A comment on Hongzhi's Zuochan zhen

The thing about Buddhas (there are many, 
perhaps as many as grains of sand)
is that their being Buddhas is not an identity
(other than for convenience, as we are lazy)

but that they do something (without going
anywhere much, when it is what they do)
and that something is hard to speak of
(not that it's a secret or obscure, but because

nouns slide us far from where verbs are going).
Example (ha ha): while observing a growing
blade of grass, a Buddha observes growing,
letting "blade" and "grass" remain provisional,

unless of course it is time to mow (should a Buddha
chance to live in a neighborhood
with a Home Owners' Association,
in which case there is no help for it). But letting

grasses grow, birds fly, and fishes swim
a Buddha settles a bit deeper into the lawn chair
in shade, and sips glorious tea, without even
thinking not to think "glorious tea," in which case

the grass greens greenly in full sun, the bird
pounces mercilessly upon the fish, the fish
gratefully remembers how kind was its river,
and the Home Owners' Association deeply bows.

--shonin 

The bee moves on

Somewhere out back
the seven-year-old cherry
takes up its found duty
teaching evanescence

 

I sometimes don't make it out to the hut for two or three days at a time, especially in rain or snow. I've reached the age of more or less permanently camping in the easy chair, medications at hand, scarf wrapping neck, wall-gazing like Bodhidharma but with perhaps less intent, my sitting interlaced with napping, like Daughter's very old dog who lives with us still.

Son or Beloved bring me teas and nibblets. This perks me up, and seems to do them some good as well.

The thought experiments I've been sporadically attending to are: Occam's Razor and entropy.

Occam's idea, not completely original to him but close enough, is that there is no call to multiply entities needlessly. That is, if you fell off the cliff due to your own carelessness, you need not also attribute the fall to interference in your short life by a demon. 

Applying Occam will tend to lead one toward a monistic materialism devoid of teleology, which many physical scientists hold either explicitly or implicitly, for reasons. "Literary criticism is a branch of biology ( --I.A. Richards)."

Core Buddhism as it has come down to us does not have a lot of new ideas: 

1. there is suffering,
2. some suffering is self-inflicted,
3. stop that,
4. here's how.

It stands up well under Occam. 

Buddhism has acquired a lot of cultural accretions, some of which go back to the first generation or soon after. Many -- if not most -- of them may not stand up well under Occam.

Entropy can be thought of in lay terms as "everything runs down." 

To assemble what we may call a state or object, we must find and supply additional energy to the amount originally embodied in it to maintain it as such; otherwise it becomes other stuff. 

A car becomes not a car if it is set up on blocks and its wheels taken away. Leave it there long enough and it becomes an unwieldy and rather forlorn flowerpot.

Combine the razor and entropy when looking at the Four Truths and we get a pretty easily tested life engine that strikes me as having some ontological staying power.

Buddha's charioteer brought him to see the Four Sights, the first three of which were signs of entropy: old age, illness and death. The fourth was asceticism, a somewhat extreme response to the first three, which appealed to the young man and led to his years of practicing some rather severe yogas, as if punishing himself for being subject to entropy. 

After a rather simple meal offered to him, that is, some energy input to maintain his state as a living being, he decided against punishment and proclaimed a Middle Way: live without either seeking too great a buffer against entropy or too little. Entropy just is.

The bee checks out the cherry blossoms for at most a few days. The petals fall. The bee moves on. 

 -- shonin

The best way is not difficult

It only excludes picking and choosing.
-- Xinxin Ming tr. Pajin

Nothing need stop us

Slow moving illness
provides time to review
things done, not done:
release them all

Sitting in the new hut, Manzoku-an, or Hermitary of Quite Enough, she is running out of needs.

Buddha's great discovery was re-discovered millennia later. It's called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As dharmas (things or beings) 

are not, or do not have ... 

... states ... 

... but are bundles of energy arriving and departing ... 

... they are ephemeral. 

All are equal, all equally evanescent. Resting from concern or anguish over that which is as it is, nothing need stop us from enjoying ourselves, as we might an evening of fireflies.

-- shonin


Whether I sit or I lie,
My spirit roams with the origin of things.
Singing alone or rhyming alone,
My joy runs to the edge of the sky.
-- Songs of National Preceptor Wongam (1226–1292) tr. Whitfield, Park

 

A cloudless sky

Asan was an eighteenth century Japanese laywoman who studied Zen with Master Tetsumon and was unremitting in her devotion to practice. One day during her morning sitting she heard the crow of a rooster and her mind suddenly opened. She spoke this verse in response:

The fields, the mountains, the flowers, and my body too are the voice of the bird -- what is left that can be said to hear?

-- From The Hidden Lamp, Caplow, ed., et. al.

Xiangyan sat for many years, then his life turned around when he heard the tile strike the bamboo.

I like to think I have had many moments like that, but I'm very stubborn and mightily resist turning. There's maybe half a turn, then the noise sets in.

I drove once a month for years to Bird Haven Zendo. Sit, kinhin, sit, bow, jundo to altars, reflect, receive instruction, eat, trim candles, sit, kinhin, sit, join kitchen table dharma, smile goodbye, drive home.

It was only one day a month, but I count it as steadily ongoing training of a sort, as it set the tone, or it seemed to me it should have, for all the days in between, gardening, making tea, walking with the dog to the river.

Some days, every sight or sound was itself. Others, they gave rise to wandering thoughts. And more wandering thoughts, and more wandering thoughts.

It's as if I am just underwater, and can see the shining sunlight right there above me in a cloudless sky.

I'm the most industriously lazy monkey-mind I know of! It's frustrating because I know the effort to halt this is like paddling to cross to the other shore when there is no paddle. 

Gardening, making tea, walking all happen before there is a single delusion.

-- shonin

Your unborn mind is the Buddha-mind itself, and it is unconcerned with either birth or death. As evidence of this, when you look at things, you're able to see and distinguish them all at once. And as you are doing that, if a bird sings or a bell tolls, or other noises or sounds occur, you hear and recognize each of them too, even though you haven't given rise to a single thought to do so.

-- Bankei, The Unborn tr. Norman Waddell.

 

Lily

Dear Sangha, meet my new toy.

In my own case, it's not yet what it may seem: I walk a lot. Even hike, admittedly with two sticks. But I absolutely cannot stand in a queue. I have obtained the device to get in line for vaccinations and such.

I like it; amazing what all I can store under the seat. I'm sure it will come in even more handy later. 😄 What with the Second Law and all.

I think I will call it Lily, as it is my lily pad where I can sit and wait for whatever turns up. In the evening Jupiter, bright, resplendent. In the morning Venus, resplendent, bright.

-- shonin

A frog's way of sitting is much better than our zazen. I always admire their practice. They never get sleepy. Their eyes are always open, and they do things intuitively in an appropriate way. When something to eat comes by, they go like this: gulp! They never miss anything, they are always calm and still. -- Shunryu Suzuki

In the inn that is this world
People come and go in a flash.
The moon shines on the hill bamboo,
Alone I sit and hear the kingfishers.

Spring rain, a pondful of frogs:
Going in and out, like the drum beat,
Chanting and turning a thousand sutras.
What is the use of reading texts?

All my life I have lacked cleverness,
My early learning was sleeping beneath the trees.

-- Poems of Cheongheodang (1520–1604) tr. Whitfield and Park


If you want to comprehend this essence, you should know that the voices of frogs and worms, the sound of wind and raindrops, all speak the wonderful language of the dharma and that birds in flight, swimming fish, floating clouds, and flowing streams all turn the dharma wheel. -- Bassui

 

The luminous moon drifts by so lightly,

The sutra hall lies silent without a sound.

Bits of moonlight pierce the cracks between the bamboo,

Its round refulgence perches in the intersecting pine branches.
The dew dampens the nests filled with noisy swallows,

The wind combs the grasses filled with croaking frogs.

I sit with the master after the ceremony is over

As, face to face, we straighten out our robes.

-- Shiyan, in Daughters of Emptiness tr./ed. Beata Grant

 

furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto
an ancient pond / a frog jumps in / the splash of water -- Bassho

At my shady house,
My two legs stretched lazily,
I find endless joy
In hearing the summer frogs,
Singing in a hillside field.

-- Ryokan (tr. Nonoyuki Yuasa)

 

Prayer (After Shantideva)

 Prayer ( after Shantideva) 
 
May all beings everywhere
Plagued by sufferings of body and mind,
Obtain an ocean of happiness and joy
And may I assist and not hinder.

May no living creature suffer,
Commit evil or fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled,
With a mind weighed down by depression.

May the blind see forms
And the deaf hear sounds.
May those whose bodies are worn down
Be restored on finding repose.

May the naked find clothing
The hungry find food
May the thirsty find water
Clean and abundant.

May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy;
May the hopeless find hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.

May there be timely rains
And bountiful harvests;
May medicines be effective
And wholesome prayers bear fruit.

May all who are sick and ill
Be freed from their ailments.
Whatever diseases are in the world
May they never occur again.

May the frightened cease to be afraid
And those bound be freed;
May the powerless find power
And the people benefit one another.

For as long as space remains,
For as long as sentient beings remain,
Until then may I too remain
Dispelling the miseries of the world. 

Nowhere is there anything hidden

 

From the hut window, I spotted a Cooper's hawk diving into the alley. It reappeared, settling on a power line, holding a stunned garter snake. A scrub jay flew over, parked within a couple of feet of the hawk, and clearly was talking to it, bobbing obsequiously, as much as to say, "you gonna eat all of that?" The hawk, seemingly a bit miffed, lifted its wings and made off to a distant walnut tree to eat in peace.

I gave the scene a little gassho.

What was that?

Sometimes we are the hawk; sometimes we are the scrub jay, and sometimes we are the snake.  Sometimes we are the suddenly snakeless grass. 

There is much to bow to.

When we gassho, one hand is us and the other is ... the other person, the thought we just had, that fleeting feeling, that old familiar pain, the mountain, the river, the hawk, the snake, the jay, the grass, leafless walnut, strumming wire between power poles, wind, hair falling in front of our eyes, a sudden truth revealed, a vulnerability, an unexpected strength, the altar, the universe. One with, one with, one, one, all, all, unspeakable, hence gestured, a candle flame at the ends of our arms, supporting, accepting, being supported and accepted, vanishing into and becoming all past, present and future support and acceptance. 

Nowhere is there anything hidden from the gassho.

-- shonin

Water over stones

  

 
 

Neither/nor stuff is all over Buddhism, and of course it's all true, but only in the cumbersome sense of talking in the realm of talking. 😊 Dharma is in a place where what is not said takes up the whole universe, so we're probably best off, at least in the first moment of full awareness, just standing there stunned by the riffle of a bit of water over stones. 

-- shonin

Now, in the unhindered and unobstructed dharma-opening of the dharma-realm there is no dharma, and yet no non-dharma; no opening, and yet no non-opening. Thus it is neither large nor small, neither in a hurry nor taking its time; neither moving nor still, neither one nor many. Since it is not large, it can become an atom, leaving nothing behind. Since it is not small, it can contain all of space with room left over. Unhurried, it can include all the kalpas in the three time periods; not taking its time, it can enter fully into an instant. Since it is neither moving nor still, samsāra is nirvāna and nirvāna is samsāra. Being neither one nor many, one dharma is all dharmas and all dharmas are one dharma.

-- Wonhyo, tr. Muller   

Image: Dongshan Liangjie attains insight while crossing a stream.

Disentangling vines

 To step away from the treadmill

When Socrates (according to Plato) was asked to define Justice, he began world-building to model a scenario. His first try was to describe a subsistence-based society.

His audience would not have it, demanding a model based on Athens. Socrates noted that such a model represents unsustainability, requiring the acquisition of resources already in use by someone else. that is to say, if your model of comfort is a life extractive beyond the means in your locality, you must dysregulate someone else's homeostasis to achieve it. The first model was just. The second was patently not, yet it is the one studied to this day for ways to achieve justice. Our society's authoritarian narratives tend to be threatened by the point Plato was making, so to avoid being the tall poppies, we're trained to carefully miss the point.

Siddhartha Gautama, a silver-spoon oligarch, being bored one day, ordered up his chariot to go for a spin, but encountered a sick person, an old person, and a dead person. He realized his palatial life ran on delusion, handed over his chariot and fancy duds to his charioteer, and absconded to try out various versions of subsistence-based living.

What had he seen? I'd say, entropy. As Dogen says, "firewood becomes ash. It does not turn into firewood again." ("he's dead, Jim.")

What was the delusion? I posit teleology. Those who seek power over others devise narratives of purpose to support their authority. But teleologies always eventually fail; the closest thing to "purpose" that can be detected in the universe is that it must run itself down; not a popular idea with authoritarians.

Buddha formed a free association of like-minded individuals and opposed the current teleology. His eight-points yoga consisted of clear-seeing, determination, clean and spare speech, refraining from abuse of others, refraining from working in an exploitive system, bringing one's all, staying mindful, concentrating. This yoga supports a low-energy-consuming lifestyle rather than the high-energy-consuming lifestyle buttressed by delusion (teleological narratives promulgated by authoritarians).

Over time Buddha clarified "right action" and "right livelihood" with what he perhaps had hoped would be self-evident rules: not killing, not stealing, not lying, not horndogging, not glue sniffing, not gossiping, etc. And added some "wisdoms" -- generosity, virtue, patience, diligence, concentration and insight.

Many such lists were devised. They overlapped, but that was fine; they were mnemonics for an oral culture. They could be summed up by the word "restraint." His followers were taught to restrain themselves from participating in the illusion of power. A subsistence-based lifestyle is a very direct, in-the-moment lifestyle, restrained from abusing, exploiting, profiteering, colonizing. A rich Buddhist is oxymoronic.

Gandhi had his issues, but his methods had some point. The aim was to throw off the oppressive colonizers. Sarvodaya and Satyagraha included equality, simplicity, nonviolence, truth-telling, not stealing, right livelihood, refraining from covetousness, gluttony, anger, or abusiveness. This aspect of the movement was the practice of being the opposite of a colonizer in every possible way. Resistance was grounded in the simple living that does not go shopping.

Not remembered now by many, Charles Gray, a sometime Quaker from the US Pacific Northwest, once a millionaire, gave away his money and possessions and built from scraps, with his partner, a tiny house that could be disassembled and relocated. Fearlessly shaving any costs they could think of from their lives, they aimed to live at or below the world average income and largely succeeded, despite being in the US.

I think the common thread between Socrates, Buddha, Gandhi and Gray, and many others such as Peace Pilgrim or Dorothy Day, is

1. Noticing the Second Law of Thermodynamics,
2. Noticing the link between entropy and suffering,
3. Noticing that those determined to have more than their share of energy occasion great suffering,
4. Not really wanting to be a part of that.

Religions in general are, to my mind, futile efforts to escape the Second Law: Heaven, the Pure Land, Taoist immortality. I think these are bogus; that law is immutable. I also think this notion of restraint looks kind of weak on the face of it. If all the universe, and every species in it, must perforce destroy heaps of energy wherever found, what's the virtue in trying not to do what must and will be done, let alone escape the consequences?

I do feel inclined to stay out of the rain, dress warm, eat enough, drink clean water and breathe clean air, and I want these things for those around me, as is natural. The two ways of going about this are

1. to destroy just enough heaps of energy to provide for me and mine as needed, within available cyclicity of solar energy replenishment.
2. to keep destroying more and more heaps of energy to provide a seemingly infinite cushion against the unforeseen, drawing down energy that has been banked in fossil fuels.

That's reductionist, of course; it leaves out discussion of, for example, nuclear power and its advantages (and significant real and potential drawbacks, such as political or state instability: see under Zaporizhia Power Plant).

But to the point: 1. enough, or 2. too much?

Why even consider too much? Well, we've had droughts and famines and such. Many families and tribes, even cities and nations, have been wiped out over time, and there's an impulse to avoid genetic dead ends, exigencies that endanger one's DNA's project. We like the endorphins, so we reproduce. The compulsion to do so, on average, is very strong.

We see this at maximum in today's futurist techbros. Noting risks that have burgeoned in our time, they seek a hail Mary that will throw their DNA forward with certainty, and willingly will sacrifice your DNA and that of their MAGA supporters to try to achieve it. I feel theirs is a fool's errand, though I'm not good at the math that would confirm this. Maybe Tom Murphy's textbook will convince.

You know when your checking account is about to be overdrawn that it is time to not write another check until after the next deposit. All of us having an overdrawn solar energy account together is the problem of our time, to which other aspects of the issue, such as hoarding of (the overdrawn) wealth by the rich, or pollution, or heat, or drought, or flooding, or crop failure, are but aspects.

Colonizers, religionists, dictators, enclosers of the commons, charlatans, grifters, marketers and rent-seekers repel most of us with their self-aggrandizing schemes. With Socrates, we feel that running a white-hot Athens with its marketplace of baubles is going to get our kids fed to some kind of Moloch made up of Tesla fenders, and we resent this. Yet we'll go on buying endless streams of plastic, saying "living well is the best revenge."

There has to be a better way.

I think there is.

Look closely at "time." There's nothing to what we call the past but memories and records in the present. Likewise, there's nothing to what we call the future but speculation, based on implicit or explicit statistical inferences from memory and records.

Zen folks say that a lot, then say there is only the present moment, but that falls a little short.

Take a tray, put about sixteen marbles on it, maybe with a little sand to hold the marbles still, and arrange them equidistantly as you are able.

Now give the tray a little shake.

The ordering of the marbles becomes a bit randomized.

We measure "time" by measuring movement. The marbles moved, but they did not "time," they "moved." As a side note for now, you can shake marbles into disorder but into order, not so much.

I posit "time" is "entropy."

You can manage chowing down on a small energy heap with less effort than on a large energy heap. This may entail accepting run-of-the-mill environmental risk, but the payoff is "life now" -- as opposed to "maybe rich later" and also "whoops, a few getting rich killed us all off" -- the disasters historically faced by villages are smaller in scale than the disasters brought on by multinational corporations. Restraint in production and consumption can stave off those preventable disasters.

Socrates, Buddha, Gandhi, Charles Gray and Robin Kimmerer (adding her in here for reasons, go read her book) are onto something: "Show a little restraint."

Good and evil are labels. What is, is. And from our point of view there's less of it all the "time," that is to say, the Sun will run down and long before it goes, we'll be gone. We can therefore decide nothing has intrinsic meaning (which it doesn't) and be cruel to one another by enclosing and hoarding the commons, or just not. The discovery that there is no intrinsic meaning to our surroundings doesn't mean we can't enjoy planting a potato.

At this point in my scrambled and repetitive thoughts about these things, I tend to want to wax prescriptive, and this tendency is being enhanced, if you will, by oncoming dementia. So, some speculation:

Most outcomes are short-term. Once you have been treated unjustly, the injustice may rankle with any descendants you may have, but when you die, you personally will feel no injustice.

Likewise, if you have treated someone with respect and generosity regardless of "rank," the effects of that too will dissipate and be forgotten, and you will die soon enough and so will the other person, both soon forgotten.

We try to fend off this natural process by investing in imagined futures. "Sin," whereby an unjust action is remembered by an invisible entity and held against you in the afterlife, and "merit," whereby a just action is counted by an invisible entity, giving you a ticket to a paradise, are simply concepts that we have.

That's fine. I never liked being corralled into my life choices by either the impossible stick or the impossible carrot, and I bet I'm not alone in this.

What we do have is this one life right here.

It's at this point in my musings that I remember Occam's Razor. The bishop noted that we tend to spin our intellectual wheels when we offer more causes for an observed reality than are necessary for that reality to exist.

It's a powerful tool for thought as it has been applied, to call out delusions. I'd like to try to stretch it a bit: we tend to spend our lives fruitlessly when we seek to pad our resources beyond what the general energy budget from the Sun will support. To look to fossil fuels, or the resources in lands inhabited by others, or the resources on which other families in our communities depend, for the maintenance of our own or our families' (or tribes') comfort, is like Occam's "multiplying entities needlessly."

If you shake a tray with six equidistant marbles on it, it's easier to put the marbles back in order than if you shake a tray with sixteen, or sixty, or sixteen hundred, marbles on it.

Buddha reacted to the discovery of suffering by reducing complexity. He also taught the reduction of complexity. That he taught it is suggestive. He considered all beings his family.

Gandhi reacted to colonialism by recommending reduction of complexity. By living simply, truthfully, and cleanly, with practically no shopping, satyagrahis could concentrate on resistance. The colonizers had fewer handles of manufactured needs by which to get a grip on them.

Charles Gray was able to pay rent on a room or a spot for his hut without rejoining the rat race, because his other costs were relatively low -- foraging, a meatless diet, sweater instead of a heater, healthy exercise (without paying a gym), conversation in the place of costly entertainments. Restraint is energy descent, if you will.

Although I fall into the "this is good, that is evil" mindtrap as much as anybody, I have set myself the task of looking for ways to reduce complexity and then examining the apparently entrained circumstances. How do I feel? Am I ... happier?

Who even knows what the hell that is? But it seems like I am. I let a thing go, give it away, reduce, repurpose, recycle, make, mend, forage, sit watching clouds and rainbows, visit a crow, garden, make weed tea for the things gardened.

To reduce gratuitous complexity, to "draw down," feels to me as something like decolonization. It doesn't take away the crunching sound of the Turtle Island bones I'm walking on, but it may lead away from unconscionably adding yet more bones to the pile. 

The very fact that in 2020 those in charge of complexity were willing to destroy the institutions of public health, and the lives of millions, to keep us shopping, suggests there's a lot at stake here.

Not to prescribe for y'all, but me, I'm kinda ready to step away from their treadmill as able. I regard subsistence as the sustainable lifestyle, therefore the most ethical.

 

-- shonin 

Tonglen 8/7/26

🔔
[Officiant  makes offering]
[Roll down] 🔔 ● ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●  (dim.)

🔔 🔔 🔔 

clonk 👏 

The five remembrances:

I am subject to aging. There is no way to avoid aging.

I am subject to ill health. There is no way to avoid illness.

I am going to die. There is no way to avoid death.

Everyone and everything that I love will change, and I will be separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

clonk 👏 

 We have made offerings and this recitation to all who 
 have died in natural and human-made disasters, including 
 war, disease, poverty, climate change, and acts of terror, 
 violence and persecution. Recognizing buddha nature manifested 
 in their precious lives, we pray that the benefits of their positive 
 actions of body, speech and mind may continue and that all harm 
 may be swiftly brought to peace; 

 and for the well-being of those 
 suffering as a result of natural and human-made disasters, 
 including war, disease, poverty, climate change, and acts of 
 terror, violence and persecution. May they find wisdom and 
 serenity in the midst of their difficulties and be free from 
 hindrance. May all beings realize the Awakened Way. 

[Officiant  makes offering]

🔔 All Buddhas throughout space and time,
🔔 all honored ones, Bodhisattvas, Mahasattvas,
🔔 wisdom beyond wisdom, Maha prajna paramiiita.
 

 [Roll down] 🔔 ● ●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●  (dim.)
 
 🔔  🔔  🔔  

 "Zazen" 

[sit zazen 10 minutes]

[end of zazen] 🔔🔔  
 

Officiant makes offering 

Tonglen  [five minutes for each visualization] 

🔔 
Visualize a person in need, in this instance yourself.
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion. 

🔔   
Visualize a loved one.
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.

🔔  
Visualize a friend.
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.
 
🔔   
Visualize a stranger
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.
 
🔔  
Visualize a difficult person.
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.

🔔   
Visualize all beings
Imagine their pain as a dark, heavy cloud surrounding them.
As you inhale, visualize taking in their pain.
Allow yourself to feel it, understanding their experience.
As you exhale, visualize sending them relief, love, and healing energy.
Imagine their suffering dissolving as they receive your compassion.     
 
clonk 👏 

All my ancient tangled karma
From beginningless greed, ill will, and ignorance
Born of body, speech, and mind
I now fully avow.     

🔔 🙏 
 
clonk 👏  

 I vow to save all sentient beings, though beings are numberless
 I vow to transform all delusions, though delusions are inexhaustible
 I vow to perceive reality, though reality is boundless
 I vow to attain the enlightened way, a way that is non-attainable
 
🔔 🙇  

🔔 🙇