Pulling threads
Notes and news from the present moment, on its swift way to becoming past.
How Spacious the Meadow
To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him.
Zen teachings are enigmatic, the language circular and contradictory often, which creates puzzles and potential for sparks of insight. This brief line led to much thought and discussion about the nature of freedom and constraints. What are the right constraints for us to know freedom within? How spacious our meadow?
Asteya - The Yama of Non-Stealing
The third yama in Patanjali's Yoga Darshan is asteya, or non-stealing. Not committing acts of theft seems like an obvious virtue. More subtly, asteya also applies to speech and to thinking — to not claim what is not ours, to not cheat, nor misappropriate. How do we steal, how do we take what is not offered? We may do so in unawareness, unconsciously; or, more deliberately, out of a sense of not having enough, of not being enough. Could this apply to this end-of-year and a seasonal hunger for what we don't have — for the future, for the past, for things as we wish they could be?
Life Is Art Is Life
At the beginning of 2020, besides thinking about the yamas and niyamas, I chose a word to be my focal aspiration for the year. (Much more helpful than a resolution!) My word was “concordance,” which is to bring all parts together in harmony.
In Essence
Essence, harmony, truth … satya is the glue that holds the formed universe together. Precepts and seed-thoughts for thinking through…