The title of this post came from a comment by my astro-blogging friend, Neeti Ray. I was trying to describe the weird sense of limbo I’m feeling that I can’t shake, like being on the verge of something that hasn’t yet manifested, and she wrote: ‘On, the verge of, verging’. Perfect! My original title was [...]
Archive for the ‘Zen’ Category
On the verge of … verging
Posted in Astrology, Awareness, Buddhism, Practice, Suffering, Zen, tagged lunar eclipse, nessus, pain, Pluto, Right Effort, Venus in Cancer on 2 August 2009 | 2 Comments »
Day before the solar eclipse: Home retreat
Posted in Astrology, Meditation, Practice, Zen, tagged solar eclipse on 21 July 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Sitting on the bus on the way home from work this evening, it occurred to me that I would do a day retreat at home tomorrow, the day before the much anticipated Solar Eclipse in Cancer. For once, I’m going to put aside my guilt of never doing enough work (Sun-Merc-Saturn in the 6th [...]
Grateful for zazen
Posted in Anxiety, Gratefulness, Meditation, Poetry, Practice, Zen on 14 May 2009 | 2 Comments »
The past few months have been rather trying, and while I can easily point to Pluto (see past few posts), ‘blaming’ the transits is missing the point. Life happens. Learning about Pluto is a means of understanding what’s happening. A means of coping with it is practice.
Doing enlightenment
Posted in Practice, Zen, tagged book, Brad Warner, Dogen on 11 May 2009 | 3 Comments »
I just finished reading Brad Warner’s Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate. He has an easy, conversational style and I managed to finish it in about a day and a half.
Basically Warner presents a no-nonsense view of life as a Zen teacher and cuts through the hypocrisy of the construction of Zen practice [...]
Pluto transits: Bearing witness
Posted in Astrology, Awareness, Practice, Zen, tagged Pluto, witness on 13 April 2009 | 6 Comments »
One of the hardest things to do during one’s own Pluto transits, as well as others’, is to learn to bear witness to the transformation without judgement.
Here are two enormously insightful articles: Elizabeth Spring’s ‘Healing Pluto’s Wounds’, and Radiant Woman’s ‘Five Ways to Use Pluto Square Pluto Positively’.
The only thing I can think [...]
Oh, wait… what happened to no-self?
Posted in Awareness, Ego, Practice, Thinking, Zen on 18 March 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Okay… So if there’s no-self, then there’s no-self to be broken and put back together, none to be lost or found.
All is perfect.
But there is room for improvement. (to misquote Suzuki Roshi slightly)
Clearly.
More to ponder, and practise.
Having lost sight of our goals, we re-double our efforts!
Posted in Meditation, Practice, Zen on 17 March 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I was listening this morning to a talk by Mark Lesser on ‘Doing Less’ (dated 1 March 2009), hosted on the San Francisco Zen Center website. He mentioned one of those pithy Zen sayings:
Having lost sight of our goals, we re-double our efforts.
Trial by fire
Posted in Blogging, Buddhism, Poetry, Practice, Zen, tagged fire, Fire Sermon, Osho Zen tarot, Tassajara on 16 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I am reading, with much admiration, the blog recounting the efforts of the members of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, a Soto Zen monastery in California, to cope with the wildfires currently ravaging the countryside. The blog is aptly called ‘Sitting with Fire’, and I am much struck by how calm and circumspect the reporting [...]
Mirror, mirror, on the wall…
Posted in Ego, Perception, Poetry, Practice, Zen, tagged mirror, projection on 6 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I finally bought a mirror yesterday after three months of moving into my new flat. I remarked to a friend that living without a mirror has been a good exercise in ego reflection, and although I’d meant it as a joke, it made me think about mirrors, and ego reflections.
Mirrors are funny things, [...]
Zen Mind, Noisy Mind
Posted in Practice, Zen on 4 July 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The stereotypical image of Zen practice is usually located in a place of peace and calm, typically set within nature, as we can see in this clip:
Sex and Zen III: 8th house astrology
Posted in Astrology, Awareness, Compassion, Desire, Fear, Zen, tagged eighth house, sex on 29 June 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Parts I, and II.
Trawling through my archives, I came across this article by Eric Francis on eighth house astrology, bringing together ideas of orgasm, death, and self-renewal, I’d been musing about earlier. ‘Typically,’ he writes, ‘the 8th becomes a dance of death: ego death; flirtation with orgasm and desire (often secret desire)’.
In the previous [...]
Sex and Zen II: Quelle probleme?
Posted in Death, Desire, Fear, Pleasure, Thinking, Zen, tagged orgasm, sex on 29 June 2008 | Leave a Comment »
Part I
When asked how to deal with the ‘problem’ of sex, Krishnamurti gave this answer:
Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem? We have made God a problem, we have made love a problem, we have made relationship, living, a problem, and we have made sex a problem Why? Why is [...]
