Yearly Archives: 2009

Information

About Jim

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Jim Riis | Read

Nancy__Jim__Muji_1.jpg
Left to right, Muji, Nancy, Jim.

I am a happily semi-retired psychotherapist living with my wife, Nancy, on the north coast of California. We enjoy tending our garden and taking beach walks with our dog, Muji. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed traveling in Morocco, Mexico and Europe.

My work history in social services includes counseling, corrections, delinquency prevention, and community organising. A Buddhist practice has been helpful in these endeavors and has likewise helped my practice. They are inseparable.

In 1987 I took the Lay Precepts with the OBC and have since become a Lay Minister in the Order. I benefit greatly in my studies with Reverend Master Mugo.

Daily Life, Information, Teachings

Giving Expression

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Behind the scenes much has been happening. Emails back and forth. Phone calls. Words of encouragement and some cajoling too. Fingers have been typing, minds have been exercised. Hearts are opening like flowers.

Very soon there will be a tab under the banner image which will read Contributors. Click on that and you will meet people, initially two and later more, who I have asked to write for Jade.

This is an experiment, I’ve been told Jade is an experiment. An exploration would suite better.

We say that in the beginning one trains for ones own benefit, later for the benefit of others. Later training is seen to be for both self and other.

In truth, however, in the beginning, middle and end there is just training. Could that be the exploration, the lively active encounter? Endless and without edges? There is a saying: Enlightened action leaves no wake. and There is no doer who does the deed nor one who reaps the fruit. And still there is the every present matter of action, responding, giving expression.

Thank you contributors. This development is an expression of Refuge. Refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. Treasures all.

Overcome Difficulties, Teachings

Keeping Honest

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I’ve been talking to somebody recently who is caught up in a tricky situation, which is being played out rather publicly. Names and reputations, good ones, are being chewed on, dragged around and generally besmirched. Sad business. (Incidentally this is not in the world of party politics in case anybody was wondering.) There is no way anybody will come out squeaky clean. More arguments and counter arguments will only create more soap bubbles. What is the way through in this sort of situation? To defend oneself, to ignore the inevitable inner disquiet that soap opera produces? Do nothing ’till the storm blows over? Or, like the Manchester hermit in his blog today, apologise. One can at the very least apologise for ones own part in the creation of soap. Or ones part in inadvertently causing hurt to those concerned. As a meditator and one who has Precepts it’s really hard to purposefully, and consistently, create harm. Intention is the touch stone. Touching it regularly keeps one humble, and honest.

I felt a deep regret while meditating this morning so I thought I should say something. I take it as a sign of progress. It’s a funny thing, meditation. Very difficult to know if you’re doing it right. It’s very simple but also extremely difficult. The job is to try and stay with the truth, but I’m so beset by delusions and confusions that it’s often difficult to know if I’ve taken a wrong turn. The only way to really measure oneself is by an increase in loving feelings. This is a sign that my habitual self-centredness must be dissolving slightly and I can start to see things from other points of view.

It’s not something you can create or fake either. If you get on with the main work of patient observation diligently, it just seems to happen by itself that a spring of generous thoughts begins to seep through the ground. It’s very easy to be sitting there daydreaming, or circling round and round selfish or delusional ideas – and I’ve done that. The only way to know if you’re on the right path is if spontaneous kindness starts to break through. Makes you feel happy. Which in my experience makes it quite likely that crabby and irritable is just round the corner…

from An Apology – by The Manchester Hermit.

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Bear Play

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We all know bears are old softies at heart, fun loving, playful, not a fighting bone in their bodies, unless crazed with hunger of course. Reading about a polar bear playing with a husky on Hudson’s Bay Canada just confirmed what ‘we all’ know. Animals play.

And humans can do that too, given the right conditions and appropriate permissions and…food in the belly!

Thanks to Ian of Impacted Nurse for his article dog vs. polar bear.

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Old Hands New Ways

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In conjecturing what may be, men set before them the examples of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and coloured by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious; for streams that are drawn from the springhead of nature do not always run in the old channels.
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, C1X

See this article on impermanence. And also see The Manchester Hermit who pointed to this article.

Phew! And now I see this article. The Hermit is pondering hands… Good job I will not have the time today, or this week-end, to leave a comment! I’m helping to move a temple from one house to another. I’ll be using my hands, which by the way, are wonderfully connected to the rest of me! I hope I use them with this connection in mind.

More on hands, and working meditation another time.