This Wednesday Night Meditation included a 33-minute meditation and a 49-minute talk from Rick’s series on Wise Effort, focusing on being Already Home.

This is the first in a series on Wise Effort. Many people these days are feeling discombobulated, rattled, befuddled, alarmed, outraged . . . . What to do about this?

We need clarity about the efforts that we CAN make, and we need to find authentic ways to be at peace with what is out of our hands. So this series offers simple steps we can take in our own lives to find our footing, lower the pressures, and feel calmer and clearer inside.

This talk and meditation featured several quotations which can be found under the video players below.

This talk touched on 5 different aspects that related to 5 different quotations, which are:

— ONE —
Be at home in your refuges

My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those who
Age after age,
Perversely,
With no extraordinary power,
Reconstitute the world
—Adrienne Rich

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:
stay together
learn the flowers
go light
—Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island, reprinted in Tricycle, Fall 2022, p. 120

—TWO—
Rest in the home base of your own biology
in its Green Zone, including being at home in the heart

Have compassion for everyone you meet,
even if they don’t want it. What seems conceit,
bad manners, or cynicism is always a sign
of things no ears have heard, no eyes have seen.
You do not know what wars are going on
down there where the spirit meets the bone.
—From The Ways We Touch: Poems. Copyright 1997 by Miller Williams.

—THREE—
Be at home in the present

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
—James Baldwin, in Nobody Knows My Name

You Reading This, Be Ready
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –

What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
—William Stafford, from The Way It Is

—FOUR—
Be at home in the ground of all
recognizing interdependence and interbeing

In the past I have been a cloud, a river, and the air. And I was a rock. I was the minerals in the water. This is not a question of belief in reincarnation. This is the history of life on Earth.
—Thich Nhat Hanh

You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
—Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

You live in illusion and the appearance of things.
There is a reality, but you do not know this.
When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing.
And being nothing, you are everything. That is all.
—Kalu Rinpoche [in the Gratitude hut at Spirit Rock Meditation Center]

A grace living here as we live,
Move my mind now to that which holds
Things as they change.
—Wendell Berry, A Timbered Choir

—FIVE—
Be at home in yourself

Your purpose is to be yourself. You don’t have to run anywhere to become someone else. You are wonderful just as you are. This teaching of the Buddha allows us to enjoy ourselves, the blue sky, and everything that is refreshing and healing in the present moment. There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become…The Heart Sutra says that there is “nothing to attain.” We meditate not to attain enlightenment, because enlightenment is already in us. We don’t have to search anywhere. We don’t need a purpose or a goal. We don’t practice in order to obtain some high position. In aimlessness, we see that we do not lack anything, that we already are what we want to become, and our striving just comes to a halt. We are at peace in the present moment, just seeing the sunlight streaming through our window or hearing the sound of the rain…People talk about entering nirvana, but we are already there.
—Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching