I shouted, The cat is outside!
She shouted back, Is that bad?
I paused….
Then I said, Well it’s not ‘good’!
Every day,
in the heat of a moment,
making an effort
to verbally navigate
duality.
While catching a cat.
The cat’s a character, she comes to the call of kibble shaken in a can.
Later, needing to illustrate a point I was making about dualistic thinking, I asked her if she heard what I’d said. No sorry, I’m hard of hearing! Then I forgot to repeat it!
Oh well, never to mind.
Dave, who died recently, was taken to the Emergency Department having collapsed in a supermarket. He had a cell phone on his person and, as good fortune would have it, his lunch date phoned to see why he was late… The ER nurse answered the phone and the lunch date came running, and with her came the information needed to treat him appropriately.
Now. What about if you or I were to be taken off to the ER department in a state of major disrepair. Maybe we are unconscious. Who is our next of kin? Who can make decisions on our behalf? Does this person have any medical allergies? And…just who is this person? There are just a few major pieces of information ER nurses need to know and need to know fast. We can help them, and ourselves, by carrying the information on our person. There is the on-line ICE (In Case of Emergency) service however Ed of Impacted Nurse suggests, urges, people to make themselves a low-tech ‘ICE’ ID card.
It only takes a short time to make up these things and believe me, this low-tech ICEcard is much more likely to be of use to us. Such a small thing, it can make a big difference to the quality and appropriateness of the care you will get.
Today I’ve been preparing to be the temporary priest in charge here at the Berkeley Buddhist Priory. This is earthquake country. One needs to be prepared. So it was with some relief that I read about the 19 Commonly Held Myths about Disasters. Maybe an earthquake does not mean instant death after all. And yes, the house has been retro fitted to withstand earthquakes.
Thanks to Ed, once again, for the information.
There is a Buddhist saying: Hope for the best, Prepare for the worst and do the possible.
Anticipatory fear can cause one to become paralyzed into inaction however being prepared can dissolve that fear.
Here is Iain in Japan, a lay minister within our Order, reflecting on age and what that might mean in practice.
…time really does fly like an arrow. there’s many things I’ve done already and don’t need to do again and also if I’m making a long term plan to do something now perhaps there should be a very good reason to commit that time because even taking an optimistic view it isn’t an infinite commodity is it? There’s the difference. I’m still ‘me’ and yet out of the corner of my eye I can see that in addition to that long list of those one-time ‘to do’ items I can now already cross off the list as impracticable – the Mt. Everest thing, becoming Prime Minister etc. – I ought to be bearing in mind more that the tank is no longer full of petrol. It is somewhere between half full and ‘E’ for empty and who knows just exactly what that gauge is actually reading?
From Little House in the Paddy.
The section of the Shushogi referenced here goes thus:
Time flies quicker than an arrow
And life passes with greater transience than dew.
However skillful you may be,
How can you ever recall a single day of the past?
‘Putting the Teachings into Practice and Showing Gratitude’, Zen Master Dogen
Thanks Iain for your reflections on the event of your turning sixty one.
Anna, who is a Jade reader and long time practitioner within our Order, wrote me an email which I am sharing here, with her permission. The reason I’m doing so is because it offers a window on a reader’s world. Through this window we find one who overcomes multiple great difficulties with dignity and within them finds the time to express gratitude as well. Thus, as far as I am concerned, she offers spiritual encouragement. Thank you, with bows.
Reverend Master Mugo,
For days…weeks probably…I’ve had a list of topics from your more recent blog entries by my computer, entries that somehow live in my memory for a variety of reasons. Then this morning, when I read your blog’s history I realized that I wanted to thank you for taking the leap whenever you initially began this project. I always appreciate people in the culture, and in this case, monks in our Order, who are willing to walk outside the box and take us to the Dharma in a less obvious way. So, thank you for your innovations and openness and I applaud their growth and your wisdom in guiding readers through new Dharma Gates. There are so many ways in, aren’t there.
About this list next to my computer. When I first saw the green handicap parking sign and Towing Enforced I laughed aloud. For anybody who used to walk and has now periodic experiences in a wheelchair, you may not realize how relevant Towing Enforced is. I suddenly found in that sign a description for what happens on my ride from the Buddha Hall up to what a certain Reverend calls my horse barn when some brave soul–did you push me when you were here, I forget–has kindly given me a ride. I’m heavy in the chair, so nobody dawdles, but rather gains momentum and we move at quite a speed. No stopping to exchange the time of day with a pedestrian, no social exchanges, just enforced towing in reverse. And suddenly it’s all over. It’s like a major experience in impermanence–and I realize how much I enjoy walking slowly and taking in all the crinkles in the wood siding and the views out one or two windows– when I am strong enough to walk. The object of my appreciation must change quickly, and I get more and more practice in that marvelous teaching…detachment. Always letting go, always letting go.
I remember the question from students about increasing their vocabularies…how???? Read, I always answered them, read. That’s the only real way to let words learn to live inside of you. I wish I had thought of the inhaling/exhaling image. Really fine.
Somewhere in some blog about who knows what now, you ended with one of your pithy last lines…*”let go of loneliness.” Well, I still haven’t and create suffering for myself because of it and the line went like a knife straight through. There’s a blog “format” that you employ sometimes, and I admit it’s one of my favorites: some daily life story, perhaps pithy, perhaps simple [remember your vacuum cleaner duty at Throssel?], but it ends with a one liner of teaching that zaps the heart. You’re really good at that and I am always grateful for it. Like the fine Dharma talks from some weighty piece of scripture that illustrate what’s so true about the Dharma…it certainly understands the human heart.
Your recent discussion about trains and the points about excitement…I appreciate a teacher who doesn’t tell me never to get excited, although I will bow to the idea, but I like being lassoed with the responsibility to walk the middle path. In that piece I saw, or “felt” in a visceral way, the loss of true excitement when it lacks limits. Experiencing the joy is one thing…then letting it go and going on, always going on. I don’t have your text in front of me, but somehow it balanced excess while allowing some true pleasure. Ways and ways…you said….
I am so happy you went to Washington and I hope at some point you will indeed have some time in Ryokan’s hut. I found Reverend Eido’s talks renewing for me in a couple of ways. I was too ill to go to the retreat, so I missed the hands-on parts, and the parts one only really “gets” if one is present. But (a monk) recorded the Dharma talks and when I got my copy I sat in front of my computer here in my town hermitage and listened to one talk an evening. I realized that given the state of my body now, I got more out of the talks by listening to the mp3 than I would have if I’d had all the chemistry of adrenalin –both mine and other people’s–to deal with if I’d been strong enough to be present. Her greatest gift to me was to open my heart again to what is innately true for my path: art, music, language do not take one away from the Great Silence of Spirit at all, but they can be Dharma gates and reflections of our Buddha hearts. I have heard some denials of that–perhaps I misunderstood–and I was so grateful to have what is true for me affirmed.
Sheds and stone walls…they are etched inside this damaged head of mine and I go to them sometimes for solace. No special ones, just visions of photographs that offer me quiet. Thank you for it all.Travel safely and I hope I will see you in September, or at some point. Care for your heart, gently.
Bowing, Anna
Thank you Anna for the feedback and for giving me the opportunity to try out the Search feature on the blog. I was thus able to briskly find the articles you mention and then link to them.
This is the actual quote from the article Lonely Moon.
*Perhaps it is good to remember not to abandon ourselves to loneliness.
The Peace of Wild things
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come to the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
The following is part of a comment left on a previous posting titled Animals and End of Life Issues.
The situation of Peter Cat reminds me that, just as for humans, it’s helpful to have written Last Wishes for one’s animals in case they die while under the care of another person. Continued…
Be it forethought of grief or afterthoughts of grief, rest in the grace of the world. In wild places.
Many thanks to Nic for another great poem.