SIT-A-LONG with JUNDO: Xin Xin Ming - (II)

[Hoyu]

Love it!!!!

Gassho,
Hoyu

[Ekai]

Looking forward to the day of service!

Gassho,
Ekai

[Shinko]

may every day be a day of service...

[Kaishin]

Sounds great! _/\_

[Koshin]

Great idea, thank you for this

Gassho

[Hans]

Hello,

thank you Jundo for the announcement and thank you fellow Sangha members for your enthusiasm.

All the best and Gassho,

Hans Chudo Mongen

[Thane]

Thanks Jundo

I look forward to it.

Gassho

Thane

[Marla567]

Very good idea! I'm going to find it out, what kind of activity is appropriate for me.

Gassho
Bianca

[markkemark]

This is a great idea. I think I already know what I'm going to do.

[Jundo]

SIT-A-LONG with JUNDO: The Start of Jukai & Our Treeleaf 'Global Day of Service'

Today is an auspicious day for our Sangha, as we start our study and reflections on each of the Precepts in preparation for our next Jukai (Undertaking the Precepts) Ceremony in January. Together with that, our Jukai-ers each began hand sewing a Rakusu (small Buddhist robe) this past week, a wonderful practice in which one sews diligently stitch-by-stitch, but without thought of achievement. All is hand-in-hand with Zazen. Once again, our January Ceremony will be all-online, with folks simultaneously participating and receiving the Precepts in several countries and time zones. Here was our last ceremony ...

TREELEAF JANUARY 2012 JUKAI

If anyone is interested in undertaking Jukai, there is still time to jump in ... so please join through our forum.

TREELEAF SANGHA COMMUNITY FORUM

Today also marks the start of our Sangha's GLOBAL DAY OF SERVICE, in which we ask each and all of our Treeleaf Sangha members, for one day sometime during the period September 15-29, to spend a full day making their local communities, the lives of others, and this world a bit better. This is a chance to live the Virtues of Generosity and Giving, and our Bodhisattva Vows to Aid All Sentient Beings. We hope you will join in with us, and perhaps make it a family event for you to work together with your loved ones. More information here ...

GLOBAL DAY OF SERVICE

Folks have been very creative in thinking up ideas for service projects, some even from home for those who are housebound. Here are some examples ...

I pretty much have to work out of my home, so I will be knitting warm winter scarves to donate to our local Senior Center Thrift Shop. Also will look into telephone work for our wonderful, free spay & neuter clinic for the pets of low income people & seniors.

I will be taking my eight-year-old son out on a day-long island clean-up ... I really want to share with my son our most basic and important teaching - our connectedness to all sentient beings - trees, mountains, oceans, people, animals. We are all responsible for one another.

I am going to get involved with the local hospital and hospice to bring [our dog] Bodhi in to share the experience of just being in the moment with that cute little fur ball.

We have an alternative high school ... The students at this school haven't been successful in traditional classrooms and many already have criminal records and broken homes, so this school is designed to meet the special needs of these teens. Several years ago, I played a bit of chess and during that time I got to know a gentlemen who had created an organization that uses chess, martial arts and hip-hop music to illustrate the power that our decisions have. So to tie the whole thing together I'm in the process of implementing a chess program at the high school that will be followed-up some time in October or November by an on-site chess tournament put on by the Hip Hop Chess Federation. My goal is to get chess into the classrooms on a daily basis at our alternative high school.

I'm thinking of volunteering to teach some basic yoga poses (for free) for our local community. ... Also, for this saturday we're going to relaunch the reading program that I helped start two years ago [at a school here in the Philippines]. ... We're also gonna be planting in the school's vegetable patch by the end of the month. Hopefully, the harvest will be enough to supplement the feeding program.

These days I teach English to kids whose parent's can't afford an English School. My English is not perfect, but passing on what I know is better than not speak English at all.

I am planning on spending more time at my local hardware co-op. We take in old computers, refurbish what we can, responsibly recycle what we can't, and give computers to non-profits, the under privileged, and volunteers.

... and many more creative ideas. Of course, all volunteering and giving is to be undertaken for no personal benefit or credit, simply with awareness that the giver, gift, giving and recipients are one.

More here ...

[Mp]

This is wonderful Jundo, thank you. I have to admit I am very excited about this ... ideas are dancing around in my head.

Gassho
Michael

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Myoku]

Thank you,
Gassho
Myoku

[Kyonin]

Wonderful kick off!

Yes, lets bring out peace and stillness to the world.

Thank you for this opportunity, Jundo.

And thank you all participating.

Gassho,

Kyonin

[Jiken]

The time for talk is over! Time for action.

Gassho

Daido

[Jundo]

SIT-A-LONG with Jundo: Even Buddhas Get the Blues

Taigu, our other Teacher here at Treeleaf, posted this week that he was going through some HARD TIMES at home and work, feeling stress and the blues from his job. Taigu recounted a story about the great Tibetan Teacher Chogyam Trungpa who, according to detailed accounts by his wife, suffered from frequent bouts of depression so severe that Trungpa was sometimes pushed to the point of considering suicide. (page 27 to 29 here) Taigu was talking about a little blues in his own case, not anything like Trungpa. Even so, some folks contacted me privately this week expressing surprise, believing that Buddhist Teachers should be beyond the blues and all stresses of life, perpetually in a realm of all encompassing bliss and tranquility. After all, isn't that the point of ENLIGHTENMENT?

Well, what may startle some folks is that Enlightenment does allow one to be totally beyond the blues and all stresses of life, free of loss and longing and sickness and aging and death ... even right in, as and amid days of sadness, times of stress, loss and longing, sickness and aging and death. BOTH VIEWS AND THE VIEWLESS, AT ONCE AS ONE. Oh, one should not be a prisoner of extremes ... falling into anger and violence, excess longing and greed, life halting depression and thoughts of suicide, destructive panic, uncontrolled regret and other harmful extremes of thought and emotions. However, the full range of moderate, healthy emotions ... life's normal ups and downs ... are what life is about and are not to be fled. Heck, any human being can even suffer depression or some other human weakness for a period. At the same time, right in the ups and downs, this Buddhist Way allows us to simultaneously taste a way of being thoroughly transcending up and down ... all at once. Strange as it may sound, one may sing and feel the blues ... and be beyond the blues ... at once.

Perhaps the very concept of "Enlightenment", and the point of this Buddhist enterprise, has evolved over the centuries ... into something far more subtle and powerful than even the early interpretations of long ago. You see, originally, the goal of early Buddhism might actually be best described as total escape from this world which is seen as a realm of suffering. Family, home and ordinary life were to be left behind on a path of cooling and abandoning human emotions and human ties. This life, the possibility of rebirth, was not looked upon as something positive to be lived, but as something to be fled. The goal was halting the endless chain of birth and death and rebirth.

Next, a concept of "Buddhahood" developed in which a Buddha or other Enlightened Master might be beyond all human attachments, sadness, fear, regret, longing, and all the rest even in this life. This is still perhaps the most widely held image of "the point of Buddhist Practice" that most Buddhist folks are to aim for. Old Buddhist Sutras, myths and hagiographic histories, painting exaggerated portraits of our long dead heroes, contribute to the image by stripping such saints and supermen of every human weakness or failing, thus building an idealized legend.

But with the passing centuries, a much more subtle viewless view of "Enlightenment" developed, and this is perhaps the most powerful of all. For in this "Enlightenment", one could live fully this up and down life, with family and household responsibilities and work and all the pains of normal life, the rainy days and sunny ... feeling it all ... yet simultaneously, thoroughly free of it all. Amid sadness, feeling sadness yet simultaneously embodying that Joy that sweeps in both small human happiness and sadness. Knowing birth and death, the travails of aging and passing time ... yet simultaneously free of birth and death and time. Oh sure, one still needed to avoid the extremes and perils of harmful emotions such as excess greed, anger and all the other chains of the runaway mind ... but in so doing, the result is a kind of "Buddha cake and eat it too" view of an enlightened life amid Samsara. Yes, the Buddha DOES TOTALLY ESCAPE from the world and the prison of Samsara ... right here amid the prison of Samara, right at the heart of the sometimes hard and stressful times of human life. There is a Peace, Beauty and Wholeness that holds all the broken pieces, both the beautiful and oh so ugly, the simple pleasures and unavoidable pains, of this complex world.

If you ask me, that is the most powerful view of Enlightenment, allowing Peace and Joy right amid a full, rich and balanced life, freedom from birth and death while born and growing old and someday dying. I would not trade it for any other Enlightenment even if all the Buddhas and Ancestors were to appear before me and point elsewhere. Anyway, in my heart, I do not believe they would.