¡Hola! Everybody…

Today is the Dominican Day Parade. I will be there as the [un]Official Parade Culo Inspector… LOL

I don’t know if the following was written by a Buddhist, but it sure does capture the core Buddhist POV on pain and suffering…

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-=[It’s Too Much to Hope for ]=-

It’s too much to hope for a life without pain,
It’s wrong to expect a life without pain,
For pain is our body’s defense.
No matter how much we dislike it,
And nobody likes it,
Pain is important,
And,
For pain we should be grateful!
How else would we know,
To move our hand from the fire?
Our finger from the blade?
Our foot from the thorn?
So pain is important,
And for pain we should be grateful!
Yet,
There’s a type of pain that serves no purpose,
That’s chronic pain,
It’s that elite band of pain that’s not for defense.
It’s an attacking force.
An attacker from within
A destroyer of happiness
An aggressive assailant on personal ability
A ceaseless invader of personal peace
And,
A continuous harassment to life!
Chronic pain is the hardest hurdle for the mind to jump.
Sometimes it is almost impossible to jump,
Yet, we must keep trying,
And trying,
And trying,
Because if we don’t it will destroy.
And,
From this battle will come some good,
The satisfaction of overcoming pain.
The achievement of happiness and peace, of life in spite of it.
This is quite an achievement,
An achievement very special, very personal,
A feeling of strength
Of inner strength
Which has to be experienced to be understood.
So, we all have to accept pain,
Even sometimes destructive pain.
For it is part of the scheme of things,
And the mind can manage it,
And the mind will become stronger for the practice.

– Jonathan Wilson-Fuller

What is even more remarkable about this piece is that it was written when Jonathan was only nine-years-old!

Love,

Eddie

¡Hola! Everybody…
It’s a little cool here in the north, but life is good…

* * *

-=[ Uncovering the Heart ]=-

Your Heart [A work in progress]

A rare and beautiful bird
resides in the
nucleus of your heart.

Occasionally…

when I listen
to your silent painful pauses,
I can heart its song…

faintly.

It struggles within
its bejeweled prison –
bars of gold
And though it flutters its wings,
longing to be set free,
it sings its song.

Just now, I find myself
drinking in your smile
and I wonder…

that bird…

to hold that precious bird,
gently caressing it in my hands,
to feel its rapid heartbeat…

what joy…

Would you… ?

Let me set it free,
so it could soar
to sing its song
of freedom and love?

* * *

What counts is to strip the soul naked. Painting or poetry is made as we make love; a total embrace, prudence thrown to the wind, nothing held back.

– Joan Miro

Uncovering the heart means exposing the very core of the self. For many of us, this is a scary move into unknown territory, though it is a part of our inner selves that we are uncovering. The heart symbolizes feeling and intuition. Though we may be fearful, the true danger is in the death, not the exploration, of the heart.

Sometimes our hearts remember, better than our analytical minds, the times and places of our deepest felt experiences. During times of crisis or personal breakdown, the heart insists on revealing itself to us; we are forced to pay attention. These are times of deep personal pain that most of us would rather avoid, because we fear that the load will be too much to bear — that it may be possible to feel too much.

Just as it is possible to close our eyes and not see the world around us, we can also close our hearts. We do so at a great price: we may choose to live in a world of flat surfaces, a clinically dry and angular world seemingly sterile until we peer under its surface.

To undress the heart is to reveal our inner history — a history forgotten or hidden. We may be paying a price for relegating powerful forces to the shadow world for it is there they hold greater power. One of the aims of depth psychotherapies is to help us rediscover our lost selves gradually and integrate them again into our whole personalities.

The language of the heart may seem illogical. But if we listen to it — really listen to it without losing our heads — we just might find the faintly shimmering message in it that what lies ahead is a new and better way of living. It is in this aspect that there is strength in living with a naked heart.

However, there is that fearful vulnerability also. We take a chance when we open to others. We can be hurt. We may ask ourselves if we are risking too much. Who wants to be open and vulnerable?

I have found that in my own life, some of the most rewarding examples of creativity have been those moments when my heart was uncovered, when I was able to emerge and address those unique yet universal experiences that bind us together in the human condition.

I have learned that the uncovered heart contains both vulnerability and strength. Its strength perhaps lies precisely in that ability to open itself to itself with an exquisite grace that invites the hearts of others to do so too.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Picking up the Pieces)

¡Hola! Everybody…
The stupidest thing I’m seeing this week concerns the so-called “protest” against Obama’s commencement address at Notre Dame. First, there are perhaps  one dozen people doing the protesting. Why is this news? Secondly, a plurality of Catholics approve of Obama speaking at Notre Dame. Finally, where were these people when Bush, he certainly espoused anti-Christian values (war, death penalty, etc.)?

Can you say… hypocrites?!!

I’m on the way out — I have to work today. I get paid to talk, isn’t that something? LOL I might use a version of the following…

* * *

-=[ The Starfish Story ]=-

Early one morning a man was walking along the beach, watching the ocean waves breaking on the shore, and he saw a most unusual thing. He saw that the beach was littered with thousands of starfish that had been washed up on shore and were dying in the sun. Far down the beach in the distance, he could see a young woman picking up starfish and throwing them back in the ocean, one at a time.

When he was close enough to her to be heard above the waves the man said, “You’re wasting your time. There are thousands of starfish here. You can’t possibly make any difference.” The young woman reached down, picked up a starfish, and threw it as far as she could, back into the sea. “I made a difference to that one,” she said, and she reached down to pick up another.

* * *

The message and implication of the story is clear — all our actions reverberate, making an indelible impact, however small, in the fabric of our interconnectedness. But I also use this story to illustrate another, more personal, but equally important point.

Sometimes, when we awaken from the wreckage of our past and attempt to pick up the pieces, it may seem like an impossible task. Like the seashore littered with all those thousands of starfish, it may seem to us that nothing we do will make a difference. But as in the story, the point is to make the commitment to pick up the pieces. Every little action you take, one day at a time — sometimes one breath at a time — makes all the difference. The point isn’t found in perfection, it is uncovered in the practice.

One by one, you pick up the pieces… Over there, the pieces of your shattered heart, by that rock, the shards of your mind, there, blowing in the wind, your withered soul. You pick them up one by one, lovingly, with compassion, and you give them sustenance and one day you look and you are more whole, more balanced, and you will feel how far you have journeyed.

And in that way the reverberations you send out leave an indelible mark on the fabric of all that is connected and bring back to life all the dead zones within you.

Love,

Eddie