Happy Tuesday (Wed for me in OZ)!
I had a great couple of days off and yesterday we headed up to Lake Macquarie Eco Resort just outside Sydney. What a beautiful spot to teach HLC2 to 40 students!
We all had dinner together last night and I have this inner soul-sense that I’m in the right place to teach with the right students who will take my teachings back to their communities.
Today class starts so I’ll share more tomorrow. In the meantime, please enjoy my Tao-te-zen sutra today: “Sit Quietly in the Mountains.”
City streets crowded
Smoke, noise, and people everywhere
Bills in the mail
Taxes due
Your house, your car, or food
In a hurry you put your pants on
The front is in the back
You are eating from a box
Your doctor warns of heart attack
TAO-TE-zen practice
Is the management of two
The outer and the inner
For both make the One of You
When dogs are full of stress
They head for wooded trails
They smell, they breathe, they drink
The motherland
And soon they wag their tails and nuzzle in your hands
In your heart your spirit knocks
Firmly on your door
Your spirit begs for leaves and trees
And moss upon the floor
Hike until you need to rest
And enjoy a mountain sit
The birds will sing and call your soul
The wind will dance your hair
Zen is the stillness
Of the soul
Share it where you go
“Sit Quietly in the Mountains” is an invitation to change your view, change your perspective.
Sitting quietly in the mountains gives one an overview of all things down below.
From the mountains we can see towns and cities and often we can see the ocean and rivers and streams, the birds flying.
We can see nature in its organic wholeness. We naturally feel a sense of inclusion. We can see nature working in her wholeness.
This aids in giving us a broader perspective because none of the animals or plants have schedules or wear watches.
We naturally slow down inside when we are in an environment that is more harmonious with our inner self – the nature within us.
This sutra is an invitation to change our environment, to go where we can naturally calm down and take advantage of the stillness and the natural flow of things around us.
Little trips into nature like this are highly therapeutic.
Field trips into nature once a week have been shown to significantly help or completely eliminate Attention Deficit Disorders or Hyper Activity Disorders in children.
We are all still children in many regards. Getting out into nature, playing, having no watch, no schedule, no agenda is one of the most healing gifts we can give ourselves.
I encourage you to cultivate the beauty, the joy, and the healing power of stillness, association with the highest aspect, the most whole part of your self.
Wherever one goes who is whole brings wholeness. One who is still brings stillness.
Just as sitting in the mountains calms us down, being present with somebody who is still also calms us down.
This is an offering for you to be the change that will help all other people come to know the truth of yourself. We do not need to fix anybody.
When we heal ourselves, we heal the world.
That is zen.
Love and chi,
Paul Chek
