A Time for Coming Together, Looking Past "Ours" and "Yours"

[Jundo]

Dear All,

What I am going to say is not particularly original, nor anything that 1001 other commentators and clergy are not also saying various places today.

Now is a time to look past winning and losing, my side and your side, and to work to come together. Coming together, as hard as it seems, is our only hope. We have real problems in society to deal with, and we will only be able to face them if we reach out to others with whom we disagree.

Oh, I have my own (quite passionate) personal political references, and there are events today that I am celebrating as well as some developments which I am mourning. There are millions and millions of people doing the same today, from their perspectives. There are places on the internet where I can even be heard to express my particular views.

But here within a Zen Sangha, we must look beyond particular candidates, my candidate or your candidate, win or lose, to transcendence, healing, peaceful coming together, breaking bread with former foes, forgiveness, new starts, buried hatchets and waters under the bridge. Thus, in our Zen Sangha, I am asking that particular candidates' victories not be praised or decried, but that we step up and step beyond all that. If we are to celebrate anything, it is that the social system is holding together, leadership is changing peacefully (with some bumps) and free of large-scale violence, and there is work for all of us to do now. Believe it or not, we have members of our Treeleaf Sangha, all good people, who voted for their respective "sides" for their own good reasons ... and all are welcome here. We have so many members outside the USA, but they have their politics and preferences too. We are all winners within Treeleaf Sangha! That is a message which steps beyond "my side" and "your side," as we reach to the other side to shake hands (or elbow bump these days).

Especially in Zazen, we drop all thought of "sides" (and of 10,000 other things too), and Just Sit. Then, after Zazen, we can get up off our asses to get to work, making this world better somehow.

That is my message, something that 1001 other folks are also saying today, more elegantly too.

(sorry for running long)

Gassho, Jundo

STLah