Ethiopian Sacred Forests

 

James Godfrey-Faussett:

"100 years ago Ethiopia was blanketed by 45% forest and now that figure is down to just 5%. Part of the surviving remnants are over 1000 ‘sacred forests’ found protecting Ethiopia’s orthodox churches, that act as living stands of biodiversity amongst the brown overgrazed farmlands.

These small clusters of ancient trees, each about 2km away from the next, ensure that the local people are never far from the forests that are so deeply rooted in their social and spiritual lives.They are used as community centres, meeting places and schools and provide the only shade for miles. 

Each dot of green stands out on the landscape dramatically because they are some of the only trees left in a country that’s experienced widespread deforestation. Some of the sacred forests are more than 1,000 years old and these precious trees have thankfully been spared thanks to conservation as a by-product of religious stewardship. 

The forests are thought of as particularly sacred because each houses a tabot in the centre of the church, which is thought to be a replica of the original Ark of the Covenant. The trees are seen as ‘clothing’ for the church, part of the church itself, which is why just a small ring of trees – those closest to the church – has been protected, creating tiny forests with fields pushing right up to the edges.

Areas like these sacred forests are immensely valuable from an ecological point of view and should continue to be protected at all costs.

They contain precious genetic purity and diversity and should be seen as living nurseries that could hopefully some day be used as a basis to reforest the surrounding lands.."

From here: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wildurbanspaces_biodiversity-ecosystemrestoration-ecosystems-activity-6948925557568909312-4Iib/

A wealth not dependent on possessions

Journeying god
Traditional (Ghana)

Journeying god,
pitch your tent with mine
so that I may not become deterred
by hardship, strangeness, doubt.

Show me the movement I must make
towards a wealth not dependent on possessions,
towards a wisdom not based on books,
towards a strength not bolstered by might,
towards a god not confined to heaven.

Help me to find myself as I walk in others' shoes.

Prayer song from Ghana, traditional, translator unknown

Ichigo Ichie: One opportunity, one encounter

"Ichigo Ichie literally means “one opportunity, one encounter.” The terms is often translated as “for this time only,” “never again,” or “one chance in a life time.”

Its better translation may be “Treasure every encounter, for it will never recur.”

The term is derived from Zen Buddhism and concepts of transience, and it is particularly associated with the Japanese tea ceremony and it is often brushed onto scrolls which are hung in the tea room. In the context of tea ceremony, ichigo ichie reminds participants that each single tea meeting is unique that will never recur in one’s lifetime, therefore, each moment should be treated with the utmost sincerity.

It can be applied to one’s daily life, “all we have is today, so let’s live it to the fullest.”

From here: http://calmthings.blogspot.in/2015/03/did-you-hear-that-winters-over.html

Love Letters

Love Letters

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters sent by the wind
and rain, the snow and moon.

Ikkyu, 'Ikkyu and the Crazy Cloud Anthology', trans. by Sonya Arutzen

Hunger

"We suffer, often unknowingly, from wanting to be in two places at once, from wanting to experience more than one person can. This is a form of greed, of wanting everything. Feeling like we're missing something or that we're being left out, we want it all. But being human, we can't have it all. The tension of all this can lead to an insatiable search, where our passion for life is stirred, but never satisfied.

When caught in this mindset, no amount of travel is enough, no amount of love is enough, no amount of success is enough...

The truth is that one experience taken to heart will satisfy our hunger. "

Mark Nepo

100 Butterflies (excerpt)

Where you are going
and the place you stay
come to the same thing.

What you long for
and what you've left behind
are as useless as your name.

Just one time, walk out
into the field and look
at that towering oak --
an acorn still beating at its heart.

Peter Levitt

A Real Measure of Peace

"On yet another level, silence means listening. We follow the Rule of St. Benedict and the first word of that Rule is "Listen." That's the great ethical element of silence: to check my words and listen to another point of view. I'll never have any real peace should my sense of well-being depend on soundless peace.

When I can learn the patience of receiving, in an un-threatened way, what I'd rather not hear, then I can have a real measure of peace in any situation."

How Silence Works: Emailed Conversations With Four Trappist Monks
Jeremy Mesiano-Crookston

Ukemi, the Art of Falling

"Ukemi is a Japanese word used in Judo for the method of falling without getting injured.

...He [my Judo teacher] made me practice nothing but falling for six months, correcting every infinitesimal detail. He would sense my frustration when he caught me wistfully looking at the other judoka. They would be performing their techniques and sparring while I rolled for hours on the mat, with my teacher sometimes deftly throwing me to demonstrate a nuance I had missed.

He would then remind me that the art of falling was the foundation of good Judo.

...One day the head teacher, a seventy-year-old eighth Dan judoka, legendary for his insightful teaching called me aside after a randori. “How can you do beautiful Judo if you don’t risk falling?” he asked. I was taken aback. I thought the whole idea of a randori was to avoid getting thrown.

He continued, “A lot of judokas don’t like to fall, so they try to avoid it at all cost. By doing this, they get tense, their techniques become wooden and their Judo lacks zest.”

Seeing he had piqued my interest, he went on, “Real Judo is like life. The little losses and gains don’t count for much. What matters is whether you lived beautifully, with courage and joy.

For this, you must learn not to fear falling or failure and welcome it like a friend. Because only when you learn to love it, then can you really live to your full potential.”

Ukemi
Sanjay Kabir Bavikatte

One Way to Spend an Afternoon Together

Our noisy outer world is but a reflection of the noise inside: our incessant need to be occupied, to be doing something.

Three Types of Laziness, Tenzin Palmo

Sit with me. Let’s say nothing at all.
There is nothing that must be said.
The impulse to comment on weather,
we’ll feel it rise and melt away.

The weather will do what the weather does,
will rain, will shine, will hail.
Perhaps we will feel the need
to comment on the light or to wonder

when things will be different than they are now
or to worry about all the problems
that we will never be able to fix.
Urgency only lasts so long before
it disappears. How did we ever

believe we belonged anywhere
but here? Though the rain
is gone, the scent of rain persists.
If we are quiet long enough,
it will say everything that must be said.

Rosemerry Trommer

https://ahundredfallingveils.com/2016/05/16/one-way-to-spend-an-afternoon-together/

And the world owes me nothing

Yes, I’m Truly A Dunce
Taigu Ryokan

Yes, I’m truly a dunce
Living among trees and plants.
Please don’t question me about illusion and enlightenment —
This old fellow just likes to smile to himself.

I wade across streams with bony legs,
And carry a bag about in fine spring weather.
That’s my life,
And the world owes me nothing.

Ryōkan Taigu (良寛大愚?) (1758–1831) was a quiet and eccentric Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. Ryōkan is remembered for his poetry and calligraphy, which present the essence of Zen life.

Practising Dying

Learning from Trees


If we could,
like the trees,
practice dying,
do it every year
just as something we do—
like going on vacation
or celebrating birthdays,
it would become
as easy a part of us
as our hair or clothing.

Someone would show us how
to lie down and fade away
as if in deepest meditation,
and we would learn
about the fine dark emptiness,
both knowing it and not knowing it,
and coming back would be irrelevant.

Whatever it is the trees know
when they stand undone,
surprisingly intricate,
we need to know also
so we can allow
that last thing
to happen to us
as if it were only
any ordinary thing,

leaves and lives
falling away,
the spirit, complex,
waiting in the fine darkness
to learn which way
it will go.

Grace Butcher

From here.

Individuality

"...unless that underground level of the self is preserved as a verified and verifying element in your make-up, you are going to be in danger of settling into whatever profile the world prepares for you and accepting whatever profile the world provides for you. You’ll be in danger of molding yourselves in accordance with laws of growth other than those of your own intuitive being.

The true and durable path into and through experience involves being true to the actual givens of your lives. True to your own solitude, true to your own secret knowledge. Because oddly enough, it is that intimate, deeply personal knowledge that links us most vitally and keeps us most reliably connected to one another.

Calling a spade a spade may be a bit reductive but calling a wooden spoon a wooden spoon is the beginning of wisdom. And you will be sure to keep going in life on a far steadier keel and with far more radiant individuality if you navigate by that principle."

Seamus Heaney

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/01/19/seamus-heaney-commencement/

Sarvam Annam

A Poem for My Daughter
Extracts

It seems we have made pain
some kind of mistake,
like having it
is somehow wrong.

Don’t let them fool you—
pain is a part of things.

But remember, dear Ellie,
the compost down in the field:
if the rank and dank and dark
are handled well, not merely discarded,
but turned and known and honored,
they one day come to beds of rich earth
home even to the most delicate rose.

❖

God comes to you disguised as your life.
Blessings often arrive as trouble.

In French, the word blesser means to wound
and relates to the Old English bletsian—

to sprinkle with blood.

And in Sanskrit there is a phrase,
a phrase to carry with you
wherever you go:

sarvam annam:

everything is food.

Every last thing.

❖

The Navajo people,
it is said,
intentionally wove
(intentionally!)
obvious flaws into their sacred quilts …

Why?

It is there, they say,
in the “mistake,”
in the imperfection,

through which the Great Spirit moves.

❖

Work on becoming a native of mind, a native of heart.
No thought, no feeling, could ever be “bad.”

It’s just another creature
in the bestiary of Buddha,
the bestiary of Christ.

Knowing this,
knowing this down to the marrow,
could save you, dear one,
much needless strife.

Remember that wild and strange animals
paused to drink at the pond
of the Buddha’s mind
even after he saw
the morning star.

❖

...To laugh …

To be shameless, wild, and silly …

To know—fully, headlong,
without compunction—the ordinary magic
of our beautiful human bodies …

these seem worthwhile pursuits, life-long tasks.

❖


By way of valediction, dear Ellie,
I pass along some words
from our many gracious teachers:

Eden is.

The imperfect is our paradise.

All is grace.

❖

Teddy Macker

http://www.ayearofbeinghere.com/2015/12/teddy-macker-poem-for-my-daughter.html

My post: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.com/2016/03/13-sarvam-annam.html

There are no edges to my loving now

The clear bead at the center changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.

You've heard it said there's a window
that opens from one mind to another,

but if there's no wall, there's no need
for fitting the window, or the latch.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi
Translated from the original Persian by Coleman Barks

Forget meaning, practice being

"...Bare attention, Buddhism calls it, a pinnacle of meditation, a path to freedom from pain and suffering - not by fleeing the world, but being fully available to it.

Disponibilité, André Gide named a related attitude. (Availability, Receptiveness, in French)

Phenomenologists label their version of "bare attention" phenomenological reduction. But it's interesting how many of the world's religions and philosophies urge us to live in each silvery moment, while resisting the temptation to skim over, take for granted, or ignore the impromptu sensations that give life its vigor.

Forget meaning, this attitude says; practice being.

Feats of disciplined awareness wouldn't be necessary if we weren't in such a hurry to die and shed the burden of the senses, those permanent houseguests that keep us tipsy or tormented throughout our lives. Slow down, our sages advise, slow all the way down to the pace of stone and shadow.

How long can you watch sunlight flash across threads of spider silk stretching between two limbs of an evergreen? How long after the tree appears to be full of tinsel? Can you observe it longer than that, with continuous pleasure and surprise, but without remembering a Christmas? Without planning gifts or visits? This is the tinsel test.

Poets tend towards bare attention naturally, and are usually able to address one facet of the world with such devotion that, as Blake described it from the depths of his own supple vision, it is possible to "see a world in a grain of sand, / And a heaven in a wild flower, / Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, / And eternity in an hour. (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172906)

Page 266, A Slender Thread, Rediscovering Hope at the Heart of Crisis', Diane Ackerman

Ritual

Started writing again here (http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in). Thanks to the giant silk cotton tree, its lessons.

Notes from a Ritual: http://whiletheworldisgoingplaces.blogspot.in/search/label/Notes_from_a_Ritual

Astonished

Tilicho Lake

In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.

Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.

Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow
the true shape of your own face.

David Whyte

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilicho_Lake

The Path

"Ali said: None may arrive at the Truth until he is able to think that the Path itself may be wrong."

'Thinkers of the East, Studies in Experientialism'. Page 38.
Idries Shah
 

Emergence, not immersion

"...A labyrinth is an ancient device that compresses a journey into a small space, winds up a path like thread on a spool. It contains beginning, confusion, perseverance, arrival, and return. There at last the metaphysical journey of your life and your actual movements are one and the same. You may wander, may learn that in order to get to your destination you must turn away from it, become lost, spin about, and then only after the way has become overwhelming and absorbing, arrive, having gone the great journey without having gone far on the ground.

In this it is the opposite of a maze, which has not one convoluted way but many ways and often no center, so that wandering has no cease or at least no definitive conclusion. A maze is a conversation; a labyrinth is a an incantation or perhaps a prayer. In a labyrinth you're lost in that you don't know the twists and turns, but if you follow them you get there; and then you reverse your course.

The end of the journey through the labyrinth is not at the center, as is commonly supposed, but back at the threshold again; the beginning is also the real end. That is the home to which you return from the pilgrimage, the adventure. The unpraised edges and margins matter too, because it's not ultimately a journey of immersion, but emergence."

Page 188, 'Flight', from 'The Faraway Nearby' by Rebecca Solnit

The Infinite has no preferences

 

From Aphorisms for Thirsty Fish, The Lost Writings of Wu Hsin:

The greatest crime is
The overlooking of
Who you really are in favor of
The story of
Who you think you are.
This preoccupation with
Your personal drama is
The cloud that masks the sun.

*    *    *    *

To search for happiness
Implies its absence.
This implication is a fundamental flaw.
Happiness is ever present.
It may become obscured,
Such obscuration being temporary.

*    *    *    *

The greatest enjoyment is experienced
When there is no concern for its duration.

*    *    *    *

Expectation is the grandfather of
Disappointment.
The world can never
Own a man who wants nothing.

*    *    *    *

Nothing succeeds like failure.
Failure is a natural
Call for attention,
Like pain.
To pay attention is to
Step out of your trance.


*    *    *    *

Ridding oneself of ignorance is
Worth more than the acquisition of knowledge.
With memory gone
The past is gone
Relinquishing hopes and fears
The future is gone.
The present is upon you.
In every moment.
You are free.

*    *    *    *

To conquer the large,
Begin with the small.
To change your world,
Begin by changing yourself.
What needs to be changed?
Only the point of view.

*    *    *    *

You are not satisfied
With the answers
Given by others.
So you come to Wu Hsin.
But what you really seek
Are not answers
But confirmation
Of what you think
You already know.
If you were to admit
That you know nothing,
Then I will most gladly answer.


*    *    *    *

The sum of a past is I was.
The sum of a future is
I will be.
The continuous crossing back and forth
Between the two
Obscures the present moment,
The I am, Being Itself.

*    *    *    *

The man of contentment
Seeks nothing that
He doesn’t have and
Understands that
Whatever he has
Isn’t his to own.


*    *    *    *

The attachment to beliefs is
The greatest shackle.
To be free is
To know that
One does not know.

*    *    *    *

Controlling the mind doesn’t
Take one to freedom.
Controlling the mind
Adds another link
To one’s shackles.


*    *    *    *

Chasing after the things
One yearns for is
Inferior to
Chasing after
The source of the yearning.


*    *    *    *

Whereas pain is
A physical experience
Suffering is a mental one.
It is the sense that
Things should be
Other than they are.
Its antidote is Acceptance.

*    *    *    *

The Infinite has no preferences.
It kisses both the darkness and
The light equally.

Wu Hsin

That Sweet Moon Language

Admit something:

Everyone you see, you say to them,
“Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud,
otherwise
someone would call the cops.

Still, though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.

Why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,

with that sweet moon
language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to
hear?


Hafiz