Honoring the Three

Lately I've been working with what Sebene Selassie calls The Three Honorings. Each morning I honor the land I'm on. Then I honor the spiritual lineages that carry me. And finally I honor my ancestors, the living bloodline that flows in me and through me and is me.

It goes something like this:

The Land
I am writing these words from a friend's cottage on Whidbey Island in what we now call Washington State. From my window I can see a stand of Douglas Fir, each tree older than the cottage I'm sitting in, older than the neighborhood in which this cottage rests. I can feel, can smell, can hear the sense of this place, a wholeness hard to name, a sense of presence and power. I honor that wholeness. I honor the land. I honor also the stewards of this land, the people of the Lower Skagit, the Swinomish, the Suquamish, and the Snohomish who made this island their home for a hundred generations and more before settlers drove them from it. I honor also the spirits of this land, the unseen beings, who live in the ground, in the trees, in the waters and the sky.

The Lineages
I honor the masters of the Shangpa lineage, fiercely dedicated masters, mountain yogis, hidden yogis, yoginis of profound realization and power: Niguma, Sukhasiddhi, Kyungpo Naljor and the rest. I honor Mingyur Rinpoche and the empty luminosity. I honor also Zen—the uncompromising essence—never far from my heart. I honor the Lineage of the Elders, whose instructions have released me again and again from my stupor.

Ancestry
I honor my own ancestors, my bloodline, those whom I feel standing at my back. My ancestors who lived through war, through upheaval and loss, whose sorrow I feel in the very shape of me, whose resilience carries me through my days. I honor my ancestors, ask for their support, their guidance, and trust that time flows backward, too, and that each burden I lay down is a burden laid down for those who came before, as well as those still to come.

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When I honor these three, when I call to mind the land, the lineages, and my ancestors, each morning I feel rooted to a sense of myself and to everybody, and not only a sense of who we are on this bright day, but of who we have been, and who we could be. It’s as if we stand on the edge, as if time is breaking like a wave, and we are time, everything is time: situated, immediate, and very much alive.

Sending lots of love,
nico hase