Returning: Care is the Source of My Practice

I have, after contemplating it for months, returned to sewing my rakusu.  Sewing is an act of devotion and commitment and faith.  While sewing we chant, internally, the refuges in Japanese.  The refuges in Japanese translate something like this:  I plunge headfirst, with absolutely no hesitation, into the Buddha, dharma, and sangha.  I feel ready for my practice to embody this faith; for my body, speech, and mind to embody this faith.  Even in moments when I do not actually feel ready, after a great deal of thought and feeling I desire this and believe in this. So the blog is actually partly about learning to embody and to express this faith and the rest of the dharma as I slowly come to understand it.  As a form of speech I hope it in some way manifests my sincere attempt to explore the precept of speaking in a beneficial way, speaking in a way that in itself manifests the precepts to whatever degree I am able. 

And so it feels like the right time for me to restart the blog.  I would like to devote this new beginning to caring deeply, to recognizing that the desire to care is the source of my practice, and to recognizing that the practice makes the deepest forms of care possible.  

I have recently been making a practice of reflecting on the six perfections, or paramitas.  The one that comes to mind this evening is danaparamita, the perfection of generosity.  This is because, right now I am experiencing great difficulty in terms of being generous to myself, which is the major prerequisite of loving and caring for other beings.  I hope I can find a way to explore why it is that it is so much easier to be generous to others than it is to myself, and to give myself all the nourishment and comfort that would allow me to fully be so much more deeply generous to others.  Every moment is an opportunity for self-generosity: so in this moment, as I prepare to go to sleep, I can be generous and nourishing to myself.  In this moment I can allow my body to fully feel my breath.  In this moment I can light candles, I can sit, I can let go of tensions.  Even as I dream, I can dream of warmth, of the clarity of love, of realization. 

My old teacher Baba Hari Dass used to say that as sadhana or daily spiritual practice begins to reform our organism, our organism naturally begins to practice sadhana even in sleep.  This is my experience too; if we shape ourselves through the constant focus on love and on cultivating the mind of enlightenment, then even in dreams we may pursue that greatest act of generosity possibility – the gift to all being, even to plants and rocks, of becoming enlightened to whatever capacity we can muster. 

So with that thought I’m off to bed; and moving forward, hope to keep this blog rolling and devoted to, above and beyond anything else, exploring how practice – including the paramitas, the precepts, Dogen, ritual, etc – facilitates deep care and love.  Because at the heart of it, that’s all that matters to me, and I’m only deepening my practice because I believe more than ever before that this practice is a solid and profound way to love very, very deeply.