I can’t vouch for the authenticity of this piece, A Samurai Creed, but it speaks volumes about practice.
A Samurai’s Creed
Anonymous, Circa 1300I have no parents; I make the heaven and earth my mother and father.
I have no home; I make awareness my dwelling.
I have no life and death; I make the tides of breathing my life and death.
I have no divine power; I make honesty my divine power.
I have no means; I make understanding my means.
I have no magic secrets; I make character my magic secret.
I have no body; I make endurance my body.
I have no eyes; I make the flash of lightning my eyes.
I have no ears; I make sensibility my ears.
I have no limbs; I make promptness my limbs.
I have no strategy; I make “unshadowed by thought” my strategy
I have no designs; I make “seizing opportunity by the forelock” my design.
I have no miracles; I make right action my miracle.
I have no principles; I make adaptability to all circumstances my principles.
I have no tactics; I make emptiness and fullness my tactics.
I have no talents; I make ready wit my talent.
I have no friends; I make my mind my friend.
I have no enemy; I make carelessness my enemy.
I have no armor; I make benevolence and righteousness my armor.
I have no castle; I make immovable mind my castle.
I have no sword; I make absence of self my sword.
Share:
Dave Pollard sees skillful conversation as a key to the kinds of communities he is trying to create. In this post he revisits his ideas about personal practices for being a good conversationalist. These are great:
- Tell the other person something you’re passionate about, and why. Tell them passionately.
- Tell them something they should know that they don’t, preferably as a story, and make it clear why it’s important.
- Tell them about a possibility you’ve imagined. A real possibility, not just an ideal, a wish or a dream.
- Tell them a different way of thinking about something, one that sheds new light on what it means.
- Don’t argue. Just don’t.
- In all of the above, make sure what you tell is actionable. But don’t tell them what to do.
- And above all, keep it short, clear, and simple or entertaining. A conversation is a mutual gift.
Share:
I work with lots of colleagues and in general the flow of money is pretty straightforward. With some fiends though, we often sit with each other and think about what else we could do with the economy. Being clear about money is a life practice – in North American culture money holds all kinds of traps for energy between people.
My friend Tenneson Woolf has just blogged on this and he and his colleagues from a recent workshop worked these principles:
- Whereas the old model for these decisions is more transactional, the new model is energetic. It is not about who did what work. It is about how we collectively invite, create, hold a field to work in before, during, and after the event.
- As with design, work on logistics with open heart, enaged conversation, and clarity of action — beautiful.
- Agree to this as a conversation each time, not a formula, to listen with attention and act with love.
And in a coincidental post, Jack Ricchiuto offers this wisdom:
Interesting chat yesterday with my friend Jean Russell of nurturegirl.net and the new blog, thriveability.net. She suggests that thriving communities practice a sense of “currency” that embraces both economic and social capital. Currency is anything that “flows.” A community’s flow experience then can include all forms of purchase, barter, and gifts.
What’s interesting is that anonymous monetary currency doesn’t build community. It only, as Jean suggests, “outsources connections.” When I trade my time helping someone start a wiki website for their business for their time doing plumbing or editing for me, a relationship builds. When I hand someone ten dollars for an item at Target or Whole Foods, no relationship builds in that transaction. In a monetary currency economy, flow occurs without the building of relationship. In a gift and barter economy, relationship is formed.
[tags]tenneson woolf, jack ricchiuto, money[/tags]
Share:
A combination of quotes from two different emails today on certainty. First from Ashley Cooper, quoting Daniel Sielgel:
“When we are certain we don’t feel the need to pay attention. Given that the world around us is always in flux, our certainty is an illusion.”
And then this, from Tenneson Woolf, who currently has my copy of Tsawalk: A Nuu-Chah-Nulth Worldview. From that books is this is a story of Keetsa, an Ahousaht whaling chief who runs into trouble when the space is no longer held for him:
Every protocol had been observed between the whaling chief and the spirit of the whale. Keesta had thrown the harpoon, and the whale had accepted it, had grabbed and held onto the harpoon according to the agreement they had made through prayers and petitions. Harmony prevailed, whaler and whale were one, heshook-ish tsawalk.
All of a sudden something went wrong, some disharmony arose, some disunity intruded, and the whale turned and began to tow Keesta and his paddlers straight off shore. Keesta took inventory. Everyone in the whaling canoe remained true to the protocols – cleansed, purified, and in harmony. Prayer songs intensified. Still, the great whale refused to turn toward the beach, heading straight off shore. Keesta and the paddlers had kept true to their agreements, and now there seemed nothing left to do except to cut the atlu, the rope attached to the whale.
Keesta took his knife, and as he moved to cut the rope, Ah-up-wha-eek (Wren) landed on the whale and spoke to Keesta: “Tell the whale to go back to where it was harpooned.” Keesta spoke to the whale, and immediately the great whale turned accourding to the word of Wren, the little brown bird, and returned to where it was first harpooned, and there it died.
After the whale had been towed ashore, Keesta discovered, as he had suspected, that the disharmony and disunity had intruded at home. When his wife had heard that the whale had taken the harpoon, she had roused herself and prematurely broken away from her ritual in order to make welcome preparations. At the point when she began to go about her life in disharmony from the rest was exactly when the great whale had begun to tow Keesta and his paddlers off shore.
Share:
From last year’s gathering at Rivendell here on Bowen Island, Finn Voldtofte on four good life practices:
- Stay in inquiry, or stay in the ambition to stay in inquiry
- Stretch beyond what you know
- Do what you do for the sake of the whole
- Speak what you see and feel and allow yourself to be corrected by the field
As I reflect on the results of that gathering, including the committment I made to be in inquiry around conscious evolution, I realize that Finn’s words have deeply informed my approach to hosting, to leading from within the field. I was on a conference call with some people in Saskatchewan today about some work I might do there, and I had a strong sense that the decision I had to make was “do I join this field, and become a community member for three days in January or not?” Once I said yes to that, we flowed into some design and inquiry about possibility. From that place, and only from that place, can I offer what I authentically sense and feel, willing to be corrected so that together the field might shift and sway towards its next level.
It was about a year ago that Finn died. We were so lucky to have recorded these pearls from him and to have these ideas live in practice. Thanks to Thomas and Ashley for such sensitive harvesting.