A Summer Cloud

Don’t think I’ve gone two weeks without a blog post since I started this thing 3+ years ago.

My energy has been elsewhere, jumping into a new job.

There’s a rising awareness (check out the NPR series here) about drop-out kids and the impacts that dropping out has on them and everyone. Even in Minnesota where we think we’re all so above average, we have only a 65% graduation rate.

3,800 young people drop out of high school every year in Hennepin County alone (that includes Minneapolis and suburbs but not St. Paul).

Thanks to some strong and passionate leadership, a bunch of resources are being applied to the problem here and  I’m leading the team in one school program to pull it together fast and make a difference.

Challenging work that feels good through and through.

And I don’t think Zen practice has been less on my mind in the 34 years since I first plopped onto a zafu.

But there’s still this little niggling matter that has been coming up as presented in the old Diamond Sutra. Zen fans everywhere know it. The heart of it seems to be all about bodhisattvas not being bodhisattvas and therefore being bodhisattvas.

Seems to me that’s a whole lot of dharma misdirection.

The sutra begins with the Buddha putting on his robe, going on alms gathering, eating, and then sitting.

After all, that’s the real deal.