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[steve har via OE]

Thanks for the reminder of 2 historical community practices begun in
Plymouth and in Austin.

Wondering what a TDay prayer might sound like in the 21st Century?

Considering this prayer I just got from my Zen Buddhist teacher Dosho
Port, who teaches explicitly from the Soto zen tradition with wisdom
from a Catholic church up-bringing on the Iron Range near Hibbing.

I didn't know you could pray in the Buddhist tradition since there is
no intercessory images available like an angelic Madonna or a
psychological Jesus.

Jon and Maureen Jenkins translated the historical religious language
-if I have it right
doing = accomplishing an outcome
prayer = intention (the action before the action)
obedience = field of engaged action

and I guess chastity is about being in in a game of engaging your own
freedom - a particular way of standing and moving forward - of  being
present, focused, full of wonder for how it all turns out in the end.

Do you pray, these days -wondering hat words, language, tradition do
you pray express loving kindness for yourself and gratitude for
others?



Steve

A Thanksgiving Prayer November 26, 2014 by Dosho Port

May we all attain the way by giving the way to the way.

May we give to each other as if we were giving away unneeded
belongings to someone we don’t know, or offering flowers blooming on a
distant mountain to thusness, or offering treasures we had in former
lives.

May we give ourselves to ourselves and others to others. Indeed,
giving to ourselves is giving. Giving to our families is also giving.

May we give even a phrase or verse of the truth; our valuables, even a
penny or a blade of grass.

May we know that to launch a boat or build a bridge is an act of
giving – making a living and producing things is fully giving just as
leaving flowers to the wind, leaving birds to the seasons, are also
acts of giving.

May we study giving closely, seeing that to accept a body and to give
up the body are both giving.

May we make an effort to give and be mindful of every opportunity to give.

May we know that even when we give a particle of dust, we should
rejoice in our own act as a gift of awakening to self and others.

Indeed, the hearts of living beings are difficult to change. May we
keep on changing the hearts of living beings, beginning by offering
something of value and on to the moment that they attain the way.

Heart is beyond measure. Things given are beyond measure. And yet, in
giving, heart transforms the gift and the gift transforms heart.

(inspired by Dogen’s section on giving from “The Bodhisattva’s Four
Methods of Guidance”)


-- 
Steve Harrington