Categories
Images Poetry

Porous

By ~ Warren Summers

Bodies are porous:
Things go in,
Things go out,
Things go through.
Constantly.
Despite our efforts
To block, to pause, to bind, to insulate, to mask, to purify:
Bodies remain porous.

Hearts are porous:
Things go in,
Things go out,
Things go through,
Constantly.
Despite our efforts
To be reasonable, to be rational, to be logical:
Hearts remain porous.

Nations are porous:
Things go in,
Things go out,
Things go through.
Constantly.
Despite our efforts
To draw lines on maps, to police, to punish
To build, to reinforce, to mythologise, to manage, to expand:
Nations remain porous.

Planets are porous:
We go through them,
They go through us.
We go through us,
They go through them.
This going through
neither begins nor ends,
neither starts nor stops,
leaves no trace,
and yet makes all things possible.

The Self is a porous planet:
Heart beating in a failed State
A flimsy body infected with story
A song bordered with a desperate hope.
An unthing undone in the morning,
A mirage of a mystery at midday,
A phantom of darkness at sunset,
And flicker of fury in the evening.

We go in,
We go out,
We go through.
Constantly.
Despite our efforts
To sate, to soothe, to explain, to express,
To imagine, to know, to realise:
The self is a porous planet
Filled with stars.

And the stars are a porous promise:
Of brightness poured forth across a billion billions;
The moon lit with yesterday’s news,
Grown gardens arise from the ashes.
Such is the peculiar invention
The shadows remorseless revision
The fright, the diagnosis, the laughter,
The witness, the dancer,
The end.

Categories
Sand Talk Study Group

Study Group # 5

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock via Wild Magazine

Everybody’s Business

We look forward to coming together for our Study Group this Sunday 16th August at 4:00pm where we will continue our exploration of Tyson Yunkaporta’s Sand Talk.

We strongly encourage you to read/re-read the chapter Duck Hunting is Everybody’s Business pg 201-227. In this chapter we meet the notion of violence being part of the pattern. Perilous & complicated subject matter.

“Creation started with a big bang, not a big hug: violence is part of the pattern. The damage of violence is minimised when it is distributed throughout a system rather than centralised into the hands of a few powerful people and their minions. If you live a life without violence you are living an illusion, outsourcing your conflict to unseen powers and detonating it in an area beyond your living space.”

Sand Talk, pg 223-224

What conflict am I outsourcing? | What/who are the unseen powers? | Can it really be detonated beyond my living space?

The burden of patriarchy and misogyny narrows the lives of every person, irrespective of gender and culture. I strongly believe there needs to be a process of acknowledgement, reflection and renewal.

This requires more than an act of resistance; I see it as a process of rebirth, redesign and reconstruction… Collectively, we need to break free from the bondage of patriarchy, white privilege and the misogynistic structures that control us.  This isn’t just desirable, it is necessary, if we want to be sustainable.

Sand Talk, Kelly’s words, pg 226-7

How do I experience misogyny? | How do I challenge patriarchy and white privilege?

“Violence is clearly part of the way the universe unfolds and expresses itself, is utterly intrinsic to many life processes, and cannot possibly be disowned.  It is also part of the most horrific ways in which lives and communities and nations come tragically apart and cause vast harm.  

So what are some of the places, drawing from our own experience, in which we can see a strategy or response of non-violence and non-harming being brought to meet fruitfully and creatively with violence?”

Roshi Susan Murphy

Please bring your unique contribution and together we will further grow this rich ecosystem we call sangha relations.

()

Karen & Deborah
Study Group Hosts

Categories
2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Covid-19 Eco-Dharma Koans Online Zen Group Roshi Susan Murphy Sand Talk Talks Teachers

‘Tell me, who is that other?’

Talk #5 from Term 2 of our Online Zen Group for 2020. Click here for other talks in this series.

Teacher: Roshi Susan Murphy
8 August 2020

Click on the recording below to listen to this talk now. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()

zen open circle · 'Tell me, who is that other?'
Categories
2020 Term 2 Poetry Sand Talk Study Group

Home, in a time of plague

By ~ Sally Mackinnon

I’ve felt a stuck muteness and poet’s block since 6 September 2019 when the first of the shocking Spring-Summer 2019-20 bushfires devoured the sweet neighbourhoods and subtropical rainforest that I call home – at Beechmont/Binna Burra in South East Queensland. Since then there has been too much news and too many logistics going on in my world.

On an evening walk with my dog recently, as we rounded the top of a steep hill and stood on the edge of the forest in the dark, I had a little yarn with the cosmos…”I miss writing poetry so much; I would love to write again. Please can you help me?” There is such power in intention and asking for help isn’t there? The next morning as the sun streamed into my bedroom, I sat up in bed and gliding through the ether came a poem…

My mother’s pyjamas hang lifeless on the washing line.
From the kitchen window, speckled with webs,
I watch them – inanimate – without her flesh,
as the sun reaches from the east across quiet sky
to light up new leaves on red cedar
like Christmas.

Today I will walk without the dog, into subtropical bush.
Like a whisper of invisible breeze I will drift past
those busy roadworks that deliver
engineered restraints across this mountain
after wildfire scorched us all.
It’s calling me again, that forest.
Any chink in the manmade armour and I’m in;
asking permission to enter only from the Old Ones and the sea of green,
answered by the keen of black cockatoos and shy butterflies.

In this time of plague and serious news from cities,
I pay attention to the way the ground rises to meet my feet;
how earth surface and sole, step-by-step connect.
This is no monologue,
it’s a dance, it’s a song, it’s a deep-time songline and I pray that
simple walking will mind this life…

It’s also this sweet home on the top of the hill that
anchors me here.
Nothing is straight or orderly but the way
the sunset glows through the kitchen to
ignite every facet in my grandmother’s cut glass bowl is an afternoon aria.
After almost a year, we are all home again in this study of light and shade,
pyjamas and forest,
black cockatoos and rising earth.
Nothing is straight or orderly but
at sunrise and sunset we sing.

Today is exactly eleven months since the fire. The study group is reigniting my capacity to lean into more than grief – to be open-heartedly curious and light again; and to feel I am becoming a student of Zen.

I’m so grateful to you all.

()

Sally

Categories
Dawn Dojo Koans Roshi Susan Murphy Sensei Kynan Sutherland Talks Teachers

Dawn Dojo #4: It’s Alive | Song of Zazen

Talks from our 4th fullmoon gathering of the Dawn Dojo. Click here for other talks in this series.

Teachers: Roshi Susan Murphy (Part 1) & Kynan Sutherland (Part 2)
6am | 4th August 2020

In this talk our teachers both mention Hakuin’s ‘Song of Zazen’. You can read the full text of the Song of Zazen here.

Click on the recordings below to listen to the talks from this gathering. We will upload a transcription when it becomes available. ()

zen open circle · Dawn Dojo #4: It's Alive
zen open circle · Dawn Dojo #4: The Dawn Chorus
Categories
Sutras

Song of Zazen

By ~ Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768)

All beings by nature are Buddha,
as ice by nature is water;
apart from water there is no ice,
apart from beings, no Buddha.

How sad that people ignore the near
and search for truth afar,
like someone in the midst of water
crying out in thirst,
like a child of a wealthy home
wandering among the poor.

Lost on dark paths of ignorance
we wander through the six worlds,
from dark path to dark path we wander, when shall we be freed from birth and death?

For this the zazen of the Mahayana deserves the highest praise: offerings, precepts, paramitas, nembutsu, atonement, practice –
the many other virtues –
all rise within zazen.

Those who try zazen even once
wipe away immeasurable crimes –
where are all the dark paths then?
The Pure Land itself is near.

Those who hear this truth even once
and listen with a grateful heart,
treasuring it, revering it,
gain blessings without end.

Much more, if you turn yourself about,
and confirm your own self-nature –
self-nature that is no nature –
you are far beyond mere argument.

The oneness of cause and effect is clear,
not two, not three, the path is straight;
with form that is no form,
going and coming – never astray,
with thought that is no thought
singing and dancing are the voice of the Law.

How boundless and free is the sky of Samadhi,
How bright the full moon of wisdom,
Truly is anything missing now?
Nirvana is right here, before our eyes,
this very place is the Lotus Land,
this very body the Buddha.

Categories
2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Online Zen Group Sand Talk

BLM Link Library Update: New video & Podcasts

Hello Sangha,

Some great new topical listening and viewing in our Bla(c)k Lives Matter Link Library…

You can access the BLM link library directly at www.brightanddark.net/blmlinks or via the [THEMES] menu above. 

If you would like to contribute a link for the library you can do so here or email curlytrees@gmail.com

Enjoy!

()

Oonagh

New video & podcasts:

Country and the gift (2014) : Deborah Bird Rose

In this video, ethnographer Deborah Bird Rose looks at four pathways into country, drawing on the work of Aboriginal writers, elders and philosophers including Mary Graham, Ambelin and Blaze Kwaymullina & Jimmy Mangayarri. She considers working together for country as the most important issue of our time and asks how we could re-imagine cities if the aim of city life was to inhabit and care for country.

The Sydney Which Has No Postcode (2003) by Susan Murphy

An audio feature, written and produced by Roshi Susan in 2003 for Radio National. Exploring spirits of place and how they might talk to us; with Uncle Max Harrison Dulumunmun, Aunty Joan Cooper, Aunty Edna Watson, and sisters Pat and Fay, John Gallard and Red Cloud the kelpie.

Indigenous Language & Perception. ABC RN All in the Mind Podcast Produced by Lynne Malcolm. 2019

Relevant to our explorations of yarning, this program includes discussion of how our perception of the world is significantly affected by the language we speak. It frames our worldview by training our brains in line with cultural understanding. Indigenous languages from around Australia pose a vastly different perspective of the world than that of English. We explore how these languages influence perceptions of self, kinship and the natural world. With Dr Tyson Yunkaporta, linguist Prof Nick Evans and Bardi Psychologist Prof Pat Dudgeon.

I can’t Breathe – ABC 4 Corners Documentary by Stan Grant. 2020.

A profoundly moving story from special guest reporter Stan Grant in the wake of the shocking killing of unarmed black man George Floyd captured on camera in the United States. Mr Floyd’s death under the knee of a white police officer unleashed a wave of grief and anger across America. That wave reached Australia’s shores with thousands of Australians coming out to protest in support of our Indigenous community. In this deeply personal story, Stan Grant gives voice to the frustration and hurt that has defined the life experience of so many Indigenous Australians and explores why the death of George Floyd resonates so profoundly.

Categories
2020 Term 2 Images Miscellaneous Online Zen Group Sand Talk Study Group

Virtual sand talking

It seemed at the latest study group,
that the virtual ZOOM whiteboard was our shared
material cultural activity today;
our campfire.

“The primary mode of communication in yarns is narrative – the sharing of anecdotes, stories and experiences from the lived reality of participants.  Might include sand talk.  Physical demonstrations are included.  Sharing drink or food is often part of the ritual (most commonly cups of tea today).  Often yarning will occur around a shared material cultural activity like weaving, painting, string making, Ceremony preparation, crossword puzzles and setting up birthday party decorations.”

Sand Talk pg 132
Categories
Eco-Dharma Words

A drop in the ocean

By ~ Lizzie Finn | Click here to download this piece as a PDF

When I first started announcing Community Wildlife Corridor hand weeding events last year at the end of our Zen group sits in Western Australia, I felt a little silly. I thought an invitation to hand weed on a relatively small area of land might be considered a little bizarre as an environmental action project for the Zen group, given the huge damage to the global environment and its inhabitants with associated climate change.  ‘What difference is that going to make?’ was the question I figured people might be asking in their heads, and this question is the question underpinning this writing. 

Like me, everyone in the Zen Open Circle group is likely to have experienced an ongoing sense of grief, distress, worry and powerlessness in the face of endless news about practices such as widespread destruction of rainforests and land clearing. These leave native animals homeless and very possibly facing extinction. The recent fires in the Eastern States of Australia, which devastated the bush and its inhabitants, are a grim reminder of the effects of climate change. Associated climate warming now urgently threatens the biodiversity which sustains all life on our planet with a recent Global Assessment report concluding that 25% of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction as the result of human activity. 

These facts are both alarming and overwhelming in the sense of asking the question, ‘What can we do about it? What can I do about it?’ At Zen Open Circle extended practice events and after every Taking Part in the Gathering meeting we sing the Great Vow ‘the many beings are numberless, I vow to save them’, but how on earth do you do that when everything seems to be falling apart? 

As you would be aware, a drop in the ocean means ‘a very small amount, or a drop, compared to the amount needed’.  The ocean and a drop of water are also metaphors used in Zen teaching as a way of referring to the great mystery which we explore in our practice…

Continue reading “A drop in the ocean”
Categories
2020 Term 2 Black Lives Matter Online Zen Group Roshi Susan Murphy Teachers Uncategorized

‘The Sydney which has no postcode’

Susan told the story of John Gallard “downloading” traditional knowledge in her June 28 teisho “Coming From the Side”This story is elaborated in “The Sydney that has no Postcode” a search into the deepest layers of the feel of place,an audio feature, written and produced by Susan in 2003 for Radio National.

The program explores spirits of place and how they might talk to us : sensing the secret agreement that runs through land (still perceptible beneath development) : old roads of Sydney following ancient walking tracks : freeing the old spirits in the land to speak :  the song in the land : conversations with with country without words : feeling the land and spirit places with your body : sacred sites as body : reconciliation with the spirit of the land : belonging in this country with no postcodes : inviting the spirits to make themselves felt : stories of spirit places/sacred sites with Uncle Max Harrison Dulumunmun, Aunty Joan Cooper, Aunty Edna Watson, and sisters Pat and Fay, John Gallard and Red Cloud the kelpie.

zen open circle · The Sydney Which Has No Postcode