Mindfulness, concentration, and insight

Mindfulness, concentration, and insight are the energies that make up the Buddha. These three kinds of energy can transform habit energy and lead to healing and nourishment.

A few days of practicing mindful breathing and mindful walking can make a big difference. And the practice should be pleasant, should not be hard labor. When you breathe in, you bring your attention to your in-breath. “Breathing in, I know I am breathing in; breathing in, I feel alive.” In that breath is your happiness.

Thich Nhat Hanh – commentary on the Sutra of the Middle Way excerpted from Awakening of the Heart – Essential Buddhist Sutras and Commentaries 2021 

"It is so easy to accumulate teachings and principles to a point where they can become a burden. In reality, we understand most deeply those principles we put into action; these are the things that assist powerful change." Mindworks comment.

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We see reference to this categorization in several sutras and even the noble eightfold path can be broken down into these three. So what makes this triad a core Buddhist value?

Ethics, meditation and wisdom are arranged in a seemingly progressive order, but also, the practice of each supports the others. Sometimes known as the three wisdoms or three higher trainings, they collectively represent the entirety of the path to awakening.

The Three Wisdoms (Three Higher Trainings or Threefold Training) Mindworks blog

Coming to Our Senses

Coming to Our Senses (Seshin Day 3) Geoff Dawson, October 13, 2024 Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

Muddy Waters and Prostate Cancer

See Notion 

Rough unedited machine transcript

But zen practice, works quite counter intuitively to all that as you would know from your own experience just doing zazen here. So, the act of zazen is take up this position breathe and basically, do nothing. 

And then that that scrambled mind, that confused mind, that muddy mind, you can see it. It's like even through one period of meditation you get that sense of dropping out of your head into your body. It's like the sediment is just settling down into your body. And by the end of a meditation period, you usually find your mind is just clearer because that's what occurred. 

Now sometimes the muddiness in our life, sometimes it's just mild muddiness. It's just a bit sort of opaque, and not entirely clear. But sometimes there are life circumstances that are really challenging. Do you know in our lives? Do you know around? Um, people close to us dying or ourselves with a serious illness, or whatever, or breakups or whatever. And the emotions are very, very intense. Um, And, 

Even though they may be unpleasant emotions and unpleasant experiences, still the best advice from a zen perspective, even if you're in a lot of emotional pain, is somehow you become grounded when you really really, really, accept that pain in your body. Not in your head. But as a physical experience. And even it's unpleasant. 

I can ground yourself in that experience because even fear is real. Even sadness is real as an experience. You experience it here and stay with it. Something Something shoots, I had a mild mild version of that. Um, last week was something I was experiencing And, Took my own advice. 

And and as soon as I really came in, yes this could really come into the emotion here, like really experience at 100 something shifted Didn't make it go away. But um, it's like this is my experience right now. So turn up to Completely. 

To take this more out of A meditation practice point of view in into Insight. Because of the whole point of practicing things to cultivate Insight, Um, the people can Intellectualize it too much. Will glorify it too much. It is in itself is just Clarity. 

And so when when your mind is clear, And you're not caught up with thinking and Concepts all the time, then you just live your life through your senses. You just see what you see hear what you hear. It's not what you smell. And if you think I'm just making this up, this is what the Buddha said. He said this as well. I've reminded you in another talk. That a philosopher came to him and he was quite Sincere, man. He said, can you just tell me the nuts and bolts of what your practice is? And that's what the the Buddha said to me. When you see just see when you hear just here, When you walk, just walk. And so, Inside experiences. When they, when they occur. Are just a really it's like, it's a very, very Vivid, clear experience of reality that's 

And it's a really clear experience of reality where you're not separate anymore you and the reality are one thing. But it's really, really clean. 

And the other thing about it, To be clear about. That doesn't explain anything. 

Same practice doesn't explain anything because when you get into explanation, You get into thoughts and ideas, but that's not the experience of 

If you're at a cliff looking over the ocean, You just see the ocean. Just say goodbye. It's coming and going. You look up in the sky and you just see the clouds come going. You look inside yourself and you just say the thoughts, coming and going and the emotions coming and gone. And there's nothing outside of it. It doesn't need anything extra outside of 

Um, To use the same expression, there's no need to put legs on a snake. And it's like, it's just a snow. No need to add Frost to snow. 

Smells just snow. 

Um, 

The practice is about settling into the body, so the Mind clears and the inside is an extension thing. 

Um, So, you just have an uncluttered. 

Non-Conceptual. 

Um, full. 

Even experience of momentary life. 

So, as we practice, Um, keep remembering to not Hans Woods. Don't get to do something. 

12:26 PM

Completely. 

To take us more out of 

Muddy Waters by Geoff Dawson, September 17, 2024 Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

The Voice of Christ Through Zen Buddhism

Gender Norms and the Adoption of the Plow

In fact, the economic analysis of fashion often falls into a broader subfield of economics called cultural economics, which looks at the relationship between culture and economic outcomes. Since culture is notoriously difficult to define, cultural economists ended up studying everything from fashion and media to technology and institutions to social norms and values like trust and competitiveness.

For instance, one of the most surprising findings in this field came from a study which found that modern gender norms might have been influenced by the adoption of the plow. Plows are heavy and require much more strength to use than other early farming instruments like hoes and digging sticks. So, in societies that used the plow, men had a natural advantage in farmwork. This contributed to a gendered division of labor – men started disproportionately working in the fields while women worked in the home. And this division of labor in turn influenced beliefs about the appropriate roles of men and women in society.

By contrast, this didn’t happen as much in societies which didn’t adopt the plow. Men had no natural advantage in using other farming tools, so everyone there was involved in farmwork. There was no reason to think of work outside the home as “men’s work”, so gender norms regarding work developed differently too. Amazingly, economists found that these historical differences affect gender norms to this day. It turns out that societies that did not adopt the plow still have higher gender equality and higher female labor force participation!

What can we learn from millions of high school yearbook photos?

September 3, 2024, Planet Money 

By Sofia Shchukina

American Christianity and Methodists

Women dragged their whiskey-drinking husbands to brush arbor revivals, where they converted to Christianity, gave up booze and became stalwarts of the community.

Baptists and Methodists helped build Alabama, now they struggle to keep churches, members

AL.com, May. 13, 2024, Greg Garrison 

The Methodist Church has conducted camp meetings here since 1820. Camp meetings are religious revivals at which participants eat and sleep on site. Those who traveled long distances to attend the Gatherings here, usually held in later summer, spent two to three weeks in brush arbors. Wikipedia 

Beloved, Let Us Love One Another

I think that what everyone privileges to be the heart of the word of God will be the shaping force in their life of faith. If you believe that the love of God is the center of God's word, then that is a grounding for you. That will shape your theology. It will shape your relationship with God and with other individuals.

If you believe that adherence to what you think is the law, is the center and the heart of God, then that might ground and shape your relationship with God and with others. What do you hold as sacrosanct? And so for many, it was more the love of God. If we think about John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, John Wesley preached more on 1 John 4:7-8 than any other biblical text. That is, "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love."

Bishop LaTrelle Easterling, episcopal leader of the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware Conferences of the United Methodist Church.

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At the 2024 General Conference, delegates voted overwhelmingly, 692 to 51, to repeal that 52 year old ban. 

These decisions that have been made over these last few days is a testimony that we are claiming that we are a church where everyone belongs. We are a church with open hearts, open minds, and open doors. And as John Wesley said, although we cannot think alike, may we not love alike, may we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion. These last two days, is a testimony to the diversity and the beauty of that diversity.

Bishop Tracy Malone, president of the United Methodist Council of Bishops.

The splintering of the United Methodist Church

On Point, May 23, 2024,  Meghna Chakrabarti

The Five Hindrances

The Five Hindrances: Spirit Rock

Blog: Fear is part of the journey

Bring a Sense of Appreciation to the World

Bring a sense of appreciation to the world around you. When we experience discomfort, we often try to avoid it or fix it or make it go away. The skill of staying open dissolves that resistance. Now, why would we do that? When we're open, challenges and discomfort are not so overwhelming and we feel more confident in dealing with them. As always, see if you can practice this in your daily life. All you have to do is pause, observe, and notice what you're experiencing with openness. Good luck with your practice. 

It's just Experience | Practice | Healthy Minds 

Three Keys to Mindfulness: Awareness, Attitude, and Values

Mindfulness offers three keys that can help people unlock a life well lived: awareness, attitude, and values. 

There are a lot of pulls on our attention, and this can give us a sense of being fragmented. With all the demands on us, it’s easy to react by checking out and sleepwalking through life. Zoning out can be comfortable, but there are many good reasons to live with a sense of being fully awake.

Leading the life we want means waking up and paying attention.

Attention is one of your most important resources. What you focus on shapes what you think, your decisions, what you feel, and, ultimately, your reality. It's like the spotlight that illuminates certain conversations, people, successes, problems, and feelings while leaving others in the shadows.

Mindfulness: Awareness, Attitude, and Values

What does a life well lived look like? It begins here.

Willem Kuyken, Psychology Today August 6, 2024

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I was thinking today in church about how I am on the fringe of Christianity. I see my values and core beliefs as consistent with Methodism and mainline Christianity (leaning towards progressive). I find then Buddhism practice and understanding has enriched my life and clarified a lot of things. The article above mentions sleepwalking through life. I think that's what I did For most of my life until I slowly woke up. Somehow a consistent practice of yoga seems to have been instrumental in my awakening. I am not sure how I ended up at the Saturday morning sessions with Kevin, but a few years ago I wrote how it just seemed like a natural progression. 

The article above is an example of a quote I found in 2015: "If you look at the cover and table of contents of Psychology Today, one of the premier lay psychology journals in the United States, you will find many articles containing Buddhist principles used for psychotherapy."

I am one of those described in the following quote from the same article that adopted "a variety of Buddhist approaches to solving some of life’s more difficult challenges."

"The Buddhist wisdom of selflessness is the unique character of Buddhism. This subtle understanding of our ego (egolessness), and the nature of reality in general, attract many educated people throughout the world. This subtle philosophy of life embedded in an ethic of happiness draws more and more non-Buddhists to the Buddhist way of life. Most non-Buddhists continue to follow their own religion inherited from their families. Yet many adopt a variety of Buddhist approaches to solving some of life’s more difficult challenges."

Meditate on Death Daily

I was surprised today after meeting with Dr. M to feel feel the most sadness about my diagnosis of cancer. I decided to use my resources and luckily have this time to be alone with my thoughts. I knew there was a specific death meditation and so I found it and listened to Geoff Dawson: Sesshin Day 4: Death Meditations (April 19, 2024) It begins;

In traditional Buddhist teaching, it's referred to as Maranasati practice. Which is a very, very important part of Buddhist practice to meditate on death. In fact, to do it every day, every morning, every afternoon. Every day, every meditation, you know, is a reminder that everything is transcendent and passing away.

When I wrote about death recently, I didn't mention this Sesshin but did listen once lying on my back as I did today. I saw Dr. F first today who was serious but more upbeat. Dr. M said that third generation drugs were not that different. If I heard him right, he was saying that that is how one is treated when the cancer has metastisized. I think that was what shocked me. I probably needed that kick so I would take it more seriously and have now been prompted to follow Buddhist practice often if not daily.

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Well, not daily yet but I got another wake up when Dr. F ordered a test he previously said was unnecessary. He must have seen something in the mapping scan that was done today that made the other scan necessary before beginning the radiation.

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Bumping into Zen, while waiting for God 

May 2, 2015

I found this paragraph in "Following in the Footsteps of the Buddha" by Dr Barry Kerzin from One Dharma – Many Buddhist Traditions. 

"The Buddhist wisdom of selflessness is the unique character of Buddhism. This subtle understanding of our ego (egolessness), and the nature of reality in general, attract many educated people throughout the world. This subtle philosophy of life embedded in an ethic of happiness draws more and more non-Buddhists to the Buddhist way of life. Most non-Buddhists continue to follow their own religion inherited from their families. Yet many adopt a variety of Buddhist approaches to solving some of life’s more difficult challenges. The lay psychology literature, for example, is filed with Buddhist concepts and methods for training the mind and handling difficult emotions. If you look at the cover and table of contents of Psychology Today, one of the premier lay psychology journals in the United States, you will find many articles containing Buddhist principles used for psychotherapy."

Do I hate Dogs?

It often seems that people think I don't like dogs because I've never had one. Also refused to allow the dogs of my daughter and son-in-law to get in bed with me. So if we're watching the grandkids while they're gone that means I'm sleeping on a cot by myself. But I am offended when people say I hate dogs because I think the best thing for a dog is not to live with me who is not going to pay the attention that a dog should get. Somehow people who go to work and leave their dog home barking all day are considered dog lovers. Or people who don't train their dog so they really can't stand the dogs behavior and it stays out outside all the time are also considered dog lovers. But someone who gave his college roommate's dog water when they forgot, and trained it not to jump on me so I could let it spend time with me, somehow gets labeled that I don't like dogs. 

Several times in this blog I've thought about being labeled an atheist with my current understanding of the world. I haven't come out to most people, so that hasn't happened. But I do wonder if that's what people will label me. It's interesting because I think of it a lot like the dog hating label. But just like I don't think the dog thing is a binary choice between liking and not liking dogs, I see the same way about labeling someone an atheist. I suppose I could say I'm just not interested in the God a person has described (not interested in agnostic). This came up recently after an assassination attempt on the former president. “He thinks he was handed a gift from God. He can’t believe it,” the unnamed source said to the Post. That is OK for his personal experience of faith but not so great if other people see it as a sign of God's action. “When one tries to imbue God's providence or God's blessing on a certain event like this,” Amanda Tyler says, “where lives were lost and lives were forever altered, that is very problematic theology.” I am just not interested in the concept of God where God helps or blesses some people and lets others be injured or suffer. 😔

Death Preparation

This appears to be the third time I've written in this journal about my diagnosis with prostate cancer. The doctors have made it very clear that they are working to extend my life, not to get rid of the cancer. Twenty years has been mentioned and online it sounds like clearly I have five years as at the moment as I am vigorous and healthy. While it's clear to me that I may die from this cancer, it's not "freaking me out" as one close friend had boldly inquired. In February I took inspiration from Thich Nhat Hanh, The Most Wonderful Moment of Your Life, and thought about Thomas Merton's comment before his accidental death. In March I added how I had formerly feared having a heart attack but how yoga and Buddhism stilled those fears. I added how Geoff Dawson said "even life and death in itself is a rhythm" and Jane Hirshfield's image of us being like a cricket on a branch floating down the river towards the rapids. I titled that entry, Ready for this Moment. I recently had a financial plan prepared by a computer online that didn't me any more time than that. So I am clearly in the sunset portion of my life. One of my doctors said I am young for my age. So I keep checking in to see if I am really as calm as I seem to be. I don't have a bucket list except to be present to my my wife, grandkids, daughter, and family and friends. I would like to get rid of a lot of junk to go out cleanly so my wife and daughter don't have to sort through so much junk that I've accumulated. I'm also feeling a little bit freer with money. I've always been a little tight and My preparation for retirement has paid off in that the financial plan says we have plenty that will outlast us.

I was surprised and pleased to find that two years ago I blogged the Buddhism and Wholistic Health talk on May 1, 2022, by Geoff Dawson, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney. My blog entry title was Radical Sense of Acceptance. I am following the path on the HealthyMinds program app. I decided to search for change on this blog and found this perfect word for this change I am going through.

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Keep in mind that most men are around 70 when diagnosed with prostate cancer. Over, say, five years, many of these men will die from other medical problems unrelated to prostate cancer. Men with prostate cancer that is localized to the prostate or just nearby have a high long-term survival rate for their prostate cancer. Almost all will survive their prostate cancer for longer than five years -- and well beyond for many men. Prostate Cancer Survival Rates: What They Mean- WebMD 

Great Elephant Migration Across America

“We all know if we've got a dog or a cat how much personality exists, it's an uncomfortable truth to imagine that the whole of the animal kingdom has tons of personality–that (all animals are) beautiful people–because it would mean we'd have to change our behavior, but seeing animals as beautiful people, seeing mountains as deities and rivers as our veins, that it's a beautiful perspective,” Ruth Ganesh, trustee, Elephant Family USA, co-organizer of The Great Elephant Migration

It is a commonplace perspective across India that has fostered a coexistence between humans and wildlife. A perspective not shared in the West.

Great Elephant Migration Across America Begins In Newport, RI

Chadd Scott, July 5th, 2024

Are We in the Middle of a Spiritual Awakening?

It’s also important to note that spiritual beliefs have been part of American faith since the earliest days of colonization. “Colonial Americans were especially eclectic when it came to their beliefs about the supernatural,” Fuller writes. “While less than one in five belonged to a church, most subscribed to a potpourri of unchurched religious beliefs including astrology, numerology, magic and witchcraft.”

Still, I was most moved hearing from Brent Wright, an Indiana-based hospital chaplain, who also believes that we’re in some kind of transitional period. When we spoke, he said, “Those of us who are living right at the cusp of this shift are the ones bearing the burden of the cultural assumptions that came before us that we’re breaking out of, but then bearing the uncertainty of what does this mean?”

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He talked about the profound, transcendent spiritual connection he experiences through his work with patients. “I can look in their eyes and they look back and whatever our conversation is, whatever the content on the surface of the words, there’s a spiritual connection,” he said. “There’s a togetherness and aliveness that is profoundly rooted in the fact that we are both simply human beings and we’re here right now and I care.” I can’t think of a deeper, more meaningful experience than that.

Are We in the Middle of a Spiritual Awakening?

Jessica Grose, July 3, 2024

Crosby-Schøyen Codex

What the Crosby-Schøyen Codex gives us is a unique window into the social and theological world of 4th-century Christianity. It preserves a compilation of texts which all speak to the huge changes taking place in the Mediterranean world at that time.

From persecutions to the legalisation of Christianity, to the construction of the earliest monasteries, early Christianity was undergoing rapid transformations.

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Antisemitism had been growing for some time as Christianity gained more and more gentile (non-Jewish) followers, and Romans were no longer the “bad guys”.

Another scapegoat, other than Rome, needed to be found for the death of Jesus. Antisemitic ideas like Melito’s vicious accusations about Jews solved that problem for many Christian communities, as it seems to have for whoever compiled these diverse texts into a single book.

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Together, the works preserved in the the Crosby-Schøyen Codex shed light into a fascinating, dynamic period of early Christianity that indelibly marked the religion’s theology and culture.

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Crosby-Schøyen Codex: ancient Coptic manuscript reveals sermon that spurred violence against Jews

May 30, 2024

 M J C Warren, University of Sheffield

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The Crosby-Schøyen Codex was discovered alongside more than 20 other codices near Dishna, Egypt, in 1952. These manuscripts are collectively known as “the Dishna Papers” or “the Bodmer Papyri,” after the Swiss collector Martin Bodmer.

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As an expert on early Christian reading practices, I consider the Dishna Papers an invaluable witness to the formation of the Christian Bible. This ancient library shows how, before the consolidation of the Bible, early Christians read canonical and non-canonical scriptures – as well as pagan classics – side by side.

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An ancient manuscript up for sale gives a glimpse into the history of early Christianity

Ian Mills

What are the three marks of existence?

What are the three marks of existence?

Tricycle - Buddhism for Beginners

impermanence (anicca), suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha), and not-self (anatta)

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The three marks of existence: life is suffering, everything is impermanent, and everything is empty.

The Scribly Gun Sutra

by Geoff Dawson, April 19, 2024 

Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

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Here’s what the Buddhist idea of anattā teaches about letting goJournal January 23, 2023

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Journal May 2, 2015

Most non-Buddhists continue to follow their own religion inherited from their families. Yet many adopt a variety of Buddhist approaches to solving some of life’s more difficult challenges. The lay psychology literature, for example, is filed with Buddhist concepts and methods for training

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impermanence (anicca),  subject to decay 

suffering or dissatisfaction (dukkha),                                        unsatisfactoriness

not-self (anatta) no fixed identity 

Benefits,

- nature of existence, cultivate equinimity,  let go of attachments and aversions, develop insight 

Shikantaza The Scribly Gun Sutra

just with to begin by sharing with you, the practice that do, nearly all the time during session Shikantaza, just sitting just open awareness. I never did it for years and years. And I did breath counting and labeling and koan practice. But Shikantaza in a sense is, if I could say that, the purest form of zen meditation that you could do because it's such a direct experience of reality, of moment-to-moment reality. And the other forms of meditation all have their benefit. And as you know, I really encourage people to start with breath counting and to do labeling and to do koan practice.

But with those other practices like with breath counting, as valuable as it is, it's a preliminary practice to focus the mind, there's a linear sense of achieving something. You've got a structure and and you're aim to keep counting the numbers and stay on focus.

The Scribly Gun Sutra

by Geoff Dawson, April 19, 2024 Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

Red pill and blue pill

Red pill and blue pill, symbols originating from the 1999 science fiction film The Matrix. The pills represent a choice between remaining in a state of blissful ignorance (blue) or accepting a painful reality (red). 

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Computer hacker Neo meets the mysterious guru Morpheus. As Morpheus describes, “You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland. And I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Neo takes the red pill and wakes up in the real world.

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The Matrix also draws on ideas from gnosticism and Buddhism about ignorance and enlightenment.

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Ironically, the red pill has been seized by alt-right groups as a metaphor for freeing oneself from so-called liberal viewpoints.

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The red pill functions similarly in the so-called “manosphere.” The manosphere generally refers to a vast network of websites and blogs frequented by online misogynist groups.

red pill and blue pill symbolism

Written by Allison Rauch, Encyclopedia Britannica 

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The second-century Christian Gnostic sect leader Valentinus would love The Matrix’s Gnosticism. Gnostics like Valentinus believed that the world we encounter every day is pain and suffering, an evil falsehood created not by God but by a lower deity of God’s creation, a figure called the Demiurge. To escape from the falseness of the material world and save your soul, you must achieve gnosis, or knowledge.

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Valentinus would no doubt recognize in the movie his own worldview: the false world of the Matrix; the godlike Demiurge personified in Agent Smith; the enlightened savior Neo, who arrives to rescue humanity.

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Nineteen centuries after Valentinus and other early mystics first began preaching, Gnosticism is thriving as the native belief system of the social-media-era internet. It’s just that we know it as “red-pilling” — because, of course, there is no religious text more foundational to the internet than The Matrix. Online, “to red pill” is to learn that you’ve been defrauded and misled, that you’ve bought into a false and diabolical lie, and that your only way out is to obtain true knowledge about the way the world works. “Remember — all I am offering is the truth, nothing more,” Morpheus tells Neo.

How The Matrix’s Red Pill Became the Internet’s Delusional Drug of Choice

By Max Read, The Vulture 

The Harder It Is To Believe In It All

I'd got used to accepting some very, very traditional points of view on Catholicism, and that was all turned upside down. There was a time after I'd been studying theology for about a year, that I was really scared that it was going to ruin my soul, and I was going to lose my faith completely. And I did struggle with my faith for a while. I found the more you know about the Christian history and the way the scriptures were put together and things, the more questions you've got, and the harder it is to believe in it all.

A former nun explains why she ran away from her 'Cloistered' life

MARCH 20, 2024 Fresh Air with Terri Gross

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In Christian theology, sin needed to be judged by a just God; there needed to be an atonement, a concept that Christians share with Jews. But the way Christians believe it played out is that Jesus—“the Lamb of God who was slain”—took on himself the sins of the world so that others may live.

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I have taken comfort during my own times of grief and pain in believing that God can empathize with my experience. It’s reassuring to believe that heartbreak and suffering, even tears, aren’t alien concepts to Jesus. This doeshat is shattered; it doesn’t reclaim what is lost. But it does make the loss more tolerable. I’m not quite sure why. Perhaps it’s a sense of feeling known, a kind of solidarity in suffering.

That, of course, doesn’t answer why an all-good and all-powerful God would allow suffering to exist rather than eradicate it. Christianity doesn’t provide an explanation; what it does is place pain into a larger narrative, one in which the crucifixion of Jesus gives way to his resurrection. Death gives way to life. Fractured lives are repaired. Restorative justice happens.

THE GREATEST CONTRIBUTION OF CHRISTIANITY

Good Friday reminds us of the ephemerality of human power.

By Peter Wehner

The Power of Prayer

My spiritual journey never ceases to amaze me. Twenty minutes before a meeting to deal with a difficult situation created by a church member, my pastor (P) calls me in tears and asks me to pray with (P). I have led prayers in church that were written or that I prepared. I have also been called on in the past by church members to pray extemporaneously at events when a pastor wasn't available. I was actually called on with little notice to pray at a wedding of a cultural situation I was unfamiliar with. I recently had a friend call me to pray for me and with me on the phone about my cancer and the health issues this person was facing. I was surprised and didn't add to the prayer.

This was most surprising though, to be called by an ordained minister to pray for and with this person on the spot, with no explanation except for what I knew of the situation. I don't remember what I prayed. I realize now I didn't give them space to pray. Before I knew it, I said Amen, and I was probably thanked before the person said goodbye and hung up. I think of the tremendous trust this person put in me to see them in such a vulnerable situation. They were also not afraid to put me on the spot and with no lengthy explanation, they just had the confidence I could do it.

I think it's a bit challenging to talk about prayer in Buddhism because the word is such a western concept and you pretty much have to be praying to something or somebody, typically God. I looked back at these blog posts and also did a fresh Google search on prayer today as I thought about what happened.

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While externally, Buddhism has the trappings and rituals of prayer, the idea is not to petition an external being for assistance in our daily lives. The Buddhas and bodhisattvas are perfect role models, who show the path from where we are now, to full enlightenment. By praying to Buddhas and bodhisattvas, we derive inspiration from them and awaken our own inner capabilities: the limitless compassion, love, and wisdom that we all have the potential for inside of us.

What Is Prayer in Buddhism?

Dr. Alexander Berzin, Matt Lindén

Keep praying: Prayer is reminding us that God is with us - Blog post

Three Main Components to Dharma

Rough unedited transcript 

When we look at the dharma as a whole, as we've talked about before, There are three main components to it. In practice. There is the cultivation of insight. Which is basically big. The not just the intellectual understanding, but the felt sense. That there's no fixed self here. And the other way of saying that is that everything is interconnected, everything is a whole, you can't just talk about separate things and separate parts. Everything is connected to everything else. So the more Quick at that clarity. You know, experience that everything is into connected. Then that naturally leads to more altruism and more empathy. Because if everything is myself, than i want to look after it others, as i would myself. So it comes from that place. And the other aspect of practice is meditation. And it's through meditation that we develop a more refined sensitivity, particularly through the body, that's clearer, more discerning. 

The Buddhist and the Ethicist. A book review talk by Geoff Dawson, March 19, 2024 Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

Ready for this Moment

I have a strange sense of peace and feel I have been preparing for this moment. I wrote in 2006 about my realization how I had feared having a heart attack but how yoga and Buddhism stilled those fears. Buddhism definitely believes one prepares by being open about the fact that everyone will die eventually. Last month Geoff Dawson, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney, said "even life and death in itself is a rhythm."

This is our situation. We are probably in peril. We’re on a branch in the middle of a river. It’s not a good place for a cricket to be, especially if there are some rapids ahead. And yet, what does the cricket do? It sings...

Jane Hirshfield - Interview with Christa Tippet

The Buddha said: “You have to make the present moment the most wonderful moment of your life.” When I first learned the initial diagnosis about a month ago, I found this teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh to be a good preface to my thoughts.

The Healthy Effects of Touch — Come From Moving the Skin

Even During Quarantine, You Need A 'Daily Dose Of Touch'

Anne Strainchamps, To The Best of Our Knowledge 

Dr. Tiffany Field, founder and director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami Medical School and a pioneer in the field of therapeutic touch

The positive effects — the healthy effects of touch — come from moving the skin. That stimulates the pressure receptors under the skin, which send messages to the brain — mainly to the vagus nerve, which has branches in virtually every part of the body — that slow the nervous system down. So you get decreases in heart rate, blood pressure and stress hormones. You get changes in the brain waves to theta activity, or relaxation waves. You also increase the natural killer cells, which ward off viral cells, bacterial cells, and cancer cells. 

Touching and moving the skin has a huge effect on the immune system.

But just think about the fact that we’re washing our hands all the time now. Assuming you’re doing it correctly, you’re moving the skin of your hands. And that helps you stay healthy not only by washing the virus off, but by stimulating your pressure receptors.

What I'm saying to single people who don't have anybody touching them is that they need to do self-touch. They need to do yoga. They need to walk around the room stimulating the pressure receptors on their feet. They can get the stimulation they need by lying on the floor and doing crunches or sit ups. All of that will contribute very similar effects to being hugged or just shaking someone else’s hand.

AS: Sounds like we should be thinking about touch the same way we think about diet and exercise?

TF: You’re right on. It’s just like that. We all need a daily dose of touch.

Even Life and Death in Itself is a Rhythm

And even life and death in itself is a rhythm. When we're actually alive in this body, there's a energy to it and doing. And then some point in the future, we die. That energy pauses for a moment and then it finds another form. I'm not saying we can become reincarnated. But the energy finds another form. The energy goes somewhere into the soil or into another life form in some way. 

And so, when we really stay intimate with that rhythm of life, that pulsing on off on off, in out in out. I don't want it to sound too spiritual or too Zenny but we we are one with the rhythm of life, one with the universe, with the essence of the universe, when we're in touch with that breathing.

Breathing - the rhythm of life

February 24, 2024 by Geoff Dawson, Ordinary Mind School of Sydney

The Order of the Books of the New Testament

"Most scholars believe that either 1 Thessalonians, Galatians, or James was the first New Testament document written, all of which speak to events chronologically later than the Gospels. This is largely due to the fact that the Gospels are not media reports or live tweets about Jesus: they are literary biographies, composed by followers of Jesus to tell the story of Jesus as the first generation of Christians got older."

The New Testament In Order

Jacob Prahlow, April 14, 2021 Conciliar Post

The Second Vatican Council stimulated arguments over “true and false tradition” (Yves Congar).

More than a decade before Vatican II the French Dominican Yves Congar wrote a book with the title True and False Reform in the Church. The work was considered controversial in its day, but has, I think, been vindicated as thoroughly orthodox.

True and False Reform

Avery Cardinal Dulles, August 2003

First Things

The Institute on Religion and Public Life, publisher of First Things, was founded in 1989 by Richard John Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor who later became a Catholic priest. The Institute’s mission is to advance a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.

Bishop Eusebius, Father of Church History

Eusebius's account is the only surviving historical record of the Church during its crucial first 300 years.

Bishop Eusebius, a learned scholar who lived most of his life in Caesarea in Palestine, broke new ground in writing the History and provided a model for all later ecclesiastical historians. In tracing the history of the Church from the time of Christ to the Great Persecution at the beginning of the fourth century, and ending with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, his aim was to show the purity and continuity of the doctrinal tradition of Christianity and its struggle against persecutors and heretics.

The History of the Church: From Christ to Constantine

Eusebius

Description from Good Reads

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Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision.

Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.

Making Christian History

Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers

by Michael Hollerich, June 2021

About this book, University of California Press

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I decided to try that approach“ [reception history”] to measure the impact of Eusebius’ book on church history, a subject that he could legitimately claim to have invented.

For too long, the Constantinian panegyrics dominated how moderns read him.

I wanted to look at how Ecclesiastical History survived and influenced later ages and religious cultures, as well as what that tells us about how Christians (and also non-Christians) understood themselves and their past. To borrow a usage from German scholar Dorothea Weltecke, a student of the universal history of Michael the Syrian, I wanted to see works of history as themselves historical events, a methodological turn in the study of ancient historiography in general.

Reflections on Making Christian History

By Michael Hollerich, May 27, 2022

The Most Wonderful Moment of Your Life

The Buddha said: “You have to make the present moment the most wonderful moment of your life.” And this is possible, because if you are able to go home to the present moment, to the here and now, and become fully alive, fully present, you can touch all the wonders of life within and around yourself.

Everything belonging to you is a wonder: your eyes, your ears, your nose, your body, your mind. But if you are not mindful, you don’t touch them deeply, you don’t know that they are wonders until you die and you begin to regret that you have not lived at all.

That is why our true home must be sought in the here and now. It can be touched in the here and now.   

Inviting the Bell

By Thich Nhat Hanh

November 21, 2021

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I'm processing being diagnosed with prostate cancer with a Gleason score of 7. I feel calm because I have been thinking about death since I got the biopsy that the doctor told me I needed. Well this brings the reality much closer, I have been thinking about it because Buddhists think about death. Everyone is going to die. Somehow we don't want to talk about that but Buddhist prepare by saying it out loud. Many people live life fuller when they have been diagnosed with a terminal illness. I'm not at that point but I feel like at the age of 71 Buddhism has been moving me in that direction.

In these past 2 weeks as I anticipated the news after my biopsy, I realized it will be much harder for my spouse and daughter than for me.

Thomas Martin died in Bangkok after giving a lecture. At the end of his talk he said "We will have question tonight. Now I am going to disappear."

My Interfaith Journey, Again

Since I have not really come out to my friends and family about my take on Christianity, I often think of what I would say when someone is with me on my deathbed and asked me if I think I'm going to heaven. The short answer is "I'm not going anywhere." Then I think, I'd prefer a long answer on how I got there like the following.

I can say Jesus dwells within my heart. He healed people, performed miracles, and ate with the outcasts. He inspires and teaches me as he journeys with me. The earliest writings about him appear to be a collection of sayings known as Q which stands for "Quelle," the German word for source. Many scholars are convinced that such a document once circulated in early Christian communities. Some Christian communities may not have seen Jesus as a Messiah but as a teacher of wisdom, a man who tried to teach others how to live. According to the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus suggests that when we come to know ourselves at the deepest level, we come to know God: "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.''

It took four centuries for the church to figure out who Jesus was and what it all meant. Statements of belief like the Nicene Creed were prepared when the church was mainly associated with the empire. Christianity has been culturally shaped everywhere. It has evolved, just like Buddhism. There has also been much progress in reinterpreting the meaning of the scriptures and who Jesus was. The laity has not evolved along with modern theology. Verses of the Bible are quoted without context or understanding of how and why that particular book was written. Pastors are caught in the middle and look after the needs of the congregants rather than trying to explain modern theology.

Some no longer call themselves Christians after studying modern theology. But most people who leave Christianity are not leaving because of the changes in their view of who Christ is. A recent study noted that many evangelicals do not view Jesus as divine. So I don't feel I've rejected Christianity but feel I've evolved. And for me it works. Even though there is a much different belief and understanding of practice behind the scenes, I feel very comfortable remaining in Christianity for the most part. Along with Marcus Borg, I try to stay at the banquet table rather than going off and becoming an individual seeker.

"Altruistic love and compassion are the heart of Buddhist practice." In the Buddhist sense, altruistic love is defined as "the wish that all beings may find happiness and the causes of happiness," and compassion as "the wish that all beings may be free from suffering and the causes of suffering." While this is written by a Tibetan Buddhist, nearly all Buddhist would agree with this summary no matter which sect they belong to. It seems like it's harder to say that about Christianity. We get caught up in interpretations of the Bible which result in huge distortions by "the other side". The current culture wars are ostensibly based on Christianity.

So Zen Buddhism informs my Christianity with understanding such as our human life is extremely precious. Being one with everything means that we cultivate altruism and compassion towards others. And I don't feel like an atheist, it just seems like worship is way over emphasized and becomes a distraction from what we really need to be doing. Like Jews who believe the name of God his sacred and should not be pronounced, I am comfortable not saying much about God but living the life that Jesus told us to go live. Instead of trying to convert people to Christianity, we interpret Luke 5:1-11 as “You will be restoring people to life and strength.” Rather than catching them in nets, we might capture them with love.