Change Us – January 30, 2012 Meditation
Gandhi assassinated on this day in 1948

At night my dog likes to sleep in my bed. Isn’t it amazing how the littlest dogs can take up the most amount of space. They may enjoy sleeping in bed but they sure don’t get the concept of sharing. It is comforting to have my dog curled up at the foot of the bed. And in our case if she takes up too much room I just put my feet on top of her or my leg, this dog doesn’t seem to mind.

Several times a night though she’ll come up to the head of the bed and paw at the covers hoping that I’ll let her climb underneath. I usually don’t, because it get too hot after a while and then she wants out and when she does she pulls all the covers off me. Sometimes though she’ll paw and paw at the covers, insisting I let her under. She’ll go to first my face side and paw and if she has no luck she’ll climb over me and paw at the backside. Then she’ll climb back over and do it all again.
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Sculpture – January 28, 2012 Meditation

It is said that Michelangelo once replied, when asked how he created such beautiful sculptures, that all you had to do was carve away the stuff you didn’t want. Of course, now I understand!

It should be very easy to sculpt with that kind of instruction.
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The Dance – January 26, 2012 Meditation

The Lotus Sutra mentions dancing as both an expression of joy as well as something to be offered in appreciation for the Dharma. I was thinking about this, as I especially like the images that come to mind when it talks about people dancing with great joy.

When a person dances are they tying to get somewhere? There isn’t really a destination in mind for the purpose of dancing. The goal of dancing isn’t to get from this place to the next. When we dance it is the joy of the steps. It is the pleasure even possibly from not needing to go anywhere but to just enjoy the process.
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Falling From The Tree – January 24, 2012 Meditation

My father used to tell me that the seeds of a magnolia tree will not germinate under the parent tree. If you think about most other trees such as oak, maple, pecan, pine and many others their seeds will take root under the parent tree. If you look at a magnolia they can spread out quite wide, the leaves are very large and thick and they fall to the ground almost constantly all year long. I wonder if perhaps because of evolution seeds naturally selected themselves to only germinate outside the boughs of the parent tree, because it would be extremely difficult to germinate under the large thick leaf cover around the base of the tree.

At any rate it is interesting to think about, or at least to me it is interesting.
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Genuine Friends – January 22, 2012 Meditation

Tracking the changing vocabulary of English the folks at New Oxford American Dictionary decided that the word of the year in 2009 would be unfriend. They define it as a verb, “to remove someone as a friend on a social networking web site,” such as Facebook. As you probably know, on that site, Friends allow each other to access their personal information. They may have never met face to face or even really know each other and may only be remotely aware of who each is. They may not even exchange any personal greetings online. In our world of fleeting cyber acquaintances, we may be drifting away from close connections to true friends.
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