Episode Details

It’s beautiful to be taking refuge together in all the various places we find ourselves.

Ah. Here we are. Survivors of the election. Spiritual warriors attempting to live a vow-fueled life. Hearts turned towards love larger then fear. Even if fear is rattling in your gut, or anger is raging strong in your body or numbness has you hiding out.

Whatever you are feeling is welcome.

Whatever you are feeling is wisdom.

Its your body telling you something—

That something might be: This isn’t ok. NO! I don’t feel safe. I am afraid. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I have the energy to fight. This matters. This is what i love. This is what i care about.

Or something else. Listen. What is your body trying to say to you? This may change moment to moment.

In the Zen Community of Oregon, we are currently studying a text called The Eight Realizations of a Great Being. A set of pith instructions given by the Buddha shortly before they died.

This week we explored the Fifth Realization

Ignorance leads to birth and death. Bodhisattvas are always mindful

To study and learn extensively, to increase their wisdom

And perfect their eloquence, so they can teach and enlighten all beings,

And impart great joy to all.

Dogen Zenji calls it Always Maintaining Mindfulness and comments:

Mindfulness helps you to guard the dharma, so you never lose it. If you practice this the robbers of fear and desire cannot enter you. Therefore you should always maintain mindfulness. It is like wearing armor going into a battlefield, so there is nothing to be afraid of.

When we have mindfulness, or heartfulness—we know who we are, and where we stand. We are aligned with vow, the great vow—to awaken for the sake of all beings!

Mindfulness has its popular dimensions in our culture. Its found its way into businesses, schools, the military—its featured in taglines like Mindful Car Washing, Mindful Jogging, Mindful Eating, Mindful Sleep Therapy. Its said to help workers stay focused, increase productivity, basically make everything better…

Yet, mindfulness is also subversive.

A mindfulness instructor, Zen practitioner and friend said to to me in a conversation once, mindfulness is shadow work.

He has taught mindfulness in business settings, and when he said this, I felt the truth in his words.

Mindfulness is empowering and it also brings us into direct relationship with the wisdom of our bodies, the feelings perhaps we have been trying to run from, the fixed beliefs that drive our life.

Through mindfulness we aren’t lost in the wimbs or conditioning of our thinking / reactivity. We can live more authentically, we can ask questions, make space for our anger and feel the wisdom of our fears.

Mindfulness is our best english translation of the word sati, which means more “to recollect” or “to remember.” 

What are we remembering? Our practice, the dharma, heart, we are reconnecting with what really matters.

If you are feeling a lot right now, its your body saying yes, this matters, our interconnected life matters.

The earth, immigrants in our country, trans + non-binary people, queer folks, women, people of color, the more than human world—matter.

Love matters. Wisdom matters. Seeing through the forces of ignorance matter.

Awakening from our collective delusion matters.

Mindfulness also means being present with, allowing what’s here to be here—in the different dimensions of our being:

My teacher Chozen Roshi would often teach the four foundations of mindfulness during morning meditation at the mo