just be it It’s about the work involved in establishing a dedicated practice to feelings of a bigger belonging through practices aimed at increasing feelings of compassion, gratitude and forgiveness

On ‘Big Hope’ and Notions of Surrender, Acceptance, and OK

Published on 24/03/09
by randy

I just wanted to jot down some thoughts I had about ‘big hope’, ‘wholeheartedness’, ‘confidence’ and ‘feeling’ in relation to another perspective of prayer.

“That situation (person becomes supreme person, who is melted into the universe) is unknowable with our consciousness. It’s impossible for me to express it in words. But maybe you can feel that it is true, that Buddha’s activity is something that could appear in your life in the future. If so, that feeling becomes a kind of prediction, foreknowledge, or hope. That is called big hope.” P. 145

“It is possible to make that foreknowledge become real. Hope comes up, you do something with full devotion, you forget yourself, and you change the structure of time and space. Then, even though you don’t see it, people feel that.” P. 146

“All at once the past swallows up the present and spits it out. Pop! At the pivot of nothingness the next moment unfolds and a new world appears.

“The past, the present, the future are beings, but they are interconnected right now.” P. 111

Quotes from Each Moment the Universe by Dainin Katagiri, edited by Andrea Martin

In The Isaiah Effect Greg Braden introduces a fifth mode of prayer that “allows us to merge our thoughts, feelings, and emotions into a single, potent force of creation.” There’s a stepping from time, where we offer gratitude for what already exists, rather than expressing lack and asking for something to be answered.

Express by a SW Native American:

“When I was young our elders passed on to me the secret of prayer. The secret is that when we ask for something, we acknowledge what we do not have. Continuing to ask only gives power to what has never come to pass.”

“The path between man and the forces of this world begins in our hearts. It is here that our feeling world is married to our thinking world. In my prayer, I began the feeling of gratitude for all that is and all that has come to pass. I gave thanks for the desert wind, the heat, and the drought, for that is the way of it, until now. It is not good. It is not bad. It has been our medicine.

“Then I chose a new medicine. I began to have the feeling of what rain feels like. I felt the feeling of rain upon my body. Standing in the stone circle, I imagined that I was in the plaza of our village, barefoot in the rain. I felt the feeling of wet earth oozing between my naked toes. I smelled the smell of rain on the straw-and-mud walls of our village after the storms. I felt what it feels like to walk through fields of corn growing up to my chest because the rains have been so plentiful. The old ones remind us that this is how we choose our path in this world. We must first have the feelings of what we wish to experience. This is how we plant the seeds of a new way. From that point forward, our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks. (not a prayer of thanks for what we’ve created, because creation is already complete) Our prayer becomes a prayer of thanks for the opportunity to choose which creation we experience. Through our thanks, we honor all possibilities and bring the ones we choose into this world.”

Neville, The Power of Awareness

“make our future dream a present fact by assuming the feeling if our desire fulfilled”

(stepping from time, restlessness gone)

Johnson, This Precious Moment…Just Be It.

“As we launch into action, we often continue to carry our notions of separation of body from the event (subject/object). Yet at the highest levels of performance we surrender in full confidence to the insight that nothing is in our control but our willingness to give it up in full gratitude for the opportunity to participate. As we come to respect our core being-ness, we come to still the mind in full attention to the precious present moment. There’s consequent happiness from gratitude for the gift of belonging. At this moment, we step beyond pride, fear, judgment, and comparison, with the map surrendered, touching the territory outside notions of time and space.”

Michael Beckwith “We must stand in full gratitude for what is so room is given for new to come in”

Brother David Steindl Rast “Harmonious living requires making space always to find the gift in the given”. Happiness is a necessary consequence of gratitude. You ask, “Gratitude for what?” For opportunity…opportunity to participate.”

I can relate to my “change of prayer” as a youngster and how it played out 15 years ago with my two boys, relating a sense of ‘feeling’, ‘gratitude for gift given outside of time’, ‘confidence’, and ‘big hope’….touching the field of intuition.

Nothing separates…it’s always connected. Only energy dissipates, arising and dissipating….growing where attention is put, entropy where it’s not. This sense of connection is felt through the heart, thus “wholehearted” living and action. Cognition is separating and it’s why it’s so important to study the power of “feeling”.

Thich Knat Hahn speaks of our storehouse of feelings….positive and negative. Mindful living waters the seeds of positive, connecting feelings and brings them into the living room. We aim to leave the negative feelings of separation in the basement, and have confidence that they change and can dissipate just through observation.

In many respects, we can see we do the most harm when moving from our head with a sense of “I know that”, rather than moving from awareness to heart (wholehearted action) in our deepening to the play of impermanence and interdependent co-origination.

“Seeing the total functioning of time and space simultaneously gives you a deep appreciation toward human life. That is wonderful inspiration.”

Dogen says: see something with wholeheartedness; hear something with wholeheartedness. Without this actual practice, you can not make illumination alive in your life.

p. 84

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