An Ear to the Ground

December 30, 2009

Namaste to all

I am always a bit amazed how the Universe brings exactly what is needed

for the path.

This came my way this morning and as i read it was thinking about the

current discussion in the group. This is where i need to put my

attention and for it speaks not to how others are to be on their path

but how i commit to be on my path. Please forgive the length and it

might be too long for some, but i have gone back and read this one three

times today. I am hoping it will seep into the deep places for i find

resonance here.

Stacee peace be with you and may you be blessed as you journey on. . .

..

In Amma

sincerly

ordinary sparrow

An Ear to the Ground

Uncovering the living source of Zen ethics. By Lin Jensen

OPINIONS ATTRACT THEIR OWN KIND. Offer one and you get one in return.

This can be true of even the most benign assertion. The fact that you

like peaches obligates others to declare their preference for oranges. I

do this myself frequently enough to wonder what attraction opinions hold

for me. And I suspect that having an opinion is a way to stake out a

secure and identifying mental territory for myself. Who would I be

without an opinion?

When someone's giving his view of things, I've caught myself

taking a position before he's even finished laying out his point.

It's a contagious sort of reaction that's greatly magnified when

an opinion concerns the moral right or wrong of something. Judgments on

right and wrong are a nearly irresistible enticement to pick sides. And

that's exactly why the old Zen masters warned against becoming a

person of right and wrong. It isn't that the masters were

indifferent to questions of ethics, but for them ethical conduct went

beyond simply taking the prescribed right side. For these masters, the

source of ethical conduct is found in the way things are, circumstance

itself: unfiltered immediate reality reveals what is needed.

I'm sure you can appreciate how contrary this is to traditional

ethics, even the more traditional Buddhist ethics. When I first

encountered this teaching in Zen, I simply couldn't get it at first.

Among the farm people where I grew up you were expected to know right

from wrong. And the right and wrong you were expected to know was of a

consistent sort that could be recited, chapter and verse, when the

occasion required it. Those who couldn't do so were disparaged as

ones who " don't know right from wrong. " That's how

traditional ethics works: conduct is based on reference to fixed

principles. But this approach is limited, because any fixed ethical

principle is a generalization, while events are specific. A precept such

as " Do not kill, " " Do not steal, " or " Do not

lie " applies to a respective category of human behavior. Since an

actual event isn't a category, ethical precepts serve us best not as

an immediate dictate of behavior but as an instrument of inquiry.

Daishin Morgan of the Soto Order of Buddhist Contemplatives taught that

the purpose of the precepts is " to guide us beyond their form in a

legalistic sense to the spirit that lies behind them. " The precepts

are something to live with rather than live by, and living with the Zen

precepts is ultimately humbling, softening our hearts to accept our own

imperfections and deepening our resolve to live without harm.

If I want to see clearly what's happening now, I must put aside

external points of reference. What's happening now is neither what

happened before nor what I might hypothetically imagine happening in the

future. As Erich Fromm said, " Contact is the perception of

differences. " While an ethical generalization is derived from

perceived similarity, a discrete event is made specific by virtue of

difference. If an event seems familiar, it's a likely lapse in

attention that makes it so. The Chinese Ch'an masters saw that the

most unassailable right or wrong is also the most likely to lure us away

from present reality, substituting in its stead a familiar and

comforting perception. All of us on the neighboring farms, children and

adults, gave homage to the ancient ethic of not killing. " Do not

kill " was understood among us as an undeniable good urging us to

preserve life. But when a farm cat I'd raised from infancy dragged

herself onto the porch steps, its hindquarters and legs crushed beyond

saving, I put her to death. And only afterward did I weep with regret at

the life I'd brought to an end.

Once, my mother on her way out the door to a women's tea asked me

how I liked a hat she'd bought for the occasion. I thought the hat

was perfectly horrid. She was such a beautiful woman. It seemed a shame

to let her go looking that way, but I lied and told her the hat was

lovely. Was I wrong to do so? I certainly broke the literal precept. But

I would have violated the promptings of a sympathetic heart had I told

her the truth. The living moment exposes the limits of principled

behavior. Yet it's also true that Buddhism has developed and stated

certain ethical principles. The very first teachings of the enlightened

Gautama included the teachings of Right Speech, Right Action, and Right

Livelihood. And from these first teachings have been derived a series of

stated precepts that Zen Buddhists accept and practice to the best of

their ability. Most of these precepts will seem indistinguishable from

the ethical principles of other religious and philosophical systems. Zen

Buddhists formally vow to take up the way of not killing, not stealing,

not speaking falsely, and so on, and these precepts combine to support

the overriding Buddhist ethic of noninjury.

Zen ethical principles, like all systems of ethics, are derived from an

exhaustive observation of life and are a synthesis of painstaking

induction. So where does the critical difference lie between Zen ethics

and other traditional ethical systems? It lies in the way a Zen Buddhist

works with ethical principles. For the Zen Buddhist, an ethical precept

is a question to be held up to the light of circumstance, an inquiry

rather than an answer. And the nature of this inquiry is not so much the

dubious enterprise of trying to figure out the right thing to do as it

is an offering of an unaided heart. After all, it's from this heart

of ours that the precepts themselves once arose. At the threshold of

choice, the Zen Buddhist trusts this ancient heart above all other

authority. It's not that the Zen Buddhist reinvents the ethical

wheel every time he faces a new situation; it's just that he goes

back to the source itself. Ethics is not an invention but an expression

of the heart's core. What's most needed in the moment of choice

is an empty hand.

The person of right and wrong for whom right is always right and wrong

is always wrong never risks an empty hand. I've discovered that when

I advocate from a moral persuasion and I'm wrong, I can be pretty

hard to take. But when I'm right I'm insufferable. My

" rightness " leaves me vulnerable to my own arbitrary judgment of

the matter. " A Place Where We Are Right, " a poem by the Israeli

poet Yehudi Amichai, shows this consequence perfectly:

From the place where we are right

Flowers will never grow

In the spring.

The place where we are right

Is hard and trampled

Like a yard.

But doubts and loves

Dig up the world

Like a mole, a plow.

And a whisper will be heard in the place

Where the ruined

House once stood.

(from The Selected Poetry of Yehudi Amichai, translation by Chana Bloch

and Stephen Mitchell, University of California Press, 1996, used with

permission of the translators)

Zen ethics is grounded in the realization that one does not know

what's right. This " not-knowing " is the refuge from which

all moral action originates. It's a refuge that can't be

relegated to the role of moral abstraction and remains a free and alive

expression of the moment. What's offered us in the place of moral

certainty is doubt and love, which are nearly synonymous. Doubt wears

the hard edges off our best ideas and exposes us to the world as it is.

When the great Zen master Ikkyu was asked, " What is Zen? " He

replied, " Attention! Attention! Attention! "

This very attention to a world that's not of our contrivance is an

act of love, for we can only love what we truly see. I can testify to

this in the most mundane way, as can any of us. But here's an

example. I was once traveling in a car with a friend, and a mosquito

kept buzzing around my face and neck until eventually I felt the

telltale itch that told me the mosquito had fed. And then it appeared on

the windshield of the car, its tiny body made translucent against the

sunlight. I could actually see a little red thread of my own blood

shimmering inside the mosquito, and I was touched with admiration and

affection for this beautiful creature whose eggs would feed on an

offering of my own body. I said to my friend, " Look, Ralph, you can

see my blood in the mosquito's body. " And before I could object,

he'd smashed the mosquito with the flat of his hand, leaving nothing

but a red smear on the glass. I don't blame Ralph. I'd looked

and he hadn't. We touch here the crux of Zen ethics that equates

simple mindfulness with the capacity to love. And what else is moral

action if it isn't compassionate responses? We don't get love

from principles; we get love from occupying the ground we stand on.

And the ground we stand on is a field without signposts, in which we

must find our way without conventional supports. There is a passage in

Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs that aptly

describes the nature of our situation. Almiry a character who

while describing a tree could just as well be describing herself, says,

There's sometimes a good hearty tree growin' right out of the

bare rock, out o' some crack that just holds the roots, right on the

pitch o' one of them bare stony hills where you can't seem to

see a wheel-barrowfull o' good earth in a place, but that

tree'll keep a green top in the driest summer. You lay your ear down

to the ground an' you'll hear a little stream runnin'. Every

such tree has got its own living spring; there's folk made to match

'em.

While a Zen Buddhist may cherish and recite her preceptual vows each day

of her life, she nonetheless learns to keep her ear to the ground,

listening to her own living spring and trusting that above all else. She

receives the waters unwittingly, the living spring flowing into her from

all sides—the scrape of shoes on the city street, the studied

precision of the cook cleaning the kitchen counter, the girl swinging

her hair with a twist of her neck, the guard with his feet planted, an

old woman's cough heard from an adjacent room, a hand nervously

clenching and opening, the tone a voice takes, a hesitation in

mid-sentence, a child snatching at a pebble sunk in the creek. She

doesn't accumulate these bits and facts of life like evidence on

which to base a judgment. She doesn't accumulate anything at all,

nor does she form an impression of what she sees and hears. She lets the

waters enter her body like sap rising from roots. She trusts that the

limbs will grow in their own way and that the leaves will unfold in

time.

IT'S POSSIBLE TO DO GOOD and equally possible to do harm, and so

we're stuck with the necessity of choice and consequence. And no

choice can ever be encompassing and conclusive because the moment is a

movement and requires continual adaptation and adjustment. We can

faithfully adhere to a precept, and yet end up doing irreparable harm.

We can never trace the ultimate consequence of our choices, but it's

safe to conclude that whatever we decide to do will be fraught with

certain error and fall short of the best intent. An old Christian story

attributed to the Desert Fathers touches on this human fallibility. The

story goes that a monk asked Abba Sisoius, " What am I to do since I

have fallen? " The Abba replied, " Get up. " " I did get up,

but I fell again, " the monk told him. " Get up again, " said

the Abba. " I did, but I must admit that I fell once again. So what

should I do? " " Never fall down without getting up, " the Abba

concluded. Falling down is what we humans do. If we can acknowledge that

fact, judgment softens and we allow the world to be as it is, forgiving

ourselves and others for our humanity. The Buddha's First Noble

Truth—that suffering exists—is, in itself, a permission to be

human and not demand more of ourselves than we're capable of. Our

compassion arises from our very fallibility, and love takes root in the

soils of human error.

Knowing that we're certain to make crucial mistakes from which

suffering will follow, we seek moral redemption through sustained

attention. We stay around to clean up the mess we've made. If we

really want to keep the Buddha's house in order, we can't afford

to hold anything of ourselves in reserve. To be truly and wholly present

even for the briefest moment is to be vulnerable, for we have arrived at

the point where the obstacle that fear constructs between ourselves and

others dissolves. It is here that the heart is drawn out of hiding and

the inherent sympathetic response called compassion arises. We cease

seeking our own personal happiness at the expense of others, because we

see that the suffering of others is our suffering as well, and we see

that our happiness too is inseparable from that of others. This

expansion of self is what it means to be whole: it's what we truly

are when the living spring of compassion wells up in us, watering the

deserts of discord and distrust with a love that can't be turned

aside. Ethical response is just such an unasked and unimpeded flow;

it's not a talent I can perfect and carry around with me and apply

to situations. It's always new, always for the first time.

The old masters placed the site of ethics within the inward,

instantaneous and entire grasping of circumstances, a living dharma not

divisible into categories of right and wrong. We can know things most

directly when we lay no claim to knowing anything at all. The Zen

Buddhist does not ask what's right and wrong but rather, " What

am I to do at this moment? " She has no opinion to put forth. She has

learned not to acquire answers, and so holds her question open wherever

she goes.

Lin Jensen is the author of Bad Dog and the forthcoming Pavement: A

Buddhist Takes to the Street (Wisdom Publications, Spring 2007). He is

the founding teacher of Chico Zen Sangha, in Chico, California.

December 31, 2009

Stacee peace be with you and may you be blessed as you journey on. . .

Thank you so very much and peace be with you. We can judge, or we can research,

it is not time yet for you to question these things. I pray that be for each of

you on this list. As questioning ones faith is very hard to do. Many have

struggled or are still struggling through the disappointment of seeing the Guru

as a human and feeling hurt and afraid. But apparently this has happened to many

who have followed other humans who exhibit powers. This is something that we

know little about and all of us have been drawn in by Ammachi's power. But Power

and even feeling love around her are still not enough to be grounds for truth.

So please continue to carry your faith, but be watchful and aware, usually in

her presence we are working on our desires and dramas and leelas. This too can

be fun or a disaster. Our understanding of God and Truth is truly limited in

this world. We are vulnerable and fragile and we all want to belong to something

and be encouraged

to be apart of a group and fit in. That is the best that Ammachi has to offer.

But it is worth hearing others stories of deception as well. I would not call

them opinions unless you read them and understand these are experiences that our

fellow brothers and sisters have had with a figure we call the Divine Mother.

The best we can do, and this is what one of Christ's saints has said is that " I

know that there is truly very little that I know. " And try to remain humble and

open to God's Love and Will.

In peace,

S

December 31, 2009

Greetings beloved brothers and sisters and Darling children of

AMMA(LOVE).According to the Scriptures of what we call the Bible,when Jesus

Christ walked in the flesh He was said to be possessed of a demon by many of the

Jews of that time.

It says that " He came to His own and His Own received Him not. " According to

the story

it was His own blood related people that also contributed to the Divine plan of

His crucification.

We on the spiritual path have said that this crucifiction was symbolic of the

ego ,yet we can see it also playing out in our lives and in the lives of the

Saints.

What Master has walked this earth and not been met with controversial

opinions?Have we not beheld this happening over and over again.Who will be

strong enough to say that we all would be wise to look in the mirror and look at

our very own hypocrisy.

I will.i am the worse of what one might call sinners.The bible says that we all

fall short of the glory of GOD.

When Jesus came to this earth is was astrologers not Hebrews that were able to

chart His birth.the Hebrews were to self-righteous to see it.They debated over

and over again on if HE WAS THE MESSIAH.Is this not what some do with AMMA?LOVE

WILL NEVER BE UNDERSTOOD WITH THE MIND.IT TAKES THE HEART.THE HEART WITHIN.THIS

HAPPENS BY WAY OF GRACE NOT THE INTELLECT.

We are always quick to point fingers.With all the hatred in this world, can we

afford to continue looking outside of ourselves for this love.AMMA has enabled

this love that we are looking for to be found within our very own hearts.Christ

did the same thing for those that came to him in Innocence.

LOOK for the GOOD beloved children of AMMA.Look within your very own heart for

that GOOD.Lets not become religious about this.remember we all once knocked

religion people for exploiting Jesus.

if you want to see AMMA at work SHE is on an hour of footage on youtube,LOVING

AND SERVING.just youtube AMMA and the tsunami.

AMMA is the greatest example of a Humanitarian in our time.if people need

intellectual proof then just wath the video's and you will cry tears of

Compassion.

Do we actually believe that Christ is in HEAVEN somewhere plotting to over

throw AMMA on His return.that is so silly.

Even Christ said to " SELL EVERYTHING YOU OWN AND FOLLOW HIM " this is in the

Bible a few times.It was also PEOPLE THAT LIVED IN THE COURTS OF KING HEROD,that

helped to fund Christ mission.any scholar will tell you that and this is also in

th Bible in the book of LUKE.

Christ said to SELL EVERYTHING YOU OWN(GIVE IT TO THE POOR) AND FOLLOW HIM AND

THAT THAT WAS THE PATH TO ETERNAL LIFE.HOW MANY CHRISTIANS ARE DOING THAT,BUT

MANY OF AMMA DEVOTEES ARE.

LOOK AT THE GOOD BELOVED CHILDREN OF AMMA.love,temba spirit

T

Ammachi

stacee.kramer

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:46:42 -0800

Re: An Ear to the Ground