|
Dear Bodhisattvas, This Monday, February 4 during our regular Monday evening service, we’ll be holding a ceremony for the Lunar New Year. This is a moment in the cycle of the year when we can begin to feel the days getting longer and the light stronger, even while plants are mostly in resting mode–roughly half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. In many agrarian communities, people gather at this time to decide which seeds the community will plant, so that there will be enough for everyone. There is a sense of setting our intentions and beginning to arouse energy towards them. It’s a good time for taking up the Way, recommitting to practice, rededicating altars, and cleansing homes, hearts, and relationships. In many of our hearts there’s a longing to loosen the grip of fears and despairing thoughts; to turn from the small, contemptuous, and destructive towards that which is open, large, fertile and creative. So we pause, and have a ceremony to mark this turning. You are invited to bring any statues or other practice objects you’d like to have blessed and rededicated, and we’ll do that for our community altar and objects. You’re also invited to bring a poem you’d like to share with others in the sharing time that concludes the ceremony. (Cookies or flowers would be welcomed, too!) Monday evening will also mark the beginning of our 2019 practice period, which will extend until March 20 (Spring Equinox). This is a time when the community joins in supporting a deepening of practice, each of us individually and all of us collectively creating a field of encouragement for meditation, inquiry, study and service. You might, as Monday approaches, muse a bit on where you are individually and how we are, collectively. What is zen practice like for you right now? What feels ready for blessing? What wants to be rededicated? What seeds are you wanting to plant for your practice of a life right now, and for your meditation practice? How might a practice period nourish your practice? What do you think the community offers or can offer to strengthen you, and what would you like to offer to strengthen the practice of others? What might be gestating in this winter time in you? What call to creative response wants to be heard? Here’s a quote from the Lankavatara Sutra to accompany us and give you a taste of the language there (changed only a few words): An illusion, a dream, the reflection of a tree in water a strand of hair, a shimmering mirage who views the three realms like this finally attains liberation Just as the sight of a mirage bewilders the mind as it shimmers deer imagine water where no water actually exists Likewise seeds of consciousness shimmer in the visible world we give rise to projections as if we were looking through cataracts Through birth and death without beginning attached to grasping existence removing one wedge with another we renounce our desire to grasp Like something that moves by magic a cloud, a dream, or lightning such insight results in liberation and severs the three tethers forever Wishing you a beautiful mid-winter beginning, Sarah Bender Heron Dreaming |