heart : song

Big Ask

I just recently learned about the illness of Rabbi, Ronnie Cahana, who married my wife and I and has suffered a devastating stroke completely paralyzing him except for his eyes. His mind is completely lucid yet his body completely unusable. For me, he is one of the touch stones of spiritual light in my life. He is the kind of person you meet and you think, wow ... with all of the useless, destructive famous people in the world, why is not this beautiful, poetic man graced to be known by all.

He has made some substantial recovery, able to breathe, eat and speak softly and has regained some movement. But I believe he will make a full recovery, because he has the spirit of miracle around him. I read he shared a teaching on prayer whereby  when we ask of G-d, we should ask for the maximum, to ask for anything less, would diminish our concept of the supreme divine.

Rabbi Cahana, said of his circumstances, shortly after its occurrence, "I live in a broken world, and there is much holy work to do." This is how all of us must live, living to bring love and healing and compassion to the world, to make it whole, to make ourselves whole. We each each need to make the big ask of G-d, for ourselves and the world each day.

Here is a photo him, in his tallit, in the hospital healing the world, with his love and poetry and his beautiful soul. Learn more about him at www.ronniecahana.com

photo by his daughter Kitra Cahana.

Virtue vs Heart

It's been a bit of a sojourn, life seems to have gotten in the way of my blog, but time and space is all relative. So why not pick up where I left off ?

Often in constructed religion with think of aspiring towards virtue. We fabricate all kinds of rules and laws to keep us in check. Rules of morality, rules about prayer or practice. In some aspect these religious laws are there to preserve our human virtue.

But I heard it said that relying on human virtue is a very frail thing. What we need to rely on is the human heart. When we truly connect with each other at the level of the heart, we see the soul of our fellow beings. When we are at the heart level, we don't need any extrenal structures to guide us and keep us from doing wrong. The heart knows intuitively what is right and wrong and is free from conflicts that laws and rules often bring us.

Trust your heart , not your virtue and all will be well.

Bhagavad Gita

Perhaps like many people, I have never taken the time (until recently) to read through the sacred verses of the Bhagavad GIta . I highly recommend this to everyone. As a buddhist who loves vedic culture and bhakti yoga, I can now say that I finally "get' the profound nature of the Gita.

Once you understand the profound insight and perspective of Krishna ... it is very helpful in understanding the methodolgy of the Buddha. Sakayamuni gave us the dharma , the way .. but I feel Krishna ,gives us the perspective of Buddhahood ..... of God-consciousness.

I highly recommend the audiobook which Deepak Chopra recorded from the Bhagavad Gita, the music and the translation is quite wonderful.

Once you begin to get a true sense of what the nature of the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna , ... you will truly say "Hare Krishna".

world peace

We all wish for world peace.

Wouldn't it be nice if everyone in the world could just get along and all different kinds of people could just understand each other. It would be very pleasant indeed, but it seems very much like a far fetched goal.

And yet, I have just come back from a variety if trips, hoping on and off airplanes all over the country, and I almost uniformly find that when I step on an airplane, it is quiet peaceful. People are usually quite friendly and respectful. In some sense there is an unsaid ethos on a plane .... that is something like "we are all in this together and showing some discipline , following the rules and being agreeable is going to help us all get to our destination."

And if you have ever been on a plane where even one person is out of line or difficult, the atmosphere can change very quickly, the peace can be very easily disturbed.

I think our lives however can often be the antithesis of the plane ride. We are often not very focused on our destination and we tend to flounder in our attitudes and roles. And when this happens we loose our sense of peace.

For the bigger journey of all humanity to find the destination of peace, we must realize that we will only arrive there if each and every one of us remains focused and determined practice peace of mind in our daily lives.

If each of us  is willing to smile and to practice cheerfulness,  patience, determination, compassion , love, warmth, and understanding  ... then in reality, world peace is really very close at hand.

trust the love.

Life is complex at times and you will find that your experiences can be difficult. And when we are tested I think we have to ask, "what should I trust ?" .

Do we resort to anger, or to destructive behavior... like revenge ? Or do we tilt towards love, and forgiveness ?

When we look at who humans have revered over millenia, it is not those who are angry and vengeful, it is those who are loving. Some cultures have been forced to put up a statue of Hitler or Stalin, but within a short period of time ....the statues get torn down.

Gurus like Buddha, Jesus, Krishna .. etc .. these statues keep popping up and they stay a long time. Love is eternal, it is true, and it is where you should  place all of your trust.

I was at Krishna Das last night for a Kirtan and it was really wonderful, a beautiful evening of devotional singing.  Here is a video of Krishna Das, doing a chant for Durga , the embodiment of the divine mother. This is the kind of love you can really trust

your are love, so live that way

You were born into this world, and then many circumstances have come your way. And you have made a lot of choices about what you would do and who you have become. And this story you have in your head, and the way you behave day to day,  is really just a made up thing. Your karma and your choices have made this collection of concepts you call "me".

We say things like, "I am an American, a certain kind of religion, a tennis player, a chocolate lover, a parent" .. the list is very long. But we are really none of these things at all. We are acting out these roles only.

If we start to toss out all of these things and go back to the most essential essence of our beings, I think we find something very simple. Each of is a loving being, each of us is a quiet awareness. This  is who you really are, and this is who we must reveal. I think was what Jesus and Buddha were telling us.

Our actions need only reveal our essential love and that essential awareness. When we live in this "moment of love", we reside in real joy, in real happiness. When our love, joy and happiness are truly alive through our actions, it finds it's way to others. You are not the roles you thought you were , but rather you become a force of love that transforms the world.

You are not the small story, you are the big story of love .. I encourage you to live and an embrace who you truly are.

freedom and love

Most often we define ourselves by what we believe, but equally, often we disassociate ourselves from what we do. We know that certain precepts are proper, like "don't harm other sentient beings". But then, we might go out for a steak dinner. We say we love someone, but then when our feelings are hurt, we behave in a less than loving way.

What we actually have to do in life, is disassociate ourselves from our beliefs and realize that our "our actions are our only true belongings".  This is a teaching from Thich Nhat Hanh, and it is so very true. We have to realize that things like truth and love exist not because we believe in them, but because we bring them into existence through action.

We must  become "truth" and we must become "love"  as opposed to being just believers in these things.

An old joke about faith goes like this.

Little Johnny is in church and the preacher says , "Johnny what is faith ? " . And Johnny says "Faith is believing in something you know ain't true".

We each need to know what is true and false and about ourselves, and we do this by honestly evaluating the actions we take. When we actually "love" and actually are "truthful" we experience real freedom.

true love

Love is the medium of goodness in our lives. If we experience something absent of love, it is very unpleasant and it is counter to the essence of our being.

When we experience and express love in varying degrees then our happiness, tends to vary accordingly. If we can get a better sense of what "true love" is , then I think, we can also find an easier pathway to true happiness.

In romantic visions of love, our true love is envisioned as a kind of  "ultimate puzzle piece" to our souls. It is this one person who can fulfill us and make us happy. But in reality true love is nothing like that at all.

True love is unconditional love. It is accepting and loving in all circumstances. True love does not say, "well if you behave, if you fulfill certain conditions .. then I will love you". True love says "in any kind of condition or circumstance I love you." A person who can express unconditional love will naturally also experience unconditional happiness.

Krishnamurti had brilliant teachings on this subject, and he said essentially (and I paraphrase here) "love with any kind of pre-conditions or requirements is in fact.... not love at all , it is just conditional flattery or vanity".

If you begin to delve into this clear notion of love I think you will find it be quite transforming. It asks you to really  look at yourself and say, "am I serious about real love, or am I just going to remain mystified by an idea of love that has conditions ?". I have found that when you start to remove all the conditions and express love truly and unconditionally, happiness flows for you and all others.

In the end these conditions we like to extract on love are false and illusory. They are based on cultural concepts, false notions or misconceptions we hold solely due to our own ignorance.

Take the time to objectively examine all of the conditions you place on love, ... and then... one by one, ... throw them away. It is only then that you will actually experience love as it truly is. An "idea of love" is not love, and thus an "idea of happiness" is not happiness.

If you just live out the reality of "true love" then you will also find that you will begin to be "truly happy".

own your happiness

A spiritual journey, in whatever modality you choose, is really a process of transforming into a truly happy being. Whether you like or not , over however many lifetimes it is going to take, you are becoming the kind of person who is going to be unaffected by circumstances and there to help out and love all
others.

But we don't want to own that happiness, we want it in the abstract, but when it comes down be being happy and peaceful every god damned day .. well who wants that ? We like to convince ourselves that it is better to suffer along, to keep it interesting with drama, needs, wants, pleasure, judgments ... all the stuff we know we are already good at. But, no matter how much we try to mystify our goodness with things like self sabotage.. our essential goodness refuses to leaves us.

I like this metaphor. We like to pave over our happiness and our Buddha nature, but no matter how hard we try, a plant of some kind of happiness finds a way to sprout up . Does your happiness look like this photo ?

I think mine does sometimes. I like to cover it with guilt or the feeling of unworthiness or judgment. And when I don't like the look of my happiness I will try to just pave it over a few more times with some bad habits I have,... then I don't have to face my goodness for a while. I can use the mask of clean pavement as some kind of temporary fulfillment.

We end up with all of these cracked layers of hard stuff trying to coat the beautiful Buddha that you actually are.

It is much better to stop the paving process and just let the plants grow. If we train ourselves to refrain from our destructive ways, (like craving and being critical) then the paving people eventually give up. In music or poetry a "refrain' is a repeated lyric or group of notes that is the reference point of the piece. Our "refrain" of practice are things like meditation, non-judgment , service to others, kindness, wisdom. If we engage in this kind of "refrain" we come to just let things be, we realize that though we thought we had to control the world, we could just witness it and care for it , as it is. By doing this we learn to own our happiness and we make real friends with that Buddha inside and our spiritual journey moves along towards it's goal of real joy.

the power of affection

I think far too often we underestimate the power of affection and gentleness. We feel if we need to get things done we need to be tough and harsh. We feel the world is against us and for us to survive we must have some guts and be forceful.

But real transformation and real power is the opposite, it is gentle and it is permeated through affection for others. Here is a quote form the Dalai Lama that I love.

"In education, it is my experience that those lessons which we learn from teachers who are not just good, but who also show affection for the student, go deep into our minds. Lessons from other sorts of teachers may not. Although you may be compelled to study and may fear the teacher, the lesson may not sink in. Much depends on the affection from the teacher."

How true this is. I know I have learned much from the harshness of coming to terms with my own mistakes. But I don't think I have ever learned much from harsh people. I have only learned from people who express love and affection.

As a parent to 2 young girls, I know how important it is to balance firmness with love. I grew up around many Hindu families in Canada where the parents had such anatural sense of overriding affection. They seemd to be absent of any harshness, and this is something I have always admired greatly.

So I think if we can embrace the power of affection, as a method for mediating the world, our being can quite quickly be transformed.