Monday, June 25, 2007
Eden
Peter and I have been up here at the House with Sally and Cyrano since Friday afternoon, and will come back again later in the week...we would stay and stay if we both did not hve comittments in the City that take us back later today....tonight we are going to see Sharon Salzberg and Sylvi Boorstein speak at the JCC on Amsterdam Avenue and 77th Street...that is something we are both looking forward to ....and I have a full week ahead...but can hardly wait to return here.
Paul is in a 10-day retreat at the Monastery in Wappinger's Falls...Steve is down South with one of his daughters (his oldest is working on reforestation at an ashram in India!)...so we have the house to ourselves and we have loved it. I have been working hard to refurbish Momma's Garden (the Sally Garden, all blue flowers , the color of Momma's eyes) and that has been a sort of meditation all of its own. I have loved every hot and sweaty moment of it. And it looks good. I re-painted the birdhouses a bright blue...they look spiffy...found some wonderful mid-season delphiniums, different sorts, to plant by the fence, where the sun lasts the longest...put in a little lavender and the last alysum I could find....found a bunch of beautiful bamboo, short and healthy , to put in the middle of the birdbath, and re-furbished the frog pond with fresh water from the garden hose....so many tadpoles! And the frogs who live there are obviously fat and happy....there is even a cheerful slender water snake....and lots of mosquitoes for all to eat right up....a thriving habitat.
Of course, the puppies are silly with the daily joy of running about like nutty dogs, and Peter even purchased some bright yellow tennis balls to drive Cyrano even more actively crazy.... lots of running going on! And stalking the unknown wild things in the bordering forest! Sally becomes unrecognizably bold and brave, as she stealths along the thickly-leaved floor of the woods, sniffing at every possible inch of life's spory tracks. Cyrano just looks the part of the brave crusading dachshund, whose mission it is to root out evil and bark it to death! He is my hero. His ears fly behind him as he skims along the lawn....irrepressible joy incarnate.
I have continued meditation and walking....the studio above the garage makes a perfect meditation room...quiet, calm, large, cool....my cushions and reading materials are there. And the road outside the property is the perfect walking course...just the right amount of hilly challenges...and we are eating healthily, which feels better al the way around.
My main study, (aside from mining SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY for monologues for my 46-10 Group meeting tomorrow) is Reginald Ray's THE VAJRA WORLD, about Vajrayana Buddhism, the tantric path...and I am enhralled...not to mention intellectually thrilled by his writing of this endlessly interesting human investigation. Can hardly put it down. And am grateful for all I am learning . The study of Tibetan Buddhism, since it encompasses so much about the history of the Buddhism that came before it, seems to me unfailingly interesting, and realler and realler, the more i meditate and get involved. By "realler" of course, I mean, "real" in the Buddhist sense: the peeling away of illusions that guide our norml everyday existence...something so basic and indestructible, that it makes unfailing sense to me. The thinker behind the thoughts....there is an arresting passage I'd like to quote:
"The Vajrayana operates by eliciting and provoking the projections of our own deepest natures,then forcing us back on ourselves so that we have to integrate and take possession of these projections.....What is sad is not to see this process of projection in Buddhism, where it can lead to something dignified and noble, but to see the way that it operates in the contemporary "Modern" world, where it so often leads to an utter dead end. Here, people project their deepest yearnings onto things that have little to do with the human spirit and its maturation - new cars, upscale houses, clothes,vacations, credentials, fme,wealth and power. It is not surprising, for example, that it is often among those who have succeeded most fully in realizing the materialism of the American Dream that one can find the most emptiness, fear and unacknowledged despair." Reginald Ray THE VAJRA WORLD P.176
We do spend an awful lot of time chasing the things that we think will make us happy, don't we? And we seem to live in constant fear or despair of not getting these things, or once getting them, realizing how little they actually mean. The true awakening to a life of "meaning"? Realizing there is actually no meaning at all. Which is actually amazingly liberating.
More soon on that delectable 46- 10 Group of humans...I will see them all tomorrow.
For now, back to the gardens!
Paul is in a 10-day retreat at the Monastery in Wappinger's Falls...Steve is down South with one of his daughters (his oldest is working on reforestation at an ashram in India!)...so we have the house to ourselves and we have loved it. I have been working hard to refurbish Momma's Garden (the Sally Garden, all blue flowers , the color of Momma's eyes) and that has been a sort of meditation all of its own. I have loved every hot and sweaty moment of it. And it looks good. I re-painted the birdhouses a bright blue...they look spiffy...found some wonderful mid-season delphiniums, different sorts, to plant by the fence, where the sun lasts the longest...put in a little lavender and the last alysum I could find....found a bunch of beautiful bamboo, short and healthy , to put in the middle of the birdbath, and re-furbished the frog pond with fresh water from the garden hose....so many tadpoles! And the frogs who live there are obviously fat and happy....there is even a cheerful slender water snake....and lots of mosquitoes for all to eat right up....a thriving habitat.
Of course, the puppies are silly with the daily joy of running about like nutty dogs, and Peter even purchased some bright yellow tennis balls to drive Cyrano even more actively crazy.... lots of running going on! And stalking the unknown wild things in the bordering forest! Sally becomes unrecognizably bold and brave, as she stealths along the thickly-leaved floor of the woods, sniffing at every possible inch of life's spory tracks. Cyrano just looks the part of the brave crusading dachshund, whose mission it is to root out evil and bark it to death! He is my hero. His ears fly behind him as he skims along the lawn....irrepressible joy incarnate.
I have continued meditation and walking....the studio above the garage makes a perfect meditation room...quiet, calm, large, cool....my cushions and reading materials are there. And the road outside the property is the perfect walking course...just the right amount of hilly challenges...and we are eating healthily, which feels better al the way around.
My main study, (aside from mining SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY for monologues for my 46-10 Group meeting tomorrow) is Reginald Ray's THE VAJRA WORLD, about Vajrayana Buddhism, the tantric path...and I am enhralled...not to mention intellectually thrilled by his writing of this endlessly interesting human investigation. Can hardly put it down. And am grateful for all I am learning . The study of Tibetan Buddhism, since it encompasses so much about the history of the Buddhism that came before it, seems to me unfailingly interesting, and realler and realler, the more i meditate and get involved. By "realler" of course, I mean, "real" in the Buddhist sense: the peeling away of illusions that guide our norml everyday existence...something so basic and indestructible, that it makes unfailing sense to me. The thinker behind the thoughts....there is an arresting passage I'd like to quote:
"The Vajrayana operates by eliciting and provoking the projections of our own deepest natures,then forcing us back on ourselves so that we have to integrate and take possession of these projections.....What is sad is not to see this process of projection in Buddhism, where it can lead to something dignified and noble, but to see the way that it operates in the contemporary "Modern" world, where it so often leads to an utter dead end. Here, people project their deepest yearnings onto things that have little to do with the human spirit and its maturation - new cars, upscale houses, clothes,vacations, credentials, fme,wealth and power. It is not surprising, for example, that it is often among those who have succeeded most fully in realizing the materialism of the American Dream that one can find the most emptiness, fear and unacknowledged despair." Reginald Ray THE VAJRA WORLD P.176
We do spend an awful lot of time chasing the things that we think will make us happy, don't we? And we seem to live in constant fear or despair of not getting these things, or once getting them, realizing how little they actually mean. The true awakening to a life of "meaning"? Realizing there is actually no meaning at all. Which is actually amazingly liberating.
More soon on that delectable 46- 10 Group of humans...I will see them all tomorrow.
For now, back to the gardens!
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