The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning.  We reflected on the vital importance of having spiritual friends.  Good spiritual friends support us in living with authenticity and compassion.  Spiritual leader, teacher and author, Thich Nhat Hanh, encourages us to draw on our inner meditator, artist and warrior while serving in the world.  He urges us to cultivate relaxation and joy so “our actions become a true expression of our love, care and awakening.  It’s not that we have to take action.  If we’re awakened, action will naturally take us.”

Once again we drew insights from  Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet.  This beautiful book will help readers to bring compassion and mindfulness to their response to the many environmental and social crises we are witnessing today.

We heard Joseph Rubano’s beautiful poem, Friend by Friend.  Joseph is a counselor who also offers True Heart/True Mind Enlightenment Intensive Retreats at the beautiful Manzanita Village Retreat Center in Warner Springs California.

Guided Reflection

Welcome.  In our last class we affirmed our deep caring for each other.  Our circle often  reminds me of the story many of you may have heard about when the Buddha’s disciple, Ananda, shared his thought that half of the spiritual life is good friendship.  And then the Buddha corrected him by saying good friendship, good companionship is all of the spiritual life. A good friend is someone who shares your journey on the spiritual path.

Thich Nhat Hanh once said that the next Buddha would be the Sangha – the community of spiritual friends.  

In  Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet, Thich Nhat Hanh writes: 

A sangha is an island of peace.  It is a community of resistance against violence, hate, and despair.  We all need a place like that to go.  When we use the word “sangha,” we mean a community where there is harmony; where there is mindfulness, concentration and insight; where there is togetherness and joy. . .  

Good spiritual friends are the kind of people who can help us open our eyes and be our true selves.  

My spiritual friends, inspire and support me on the path.   A couple of weeks ago a dear friend encouraged me to consider my hopes and desires for the remaining time of life I have left.  What immediately came to my heart was more time with loving family and friends.  I also want to bring loving service forward.   I planted these aspirations like seeds in my heart.  They’ve been sprouting in many ways.  

Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet is a treasure of wisdom for those of us with these aspirations.  I turn to it when I feel overwhelmed by the state of the world.  Overwhelm seems to create a static that prevents me for doing anything.  

In his discussion on awakened action, Thich Nhat Hanh taught:

Action should be based on the foundation of being. . .  you can do everything relaxingly and joyfully  . . . In this way of acting, our actions become a true expression of our love, care and awakening.  It’s not that we have to take action.  If we’re awakened, action will naturally take us.

In reading this I realized that I often lose my foundation of being. I struggle and worry over what to do.  This week a few actions have naturally arisen on the path.  Small steps I could take with love and care.  I’ve also been stalled by my perception that I lack the skills that are needed to serve.   Thich Nhat Hanh taught that inside every one of us there is a meditator, an artist and a warrior.   He taught:

. . . Our inner meditator brings lucidity, calm, and deep insight.  . . . [Our] meditator can bring freshness, joy and meaning to life.  [We] need to allow the artist in . . .  to be creative so [we] can always feel and enjoy the nourishment in [our] practice of mindfulness.  . . . we have to find a way to create that joy every day.  . . . We must find creative ways to keep our . . .  our beginner’s mind, alive and nourished.  . .  Practicing mindfulness can always be healing and nourishing if we know how to be creative. . . . The warrior brings a determination to go ahead.  . . .  [to] refuse to give up . . . every time [we] overcome an obstacle [our] bodhicitta [our mind of love and awakening] gets stronger.  In this way obstacles are not really obstacles.  They are an accelerator of wisdom, of aspiration.  

I found this so encouraging.  These insights help me to get around my habitual ways of thinking about how to serve.  I realize I have all that I need:  my spiritual friends, my inner meditator, artist and warrior.  

Here is Joseph Rubano’s beautiful poem, Friend by Friend:

Who is my mother,
Who my father,
When I am being created
friend by friend?

I don’t remember who I was without you.
We have been tending sacred fires
for a long time
We are wanderers, drawn by the light
of those fires.

Surrounded by darkness,
Emerging out of darkness,
We enter into the sacred ceremony
of each other’s life.

We sing, we dance,
Humbled by the power
Of each other’s presence
we pray.
We become prayers for each other.
We sing praises to each other.
And breath by breath, thought by thought,
touch by touch,
Music rises between us.

What I was, I am no longer.
Shaking with hope, yielding to your hands
I stand trembling before you.

Let us practice now and become prayers for each other.  Let’s sit together as these many words and ideas, images and associations fall like seeds into our body-minds. You might take a few deep slow breaths feeling the large sensations of breathing in deeply.  Feel how they may release as the small sensations of breathing out completely.  As you are ready, let the breath, breathe itself.  Each passing moment, relax what ever you can.  See if you can give yourself over to allowing.  Allow the body to settle slowly into the foundation of being.

Notice what you are aware of.  See if you can bring a sense of freshness to the noticing.  As you become aware of wandering can you nourish this awareness with a smile, relax and come back to the here and now of mindfulness; concentration; insight?  You might bring your awareness to those areas where your body feels the support of Earth’s body.  Breathe and sense how these two living bodies relate to one another.  Is it possible to relax and explore this experience of connection?  Breathe and sense how it feels to breathe together.  Can there be a quiet joy in receiving the breath as a gift?  

Breathing and sensing embodiment.  There may be breathing and feeling emotion in the body.  There may be breathing and feeling thinking in the body.  You might explore breathing in caring relationship, taking nothing, doing no harm.   Enter the foundation of being, in loving awareness.  Loving awareness.  Awake.  Spacious.  Boundless.  Touching all that arises.  Everything belongs. 

If you like you can bring your attention to your heart center.   Stay in the heart center, and just feel what’s true for you, right now, any emotions, any thoughts. See if you can be tender towards your own experience. Feel the heart softly. You might see if you can open the heart outward in all directions in front of you, the side body, behind. Feel yourself here, present, in the world.  Here, right now, open awareness out in all directions from the heart.

In this space of loving awareness we might experience our shared humanness, our shared creatureliness.  We might experience our shared vulnerabilities and our shared compassion.  We might affirm our inter-being with consideration and respect, by the compassionate way we move through the world.  We might create the conditions in which our actions arise from this foundation of being.  Relaxed and joyful.  As Thay reminds us 

In this way of acting, our actions become a true expression of our love, care and awakening. . . .  If we’re awakened, action will naturally take us.