Yearly Archives: 2021

Teachings

Unfold your Wings

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I have been doing quite a bit of thinking, deliberate thinking/worrying, which has occupied my mind due to a technical difficulty regarding notification emails being sent to subscribers when there is a new post launched into the universe. If you DO receive an email notification for this post please would you leave a comment? I’ll not publish it but I just need to know if there is anybody receiving notifications, nobody or some.

I came across this quote the other day and now I have space and time to post it. Thought is a bird of space! Well I take that to be the flow of natural thought akin to meditation, rather than deliberate ‘thinking about things’.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart
you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space,
that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings
but cannot fly.

Kahlil Gibran (January 6, 1883–April 10, 1931)

Please don’t think overly about the above quote. Step into the outdoors, if you can, unfold your wings and fly!

Teachings

From Mother to Great Mother

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The following piece was written by Naomi, a loyal reader. It speaks of growing up/going deeper. Originally left as a comment to the post Untying the Mother-Cord I felt their ponderings needed to be ‘elevated’ to a post. Published here slightly edited and reformatted, in gratitude.

Please Note: Just to make it clear, everything below is the writings from Naomi, All that is above is Mugo writing. Sorry if there has been confusion.

Really growing up,
beyond conditioning,
standing on one’s own feet.
Letting go of all worldly attachments.
The True Mother? Emptiness.

Only possible to contemplate in the ‘heart’.

We can go to all sorts of things
for safety, security, and comfort;
but what do we give ourselves to
in the sitting meditation?
When we leap beyond all fear.
To really go beyond,
untie the ‘mother cord’,
at moments this seems very scary.

Yet it must be the leap beyond all fear.

She is what is there when we leap –
vast emptiness,
Joy, peace, being.
Refuge beyond all refuges.
It’s a great challenge to grow up!

To change hands from mother to the Great Mother.

A few hours after writing the above and going back again to the text, I looked up the source blog page for that post.

The context of the text echoed a context my first reading fell into:
One of a few things that came to mind was The Osho Tarot card ‘The Dream’ where they points to the dreaming of/for a lover harps of the wanting (perhaps any wanting?) as in harping for the desire to return to the mother’s womb.

I’m turning 40 this year, so different stage mortality questions come up. At this point, culture says it’s the time when we’re coupled up. Sometimes I dream of this, sometimes not. The question, for me now, is about the return not to the small womb, but the Great Mother, the True Mother.

Mother-cord is the inherited karma and conditioning that we may cling to. Great Mother, the true holding and no holding, that goes well beyond.

May the question of what is the True Mother work on/in my heart, that’s where it touches and lands.

Daily Life, Teachings, This and That

Undoing – Untying the Mother-Cord

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These Covid times can’t help but bring mortality to the fore and with that the realization that ‘somebody’ will have the task of dealing with that which remains, including ‘belongings’. I’ve done that for a number of people over the years and gladly too but I wanted items to go to places and people who could use, would like them. I knew from experience others might not have time to do that in the kind of detail I, while alive, could do. So that’s what I did, I started in on a Swedish Death Cleaning and it has brought me much happiness, and much satisfaction too.

This poem piece along with the writing it appeared with spoke to me. I hope it speaks to you. In future posts I will visit some of the discoveries I made in January, how I ‘resolved’ many items that had been with me for at least two decades which I’d not made decisions about. Left to languish.

learning to save myself, learning to live
alone through the long winter nights
means so much unknotting, unknitting
unraveling, untying the mother-cord
— so much undoing

From: Michèle Roberts’s poetry collection ‘All the selves I was‘

The following is from: a blog Rousette The title of the post is, Re-visiting poetry.
Over the intervening years, I’ve done a lot of metaphorical unknotting and unraveling, and plenty of literal unknitting and unpicking too. I’ve come to see those processes not as a failure but as an integral part of the making process. Making and unmaking are part of the same thing, and if you want to learn, to grow, to experiment, to be bold, you often have to unmake. Yes, it can be frustrating or even painful, but it’s a good thing. Unmaking and making anew almost always results in something better and stronger, and in the process, you learn. You just have to be brave, take a deep breath, and get out your seam ripper.

Finally, this has not been a process of ‘decluttering’, or preparation for death. Better described as an undoing a cutting of the mother-cord, a spiritual endeavor. Thanks to Julius for the link which inspired me to write about the process that started in January and continues on.

Information, photograph, Teachings

New Monk Joins the Community

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Yes, we have a new monk who was ordained on the February 20th. Such a total delight.

Just in case you missed it we have added a subscription feature to the blog. You will find the subscribe box on the right side of this page. When subscribed to the blog each new post will be sent into your email inbox. Your information, your email address, will not be used for any other purpose. Non at all. That’s the same for those who subscribe to Jade, see subscribe box to the left of the page you see now.

Teachings

Do the Work That Comes to You?

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Since the start of the year, I’ve not been drawn to write here although I’ve thought about it and of you readers quite a bit. I gave myself some ‘space’ to allow the possibility that my work was done in terms of writing for Jade. However apparently not!

This morning, waiting in the library for Rev. Master Leandra to arrive to give another Dharma Talk on Bodhidharma’s teaching , the series available here, I picked up a book and leafed through it.

Many poems spoke to me, the following one especially. So, here it is. There is rich teaching within it, especially around daily life meditation/living.

Better stop short than fill to the brim.
Oversharpen the blade, and the edge will soon blunt.
Amass a store of gold and jade, and no one can protect it.
Claim wealth and titles, and disaster will follow.
Retire when the work is done.
This is the way of Liberation.
Lao Tsu – Tao Te Ching

It is good to be back and to see that words and thoughts seem to be flowing OK, I’ve not lost my ‘voice’ thankfully. Reflecting now I think my talking a great deal during the New Year retreat caused me to internally press ‘reset’ regarding giving voice to my thoughts. It’s easy to get a bit carried away by the sound of one’s own voice and I want to avoid that as far as possible.