Monk : Monk

The term monk means something different in Japan than in the rest of Asia. Many Buddhists in Asia do not consider Japanese monks monks... The first reason is this:

Saicho, an important abbot of a large Tendai Buddhist monastery and head of the Tendai movement in Japan at that time, petitioned the Emperor in the 8th century asking for permission to ordain monks using only the Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts instead of the 227 Patimoksha Precepts that were ordinarily used.

And for female monks there were originally 348 Precepts!
I personally find that eventually one needs only two:

1. Be Mindful
2. Act appropriately

But the sixteen precepts that were chosen by Saicho are a good selection and work for me.

And the second reason is this:

After Japanese ports were finally opened to foreign ships in about 1868, the Japanese government mounted a campaign to establish a state religion to help prevent foreign religions from entering the culture, and the indigenous Shinto religion was chosen over Buddhism. The authority of Buddhist monks at that time was undermined and eventfully Buddhist monks were allowed and even encouraged by the government to marry. This is why in Japan today, most Buddhist clerics tend to be priests living as householders taking care of temples where lay people practice rather than living in monasteries as celibate monks.

dirty purity

I've been writing new songs of late, wrote one yesterday called 'Dirty Purity'. It's really quite peculiar the way inspiration works. A while back I had a conversation with Ottmar Leibert, and one of the things he said that I loved and has stuck with me was something like 'there's no such thing as purity, all purity is polluted, absolute purity is an illusion'. That's not a quote, but was the direction of what he said. I really loved it. It's so true, and even the illusion of total purity (racial, theological, philosophical, cultural) is a symptom of a pathological absolutism, it is actually a corruption, distortion, or toxicity. The natural tendency of things, whether on a Cosmic, human, or sub-atomic scale, is to intermingle and entwine in an inextricable weave of all four quadrants. Not only is it impossible to completely isolate or insulate an occasion, to do so results in sickness and imbalance. A closed system is either dead or dying.
(Via stuart davis's blog.)

Stuart is right on the money. Read more of his excellent post here.

the Lotus is a lie
don't try to keep your head above
dunk it in and your body, too

this mud-soup of life is all there is, no purity in sight
don't be afraid - nothing can stain you
what's there to stain

If we follow the trail of any vibrant art-form we will discover that it was actually the meeting point of several different points of view. In the case of Flamenco it was the Moor (Arab), the Jew and the Gypsy meeting in Spain, and the Gypsy was already carrying music from many stops along the road from India.

Two Masters

Bought a book with some of the writings of master Dogen, who lived in the 13th century. Toward the back of the book I found a poem by Ryokan - one of my favorite Japanese poets, who lived in the 18th century. And in that poem I found this line:

Longing for ancient times and grieving for the present, my heart is exhausted.

Cars : Bodies

Americans love their cars and cars have become their surrogate bodies. You'll see a really out-of-shape guy climb out of a Corvette and think he is the coolest... meaning some kind of transfer happens, where the car becomes us and as long as the car is cool, we don't have to eat right, or go to the gym... we don't have to be strong, as long as we are sitting in a Hummer. Dig?

If a person is afraid of traffic, s/he'll buy a giant SUV to feel safer (which is not true if you check out facts about their safety record) - instead of taking an evasive driving course. The driving course will make you more confident and a better driver and will save you money.

The above words are a quote from my diary from this morning. It is easy to buy a big SUV to make yourself feel safer - even if that is not true. It is much harder to make the commitment to take a defensive driving course. Well, first of all it means facing our fear, acknowledging our fear. It also means more work... and we'll do anything to avoid doing the work, whether that's taking a driving course, or going to the gym, or sitting on the cushion. And the mind is incredibly good at making excuses.

Mistrust your mind, question your mind. Don't let it get away with its sly suggestions and excuses. It can be so clever. The world will not end if we take a week-end to become better drivers, or we take 30 minutes out of our day to sit and another 30 minutes for exercising, even if our mind is trying to tell us that.

It is all the same, really. Anything worth doing is worth doing well. This precious gift of a life is worth doing well. I am discovering that for myself in so many ways right now.

Side-effects of a Sesshin

As I clean the cobwebs out of my head, I look around and feel the need to clean my physical surroundings as well. Clutter bothers me and this month I donated a Mackie mixer that I had not used in a while to the Zen Center Utah, and a 2 inch 24 track recorder was picked up by the College of Santa Fe yesterday. Now the recording room feels larger and less congested. The moths, which infested wool rugs, pillows and furniture in the recording room, are making it easy to get rid of more stuff - although I am sorry to see all that wool go, because that organic material has some lovely sound qualities...

We are cleaning the office and the studio and are piling up stuff - ebay stuff on one side and garage sale stuff on the other. Nice tube compressors I haven't used in years, for example. They sound great on everything but the flamenco guitar. I find that for my guitar all-digital is best. Since I don't use the tube stuff I might as well sell it to someone who can use it... It's the great 2005 purge...

And I find myself folding a bathroom towel like it was an Oryoki cloth... I suppose everything worth doing is worth doing well...

Big Mind + Zazen

Here are some email exchanges with friends from the last few days:

i've been reading your posts and was wondering how you were incorporating Big Mind into your sitting.

The non-grasping or non-seeking voice by itself does not work for me during Zazen. Since it is non-grasping and non-desiring it gets its ass kicked by the obsessing mind and any number of other riotous voices.

So, my solution was to have a second voice stand guard over the non-grasping voice. Walk softly and carry a big stick - like.

When some voice comes down the pike with problems or issues, the enforcer gently tells it to take a hike and not to take advantage of the non-grasping mind. All voices seem to be happier.

I haven't mentioned this to Diane or Genpo Roshi yet and thus don't know whether I am making an illegal move on the board - but heck it seems to work for me.

Dear O - I am still in Holland with Roshi. I read him your email. He says, “Perfect. He is invoking Manjushri Bodhisattva - masculine compassion - to do the work of protecting his samadhi.”

Yeah, Manjushri Bodhisattva! That sounds a lot cooler than guard or enforcer! Leave quietly please, or male compassion is going to kick you out. There is nothing going on here. Nothing at all. Y'all might as well rest or sleep while non-grasping sits and Manjushri watches over the whole theater.

I have been using this Big Mind technique during Zazen for a little while and it works well for me.

School

Great article by Elliot W. Eisner, a professor of education and art at Stanford University in the L.A. Times:

Although we don't think about it this way, a school's curriculum is a mind-altering device, a means through which children's minds are shaped with ideas, skills and beliefs about the world. Because what we teach the young is so important, we need to be particularly careful about what we include and equally as careful about what we don't.

and...

First, the arts teach children to exercise that most exquisite of capacities, the ability to make judgments in the absence of rules. There is so much in school that emphasizes fealty to rules. The rules that the arts obey are located in our children's emotional interior; children come to feel a rightness of fit among the qualities with which they work. There is no rule book to provide recipes or algorithms to calculate conclusions. They must exercise judgment by looking inside themselves.

A second lesson the arts teach children is that problems can have more than one solution. This too is at odds with the use in our schools of multiple choice tests in which there are no multiple correct answers. The tacit lesson is that there is, almost always, a single correct answer. It's seldom that way in life.

A third lesson is that aims can be held flexibly; in the arts the goal one starts with can be changed midway in the process as unexpected opportunities arrive. Flexibility yields opportunities for surprise. "Art loves chance. He who errs willingly is the artist," Aristotle said. Creative thinking abhors routine. Routines may be good for the assembly line, where surprise is the last thing you want. As our schools become increasingly managed by an industrial ethos that pre-specifies and then measures outcomes, there is an increased need for the arts as a counterbalance.

The arts also teach that neither words nor numbers define the limits of our cognition; we know more than we can tell.

Read the whole article - it's quite important. There needs to be more to school than learning rules and routines. So much is at stake. Like the long-term happiness of a child and the well-being of a society.

Enjoy Uncertainty - Shuffle Zen

Zen Buddhism teaches that there is no self, just a mental construct that makes us believe that there is a separate and isolated me.

Often we use music to enforce our mood. When we are sad, we look for sad music. When we are love-sick a song about heart-break sounds like it is about us! When we are happy, we look for upbeat music. Of course, sometimes we go the other way around. We are sad and look to listen to something upbeat to break us out of the mood.

I think the iPod Shuffle is cool, because it is great to observe our reaction to random emotion as chosen by the iPod Shuffle - well, unless you put only sad songs on the player, but then you are missing the point...

The smallest events can shove us into a certain mood. Somebody drives too fast or too slow, somebody has a "stupid" bumpersticker on their car, somebody cuts in line at the grocery store... you get the idea. Just turn on the iPod Shuffle and let it pick a song for you. Yeah, it is random. Almost as random as you getting upset over the driver in front of you, when you could have looked up and seen an amazing cloud, or to the right where a little boy is hugging his mom.

Feds Can X-Rated Spam

Feds Can X-Rated Spam

The Federal Trade Commission wins a court order to stop the flood of illegal, adult e-mail advertising for six companies accused of violating federal laws governing spam. It's the government's first legal case involving X-rated junk e-mail.
(Via Wired News.)

No more commenting

This morning I discovered tons of comment spam on this journal. I didn't know that there was even a market for Granny Incest. Actually all of the spam I removed today had to do with incest of all kinds...

That's some sick shit. Well, no more commenting on this blog.

If you want to take back the internet from these spammers I suggest that you contact your local, state and federal politicos and demand that something be done about spam.

I do not have the time to hunt down spam and remove it and we can't leave it to grow and choke the server.

So, there you have it. Don't complain, call your congress or senate person and do something.

U R what U eat

And if you don't want to work, study and practice to become Zen, you could always just drink it. You are what you eat. Drink contains bones of ancient Zen Masters! Guaranteed to lead to enlightenment.

Neuro-Monks

Neuroscientist Measures Increased Brain Activity in Meditating Monks

Intense meditation and mental focus can boost brain activity and even lead to heightened levels of awareness, according to research appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That won't come as news to Buddhists, who have long meditated in pursuit of that higher level, but it's a bit new for science, which only recently began to accept that a brain can continue to develop in adulthood, a trait known as neuroplasticity.

University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson has been working with a group of Tibetan monks in order to study the effects on the brain of these rigorous exercises. According to the Washington Post, the research is the result of a collaboration between Davidson and the Dalai Lama, who offered up eight of his surest practitioners of meditation for study. They had undergone from 10,000 to 50,000 hours of training, over 15 to 40 years, in the Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa forms of meditation. Student volunteers trained for a week and served as controls.

All were hooked up to electronic sensors that would measure electrical impulses the brain produces called gamma waves. They were then asked to meditate on unconditional compassion, the "unrestricted readiness and availability to help living beings." The monks were putting out fast and powerful gamma waves, which seemed to move through the brain in a more coordinated manner than in the students.

"What we found is that the longtime practitioners showed brain activation on a scale we have never seen before," Davidson told the Post. "Their mental practice is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practice will enhance performance."
(Via vedana.net.)

Well, yes...

Thailand

The grim task of cremating thousands of tsunami victims has fallen to Thailand's saffron-robed monks, whose training requires them to stare at photos of decomposing bodies to better understand the transitory nature of life.
via Tricycle

The Trees and the Axe

A MAN came into a forest and asked the Trees to provide him a handle for his axe. The Trees consented to his request and gave him a young ash-tree. No sooner had the man fitted a new handle to his axe from it, than he began to use it and quickly felled with his strokes the noblest giants of the forest. An old oak, lamenting when too late the destruction of his companions, said to a neighboring cedar, "The first step has lost us all. If we had not given up the rights of the ash, we might yet have retained our own privileges and have stood for ages."

A Woodman went into the forest and begged of the Trees the favour of a handle for his Axe. The principal Trees at once agreed to so modest a request, and unhesitatingly gave him a young ash sapling, out of which he fashioned the handle he desired. No sooner had he done so than he set to work to fell the noblest Trees in the wood. When they saw the use to which he was putting their gift, they cried, "Alas! alas! We are undone, but we are ourselves to blame. The little we gave has cost us all: had we not sacrificed the rights of the ash, we might ourselves have stood for ages."

Two translations of the same fable. The moral is one that we don't seem to act on: The betrayal of one may result in the downfall of all. The one may be somebody perceived by society as strange or different or somehow less valuable - and then you see that you can apply this fable to a lot of different political/social situations in many parts of the world - certainly in the past as well as today.

Hoberman Spheres

I sent a Hoberman Sphere to Roshi Halifax here in Santa Fe. She called me today and liked the metaphor.

I said, maybe Rinzai is like trying to hit the closed sphere with the right hand while the left hand moves the sphere out of the way at the last moment. But eventually you hit the thing and it flies through the air and opens.

Maybe Soto is like gently moving the ball out of the way with the right hand, while the left hand gently rolls it back. Until the day comes when the ball moves and opens.

Big Mind can open the sphere, but the sphere closes again before one has left the room - because it is a State and people at any Stage can have the experience of a State. Only zazen can keep it open longer. It's like developing a mental muscle that can open the sphere more easily as time passes and over time the open sphere becomes a Stage?

I am not sure whether she was serious when she said she was going to use it in a Dharma talk. You never know with those Zen teachers, but I would love to see her use the sphere!

Do What You Can!

From an interview with Roshi Berni Glassman

If we're trying to solve issues, then we'll be trapped. Our role is just one piece of the whole picture, and that's all we can do. There's a story of a bodhisattva who finds an empty well and sees a mountain covered with snow and climbs up the mountain with a spoon and gets a spoonful of snow, comes down, puts it in the well, and then goes back up the mountain. He keeps doing that, not with any sense that he's actually going to fill the well with water, but simply because that's what's needed. full quote
(Via The Inner-net.)

Modern Zen Temple

This article in the NYT Magazine caught my eye in December. At once I imagined a city Zen Temple built out of this material. I wonder what the heat efficiency of this material is. Here is another article on LiTraCon.

Tsunami

Michael Schumacher Pledges $10 Million to Aid Tsunami Victims

Michael Schumacher, seven-time Formula One world champion, pledged $10 million to help victims of the recent tsunami in South Asia. The donation was announced during a fundraising drive on German TV that received more than 34 million euros in pledges...
(Via Jalopnik.)

Buddha in the Snow

I took this photo today. Part of a Snow series.

Ken Wilber and Lama Surya Das

This weeks I-N serves up a conversation between Ken Wilber and Lama Surya Das in which Ken talks about Genpo Roshi's Big Mind process.

Agnes Martin died on Dec. 16 at age 92

Acquaintances describe Martin as both self-effacing and relentless, a characterization that accords with her interest in Zen. She had heard a legendary D.T. Suzuki lecture while she was training at Columbia University to become an art teacher.

"We are aware of fear as soon as we are alone," she wrote in 1976. "Some of us are so faint-hearted that we never allow ourselves to be alone for this reason. But artists must of necessity be alone and therefore they must recognize and overcome fear. This is a very long process."

From the San Francisco Chronicle
Thanks Yumiko

This Is It

Found: Zen E-cards
(Via The Inner-net.)

Fly Fishing

No, I don't know anything about fly fishing. But I went to a local restaurant the other day and set down for a meal. As I often do when I eat by myself, I brought a book to read. What are you reading, a man from a neighboring table inquired. A thriller, I answered. He grabbed my book to have a look.

The Eight Gates of Zen by John Daido Loori. Ah, the man said, a friend of mine is trying to get me to write a book on Zen and the Art of Fly Fishing.

I take it that you know about Fly Fishing, I said and the man nodded, but nothing about Zen, and he nodded again. Well, I lied, if you read this book you will know everything you need to know about Zen and the book will write itself.

Fat chance...