Inner Green Awakening

The Buddha name means the awakened one; his awakening happened during his own climate crisis when he touched the earth to bear witness! Today’s problems requires a “Inner Green Awakening” so that we may find greater harmony with all things. 

The Buddha offered practical guidelines on how to respond with his teachings of the Noble Eight-fold Path. Let’s us build a new green mind-set. This blueprint provides clear instruction as to how to awaken and best respond. Change can be addressed using this profound wisdom with simple environment-friendly Eight-fold techniques. 

We are all interconnected as one when we maximize well being. 

Eight-fold Path basics are below in three groups; 

• FOUNDATION - 1) Virtue/Ethics Group: Skillful Speech, Action and Livelihood:

• WALLS - 2) Concentration Group: Skillful Energy, Mindfulness and Concentration 

• ROOF - 3) Wisdom Group- Skillful Understanding and Thought 

This mental home will protect us from the harsh weather elements caused by turmoil. 

1) FOUNDATION: Cultivating Virtue– Skillful Speech, Action and Livelihood are the ethical basis and support for developing this home. 

Our foundation becomes solid with right speech, actions and livelihood translating into virtuous practices and wholesome deeds. Ethical conduct happens when we treat all things and ourselves with compassion. We cultivate virtue when we care and respect for all things are one. 

Skillful Speech: We must speak the truth with heart and meaning so as to unite. Carefully listen so as to clarify the facts from fiction. Speak what is of benefit. 

Skillful Action: Show reverence for all things, we must protect and preserve all forms of living beings. We must end instead end whenever we can. 

Skillful Livelihood: Living in an eco-friendly way. Living simply so others can simply live- thus insuring future generations. Causing no harm with your life or creating future problems. 

2) WALLS: CONCENTRATION GROUP- Skillful Energy, Mindfulness and Concentration: All these factors work together. - Walls hold or cherish this place and create sacred space. 

Skillful Energy: Prevent, Preserve, Protect and Prosper. Prevent climate change, preserve our resources, protect ourselves and prosper from these deeds. 

Skillful Mindfulness: Remembering and observing what is happening now. It is non-judgmental, present moment awareness. So mindfulness is the new mental blueprint to securely build our sacred mental house. 

Skillful Concentration: Unifying your intention so you pay attention in the moment. Focus clearly to a wholesome mind-set increasing your mental power. This mental power will cultivate wisdom and understanding to penetrate into the problem of climate change. Getting the walls squared requires concentration. 

3) ROOF: WISDOM Group - Skillful Understanding and Thought: Interconnecting it all together. SEPARATION = SUFFERING 

Now that we have the foundation (virtues) and walls (concentration) what are we missing? We all need protection from our own inner climate change or roof protection. The roof encloses our inner home. Wisdom via skillful Understanding and Thought caps this structure within. It interconnects the walls and foundation together. 

Skillful Understanding: The Buddha laid down the teaching on “Dependent Co-arising” - nothing is independent in the world- “everything is interconnected”. For instance if your mindless your roof will leak and damage your walls and foundation. 

Skillful Thought: Friendliness, generosity, and compassion. These are roofing materials safeguarding our inner home. 

Call for Action 

To address change and dissatisfaction, we must skillfully think before we act. Virtuous thoughts will secure our Foundation through skillful speech, actions and livelihood. Our Walls of Concentration create skillful energy, mindfulness and focus. Our Roof brings it together through skillful understanding and thought. 

Remember you awaken within when you maximize well-being. 

• Show reverence with generous ways, right action and speech securing a firm foundation cultivating virtue; 

• Concentrate on harmonizing by holding or creating inner space creating the walls of loving kindness. Love for earth and ourselves as one with an attitude of gratitude. 

• Finally, Compassion balances our Wisdom by understanding our interconnection and also generous nature. 

We can respond to climate change with the tools to overcome GREED, HATRED AND DELUSION WITH NEED, LOVE AND VISION. 

Take the word EARTH and take the H from the end of it and put it to the front. It spells HEART. Now let us touch our hearts together to express ONE response to our INNER GREEN AWAKENING. TOUCH OUR EARTH WITH YOUR HEART on the Noble Eight-fold Path.

Aloha Sparky

To laugh often and much

To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others: To leave the world a bit better, whether a healthy child, a garden patch or redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded- RW Emerson

Sparky aka John Breeskin passed on or like a meteor falling spreading his photons beyond. His legacy lives on. Sparky faced his death with great wonder and preparation. He was a humorist, healer,  scholar, shaman, mystic and brilliant being.  I visited him just a few weeks ago. I was amazed by all the books he was reading. It was no accident that we both were reading a new biography on Alexander Humbolt.  

Sparky was one the most curious, mischievous and stimulating person I have ever met.  He was one of the few people who truly understood me and we shared many similar interests.

Sparky profoundly changed me.  He got me out of the macro and into the micro mind set.  His tales and wisdom involve me in every fiber of my being.  At the end of Sparky's life I participated in both his individual and group therapy.  Also, I got to visit him as a friend sharing our personal observations and endeavors.  I was involved in various trips, workshops and even an online ethics class with him at the Takoma Park Library.  I took Sparky to the VA hospital for a check up.  Every encounter with this amazing man was a rich and engaging experience

Sparky loved to engage, investigate and explore.  His humor and wisdom came in many forms.  For example his teaching philosophy he termed  "sustained ambiguity."

Just four years ago meeting Sparky I sensed his time was limited.  Thanks for your guidance Sparky of looking at life from the micro perspective. For countless years before I suffered deeply worrying about the macro.  All those events  outside my control once caused me tremendous despair and anxiety.

Life is a constant reminder that all things come and go.  The word Aloha means both hello and goodbye.  Aloha Sparky, for I will see you in my dreams.  His spirit has been recycled back into the cosmos in new forms of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.  Sparky shines down on us high above with a smile and a laugh.

Tell me, I'll forget.  Show me, I'll remember.  Involve me,  I'll understand- Chinese proverb from Sparky's web site.

ART- Act, Re-gain and Transform

For most of my life making the best what I have has been an invaluable teaching.  Things once loss may be revitalized into new life.  Observing nature has taught me this invaluable lesson of our cyclical world.

Today I wish to transform a different forms of angst into treasure.  Emotional baggage: worry, anxiety and other forms of fear and feelings of inadequacy can be best managed through radical self care. Accepting and facing these pains helps me lessen my resistance so to find greater joy and peace.

First step for me is to recognize I have a choice.  Years ago I shared with a wise teacher my feelings of anxious energy and how I felt like a buzzing fluorescent light bulb.  It has taken me many years to discover this feeling is my life force or chi energy.  

The difference is how I choose to perceive and look at my situation.  Is filled with Velcro for the bad and Teflon for the good or vice versa?

My choice toward greater freedom is when I pause and see everything as a blessing not a curse.  Yes many of my painful experience hurt so badly yet they provide me an invaluable lessons how I can lessen my suffering in the future.

I can respond by pausing and reflecting or I can react sometimes mindlessly and face the consequences of not being fully present in my actions.

Our world may be filled with anxiety. however, I can exercise patience to allow this to pass.  My tendency to over analyze can  enslaved me with doubt and fear.  Old ways of thinking can hinder me from fully understanding my true situation. It takes much effort  to change.  Releasing myself from many of my cynical mind-sets can provide me with less stress and more well being. 

My relationship with these emotional weather systems filled with difficult emotions can be re-framed.   Becoming more skillful in how to best handle this negative baggage requires what I call ART;  

Act, Re-gain and Transform  (ART)

Act so I may accept what is emotionally happening allows me to  recognize my feelings are not serving me. How may I benefit? 

Re-gain whatever phenomenon that happens giving me positive guidance how I can best change my mental lemons into lemonade.   Re-gaining allows me to find more useful ways to redefine my circumstances. 

Transform my old patterns of thinking from seeing my limitations to new possibilities.  

ART is about a three step process of being creative, flexible and wise.  What do I wish to do? Increase or decrease my suffering or add more drama to an already intense situation that so many times I have in the past created.  Or how can I best free myself from my habits that get me to take things too personal, serious or out of its true context.   ART is about healing and see the whole instead of the sum of the parts. I am not escaping my reality with ART, instead I am seeing how to be more light and less dense with my life circumstances.

For example, when I am driving my car and the person ahead of me does not realize the traffic light has changed.  If I honk at them I create confrontation while if I pause and become curious when they awaken to the green light I find more peace from this experience.   

One of my relaxing experiences is kayaking since it teaches me to flow not resist the currents of the river.  Resisting life forces I always fail while when I flow with them I find grace.

Yes my entire earthly journey can be painful, yet many times this pain also gives me insights to better cope and accept whatever comes my way.  This is an invaluable lesson as I get older I see myself as a temporary visitor.  The challenge is how I can use ART to lessen my resistance allowing me to best relate and deal with the inevitable consequences of life.

Re-light Your Higher Potential

Re-light is about finding our higher potential.  Not being afraid to go beyond what is normal I venture into the non ordinary.  By becoming less dense I may bring light to whatever happens this allows me to kindly observe what new possibility may arise.

Re-lighting allow me to realize the "here and now" and not slip into future or past references so I can arrive in the present moment.  This “newness” opens the door to new creative possibility to see with a new perspective any given experience.

Re-lightening also balances me to not see things so heavy and dense yet with a weightlessness and sense of buoyancy.   In turn I become more relaxed and excel whatever I am performing for. 

Even in my darkest moments a light shines if I am observant.  Re-lighting better aligns me with opportunities in any given crisis or conflict I come up against.  Finally such lightness reminds me that when I lessen my inner resistance I can touch greater freedom by an illuminating my beliefs.

Re-lighting celebrates my virtues and liberates self-punishment when I silence my inner self talk. Again this flame of concentration ignites any hindering thoughts.

Re-lighting is about realigning my physical and mental postures to invite a more tranquil flow that provide me alter quality of attention. This flow is a synchronized  mind/body practice.  This comes from a roundness of remembering I am the earth.  This unifying insight of no separation translates in the realization of oneness of all things.   Observing the sacred interconnection of all things brings me harmony. 

When my heart awakens this liberates me to a fearlessness beyond my deepest phobias.  Both a soft and tender expansive quality emerges within me as I gently experience a profound heartfelt shift.

Re-lighting this “hereness" reminds me of my constant journey and to ignore external outcome so to further cultivate my genuine being.    Such letting go of any personal agenda I minimize distractions cause by my lower self.

Cultivating this inner brilliance happens when I fully let go.   No clinging or grasping just radiating simple loving presence without any possessiveness. This delightful state of compassion skillfully balances any sorrow with joy. As I re-light my internal baggage and ignore my ego I truly free myself to celebrate my greater and more unified self.