Dharma Glimpse – Noah Ma-yo Rasheda

I’m at the airport waiting to board my flight to San Francisco and then on to Hong Kong. This week was pretty hectic as I tried to get everything done at the office and at home in order to be ready for my trip. I will be gone for 18 days! One of the final things I did last night before leaving was mow the grass. We have a riding mower and this was the first time I’ve used it this season. I had to clear out a lot of things in my shed before I could get to the mower. I didn’t realize we had collected so many new things since last summer. I was pleasantly surprised to get it started on the first try, that’s always a good sign! Once I had the mower out and ready, I sat down and started to drive around the yard to a certain corner where the grass was already starting to get long, I noticed that about half of the yard has not realized that it’s spring time and the grass is still really short and hasn’t started to grow yet, the other half of the lawn is already growing and ready to be cut. It was nice to only have to mow half of the yard, since I was short on time and racing against the sunset to get done before my trip.

While I was mowing, I thought about how interesting it was that half of the yard was on a different schedule for receiving/accepting the fact that winter was over and spring has started. Then it occurred to me that this is also true of us receiving the teachings of the Dharma. I looked at the half of the yard that was still in “winter” mode and I thought of myself only a few years back, still not ready to start a new season, it would only be a short while before I would be entering a whole new phase in my life. I guess society is a lot like the grass in my yard, on it’s own timetable doing it’s own thing. Some of us are in the “spring” stage of life while others are in the “winter” stage still. But everyone exactly where they should be…exactly where they are in the present moment. I realize how easy it is for me to not judge my own lawn, it’s just grass. I don’t judge half of the yard thinking it’s “too early” to be entering spring and I don’t judge the other half thinking it’s wrong because it’s “too late”, and running behind schedule, both sides of the yard are just where they are. I hope to see people in that same way, everyone is right where they are in life, in the present moment. I hope to maintain that sense of non-judgement as I navigate through the phases and stages of life, while observing that we are all at different stages, and yet we are all exactly where we should be…in the present.

Noah Ma-yo Sensei  is part of the Lay Minister program with the Bright Dawn Way of Oneness Sangha.  To learn more about Bright Dawn Way of Oneness please visit us here.