#22 MICHIGAN!

 SORROW ROLLS OVER THEM; 

My favorite translation of the Dhammapada, verse 183 'Choices', reads 'Speak or act with an impure mind and trouble will follow you, as the wheel that follows the ox that drives the cart;'  however at the Grand Rapid Buddhist Temple, instead of 'the wheel that follows', they offer 'Sorrow rolls over them,'  which I find more present, more intimate.   Such was the case when one of the temples teachers, Rev. Hung Su came in a few years ago, set up to meditate and after about 10 minutes said to himself 'wait a second, there's a car in the temple..'    He has quite the life story in the link attached to his name. 

In today's lesson,  Rev Su pointed out that we have distracted minds, from the mind of the driver, who was apparently texting, to the meditator, who would benefit from some open awareness, just in case they might be in the process of being run over, be it by one's own attachments, or even an automobile. 

Also, it was the center's 10th anniversary! 

It was nice to hear their retrospective on finding a building, moving to another building, having community potlucks, and now, starting a community dharma program to drop in on the needy. 

The sangha is of Korean Seon Buddhism by history; an ancient Zen tradition, think 600 AD, and then more formalized by Jinul around 1200.   I did not realize that Korea suffered 500 years of suppression of Buddhist practice as well.   Seon was popularized and spread in the US partly by Seongsan. 

From Jinul: 

Both our own and others’ bodies and minds originate illusorily from

conditions and are void, without any essential nature, like a floating

bubble or the shadow cast by a cloud. All the sounds of slander and praise,

acknowledgment and disapproval, which emanate deceptively from the

throat, are like echoes in an isolated valley or the sounds of the breeze...