Dear Rocks and Clouds Community,
Rocks and Clouds would like to extend a deep Gassho of gratitude to each of you for showing up for Sangha at this challenging time. Sensei Water-Dragon is a pivotal and powerful community member who we have deep gratitude for both his steady generous practice and his encyclopedic knowledge of the Dharma.
We had a three-day vigil over this weekend many of you participated in-person and many participated online. Thank you! It has been important and powerful to be connected to Sangha and you during this time of transition for us as a community, for Sensei Water-Dragon, Carol, and the wider chosen and birth family.
We will continue to celebrate and deepen from the wisdom offered by Sensei Water-Dragon. It is traditional in Buddhist practice to recognize that birth and death both are a transition. Death is often marked for 49 days as a time of deep transition. Please continue to offer practice, meditation, chanting, incense, and others in support of Sensei and his family over the next days and weeks.
With generous compassion, just a reminder that we meet life on life’s terms and grief has lots of different faces. Sometimes it hits like a ton of bricks, sometimes it inspires, sometimes it just feels numb and tired. Whatever your reality is don’t make it a barrier to practice but bring that spirit of deep compassion to it and let it whatever it is wake you up.
Not a bad time to remember that old adage of how with practice we get more simple, more true, and more direct that states, ‘when hungry eat, when tired sleep.’ And how difficult it is sometimes to be that compassionate and simple. But that is the direct practice of the way.
I am reminded of the old, important and beautiful Koan “Satsujo Weeps”
KOAN CASE: When Satsujo, a great disciple of Hakuin, was old, she lost her granddaughter, which grieved her very much. An old man from the neighborhood came and admonished her: “Why are you wailing so much? If people hear this, they’ll all say, ‘the old lady once studied with Hakuin and was enlightened, so now why is she mourning her granddaughter so much?’ You ought to lighten up a bit.”
Satsujo glared at her neighbor and scolded him: “You baldheaded fool, what do you know? My tears and weeping are better for my granddaughter than incense, flowers, and lamps!”
The old man left without a word.
Article on Case: https://www.lionsroar.com/satsujo-weeps-an-excerpt-from-the-hidden-lamp-stories-from-twenty-five-centuries-of-awakened-women/
Gassho, may true dharma practice continue and we all support the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
Yours in Practice,
Michael Changaris
