Today's thought

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. […]

"We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds, how dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state from which the vast majority have never stirred?”

--Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist

The Tangerine Meditation

The venrable Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh has returned to his native land, Vietnam, to live (and die) in the Zen temple where he was ordained some 80 years ago. To celebrate his return, here is one of his most famous stories, the story of a tangerine meditation:

When I was a young novice, I asked my teacher, “Do you think that in the Pure Land of the Buddha there are tangerines? If there are no tangerines I would not like to go there!” I declared.

I really said that to my teacher!

Do you think that in the kingdom of God there are tangerines or not? I believe there are. If you go to the kingdom of God and you don’t find tangerines, you will miss the planet Earth very much, because on the planet Earth there are tangerines, and many other wonderful things.

That is why I’m determined to stay here, because the planet Earth is something very real. I do not want to exchange it for something that we cannot be sure is real. That is why to me the kingdom of God is here on Earth, available in the here and the now.

That is my insight. In order to go to the kingdom of God, you have to be very alive, which means you have to be very mindful and concentrated. You do not have to die in order to go to the kingdom; it may be too late. You have to be alive now, and to be alive, is something you can do.

Are you a gazelle or a lion?

"Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.

"Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.

"Which are you: gazelle or lion? It doesn't matter. When the sun comes up, you better start running."

--African proverb from the book "The World is Flat" by Thomas Friedman

And finally ...

May the blessings of these practices awaken your own inner wisdom and inspire your compassion. .... And through the blessing of your heart may the world find peace.

The Sarasota Zen Group meets every Sunday night at 7 pm for Zen and zazen (meditation). We start with readings and discussion, then transition into zazen and chanting.

Come find the rest and inner peace that keeps us all in balance.

Our zendo is in the Jefferson Room on the campus of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, 3975 Fruitville Road, Sarasota (map here). Contact us at zen@uusarasota.org or, if you wish to remain anonymous, you can use the Contact form on our website.

https://us1.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=d2e90fc8b644370ee568e2081&id=aa4aecbda0&e=[UNIQID]

Sarasota Zen GroupEmail: zen@uusarasota.org

Our mailing address is:
3975 Fruitville Road
Sarasota, FL 34232

unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences