June 2019, Taste of life, VOLUME 4 / 31 May 2019

Agents of change

LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN ALANDA GREENE explores the topic of perception. Her experience of picking raspberries in the garden becomes the catalyst for understanding the importance of looking at life and situations from many different angles. I pick thoroughly and am convinced that every ripe raspberry, with the tug of thumb and finger, has slid from its cream-colored conical core. Then I kneel, lean down and look up at the low branches to see if any remain. It is not one or two ripe berries now before me – it is dozens. Again, I pick all I see, drop them in the container hanging from a belt at my waist and move on. While plucking from the other side of the row, I look through the sundappled leaves and see an abundance of ripe berries hanging where I had just picked everything in sight. “Did these ripen in the time it took me to walk to the other side of the row?” I ask myself, knowing full well it is an impossibility, yet feeling it is the only logical explanation. Because I really checked carefully and thoroughly and there were no ready berries in sight a few minutes earlier in that very place. A squirmy feeling lurks in the back of my mind, hidden like the raspberries have been. Eventually, as I wait, it reveals itself; it’s a reminder that changing my angle of vision can expose what has previously been entirely hidden. It’s a reminder that from a certain perspective, I see something clearly (In this case that there are no ripe raspberries). The certainty of it is reassuring. This is the way it is, the way things are. I can trust what I see, what I have experienced and what I know. Then my perspective changes and voila!…

Read More

Focus, June 2019, VOLUME 4 / 31 May 2019

On self-sufficiency, the present moment and gratitude

CHARU SHARMA explores a line in The Lord’s Prayer, and learns a lot in the process about how we can relate to the Giver. I have been pondering over the meaning of a line in the Christian prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, for some time now: “Give us today our daily bread.” My initial thought was that the line conveyed a demand of Providence, asking Him to supply us with food unconditionally. After mentally repeating it a few times and feeling the words in my heart, this thought changed as I felt a tone of softness to it. It seemed to convey a fact; one of basic need. The meaning began to open up to me in a deeper way. I felt that if at all we were to ask for something from the Giver, we could ask for our basic need of the day, no more, no less. In all likelihood such a request would be granted too. The request implies a need to achieve self-sufficiency so that once our basic needs are taken care of, we can then apply ourselves to the meaningful purpose of our lives. This line in the prayer also implies the profundity of each day, of the present, of the here and now. It doesn’t ask for a supply of food or resources for an unlimited time period, or even enough to last for a month or a year. It is a simple request asking for basic food for the day. It suggested to me that each day lived fully was an achievement, a big step forward, in fact, just as important as a lifetime lived to its fullest. This understanding opens up a whole new dimension to the concept of living on a ‘day-to-day’ basis, being utterly joyous for it, and giving many thanks…

Read More

It changes everything, June 2019, VOLUME 4 / 31 May 2019

Gratitude is a companion to kindness

DONNA CAMERON is the author of A Year of Living Kindly. In this chapter from her book, she explores the significance of gratitude in daily life. “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” Meister Eckhart Many countries and cultures have holidays devoted to gratitude. Americans and Canadians celebrate Thanksgiving, though not on the same dates. It is an opportunity for us to pause and acknowledge our countries’ heritage and all we – collectively and individually – have to be thankful for. Ideally, we should be doing this every day of our lives, but sometimes business and busyness crowd out gratitude. Throughout my year of living kindly, I noticed over and over that kindness and gratitude go hand in hand and augment one another. This is never more evident to me as when I spend time in Nature. Whether I’m hiking, relaxing on my deck with its view of the Cascade Mountains, or strolling my neighborhood, I often feel my heart opening to the nature around me – the flight and song of birds, the vast variety of trees and the way they change with the seasons, the surge of the creek in winter and its lazy amble in summer, the deer that visit our yard to nibble on the fallen apples. These things make me want to give back to the Earth and to my community. I was attending a weekend conference in Pittsburgh during my year of living kindly. It was late May, and the weather was glorious. I had a free afternoon, so I walked to a nearby park and sat on a bench with a book. I divided my time between reading and appreciating the sights around me. The park was like a living organism –…

Read More

Interview, June 2019, VOLUME 4 / 31 May 2019

A tibetan journey

ROBERT CHILTON has spent most of his adult life keeping alive the written traditions of Buddhism in the Tibetan language. The significance of this work is that many of the original Sanskrit texts of the Buddha and the early Buddhists were lost, so now these Tibetan texts are the most accurate record we have of the Buddha’s teachings. Here he shares with ELIZABETH DENLEY how he ended up in Kathmandu and eventually took on this archival work of preserving one of the world’s great traditions. Q: Robert, you’ve been involved with the Tibetan and Nepalese monasteries for some time. Can you tell us what you have been doing there? RC: Well, in a sense it started because I was a seeker. I was trying to find a way to have some sort of an authentic spiritual life, first within the Christian tradition, and then by a number of interesting ‘coincidences’ I managed to find myself in Kathmandu in Nepal. I met Tibetan lamas there, and they were not only as knowledgeable as the best professors I’ve had at Duke university, but they also had the other side, which was they’d developed a humanness. They were both the best scholar you might meet as well as your favorite grandfather or grandmother, who would just know what you needed and find a way to give it to you. And I thought, “Okay, this is an authentic path.” When I first came back after spending about a year and a half in Asia – Nepal, India, China – my family and close friends said, “So did you convert to Buddhism?” I said, “No, no, it wasn’t like that. As I’ve learned more about the teachings in the Indo-Tibetan tradition, I’ve realized that it’s what I’ve always believed. That’s what makes sense to me,…

Read More

Focus, June 2019, VOLUME 4 / 31 May 2019

Prayer of awareness

God is the foundation for everything. This God undertakes, God gives. Such that nothing that is necessary for life is lacking. Now humankind needs a body that at all times honors and praises God. This body is supported in every way through the Earth. Thus the Earth glorifies the power of God. Prayer by HILDEGARD VON BINGEN