15 Strange Coincidences

2Spare - Top 15 Strangest Coincidences
Thank you Y.
Carol might call them miracles :)

ListeningLounge - Gift Certificates

ListeningLounge - Gift Certificates
Buy Gift Certificate(s)
1. You specify who you want to buy gift certificate(s) for, and how much money goes to each certificate
2. We can either e-mail the gift certificate redemption codes to the recipient(s), or you can have the codes sent to you so that you can write the code in a nice looking card and deliver it yourself.
3. When the recipient visits this site, he or she types in the redemption code during the checkout process to redeem all or some of the value. (Any remaining value can be used later using the same redemption code.)

How many gift certificates do you want to buy? This will make a great gift for your friends - also easy gift-giving for larger groups of recipients, corporate gifts etc...

What is a Haiku?

A haiku is not a poem, it is not literature; it is a hand beckoning, a door half-opened, a mirror wiped clean. It is a way of returning to nature, to our moon nature, our cherry blossom nature, our falling leaf nature, in short, to our Buddha nature. It is a way in which the cold winter rain, the swallows of evening, even the very day in its hotness, and the length of the night, become truly alive, share in our humanity, speak their own silent and expressive language. - R. H. Blyth

Beautiful. Thanks Y.

Tradition and Challenge

Bielefeldt. Participatory Buddhism
If we have an historical obligation to criticize our tradition, we must also recognize that the more we fix the tradition to our liking, the less power it may have to challenge us to fix ourselves.

I have thought about this a lot - the need to have something to push against. Perfection is death - nothing left to add to the painting...Rebellion against parents/institutions/traditions initiates growth. Not sure about the term "fixing oneself" - maybe a foothold against we can push...

Evolution and Religion

Evolution and Religion - Darwin’s God - Robin Marantz Henig - New York Times
Very interesting article in the New York Times.

Dropping Body

Message from Zoketsu
Someone asked me about Dogen’s “drop body and mind” and I told the Dogen biographical story, which the person hadn’t known. “Drop” really means “to be free of, not attached to, not identified with.” It’s not some sort of mystical erasure of all experience – an ultimate escape to oblivion. The sleeping monk whom Rujing slaps is being told “to sleep in zazen is to succumb to unconscious attachment to the body; and zazen is to be free of body as well as mind!” So simply to sit in zazen experiencing the body’s sensations as they are, and whatever arises in the mind as it is (without worry or identification) is to drop body and mind. Not so spectacular a deal, yet, at the same time, the most fundamental deal there is.

Norman Fischer (Zoketsu) wrote a great foreword to Beyond Thinking: A Guide to Zen Meditation, a book Tanahashi Sensei gave me last month. I found the above quote on his own web site.

Moon

Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain
But at the peak we all gaze at the single bright moon.
Just awaken to the truth; how and where do not matter.
- Ikkyu

Thank you Y.