tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9106150954400489683.post595185410413737410..comments2023-07-07T00:55:43.127+09:00Comments on she lives her life in widening circles: groundlessnessJessahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17360913666932698209noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9106150954400489683.post-87327666003312237532007-11-20T10:24:00.000+09:002007-11-20T10:24:00.000+09:00dear greenfrog,i so appreciate your comments...the...dear greenfrog,<BR/>i so appreciate your comments...the metaphor of the space that a cart's axel needs to turn in relation to happiness and suffering makes so much sense to my being. thank you for sharing that, as well as your experience of one of the most profound and healing teachings/practices of buddhism.....lovingkindness. have you studied the tonglen practice? (pema chodron writes alot about it) i have found that lovingkindness meditation and tonglen are incredibly powerful when it comes to softening the heart.....by connecting with the suffering of others, thereby working with our fear of suffering, we awaken deep compassion in our hearts. fearlessness....joanna macy once said that if we are unafraid of suffering, then nothing can stop us....and that this kind of bodhisattva heart is demanded of us in these times.Jessahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17360913666932698209noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9106150954400489683.post-53790793131429763562007-11-16T05:52:00.000+09:002007-11-16T05:52:00.000+09:00Jessa,This touched a chord in me:well, it made for...Jessa,<BR/><BR/>This touched a chord in me:<BR/><BR/><I>well, it made for a deep dis-ease with the religious beliefs that i was instructed to hold as my own and the spiritual path i was taught to follow. for twenty years the road i traveled was an ungodly narrow....</I><BR/><BR/>A teacher recently reminded me that the source words for <I>sukkha</I>, or happiness, and <I>dukkha</I>, or suffering, originally referred to the space that a cart's axel needed to turn. My understanding of the religious principles taught to me, also, seemed much more narrow and confining than the wide-open world I found around me.<BR/><BR/><I>it's a funny thing, i can't remember the exact moment i first stumbled upon buddhism. it's hazy. i find that strange because i can remember every other pivotal moment of my life (and i would consider encountering buddhism one of those). i think my discovery of buddhism wasn't so much something new but rather, a mirroring of ideas and experience that i'd been carrying inside and feeling all along, having no language to articulate and no community with whom to share it.</I><BR/><BR/>I remember it, though I didn't know it as Buddhism at the time -- it was when a yoga teacher paused halfway through a practice and taught us as a recitation the loving-kindness meditation. It made perfectly good sense to me intellectually, and it melted my heart, spiritually. I found myself repeating it silently in all my yoga practices.<BR/><BR/>It was only years later that I discovered and began to adopt the formal roots of that recitation.greenfroghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13646826003797658563noreply@blogger.com