Fiddler's Green Monastery

Master: Wake up!

Student: I'm tired 

Master: You have yet to live a single day, how can you be tired? 

--

One day while walking along the green bank of the lake I asked my Master, why is it so hard to be enlightened?

He only smiled. 

--

One day during morning meal the Master watched us with eyes half closed. He didn't touch his food.

"Why aren't you eating Master?" asked a sister. 

"I was experiencing deep gratitude for this new day, and for this delicious food," he said.

The rest of us slowed our eating and bowed to him in thanks for the lesson. 

--

"There are 4 pillars of Being Meditation," the Master said.

"One is the awareness of Being itself, that is space/time, the fabric of Being. 

Two, is the ten thousand things, but especially living and sentient beings. 

Three, is consciousness. 

Four, is transience, the folding and unfolding of Being. These are the key to true meditation practice."

--

Once when walking through a nearby town we observed a man kicking a dog. Someone asked the Master, "Why does he kick the dog?" 

"There are many reasons why men harm others. Ultimately it is because he has forgotten the miraculous nature of existence. If he had remembered, he never would have harmed that other being."

Greater things

There are greater things than the 

Idea of your gods

For gods can never know the 

Friendship of wanderers or the 

Sky-eyed host of grasstreaders, 

Oceangazers, treetouchers 

But that was the test wasn't it? 

God is:

"That than which nothing

Greater can be conceived" 

But I can conceive it 

And its conception fills me like a 

Star-lapping wave, 

With a truth that didn't come 

From a book, 

It surpasses the paper gods, 

It is greater by a green mile, 

By a host of singing lights 

That illuminate my heart, 

It is the love of a dear friend that 

Shares the long road and 

Sheds my tears 

The sunlight through the trees

Upon the infant's pure eye, 

The space between our 

Longing and Eternity, 

Present at every moment

For those with 

Eyes to see, 

Good hearts, 

Faces turned toward the 

Rising lands and waters