Dear Friends,
Continuing with the talk from Kamala Masters, “Equanimity-Seeing the World with Quiet Eyes” and adding another “good news Monday” segment…
In the talk, Kamala shares a quote from Don Juan to Carlos Castaneda and then relates that to equanimity:
This is what Don Juan said to Carlos Castaneda, “The art of being a spiritual warrior is to balance the terror of being a human with the wonder of being a human.”
That wonder of being human is how we can transform ourselves. It takes training. It takes putting effort into it. It’s not about just being calm. We can be calm in the face of highs and lows. We can have equanimity with it. That’s a deeper calm.
Later, Kamala adds to yesterday’s reflection,
“This is how it is right now.” It’s how conditions have come together in this moment. It isn’t “this is how it is and it’s going to be this way forever” – it’s more like reminding ourselves that “okay, this is how it is right now, and the next thing is, what am I going to do about it.” … They are loving statements. Accepting the everythingness of life and yet not holding on to how we think it should be, but finding the skillful means to respond.
My sangha friend Doris shared this lovely story of two humans putting the effort and training into transforming themselves and their world.
From the Facebook page of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra:
In 1999, Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said founded the West-Eastern Divan as a workshop for Israeli, Palestinian and other Arab musicians. Meeting in Weimar, Germany – a place where the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment are overshadowed by the Holocaust – they materialized a hope to replace ignorance with education, knowledge and understanding; to humanize the other; to imagine a better future. Within the workshop, individuals who had only interacted with each other through the prism of war found themselves living and working together as equals. As they listened to each other during rehearsals and discussions, they traversed deep political and ideological divides. Though this experiment in coexistence was intended as a one-time event, it quickly evolved into a legendary orchestra.
https://www.facebook.com/pg/WestEasternDivanOrchestra/about/
For more, you can check out this little video clip:
West-Eastern Divan Orchestra Short Introduction
https://youtu.be/mmmHenspaYs
If you have a good news story to share, please let me know!
Guided meditation: From Nina Wise, Exploring Peace in Our Hearts – guided meditation, about 25 minutes:
https://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/132/talk/60261/
Feel free to share your reflections or comments below, or by email.
With warm wishes,
Andrea
Ahhh….Carlos Casteneda and his Yaqui teacher Don Juan…. a great introduction to a way of being, native to this continent we are living on and its ancient wisdom. Carlos talks of the two ways of knowing the world.. the “tonal ” and the “nagual” which comes from ancient Toltec philosophy. All spiritual traditions come from the same solitary source. My limited understanding of Buddhist dharma tells me that this is what we are perfecting in meditation. The endeavour to tame the Tonal and to embody the vast Universe of the Nagual.
The Toltecs look at creation as consisting of the Nagual and the tonal. The Nagual is all that is. It is unstructured. The Nagual condenses and the tonal is formed. The tonal is structured energy. The average person only perceive the tonal. As we move into the world of energy we enter, what is referred to by the Toltecs as the Second Attention.
Thank you Robbie! This is an interesting connection you bring in.