Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:35 — 8.4MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS | More
In this sharing, we explore one of the poems from the beautiful book, The First Free Women: Original Poems Inspired by the Early Buddhist Nuns, by Matty Weingast. When used as practice for examining our own relationship with our mind, life and practice, these poems are powerful possibilities for insight. This sharing involves an inquiry practice with the poem:
Victor:
When everyone else was meditating,
I’d be outside circling in the hall.
Finally I went to confess.
I’m hopeless, I said.
The elder nun smiled.
Just keep going, she said.
Nothing stays in orbit forever.
If this circling is all you have,
why not make this circling your home?
I did as she told me,
and went on circling in the hall.
If you find yourself partly in
and partly out –
if you find yourself drawn to this Path
and also drawing away –
I can assure you,
you’re in good company.
Just keep going.
Sometimes the most direct path isn’t a
straight line.