For my Full Moon blog, this Capricorn full moon of ’23 which is aspecting our power of discernment, I’m expressing with poetry the culmination of what buddha mind is for us: realisation of quality of mind.
So, “the buddha is not a person . . . and this is not a blog . . . “
The SuZen YinZen blogs are published on New Moon and Full Moon every month . . . to get notification directly into your inbox, scroll down to bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit subscribe . . . looking forward to having you with us! Namaste
Zen is not a religion, it is not merely a philosophy. It is a unique way of living simply, with meditation, values and virtues. Zen has been called “the religion without a god” which respects the divinity within all . . .
these are our values and virtues
harmony,
tranquility,
purity and
reverence
The tea way
Elements of the Tea Way are to accept, appreciate and revere what naturally occurs, exactly as it is – in an atmosphere of harmony, tranquillity, purity and reverence: we are all equal when we take time out for tea, with the concerns of the world temporarily distant.
This is the story
Zen Master Eisai who established Zen in Japan in the 12th century, was responsible for bringing the tea ceremony with him from China to Japan, in yet another blending of art, culture and Zen – he brought tea seeds back with him and planted the first tea garden on monastery grounds which eventually lead to the Tea Way: tea drinking as a Zen Art.
My own words on equality, musing over tea
These were my own thoughts on equality and divinity while musing over tea, in my own words, that the light dancing in the dark brought to me one week when I was writing a lot: in contemplation of respecting what a struggle times of shifting change can be for some of humanity:
Our lives are so fleeting,
floating motes
dust on the light
of the Universe’s dark canvas
that is the night
of the soul
and still,
we dance in the mystery
.
Here’s a short video from my archives
.
Namaste, Suzen
[Music is ZenZen, licensed from Silenciomusic.co.uk]
The SuZen YinZen blogs are published on New Moon and Full Moon every month . . . to get notification directly into your inbox, scroll down to bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit subscribe . . . looking forward to having you with us! Namaste
The sweetness of your Soul flowing freely through your life is as simple as allowing self-acceptance into yourself and your life.
“Simple, quite difficult for many of us, but bringing a sweet revolution.”—SuZen
Ancient Steps to Sweet Flow of Soul
I call the healing we get from Zen and Yoga practices and living the path of Divinity Within, a “sweet revolution”.
Because it is about change—inner changes—a psychological, emotional and physical shift to inner peace, inner freedom, and importantly, self-acceptance. Revolution is a “pushing through” of self-acceptance. When this shift happens, we are in harmony with the sweet flow of our Soul’s energy—and so I call this a “sweet revolution”.
The ancient wisdom path to inner peace is the way we heal and grow for our Souls to flow sweetly. And for those of us in touch with our Ancient Memory—or as I call it, the Ancient in our Being—we’ll resonate with the fact that India and the East, through giving the world the ancient wisdom paths to inner freedom which we know as Zen and Yoga, have indeed given a gift which is timeless and very much needed today. In the West we’re adapting this gift to our needs right now . . . needs which come from new Psychological, life and World crises as we move collectively into a new age.
Steps to the Sweet Revolution
We are entering the Age of the Individual Master—a subtle transition from the Age of Kali Yuga, or the Piscean Age of master/victim—when it is important for each of us individually to realise that our own attainment of inner peace has a ripple effect on the world around us. What the Ancient East has taught the world, then, through the wisdom path to inner freedom are the steps to sweet inner revolution.
Yoga as we know translates as “union” or “communion”, being bound to our Soul’s purpose, but it also means discipline—the discipline in our practice, and being bound to that. So we bring a form to our meditation practice through discipline. And in our practice of yoga meditation we follow ancient steps taking us from self-acceptance to the necessary inner peace and balance for our conversations with the Divine . . .which can often manifest in a bit of chaos erupting in our lives—the nature of change!
” . . . we start with the hardest thing for a human being—self-acceptance.”
From these meditation practices, came Zen: meaning the “Dhyan” meditation of tranquility of mind. With both Zen and Yogic meditation, we start with the hardest thing for a human being—self-acceptance . . . everything else is easy after that. And this shift, this identification with our own Divinity, is the first step on the path to inner revolution.
Soul Energy Can Flow
Our true self is good . . . when our souls are healed and free, then basically we are goodness itself: and our Soul’s energy can flow sweetly. When I started healing my life, in my head I could accept absolutely that everyone MUST be good. My deepest belief is we are all part of the Universe’s loving energy. It’s something I’ve always known, intuitively— I’ve always looked for the spark of goodness in everyone I’ve ever met. But healing is not always easy. Accepting your own good is hard when you’ve always been told you are bad or wrong or shamed. Accepting your own good is strange when you’ve been badly damaged. But that acceptance IS a place you have to get to if you are going to be healed and whole.
And when you do, your whole inner world shifts to this place, inner peace is the result. And you understand the need for peace in your environment, your Universe. The result is that your life changes completely, it turns around—like a revolution.
The SuZen YinZen blogs are published on New Moon and Full Moon every month . . . to get notification directly into your inbox, scroll down to bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit subscribe . . . looking forward to having you with us! Namaste
As a spiritual community, we’re developing a Culture of Bliss . . . as “Messengers of Balance through Wisdom”. So let me say more than I have previously about my teaching of Goddess, Virtue and importantly Shakti energy as the powerful life force: essentially the power of the sacred state in which we choose to live in daily life: and we have a saying “the sacred state is always where you are . . .”
Getting to Virtue
Here are a few ways I explain these forces and powers to you: I call it “Getting to Virtue”. Remember in your introduction to SoMa daily practice, I explained that our way of practice is with small steps unfolding us spiritually and taking us to the “Raincloud of Virtue”? Our “Raincloud of Virtue” is a state of meditation which we aspire to: Samadhi, Nirvana or Heaven which of course is within you.
So, symbolically, your virtue “rains down” on all around you with blessings from Heaven—and in its purest and most forceful state the highest form of virtue that we can create is hope. “Getting to Virtue” is actually a natural state of being for us when we’re living as the true beings we came here to be.
“Livingness” rises or moves through us, and I mean through our total body-being-nature—pure essence of generative or creative life force naturally available in each of us. Essence is purer than energy and potentially unlimited, and in its essence this force is undifferentiated . . . and it moves through our central channel for divine energy, moving upwards through the Chakras.
This is what I mean . . . we say Shakti is undifferentiated because there is no “good/bad”, “happy/sad” or “right/wrong” for example in the spirituality of essence: differentiation is a human thing—it makes us fragile. Which is why we need our understanding of Goddess energy and its many, many different expressions which are usually passed down to us in myth and storytelling. Goddess Kali in the Indian expression, for example, as the Dark and Terrible Mother who teaches us the importance of overcoming our egos . . . . and Gaia in the Greek mythology, made to take her own children back into her womb by their father/brother so she couldn’t bear any more, teaching us that there can come a day when “she will take it back”—meaning the abundance of her blessings as Mother Earth.
So, as undifferentiated essence, purer than energy and without any pre-determined quality, it’s up to us as humans how we use our Shakti life force: as myth and storytellng show us, the choices we make on our life journey determine our growth. We “get to the raincloud of virtue” when we make life choices with discrimination and good judgement—as we experience energetic qualities at each Chakra level, it’s up to us to choose the highest spiritual vibration and so “raising our kundalini”.
An example would be, at base or root chakra level whenever we’re under pressure choosing to live at a higher vibration than merely survival . . . and using meditation to get more grounded, rising above fear to feel a belonging to our world. At guru, forehead or third eye chakra our aim is to attain maturity and self-mastery, making our choices with discrimination and good judgement . . . focusing our life-force at this chakra means raising our spiritual vibrations and accelerating our Spiritual Vision.
You’ll know this probably as the process of “Kundalini Rising” . . . and this is how I teach it: When we talk about Kundalini Rising, Shakti power of life force or as I call it, Livingness Rising, what I am teaching you is a path of self-mastery through our inner spiritual guidance to our own Virtue or state of Heaven, our Bliss, that becomes a blessing on all around us. With practice the spiritual guidance becomes self-guidance as you atune to your natural spiritual state of being: it’s innate, it came with you when you were born into this existence, and it is this that gradually unfolds with the way I’m teaching you in our practices.
Goddess Within
It’s “Goddess Within”: Goddess we know of as a “cluster of virtues” . . . for us that cluster is abundance, prosperity, potential and hope. So, instead of the confusion of “crappy” ideas, thoughts, beliefs, traditions and culture crowding up your mind-space, we say that Goddess Within becomes awakened and alive. Your mind becomes a living mind, and your natural state of being becomes one of always being guided by your inner spiritual guidance to make life choices and to live daily with virtue . . . building your own “cluster of virtues”: in essence your Spiritual Vision awakens, activates and accelerates—and you start blossoming in your Bliss.
“Your Sacred State is then wherever you are . . . Goddess is awakened within and you have reverence for Virtue . . .”—SuZen
The SuZen YinZen blogs are published on New Moon and Full Moon every month . . . to get notification directly into your inbox, scroll down to bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit subscribe . . . looking forward to having you with us! Namaste
Everyone should be their own guru as far as I’m concerned—so I’m not a great fan of gurus—but there is definitely a guru mentality, and they often draw heavily on certain archetypes to get reactions and give us zen thwacks upside our heads. I mean of course, for example, the typical guru trickster antics designed to shock us out of our little mental ruts. Something that Osho, the Master was good at even when he was a plain “Shree” . . . Sri Baghwan Rajneesh.
Gu – darkness; Ru – light.
When guru energy is good energy it is powerful. It’s the energy that keeps the Ashram—the work and living place for practice—alive and thriving positively. It’s the teacher that brings light out of darkness and seeringly illuminates everything with “truth” . . . Gu – darkness; Ru – light.
Zorba the Buddha
For instance I love this vintage Osho, “be Zorba the Buddha” . . . and: “your buddha mind, your buddha heart, your buddha nature are all there just waiting to be revealed . . . and existence needs every drop of you.” As the Master, he knew that we could all be the buddhas we truly are but that we might need our butts kicking every so often to just sit down and meditate and stop being neurotic.
True Buddha Nature
But . . . if being your true buddha nature means being a bit bonkers, then what? And he certainly was insistent in that guru-type no-messing way, that we shouldn’t try to be gurus saying that gurus are self-gratifiers. Then he went on to guru-ify himself. What a contradiction . . . but as a monk who used to visit our sangha when I lived in Baltimore, South West Ireland, Shinrin, told us: “unique”. Shinrin had been there with Osho at the beginning in London, when he was Sri Baghwan Rajneesh and they were the “orange-people”.
Unique
Osho certainly knew that everyone is still human: that the weeds of co-emergent energy—the crap—come up with the blossoms of living in the magic just like the lotus blossoms out of the mud every day; and that if you spend your day meditating as your medicine then you can’t be watching what the entourage are up to, as happened to him . . . and chaos can break out, because chaos does, and as long as you’re alert and watchful and mindful, then it’s just an experience. But if the leader’s finger is off the button, chaos can get scary.
So our monk Shinrin gave us an insight on one of our zen weekends in Baltimore. He had been an Osho sannyasin, and he was there at the last in America at the Ashram when things were getting crazy. Osho had given Shinrin his orange-people sannyasi name and then turned him onto zen.
This was the insight: when Osho was young they grew up in such poverty in India. Young devotees had so many barriers, personal, psychological, emotional, and spiritual to break through as young sannyasins themselves, during the epoch Sri Bagwan Rajneesh—later Osho—and his cohorts were steeped in their Yoga training: this would have been Tantra and Kundalini.
I have an old book by one of Swami Satyananda’s students, written from the view point of a yogi, and he poignantly points out that they were themselves trying in India to break through Victorian values imposed on them by the authoritarianism of an obsolete British Empire.
Clue-less
This is something I totally empathise with, having grown up in Bradford in Yorkshire, England and its mixed Asian population—Pakistani, Indian, Muslim, Hindu—and from the never-to-be-forgotten experience of training there with my meditation teacher, Sam Singh a Kashmiri man. The devotees at the time I’m talking about would have been clueless to our way of seeing them, these young bloods of brahminism . . . and uncomprehending as to why the followers weren’t just deep in sadhana and discipline: being too much into ahimsa and samadhi and motivating us all into living in intoxicating bliss.
So, when he was kicked out of America for causing stink, someone lent Osho a plane and he circled the planet, unwelcome in most countries . . . I’m not going to touch on politics at all here. Ireland let him land and he spent a short time. Apparently, he’d got on the plane clutching a handful of gold watches . . . still essentially the young Indian brahmin suffering from compulsions caused by the spiritual riches and material poverty of the East he so often spoke about? I seem to remember he had to leave all the Rolls Royce cars behind to US Government repossession.
” . . . skies upon skies to be experienced . . . “
He thought he was dying then. One of his transcribed discourses reminded me when I was deep in my own grief and feeling country-less in England following my husband’s death, that there are “skies upon skies to be experienced”. And, as it turned out, a few years from his own death he spent months in the skies with no country to take him in, until eventually India had to as he had an Indian passport. Too much consciousness and not enough grounding? Not enough living in reality, and in the moment of zen? Or just a result of gurus of his generation not really having to deal with practicalities? As Gandhi had to learn in 6 years of imprisonment, there are consequences to the minutae of physical existence here and now . . .
” . . . here to point the finger.”
Anyway, Shinrin said that Osho had said that he himself was “only here to point the finger”—to the “Way” or dharma. And now these days, they teach his style in University Communications courses: the use of silence; speaking for 3 hours at a time; storytelling to pick up the energy when people were falling asleep . . . There’s an Osho classic bit of video on Youtube “Almost Drunk with Emotional Wellness”, a concept which just fills my heart with laughter!
Purpose and prosperity, your blossoming
The voice of my heart always says I will continue to pass on his discourses and to be inspired myself by some of the truly “bonkers” nature of the teachings of a man who was uniquely a “zorba”—reference to the film Zorba the Greek—and a buddha. And out of respect for a consumate communicator, I treat him as a Master—though fallen guru—for his Satsangs . . .
Purpose and prosperity are interlinked in the way of dharma . . . prosperity isn’t always about money, although in Osho’s case it certainly was. Prosperity is everything like health as well as wealth, satisfaction from your calling, wealth in relationships, following your bliss and purpose. And in the way of dharma, purpose can be about anything, not necessarily career or job . . . because with dharma it is your blossoming, the way you blossom—which might have nothing to do with job or career, as mine doesn’t.
Blossoming, being unique, as only your own spirituality can be unique.
The SuZen YinZen blogs are published on New Moon and Full Moon every month . . . to get notification directly into your inbox, scroll down to bottom of the page, enter your email address and hit subscribe . . . looking forward to having you with us! Namaste
For my Full Moon blog, this Capricorn full moon of ’23 which is aspecting our power of discernment, I’m expressing with poetry the culmination of what buddha mind is for us: realisation of quality of mind.
The sweetness of your Soul flowing freely through your life is as simple as allowing self-acceptance into yourself and your life. 
As a spiritual community, we’re developing a Culture of Bliss . . . as “Messengers of Balance through Wisdom”. So let me say more than I have previously about my teaching of Goddess, Virtue and importantly Shakti energy as the powerful life force: essentially the power of the sacred state in which we choose to live in daily life: and we have a saying “the sacred state is always where you are . . .”
SuZen YinZen 