Tarchin Hearn teaching in Melbourne Tarchin will be in Melbourne from April 13th until May 2nd 2010 courtesy of Open Path Meditation. Download flyer with details here Threatened by Cancer? Meditation DOES Help! Take a look at my eBook detailing my research into Meditation and Cancer. See "Things to Buy"
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written by Jacqui, on February 24th, 2010 | 5 comments |  Print
A common theme of the Dalai Lama these days as he speaks to the world with great compassion is to urge us to take responsibility for our actions. He urges us to reflect deeply on the consequences of all our actions and inaction, the latter in the face of injustice, environmental damage, persecution and the like. It is with this plea for each of us to move from self-serving ends to a larger sense of responsibility for all living beings, that I am offering this moving essay by one of my spiritual teachers, Tarchin Hearn. 
by TARCHIN on JANUARY 26 2010
There was a time when the land was experienced as alive and sentient.
It was not property. It was not even environment.
It birthed all beings and at the right time,
received each and everyone, back into her fullness.
It was both matrix and mystery and a source of wonder, reverence and awe.
Today, in our culture of commerce, land has become property.
It is seen as a commodity; something to be bought or sold,
a resource to be used or abused or at best enjoyed.
What happened?
A few months ago, people across the road began to dig up a two acre paddock to create an off track motor cycle track. This caused a considerable upheaval amongst many of the neighbors who were very concerned about the noise. The issue of the noise was eventually resolved but the issue of tearing up a living meadow was never even addressed. This interaction stimulated a lot of thoughtful discussion and these reflections on owning land, have arisen as a result.
Tens of thousands of years ago, with the emergence of thinking, remembering and story telling, the gregarious cultural creatures that were our ancestors, experienced the living earth as something created by an ineffable, essentially nameless mystery; a mystery eventually pointed at with words such as God, Allah, Atman or the Divine Spirit. The land was given to nourish and sustain all creatures. Back then, people lived lightly on the earth and their sense of ownership was probably very unformed. At that time, most humans were nomadic hunters and gatherers, learning the skills of observation, knowing when this plant ripened and when that shrub suggested the presence of water, and when a particular pattern of weather indicated the migration of the animals they depended on for food. We shared in the mystery with each other and with the other creatures living here with us.
About eighteen thousand years ago, animal husbandry and plant cultivation began to appear. Patterns of land use associated with sedentary agriculture, blossomed in the natural world and humans began to accumulate things, leaving traces to intrigue the archeologists of today.
Ten thousand years ago, towns, and division of labour: builders, gardeners, warriors, merchants, priests and so forth, began to leave their marks. Attitudes and understandings about life slowly but surely changed. In the course of time, ‘kings’ were seen to hold the land in trust for God. Piecing together from archeology and mythology, it seems likely that there was often a sense of responsibility, what later became known as a noblesse oblige,(1) on the part of the rulers towards their subjects. A shared system of cultural beliefs linked the king’s moral foundation and the health and welfare of the land and all its inhabitants.
In more recent years, as the human population expanded, land was sometimes bestowed by the king on other men who had given him service. (There was not much evidence of land being bestowed on women.) Perhaps this was the beginning of sub dividing and real estate investment. Now we see a proliferation of little kingdoms within a larger single kingdom, and all of these within the kingdom of god, which itself was within the matrix and mystery of un-namable becoming.
By the late 1800s, the European social system was disintegrating. Revolutions, wars, accelerating growth of human population and the birth of a merchant class that measured wealth in terms of money and power, began to rapidly change the shape of our relationship with the earth. No longer the rule of nature, no longer the rule of god, no longer the divine right of kings or the rule of justice; now we begin to see the rule of law; and law was almost always something imposed by the rich and physically strong.
Following the two world wars of the twentieth century, the ideal of ‘owning’ land became realizable by large numbers of people. Perhaps even readers of this essay. The living earth, a dynamically evolving matrix of becoming, a loam of sentient beings, was gradually transformed in our beliefs and understandings. It became solidified, objectified and then carved up into parcels that are now owned by countless little kings and queens.
In New Zealand today, as in many other parts of the world there is a cherished assumption that when one ‘owns’ a section of land, one can then do anything one likes on it, or to it, as long as it doesn’t contravene the local human made laws. We seem blithely unconcerned about the natural order of life unfolding. My home is my castle. No-one has a right to tell me what I can or can’t do on ‘my land’. The owner has all rights and virtually no obligations, beyond paying taxes. Certainly no obligations, no noblesse oblige, to the sentient beings living on, in, and through, the land. By and large, these assumptions and beliefs about ownership and the right to do as one wishes, are deeply internalized and very rarely questioned.
When Mary and I began to hold the title for a two acre section of rural land near Katikati,(2) we were told that a local attitude about owning land was expressed with the phrase, “a good fence is the first step to good neighborliness.” The idea was that, by clearly defining what was and what was not your property, this would diminish arguments since it was none of your neighbor’s business what you did on your property and none of your business, what they did on their’s.
The whole idea of owning land is deeply and tragically flawed. The land that we think we own, is in fact an extraordinarily dense community of living beings that have been evolving with each other and through each other for millions of years. It is a summation of the birthing and dying of uncountable numbers of beings. What on earth could it mean to own another living being or to own whole communities of beings?
I was about five or six years old when I first registered of the size of the human population. It was approximately two and a half billion. Today, it is approaching seven billion. An extraordinary number of people aspire to rule a kingdom. Everyone is touched by the ideal of owning their own land. Large properties are being further sub-divided at a staggering pace. Sections of land are becoming smaller and smaller and yet this deeply cherished belief, that owning land entitles us to do anything we want with it, is stronger than ever. We can dig it up or pave it over. We can clear cut the trees or plant mono-culture crops. We can poison, maim and destroy virtually any non-human beings that live there, with legal impunity. We can ‘develop’ the property and then sell it on for a short term profit. We can do virtually anything we like with it.
The concept ‘owning land’ is now so deeply woven into the structure of present day human cultural beliefs and assumptions, that it almost carries the power of a religious conviction. To question it is risky. So many of our understandings about ourselves and our place in nature are tied up with it that, depending on where you live, to seriously raise these issues for debate can leave you open to being accused of being a marxist or an anarchist, or to be dismissed as a flaky animal rights person, or an idealistic greenie. Politicians are always in the news but question that is not being debated by our law makers and parliamentarians is our relationship with the rest of the living world.
Much of our ideas and ideals about owning land are undoubtedly based on emotional needs for security and control which are sometimes extended into needs for prestige and power. Perhaps ‘property’ is something that ‘props’ us up. Once God looked after us. Then kings. Then nobles. And now it’s everyone looking after him or herself, and sometimes their immediate families. This way of relating to the land has become a disaster for every living being. A fantasy of commercial real estate has replaced the deep experiential knowing of our real estate. Emotional assumptions and legal frameworks are blinding us to the reality of this living world, of which we are all part.
What we do on this piece of land affects all the surrounding land and the water and the atmosphere and the living beings that comprise it. They make up our environment. We are a dynamic part of their environment. Our mutual shaping over vistas of time reveals the shape of evolution. Even to speak of a ‘piece’ of land is potentially misleading as it can reinforce so many illusions and delusions. The ‘piece’ or ‘block’ or ’section’ may exist in a registry of the local municipality but it is really nothing more than a conceptual construct. In reality, that block of land, this piece of earth, is continuous with the rest of the planet; an extraordinary living sphere, perhaps even a living organism, floating in space. Sectioning off pieces of land as functionally independent from everything else is perhaps analogous to identifying and dissecting out parts of our body. My liver isn’t a piece of body to be bought or sold. It is a living organ that is part of a community of organs each with their own whakapapa(3) weaving its way backwards through time for billions of years. It is also a bit mad to say that I can pour alcohol into my liver to the point of cirrhosis and it is not the business of my heart, or lungs or neurons that I do.
In this age of i-phones, social networking and global finance we humans need to find ways to stay in touch with our deep, trans-species, communal nature. This is a moral imperative that is necessary for our survival. We need each other. We arise from each other. We are food for each other and, as Gary Snyder(4) has written, through the act of eating each other we touch an extraordinarily basic level of communion; they becoming us and we becoming them, a daily demonstration of our tangible union and need for each other.
I hope this essay doesn’t sound like utopian ‘pie in the sky’. I’m writing it as an invitation for all of us to think deeply on these issues and to allow the possibility of a fresh way of being what we are, and of being with each other. The idea of owning land has evolved in our minds over the course of thousands of years. Its pedigree is inextricably interwoven with who and what we think we are and with our place in the world of people and the world of other creatures and landscapes. Political revolutions, or law changes won’t make make such a pervasive concept go away.
If we must retain the concept of ‘owning land’ then it surely needs to be infused with a profound breadth of ecological understanding. These days, there is much talk about sustainability. The only thing that is truly sustainable is life. If there is to be a future for us then ‘ownership’ of land must go hand in hand with a deepening sense of responsibility. To drive a car, one must first take a test that proves a basic degree of competence and only then do we get a license. Perhaps we need to have licenses to ‘own land’. Like the noblesse oblige of by-gone eras, land owners should be obliged to acquaint themselves with the immense diversity of living beings and processes that together compose their land and then to interact with these particular beings, the land, this living matrix, in ways that, in the words of biologist Aldo Leopold,(5) “tend to support the integrity, the stability and the beauty of the (entire) biotic community.”
There was a time when the land was experienced as alive and sentient.
It was not property. It was not even environment.
It birthed all beings and at the right time,
received each and everyone, back into her fulness.
It was both matrix and mystery and a source of wonder, reverence and awe.
May we realise that time, is now.
Endnotes:
(1) – noblesse oblige, Oxford English Dictionary => privilege entails responsibility
(2) – We have a reluctance to think in terms of owning this land, hence the phrase ‘holding title’. Having written these words, it strikes me that the phrase, ‘to hold title’ probably hearkens back to the times when kings awarded land and along with the land went a title. What alternatives do we have? Instead of ‘owning land’ we could say that we pay for the privilege of being ‘custodians’ or ‘guardians’ of the land, but this implies we have the knowledge and skills to do what until recent times was the juridiction of God or Mother Nature. The more I contemplate the question of land ownership, the more I feel that in order to support a truly sustainable world we will need a revolution of understanding and attitude towards the land and the world of which we are part.
(3) – whakapapa; a Maori word meaning genealogy, family tree or cultural identity
(4) – Gary Snyder, “The Real Work”, New Directions Books 1980
(5) – Aldo Leopold, “A Sand County Almanac”, Oxford University Press 1989
written by Jacqui, on February 10th, 2010 | 7 comments | Print
In one’s search for the seeds of ill will to weed out, I have often been surprised to discover subtle elements of ill will lurking amongst seemingly innocent reactions to surprise prompts.
 New life! Only yesterday I discovered some disconcerting evidence of one of these underground streams of subtle ill will manifesting in disguised form in the reply I gave to an interesting question posed by a young man (32 years old) who is close to me.
He asked if I felt that, at 62 years old, I was running out of time to do all the things I wanted to do. This was a deep question and I failed to honor it by pausing and quietly contemplating how to answer. Instead, I can see now that I fell prey to the negative, ‘glass-half-empty’ stream of karmic predispositions (habituated responses) and launched into a little speech expressing relief at drawing nearer to the end of this life as I could now put aside career ambitions and demands and I might be able to avoid some of the painful effects of anticipated global warming and the fall of the Anglo/American empire!
I acknowledged that I would not actually avoid these painful anticipated consequences of actions (seeds of karma) already taken as I would be reborn into the flow of cause and effect. However, in this new life there would be a new set of learnings that would condition my early years and would hopefully be more helpful than the set of conditioned childhood learnings from this present life. I expressed the view that there seemed to be an ever-increasing gap, or dissonance, between values, skills and expectations learned in my youth and what is dominant today. My perceptions as I spoke were of the dark side that I might avoid and yet I was simultaneously feeling content with my life and happy. What a contradiction! What a self-centred view! No wonder I felt uneasy and later wanted to replace my answer with one of the many more optimistic and compassionate responses that flooded in.
However, it still took me some time to discover why I felt uncomfortable with my quick response to my friend’s question. In fact, it was not till my meditation this morning that I finally noticed the emphasis on ’self’; the separating of self from others; the separation of this life from that life and, above all, the lack of compassion. A couple of years ago, one of my teachers gave a profound teaching that I have contemplated ever since. She said, “altruism is the greatest happiness!” I was on retreat at the time and had the daily practice of wishing healing and happiness to a long list of family, friends, teachers, clients and acquaintances. Running through this list, I noticed that each of these people (and myself) did indeed appear happy when they helped others or reflected on how they had helped another.
So, how do I see my answer to the young man as flavoured by ill will? It appears to me now that there was both ignorance (delusion) and ill will in my answer. The ignorance was based on an implicit sense of separate identity and manifestation and the ill will was in caring more about my escape than about the anticipated suffering of younger people and, indeed, all beings caught in the sufferings of Samsara! This incident strikes me as a good example of the power of karmic predispositions that have a tendency to impulsively push aside more recently adopted compassionate and appropriate learning and aspiration.
So my answer now to the young man can be summarised as:
 Abundant life! “No, I do not feel that I am running out of time! I feel I have been very fortunate in this life but I have a lot to learn. There is abundance all around! I need to use every moment of life, now and in the future, to be present, compassionate and aware so that I can better understand how to promote happiness and wellbeing for all. The ending of this body form is not an ending but a transition into another life form, with yet more opportunity for learning, experiencing and giving”.
Well, how would you answer the young man’s question? Any reflections on the sense of “time running out” and “not enough time to do what one wants in this life” would be most welcome.
Wishing you well and happy,
Jacqui
written by Jacqui, on January 25th, 2010 | 1 comment | Print
This morning I have been struck by three bright experiences that I want to share with you. The first arrived when sitting in meditation, ‘trying’ to “become like a rainbow!” A rainbow-like experience arises briefly but is quickly followed by sensory observations and fleeting thoughts. I remember the instruction: “Just allow whatever is there to be there”. In other words, “be aware!” Gradually as I drop the struggle to stop thoughts and be a rainbow, the thoughts and sensory read-outs do move to the background and a sense of clarity and spaciousness arises. The focus is on ‘allowing’ and brightening awareness of what is.
My second experience came sipping my coffee after a quiet breakfast, sitting alone on the deck of my house, overlooking grass, trees and water as I contemplated the flow of cause and effect described in the TV documentary “Crude”[oil] that my husband and I had watched last night. Inspired by the wondrous, continually dissolving and re-forming, colourful visuals of the documentary, I experienced the history of earth - formed predominantly by the combinations of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen - as the interdependence of all beings and all phenomena.
The documentary (as I understood and summarised it) traced the history of oil as the energy of the sun captured in the plants that sank to the ocean’s depths to form a plankton graveyard. During the Jurassic period of the dinosaurs the excessive clouds of carbon dioxide led to dramatic climate change and super greenhouse-increased temperatures, humidity and flooding. The dead material washed into the ocean depths was then ‘cooked’ by pressure into oil or gas. As the changed conditions burned the vegetation and killed other life forms, the overheated oceans were deprived of oxygen and became dead, stagnant graveyards that locked up the excessive carbon as oil and gas, eventually resulting in temperatures dropping, until mankind discovered this amazing source of energy and released it back into the environment.
Driven by greed and blinded through lack of awareness, our excessive use of oil in all its many discovered forms has dangerously effected our climate and the health of air, earth and water. So round and round we go as our actions change the conditions and the conditions influence our actions. In other words, the flow of karma shapes the samsaric world!
And so I come to my third ‘experience’ of this morning. This time I am struck by some wise teaching I have read in the current version of Buddhadharma in which Glenn Wallis quotes the following sutra by Siddhartha Gautama on ‘Destination‘: 
I will teach the destination and the path leading to the destination. Listen to what I say. What is the destination?
The eradication of infatuation, the eradication of hostility, and the eradication of delusion is what is called the destination.
And what is the path leading to the destination?
Present-moment awareness directed toward the body. This awareness is what is called the path leading to the destination.
In this way, I have taught to you the destination and the path leading to the destination. That which should be done out of compassion by a caring teacher who desires the welfare of his students, I have done for you.
There are secluded places. Meditate, do not be negligent! Don’t have regrets later! This is my instruction to you.
-Parayana Sutta; Samyuttanikaya 4.43.44.
Now to my mind this is a very clear instruction by the Buddha on why the increased awareness promoted in meditation practice leads to the reduction of suffering and brings you to the destination of Nirvana. If we look at the grand story of oil and the history of planet earth, we can see how infatuation (or greed, desire and passion) for what oil appears to give us has blinded us to the negative consequences of our overuse of this ‘liquid gold’ and even now, as many eyes open to see the dangers, infatuation for wealth and convenience stops us from taking the steps that may prevent threatened catastrophe.
On the micro level, this teaching is a great reassurance and a guide to me on how to relate to my meditation practice. It reminds me that the purpose of my sitting mindfully, with clear awareness, is to notice what arises and let it go. Notice the body states, the mind states and the impulses and let them go, thus undermining the habits of infatuation/desire, hostility and grasping at the delusion of a separate self.
So there you have it: the three bright thoughts that have moved me this beautiful, sunny morning. Perhaps you can think of some bright experiences of the last twenty-four hours?
With warm wishes,
Jacqui
written by Jacqui, on January 5th, 2010 | 4 comments | Print
Noticing the strength of habitual self referencing, reflected in the show of excessive apologising during recent hosting of wealthy English family members visiting us for Christmas, I am prompted to make some resolutions for 2010. Clearly, I need further work on developing loving kindness, acceptance, compassion and equanimity - amongst many other qualities!
It was somewhat unnerving to notice - with the help of my 22 year old and 32 year old daughters - how frequently (read ‘impulsively’) I fell into what I had thought was an outdated habit of internalised ‘put-downs’, expressed externally as apologies for inferior sleeping quarters; inferior, squashed seating arrangements for eating and limited cooking abilities of ‘vegetarian-only’ food!
On reflection, I noticed that I had unconsciously slipped into judging and negatively comparing our simple country house, lifestyle and limited cash supply with the visiting family’s urban, up-market, successful-business-oriented lifestyle, house, clothes, possessions and ready cash.
On a conscious level, I was and am very happy with our values and lifestyle and have no wish to swap places. However, it appears that although we all got on very well together, in a warm, happy, celebrating, sharing atmosphere, at an unconscious level the material lifestyle differences between our two families triggered some of the defensive behaviours learned during childhood.
 From big things little things grow! My childhood family were caught in endless financial struggle, trying to uphold their social place as their material resources relentlessly slipped further and further behind their peers. While my mother struggled to care for the five children and overly large house that was falling apart, my father’s snobbish ’superior/inferior’ defence, angry criticisms and erratic behaviours became ever more marked.
However much I have always disliked the thought, some of these defences rubbed off on me! The endless criticisms became internalised and often unconscious. I have for many years been targeting for demolition the English, class-based, habits of endless judgement and comparison and so it was sobering to find, so recently, that these particular seeds of karma were still alive and well once watered with a strong dose of supportive conditions!
This brief reflection on one of my less attractive “little me” behaviours during the Christmas period, has provided a good launching pad for a set of new year aspirations. I need to further develop loving kindness and acceptance of myself and others, ‘warts and all!’ What is also needed is a good dose of compassion blended with effort to develop the wisdom to fully comprehend ‘anatta’, the essential emptiness of a self-existing ego-entity, or any other abiding substance. To put myself down shows as much pride and ignorance as comparing myself favourably, or even believing that I am ‘equal to’ the other.
There is no reason for me to despair in response to noticing the continued life in my impulsive self degradations and comparisons. Instead, it is much more useful to notice that I need to remain mindful of these karmic predispositions (or seeds of past action) and, as soon as I notice myself comparing, excusing, judging or criticising myself or others, replace this negative mind state with loving kindness and acceptance so that equanimity develops and the self referencing drops away. As is usually the case, self referencing (or putting myself centre stage and separate) is the root cause of these negative tendencies. The relative truth of the continually changing and impermanent form, socially identified as “me”, must be balanced with the absolute truth of the impersonality, insubstantiality and continual forming and emptying of all existence.
To increase my understanding of this central Buddhist doctrine of anatta is a lifetime aspiration that can be supported by the day to day development of loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. The more I can develop these qualities during 2010 the less susceptible I will be to comparing, judging and criticising. What a relief that will be!
If any of you would like to share your new year resolutions, or any reflections or questions arising from this piece of writing, I’d love you to express them in the comments box below.
With very warm wishes for the new year of 2010,
Jacqui 
written by Jacqui, on November 19th, 2009 | 2 comments | Print
I have just launched an ebook titled “Meditation and Cancer: It Does help!” For details see under new menu category “Things to Buy“.
This eBook combines a guide on meditation practices to promote health with true stories of people living with cancer who used meditation as part of their healing strategy. In addition, each chapter ends with a guided meditation and some questions to prompt reflection on possible areas of one’s lifestyle and ways of relating that might benefit from change.
This eBook “Meditation and Cancer : It Does help!“ details research that I undertook and which was awarded a first class honours degree. The research won me a scholarship to do further doctoral research on alternative and complementary ways of healing cancer.
My hope is that the combination of a step-by-step guide on meditating for health and the examples of people who have tried such methods when actually unwell with a life-threatening illness will inspire and help people use these methods of working with the mind to heal the body and other unsatisfactory aspects of one’s life.
Unlike so many medicines and treatments, meditation is free and can be practiced in the privacy of one’s own home, at one’s own pace.
If you, or someone close to you, has a chronic or life-threatening illness - such as cancer - then take a look at this ebook “Meditation and Cancer: It Does Help!“
Warm wishes,
Jacqui
written by Jacqui, on November 11th, 2009 | Add your comment | Print
The Quakers - or Society of Friends - probably have the Western world’s record for their consistent commitment over the centuries to peace and non-violence, in the face of numerous wars and oppression often fought in the name of religion. Listen to my interview with 83 y.o. Ruth Watson, who - as a Quaker - has spent much of her life supporting peace, mutual understanding and non-violent action for justice. In addition to describing some of the defining practices and beliefs of the Quakers, Ruth speaks about the many similarities with Buddhist thought and reflects on her service representing the Quakers on The United Nations Peace Committee.
Enjoy the interview with Ruth!
Warm wishes,
Jacqui
written by Jacqui, on October 26th, 2009 | 5 comments | Print
Most of us find periods of explicit uncertainty very difficult to handle with equanimity. Indeed, the urgent desire to ‘know’ the way forward — to escape that uncertainty — or change the scenario, can feel quite overwhelming. It is this desire for it to be different that causes the extreme suffering associated with the times when we know we don’t know. I’m thinking of times that we may be waiting for medical or academic test results. Or news from a loved one or awaiting our estranged partner’s decision to return home or set up house elsewhere. So many times when we know we have no control over what comes next.
As the Buddha said, “suffering is wanting things to be different!” We yearn to be able to fix things; to be able to turn the clock backwards or forwards!
Impermanence ensures uncertainty
However, if we look carefully, we can see the impermanent nature of all things, resulting in moment-to-moment uncertainty! Everything we can experience, on any level of being, is constantly changing. In order to feel more comfortable, we have a strong tendency to think and act as though we can predict at least some of the more mundane aspects of our day to day life. The authority figures in our particular culture play on this desire for ‘certainty’ when they issue their directions and their predictions of how things will be. The problem is that it is a delusion to believe we - or the authorities - can accurately predict even the next moment!
Yesterday I heard that a friend had died. He felt he had a touch of ‘flu one night and lay down on the living room couch. His wife decided to leave him there for the night. In the morning he was dead! He was a few years short of 50 and thought to be healthy.
 Which way? Which way? ‘Bardo’ — the in-between state
This in-between period, between knowing and not-knowing; between one perception and the next; between feeling good and learning you have lost something precious; or between learning of the death of a loved person and the grieving period prior to accepting this loss, is known in Buddhist terms as ‘bardo’. The term ‘bardo’ is often seen as the period between birth and death and death and the next life but, more accurately, it is the gap between this moment and the next unknown moment.
In Buddha Dharma, the larger bardos are (1) the bardo of this life; (2) the bardo of dream (the gap between going to sleep and waking up); (3) the bardo of meditation; (4) the bardo of dying; (5) the bardo of dharmata (or reality — the seeing as it really is) and (6) the bardo of existence (or becoming).
So bardo is both the gap between moments and the much larger intervals that punctuate all our experience of waking, sleeping, meditating, being born and dying.
Freedom in accepting uncertainty
Pema Chodron, a wise North American Buddhist nun and spiritual teacher, tells us that “nothing to hold on to” is the root of happiness! She points to the sense of freedom that comes from acceptance that we are not in control and we don’t “know.”
Generally we don’t want to stay in that middle place of “unknowing” because it makes us feel vulnerable and uneasy. However, it is by staying open and flexible, explicitly acknowledging our uncertainty, that we begin to access our inner strength, a strength that is based on compassion, wisdom and loving acceptance, or equanimity.
As Pema Chodron says, our practice is “to stay with the uneasiness and not solidify into a view. We can meditate, do tonglen, or simply look at the open sky–anything that encourages us to stay on the brink and not solidify into a view.”
 Misty blue distance … Working with paradox
As time goes on and my awareness of impermanence deepens as I watch my body — and the bodies and circumstances of my family and friends — age and change, I find myself thinking more and more in terms of paradox, rather than right or wrong; this or that! Interestingly, allowing paradox (the co-existence of opposite ideas) to more frequently replace my learned tendency to make ’statements’, as though I know things, has indeed brought with it a sense of spaciousness and possibility that feels joyful and hopeful.
On those rare occasions that I allow myself to watch the (generally bad) news of global warming, disasters, war and terrorism, I am tested to maintain this open view. I notice the definiteness with which the news and predicted dire consequences are pronounced and it is indeed a challenge to remember how peace follows war and disasters can bring out the best in people, as well as causing enormous suffering.
Hopefully, I remember that I don’t know, and they don’t know what comes next. Hopefully I remember to keep my heart open and hold the aspiration for courage, support and skilful resolution of the challenges each of us face, moment to moment, in our unknowing.
The goal is to maintain a state of non-clinging awareness and equanimity. In this state we are free, open and happy!
Perhaps some of you have ideas on coming to terms with uncertainty? Any thoughts, comments, questions are most welcome!
Warm wishes,
Jacqui
written by Jacqui, on October 13th, 2009 | 1 comment | Print
I am moved to share with you my present experience of passing time, waiting the long seven hours at an airport before I can take the late night flight back to my home city, a further five and a half hours away. I am entirely responsible for this inconvenience as I have missed my planned flight. Although I have cut times tight before, I have never yet actually missed a flight. It is a timely lesson for me and I want to share with you some of my reactions to putting myself in this position. Read the rest of this entry …
written by Jacqui, on September 26th, 2009 | 2 comments | Print
It’s all very well to feel a compassionate response to hearing about a friend in trouble or pain, or to be strongly moved by a story on the news or in a documentary, but how can I put this compassion into action?
Tonglen is a long established Buddhist practice of taking into one’s heart the pain of another, or others, whether they be human, animal, bird or insect. I have heard some people expressing concern that by doing this you are inviting illness, or the particular form of suffering you are taking into your heart, to actually take root in your being and make you sick. But then I wonder why so many revered Buddhist teachers, from many different schools, strongly encourage their students to take up this practice, both for their own spiritual development and to relieve the suffering of others. Sogyal Rinpoche, for example, Read the rest of this entry …
written by Jacqui, on September 9th, 2009 | 2 comments | Print
The audio interview with Cecilie Kwiat, a Canadian dharma teacher, based in Alberta, is now available. Cecilie has been primarily influenced by her, now deceased, root guru, Namgyal Rinpoche, of the Kargyu Tibetan Buddhist school. She has also practiced a wide range of dharma with teachers from Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Burma, India, China and Tibet, teaching from Vajrayana, Mahayana, Theravadin and Zen Buddhist schools.
In this (hour long) interview Cecilie shares how she has learned to live and work with her own physical pain and aging process and the physical and mental pain of others. She reflects on her distinctive and trusting attitude towards money, ranging over her experiences living on the street in her youth through to the last thirty or so years living “by the bowl”, dependent on free giving by others. She compares some of the basic similarities and differences between Buddhist and Western psychological approaches to suffering and healing, plus some of the similarities and differences in the relationships between therapists and their clients and teachers and their students. She emphasises the key importance of compassionate motivation and has some particularly interesting things to say about some unhelpful Western attitudes towards rituals that are seen as shaped by mystifying Eastern cultural influences but may actually be powerful vehicles for wisdom transmission, when explored with an open mind.
I hope you enjoy this stimulating interview as much as I did. I look forward to any comments or questions that it might evoke in you.
Warm wishes,
Jacqui
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 Dr. Jacqui Dodds
Interviews Available Now
Dr Bill Genat - Open Path Meditation, Melbourne
HH Sakya Trizin - the lineage holder of the Sakya School of Tibetan Buddhism
Lama Choedak founder and Spiritual Director of Sakya Losal Choe Dzong in Canberra
Ven Robina Courtin - Director of the Liberation Prison Project
Khenpo Ngawang Dhamchoe - experiences of a Tibetan Monk living in Australia
Ruth Watson an 83y.o. Quaker
HE Jetsun Kushok Chimey Luding - sister of HH Sakya Trizin
Cecilie Kwiat - Canadian Dharma teacher
HE Ghyana Vajra Rinpoche
- Youngest son of HH Sakya Trizin
HE Dungsei Ratna Vajra Rinpoche - Eldest son of HH Sakya Trizin
Coming soon:
Khenpo Ngawang Dhamchoe (Part 2)
Tracey Stranger
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