Six paramitas

Param=other side of the river
ita= arrived

six perfections to be acquired:
generosity, giving-dana-not judging or evaluating our experience, to give and if the receiver is not ready to receive, they will not receive it, if ready, they will come and take it. Not looking down on someone, giving to those less than, to feel good.
discipline-shila-like the walk of the elephant, each step slow and sure and definite, one step after another, in chaos, just fall in, be with the chaos, things sort themselves out.
patience-ksanti-not expecting anything, not impulsiveness where we are running without eyes to see, not fighting anything
energy-virya-not the have to go to work energy,-joy energy, everything is interesting, part of the path. Having generosity, discipline and patience, there is now joy, no striving, never a dull moment. Plants grow in the sun. The sun doesn't strive for plants to grow. Plants are reacting to the sun and the situation is a result of it.
meditation-dhyana-a continual feeling of "awake." Not a trance state.
knowledge-prajna-knowledge, the emptiness of all things, no enduring self in the way we think anyway, world as we see it, is illusionary. The Heart Sutra and the Diamond Sutra expand on this.
http://www.purifymind.com/SwordPrajna.htm
Images and words paraphrased from Chogyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, chapter on the Bodhisattva Path.

Six directions

East - beginnings, intention, spaciousness, expectation, birth, looking outward, planting the seed.
South - fire, action, warmth, passion, desire, growth, light, the growing seed.
West - change, rivers, twilight, transformation, endings, returning within, acceptance, the seed has become the plant.
North - quiet, stillness, white, crystalline purity, rock, groundedness, clarity in complete darkness or blinding light, the plant bears fruit.
Sky - all that can be, ethereal, limitless, spacious, limitless growth, going everywhere, vines.
Earth - rootedness, gravity, grounding, staying here, not moving, yams and potatoes.

What is

Sometimes to be with what is, it is painful.

We can't all be desired all the time, chosen every time, visible all the time, a part of every tribe, a consideration.

We can't know rejection, if we receive apologies, acceptance and an invitation to return with open arms.

We live in a culture that accepts pleasure, but hasn't found a way to be with the painful. We are subject to pain because we are born. We breathe in. We breathe out. We meet, we depart. The meeting and the departing are both important.

The way to be with pain is acceptance, to be with what is,
not to create more pain or the conditions for suffering,
there is enough already,
to be with what is.
Just this much, a centimeter at a time.

Today I am grateful to be alive, to walk outside on the earth this morning in the warmth of the March sun with the purple crocuses coming up through the leaves, to find the pussy willows along the side of the road, the fragrant daphne blooming in my front yard. Things happening three years ago, find space to be. The glacier melts. My limits get stretched thin because it sometimes takes a 2 x 4 over my head to be with things as they are, the subtle, or not-so-subtle messages before then, not heard, not accepted. 2 X 4, here I come. Wake up, avalanches of chunks fall off the glacier. Aware of the present moment, I know it is a wonderful moment. Making room for what is, Boom, Crash. Wake-up. Rolling in the river.