welcome, well come to day 26 of a season of peace on this twenty-fourth day of fleeting february and the year anniversary of the escalation of the US/NATO/EU Proxy War against Russia in Ukraine, a day spent in subtle activism sitting in silence and solidarity with circles of co-hearts across the planet being peace in ourselves and in the world…

In Silence

“Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your

Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
Are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.

I will try, like them
To be my own silence:
And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning? How can he dare
To sit with them
When all their silence
Is on fire?”

~ Thomas Merton ~

~

with the outer world on fire, thanks be for the continuation of peacemakers like Merton’s and Thay’s work and wisdom so needed in our world today as we witness the unraveling before our eyes… breakdown to breakthrough in this moment of emerge-n-see, this moment of both danger and opportunity of bringing lasting peace for all beings…

the following prayer was used throughout South Vietnam in 1965 in the “Don’t Shoot Your Own Brother” campaign to rouse the willingness to work for peace… during meetings of young people, they chanted this poem, uniting our hearts and our efforts to continue to work for peace:

“In beauty, sitting on a lotus flower,
is Lord Buddha, quiet and solid.
Your humble disciple,
calm and pure of heart,
forms a lotus flower with his hands,
faces you with deep respect,
and offers this heartfelt prayer:

Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions.
Please have compassion for our suffering.
Our land has been at war for two decades.
Divided, it is a land of tears
and blood and bones of young and old.
Mothers weep till their tears are dry
while sons on distant fields decay.
Its beauty torn apart,
only blood and tears now flow.
Brothers killing brothers
for promises from outsiders.
Homage to all Buddhas in the ten directions.
Because of your love for all people,
have compassion on us.
Help us remember we are just one family,
North and South.
Help us rekindle our compassion and brotherhood,
and transform our separate interests
into loving acceptance for all.
May your compassion help us overcome our hatred.
May Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva’s love
help the flowers bloom again in the soil of our country.
Humbly, we open our hearts to you,
so you may help us transform our karma
and water the flowers of our spirits.
With your deep understanding,
help our hearts grow light.

Homage to Shakyamuni Buddha
whose great vows and compassion inspire us.
I am determined to cultivate only thoughts
that increase trust and love,
to use my hands to perform only deeds
that build community,
to speak only words of harmony and aid.

May the merit of this prayer
be transformed into peace in [the world]
May each of us realize this,
our deep aspiration.”

shanti shanti shantihi…

re-membering today the wise old saying that truth is the first casulty of war, i feel the call in this moment of eternity when our island home desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, lovers and storytellers to re-visit once again an old legend of the first peoples of this turtle island land which has been passed down orally from generation to generation; it is a legend about a savior named deganawida, the peacemaker, originating over a thousand years ago during the final decades of pre-columbian america at a time like now, a time of pervasive fear and instability in the haudenosaunee world when a young virgin gave birth to a son… she was told in a dream that “your child will be a messenger of the creator and will bring peace and harmony to the people on earth.”…

when deganawida came of age he told his mother, “I shall now build my canoe from white stone, for the time has come for me to start my mission in this world. I know I must travel afar on lakes and rivers to seek out the council smoke of nations beyond this lake. It is now time for me to go stop the shedding of blood among human beings.”

as deganawida began his mission, he first encountered a group of hunters who were fleeing from the bloodshed in the their own village and he instructed them: “Go back to your people and tell them that the Good News of Peace and Righteousness has come to your nation.”

the peacemaker’s mission, as the many accounts of the legend make clear, was to re-establish the natural equilibrium on which the well being of individuals, societies, and the whole of creation depends… deganawida achieved this mission by healing them—by “making their minds straight.” deganawida’s role was not that of a warrior, but a redemptive shaman—a healer… he was quite explicit about the mission: “health means peace, for that is what comes when minds are sane and bodies are cared for.” the peacemaker, like the rainmaker, like all healers and medicine elders, well knows that conflict is born of suffering and the root causes must be addressed for the villages to come back into health and equilibrium where all feel they belong and are cared for and are treated with dignity…

as the story goes, deganawida traveled between each of these warring tribes to spread a message of peace, friendship, and unity, but was not always met with understanding… as the white pine tree was known to them as the tree of peace, deganawida used it as a symbol of his intentions…. auspiciously, the tree was said to have four symbolic roots, the great white roots of peace, which extended north, east, south and west… all the leaders of each nation who agreed to bury their weapons under this tree and be a part of the peace agreement would meet beneath its branches to talk about preserving The Great Peace and be joined together as one…

let us gather under the tree of peace, bury our weapons, breathe deeply together into the sacred space of wisdom and courageously take on the transformative mission of being peacemakers every moment of eternity so that we can create a sustainable world of peace we all desire and demand that our world leaders do the will of the people by acting like adults who come from a place of the onemind…

welcome, well come to day 26 of a season of peace on this twenty-fourth day of free at last february and the first of four days of the great prayer festival in tibetan buddhism where we celebrate the miracles of this new year; today with the support of Ram Dass, let’s meditate on pure mind…

“I have the intention to become free and I’m using everything in my life to do it. At first you just have practices like meditation or prayer. And then you go to work, or you do your stuff, or whatever. And after a while all of it becomes your practice, every bit of it. You tell me something that can’t be practiced. Tell me something that you can’t convert into becoming one with spirit.

So you keep working on yourself to cultivate the Witness, which becomes, in your way, a gift to everybody around you. Because they come in thinking they’re somebody, just like you do most of the time. And you’re creating an environment where they can if they want to, but they don’t have to.

So intention to awaken, finding the part of your mind that is not caught. Even though immediately after you’ve noticed it gets caught and then you come back again. The predicament is the clinging of mind. The predicament is that awareness clings to thought. I’ll just read you the first paragraph of “Extracting the Quintessence of Accomplishment.” And it comes from Dudjom Rinpoche who was an extraordinarily beautiful Tibetan Lama who passed on a few years ago I guess.

‘The nature of our mind. The nature of our mind is the nature of absolute reality.” Try to think of it now as the sky as opposed to the clouds. “Divested of all conditional and artificial characteristics fabricated by the intellect. This nature, this mind, is established with certainty in awareness. Awareness arises, naked, as the self-originated primordial wisdom. It just is. This awareness cannot be expressed in words, nor shown by examples. It is neither corrupted in samsara nor improved in nirvana. It is neither born nor ceases to be. It is neither liberated nor confused. It is neither existent nor nonexistent. It is neither delimited nor falling to either side. In brief, from the beginning, awareness has never existed as a substantial entity with elaborated characteristics. Its nature is primarily pure, void, vast, and all pervasive.’

“Now take the stages. You’re caught in experience. Then you cultivate the Witness, which is that little part of your mind that sees the rest of it. After a while the witness gets stronger and stronger and stronger until most of the time you are “Ah, so.” And even though the dramas of desires, fears, aging, life, crisis, are all coming and going, coming and going, they’re all undulating within you, there’s a part of you that is strong, that is clear, that is saying, “Ah, so.” And then, in this particular technique, you become aware of that in you which is saying, “Ah, so.”

And you go through, into pure mind. Which is neither the witness, nor not the witness. It is neither the experience, nor not the experience. It’s not looking, but it knows everything because it is everything. I am describing to you a very disciplined technique of using the mind to beat the mind. Stand back from experience into the witness, not denying the experience, this isn’t dissociation, this isn’t a defense mechanism. Stand back so that you’re feeling the pain of it all and at the same moment, seeing it. And when you’re resting in the awareness, the seeing of it broadly, then you start to note the seer. The witness.

And there’s a flick that occurs. And no longer are you experiencing the universe, the universe just is. It includes you but it’s nothing special. It’s really the process of dying as a separate entity into pure mind. And the moment you do that, a moment later you’re fully there as a separate entity but you’re also not there as a separate entity. It’s all there all at once. You’re a star and you’re also the heavens.”

~

welcome, welcome to day 26 of a season of peace on this twenty-fourth day of the flowering field of february and today with the support of Ram Dass, let’s meditate on pure mind …

~

“I have the intention to become free and I’m using everything in my life to do it. At first you just have practices like meditation or prayer. And then you go to work, or you do your stuff, or whatever. And after a while all of it becomes your practice, every bit of it. You tell me something that can’t be practiced. Tell me something that you can’t convert into becoming one with spirit.

So you keep working on yourself to cultivate the Witness, which becomes, in your way, a gift to everybody around you. Because they come in thinking they’re somebody, just like you do most of the time. And you’re creating an environment where they can if they want to, but they don’t have to.

So intention to awaken, finding the part of your mind that is not caught. Even though immediately after you’ve noticed it gets caught and then you come back again. The predicament is the clinging of mind. The predicament is that awareness clings to thought. I’ll just read you the first paragraph of “Extracting the Quintessence of Accomplishment.” And it comes from Dudjom Rinpoche who was an extraordinarily beautiful Tibetan Lama who passed on a few years ago I guess.

“The nature of our mind. The nature of our mind is the nature of absolute reality.” Try to think of it now as the sky as opposed to the clouds. “Divested of all conditional and artificial characteristics fabricated by the intellect. This nature, this mind, is established with certainty in awareness. Awareness arises, naked, as the self-originated primordial wisdom. It just is. This awareness cannot be expressed in words, nor shown by examples. It is neither corrupted in samsara nor improved in nirvana. It is neither born nor ceases to be. It is neither liberated nor confused. It is neither existent nor nonexistent. It is neither delimited nor falling to either side. In brief, from the beginning, awareness has never existed as a substantial entity with elaborated characteristics. Its nature is primarily pure, void, vast, and all pervasive.”

Now take the stages. You’re caught in experience. Then you cultivate the Witness, which is that little part of your mind that sees the rest of it. After a while the witness gets stronger and stronger and stronger until most of the time you are “Ah, so.” And even though the dramas of desires, fears, aging, life, crisis, are all coming and going, coming and going, they’re all undulating within you, there’s a part of you that is strong, that is clear, that is saying, “Ah, so.” And then, in this particular technique, you become aware of that in you which is saying, “Ah, so.”

And you go through, into pure mind. Which is neither the witness, nor not the witness. It is neither the experience, nor not the experience. It’s not looking, but it knows everything because it is everything. I am describing to you a very disciplined technique of using the mind to beat the mind. Stand back from experience into the witness, not denying the experience, this isn’t dissociation, this isn’t a defense mechanism. Stand back so that you’re feeling the pain of it all and at the same moment, seeing it. And when you’re resting in the awareness, the seeing of it broadly, then you start to note the seer. The witness.

And there’s a flick that occurs. And no longer are you experiencing the universe, the universe just is. It includes you but it’s nothing special. It’s really the process of dying as a separate entity into pure mind. And the moment you do that, a moment later you’re fully there as a separate entity but you’re also not there as a separate entity. It’s all there all at once. You’re a star and you’re also the heavens.“

~