June 2021

Direct Experience—Part 3
Rev. Master Olaf Miller

This is the third in a series of articles. For a PDF file of the first three articles, click here.

In the first two parts of this series I wrote about help that came to me spontaneously and without my consciously asking for it. In this part I would like to relate times when I asked more directly for help in different ways.

When I was around thirty, a great deal of change occurred in my life. For one thing, after a decade of smoking I decided to quit. I enrolled in a stop-smoking course and for a week I received instruction on how the mind works in relation to addictions and how to change that way of thinking. It worked for me and I never smoked again. I think the most important thing to come out of this was that I learned how to use my will. I learned that I could direct my life in positive directions, and not merely act on habits that were damaging to myself and others.

Another event that occurred around this time was that my marriage fell apart. This was certainly a time of great upheaval. Something that I had taken refuge in—something that had defined who I was—was gone. The comfortable rug of expectation I had been standing securely on was pulled out from under me and I was flat on my face. I needed help to stand back up find a new way forward. Then, one night I was walking home, feeling miserable, angry, and frustrated. I looked up at the sky, shook my fist at it, and said, “If You are up there, show me the way! “ Within a few days I was introduced to the Portland Buddhist Priory and the “Way.”

Our Guardian Ceremony offertory says, “Whenever we pray we receive, without fail, a sympathetic response.” As I hope these articles have shown, heartfelt prayers can take different forms, but they are heard by the Eternal. The “sympathetic reponses” may not always be what we think we want, but they will address the need.

Just Sitting
Rev. Master Bennet Laraway

Traffic noise in my left ear             Birdsong in my right
Here I sit in the middle
with a Peaceful
Heart