... as a daily rite

🙂 🙏

It's over-simple on my part, but it can very much be the case that meditation helps us realize the miracle that's always already "this." We are of course distractedly identified w/ our thinking selves, but I sense awakened realization is about allowing an embrace from the truth that's already here.

group shot of some of the main characters of the television show Babylon 5

🖖 👍

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a bit younger yours truly with dark hair and a dark beard, seated with a shaggy blonde-brown dog in my arm, both of us wearing black tops

It's a few years old now, but when I've used it I've made a point of noting I'm the slightly less furry one here.

this one's got buddha-nature for sure 🙂 🙏

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And of course, esp. with Zen/ Chan texts, they're often in colloquial speech, turn on irony, are intended for experiential effect (rather than strict propositional content), and gesture towards non-linguistic experience.

And as scholar Thomas Kasulis notes Dōgen for one wrote in "his own" language.

re-upping the links to this pair of video presentations I put together a couple years ago, on Zen teacher Hakuin's art

h/t @gerritb.bsky.social

Ink painting by Zen teacher Hakuin of two blind men with canes attempting to cross a ravine on a log bridge

🙂 🙏

blue skies behind early green-leaved spring thin tree branches and the branches of a dogwood tree with lots of four-petaled white flowers

today's update :)

I'm reminded, I used to do a periodic column on religion for my city's newspaper. I had to inform the editor, more than once, that if you change the grammatical voice — from passive to active (which they did) — you are changing the theology.

:) ... I just realized those are the state bird and the state flower here (North Carolina)

window frames a red cardinal sitting on a white roof gutter, behind the roof is a blooming dogwood tree

good morning ...

red cardinal and dogwood flowers outside my window just now

thanks

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Thanks, Dean.

The quote-post here is from a thread which mentions the Buddhist jhānas.

I have a 30 min Youtube that discusses them, here:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XjE...

There's a range in jhāna practice—with Visuddhimagga-style jhanic absorptions full on synesthetic altered states. For me their practice has had the sweet benefit of letting me know some of just what our minds are capable of, and an appreciation for how ordinary functioning, too, is an altered state.

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Zen is of course famous for its self-understanding as "a transmission outside the scriptures" and "not based on words and letters"; and there are stories of Zen monks throwing away their books.

Those monks, though, as often as not had already memorized those books.

🙂 🙏

making demons feel the burn 🔥

A monk asked, “What is it? And why is it so hard to realize?” Xuansha said, “Because it’s too close.” (Later, Fayan said, “It couldn’t be closer. Actually it’s the monk himself.”) in Andrew Ferguson (2011) Zen's Chinese Heritage, p. 300

reminds me of a Zen story:

A monk asked, “What is it? And why is it so hard to realize?” Xuansha said, “Because it’s too close.” (Later, Fayan said, “It couldn’t be closer. Actually it’s the monk himself.”) in Andrew Ferguson (2011) Zen's Chinese Heritage, p. 300

reminds me of a Zen story:

beautiful

and it offers added depth and simple beauty to a moment I experienced some years ago:

a pair of donkeys (each having just eaten an apple) looking towards the camera in a grassy field in front of their shed on a grassy hillside

Pearl effectively is a companion — she was relatively recently brought to this little farm to accompany Sally.

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🙂 🙏

you're still an 11 Abby

she was on today's "Daily Blast" podcast with Greg Sargent (21 min):

open.spotify.com/episode/0lwL...

I'm not seeing that, but I am finding currently that I cannot "like" or see comments to posts which are re-posted by others.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯