forgive me; i couldn't resist.........
 
This is a year when both Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address occur in the same week.
And as it has been pointed out, "It is an ironic juxtaposition of events: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, while the other involves a groundhog."

http://www.dipdive.com/

in san fran for benefit for brother david.....
coleman barks knocked us out
it was the jig
this man can dance

we need dancing, more dancing

who will this be?

Creative calm
Salem facility has reined in restraint
By peter korn
The Portland Tribune, Feb 5, 2008

excerpts:
***
At Salem Hospital, practicing as normal meant using the twin tools of
restraint and seclusion — tying patients down and forcing them to stay
alone in their rooms, sometimes for days.

Restraint of patients with mental illness became a Portland issue in
December, after a federal report found that Scappoose resident Glenn
Shipman Jr. had died from asphyxiation after being restrained by staff
in the psychiatric unit at Legacy Emanuel Hospital & Health Center.
***

A large, muscular patient was shouting from his bedside at a nurse,
yelling that he would not take his medication.

The patient was no stranger to the psychiatric unit staff. He had been
treated at the hospital several times before. Each time had ended with
his being placed in restraint.

"This guy was on the other side of the bed in his fighting stance,
kind of rocking back and forth," Bennington-Davis recalls.

But the nurses had hatched a plan that didn't call for fighting. They
gathered together at the foot of the patient's bed and began a
three-part harmony version of "God Bless America."

"It was so stunning," Bennington-Davis says. "I watched the man: He
was very tense, and he just relaxed. We laughed, and you could see it
happening in the patient, too. He looked so bewildered, like, `What do
I do now?' They held out the little glass of water and his pills, and
he just took them."

Bennington-Davis says she knew at that moment that Salem Hospital was
on the verge of creating a new way of dealing with people suffering
psychosis.

Why ‘chaplain’?The word chaplain comes from the Latin word for cloak; the word grew out of the story of St Martin meeting a man without a cloak, begging in the rain. If St Martin had met the man's need by giving him his own cloak, he would have shifted the problem to himself. Instead he tore his own cloak in two and shared it, half for the beggar and half for himself. It was, therefore, recognized that a chaplain is someone who shares support with those in the storms of life and offers some spiritual help and direction in those difficult times.As hospitals grew from hospices (places where travelers could find hospitality, Christian love and medical care, on their journey), so it is appropriate that hospitals have their own chaplains who can continue within that tradition of offering care and support to those in difficult times.

UPAYA BUDDHIST CHAPLAINCY TRAINING PROGRAM

Upaya offers a two-year Certificated Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program in Prison, End-of-Life-Care, Peacemaking, Women’s, and Environmental Ministry. The training is open to those who wish to be ordained as Buddhist Chaplain Priests, Lay Chaplains, and those who wish to deepen their understanding of service from the Buddhist and systems perspective.

Directors: Roshi Joan Halifax, Sensei Fleet Maull

Faculty includes:
Roshi Joan Halifax (Co-director), Sensei Fleet Maull (Co-director), Dr. James Austin, Gigi Coyle, Barbara Dossey, Rabbi Malka Drucker, Maia Duerr, Troy Fernandez, Roshi Norman Fischer, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Natalie Goldberg, Jim Gollin, Dr. Al Kaszniak, Merle Lefkoff, Joanna Macy (2009), Roshi Enkyo O’Hara, Frank Ostaseski, Cynda Rushton, Sharon Salzberg, Beate Seishin Stolte, Sensei Kazuaki Tanahashi, Lynne Twist, Margaret Wheatley, Jean Wilkins

Mentors:
Jean Wilkins, Beate Stolte, Marty Peale, Maia Duerr, Malka Drucker

Introduction
The Upaya Buddhist Chaplaincy Training is a visionary and comprehensive program for a new kind of chaplaincy based in serving not only individuals and communities, but also the environment and the world. It is a program that focuses on altruistic and compassionate service, and as well on social transformation from a system’s perspective. The training prepares people in best practices for transforming all forms of suffering, including suffering induced by structural violence.

The training is based in a systems approach, with the premise that those doing ministerial work are endeavoring to serve and heal not only individuals, but environments and social systems as well. Thus, chaplaincy is conceived as compassionate service from the point of view of systems change, from intrapsychic and interpersonal to environmental and global. This approach, based on complexity and systems theory and Buddhist philosophy, is radically innovative and is the theoretical, practical, and compassionate basis of the training program.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a huge growth in the presence of Buddhism in the West and what it has to offer as a way of life and a means for transforming suffering in the world. Buddhism addresses suffering in the first teaching of the Buddha on the Four Noble Truths. During the two-year training program, faculty and students study suffering, its causes, the end of suffering, and the way that suffering can be transformed. Our studies, practices, processes, and projects are all based in the profound motivation to end suffering in the world and in our lives. The “how” of this altruistic intention is the heart of our training.

Areas of Training:
∑ Theoretical, Scientific and Practical Bases of Service
∑ Introduction to systems and complexity theory.
∑ A new model of service: Living systems and trans-local perspectives
∑ Exploration of emergence and robustness
∑ How to intervene in a system for social change
∑ Buddhist philosophy and psychology of social and environmental responsibility
∑ Buddhist perspectives on the relevance of interdependence, causality, and impermanence in terms of social service
∑ Exploration of neural substrates of attention, compassion, altruism

∑ Engaged Buddhism
∑ Introduction to history, ethics, vision of service and social action, and the function of a chaplain in our changing world
∑ The Five Buddha Family Mandala as a systems model for chaplaincy training
∑ Essentials of Buddha Dharma and chaplain practice
∑ Ritual process and rites of passage
∑ Meditation practices as a base of chaplaincy

∑ Transforming Suffering
∑ Exploration of direct and structural violence, social service and social action
∑ Exploring issues related to moral and spiritual pain
∑ Training in recognizing compassion fatigue and working with secondary trauma
∑ Practices for care of others and self care, including identifying the signs of stress
∑ Perspectives on care of the environment and the creation of sane environmental policies
∑ Fostering ecological sustainability as a basis of compassion

∑ Ethics, Relationship and Communication
∑ The creation of networks and communities of practice
∑ Buddhist ethics and pitfalls on the path
∑ Relationship-centered care
∑ Exploring communication skills for use in complex situations
∑ Mediation skills
∑ Council training
∑ Cultural competency in a multi-cultural world

∑ Defining Ministries
∑ Compassionate end-of-life care
∑ Prison ministry
∑ Environmental ministry
∑ Peacemakers
∑ Interfaith and multi-faith ministry
∑ Women’s ministry
∑ Systems ministry

• Applications
∑ Creating and sustaining global and local chaplaincy programs
∑ Fundraising for chaplaincy programs and projects

∑ Fulfillment and Confirmation
∑ Receiving Jukai (lay vows), Tokudo (Novice Priest Ordination), Lay Chaplain ordination
∑ Presentation of Project Demonstrating Excellence
∑ Formal presentation by Upaya Institute/Zen Center of Certificate of Completion and ordination documents.

The Training Path includes:
Students create their Training Path with mentors:
∑ Participating in the core UBC training programs
∑ Twentysix Upaya learning/practice days a year
∑ Four conference call meetings a year with the core learners
∑ Four telephone meetings a year with a Upaya mentor and/or Roshi Joan
∑ An eighteen-month learning project, with plan, mentorship, and fulfillment/presentation
∑ One hundred hours of volunteer chaplaincy over a two-year period with documentation
∑ Completion of assigned readings
∑ Four written assignments a year
∑ Four Field trips over a two-year period to hospitals, hospices, prisons, and other service centers with written reports of visits.
∑ Training in and then reception of lay vows (Jukai) during the first year, and for those whom it is appropriate, Novice Priest ordination or Lay Chaplain ordination when preparation is completed.

Criteria for acceptance into the training:
The aim of this training is to invite people who have a commitment to Buddhist practice and teachings, along with an ongoing involvement in engaging with Buddhist practice and teachings in daily life in service to others, to participate in a training program that will prepare them to be Buddhist chaplains within the prison system, in end-of-life care, the environment, service to women, and peacemaking. To facilitate this, participants will receive Jukai (lay vows) from Roshi Joan Halifax. Those for whom it is appropriate to receive Novice Priest and Lay Chaplain ordination will be supported and trained to do so.

Requirements for acceptance into the training:
The number of places in the training is limited; applications will be considered as they are received. The first Cohort meets April 2, 2008. The second Cohort meets January, 2009.

Please send:
∑ If not a student of Joan Halifax Roshi, a letter of recommendation from your current Buddhist teacher is required.

Experience required:
∑ Having engaged in a regular and committed Buddhist practice and related study for at least 4 years.
∑ Previous chaplaincy training will be taken into account on an individual basis.
∑ Having attended at least four Buddhist retreats, of one week or longer.

A written report covering the following:
• Your reasons for engaging in this training at this time.
• How your life/work experience will support this training?
• What are your plans for engaging in this work following training completion?

An interview either in person or by telephone.
Program Cost:
2008/9 is the first time this unique training will be offered. Those who register for this program by 1 December 2007 are eligible to pay the discounted tuition of $4950 a year. This includes tuition, food, lodging (on a dorm basis), program costs, mentoring, and conference calls. Students who wish to engaged in more programs than the 26 learning days may do so for a 10% discount on tuition and lodging (international trips excluded). More information can be found on the website at www.upaya.org or by contacting Registrar@upaya.org or chaplaincy@upaya.org .

Upaya Zen Center and Institute
Upaya is a residential Zen Buddhist practice and social service community, serving many people each year through our retreats and social action projects. Our vision focuses on the integration of practice and social action, bringing together wisdom and compassion. Upaya provides a context for community practice and education in Buddhism and social service in the areas of death and dying, prison work, the environment, women’s rights, and peace-work. It endeavors to fulfill the vision of the Five Buddha Family Mandala by understanding the integration of all of its functions from a systems theory perspective. It is a vision of Buddhism that is integrated, interconnected, and process-oriented and is based on the integration of our spirituality, education, livelihood, service, and community into a whole cloth.

Location
The Training Program will be held at Upaya Zen Center, 1404 Cerro Gordo, Santa Fe, New Mexico, 87501. Directions can be found on the website at www.Upaya.org.

Upaya Zen Center
1404 Cerro Gordo
Santa Fe, NM 87501

Telephone: 505 986-8518

It is usually the imagination that is wounded first, rather than the heart; it being much more sensitive. - H.D. Thoreau

One Love

I took off petal after petal,
as if you were a rose,
in order to see your soul,
and I didn’t see it.

However, everything around –
horizons of fields and oceans –
was filled with a perfume,
immense and living.
—Juan Ramon-Jimenez

One of the wonderful discoveries of practice is that even as we see more deeply through the dream of self and other, we find an increasing presence of intimacy and love that feels very personal. The experience of no-self, this one ocean of Reality, paradoxically reveals our capacity to see and love the differences of a unique individual, to see and love this person, just as he or she is.

This quality of personal love may also appear in our spiritual practice. Just as we learn to love other people as they are, practice becomes, in part, an unconditional yet very personal relationship of loving the Truth, just as it is, regardless of the form it takes. The challenge is no different.

I imagine that for many of us it is in the sphere of personal love that our practice is most severely tested. In the blink of an eye we fall back to sleep, and self and other seem painfully real. Someone – us or our partner – is flunking who we think they should be. Love for all beings seems much easier than love for the person seated across the breakfast table.

But love for all beings, love for this specific individual, and love of the Truth are not separate. In Zen we say there is just this One Mind. We might also say there is just One Heart, One Lover, One Love. We look at another person with both appreciation for knowing them so intimately, and with the awe that we are looking at an endlessly unfolding mystery.

There can’t be one love for the Truth and another for your spouse. We can’t reject what is in front of us and hold out for the Absolute. So I thought it might be helpful to relect on this paradox of personal love not bound by personal mind, and some ways that the self keeps reappearing to block it.

As an experiment, remember a time you fell deeply in love. Even if you were young and immature, without judgment remember the first look, the first touch.

All you want is to keep moving closer to her . . . You think about him constantly. You’re always paying attention to him . . . You want to know everything about her, and everything about her is fascinating.

It’s just so adorable that she’s named her cat Frisky . . . It’s so amazing to discover that you both love Star Trek . . . The way he snores is so cute you stay awake to listen.

The whole world begins to look beautiful, and you feel inexhaustibly full and generous.

This experience of personal love paradoxically moved you beyond the sense of a separate self. When you love someone or something, the object of your love starts to reveal itself. And the more you see, the less you know. A perfume, immense and living, fills the universe. But when the love stops so does the revelation, and that feels terribly painful.

This same quality can deepen our practice. Relationship to the Truth can become more and more personal, more like being in love. In spiritual practice, as in relationship, it’s crucial to develop the ability to keep moving toward what you want most deeply, not being stopped by frustrations. When I love the Truth deeply, to do this is a joy.

In both love and practice we’re always paying attention. When I love the Truth, love and attention are the same thing. It’s not a discipline. When you’re in love, the obstacles and pains don’t really matter, they just show you how strong your love is.

In both love and practice we develop not just faith but a faithfulness that keeps us more and more steadily on the path, not simply visiting the path. When we love something, we want to know it fully, to never be separate from it.

Of course, my love is not unconditional, and I make the same mistakes on the mat as I do at home. As long as there is a self there are conditions. As long as I put conditions on when I’m willing to be intimate, as long as I try to make deals with the Truth, there is pain. My distance from my girlfriend is the same as my attachment to a self.

In my relationship this self reappears most dramatically in moments of hurt and anger. These emotions, more than most, are so powerfully attached to a personal story of who did what to whom, and whose fault it is. For a moment we can experience that the whole universe feels hurt or angry, and then it’s over, in a flash. But when we’re stuck in the emotions, it’s good to see that hurt and anger, too, are not apart from the Truth, and can be explored with loving curiosity. Some personal examples:

I want to talk to my girlfriend about something important. She’s reading, and wants to continue reading. I feel really let down, then hurt. This story, these images of the two of us, are swirling through my mind. Letting go of the thoughts and staying with the pure sensations, I feel a pain in my chest. As I continue to explore the pain, it feels like a contraction around my heart. I begin to question what is feeling so hurt: What is this? The pain becomes the feeling of a hole, as if I’d been shot through the heart. I feel an open wound. Staying with each sensation, questioning what is wounded, the empty hole shifts from pain to the feeling that there’s nothing in my chest at all. The stories have stopped. And suddenly, with no stories, there is no separation. The painful vulnerability has been transformed into an open intimacy, with no inside or outside. I look at my girlfriend, reading. She looks sweet and tender. I still want to talk to her, but this wanting no longer feels like I’m missing something I need from her. The wanting itself already feels full; full of open space and personal affection. I see again that the real pain is to be separated from this One Heart, my own heart. When I’m able to feel the depth of my disappointment, to see that no thing and no one will fill the hole in my heart, love is present. Regardless of conditions.

Another example, this time about anger. Anger is usually seen as destructive, but it’s helpful to distinguish the experience of anger from its expression. The experience can be explored beyond the distortions of the ego – that there’s a separate "me" that needs to be defended – to its more fundamental energy. So, my girlfriend is mad at me. I see this as a pattern that has happened over and over, and I also feel angry. I’m aware of the story – I’m being treated unfairly, she doesn’t understand my feelings, I have a right to be mad, on and on. Letting go of the thoughts and questioning the actual experience – what is this? – my body fills with an energy that feels like hate, but now there’s no story attached to it, so there’s no object of hatred. Just breathing with this black hateful feeling, not knowing, I’m aware of wanting to destroy everything that seems to be in my way, to annihilate everything that seems to frustrate me. I hate what is interfering with my happiness. But what isinterfering with my happiness? Now it’s not about my girlfriend. Then what is this?

I suddenly realize that what I hate is exactly the story I’ve made up in the first place, the story of "me" and "her," this prison of images that defines and limits both of us.

I feel an enormous energy. I want to kill everything false, to kill every "thing." In the process of questioning, what began as ego-centered anger – the desire to protect one’s self-image of being "right" – has revealed its intrinsic wisdom, the energy to separate from what is false, to separate from allimages. Now, instead of anger, there is an immovable refusal to be pulled into the lies of the mind, a refusal to go for the "bait" of ideas about self and other. And this energy itself is clarity and peace.

I look at my girlfriend. She’s no longer "someone who’s mad at me." I see the woundedness from which her own anger comes, and much more . . . an undefinable and joyous mystery. What I "know" about her evaporates. I’m in love with this mystery, a mystery so boundless and so personal.

My practice keeps showing me that every object, every "other," is ultimately frustrating. No matter what "I" get, no matter how much someone loves me, it doesn’t fill me. There are no consolations. From the point of view of the self, life doesn’t "work out." It cannot work out.

I imagined at one time that unconditional love meant that the love I now felt would simply get bigger and happen more and more often. But what I’ve found is that love is a presence, an inherent quality that is simply there, regardless of conditions. It doesn’t include all conditions; it simply has nothing to do with conditions. And every so often I rediscover the boundless personal love and freedom of being no one.
—Allan Whiteman

Allan has been a member of the Rochester Zen Center since 1983, and lives in New York City.

http://www.gadling.com/2008/02/01/best-prank-ever-stopping-time-at-grand-central-station/

"Buddhism is really hard, particularly Dogen's teaching.
He gives you a very hard practice: Keep your mouth shut and look directly at impermanence! "
From Katagiri Roshi

taking a few days of rest in hawaii before doing a fundraiser for old friend ramdass
yesterday, went to beach to meet him
he slowly walked with friends on either side holding him as he made his way to the water's edge
then into it
a life jacket keeping him afloat
a webbed black mitt on his left hand giving him more pull as he paddled with his one good hand
his face full of fun
and a trail of bright flowers floating around him as his buddy let them go from a white plastic bag
it's the old ramdass, now old and very beautiful


From Albert Einstein:

The Mysterious:
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is_the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a_stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is_as good as dead; his eyes are closed.... To know that what is_impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest_wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can_comprehend only in their most primitive forms--this knowledge, this_feeling, is at the centre of true religiousness. In this sense, and_in this sense only, I belong in the ranks of devoutly religious men."