As a Sangha, we have the option to join a daily read and reflect group.
We're currently reading Your True Home The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh. Compiled and edited by Melvin McLeod.
We've been doing this in chunks of 30 days, we vote on whether to take a break as a group and it's a voluntary participation on the daily too.
My 129 reflection:
Your noble self, your sovereignty - is not as we have the associations in the West; nothing at all to do with being born or married into royal households.
Rather in finding our True Self, that Noble, sovereign self, has no permanent fixed state. As all things find themselves.
Interdependent.
Co-existing.
All things are one.
How majestic. Endless. Vast and pure.
Our emotions are not fixed. They hold our attention until they do not.
Breathing is not fixed on in but also needs out.
We are not fixed in one moment in time, but rather it is now past, now is the moment and there WILL be a future.
Past is lingering on what was.
The future is casting onto what will be.
In the here and now.
I breathe. Others breathe.
Tree and flower breathe.
Bird breathes. Fish breathes.
All things breathe, or once did.
I live. We live.
Trees and plants live.
Bird flies. Fish swims.
We all grow until we can grow no more.
All energy lives on.
As we walk or sit zazen.
This sense of individual self we have entangled ourselves in drops away.
Stomping off anger.
Walking with tears.
Striding will glee.
Skipping with joy.
Walking🚶♀️, sitting 🧘♀️, and breathing 😤🫁 have a commonality:
a rhythm and a pace that connects with the natural.
If it's natural, it soothes.
Breath and step auto-synch. Body falls away.
Mind doesn't have to grasp onto emotion, or continue repeating that narrative. We don't have to plan tonight's meal. We don't have to focus on anything in particular. The mind can be busy, we don't have to tune into that frequency, for now.
Mind falls away.
In this, we connect to our inner peace.
That which is always there.
Under all this ......
There is natural peace.
How sovereign
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