A lifetime sitting with the central tenet of Islam has led me to accept it.
You must submit.
Islam means submission in Arabic. A muslim is a person who has submitted.
Specifically they submit to Allah. He's also the only thing worthy of submission. If your orders come from anywhere else, you waste your life marching into a dead end.
Most religions recognise this truth, though they express it differently.
Buddhists call it acceptance of the Dharma. You don't get enlightenment from your teacher, your religion, or even the Buddha.
It comes directly from the Dharma.
This may seem fanatically reductive, especially when the people shouting it at you are really referring to themselves when they say "Allah" or "Dharma".
But taken at face value, I'm convinced it's exact.
Because Allah isn't just the only authority qualified to lead you.
He's also the only one you can trust.
(Photo courtesy of Muh Rifandi and Wikimedia Commons.)
(Here's another bullfrog [Rana (Lithobates) catesbeiana], rather better lit and differentiated from her background. She's a whole handful, likely weighing about a pound; I found her sitting zazen in the middle of a local bike path on a cool autumn day.
Literally just sitting, untroubled by bikes, dogs, or walkers, as one seldom finds her kind.
Frogs play an outsized role in Zen, but I'll temper my monastic impulses and guess that my sister's equanimous demeanour was down more likely to being zombied out on incipient hibernation, and heading to a winter bed in the muddy lake some yards away.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
"Strictly speaking, every unenlightened practitioner is mixing their own convictions and belief systems with Buddhism. There is no way around it.
"We need to acknowledge that in ourselves and understand that our perception of reality is clouded by many things, some of which are ideologies and beliefs."
—This salient practice point courtesy of an astute sanghamate in Reddit group r/Buddhism/.
(Photo of torii gate [a Shinto symbol that's been widely embraced by Japanese Zen] at Mosteiro Zem Budista, Ibiraçu, Brazil, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
(Another rivetting instalment in the saga of the wayfaring poke [Phytolacca americana] that's mysteriously turned up in the neighbourhood, thousands of miles from its native range. Here you see its ripe, deep-purple berries, whose poisonous juice was once used as ink in settler communities far from mine.
Invasive, but fascinating.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
"Having children takes talent, like any creative thing."
Maurice Sendak
(Photo courtesy of Seth Anderson and Wikimedia Commons.)
Let us walk alone together, comrade sojourner.
We will be like pebbles in a bag, polishing each other bright.
(Ship's dogs, ca. 1920, courtesy of the US Navy and Rawpixel.com.)
(Malus fusca. Native to the North Coast, in my home county it's a common understory tree, flourishing on the margins and in clearings of mature forests.
Though M. fusca's apples are only bean-sized, given the number available, they're a staple of local indigenous cuisines. Like all crabapples they're barely palatable raw, but a brilliant upgrade to other fruits, contributing depth, tartness, pectin, and rosy perfume to evergreen huckleberries, apple pie and cider, rose hips, blackberries and a great many others.
The wood is dense and hard, verging on flinty, and so good for such things as tool handles, stakes, digging sticks, and hard-duty walking sticks.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
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