Old card for Buddhist friends
Category: MEDITATION or BUDDHIST
Sitting through the storms
This was the first picture in my Covid project, Barbara’s Bits, and because those emails were originally going out to a group that was Buddhist-orientated, tho with members of all different backgrounds, it had a meditation theme.
This shows a person sitting (meditating or not, as you like) on a mountainside or hillside, the slope between where we are, and where we might like to be, and becoming still, despite the thunder and lightning crashing all around.
The lightning comes close, wavers around their head, but passes over them and they weather the storm. I made it a few years ago. This time of pandemic is a terrible “storm” we are in now, and we don’t know what may happen to any of us, but we are all trying, each with what we are given, to BE in it, in the best way we can.
So whether you: Meditate (sitting,walking or lying down); Question, or Inquire; Sit in Silence at home or in a Meeting; do Yoga; attend a place of worship; simply walk in appreciation of Nature in all its forms; delve into The Great Mystery; chant; practice compassion ; work with your anxiety, or a great many other possibilities, I hope you can relate to this.
To all experience, Gassho. To all experience, I bow.
This drawing (an actual drawing in this case, not digital) was part of an article which I wrote many years ago for the newsletter of the Zen Buddhist group with which I meditated. The article is called Bowing Happens and gives my take on the various kinds of bows, mainly for people who have difficulty with the idea of bowing! A gassho, here, is the kind of palms-together in front of the face little bow, with which many non-meditators also are familiar, an acknowledging, greeting, accepting bow.
The meditating person on their cushion, enfolded in the gassho-ing hands, is in black, because that is what we wear in zen when meditating (in a group). He or she is faceless because when we sit, we are (in one sense) self-less; we are as Buddha-mind. However, in the heart region, the region of compassion, where there is a face which could be either a Buddha face or a female person (or both!) this figure is also tenderly cradling a face with tears. We hold all these factors, these “faces”, in our hearts.
If anyone would like to read the full article, here is a PDF. Remember, this was just my viewpoint at the time, not a official one!
_______________________________________________