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On Listening

June 18, 2004 By Uncategorized

More from Shunryu Suzuki on listening:

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong, good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may accept it, but if it does not, you may not even really hear it. That is one danger when you listen to someone.

It is a very difficult practice, but especially important for a facilitator, to listen without leaving traces of your own voice ringing in your own ears.

Three kinds of creation

June 17, 2004 By Uncategorized

I’ve been reading Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (famous for the quote “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”) There are some fabulous teachings in the book, which I will blog here over the next few days.

This is about the three types of creation:

There are perhaps three kinds of creation. The first is to be aware of ourselves after we finish zazen [Zen sitting meditation]. When we sit we are nothing, we do not even realize what we are; we just sit. But when we stand up, we are there! That is the first step in creation. When you are there, everything else is there; everything is created all at once. When we emerge from nothing, when everything emerges from nothing, we see it all as a fresh new creation. This is non-attachment. The second kind of creation is when you act, or produce or prepare something like food or tea. The third kind is to create something within yourself, such as an education, or culture, or art, or some system for our society. So there are three kinds of creation. But if you forget the first, the most important one, the other two will be like children who have lost their parents; their creation will mean nothing. (p. 67)

Universe began with a hiss

June 17, 2004 By Uncategorized

The Big Bang was actually a Big Hiss, according to this article in the New Scientist.

I have heard a Midewiwin teaching that said that the first sound heard in the universe was the sound of the Creator’s rattle. Here’s the sound (0.5 Mb.wav).

Open Space and decision making

June 16, 2004 By Uncategorized

My friend John Engle has posted a story about using Open Space at a small liberal arts college near Chicago. What is remarkable about the story is that it opens up a new way to use Open Space Technology for decision making.

You can read the story in .pdf format at John’s site

News from Clarksburg

June 16, 2004 By Uncategorized

My dad has a blog where he shares News from Clarksburg, a small village in Ontario’s Beaver Valley. He doesn’t post often, but when he does he posts these little stories that capture so much more than they purport to:

These two trees are on the route into Clarksburg village that Maggie (the golden retriever) and I walk in the mornings to fetch the Globe and Mail. About four years ago I noticed a young Mountain Ash growing in the crotch of a branch of the Maple about five metres above the ground. I suppose a squirrel or bird must have carried a berry up into the tree and the seeds took root. Each spring as the Maple burst into leaf, so did the transplanted Mountain Ash. It produced its own orange berries each summer just as it parent did down the street. I made a point of searching for any other young Mountain Ashes in the same area but the only one I could see was the one growing in the Maple tree.

The ritual was repeated this spring and Mountain Ash was now about 2 metres tall growing in a normal fashion five metres above the ground. Unfortunately, the old Maple was having a hard time. Each storm brought down more of its dead branches and even big pieces of bark. Two weeks ago I was sad to see that the Maple and its Mountain Ash were gone. It must have happened while I was away for a few days because I did not see the work crews. All that is left is a round patch of dirt where the stump was removed. Soon the grass seed will cover over the spot and the two trees will only be a memory.

Is there a moral to this story? Perhaps not. Just another example of the wonderful way that Mother Nature works and the importance of us noticing.

Beautiful.