odd but true

Happy New Year. It's odd but true that every small thing we do has what the bankers call "serial effect."  You bounce one check putting your account into overdraft and the next follows. We make very small choices going this way or that, and the course of our lives is forever changed by each choice we make. 

Unfortunately we are not given clear maps, and the shortest distance between two points is almost never a straight line. Also, it seems that very small decisive moments can make all the difference in the world, while at the same time, we may feel and seem powerless in response to catastrophic world events.

But what is the power that we have, and what can we do with it?

A number of years ago friends brought me a slender volume published at Naropa Institute in Boulder Colorado where they had attended classes in meditation. The thin volume is called the Tsin Tsin Ming, translated from the writings of the third Zen Patriarch. 

The volume suggests a path forward. When we make the slightest distinction, heaven and earth are set infinitely apart, but by refusing to fall into judgement of things, this vs. that, everything becomes clear and undisguised.

In that is a simple path forward. The world we face is profoundly complex. There are people trying to divide us from each other, and they are well practiced in their ways, using buzz words and ready anger to gain power and control. We see it in every event, and yet we are each presented even in this new year with a path of peace that starts from this moment.

The hands have a clear and distinct role to play in this transformation. They demand your (and my) presence in the now, in this moment, and in the real world.

Again, Happy New Year.

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