"Pines and sunlight are stronger than any dream"

Robert Pirsig "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

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"This deepest form of prayer is really just the willingness to be still and let the longing in your heart go out without defining or understanding where it is going. This is faith. Our minds cannot see the goal of our spiritual training. Meditation is the willingness to let go and learn to trust so that we may enter into this seeming darkness. In the passage from The Cloud of Unknowing, the writer is expressing the idea that our minds cannot grasp God, cannot even begin to say what God is, yet our hearts are reaching out. A Buddhist way of saying this is that our small minds and intellects cannot even begin to fully grasp or understand the boundless life of Buddha."

by Rev. Kinrei Bassis

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I have not updated my blog for some time now.

I have been pondering on forgetfullness at the moment. We say in practice, may I awaken from forgetfullness and realise the Pureland. I have been contemplating this and my wish to live in rememberance. Rememberance of the Buddha and his teachings, rememberance of that which is not self (everything! Thank goodness!)  and rememberance of the compassion that sustains life. Alas, I am half asleep unfortunately and yet, there is something that isn't. It is unknown to me and yet there is an unspoken connection in my heart with it. I call it Amida, it doesn't mind. Namo Amida Bu.

In the words of Shinran,

"Although my eyes blinded by passions

Do not see the warm light that embraces me,

Great compassion never tires

Constantly casting light upon me."

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