Under a Bodhi Tree One Time

Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORIAL); Ítalo Silva Cano ("Ohm" photo/flickr.com)

An ant crawls along my leg

I do not open my eyes

I took the tiny fruit and fed

A famine-diet in my despair

A fig a fruit a marvelous thing

Its composition some expansion

But what shortcut could undo my rut

I breathe out, I breathe in

Happiness overwhelms me

Blameless and buoyant now

The breath a wiggle, faint osmosis

A trace of refined attentiveness

Without effort, without will

All unfolds, all seems to blossom

I would not move in my rapture

And so comes absorption

Emerging, I turn attention

To this life and its condition

And see that it is no haphazard thing

But born of Dependent Origination

And that realization

Leads to insight, to liberation

This much is sure and there's more --

My time under a tree and the fruit it bore.

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Real "fasting" for Ramadan

Sabadabadooo (The Brown Girl Chronicles) 

Moderate fasting help many paths to meditation

In light of Ramadan, now that Boudicaspeaks [almost as if the Bouddha, rather than Boudica, were speaking] has given you an overview of fasting beyond just no food or drink, I feel the need to discuss something that I strive to do any time of the year: 

  

Remembering GOD or zikr. However, for me the intensification of Remembering God is a different one this year. Many will say that fasting helps do this, but I have found it is all about first silencing the mind, and then intensifying that silence with the hunger. I mean, being hungry and tired surely brings about silence, but I still have yet to reach that truly meditative silence.
 

“Silence is the Language of God,

All Else is Poor Translation” 

-Rumi

   

Persian mystic poet Rumi (Hossein Behzad)

No matter what state of spirituality I am in (and I do not believe in stages, but rather highs and lows), zikr reminds me of the source of spiritual refuge in this universe, regardless of what religion people classify themselves under.

Rather than trying to push forward our own views about right and wrong and the way people ought to live, it may just help to simply be silent, both physically and even mentally (and I can relate to mentally with my constantly wandering mind). More

“Out beyond ideas of right and wrong,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.  

When the soul lies down in that grass,

The world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

Does not make any sense.”

-Rumi (A Shot of Zen)

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