Contemplations
May Contemplation
There is a Zen story usually referred to as "No Water, No Moon." It is about the nun Chiyono, who after many years of study and practice became enlightened because of a beautiful moon reflected in the pail of water she was carrying. She wrote the following poem:
In this way and that I tried to save the old pail
Since the bamboo strip was weakening and about to break
Until at last the bottom fell out.
No more water in the pail!
No more moon in the water!
Yes, we can use all our studies, wealth, skills, technical knowledge, and resources to try and keep the bucket together, but the bottom falls out again and again. In Zen and wabi-sabi, there is no perfect bucket. How wonderful for Chiyono the nun that the bottom fell out. She awoke.
Wabi-sabi is the appreciation of things impermanent, imperfect, and incomplete. In wabi-sabi we find value, beauty, and interest in unlikely places, and an acceptance and appreciation of life as it is rather than life as we wish it would be… Madison Avenue bombards us with ideas such as, "Buy this perfect product, get that perfect life." Just about every commercial suggests there is something wrong with us. Wabi-sabi is the antithesis of that. It is about life without pretense, without fairytale endings, without immortality, without perfection. Wabi-sabi is about life as it is.
April Contemplation
As a complex religious tradition, or group of traditions, Buddhism has a lot to say about the natural world. Passages in many Buddhist texts reveal sensitivity to the beauties of nature and respect for its various beings. A good example is the Jataka tales (“birth stories”) that describe the previous lives of the Buddha before he became the Buddha. In many of them he is born as an animal, and in some of the best-known tales the Buddha sacrifices himself for “lower animals,” such as offering his rabbit body to a weak tigress so that she can feed her starving cubs. Such fables challenge the duality usually assumed between humans and “nature”— as if we were not part of nature! They suggest that the welfare of every living being, no matter how insignificant it may seem to us, is spiritually important and deserving of our concern. All beings in the Jatakas are able to feel compassion for others and act selflessly to help ease their suffering. In contrast to a Darwinian “survival of the fittest,” which is often used to justify our abuse of other species, its stories offer a vision of life in which we are all interconnected, parts of the same web of life, and therefore also interresponsible, responsible for each other...
Any genuine solution to the ecological crisis must involve something more than technological improvements. If the root of the problem is spiritual, the solution must also have a spiritual dimension...We discover the meaning we seek in the ongoing, long-term task of repairing the rupture between us and Mother Earth, our natural ground. That healing will transform us as much as the biosphere.
David Loy in Healing Ecology: What can Buddhism Contribute to our Understanding of the Ecological Crisis?
Selected in honor of Earth Day, April 26, 2026
May Contemplation
"In Buddhist scriptures it is said that beings born into nonhuman states are as numerous as nighttime stars, whereas beings born as humans are exceptionally rare, as rare as stars visible in daylight. Look at the stars in the sky and reflect on how rare it is to be born as a human! It is not as if we suddenly appeared here for no reason. We did not burst out of the ground, nor did we fall out of the sky or magically appear. Our body, mind, and each of our many positive circumstances were created by a complex network of causes and conditions…the next question to ask is: How can we make this life ultimately meaningful? We have the opportunity to create the causes for both temporary and ultimate happiness, which will benefit ourselves and others… Temporary happiness means finding true joy in this life by working on our mind so that happiness is not dependent upon external circumstances. Ultimate happiness is achieved by fully entering a path that leads to freedom, a path based on purifying ourselves of obscurations and flaws while realizing our true nature…By pursuing both temporary and ultimate happiness, we will not only realize our capacity to benefit ourselves but also to benefit others."
Khentrul Lodrö T'hayé Rinpoche in The Power of Mind: A Tibetan Monk's Guide to Finding Freedom in Every Challenge
Selected in recognition of all those who delivered
precious human lives and in honor of Mothers Day.
February Contemplation
Lovingkindness meditation dispels the illusion of an us and them, there is only us. We can take that vision of life into everyday encounters and situations. Today doesn’t exist apart from the network of relationships and influences that brought us to this moment in our lives. How many people were involved in some way in your decision to meditate? How many people loved you, or prodded you? Told you about their meditation practice? Challenged you so that you decided to look for more inner calm and understanding? What about those who hurt you, brought you to an edge of some kind so that you thought, I've really got to find another way or I’ve got to look for another level of happiness? They may be a part of why you’re reading these words. We are each swept into the here and now by a confluence of events, causes, and conditions. A large community brought you to this moment.
Sharon Salzberg, in Real Happiness:
The Power of Meditation
March Contemplation
Celtic spirituality reminds us that we do not live simply in our thoughts, feelings, or relationships. We belong on the earth. The rhythm of the clay and its seasons sings within our hearts. The sun warms the clay and fosters life. The moon blesses the night. In the uncluttered world of Celtic spirituality, there is a clear view of the sacrament of Nature as it brings forth visible presence. The Celts worshipped in groves in Nature and attended to the silent divinity of wild places. Certain wells, trees, animals, and birds were sacred to them. Where and what a people worship always offers a clue to where they understand the source of life to be. Most of our experience of religion happens within the walled frame of church or temple. Our God is approached through thought, word, and ritual. The Celts had no walls around their worship. Being in Nature was already to be in the Divine Presence.
John O'Donohue in Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong
January Contemplation
One of my yearly rituals is to find a word that represents my intention for the coming year. And this year’s word seems to be threshold, perhaps to remind me that I get to decide which doorways I want to step through—I get to decide to invite into my life only the people, work, places, and actions that keep my heart clear. But what do I mean by a “clear heart?” I can only say that I feel most spacious and clear when I am living in a way that aligns with my values, following practices like meditation and prayer, which reinforce my daily intentions. Each morning, I pray to be used to make this world a kinder, more beautiful, and more loving place. And while there are days when I don’t feel I’ll ever measure up to that wish, I now see how even our smallest acts and gestures can change lives. I trust that a well-placed thank you, or kind message, or simple smile, can alter the very texture of someone’s being. Let us all walk with this faith through the coming days, choosing as often as we can only those doorways marked Kindness, Compassion, and Presence.
September Contemplation
"There’s a shadow side to the age we live in. It consists of the ideas that get rejected as unacceptable. Today the shadow is occupied by mysticism. The reason we reject mystical ideas is that they contradict science, technology, rationality, and the five senses…. The East has a profound tradition in this area, whereas the West got sidetracked by religion. When God enters the picture, metaphysics gets entangled with faith, dogma, and every kind of warring religious faction. The simple fact that God is unknowable implies that mysticism is unknowable, too…..
I often think of the ancient Indian sages as Einsteins of consciousness, because their discoveries are just as momentous as the theory of relativity…The first and foremost discovery is this: The field of pure consciousness created the universe. It didn’t do this by creating time, space, matter, and energy. Those are mere appearances. What pure consciousness did was create versions of itself. Everything in the universe is a form of consciousness hiding behind the mask of matter… Once it emerges into the visible universe, consciousness by its very nature evolves. Creation dominates over destruction. In the setup of human reality, the universe is on our side — we were created to evolve."
August Contemplation
“The root word for suture means ‘to thread [something] together.’ The related Sanskrit word sutra refers to Buddhist scriptures. A sutra is a source of healing. Its purpose is to suture together something that's been split, some hurt we have, a feeling of separation, alienation, or isolation from the world around us.
In a sutra, the suturing is usually done through the wisdom of our ancestors. But the Mountains and Waters Sutra, written by the Zen master Dogen, speaks of another kind of wisdom. We are surrounded by the sutra, under our feet, overhead, and inside us. So there is nothing to read, nothing to understand, and nothing to do. The suturing is done by the mountains and waters: nature itself is the source of healing…the earth, the trees, and the underbrush of the mountain…the lakes, the streams, and the rivers. Many of us notice a deep happiness or an unexpected calm when we're close to nature. When we spend contemplative time by mountains and water, our sense of separation, anxiety, and loneliness abates, and what has been torn asunder gradually begins to heal. The healing happens naturally if we are open to it- one breath, one stitch; one stitch, one breath.”
Tim Burkett, in Zen in the Age of Anxiety: Wisdom for Navigating our Modern Lives
June Contemplation
Mind is pure potential---it has no limits as to what it can hold which means, of course, that we as living beings have no limits as to what we can hold, be it wretched or sublime, cranky or joyous, ugly or beautiful.
But beware, because when we stop objectifying things and instead admit them into our awareness, we won't see them in the same way as we did before. The lines between suffering and happiness will start to shift and fade. We may see traces of pain, expectation, and discontent in what we used to consider only "pleasant." Conversely, we may start to value what we previously considered "unwanted" as broadening and enriching. And this may rouse our curiosity enough that we begin to ask ourselves: "What is suffering or beauty before we objectify it?" Now if we're going to seriously start asking questions like this we better get ready to change... because that's what will happen.
Elizabeth Mattis Namgyel in The Power of an Open Question: The Buddha’s Path to Freedom
July Contemplation
“The way of direct revelation and embodied, experiential discovery is not the easy way. It is not the path of five clear steps to empowerment, manifestation, or thinking our way into permanent happiness, abundance, and bliss. It is not about learning a bunch of new powerful techniques or the latest awakening technology. There is nothing wrong with these approaches per se, but mine is only an invitation to keep our eyes open and realize we might never be able to fully touch the mystery with technique or prefabricated steps and stages. We must discover the secret map within us, hidden inside our hearts, and cultivate the courage and the trust to follow our own path, at times to walk alone and at other times to make the journey side by side with a kindred traveler who can see into our shadow in ways we cannot see on our own. How this 'kindred traveler' takes form is a mystery and often comes into our lives in surprising and unexpected ways.”
Matt Licata, PhD, in A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times
May Contemplation
The Buddhist way of working with the mind has profound implications for how we as individuals think about change. In Western theories, the hope is always that emptiness can be healed, that if the character is developed or the trauma resolved that the background feelings will diminish. If we can make the ego stronger, the expectation is that emptiness will go away. In Buddhism, the approach is reversed. Focus on the emptiness, the dissatisfaction, and the feelings of imperfection, and the character will get stronger. Learn how to tolerate nothing and your mind will be at rest. Psychotherapy tends to focus on the personal melodrama, exploring its origins and trying to clean up its mess. Buddhism seeks, instead, to purify the insight of emptiness.
Mark Epstein, M.D. in Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness –
Lessons from Meditation and Psychotherapy
April Contemplation
April is National Poetry Month and Earth Day is April 22
Read the entire interview, here.
March Contemplation
"It is a paradox that we encounter so much internal noise when we first try to sit in silence.
It is a paradox that experiencing pain releases pain.
It is a paradox that keeping still can lead us so fully into life and being.
Our minds do not like paradoxes, we like things to be clear so we can maintain our illusions of safety....
We each possess a deeper level of being, however,
which loves paradox. It knows that summer is already
growing like a seed in the depth of winter. It knows
that the moment we are born, we begin to die. It knows that all of life shimmers, in shades of becoming --that shadow and light are always together, the visible mingled with the invisible.
When we sit in the stillness we are profoundly active.
Keeping silent, we can hear the roar of existence.
Through our willingness to be the one we are, we become one with everything."
Gunilla Norris in Sharing Silence:
Meditation Practice and Mindful Living
February Contemplation
When it is warm with tenderness and affection toward others, our own heart can give us the most pure and profound happiness that exists and enable us to radiate that happiness to others…The word in English that captures this experience best is probably love. In my mother tongue of Tibetan, we use the word tsewa…The future of the world depends on tsewa. This is fortunate because tsewa is something we are all born with. Out of habit or ignorance, we may choose to keep our heart closed, or we may not realize we have a choice. But when we begin to understand the power of tsewa and how we can cultivate it, our innate wisdom will guide us toward greater and greater warmth and tenderness, until there is no difference between our heart and the heart of the Buddha, the perfect compassionate guide.
Dzigar Kongtrul in Training in Tenderness: Buddhist Teachings on Tsewa, the Radical Openness of Heart
That Can Change the World
My fate is twined with the fate of destiny, held in perpetuity with all life, spiraling all the way back to the beginning of time. As I move toward my highest expression, the wisdom of ages is wrapped around me like a cloak; it moves with me, shifting to match my own unique rhythm and then integrating the rhythm into the movement of creation. Let that cloak be a comfort to me in times of trial. Allow me to open myself to this wisdom and let it soften my defenses against it, knowing that any pain that I feel during this process is caused by denying the wise enticement of my own true heart. I seek to become a willing vessel and to open my heart completely to those whom fate has drawn towards me. Allow me to see them, not through the obscured vision of my own wounding, or the defensive shelter created by theirs, but with the clarity of vision that can reveal their soul to me. Give me strength to remain seated in this pursuit beyond the levels of my own discomfort and fear, so that I may become the boundless being that you have created me to be, capable of embracing all life, and capable of giving and receiving all the love that the divine spirit holds for me.
what you give
to the world
is who you are
we are not here
to hoard the light
we are here to reflect it
our souls don't
have pockets
everything we fought to gather
will one day slip through our
unclenched translucent hands
nobody will remember
how safe we were with
our gifts and heart
they will remember how
recklessly we gave of ourselves
we aren't here to
turn our lives into
a bank vault
we are here to be
a gateless park
we are not what we take
from this world
we are defined by what we
give back to it
December Contemplation
John Roedel @ www.johnroedel.com
January Contemplation
When we look at our lives as a story of an awakening process that has been taking place in each and every moment, we move out of conceptual mind’s either/or mentality, a mentality that mistakenly separates our humanity and the sacred. We gradually develop a view that allows the heart to rest in and. That and view allows us to acknowledge our still-wounded selves, our at times still reactive selves, as awakening beings – engaged in the process of integrating our buddha nature with our human nature….
Since we first reached out to a path, to a practice, through maturing and ripening, each step has followed-however faltering-our heart’s intention. And truly and deeply, it is not even “our” intention. It is Being’s longing for expression through us, Being’s love for its own expression as us.
Kathleen Dowling Singh in The Grace in Living:
Recognize It, Trust It, Abide In It
May Contemplation
“Dedicated lay Buddhist practice in the West is open at all of its edges to ordinary life, to the householding life and the parenting life. And we are all pioneers here, doing the impossible---bringing a two-and-a-half thousand year monastic tradition into all the corners of our ordinary sacred lives. In one sense every step of practice, every step on the Way, is pioneering.
We make the path by walking; even those of us who are not literally parents but are including, in various ways, parenting relationships with others, are making the path of practice right through the center of ordinary life. (Though what life was ever ordinary!)”
May Contemplation
Dogen frequently points out that the most magical of mystical powers in not to levitate, walk on water, or foresee the future – assuming we could do any of these – but simply to perform countless ordinary and natural actions which, when we reflect on it are truly amazing. How much of a miracle is it that we are here, able to breath, laugh, cry and drink a cup of tea? It has taken all the physics and chemistry, time and circumstances of the universe to allow us to be here, doing a simple act like drinking a cup of tea. All the heat and light, twists and turns of the universe also work to bring us to the mysterious miracle of death. So, all of life and death are our “mystical powers.” This is especially true when we use these ordinary powers for good, such as to bring a bit more strength, kindness and compassion into the world.
Jundo Cohen in The Zen Master’s Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe
May Contemplation
Dogen frequently points out that the most magical of mystical powers in not to levitate, walk on water, or foresee the future – assuming we could do any of these – but simply to perform countless ordinary and natural actions which, when we reflect on it are truly amazing. How much of a miracle is it that we are here, able to breath, laugh, cry and drink a cup of tea? It has taken all the physics and chemistry, time and circumstances of the universe to allow us to be here, doing a simple act like drinking a cup of tea. All the heat and light, twists and turns of the universe also work to bring us to the mysterious miracle of death. So, all of life and death are our “mystical powers.” This is especially true when we use these ordinary powers for good, such as to bring a bit more strength, kindness and compassion into the world.
Jundo Cohen in The Zen Master’s Dance: A Guide to Understanding Dogen and Who You Are in the Universe
October Contemplation
Navigating mystery humbles us, reminds us with every step that we don’t know everything...What if we reframed “living with uncertainty” to “navigating mystery”? There’s more energy in
that phrase. The hum of imaginative voltage. And is our life not
a mystery school, a seat of earthy instruction?
There are few tales worth remembering that don’t have uncertainty woven into them. Without uncertainty we have mission statements not myth. We have polemic not poetry,
sign not symbol. And true human experience has always involved ambiguity, paradox, and eventually the need for sheer pluck...we have to walk our questions, our yearnings, our longings. We have to set out into those mysteries, even with the uncertainty. Especially with the uncertainty.
Make it magnificent. Set sail, take the wing, commit to the stomp. Evoke a playful boldness that makes even angels swoon. There’s likely something tremendous waiting.
Martin Shaw in Navigating the Mysteries, Emergence Magazine
Read the article in its entirety here.
June Contemplation
"What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness…As a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder…There are ways. You already know that because, in your life, there have been High Kindness periods and Low Kindness periods, and you know what inclined you toward the former and away from the latter. Education is good; immersing ourselves in a work of art: good; prayer is good; meditation’s good; a frank talk with a dear friend; establishing ourselves in some kind of spiritual tradition — recognizing that there have been countless really smart people before us who have asked these same questions and left behind answers for us…One thing in our favor: some of this “becoming kinder” happens naturally, with age. It might be a simple matter of attrition: as we get older, we come to see how useless it is to be selfish — how illogical, really. We come to love other people and are thereby counter-instructed in our own centrality. We get our butts kicked by real life, and people come to our defense, and help us, and we learn that we’re not separate, and don’t want to be. We see people near and dear to us dropping away, and are gradually convinced that maybe we too will drop away (someday, a long time from now). Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving…And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE…That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality — your soul, if you will — is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Teresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly."
July Contemplation
I've found it helpful to think of existence - the entire play of sounds and thoughts and bodies and trees - as the foreground of life, and awareness as the background. In the Zen tradition, the shift from focusing on the foreground of experience to resting in pure being is called "the backward step." Whenever we step out of thought or emotional reactivity and remember the presence that is here, we are taking the backward step.
One of the reflections I most love is drawn from a Tibetan Buddhist teaching that offers a beautiful reassurance. It tells us that the refuge of awareness is:
Closer than we can imagine.
More profound than we can imagine.
Easier than we can imagine.
More wondrous than we can imagine.
Sufi poet Hafiz says that we are different from the saints because we still think we have "a thousand serious moves." But just as we fall asleep and get lost in doing, we can fall awake. Invite yourself to be at ease, to give up any planning or attempts to control. Relax your body and mind, and allow everything to happen - sounds, sensations, feelings... What is it like to realize that living with this awakened body, mind and heart is more wonderous than you can imagine?
Tara Brach in True Refuge: Finding Peace and Freedom in Your Own Awakened Heart
January Contemplation
Aspiration connects us with a sense of what is possible. It is a key that opens the door to healing, spiritual cultivation, and social transformation. Without aspiration - without the sense that things can be different - we don't bring forth the energy... Aspiration also can be more of a feeling than a specific goal - an uplifting glimmer that emerges when we feel moved, touched, or inspired...Other times, aspiration is forged in the crucible of pain. Rather than compounding pain into suffering, you can aspire to heal and grow. Aspiration is the seed of the lotus that grows in the muck of our suffering...Aspiration is a kind of practical hope that opens the heart to possibility…The author and educator Patrick Overton expresses this receptive aspect of aspiration beautifully in his poem:
Faith
When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown, you must believe that one of two things will happen -
There will be something solid for you to stand upon,
Or, you will be taught how to fly.
Sometimes connecting with our aspiration just means taking the next step and trusting that the ground will appear beneath us or that we will discover new resources we didn't know we had... As Paulo Freire famously wrote, "We make the road by walking." In the face of despair and hopelessness, if we take one step at a time and remain open to life, we will hear the call of our aspiration.
Oren Jay Sofer in Your Heart Was Made for This: Contemplative Practices for Meeting a World in Crisis with Courage, Integrity, and Love
March Contemplation
“One of the reasons the Lotus Sutra has remained so beloved around the world for so long is that it is considered the teaching of universal liberation. Everyone is guaranteed to become a Buddha, monastics and lay practitioners, women and men, animals and plants alike...In Chapter Five’s Parable of the Medicinal Herbs, or the Parable of the Rain of the Dharma, the Buddha compares himself to a rain cloud that softly blankets the whole earth and the dharma to the rain that nourishes all beings and things equally...Using this beautiful and gentle story of a cloud, rain, and seeds blossoming into living plants, we see the interconnectedness of nature, where all the components are inextricably linked and connected in order for something new to grow. This is another way to express interdependence and inter-being...
While the dharma rain falls equally on each of us, we must do the work—through our practice, or right endeavor—to grow into the best versions of ourselves...We are all bodhisattvas in the process of becoming buddhas. It takes time to grow. We need to drink in the rain of the dharma and nurture the dharma around us, like the continuous, circular flow of being.”
June Contemplation
If we truly aspire to ending our personal ignorance and craving, supporting relationships rooted in metta and compassion, and contributing to human flourishing and to a just and humane society, then we need a fully immersive, always-on engagement with the Noble Eightfold Path...As we approach the Buddha's discourses, our modern, individualistic minds may be baffled by descriptions of elevated mind states. Our scientism may be challenged by teachings on rebirth, and our religions or cultures that posit a self or soul may not immediately mesh with teachings on momentariness and relinquishment. But we must be willing to be confronted by those challenges and willing to not know the answers…We must engage a whole-life path at an ever-shifting balance point between urgency and patience. Death is near; unskillfulness and delusion are easy to get lost in, and we practice as if our hair were on fire...The Buddhist path has traditionally been conceived of as unfolding over multiple lifetimes. Our modern cosmologies do not provide this same kind and patient framework, so we need to remember the deep roots of our hunger and confusion, let them build ardor in our hearts, and with patience, appreciate that a workable path is available to us.
Gregory Kramer in A Whole-Life Path: A Lay Buddhist's Guide to Crafting a Dhamma-Infused Life,