My intention for No Centre, No Edge is to share moments and phrases that have helped me find my own way. If something here touches even one person, the effort will have been worthwhile.
Many describe our time as one of overlapping crises—ecological, social, psychological, and spiritual. What role do unexamined beliefs and assumptions play in creating the experience of these crises? What sort of world energes from the widespread conviction that we exist as separate from the world around us, standing apart from what we experience? When awareness knows itself, the sense of separation falls away. This blog is a small offering in service of that shift: a place to pause, listen, and reflect—one passage, one moment of practice, one glimpse of awareness at a time.
To close, here’s a short passage on repaying the kindness of one’s teachers from Then and Now. In that series Ken McLeod teaches from the classic lamrim text, The Jewel Ornament of Liberation This particular excerpt is from a session on the perfection of diligence or effort.
From Then and Now 31
Ken: These are the moral ethics of benefitting sentient beings. So these are to help others you support meaningful activities, dispel the suffering of those sentient beings who are suffering.
I’m going to translate some of these.
Supporting meaningful activities. You engage people in things that are meaningful to them. Show them how to do it without struggling. Showing methods to people who don’t know them, that’s teaching them; teaching them something they don’t know how to do.
Recollecting others’ kindness and then repaying it. When we talk about repaying people’s kindness this should be understood fairly broadly. There are lots of instances of kindness, the kindness of our parents, the kindness of our teachers that we will never repay to those people. It’s not possible. You can never repay your parents for all that they gave you so that you have a life. What you can do is take what was given through all of that and nurture other people’s lives. And that’s how you repay it. It’s not repaid back, it’s repaid forward, in a certain sense. And that becomes very powerful.
One’s willingness to do that comes directly from appreciating what was given. So when people undertake spiritual practice, as their spiritual practice begins to take hold and they can really feel its value, they often become concerned—“How can I thank my teacher, how can I pay him or her back for this?” Wrong way to think, in my opinion. So now you understand the value, so how do you light that candle, ignite that spark in somebody else?
Dedication
Goodness comes from this practice now done.
Let me not hold it just in me.
Let it spread to all that is known
And awaken good throughout the world.
Awakening mind is precious.
May it arise where it has not arisen.
May it not fade where it has arisen.
May it ever grow and flourish.
Everything known—nothing to understand.
Everything clear—nothing to explain.
Everything in its place—nothing to do.
May the joy of this way touch beings everywhere.
Ann Braun Wheatley —
Contact
Nelson, Aotearoa/New Zealand
30 October, 2025