Buddhist teachings

Warning: mostly boring stuff. This is a journal entry that I started on Facebook and it started to get too long so I finished it here. I picked up a few documentaries at the video store the other day–one was on hiking Kilimanjaro. And the other entitled “When we left the earth” about the space program, NASA and the astronauts. Found both very enjoyable and no problem to ease into watching after leaving the gym today. The last 10 minutes on the treadmill required mental discipline to get through but even though it’s Friday, I didn’t accept any excuse from the weak mind that kept offering excuses to quit prematurely.

They were giving away free T-shirts so picked up a few for myself, daughter and granddaughter; so soft and a nice little treat.

The last of the pottery Xmas gifts are being fired and tomorrow I will finish one of the last ones. Hope to go the movies later to see Hunger Games with some of the family and aside from that, just waiting for news about an upcoming move to my own apartment.

This little place which is like a little house of it’s own has a front and back porch for my plants and steps up with a railing–not many; maybe 6 or 7. The whole apartment area which is more like small little houses is really surrounded by woods and a creek is nearby or so I’m told—its a gem to find a place surrounded by woods here in the city. Another bonus is that it’s not far from family and even closer to the gym than where I reside now.

Yeah, so I’ve been renting a few movies which help to keep my mind away from wanting to attach … well, you know this saying, right? My Dad used it all the time, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched”, he’d say to me. Evidently, Dad (rest is soul) noticed the tendency toward disappointment in me at an early age. It’s taken all these many years to finally integrate that message of non-attachment.

The other day I was listening to a Buddhist teacher who said when you begin the path of awareness and mindfulness that you sometimes do a lot of karmic clearing all at once. This brought a moment of consolation for the difficulties that I’ve experienced integrating here from my hermit lifestyle in the woods. The Winter Solstice before even considering a move (or having the foggiest hint that I’d be doing so) I remember standing up on the mountain ridge behind my house hanging i-Ching and Buddha coins on a sweet little naturally growing live white pine tree which I assigned as my personal yule tree. I clearly recall that I asked for more knowledge about Buddhism and “to become more Buddha-like”. Yep, that could have done it! LOL I’m not kidding –really, I’m not. I was quiet serious about expanding knowledge about Buddhism at the time. And actually, not long after that (there being no sanghas in those old mountains, I learned about Vajra TV which I considered to be a miracle!)

And now that I’ve left the mountains, I will be happy to be once again in my own little nest. (I’m sharing an apartment with my sister and niece–add that one to the challenges faced since moving here.) Anyway, when the move happens (and it will eventually!), I plan to eat better, cook healthier food.

simple life — Mentors Channel posted this on Facebook today; I relate

You know… I look back over my life for the past… well, since the summer of 2012 (and we’re soon to be in 2015 in a few weeks) and realize even more so now how this “heap-load of intense karmic clearing” could really be a viable or possible truth.

I hope not to have incurred further or additional karma these past few years, but if intention is part of the cause/effect karmic equation for the future, this may ease any future karmic consequence.

One can only hope for the best on a karmic level and to offset that to perform good deeds, so tonglen meditations, and as they say accrue merit to create good karma to balance.

Anyway, I can correlate so many Buddhist teachings with my experiences over the past 2+ years and while I may have struggled a good deal with reality/life, many realizations have occurred. And this is one more thing to be grateful for.

My daughters have their apartments all decorated for the holidays now. I hope for them that they experience that time goes slowly so that they can enjoy their Christmas trees and bright things each day.

In contrast, and as for me as I’ve grow older, it seems that holidays come and go so fast that it’s hardly worth the effort to drag the decorating stuff out before you have to put it back again. I gave my holiday decorations to my girls for that and various reasons.

I know that I will be releasing even more items/things/stuff, giving more away since the new apartment will be even smaller than the old one that I had here.

Anyway, speaking of releasing, somehow I lost a few pounds recently and this time I hope to keep that going! I think I owe a thank you to the treadmill. 🙂 I am so grateful to be able to go to the gym. I want to get back into swimming soon too–all these big plans. LOL

Letting things go… materially, emotionally and mentally! And as Shakespeare wrote, “All’s well that ends well” and yet it is still debated if that play was a comedy or tragedy. Perhaps, like all of our lives, both.

PS– oh, and that apartment house I mentioned… it’s an 11 (numerology). But then there I go again; you’re right about those chickens Dad. Yeah, I’m psychic and my intuition tells me things but it’s still better to take Dad’s advice.

Better put in another video. 🙂

Form is nothing but emptiness

Emptiness is nothing but form

Word from the Heart Sutra which holds my life together.

Here I go again–using this blog to sort out my personal life. Therapy for an “off” day here and there I suppose. Maybe that’s it. Write it out and it is released. Not energized further. No. Released, that’s all–sorted out and seen for the silliness that it is, the illusion that it is. Maybe this post could be called something like ‘The Life of a Psychic’ or some such.

BLOG INTENTION, ASPIRATION: Yeah, but in the spirit of Tonglen, knowing others out there feel this way from time to time or there are those who know this feeling right now just as I do. Hello to you and may this feeling for us all and package it up and see us all being free of it, having compassion for you and for all those who feel a bit disoriented or perhaps are also in the midst of a move… whatever it is you are experiencing may we know that we are not alone… there are always many others who also go through this and may we all be relieved of this suffering or uncomfortable feelings such as they are… and may we all come to contentment and peace and may I be part of that process through my love and compassion for us all as we move through uncertain times. May this blog in some way be helpful to you.

Here it is, this feeling I’m sorting out or trying to heal. And the internal feeling comes from attachment to STUFF, yeah, form appearances–things. Actual material things. I told you this is silliness being sorted out here! I already feel better really looking at this using some logic and intellect to soothe the …. well, the what?

Beyond what words can show, it is. How about a picture to describe it? A bit like the scarecrow from the story ‘The Wizard of OZ’. That scene where parts of him were over here and over there and some he didn’t know where!

No, I’m not falling apart but rather I am realizing this whole Buddhist thing about the non-self and yeah, attachment too. How can part of me be in a storage unit (we took a lot of boxes and things, forms) and loaded them in the vehicles and unloaded them into a storage unit. As I tried to fall asleep last night I kept flashing on the dark rainy rows of storage structures and the number on my own with the lock and my things inside. Yeah, it felt like parts of me were there, haunting my ‘things’ in some way.

Another part of me was hanging around my sister’s apartment, haven spend some hours at her place over the weekend helping her clean and pack. Yet still, another aspect of consciousness was hanging around the new apartment that we’re going to that is getting updated appliances, new carpet, paint and so forth–do I really belong there? Where is my place when I also see flashes of the last few things leaving this apartment unit. I’m all over the place! Like I said, silliness in the life of a psychic.

I’m feeling a wee little bit like crying (its mild), but have no real down-home authentic reason but for the fact that I’m feeling homeless and even without a self, more like a floating spirit neither here, nor there, everywhere and nowhere. And the Buddhist teachings speak of emptiness in view of it holding form and formlessness such that everything is actually non-real as if it were a Moon’s reflection in the water.

I think again of that song of enlightenment, “All these form, appearance emptiness; like a rainbow with a shining glow…”

And one of the other lines is “Just let go, and go where no-mind goes.”

I guess I’m having to do that a bit as I feel pulled in many directions like taffy. Pulled, stretched, thinning out…. and definitely no place to ground. The lessons of impermanence and non-self and forms being emptiness by appearing just the same… these are all being re-enforced within me.

At the same time, it feels like my solar plexus is torn a bit. Here I am looking at an application, another one, for an apartment that I applied for on April 2nd and last week I found out my application was nowhere to be found. I now have to fill out a new one!

Meanwhile, I am trying to visualize how I will fit all my necessary “stuff” into the master bedroom of the apartment that I’m sharing with my sister and her daughter, a teenager! I feel grateful to have a place to go.

GRATITUDE: I CAN DO this, of course I can and am so grateful to have some shelter so that I’m free to go without having to break a lease just as soon as I get a call from one of the many places upon which my name is on the list.

And so the story goes. Maybe I feel a bit better for writing it out? My tummy is still topsey-turvey but I’m telling myself to enjoy the experience such that it is. I’d better get that application filled out (another form—“all these forms”— and anyway get it resubmitted. Forms are only emptiness.