Empathic attunement

The practice of being a good friend. 

A practice for ourselves in a friendly way and then to others. 

If one didn't get it early in life, seeds can be nurtured later. Enhances our relationship with other people. 

Religious background September 28, 2020

I think about how my experiences paved the way to the Dharma. I also can claim all of my previous religious experiences. As I have journeyed, I have come to feel that it isn't that I was this fixed thing called Christianity and now I am this other thing, Buddhist. As I have mentioned before, I felt welcomed when I heard a person say that you don't have to join anything, just start practicing. My Sangha is clearly the church I attend and serve in leadership roles. I know the language and rituals so I am able to be available to these people. My in-person Buddhist contact is very limited but very welcome. Most is self-study of reading and listening to Dharma talks.

Stop wanting. Get nothing. Zen meditation.

This is merely a manifestation of what consciousness does—it expands and contracts. Self disappears and reappears. This is Tathagata [Buddha-nature] as I understand it—appearing, disappearing, reappearing: suchness. But after the great question comes no great answer. There is just the thing “as is.”

For example, consider the koan “Where does the wind come from?” I suppose if you’re a meteorologist you can come up with all kinds of answers. But for the Zen student, an appropriate response might be: “The tall grass lies down; a crow hovers mid-air.” (At which point, a good Zen master might take the stick and beat you!) The poem begins in silence, makes a little noise, and then ends in silence because there is nothing else to say.

I agree that Zen poems do teach, but what do they teach? They teach nothing. I’ve heard people who have practiced Zen meditation for a while say that they “got nothing out of it” and stopped. The problem is, we already have too much. What more do you want? Stop wanting. Get nothing.

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Ignorant people fear silence and solitude. They are afraid of themselves. They don’t want to step back and see. See what? What’s to see? Educated people know what questions to ask. They know what it means to step back, if only to ask a question. These are the people who live an examined life. It takes discipline, effort, perseverance, and concentration to live an examined life in this mass media culture. "The Examined Life" by Seidi Ray Ronci in Tricycle magazine, March 4, 2013

I see myself in this 2nd passage written by a Buddhist monk who works as a college professor. I was so lucky to marry my wife and get the job that became my career.

Divine intervention

As I think about how I would talk about God with someone, I realized the focus is really divine intervention. One of my earliest memories is as a child in the church, I wondered  about the people that lived before Jesus. They couldn't believe in Jesus and be saved so what happened to them? 

As an adult I have grown to dislike the saying, "there but for the grace of God go I." So God lets bad things happen to other people but at least God protects me, really? Picture a stream flowing by that represents people who have cancer, God stands on the bank and occasionally pulls people out but most people float on by. So I've never understood if God is all powerful why all these things happen. I have never found the explanations satisfactory. (See post on Theodicy, (from Greek theos, “god”; dikē, “justice”), explanation of why a perfectly good, almighty, and all-knowing God permits evil.)

I realize lots of people find comfort in this but I don't think it is ever comforted me. Since becoming a inquiring student of Buddhism, I realize the Buddhist teachings do impact me in the ways that a lot of people say their Christian faith does. They help me understand the world and how I should live.