I would prefer not to.

Issue 002

Art

Encantadas and Bartleby, 064 and 065
pencil on moleskine sketchbook paper

Idea

Notes from a Dharma Talk
S. Miller

Ed Brown. 2.2.13. Green Gulch Zen Center.

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gomashio: roasted ground sesame + salt —> 8:1 ratio

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Just because things aren't the way you want doesn't mean you are being punished. (This is child-thinking.)

Tasting the true spirit means moving past whether you like it or not. (Which stops you.)

Suzuki Roshi said, let it come home to your heart.(Self consciousness is a form of dualistic thinking.)

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Look for the positive intention in resistance.

You know you're fine because you have feelings.

Wholeheartedness and sincerity. Only you know whether you do this. No one else can say so for you. That's beyond assessment.

You can learn that you can adjust how open or closed you are, depending on the circumstance.

It's not love to let in others' bad energy - it's just bad boundaries.

Causing another's disappointment isn't really your problem. It's not your job to improve others or to get others to approve of you. You only need to be sincere.

Why would awareness stick around? It will go looking for joy and ease. 

If you keep practicing, it will be more obvious.

This will affect how you experience your life.

Other Notes, not from Ed Brown

Every emotion has a chemically-induced life cycle of 90 seconds. If left alone, the emotion will arise, peak, and be flushed out of your mind and body within that time period. However, if you feed the emotion by generating stressful stories about it, you’re physiologically re-stimulating it, and it will stay around much longer than 90 seconds.

—

There’s this wonderful concept among the people of Papua New Guinea. They talk about Awumbuk, which is what you feel when your visitors leave and you get this feeling of heaviness in the household. They leave a bowl of water out overnight, because they think the heaviness is caused by a mist their guests have left behind so they can travel lightly. They take the bowl of water out the next morning and throw it away, and everyone comes back to life again in the house. That’s an example where an emotion isn’t thought of as coming from within.

Art

Map
collage mixed media

Poem

White Things
by C. Hudak

Are all white things cold and damp? Women,
eyes wracked with want, little vials
of cocaine, and my mother’s skinny fingers
on a Virginia Slim, weak wisp of smoke
the sole rising thing in that room.

Yes. From certain distances
all white things are
cold and damp, untouched
by warmth or light.

When the heat runs out again
and I wake to rime frosted edges
on frozen blankets,
something dawns:

a pearl is not white.
A pearl is cream
and color,
a precious thing, born

from irritation.