Quote from Buddha's Daughters
Buddha's Daughters: Teachings from Women who are Shaping Buddhism in the West
edited by Andrea Miller and the editors of Shambhala Sun magazine
Shambhala Publications, Boston, Massachusetts, 2014. 289 pp.Features: Tsultrim Allione, Jan Chozen Bays, Charlotte Joko Beck, Sylvia Boorstein, Tara Brach, Pema Chodron, Thubten Chodron, Darlene Cohen, Christina Feldman, Carolyn Rose Gimian, Joan Halifax, Blanche Hartman, Roshi Jiyu-Kennett, Khandro Rinpoche, Ayya Khema, Sister Chan Khong, Anne Carolyn Klein, Judith L. Leif, Joanna Macy, Karen Maezen-Miller, Pat Enkyo O'Hara, Toni Packer, Tenzin Palmo, Sharon Salzberg, Maurine Stuart, Joan Sutherland, Bonnie Myotai Treace.
Roshi Jiyu-Kennett: Why Study Zen?
"I would like to talk to you about why one comes to study Zen in the first place. You have to start off on the 'me' side, on the greed side. You see, somebody comes to religion not because he or she really wants to but because the person has no where else to go. You go to religion when psychology, psychiatry, and everything else breaks down, and you say, 'oops, where do we go from here?' Then you start saying, 'Well, maybe there is something I don't know very much about,' and you start looking for a priest or a teacher. And if you're lucky, you find one who knows his or her job.
So, what is it that primarily drives people to do this? A lot of people say it is fear of death, but it isn't: -- it's fear of life. . . " (p. 128)
We need courage to be creative. To be sensitive and aware requires great courage. This word courage comes from the same root as the French word coeur, which means heart. So please have the courage to listen to your heart, to your body, to your hara, and not just to your head. You will discover new ways to experience your life.
Maurine Stuart: There Are No Repetitions
"What is the condition of our minds right now? How are our hearts? This moment is all we have -- so at this moment, how creative are we, how in touch with the source are we?We need courage to be creative. To be sensitive and aware requires great courage. This word courage comes from the same root as the French word coeur, which means heart. So please have the courage to listen to your heart, to your body, to your hara, and not just to your head. You will discover new ways to experience your life.
We are always at the beginning. It is always the very first time. Truly there are no repetitions. When I play the piano, I often come to a repeat sign. Can that passage be repeated? If I am teaching a piano student and see a repeat sign, I tell the student there are no repeats. We return to the beginning of a certain passage, but it's never the same. It's always fresh." (p. 263)
Joan Sutherland: Through the Dharma Gate
"As I think about the shapes and forms meditative practices take, I keep returning to the afternoon before the fateful night in which a man named Siddhartha would sit under a tree and, at the rising of the morning star, become the Buddha. On that long afternoon, Siddhartha took a bowl, went down by the river, and made a vow: 'If this bowl floats upstream, I'll become enlightened before tomorrow dawns.' He threw the bowl into the river and bent all of his intention on its journey against the current; against the unceasing tumble of being and doing and becoming, making and unmaking, birth and growth and decay and death -- against the unrelenting torrent of stuff and matter, of thought and feeling and sensation, to the source of it all, in its stillness and eternity.That is the same intention we set as we take up a meditative practice: we throw our bowls into the river, hoping to find its source." (p. 269)
-- submitted by Jennifer Knight
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