Principle #1: see the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings.

I am loving reading everyone’s posts and encourage everyone to continue to post free form with whatever and however it occurs. I love what’s developing here.

The organizing idea behind this blog is to read the The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology by Jack Kornfield over the course of this year,  do the practices in each chapter. and write about it. I’ve already read the book once, and my thought was, that if I read this book slowly, very consciously do the practices, write about my experience, and surround myself with people who will hold my feet to the fire, that would support my wish to improve my “way of being with the world” (Kornfield 7).

Anyway, I don’t want to get all project-y about it, but imposing some structure as a way to keep me honest seemed to me to be a good idea. So I did develop a schedule (don’t let that word freak you out) and will be posting the milestones (principle, chapter, practice) here every two weeks throughout the year. My fellow bloggers may or may not follow this same schedule.

The Milestone: Starting today,  I’m reading chapter one, learning about the first Buddhist principle, and doing the first practice which calls on me to “look for the inner nobility” in other people, including strangers and difficult people, and note how this perception affects my interactions, my heart, and my work.

An interview with Parker Palmer I listened to on Speaking of Faith about the spiritual aspects of the economic crisis feels relevant. My brain is too fried at the moment to write this cohesively so here are some thought fragments:

Parker Palmer : we’re at one of those interesting points in history where self-interest and idealism converge.

I do feel like evolution is trying to happen in our world now. Question is: which way is the evolution going to go?

Parker Palmer: It seems to me that one of the commonest features of human life is what I sometimes call secrets hidden in plain sight, things we know but don’t want to know and thus find systematic ways of evading or ignoring or denying. And I suppose the fundamental answer as to why we do that is that if we knew these things we would have to change our lives, and we don’t want to change our lives.

This is the huge, huge, huge lesson I learned last year. I am blind. So blind. I have made an effort to be aware all my life — and I am still blind. It’s shocking how blind I am. Everyone is blind. The only difference among us is our degree of blindness.

Parker Palmer: Violence is done when we simply don’t care or don’t look hard enough to evoke our caring for another. So for me, living a nonviolent life means, first of all, doing what’s within my reach so that every day in every way in every relationship I have, I’m trying to ask the question how is it that I am called tohonor the identity and integrity of this person? Whether that’s a person less powerful than I am or a person more powerful than I am. Sometimes that’s as simple as being called to listen to this person’s story.

Relevant to “seeking the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings.” Knowing how blind I am, how blind we all are, has made me much more patient with myself and with others. Miles to go before I’m Mother Theresa, but still… it is much easier for me to be patient and forgiving of another’s behavior (and my own) when I attribute the behavior to blindness rather than some terrible character fault or negative motive.

You can listen to (or download) the interview here. I found his comparisons of the economic crisis and inner life really fascinating. (External reality is just a metaphor.) There’s also a transcript.

Tilt-shift is a photographic technique where the camera is manipulated so that a life-sized subject looks like a miniature-scale model.

Tilt-shift photos here.

Like the photos, events in my life  can be made “big” or “small” depending on the lens I use.