It’s true that in each moment there’s a wildfire burning. Everything could turn upside down, it is turning, it has turned, and the life of a minute ago has gone up in flames. Everything has the light and is reaching for the light. This is meditation.

The fire in each heart is a democratic fire, available to all the creatures merely for existing. It’s the luminous force that gives life. It’s obvious that dogs have it in their glance and in the fold of their legs and the way they seem to review their lives when they get very old. Demons have it too, i their fangs and anger and in the sorrow deep inside their eyes. So we must include our own confusion, and our repulsive and disgusting moments, as well as our slivers of joy. We cane here to include them too: the dogs, the demons, the hungry ghosts, the angry gods, and the cluelessly rich and ignorantly blissful.

This is what imagination means in the world. The vessel of consciousness enlarges and we feel more of what- even more basic than who- we are. We step from story to story and in each of these little worlds, life has us.

~John Tarrant

it’s a real mess isn’t it? or what else?

inquiry for today~ and take this day as a reflection of great care……

belly up

For those of us with a spiritual path and set of practices, who are willing to leave the home of comfortable assumptions, we have now the choice to say yes to virus pandemic and economic collapse. Yes to mass extinctions of flora and fauna. Yes to the threats of Fascism and, speaking for myself, yes to giving up the urgent need to know and control, even as I participate fully in communities of strategic resistance and resilience.

I need to go through the inner landscape of all my emotions, all my hopes, all my inconceivable fears and vows and faith and doubt. I need to do this “omitting none,” as it says in one translation of the Karaniya Metta Sutta, the Buddha’s teaching on loving-kindness. I’m of use to my communities only if I’m able to show up in imperfect wholeness, in intimate and more healed communion, with as much of reality as I can embody.

~Mushim Patricia Ikeda