serendipityoucity

I found out about this movie from the Policy Action Research List, a bilingual Canadian Electronic Feminist Network. I posted a note with the following NYTimes article about the Rape Epidemic in the Congo, and now there is a slow trickle of information emerging.  The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo is part of that information loop.  Not much grassroots work is appearing beyond this film and the Vday & UNICEF support.  It is so big, tangled and dangerous. I send a note, post a blog post, read the articles, drink my hot chocolate and suddenly the day is gone since I am lost in my own silly mindworms that seem to take up so much energy.

We in the west have the pleasure to choose what we want to work on, many like me, for the moment anyway, can’t, and instead read this material and find it hard to explain these parallel realities.  I remember explaining this difficulty of being happy & settled when I always have these and other realities in my mind. It was and often still is - when i remind myself - hard to align the incongruities of these parallel realities and to understand what I am to do with the knowledge of that suffering.  I think of the improbability of being born in this place, with these assets at this time.

After listening to my story, a Buddhist teacher looked at me and simply said -

There is suffering.  There is impermanence and death.  There are the causes and conditions of suffering and happiness - karma. There is the opportunity in this life to consciously work with our minds for the benefit of others and ourselves and that very few of us have to opportunity to do and know this, we are in fact very unique.

As I was thinking of this, I went digging into two precious pouches that I keep stored on a shelf in my bedroom.  They contain pictures, books, blessed strings, prayers, cloths, blessing scarves, and meditation prayers.  And well 50 000 Yen I had completely forgotten about! Dang I really need that right now! These remain enveloped in the aroma of Incense from the places, spaces I lived at the time. I also found the following:

May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. 

May all sentient beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.  

May all sentient beings never be separated from the happiness that knows no suffering. 

May all sentient beings abide in equanimity, free from the attachment and anger that hold some close and others distant. 

Mindfullness and conscious action. And as a good friend said - 

it is very hard to be compassionate with ones self

Time to finish with my tax receipts, get more hot chocolate, plan a family meeting on what to do with the 50K Yen, finish some work and seek out the beauty in simple things.