Lost my faith, No! June, 30, 2019

As I sit in church, more and more I feel the rituals have little meaning to me. It is up to me to find the spiritually uplifting portions. I am confident I have not lost my faith. In fact, I feel like I've never had a more vigorous faith than I do now.

As I've mentioned before though, one does not need to join anything with Buddhism, you just start practicing. Each moment is an opportunity to be more present, to have more loving kindness, to be aware of the needs of the world.

So as I participate in the Christian church, I often think what is the best way. This is my Dharma group. these are the people that I am to be present to and hope to relieve their suffering. I don't need to go anywhere or be someone different. These people have been given to me and many of them look to me as an example of how to live so if I can help them on their path, that will be enough.

Zen Monasticism

As I think about retirement, I think I need to figuratively become a Zen Monk. Washing the dishes will be a spiritual discipline. I will consider the person I live with to be my spiritual teacher when they asked me to do something or interrupt what I'm doing.

I am serious about having a Zen attitude towards my daily life. Here is a quote from Thich Nhat Hang.

There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes and the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes...
If washing the dishes we think only of the cup of tea that awaits us thus hurrying to get the dishes out of the way as if they were a nuisance then we are not washing the dishes to wash the dishes. What's more we are not alive during the time we are washing the dishes.
In fact we are completely incapable of realizing the miracle of Life while standing at the sink if we can't wash the dishes, the chances are we won't be able to drink our tea either. While drinking the cup of tea, we will only be thinking of other things, barely aware of the cup in our hands. Thus we are sucked away into the future and we are incapable of actually living one minute of life.