But the thing that truly impressed me this morning, as I sat in a wooden house in the forest beside the winding streams of this jewel of a planet, is the way that this elderly cat, who has seizures and advanced kidney disease and lungs that don’t work very well anymore, nonetheless dutifully wakes us up every morning.
Humans have just sent a rocket 126 million miles to Mars. And I have to say I laughed when I saw its first tweet upon landing. And I appreciated the way it snapped my mind out into a much bigger place, the vast space of things.
But the thing that truly impressed me this morning, as I sat in a wooden house in the forest beside the winding streams of this jewel of a planet, is the way that this elderly cat, who has seizures and advanced kidney disease and lungs that don’t work very well anymore, nonetheless dutifully wakes us up every morning.
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This past week, I have found solace in an 11th century poet's mind. The great Buddhist master Shantideva. As bombs have torn through people and lives, and as chaos has reigned in the region, the country, the world. The accents on the radio and TV are the same Bostonian accents of my sangha friends down in Massachusetts.
Our Buddhist center was meant to be running a workshop in Boston this weekend, in a church just one street over from where the bombs took place. That workshop, which would have been led by my teacher, Kelsang Pawo, was going to be all about the power of our minds, and how by training our concentration, we can overcome our inner demons - harness our minds to all our good qualities and learn to be of service to others. It's been a time where I've gone deep within, to find an answer, and it's brought me again and again to Shantideva. Today's blog is dedicated to my Mum, Jenny Tyrrell I have been thinking of her a lot lately. She's been going through some difficult times and my mind has been moving to the rocky walls of her French farmhouse. I wish I could teleport myself to her kitchen for a cup of tea.
It has been dawning on me lately, how blessed I was to be born to this woman. In Buddhist teachings, we hear of karma. We hear how we planted seeds of actions way back across many past lives and how these now ripen as experiences, as appearances, as the content of our lives. To have appeared in Jenny Tyrrell's life, I had extraordinary karma ripening. |
Peace BlogWhere I contemplate my meditation practice and how it aligns with daily life. Sometimes these take the form of poems. Categories
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