Warm greetings to you!
I enjoy your posts as well, and am glad that we are creating spaces of awareness in the cybersphere. Keep up the great work!
Much love and many blessings,
Ericson
Atisha (11th century Tibetan Buddhist master)
When I pray one-pointedly, with fervent faith and devotion,
To the master Padmakara, to Padmapani, venerable Tara and other deities
In whom the Three Precious Jewels are all gathered,
I beseech you to direct your enlightened intention compassionately toward us
From the invisible expanse of reality!
All aeons of time that are illustrious in lifespan and merits are destroyed
By ill-intentioned thoughts and deeds, and by evil barbarity.
Will you not therefore direct your enlightened intention compassionately
Toward living beings who, lacking positive opportunities,
Commit an enormous mass of degenerate actions, embodying the five degradations?
Due to rapacious greed that covets the world’s resources
Trees and forests are cut down and so forth,
Causing an imbalance of the rain water element.
May you swiftly and compassionately protect
Living beings who fall into such disastrous circumstances!
In order that countless diverse machines might be brought into service
There is unlimited excavation of mines, and through these actions
The abodes of celestial, aquatic and terrestrial spirits are imbalanced.
Grant your blessings therefore that afflictions associated with the elements might be assuaged!
The air is being polluted by billowing clouds of smoke from countless factories,
And through this primary cause,
The whole world trembles due to unprecedented diseases.
Grant your blessings that it may be protected from such states of misery!
In particular, due to insatiable desires and cravings,
Coarse human behaviour pulverizes the physical world and its organisms,
Giving rise to an imbalance of the four naturally occurring elements.
Grant your blessings therefore, that the mundane aggregates
Might be pacified right where they are, without causing harm!
The poison of global warming due to the harnessing of machines in all places and times,
Is causing the existing snow mountains to melt,
And the oceans will consequently bring the world within reach of the aeon’s end.
Grant your blessings that it may be protected from these conditions!
Moreover, there are incurable skin diseases that arise
From the breaching of the natural ozone canopy
Which inhibits the intolerable and terrifying poisonous radiation of the sun.
Grant you blessings that these may be pacified, remaining behind in name alone!
In brief, dependent on strong desire and craving,
This world generated by ordinary past actions
Is beginning to be swiftly transformed into a desert.
Grant your blessings that the negative past actions which are responsible
Might cease, right where they are!
Although the entire mass of defects that afflict the physical world and its living organisms
Has been engendered by the dissonant mental states associated with past actions,
Comprising all primary and secondary dissonant mental states,
Even so, through the unfailing power of truth, of the Three Precious Jewels,
I pray that all the points of this aspirational prayer may be fulfilled!
(This prayer was composed by Ngawang Kunga of the Dolma Palace, throne holder of Sakya, in accordance with the repeated exhortations of Dr John Stanley, conveyed with the great clarity of higher aspiration, with regard to the impending catastrophe that now confronts the environment and living organisms in all parts of the world. May its aspirations be accordingly fulfilled! Translated by Dr Gyurme Dorje.)
I’ve always been fascinated with the figure beautifully rendered and by pattern and decoration. In my new work, I focus on these two interests: my figure studies are given a context within the designs found in erotic Japanese “Shunga” prints, Persian miniatures and the pattern traditions of Eastern Art: realism and pattern/Eastern and Western aesthetics.
Begin by observing your breath for a few minutes to calm the mind.
Think of the qualities of infinite love, compassion, wisdom, skillful means, and other wonderful qualities you aspire to develop. What would it feel like to have those qualities? Get a sense of the expansiveness and peace of having a wise and kind heart that reaches out impartially to work for the benefit of all beings.
Those qualities of love, compassion, wisdom, skillful means, and so on now appear in the physical form of the Buddha, in the space in front of you. He sits on an open lotus flower, and flat sun and moon disks. His body is made of radiant, transparent light, as is the entire visualization. His body is golden and he wears the robes of a monk. His right palm rests on his right knee and his left is in his lap, holding a bowl of nectar, which is medicine to cure our afflictions and other hindrances. The Buddha’s face is very beautiful. His smiling, compassionate gaze looks at you with total acceptance and simultaneously encompasses all sentient beings. His eyes are long, narrow, and peaceful. His lips are red and his earlobes long.
Rays of light emanate from each pore of the Buddha’s body and reach every part of the universe. These rays carry countless miniature Buddhas, some going out to help beings, others dissolving back into the Buddha after having finished their work.
The Buddha is surrounded by the entire lineage of spiritual teachers, all meditational deities, innumerable other Buddhas, bodhisattvas, arhats, dakas, dakinis, and Dharma protectors. To the side of each spiritual master is an elegant table upon which are arranged volumes of Dharma teachings.
Surrounding you are all sentient beings appearing in human form, with your mother on your left and your father on your right. The people you do not get along with are in front of you. All of you are looking to the Buddha for guidance.
Click here to listen to the audio version of this meditation.
—from Guided Meditations on the Stages of the Path by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron, foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, published by Snow Lion Publications
The moment desire arises,
look directly into its essence.
From where did it arise?
Where is it now?
Where will it go at last?
Is there color or shape?
When you really look,
it is primordially empty,
there is nothing there to grasp.
Seeing into its essence,
desire itself is the very heart
of discriminating wisdom.
Synchonicity is wonderful. Updated my Facebook status with a blessing of pronoia, and then what shows up? This most excellent article. Thanks vibestream.
