May we all extend our intention for the well being and protection of our loved ones at Tassajara

Some serious thoughts on this holiday weekend:

As we wait in breathless anticipation for the outcome of the wild fires, I thought I would share something of my wish for the world both canine and human and to send my best wishes, thoughts, and love to all of our sangha members at Tassajara who are working so hard to protect our home and practice center. May all awakened beings manifest their luminous mirror wisdom for the protection and benefit of everyone at Tassajara..even Monkey Bat (who isn't really at Tassajara).

I want to join a movement of world-wide universal compassion for all beings. I want to live in a world where dogs and people travel by bicycle and grow their own food and who realize, as Epicurus did, that life should be simple, wholesome, nutritional and supportive in all ways, physical, emotional and spiritual. I want to see the end of the corporate hegemony which sucks the life out of our local communities and replaces it with the robotic corporate model of the big box monoliths and the conformist consumer citizen automaton.

I believe in the model of the credit union, the labor union, and the power of social capitalism and entrepreneurship. I believe in leveraging the power of the collective as against the “empire” mentality of our so called “leaders”. I believe that “free enterprise” and “free trade” must be lead by free humans in a social-political model of equality where people can move as freely as commodities across barriers now marked by barbed wire, death, and despair. I believe in caring for my brothers and sisters and for our mother earth and all her children whether man or beast.

I seek internally to beat my own psychic swords to plowshares and my arrows of indignant intolerance and anger into pruning hooks as I am aware that nothing in this world can effectively change until I change the demons from within. I desire the aid and nurture of my fellow beings to help me to overcome the unwholesome aspects of myself; and that in so doing I might recognize that the same internal forces that are now dragging me into the pits of despair and anguish over this suffering world are the forces that can deliver me from this suffering.

I believe in a world where hunger is history and where physical pain is a rare occasion. I believe in a world free for all expression; a world free for all the spectra of diversity; diversity of race, religion, non-religion, opinion, ideas, beliefs, culture, sexual/gender identity. I pray for a world where “different” is exciting, not threatening; where something new is an eye and heart opening adventure; where change is welcome not feared; Where hate is never defeated by hate but overcome only by love; where violence is never defeated by violence but overcome only by peace.

Love,

Ginger