Events

Being told that nothing is the matter challenges my ideas about reality. Being asked what I think I lack helps me appreciate that the questioner knows what it is to feel that lack, which opens me to what they have to say about it.

Oct. 26th – Individual Conversations on your Meditation Practice
with David Weinstein. Online booking for Sat. now available.

These stories (koans) still have this effect and our times are much like those ancient times. There were invasions, migrations, wars, and great art. People took stories of awakening and stories that encouraged awakening into their work, as they still do today. Images of awakening were helpful too. People entered their difficulties and found a light there.

It is that integration with the body that allows us to experience the freedom to be unstuck and to hear the echo of the sounds of the Valley Spirit and to experience the freedom of walking in the sky with Feng po-po.

In the Tao te Ching the music of earth is said to be produced by the spontaneity of the wind. The music of heaven is the music of silence. The Dragon traverses between heaven and earth as freely as the wind and clouds it rides, not needing to ask permission or explain.

A few days ago on a meditation retreat I was walking along the path with a friend who suddenly yelled, “D, you just stepped on a snake!”  I jumped back, saw a small rattlesnake coiling up into strike position

I had had a turbulent couple of months dealing with changes in important relationships and was feeling a little road weary. I was holding fast to whatever I could, fearful of more change. Never a healthy stance, but there you have it.

Next on my calendar was a float in an isolation tank.  Not something I do every day. Or ever, really. Let me assure you, it’s dark in there. 

As part of my own exploration, as I’m writing this, the question comes to me is: I wonder what Zhuangzi’s reaction would have been if he had dreamt that he was a dung beetle?

Dreams are a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, like koans, like us. Inquiring into the dream that we are, provides the opportunity to appreciate that even when we awaken from our dream