Random Dharma

I like the relationship metaphor Ona!

I guess for me the thing is to acknowledge my eclecticism and to not make it purely utilitarian, all about me, and what I can get from a tradition.

To continue your metaphor it's like the difference between being a player only out to get my kicks and being polyamorous I'm definitely able to fall in love with multiple traditions, and inevitably after a phase of immersion the relationship shifts and there are aspects that will continue on in my life althought the monogamous immersion fades. The connection remains though and although it has shifted to being about the overlap between that tradition and where I'm at, there is still that respect and appreciation for the tradition as a whole. So I guess I'm like a serial monogamist with poly tendencies... lol!

www.donothingfor2minutes.com

Common cool, he was a proud young fool in a kick-ass Wal-Mart tie
Rippin' down the main drag, trippin' on the headlights rollin' by
In the early dawn when the cars were gone, did he hear the Master's call?
In the five-and-dime did he wake and find he was only dreamin' after all, 'cause

This is an ordinary town and the prophet stands apart
This is an ordinary town and we brook no wayward heart
And every highway leads you prodigal back home
To the ordinary sidewalks you were born to roam

Rock of ages, love contagious, shine the serpent fire
So sang the sage of sixteen summers in the upstairs choir
So sang the old dog down the street beside his wailing wall
"Go home, go home" the mayor cried when Jesus came to city hall, 'cause

This is an ordinary town, and the prophet stands alone
This is an ordinary town and we crucify our own
And every highway leads you prodigal again
To the ordinary houses you were brought up in

Raised on hunches and junk food lunches and punch-drunk ballroom steps
You get to believing you're even-steven with the kids at fast track prep
So you dump your bucks on a velvet tux and you run to join the dance
But your holy shows and the Romans know you're just a child of
Circumstance, 'cause

This is an ordinary town and the prophet has no face
This is an ordinary town and the seasons run in place
And every highway leads you prodigal and true
To the ordinary angels watchin' over you
(lyrics by Dave Carter)

Q: How much ego do you need?
A: Just enough so that you don’t step in front of a bus
— Shunryu Suzuki

Suzuki Roshi was the Charlie Chaplin of zenjis.

bardo of dreams...

"I dreamed I was in a Hollywood movie; I dreamed I was the star of the movie..."

I Have Died Many Times

Thank you, Eric-- that's a good description of the "Bardo retreat" that Ngak'chang Rinpoche teaches!

A shinzen quote that captured an entire volume of my own thinking... in two sentences:

At the gym, muscle is broken down then grows back stronger. On the cushion, self is broken down then grows back cleaner.

Just watched a fantastic movie last night (or I would have joined the hangout )
Boyhood by Richard Linklater. Shot over twelve years (but NOT a documentary: a scripted, acted film) it follows a boy and his family as he grows up from about 6 to 18 and heading off to college. The director got the actors together a few weeks per year to shoot. Really amazing portrait of growing up, the rhythms of life, and (perhaps because Linklater is kind of a mystic) I felt a strong sense of that paradox of timelessness/the passage of time reflected in the humble everyday moments of this film. Highly recommended! Very little if any explicit dharma-y stuff in the film yet it still seemed to point to and touch on some profound themes (partly because Mason, the main character, is a pretty reflective sort with a bit of a mystical bent.) Anyhow, highly recommended.

Full Speech: Jim Carrey's Commencement Address at the 2014 MUM Graduation

Stanford's Sapolsky On Depression in U.S. (Full Lecture)

Listening to this episode of On Being with poet Marie Howe: www.onbeing.org/program/the-poetry-of-or...with-marie-howe/5301 . The title is "The Poetry of Ordinary Time." Marie talks about growing up in a large Catholic family and the rituals of ordinary life.

Here's The Gate, about her young brother whom she called her spiritual teacher and died from AIDS at age 28:

I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world

would be the space my brother's body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man

but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,

rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.

This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I'd say, What?

And he'd say, This, sort of looking around.

(Reading here: www.onbeing.org/program/feature/the-gate-by-marie-howe/5316 )

And, Hurry:

We stop at the dry cleaners and the grocery store
and the gas station and the green market and
Hurry up honey, I say, hurry,
as she runs along two or three steps behind me
her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down.

Where do I want her to hurry to? To her grave?
To mine? Where one day she might stand all grown?
Today, when all the errands are finally done, I say to her,
Honey I'm sorry I keep saying Hurry—
you walk ahead of me. You be the mother.

And, Hurry up, she says, over her shoulder, looking
back at me, laughing. Hurry up now darling, she says,
hurry, hurry, taking the house keys from my hands.

(Reading here: www.onbeing.org/program/feature/hurry-by-marie-howe/5321 )

Yes, indeed: "And he'd say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich."

and "her blue jacket unzipped and her socks rolled down."

the best poems come from being so precisely awake to the details of living a life.

She talks about asking her students to bring in four ordinary things they notice each week — without any metaphor or analysis — and how it usually takes them a few weeks to get it.

Anyone else like hearing dharma in lyrics?


Cover of Elliot Smith - Can't Make a Sound

I have become a silent movie
The hero killed the clown
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound

Nobody knows what he's doing
Still hanging around
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound

The slow motion moves me
The monologue means nothing to me
Bored in the role, but he can't stop
Standing up to sit back down
Or lose the one thing found
Spinning the world like a toy top
'Til there's a ghost in every town

Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound
Can't make a sound

Eyes locked and shining
Can't you tell me what's happening?
Why should you want any other
When you're a world within a world?
Why should you want any other
When you're a world within a world?
Why should you want any other
When you're a world within a world?
Why should you want any other
When you're a world within a world?

www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/09/08/..._murray_a_guide.html


Step seven: Remember that you are you and no one else is.
The night’s final question was “What’s it like being you?” Murray responded with a guru-level reminder about the importance of being present, which we’ll reprint in full and embed in audio form below.


I think if I’m gonna answer that question, because it is a hard question, I’d like to suggest that we all answer that question right now, while I’m talking. I’ll continue. Believe me, I won’t shut up. I have a microphone. But let’s all ask ourselves that question right now. What does it feel like to be you? What does it feel like to be you? Yeah. It feels good to be you, doesn’t it? It feels good, because there’s one thing that you are—you’re the only one that’s you, right? So you’re the only one that’s you, and we get confused sometimes—or I do, I think everyone does—you try to compete. You think, Dammit, someone else is trying to be me. Someone else is trying to be me. But I don’t have to armor myself against those people; I don’t have to armor myself against that idea if I can really just relax and feel content in this way and this regard. If I can just feel, just think now: How much do you weigh? This is a thing I like to do with myself when I get lost and I get feeling funny. How much do you weigh? Think about how much each person here weighs and try to feel that weight in your seat right now, in your bottom right now. Parts in your feet and parts in your bum. Just try to feel your own weight, in your own seat, in your own feet. OK? So if you can feel that weight in your body, if you can come back into the most personal identification, a very personal identification, which is: I am. This is me now. Here I am, right now. This is me now. Then you don’t feel like you have to leave, and be over there, or look over there. You don’t feel like you have to rush off and be somewhere. There’s just a wonderful sense of well-being that begins to circulate up and down, from your top to your bottom. Up and down from your top to your spine. And you feel something that makes you almost want to smile, that makes you want to feel good, that makes you want to feel like you could embrace yourself.


So what’s it like to be me? You can ask yourself, What’s it like to be me? You know, the only way we’ll ever know what it’s like to be you is if you work your best at being you as often as you can, and keep reminding yourself: That’s where home is.

edit: this is Bill Murray talking

www.personalpowermeditation.com/how-i-beat-depression-forever/

it's actually not a bad blog post

Tom Otvos wrote: I struggled with where to put this, but Random Dharma is not wholly off-base. A delightful and entertaining read:

www.dharmaoverground.org/web/guest/discu...ards/message/5585792

Do I smell..... schism?

Better put out the cots and get some soup warmed up in the Online Forum Dharma Refugee Camp.

Weird.

The link goes to an error page now. What was the topic about?