Dharma week 24-30 April: Who are we in the world? "Nothing to worry about" doesn't mean "everything is going great." It just means, "Worry doesn't help." In these times of transformation, we need all the help we can get. This week, we will investigate what is true about who we are in the world--from the outermost to the innermost realms of what we are. The facts of life from mutual influence and the demands of these crazy times, to deep awakening to what is. Email shahar(AT)o

Over the 9 years that I have offered online teachings, I have come to love the way themes and breakthroughs seem to happen around the world with different people at the same time. The more time and space we leave open, the more emerges. Online meetings allow a kind of impersonal friendliness that often gets obscured when we interact in person. David Bohm captures (below) his experience of how Dharma emerges within a group of people, with commitment and openness, friendliness,

All night I could not sleep because of the moonlight on my bed. I kept on hearing a voice calling: Out of Nowhere, Nothing answered "yes." ~attributed to the poetess Zi Ye sometime between 6th-3rd century BCE (transl. Arthur Waley) I will be offering a 2-year online Dharma program, starting in late April of this year--2019-2021. We will allow the teachings to emerge from the field of our practice, commitment, friendliness, and silence. Participants will take initiative

"Curls of Love and Interest," drawing by Jaya Wendell Berry grappling with ideas about food, sexuality, gender, community... decades ago through the Lindisfarme community. Thanks to Karen Tibboji for sending me the link to this treasure trove of audio, in response to my wondering aloud whether Berry knew how much his poetry resonates with Indian spiritual traditions. https://archive.org/details/WendellBerryG12 #WendellBerry #deepecology #ecology #Inspiringlinks #awakening

Is it self-indulgent to commit to so-called inner work? Is it avoidance if we devote ourselves to so-called outer work? (Drawing by Jaya, Copyright Jaya Julienne Ashmore, 2019.) I've been hearing these questions frequently in recent weeks. In the face of ecological turbulence, for example, where do we reach for our response? What do we do and from where do we find a real willingness to be here and meet our situation fully? I'd like to share and get real with these and oth

Kathleen Dowling Singh: ~Dying is safe. ~Our fear of death is grounded in a strong sense of the 'I'" ...a transformation from perceived tragedy to experienced grace. I realized that what I had been witnessing in the process of dying was grace, all around, shimmering and penetrating. I became aware that all of the observed qualities of the Nearing Death Experience point to the fact that there is profound psychoalchemy occurring here, a passage to deeper being. There appears

Another old CD coming back to life--Handel's Messiah-- has kept me company driving in the rain this week. Listening and singing along brought me to some kind of intersection-- a Monty Python-esque funny bone, the majestic sweep of harmonies, and a kinship felt in ancient shepherd poetry. Within all the absurdity and vastness, we're not so different after all, so then what? I had not paid as much attention to three passages that stood out this week: "All we like sheep," "Why

Sweet Honey in the Rock introduce their miraculous singing of "Wade in the Water," with this invitation/warning: "If you want change in your life, and you're avoiding the trouble, you can forget it. So Harriet would say, Wade on in the water." The sound system in my car, blessedly, only plays CDs and the radio, so I am visiting decades past, through my CD collection. Singing along to Sweet Honey in the Rock "Beatitudes" and "Peace"-- I found "Wade in the Water" responds to t

Atul Gawande raises questions that help us be as perfectly imperfect as we are--mortal and holding very specific things precious. He suggests that doctors ask us, "What are you priorities? What are you willing to sacrifice?" I would broaden those very questions, to help us not only die, but also live gracefully. These very questions could help us uncover an unconditional willingness to center our lives around what we hold most precious. Not only to say, Okay, life will not b

Trungpa! (VCTR = Vidhyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Ringpoche, below...) (painting by Jaya) RK: Where does the sense of enlightenment or sacredness come from? Is it sacred because it comes out of the ultimate alaya? VCTR: You could say that. Ultimate alaya at least holds the potentialities of the whole thing. We could say that samsara came out of some kind of freedom. That is the basic logic of why anyone can attain enlightenment. RK: In meditation, is our approach to identify with

"Many African-American midwives in rural southeastern US of the 20th-century were proud that they could'“plow like men, and pick cotton by moonlight.' They said they were uneducated but that midwifery put their 'big minds' to work." (pg. 63, Listen to Me Good, Margaret Charles Smith and Linda Holmes.) About 11 years ago, while pregnant, I wrote and article called "Call Me A Pregnant Woman" to bring up questions about midwifing big mind and birthing insight: "Gautama Buddha s

I don't always like to use this kind of question--we don't need to earn life by being useful. So many people have a nagging feeling that something is wrong with them, and hope to get rid of that feeling by getting busy, or by being useful. What are we here for? Perhaps, if we can go beyond the purposes that human mind's can devise, we may talk about a way of being here that is fulfilling. A calling that is challenging. A challenge that is fruitful. A fruitfulness that bring