ReikiStar's Open Salon Blog

What WOULD Jesus do?

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 14:12:36 -0500

Well it's been quite a year, hasn't it? As you may know, I live in a little town in southern California. Before I moved here my perception of SoCal was that everyone was "cool", carefree and a little nutty. However, I just happened to find myself in the most conservative area in California, Riverside county.

This year, we actually made the national news and Jon Stewart, thank you very much! Why, you may ask?

Leaders of the 12-year-old Islamic Center of Temecula Valley are working to build a mosque in eastern Temecula. About 150 families actively pray and attend events in the current building, a warehouse. Muslims have worshipped there, up to now with no incident. The Islamic Center finally came up with enough funds to begin building a real mosque. They went to the City for plan approval. Then it began.

Vocal opponents of the 25,000-square-foot mosque proposed for 4 acres in the city's northeastern corner describe Islam not as a religion, but as a political movement bent on taking over the world and squelching freedom in favor of strict religious law. (And apparently, in their stealthy way, those darned Muslims have chosen Temecula to be the center of their dastardly deeds.)

In July of this year, about 20 protesters showed up before a Muslim prayer service and carried signs such as "Muslims Danced for Joy on 9/11". Some people brought their children and, get this, dogs. Those people were holding signs stating "Muslims hate dogs". Okaaaaaay.

The national press became aware of the broohaha and suddenly media trucks became part of the scenery. One woman was asked by a reporter, "but doesn't freedom of religion apply to everyone?" She replied "I don't have to like it". Seriously, that is what she said!

Thankfully, there is another side to the story. And I am happy to be on the other side. The Interfaith Council of Temecula, together with the Imam of the mosque, hosted a series of open gatherings to educate. One of the constant comments about haters is "they're ignorant, that's why they are fearful".

The Interfaith Council is comprised of many local religious leaders and loving individuals. Rabbis, LDS, Bahai, Muslim, Christian, Unity Church and our little Indigo Lotus Buddhism Group are part of the group. "Meet the Muslims" was a gathering hosted by the council to educate and inform. The Imam spoke. Rabbi's spoke. Ministers spoke. Latter Day Saints spoke. After all the speaches, the group opposed to the mosque made a series of comments showing, they had not heard, or learned a thing. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Well, you gotta try anyway.

Short story long...it got really ugly. The mosque issue seemed to bring out the worst in some people. After a series of demonstrations, the issue finally came to the City Planning Council. All plans must be approved before building can begin. The members of a local Christian church, the most avidly against the building of the mosque, began circulating a flyer weeks before the meeting, to "civilized patriots", asking all opposed to attend and to protest because, as the author of the flyer stated, " I do what I do because I know. I and my kinfolk and friends, you, other good people, have children and will have grandchildren who will have children and I care as you do. When the time comes and we stand in judgement before God, we will have to answer whether we served Him or the Devil. "

Huh?

Anyway... the City Planning Meeting. This was just for the approval of the plans to build the mosque.

It was sad. A standing room only crowd attended and there were over 5 hours of comments from one side and the other. Those against the proposed mosque shouted, "go back to Israel" after a Rabbi spoke in support. That's just one comment. There were also "Obama is a Muslim", you know that sort of junk. It was that way all night. Religious leaders from the area spoke, including Jews who spent the first night of Hanukkah at the meeting, supporting their brothers and sisters in the fight for religious freedom.

After the meeting public comments were made by commissioners. “As a citizen I can say I was flabbergasted by the rhetoric I heard tonight,” said commissioner John Telesio. “Ignorance of the facts breeds fear. Fear breeds hatred. Unfortunately I saw a lot of that today.” Planning commissioner Robert Johnson said he was ”ashamed and flabbergasted by the type of rhetoric I heard today.”

Then the Temecula Planning Council unanimously approved the plans!

The other side just filed an appeal yesterday.

As a Buddhist, I believe in peace. As a Buddhist, I believe in the inter-connectedness of all that exists. It makes me sad that some of us are acting this way. As a Buddhist, I will be at every meeting these negative souls attend and will stand for the rights of everyone to worship as they see fit.

Merry Christmas.

The Monk With Cancer

Tue, 11 May 2010 12:05:50 -0400

Last Saturday started out as an ordinary day.

There were the usual house duties, motherly nagging, grunt work. My daughter and I managed to make it out back to the community garden we are planting and marvelled at the sunflower sprout.

Since it was Mother's Day, instead of Buddhism Group on Sunday night I planned a visit to a local Buddhist Temple on Saturday.

I am a Mahayana Buddhist. Among other things, but pertinent to this blog, in a nutshell, a difference between Mahayana and Theraveda Buddhism is that Theraveda believe that only monks and nuns can reach Nirvana at death, while middle path Mahayanas believe anyone may reach enlightenment. (Convenient for me, huh?)

So, off our little motley crew went. The "temple" is actually two little houses in a rural area near my town. One house, well it houses the monks, the other is the temple. As we drove up, a few in our group commented as to the disheveled appearance of the grounds. In other words, the space is not "grand" by any means.

As we approached the temple, a small, dark monk with a huge smile came out to greet us. I explained that our little group was hoping to meditate with them and he said.."oh, yes! That will be good." He is originally from Thailand, and although he kept apologizing for his broken English, he made his points rather well. We followed him in and sat on pillows on the floor. He explained to us that we should have been there earlier, as there were "30 people for meditating!" He had a small lisp and in a soft voice directed us to "breathe in through the nothe, breathe out through the nothe". By the way, we all loved him immediately, especially the lisp!

After 15 minutes of silent meditation Little monk began to tell us that he does not ordinarily live at the temple, but is visiting because he is caring for his brother who is dying of cancer. In our flippy, floppy language connection, I stated that we do Reiki. He said, "Reiki?" I said, Reiki. After several of these, I put my hands palms down on a table and he said..."Oh! Healing!" I asked him if we could do some on his brother, back in the house. He gave us a huge smile and said, "Oh, yes!, I be making him Thai soup with leaves and he not on morphine anymore, and he say no more pain."

Little monk directed us toward senior monk at the doorway, who spoke virtually no English, so it was kind of fun trying to translate what senior monk was saying to little monk and then to my group. Eventually we figured out that Sr. monk was taking us for a walk around the grounds while little monk got his brother ready for a treatment.

We walked slowly. He showing us his garden and attempting to pronounce flower names and colors in English. "Pink, I love!"

Finally we came back to the house, removed our shoes and entered the very modest dwelling. We were ushered into the bedroom where on the small bed was one of the tiniest persons ever. (Senior monk pulled out a movie camera and proceeded to film us...) Sick monk was gray, with a faint smile. We circled around, some of the younger members a bit hesitant to touch, not because of his illness, but, what is proper on monks who don't even shake hands with lay people? Finally I did the, "you do his arms, you do his legs" thing and I went behind him, where he was propped and proceeded to "lay hands" on his back.

An interesting thing happened. We pretty much had our eyes closed, but I am a peeker. As I looked at the faces of our group, they had their eyes closed but were smiling! I was too. What? We are doing Reiki on a guy who is so ready to cross over from this horrible illness, and everyone in the room is smiling. Monk said, "Feel good. Hot".

At that point my heart felt so filled with love that it brought tears to my eyes. Not sad, oh he's dying tears, but, "Wow, THIS is why we came!"

See, we all came to the conclusion that the fact of the matter was not that we came to the temple to meditate. We came to feel compassion, the very point of Buddhism!

We floated out of that place. The monks kept bowing and saying "Thank you!" but all we could say was, "No, thank YOU!"

Many Theraveda Buddhists believe that when a monk dies, he goes straight to Nirvana. So, although we weren't jumping around with glee, we do believe that our little Reiki session may have helped him with his transition. And that aint bad!

Anyhoo, it started out as an ordinary Saturday.

Sending Love, Light and Laughter,

Star

My name is Jenny and I am a gossip.

Thu, 22 Apr 2010 12:04:20 -0400

Sunday I hosted the weekly Indigo Lotus Buddhism Group. The topic was The 8 fold path. It's sort of a roadmap that The Buddha invented for living a happy and more compassionate life.
One of the truths is "Right Speech".

I love to gossip. Oh, I dismiss it and rename it. "This isn't gossip, because it's true." Or, "It's not malicious, it's just true". As my friend Susan says, "Maybe it's just a Parable" :)

No, it's gossip. And I catch myself doing it alot.

Hosting a Buddhism group makes you think about how you treat others. I am not the Dalai Lama and I don't feel compassion at every moment for all sentient beings. Gossip is the problem with me and I continually need to work on stopping. There is no 12 step for my mouth, no support group. I need to work on it all by myself. It's my responsibility. I usually do not catch that negative action as it happens, but later while doing replays of the day before bed.

It's kind of like remembering you had decided to lose weight, but not remembering until AFTER you've had that 3rd slice of pizza.

It's all about timing.

The interesting thing about trying to follow a path is that the more you remind yourself of what is the better thing to do, the quicker you catch yourself messing up. Used to be I felt nothing after "parablizing". (New word, write it down..) Now, I immediately feel it. Not like guilt, it's not the same. It's just when I hear the words coming out of my face, I know I have just said an unkind thing. Of course the person I have been gossiping about is not here and is unaware. But I'm here, and trying to get "aware".
And that stings. Because, it really doesn't harm the person being talked about, it just sets me back in my path toward enlightenment.

Oh, and here's the good part. It also sets the person back to whom I am telling the story to.

So, I've managed to set a negative wheel in motion that may not stop. Because the person I gossiped to may tell someone else. And so on, and so on...

Well great. I got a minute of attention, and some sort of smug satisfaction by gossiping and caused a reaction of negativity. I am so happy with myself.

I had 3 Daiquiris on Saturday night. I smoked an entire pack of cigarettes that day. Even though I am not proud of that, I honestly don't feel badly about it. It did not set me back on my path.
Gossip does.
It hurts me and others.

So the point is..yes there is a point. I'm working on it. And if I gossiped to you, I apologize. And if I gossiped about you, I apologize. And, hey ME, I apologize.

Anyhoo, if we're hanging out, and I am quieter than usual, or I stop myself mid-sentence, please realize, I am trying to get back to the path :)

Sending you Love, Light and Laughter,
Star

Pole Vaulting Over Rat Shit

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 10:04:58 -0400

My 16 year old got a "tardy" notice for one of her classes yesterday. I had to sign off on it. When I asked why she was tardy, she informed me that she had stopped at a machine to get a bottle of water. Grrrr!

See, usually such occurances would not be a huge concern. However, one day, just before Spring Break last month, I got a call saying she had cut 2 classes one day. Lord knows I never cut classes in high school...yeah right. Finally when confronted, oh, and this has been verified, she confessed to hanging out for an hour and a half at her friend's house.

So of course, because of these two instances, on the way home from school in the car, her future flashed before me. My ire rising quickly, in my mind, within ONE MINUTE, I see her travelling down a slippery slope and immediately envision her destitute in a crack-house. Because I'm a mom. We can do that. It's a magical, mystery tour of doom whenever your kid messes up, because this could be "the big one".

Pole vaulting over rat shit, my middle daughter Linda calls it. I, am an Olympic champion. You may call it, making mountains out of mole hills, but I like the pole vaulting analogy because I'm originally from New Mexico and we had no moles.

Anyhoo, I digress. I do that. I'm a mom. (Yes, I use that excuse alot.)

I started yelling at her. 'I can't believe you did this! What was the emergency? Had all the fountains gone dry? Your job is to go to school, go to all your classes and get there on TIME!'

Scarlett, sitting next to me, staring, with her mouth twisted in that teenaged way they do, then says the wrong thing. "Mom, it was no big deal! You are making such a big deal out of this!"

Oh, no, you didn't.

Then it hit me. I spent two hours talking about this during the Buddhist group I host on Sundays. Precisely this. I sat in my living room and spoke of a sermon that Joel Osteen gave that very morning on not "Making Mountains Out Of Mole Hills". (He's in Texas, I assume they have moles there. But I do digress, yet again.) I titled my little "speech" that day, "Pole Vaulting Over Rat Shit". I spoke to the group about the Dalai Lama having to work out the fact that he still gets angry, not sweating the small stuff, (we DO sweat in New Mexico) and not letting anger live in you, and let go of it if it isn't important, bla, bla, bla.

I lived up to my own words for exactly 46 hours.

Because that's what we humans do. We know things, but practicing what we "preach" is the ridiculously hard part. It's a process, I grant you, but seriously, 46 hours?!

So, as usually happens when we "over react", "make mountains", etc., "pole vault", I had to eat delicious crow. Yum, so tasty. This morning, "Ok, here's the thing, Scarlett. While I absolutely don't want you cutting classes or being tardy, I want to apologize for over reacting yesterday. I really did make a big deal out of it, and I'm sorry. But, I honestly do not want you to ever do it again!"

And Scarlett said, "God mom, you're still thinking about THAT!"

Here I go! Hand me that pole.

Sending Love, Light and Laughter,

Star

You Buddha Too?!

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:04:41 -0400

Buddha means Enlightened one.

Back in the day, when I had a bit of cash, I used to love getting a manicure. Way back in the day :) As a practicing Buddhist, I sometimes wear jewelry with an Om or a Buddha. This is not to make any sort of I'm a Buddhist and you're not statement. It's just that when I do, I will find myself glancing at my reflection, or looking down at my hand, and will see the icon, and it reminds me to try to be good. Try. (I know, Yoda, there is no try there is just do.)

Anyhoo, back in the day, I lived in San Diego and there were many Asian Americans working in nail salons. As they would begin to work on me, invariably they would say, oh, Buddha! I am Buddha, you Buddha too? At the time, I took it as language limitation, lost in translation kind of thing.

Then, I pondered. It's good to ponder, makes things make sense, sometimes.

One translation of "Namaste" is: "The Divinity within me perceives the Divinity within you." Or, the Buddha within me perceives and the Buddha within you.

So, now I believe that is what was meant! Perhaps not, but that's how I feel, so there.

J.C. Cleary, a Buddhist author once wrote: "Buddha is the name for the one reality that underlies all forms of being, as well as an epithet for those who witness and express this reality. According to Buddhist teaching, all people possess and inherently enlightened True nature that is theri real identity. Bu bdcoming mindful of Buddha, therefore, people are just regaining their own real identity. They are remembering their own Buddha nature."

Isn't that neat! You know, it's great when I meet a fellow Buddhist and we say "namaste". But..could you hand me that soap box over there?

Wouldn't it be great if even when meeting a non-Buddhist, or even if we don't know if they are or not, we could recognize the Buddha in them by saying, "Hey", "Hi", "Hello", "Thank You", "Can I have $20.00 of gas on pump 9?"

Because, oh, you Buddha too!

Sending Love, Light and Laughter,

Star