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Butterflies on a Sea Wind: Beginning Zen
Anne Rudloe was attracted to Zen as a college student. But it seemed premature for a 21-year-old to focus on the difficulties of life when she'd hardly begun to live. Twenty-five years later, she was ready to explore the spiritual discipline that originated in Asian monasteries more than a millennium ago.
Rudloe's quest is compellingly chronicled in Butterflies on a Sea Wind, which combines the rigor of formal monastic Zen practice with the challenges of integrating Zen concepts into modern daily life. Her narrative describes both the physical and mental demands of Zen retreats and how she applied what she learned there to her work as a marine biologist in Florida, as well as to the rigors of raising children and caring for an elderly grandmother. In words that intimately draw in her readers, she describes how Zen helps us look inward and use the wisdom we find there to reach out to others.
Buddhism is one of the fastest growing spiritual traditions in America today. During the 1990s, the number of organized Buddhist centers in this country grew more than 40 percent, from 429 to 1,062. While there are many books about Zen on the market today, few give a clear picture of what it's like to actually sit down and begin a meditation practice and then apply it to a daily life. Likewise, few books discuss the types of issues most people face every day: raising a family and earning a living. Butterflies on a Sea Wind does all this and more.
Rudloe's quest is compellingly chronicled in Butterflies on a Sea Wind, which combines the rigor of formal monastic Zen practice with the challenges of integrating Zen concepts into modern daily life. Her narrative describes both the physical and mental demands of Zen retreats and how she applied what she learned there to her work as a marine biologist in Florida, as well as to the rigors of raising children and caring for an elderly grandmother. In words that intimately draw in her readers, she describes how Zen helps us look inward and use the wisdom we find there to reach out to others.
Buddhism is one of the fastest growing spiritual traditions in America today. During the 1990s, the number of organized Buddhist centers in this country grew more than 40 percent, from 429 to 1,062. While there are many books about Zen on the market today, few give a clear picture of what it's like to actually sit down and begin a meditation practice and then apply it to a daily life. Likewise, few books discuss the types of issues most people face every day: raising a family and earning a living. Butterflies on a Sea Wind does all this and more.
- GenresNonfictionZenBuddhism
192 pages, Paperback
First published August 2, 2002
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 3, 2020
IF YOUR LIFE IS A LEAF THAT THE SEASONS TEAR OFF AND CONDEMN,
THEY WILL BIND YOU WITH LOVE THAT IS GRACEFUL & GREEN AS A STEM.
Leonard Cohen
Our minds, at their root, converse with us in the meaningless terms of machine language.
There is really nothing special about this. To call this book Butterflies on a Sea Wind is gilding the lily. There’s really nothing special about ordinariness.
Yet, move up a few degrees from this hieroglyphic machine language and you see something special. You smell the ocean breeze and your mind becomes alive.
You’re not yet at the level of the GUI, the graphical user interface of our minds that so fascinates and mesmerizes us in the thrillers we read or the love stories we watch on video.
Dreams are for sleep. This is Real.
You’re being reborn.
Look - you’re almost THERE.
Where, exactly? You don’t know, but your skin tingles with the feeling of aliveness.
(You are a middle-aged marine biologist on the coast of the Deep South. Your name is Anne Rudloe, and you are amazed and enlivened by that tingly feeling you feel when your mind surfaces after prolonged, disciplined meditation.
You describe to your readers how your meditation classes are going as you advance in discipline and slow, steady insight.
You are still shocked and upset over how grumpily unfocused you remain - and, yes, how your arms and legs still become wracked by contortions of pain - in your pointless early-morning meditation exercises in silent futility.
But in the afternoon, back at the marine biology station, the crystalline clarity of your mind shocks you into self-admiration - be careful!
You’re not responsible for your joy.
Mu - Being - is at the root of this ecstasy. You are the cart; Mu is the horse.
So you keep going.)
When we meditate, we find our mind is dominated by our self-will. Further along, we see that our self-will CENSORS selfless goals. Still further along, we see that different levels of our minds have different opinions.
This applies to us all, by the way. But in slow, easeful meditation our relaxed minds “knit together the ravelled sleeves of care,” as Shakespeare says.
It FREES us from our worst enemy - our EGO. The Ego is the Enemy.
As we all keep moving through this nattering life...
Not being perplexed by the dead tedium of our mental machine language. Not getting excited by the incredible GUI array on your screen that you’ve GOT to share with a friend.
No.
Just remaining in the middle range of things. Not becoming affective, not becoming simple or pure. Not becoming - only BEING...
At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless: neither from nor toward.
At the still point -
THERE the Dance is.
***
Want to know a secret?
Attentive Emptiness can OPEN AND FLOWER within you...
And produce a REMARKABLY FREE AND NEW WAY OF LIVING.
THEY WILL BIND YOU WITH LOVE THAT IS GRACEFUL & GREEN AS A STEM.
Leonard Cohen
Our minds, at their root, converse with us in the meaningless terms of machine language.
There is really nothing special about this. To call this book Butterflies on a Sea Wind is gilding the lily. There’s really nothing special about ordinariness.
Yet, move up a few degrees from this hieroglyphic machine language and you see something special. You smell the ocean breeze and your mind becomes alive.
You’re not yet at the level of the GUI, the graphical user interface of our minds that so fascinates and mesmerizes us in the thrillers we read or the love stories we watch on video.
Dreams are for sleep. This is Real.
You’re being reborn.
Look - you’re almost THERE.
Where, exactly? You don’t know, but your skin tingles with the feeling of aliveness.
(You are a middle-aged marine biologist on the coast of the Deep South. Your name is Anne Rudloe, and you are amazed and enlivened by that tingly feeling you feel when your mind surfaces after prolonged, disciplined meditation.
You describe to your readers how your meditation classes are going as you advance in discipline and slow, steady insight.
You are still shocked and upset over how grumpily unfocused you remain - and, yes, how your arms and legs still become wracked by contortions of pain - in your pointless early-morning meditation exercises in silent futility.
But in the afternoon, back at the marine biology station, the crystalline clarity of your mind shocks you into self-admiration - be careful!
You’re not responsible for your joy.
Mu - Being - is at the root of this ecstasy. You are the cart; Mu is the horse.
So you keep going.)
When we meditate, we find our mind is dominated by our self-will. Further along, we see that our self-will CENSORS selfless goals. Still further along, we see that different levels of our minds have different opinions.
This applies to us all, by the way. But in slow, easeful meditation our relaxed minds “knit together the ravelled sleeves of care,” as Shakespeare says.
It FREES us from our worst enemy - our EGO. The Ego is the Enemy.
As we all keep moving through this nattering life...
Not being perplexed by the dead tedium of our mental machine language. Not getting excited by the incredible GUI array on your screen that you’ve GOT to share with a friend.
No.
Just remaining in the middle range of things. Not becoming affective, not becoming simple or pure. Not becoming - only BEING...
At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless: neither from nor toward.
At the still point -
THERE the Dance is.
***
Want to know a secret?
Attentive Emptiness can OPEN AND FLOWER within you...
And produce a REMARKABLY FREE AND NEW WAY OF LIVING.
July 30, 2018
I went in with low expectations. For some reason, anytime I read books by “local authors” I expect that the reason they are on the shelves is due to that fact rather than on their own merits, but this “beginning zen” book was really helpful to my beginning zen brain. Many times I had to set the book down to digest a powerful nugget of wisdom that it contained. This is one of those rare books that I feel the need to purchase my own copy of and recommend to others.
August 24, 2022
“Zen is simply a matter of turning off the noise”. Balance, as in butterflies on a sea of wind.
October 8, 2024
I completely happened upon this by chance as it caught my eye whilst residing next to the book I was actually in the stacks to pluck off the shelf and take home (yet another reason why physical libraries are so cool). It took me awhile to get into it, but after I did I was amazed by the way she was able to make certain concepts so much more viscerally clear to me than I had ever experienced before.
It's definitely going to be a book for me to purchase for my keeper shelves.
My only quibble was that she states in the book twice, once quoting a Zen teacher and once of her own volition, that humans are the only animals to feel compassion; which is not only something I vehemently disagree with, it seemed especially jarring in the context of all the environmentalism and appreciation of nature that pervaded the rest of the book. Weird.
It's definitely going to be a book for me to purchase for my keeper shelves.
My only quibble was that she states in the book twice, once quoting a Zen teacher and once of her own volition, that humans are the only animals to feel compassion; which is not only something I vehemently disagree with, it seemed especially jarring in the context of all the environmentalism and appreciation of nature that pervaded the rest of the book. Weird.
October 12, 2023
Truly a wonderful little book! This is one I will reread.
July 25, 2011
This book really touched me. I finally was able to begin to understand the basic philosophy of Zen and how I can apply it to my life. For so long I felt like a wanna-be hippie from the 60's whenever I read about cosmic energy and karma and inner peace. It's been ridiculed so much in western culture. But Zen has been around for thousands of years and if you open your mind to its teachings, it makes perfect sense. It is beautiful in its simplicity. You don't have to shave your head and give away all your worldly possessions to experience the kind of energy and awareness and peace that they talk about.
This book was written by a young woman living in British Columbia. She has a job and a family and problems just like most people. But she has chosen to seriously pursue the Zen practice by going on retreats. This is her experience. She writes about the challenges she faces trying to integrate Zen into modern life. There are a lot of struggles along the way but her progress in spite of that and her determination to keep trying to learn more gave me inspiration to seek my own spiritual growth.
This book was written by a young woman living in British Columbia. She has a job and a family and problems just like most people. But she has chosen to seriously pursue the Zen practice by going on retreats. This is her experience. She writes about the challenges she faces trying to integrate Zen into modern life. There are a lot of struggles along the way but her progress in spite of that and her determination to keep trying to learn more gave me inspiration to seek my own spiritual growth.
Did Not Finish
October 21, 2008I always burn out on philosophy. (2008)
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews