The forces of life just happen

‘The forces of life just happen, and sometimes we are collateral damage.’
A touch of simple truth.

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Karma means action or movement, though my studies have been imperfect, I have learned that events occur at an intersection of hundreds of levels of cause and effect, which are beyond all but the most elevated consciousness to see and use. One image is the dandelion seed flower head with the multi number of petals on a myriad number of stems all destine for a different direction, or the 500 or more layers of intersecting spider webs sandwiched into a milky way of possibilities.

Not only cosmic knowledge but molecular resonance are just two of the many perfected skills necessary to live in leadership with responsibility to the whole system. From the very core of chemical compounds out to the refined ‘being’ I call Peace each cell, person or system is responsible to the surroundings. This is perhaps a vision of the Mother of the World?

The example of the ‘rain maker’ in many native people around the world, on many continents or as part of Indian and Tibetan religions events is a good one, since that rainmaker individual has to see clearly all the responses at intersections that are moved, even ever so slightly, and be RESPONSIBLE for those changes. She/He is personally responsible for what occurs because of even the slightest change in the intersecting webs is a change in the system.
For my part, I have been working on my own flaws, as I study and look out into the great panorama. Here on this meditation path, I believe each one of us have real help with constant guidance and unparalleled grace at every intersection of thought speech and action.

Early on in my time living in the East Bay of California, I was asked to help a woman who had been burned out by the fire storm in Oakland several years back. She lost everything including her business which operated out of her home. One part of the story that has stuck in my consciousness is the story of her meditation bench.

Her partner was in the house at the time of the conflagration and was toast, as was everything in the area. All was turned to ash, Except her meditation bench and the circle of grass around that wooden seat. Every day she sat and did her form of Buddhist meditation on that seat in the wooded grassy side of the property.
The freshness of the verdant grass shocked her to her very core. The bench was not even smoke damaged let alone touched by flame.

I look on that story as an intersection beyond my ability to explain.
Currently I strive to think before I speak. I try to walk with grace, stepping along side by side with those who I find on the pathways.

As the China literature says, ‘We live in interesting times.’  We are surrounded, globally, by fires, floods, Global Warming, drought, political and religious unrest, all drenched with fear.  Pedantic ‘heart felt’ personal story writing seems to be a focus as an individual and individuals get the internal ‘hook’ into the events of a certain time and place.  Hooked on Fear is the international sign of our time.
Perhaps it is ‘road rage’ on a global scale!  My only resort is to live with an ‘inner prayer’, Meta, the Golden Rule or I Am That I Am to move mentally what is troubled here on Earth.  This is also ‘troubled’ in the less dense worlds out to the edge of the universe. The fearful thoughts hang in the atmosphere surrounding our planet as an emotional smog.  Clarity is diffused, the smoke from the world wide fires of both rage and inaction blaze.
Tassahara Meditation Center has been faced with the encroaching tongues of fire on two other occasions.  This is the third time the fires have moved within a 100 yards of the buildings.   It is now imperative to be digging fire cuts to save the structures that are so precious to all the guests over the last many decades. The Zen leadership from the surrounding centers now put on the yellow gear and set out every day to dig in the forests. They are working hard, to the best of their ability, in the right here and the right now. Would that I could follow their foot steps against the fingers of destruction burning in my life and the lives of friends and family!  Would that I could see what is most important in the present moment.