Moon Day

 

The moon can represent so many things. To me it's a friend I look for in the sky to accompany my meditations. Every time I see it I'm pleased. I'm disappointed when it's overcast, or it's set. On full moon days you're supposed to gather with the local Buddhist friends. The monks would talk Dharma all night.

The complaint of book reviews is that non-muslims de-emphasize the Islamic aspect of Rumi, but I think it's OK if you're not a muslim, but like Rumi, that you don't go into what you don't really know about, and extract what makes sense to you. Rumi, in many ways, shucked off the formality of fundamental Islam, for freedom. Maybe those strictures feeling tight would give another feel to Rumi, but if you don't feel the strictures, you don't feel the strictures. You just like the freedom, and have your own strictures. (New Yorker article)

Love emerging from a structure, a tradition, a lifetime of scholarship, is glorious. Love smashes all the arbitrary separators of class, gender, sexuality, sect, etc. 

I really should go to the Chan center in Elmhurst to connect with sangha, but when I went a tall bald female monk said, "Oh Triratna, you have no lineage, we have two lineages." Now lineage is important, I'm not brushing it away, but so literal a mind, seemed unworthy of the deep Buddhism I aspire to practice. Love destroys these kind of barriers to love. Lineage is beautiful and wonderful. 

One must accept the banishment from the beloved sangha as the natural consequences of ethical misconduct. 

I must be a solitary practitioner from my chosen sangha. The sangha is allowed to make the mistake of pushing you away unjustly. The sangha is not perfect, or enlightened yet, but they are trying. They can't waste energy. I tried to return after many years, but hey superficially judged me unworthy. I shall not try again. They are wrong, and I and healed and pure, their lack of vision shows how impure and unhealed they are. It doesn't matter, I still love the time i spent in the bosom of the sangha, and learned so much. Forever solitary, like the great mountain poets of China. It's OK to be rejected by imperfect being you want to connect to, I shall take it as a lesson and strive on. 

Somehow I lucked on a practitioner far away. He doesn't seem to mind my quirks so far. He is young but he sees deeply. Though he tries to be casual, he is deep and committed.

I have found a new sangha, foreign, far away. It fits just right, I am forgiven and appreciated. I have not hidden my past misconduct, indeed, I lament about it probably too much. I shall work to be worthy of their love, and be loving in return.