Kate Haimson’s son, who is recovering from surgery on March 18th for a brain aneurism
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Lilith Armitage, Shannon Bergman’s daughter who is recovering from knee surgery on March 17th
- Mondays: 7-8:30pm - zazen, short service, lecture/discussion
- Tuesdays-Fridays: 5:30-6:10pm - zazen, offering of merit/bows
- Saturdays: 8:00-10:15am - zazen, short service, tea, discussion/study
Many have spoken recently about feeling torn
between wishing to honor the Buddhist values of compassion and kindness toward
all beings, and the actual expression of them when confronted by individuals with
whom we strongly disagree or whom we think are behaving in seriously harmful
ways. These feelings were arising long before
the arrival of COVID in our struggles to address the climate crisis and an
increasingly divisive political atmosphere, but the pandemic has suddenly
brought them up-front and personal. We could shake our heads about politicians
or feel sad but helpless about oil spills and endangered species, but even
though we cared deeply about those things, they were still something that could
be seen as ‘out there’. Now there is no ‘out there’--there is only ‘in here’,
here in our minds and hearts and bodies that are sheltering from a very
personal and insidious enemy that will not care about our political
affiliations or whether we assiduously recycle or compost our waste.
We are at a tipping point right now with the virus. At this time it looks like California may be following
in New York’s footsteps with massive illness, and other states may follow soon. Individuals in positions of responsibility do not seem to be making wise decisions and others seem to be deliberately sowing false information
to diminish the danger. How do we arouse
compassion and kindness in our hearts for these individuals who seem to be more
concerned about economic decline than the deaths of thousands of family and
friends? How do we not go to that place of condemnation and anger and wishing
ill upon another so that they will just ‘go away’? Hard questions indeed, but
not new ones--the Buddha was asked the same ones 2,500 years ago.
In the book, Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts, a sage is speaking to the protagonist: “The truth is that there are no good men, or bad men,’ he said. ‘It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds, and bad deeds. Men are just men—it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love, in the heart of anyone—the noblest man alive or the most wicked—has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-folds of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.”
This is
what I try to remember: that an instant of real love in the heart of anyone
contains the purpose and process and meaning of life. While we cannot and must
not condone harmful actions, our practice encourages us to arouse our compassion
for the one who is behaving in such a way in the hope that their true nature will awaken, and along with ‘every atom, every galaxy, and
every particle of matter in the universe’ let go of the three poisons of greed,
hatred, and the delusion of separateness. This is the meaning of our vow to
save all beings.
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