Zen Stories

Today’s Oracle

My software angels choose this oracle quote for you today:

101)    If your guides claim
That the Kingdom is in the sky,
The birds of the sky will be there before you.
If they say it is in the sea,
The fishes of the sea will be there before you.
The Kingdom is within you and without you.
When you know yourselves, you will be known.
Then you shall know that you are
Sons of the Living Father.
But, if you do not know yourselves
You are in poverty, and you are poverty.

    Attributed to Jesus, Gospel of Thomas

You can use my Potent Quotes Oracle page whenever you need help.  Hold a question in your heart, and see what quote comes up for you when you scroll down.  It will be a response to your question.  Play with it.

Quotations act as little doorways into new worlds and new perceptions. They consist of distilled genius. 

Get the Wizard's Handbook on Oracle Creation and have fun with oracles. 

 

Zen Stories

I love stories.  Stories offer me possibilities of how I could choose to live my life.  Most of the important life changes I have made came from listening to living stories told by writers, colleagues, clients, or life coaches.

Back in the 60’s, my brother, John, introduced me to Zen.  Then I found Zen Flesh Zen Bones: A Collection of Zen and Pre-Zen Writings either from his guidance or from The Whole Earth Catalog.  Naturally, the koans in the book puzzled me, but I loved the 101 Zen stories Paul Reps told.

Note: The idea in Zen is to get direct insight into the mystery  of the universe.  Not an intellectual understanding but to arrive at the same place that Buddha did.  To wake up.

Japanese Zen masters use short stories called koans to nudge the student into awakening.  They’re puzzles that can’t be solved from where you are.  Your intellect and your ego will grind to a halt or explode trying to manage it.  If you wrestle with them long enough, an intuitive leap offers itself to you. 

It has that sense like something you know intimately that’s just on the tip of your tongue.  And then POW.  (See sculpture from the Seattle Art Museum depicting a Zen monk at the moment of awakening.)

Preparing for my total hip replacement surgery, I was hungering for more Zen stories and found this lovely book, Zen Masters Of China: The First Step East by Richard Bryan McDaniel.  Bryan has collected stories from Buddhism’s first entry of into China with Bodhidharma through to the Japanese era. 

Think of sitting in a coffee shop with your old friend, Bryan, who has just returned from a spiritual journey to China.  Bryan tells you stories of the people he met, some of whom you may have read about.  Bryan gives you some background, some historical perspective about these masters he met, but he mostly tells you sweet and engagingly useful stories.

I found the stories comforting, which is what I was really seeking.  (My surgery went well.)

Recently, I was reporting to my Zen coach, Osho Genjo Marinello, “Currently, I am watching and feeling the breezes.  Even when I’m indoors, I look out enjoying the wind moving through the trees bending the ornamental grasses across the street.  It helps me come back to the moment.”

Genjo then told me that the Zen master, Joshu used the wind in one of his koans.    

I found the story in Zen Masters Of China –

Another monk posed this somber question: “After the body has died and has been reduced to its constituent elements and scattered, is there anything that remains, eternal, non-material.”

“The wind is brisk today,” Joshu (Zhaozhou) replied.

Way cool, yes?  Imagine my relationship with the wind now.  And with Genjo and Joshu. 

McDaniel’s next book in the series of three books stepping east, Zen Masters of Japan, is out now.  Bryan is working on book three which will deal with American Zen masters.  He posted a wonderful piece about his lovely conversation with Genjo:

May you walk in beauty,

William

P.S. My newest book Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey echoes all these ideas.  Go read the description and consider getting it.

P.P.S. Please let your friends know about this.

P.P.P.S. Get Notified: Have you filled in your email at the top right corner yet?  Do it now while you’re here.  Obviously, you can unsubscribe anytime if it doesn’t serve you.

 

Happy Solstice – Book Giveaway

Happy Solstice – Book Giveaway

 A dear friend heads into heart surgery this morning, another friend’s adult daughter died leaving behind a husband and two kids, I successfully passed through my hip surgery and recovery unfolds well.

So what?

Prayer will transform all three situations.  And building an altar or a shrine puts muscle, creativity, and heart into your prayer as you put your mind and hands to work.

Saturday, December 21^st is winter solstice when we welcome the return of the sun.  This celestial event lends itself to building a shrine for the coming light and the coming year.

In honor of solstice, I’m giving away my Kindle book Altar Making: An Active Meditation for Healing Your Heart and for Deepening Spiritual Meaning in Your Life for one day.

You can download the Altar Making giveaway from 12:01 AM to midnight PST December 21, 2013.

Please get it and tell your friends, Facebook and tweet with abandon.  Consider writing a review.

Go for it => Altar Making

May the light shine on you this season,

William 

P.S. Kindle Devices keep getting better, don’t they – And more affordable.  Check them out here => Kindle Devices.

And you probably know you can read Kindle books on pretty much anything these days.  I read on my PCs.  Sasha reads on her Kindle and her Droid.  People love to read them on their Apple devices, particularly the iPad.

Get the Kindle reader apps for your device here => http://amzn.to/Ae0GtB 

Best Gifts

Today’s Oracle

My software angels choose this oracle quote for you today:

212)  We painted like children in the face of nature. – Henri Matisse

You can use my Potent Quotes Oracle page whenever you need help.  Hold a question in your heart, and see what quote comes up for you when you scroll down.  It will be a response to your question.  Play with it.

Quotations act as little doorways into new worlds and new perceptions. They consist of distilled genius. 

Get the Wizard's Handbook on Oracle Creation and have fun with oracles. 

 

The Best Gifts

Mostly, I’m a Grinch about Christmas.

You know what helps?  Reinventing the holidays.

I hang the decorations I like when I like – origami crane mobiles, red spheres dripping from the jade plant, favorite toys on the kitchen pass-through, displaying the pretty cards people send us.  And for me, staying out of the mauls (sic).

But what I like best is giving to charities.

Here are my two favorites:

The Heifer Project

The Heifer Project has their roots in WWII.  After the war, people in Europe were hungry and hurting.   An Arkansas farmer figured, “What those folks need is a heifer.”  He gave them one.  And that’s what they’ve been doing ever since.

They give folks in need breeding pairs of animals, fruit trees, bees...  And they train folks in how to care for the animals or plants.

 The owner doesn’t just eat the animal, they breed them.  That then becomes a small business that pays for clothing, medicine, and schools for their children.

The good news continues.  The recipient of the animal passes on a breeding pair to someone else and trains them.  That family then passes it on and on and on.  It’s paying it forward in a big way.  Whole villages are transformed this  way, lifted out of poverty, becoming self-sufficient and able to help others.

Can you imagine the self esteem and smiles.  Look at the website, you can find all kinds of success stories.  You won’t see starving kids.  You’ll see smiles.

And the best thing is you can give chickens, goats, heifers, ducks, and water buffalo in the name of your friends and family.  My Aunt Winnie was so happy when I gave chickens in her name.  She didn’t need a thing for herself.

 This video says it all in one minute.  Watch it.

Trust for Public Land

TPL celebrates 40 years of creating parks and conserving land for people this year.

You know this, but I’ll repeat it, “Parks are good for people.  Good for their souls.  Good for their mental health.  Good for their physical health.”

TPL wants to have a park or a pea patch garden, within walking to wherever  people live, especially underserved populations, which, not surprisingly, are the poorer sections of cities.  Lack of parks diminishes their lives and their souls, keeping them poor in spirit and in pocketbook.  Research shows parks reverse this trend.

 Chances are you have a TPL project near you, perhaps one you have enjoyed for years but never knew TPL had anything to do with it. 

Because TPL turns the projects over to local city, counties, national parks and the like. You may never know what they’ve done unless you visit their site.

They’re humble people.

Look around their website and be amazed at the heart and savvy behind their work.

And something I like, they win awards for the efficient use of your funds.  Almost all of it goes into acquiring the land.  I doesn’t go down a sinkhole of mismanaged flabby overhead.

Oh, and they never go into an area and just do good where they’re not wanted.  They are always invited in by a grass roots groups of people just like you.  I love that.

Think of what fills your heart and do that this season.  Do what you like best.

May you be blessed by your choices this season,

William

P.S. I’m giving the trade paperback version of Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey to people this year.  You might want to join me in this.  It’s pretty and will look good on coffee tables.

More importantly, Drawing the Sacred can put people in touch with what’s holy in this time of holydays.

Go for it => Drawing the Sacred: Communing with the Sacred through Drawing - An Illustrated Journey

Alert: Stop Colds and the Flu

Today’s Oracle

My software angels choose this oracle quote for you today:

111)    Start a huge foolish project,
like Noah.
It makes absolutely no difference,
What people think of you.
-- Rumi

You can use my Potent Quotes Oracle page whenever you need help.  Hold a question in your heart, and see what quote comes up for you when you scroll down.  It will be a response to your question.  Play with it.

Quotations act as little doorways into new worlds and new perceptions. They consist of distilled genius. 

Get the Wizard's Handbook on Oracle Creation and have fun with oracles. 

 

Alert: Stop Colds and the Flu

Suzanne’s hairstylist  and her massage therapist both said that everyone they saw yesterday was coughing.  Sasha brought a cold home from college.  A couple of my clients had the cough, too.

Don’t get sick.  It sucks.

Get Well, Be Well, Stay Well: How to Prevent and Treat Colds and Flu Naturally will show you how.

The book reveals the acupressure points I use and that I teach my clients.  I have videos that make it easy. 

I show you magic ways to protect your body from martial arts methods to eating French clay.  From an ancient sinus clearing technique to vitamin supplements.

Have these methods prevented colds and flues for people? 

 “Most certainly.  These methods work,”  I say

And I recall what my first CranialSacral teacher said, “It’s hard to take credit for preventing something because the illness never happened.  But this work prevents tons of problems down the road for people.  Bet on it.”

Get the book.  Read it.  Use it.  Live long and prosper.  Tell your friends and family.

At $2.99 it’s a steal => Get Well, Be Well, Stay Well

Because it’s a kindle book, you can be reading it five minutes from now.

Remember, you DON’T need kindle reader to read kindle books.  Amazon will give you software to read Get Well, Be Well, Stay Well on your laptop, tablet, iPad, phone, et. Al.

Please pass it on to your friends.

Go for it => Get Well, Be Well, Stay Well

Live long and prosper,

William

P.S. Get Notified: Have you filled in your email at the top right corner yet?  Do it now while you’re here.  Obviously, you can unsubscribe anytime if it doesn’t serve you.