Hit Him with Your Wooden Spoon

Crashed to the floor this morning. Ouch! Just cracks, not broken - much as the villagers probably think of yours truely.

Reminds me of a Tshirt I once saw that bore the message "Only This". Gosh, imagine being someone under torture as we hear about all the time in the papers. No wonder people believe in their Gods.

Do you remember Master Dogens' Shakyamuni Buddha sitting on the cooking pot? "Hit him with your wooden spoon!" he adjured the cook.

Thats all for now, got to go feed the cat.

The way to wake up.

I am now the recipient of so much kindness, instead of running myself ragged and fattening my ego with compassionate acts. Thank God for Christianity - the lower or no-er the church, the kinder the members seem. Compassion ain't an idea, it's really how it works usually. I know that I am hard work to my long suffering family but from my carers I hear it could be a lot worse.

The more heart there is the better. After all we are Shin (heart/mind or compassionate wisdom). If there are obstacles in our way (the earlier the better usually) work on them with a therapist. Speed bumps are one thing, but walls are another. I remember a Spike Milligan's cartoon-style self portrait carrying a nasty little black bag of depression.

Q: Why didn't he drop it?

A: Because he didn't know what was in it!

Mid-day thoughts

(6:30 am) Its so easy to press a dharma button. As Joanna once said "And out comes a dharma talk", but i would rather look at whats happening in my life in case it rings any bells for you. Like bereavement it is so easy to talk of letting go, but its got to be gone through. I am lucky I haven't had to drop things. I woke up one day and began discovering bit by bit how much has gone. Now its like one of those cookery programs which give aspiring chefs a bag of random ingredients and ask "well what can you make out of this?"

(12:00pm) Anyway lets talk spirituality for a while. I am a Gen X and ex RC who deeply loves the christian mystics eg. Master Ekhardt whose sermon on poverty caused him to be burnt at the stake for his pains.

I think of Buddha Nature or Big Mind/Big Heart as God, just because I was raised a christian. The churches have all the capacity to go far beyond what they teach the lay people. To be controversial for a moment, Jesus must have suffered acute remorse at the time of his great death (dai-kensho) "I have shown them the wrong path"