Appamada

Appamada

By AppamadaReligion & Spirituality
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Appamada episodes

  • 2026-01-20-2026 I A Patchwork of Possibilities I Inquiry I Trudy Johnston
    May the vulnerable
    be guarded with love.
    May the powerful
    awaken to wisdom.
    May the earth and its
    being be cherished.
    May peace take root
    in every direction.
    ~Jack Kornfield
    Praying
    It doesn’t have to be
    the blue iris, it could be
    weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
    small stones; just
    pay attention, then patch
    a few words together and don’t try
    to make them elaborate, this isn’t
    a contest but the doorway
    into thanks, and a silence in which
    another voice may speak.
    Thank you
    ~ Mary Oliver
    Instructions for Having a Soul
    Take it out in the rain sometimes.
    It has vast, invisible wings that gather dirt
    and need rinsing.
    When it tries to kill you
    that is because you've forgotten
    to let it look into someone's eyes
    for longer than a minute.
    It needs that the way a bee needs nectar
    in the early morning dew.
    Every so often, take it on a journey.
    Let it read long, hard books
    and let it stare into the depths of the sea.
    Yes, you can give it chips and whiskey
    but from time to time let it kneel
    in a place that is holy
    like the simple cathedral of the willows.
    All it wants is to live, to keep becoming.
    Nourish it, and it puts down roots, it opens.
    But starve it, and the mind, the flesh is empty;
    the world breaks down; symphonies go unwritten;
    the rockets fall; the children die
    in flames.
    Listen. It is not too late
    to wake it.
    Say the names of the wild, the forgotten things:
    bluebird, red wolf, robin; violet, child, clover.
    You cannot save the world but you can open
    the window for the trapped wren in the cellar.
    Read a book to a blind man, to your father.
    Tell a child you do believe her anger.
    Make your life the first life that you save.
    —Joseph Fasano
    1 hr
  • 2026-01-11 | Dharma Activity | Reflecting on Robert Aitken's gathas | Joel Barna
    Selected Gathas from Zen Vows for Daily Life, by Robert Aitken Roshi
    Watching the sky before dawn
    I vow with all beings
    to open those flawless eyes
    that welcomed the Morning Star.
    __________
    Waking up in the morning
    I vow with all beings
    to listen to those whom I love,
    especially to things they don’t say.
    __________
    Preparing to enter the shower
    I vow with all beings
    to wash off the last residue
    of thoughts about being pure.
    __________
    Preparing to enter the shower
    I vow with all beings
    to cleanse this body of Buddha
    and go naked into the world.
    __________
    Turning to use the toilet
    I vow with all beings
    to honor my body’s knowledge
    of what to retain and discard.
    __________
    Lighting a candle for Buddha,
    I vow with all beings
    to honor your clear affirmation:
    “Forget yourself and you’re free.”
    __________
    With the sound of the temple bell
    I vow with all beings
    to offer my skull as a bell
    in the echoing chiliocosms. *
    __________
    When thoughts form an endless procession,
    I vow with all beings
    to notice the spaces between them
    and give the thrushes a chance.
    __________
    Taking my seat in the Zendo
    I vow with all beings to acknowledge
    that here is the sacred:
    this bottom, this body, this breath.
    __________
    When people show anger and malice
    I vow with all beings to
    listen for truth in the message,
    ignoring the way it is said.
    __________
    When I’m worried about my attachments
    I vow with all beings
    to remember interdependence:
    if I weren’t attached I’d be dead.
    __________
    In dealing with questions of sex
    I vow with all beings
    to recall the perennial precepts:
    “Don’t harm, don’t steal, don’t exploit.”
    __________
    Kicking a chair in the dark
    I vow with all beings
    to let the pain and surprise
    slow me down to this step, this step.
    __________
    When everything loses its meaning
    I vow with all beings
    to honor this intimate teaching
    that clears my dependence away.
    __________
    When a car goes by late at night
    I vow with all beings
    to remember the lonely bakers
    who secretly nurture us all.
    __________
    Whenever I’m tempted to judge
    I vow with all beings
    to remember we both have two nostrils
    and the same implacable fate.
    __________
    Watching the stars after midnight
    I vow with all beings
    to remember the point of existence
    has no dimension at all.
    __________
    When roosters crow before dawn
    I vow with all beings
    to acknowledge each voice in the chorus,
    there you are, there you are, friend.
    * In Buddhist cosmology, a chiliocosm is a
    “thousandfold world system,” a unit in a
    hierarchical structure of multiple universes.
    37 min
  • 2025-12-16 I Annunciation I Inquiry I Flint Sparks
    Annunciation
    ~Marie Howe
    Even if I don’t see it again - nor ever feel it
    I know it is and that if once it hailed me
    it ever does -
    And so it is myself I want to turn in that direction
    not as towards a place, but it was a tilting
    within myself,
    as one turns a mirror to flash the light where
    it isn’t - I was blinded like that - and swam
    in what shone at me
    only able to endure it by being no one and so
    specifically myself I thought I’d die
    from being loved like that.
    Gabriel’s Annunciation
    ~ Jan Richardson
    For a moment
    I hesitated
    on the threshold.
    For the space
    of a breath
    I paused,
    unwilling to disturb
    her last ordinary moment,
    knowing that the next step
    would cleave her life:
    that this day
    would slice her story
    in two,
    dividing all the days before
    from all the ones
    to come.
    The artists would later
    depict the scene:
    Mary dazzled
    by the archangel,
    her head bowed
    in humble assent,
    awed by the messenger
    who condescended
    to leave paradise
    to bestow such an honor
    upon a woman,
    and mortal.
    Yet I tell you
    it was I who was dazzled,
    I who found myself agape
    when I came upon her—
    reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
    I cannot now recall;
    only that the woman before me—
    blessed and full of grace
    long before I called her so—
    shimmered with how completely
    she inhabited herself,
    inhabited the space around her,
    inhabited the moment
    that hung between us.
    I wanted to save her
    from what I had been sent
    to say.
    Yet when the time came,
    when I had stammered
    the invitation
    (history would not record
    the sweat on my brow,
    the pounding of my heart;
    would not note
    that I said
    Do not be afraid
    to myself as much as
    to her)
    it was she
    who saved me—
    her first deliverance—
    her Let it be
    not just declaration
    to the Divine
    but a word of solace,
    of soothing,
    of benediction
    for the angel
    in the doorway
    who would hesitate
    one last time—
    just for the space
    of a breath
    torn from his chest—
    before wrenching himself away
    from her radiant consent,
    her beautiful and
    awful yes.
    1 hr 3 min

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