Monthly Archives: January 2015

Daily Life

Being Where You Are Not!

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The following is from an article in Brainpickings titled: The Spirit of Sauntering: Thoreau on the Art of Walking and the Perils of a Sedentary Lifestyle. How familiar these words below are. How good to hear Thoreau all those many years ago contemplating the simple act of going for walks and the practice of being where one is and not somewhere else.

I am alarmed when it happens that I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without getting there in spirit. In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to Society. But it sometimes happens that I cannot easily shake off the village. The thought of some work will run in my head and I am not where my body is — I am out of my senses. In my walks I would fain return to my senses. What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?

Walking by Henry David Thoreau Free for Kindle users on Amazon.co.uk.

And here a contemplation sauntering.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre, to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all; but the saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea.

Saunter, without land or a home, equally at home everywhere. Let’s saunter!

Daily Life, Teachings

Interconnected Suffering

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Upside down, inside out. Topsy-turvydom! That’s the sense of the world right now. Does a day go by when topsy-turvydom, defined as a state of extreme confusion and disorder, does not impact us. Individually and collectively. Viscerally. Recent news, and if I think back I can’t remember when this has not been the case, brings us into contact with suffering. World suffering. Mass suffering.

While suffering is personal/individual it is, simultaneously, universal. Great Grief is the response; a deep connection of sympathy, love, compassion which showers on all, equally and without discrimination. While living in the world of duality the response need not come from duality. However ones response will invariably be conditioned to a greater or lesser extent and so it is that meditation and the Buddhist Precepts inform and guide ones response.

I’m thinking of the teaching of the Net of Indra and of the Tower of Maitreya. In the Avatamsaka Sutra, the image of Indra’s net is used to describe the interconnectedness of the universe:

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering “like” stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

The merit of this post is for all those caught up, directly impacted or indirectly impacted by the happenings, past/present/future in this topsy-turvy saha world. The above link goes to a long passage from the Avatamsake Sutra, AKA The Flower Adornment Sutra.