I'm well and hope that you are also well in every way.
I'm experiencing a profound sense of homecoming nowadays, as I am staying on with my parents in an open-ended way, in their lovely home and village in the UK.
It's a homecoming especially in the sense of deeply stilling and entering into the heart. Being with old age is a slowing down. An embracing of impermanence. A welcome to the truth of not knowing. A letting go.
It's beautiful to be here with my dear elderly Mum and Dad. A chance to repay some of the great love and care that I have received from them my whole life and to keep cultivating love, care and patience, opening to nature, to Dhamma.
A Contemplation
From The Greater Discourse of the Buddha on the Mass of Suffering MN 13, for contemplation -
". . . With sensual pleasures as the cause, sensual pleasures as the source, sensual pleasures as the basis, the cause being simply sensual pleasures - kings quarrel with kings, nobles with nobles, brahmins with brahmins, householders with householders, mother quarrels with child, child with mother, father with child, child with father; brother quarrels with brother, brother with sister, sister with brother, friend with friend.
And here in our quarrels, brawls and disputes we attack each other with fists, clods, sticks or knives, whereby we incur death or deadly suffering . . . We take swords and shields and buckle on bows and quivers, and we charge into battle massed in double array with arrows and spears flying and swords flashing; and there we are wounded by arrows and spears, and our heads are cut off by swords, whereby we incur death or deadly suffering. This too is a danger in the case of sensual pleasures . . . the cause being simply sensual pleasures.
. . . And we charge slippery bastions, and we are wounded by arrows and spears, splashed with boiling liquids and crushed under heavy weights . . . And we break into houses, plunder wealth, commit burglary . . .
Thus, we, people indulge in misconduct of body, speech and mind. Having done so, on the dissolution of the body, after death, we reappear in states of deprivation, an unhappy destination, in perdition, even in hell. This too is a danger in the case of sensual pleasures . . . the cause being simply sensual pleasures.
And what is the escape in the case of sensual pleasures?
It is the removal of desire and lust, the abandonment of desire and lust for sensual pleasures. This is the escape in the case of sensual pleasures.
Healing Dhamma
A burning question for this time is, "How do we allow ourselves to open to the pain and grief of our sisters, our brothers, our children without bitterness? Without trauma? Without re-enacting and extending the pain, like a voracious fire that ravages everything in its path?
The trauma that we share in our human family is surely all of our work. It is our Dhamma duty to attend to it, the air that we breathe, the life and death we all share.
Can our collective grief and trauma bring us closer together?
Can we recognise our inseparability?
For how can I be happy without you sharing my happiness? And how can you be in fear and pain without me being affected?
May the practice of meditation continue to help and guide us in healing the human world from within. May we have the possibility to stop, to sit and to feel. To breathe deeply. To allow and to open to the collective suffering and make peace within us.
No thought is required, no view, no solution. No side, no stance, no holding back, no other.
We are surely all alive in this world to wake up. To heal and repent. To apologise. To mourn fully and release the pain that makes us feel separate and reactive. To see for what they are the projections of our unfinished healing onto the creations we call "other".
There is no other. We are us. All that happens in this world can be known, felt bone deep and understood.
My body, my blood. One family, one land.
This is the invitation. From the broken hearted, the maimed and the defeated. From the unheard, the alone and the lost.
"May we be seen! May we be heard!
May we be held tenderly in consciousness.
May our suffering be acknowledged, fully felt and owned.
May we be welcomed warmly home.
May we heal and know our true potential, the natural resting place that is love, compassion, joy and peace.
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