Wednesday, November 25, 2020

November 26, 2020

 A Day of Thanksgiving:  

Zen Heart Sangha writes what we are thankful for...


T
Pixie Couch: I am grateful for sangha and sangha and sangha.

David Shaw: I am most grateful for still being on this planet and able to proceed with my stroke recovery, experiencing the dharma as it unfolds before us, and I have a safe home, a helpful wife , and ZHS support.
Thanks to this beautiful world and my place in it.  All the flora and fauna here and everywhere that populate it.I ask for patience and forbearance as I struggle with such appalling lack of neatness and even legibility as I attempt to write in pen.  

Dainuri Rott: I am grateful for the Zen teachings of Bodhidharma, translated by Red Pine.

(photo by Misha Merrill)



Sue Jensen: When I was very young, my dad told me I would always have enough. Perhaps, someone had stolen something and it was a teachable moment, but he meant something far beyond. I‘ve often fallen back on those words — and I am grateful — that I have enough strength, enough love, enough food to share — and that through this I came to understand that everything would always be alright.


Randy Komisar: I am grateful for simply being part of it all.


Rick Moss: I am grateful for science. This week, to take one shining example, making Covid vaccines in under a year from scratch. To the extent that humanity is better off today than it was a century or a millennium or a kalpa ago, it is due to this method for ascertaining reality - removing a bit of that “dust in the eyes”, our fundamental misperceptions, that Buddha talked about. Whether you temperamentally favor mind science, physical science, biological science or social science, we cannot deny that despite the existential threats we face, we are in general living the best (and longest, healthiest, most secure) lives in human history because of this cultivable potential of human nature.

Sylvia Hawley: I am grateful for this life.

Kathleen Dickey: Today I am thankful that I am alive, that I can see the beautiful autumn light, that I can hear the radio bring me news and music, that I have shelter and hot water, that I can feel the breeze and the warm elbow bumps of friends and family.


Wing Ng: Diane is grateful for my health and occasional feelings of optimism.

Patty Pecoraro: I am grateful every day for my practice… It strengthens me… It really does help me make sense out of the nonsense in my brain.

Hiromi Kurahashi: Grateful to encounter Buddha in three different ways


Mary Lou Lacina: Grateful  for Nature and all that she provides, may we remember to be respectful. For the animals, wild and domesticated, who live in the skies, on Earth and in the oceans, all who bring us love and beauty.  For the challenges, hardships and betrayals, which are my great teachers. To family and friends, present and those no longer with us, for their love, support and patience, during the highs and depths of misery.  To this Sangha, Eternally grateful.


Misha Merrill: Grateful for beauty, art, music, and all of my teachers known and unknown

(Photo by Pixie Couch)

Bill Clopton: After walking into Mt Alverno twenty plus years ago, November 1999, then sitting with and meeting you both my gratitude for our practice of the dharma, our long time friendship, and our time together is a treasure that has nurtured who I am today . Plus there at Mt Alverno is where I met Nancy. I’m so grateful for you three .

Gulia Bekker: I am grateful for my partners Gayle and Chris, my sons Nicki and Aaron, and for being alive.

Kat Haimson: I am here because of so many causes and conditions, so many people,  that have made it possible for me to be here now.  My mother used to say that we stand on the shoulders of others, and there are countless others.  How can I begin to list them?  I am deeply interconnected with all of them.  At this time I am deeply grateful for the Sangha and the teachers who have made sure to keep us together through this challenging time.

Merrill: My gratefulness is being able to be in touch with my mother in her very old age as she sits in a nursing home mostly alone

Jim Little: I am grateful to have my love with me during quarantine, to be able to breathe and to stand up for those who cannot, and for Impermanence.  For all that can be tragic about change, there is also great hope, and I am grateful to be able to see each moment.

Lidia Luna: Grateful for my lovely daughters.  

Shannon Bergman: As I sit here at 4:00 in the morning, with a husband who can't sleep because of medication side effects (hallucinations, extreme pain) and a daughter with newly diagnosed diabetes and now neuropathy due to other medication side effects for medication she takes for mental health... Right during my morning meditation, I get the text "Mom, I can't sleep and now my foot is numb along with my hands blistering."

I'm tired and exhausted from all the health issues with the people I love the most in this world and not being able to wave a magic wand and heal them, but am so very thankful they are still with me and they are of sound mind... and in the grander scheme of things, everyone is still in relatively good health.  (BTW, help is on the way for all the medication problems. It's just going to take a few days for the medication to leave their systems.)  I am also VERY thankful for my health...that I am well enough to take care of them in their time of need. I love being a wife and mom to these two spectacular individuals that truly give my life meeting.

I've accomplished so many things in this lifetime -- pretty laudable things, but the thing that I take the most pride in and the thing I am most thankful for is my family (which of course includes our two greyhounds and turtle (that we inherited with the house when we bought it that lives in our atrium). And I thank you, too, dear Sangha. Your love and support have been the bedrock that has held me together through these last three years. I truly feel like I've found my home and am enjoying building individual relationships with each of you. Thank you for welcoming me with non-judgmental open arms.


Jill Kaplan submitted this poem 
by Mary Oliver: 

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, 
there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; 
there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still 
and learning to be astonished.

The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

(Photo by Jill Kaplan)




































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Special bows for today: 
  • Please continue to offer bows in honor of:
    • Dan Pomeroy, a friend of dharma brother, Dainuri Rott, who died on 11/20/20
    • Ofelia Mendez, Lilliana Mendez-Soto's aunt who died  on 11/12/20; her relatives Jorge and his sister were able to be with her at the end
    • Phyllis Merrill, Misha's mother, who died on 10/18/20
    • Charles Kennicott Leech, Nancy's father who died on 10/9/20
  • Please offer bows of well-being for Jim Little's daughter, Meara, and her boyfriend, Cody Mauser, who have contracted COVID
  • Please continue to offer bows of well-being for:   
    • Flip Dibner, who has been diagnosed with lymphoma and is currently undergoing chemotherapy but living at home with wife, Diane Renshaw
    • David Shaw, who suffered a stroke on 9/30/20; he has been taken home by his wife for rehabilitation
    • Rev. Les Kaye, Misha’s Zen teacher, who is recovering at home undergoing chemotherapy; he is in the final month of his treatment.
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Wonderful links shared by sangha members and friends:

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