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Found this un-posted entry on my computer today:

As I get older I notice that my interests are shifting curiously. I am now much more interested in subtle changes. Instead of playing an arpeggio as fast or as powerful as possible I am now interested how I can accent the different notes and bring out nuances. One can play the same chord many different ways by accenting different notes of that chord... The same is true for relationships. Over time the way a partner moves their hand or holds their head communicates so much, tiny facial expressions become obvious...

Now, the same is true for Zazen. Twenty years ago I would have loved to do Koans, but now I am much more interested in the subtle changes and shifts that happen while doing Shikantaza.

Fine Life

To lead a fine life we don't necessarily need a religion or a spiritual path, but the ability to access multiple perspectives seems essential. The world looks through many different eyes and has therefore many different perspectives... if our spouse agrees with us on every issue, s/he is probably lying - at least some of the time. If we should expect our spouse or friend to agree with us at all times, then we are either deluded or afraid of any opinion that is different from ours.

Are we afraid that we might be wrong after all? Or just afraid that there is something else out there, something we can't define and depend on. Welcome to life. It is full of uncertainties, why should relationships be any different. One moment you are sunbathing, the next moment a 100 foot wave swallows you up. Or, as my mom always said, I could just fall backwards in a chair and break my neck...

It seems to me the ability to access and hold multiple perspectives leads to empathy and empathy will lead to care and so on and so forth...

Without the ability to hold multiple perspectives I would imagine a life to remain very poor, for that ability is quite essential to enjoying life, or art for that matter. I imagine a single perspective/view-point to feel like living inside a tightly closed fist. No room to breath, no space... and lack of space is the Japanese definition of Hell.

I myself am not particularly interested in Buddhism or in being a Buddhist. I am interested in being Buddha. Zen Buddhism is just the path I have chosen to become Buddha - or recognize that I am Buddha already, as Zen would say. Likewise I feel that more people should become Christ rather than remain Christians. There is a fundamental difference. One lives the absolute truth - or as close as one can get, the other follows the relative truth, one lives the rules or precepts, the other follows the rules, one lives love and compassion - the other talks about it.

Auto-Erotic

Tricycle Blog

Buddhists were once again put on the defensive by Ratzinger in 1997, when a March issue of the French periodical L’Express reported that in off-the-cuff remarks he had called Buddhism an “auto-erotic spirituality” and suggested it was more dangerous than Marxism.

Auto Erotic Spirituality - that sounds pretty exciting.

Accidents

Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you accident prone.

Ken Wilber quoted Baker Roshi in this 1997 article.

Living with the Devil

Last night I was reading Living with the Devil by Stephen Batchelor - a fantastic book by the way... and I came upon this sentence:

Buddha and Christ may have conquered the devil, but that does not prevent the devil from corrupting Buddhism or Christianity.

There is a lot of food for thought in that simple sentence.

flow

Convictions are dangerous. What if my strong conviction turns out to be a figment of my imagination. Life is a flow, and when those large boulders we call convictions are dropped into that flow, what happens?

Life is a flow. Life is the sum of all possibilities. Life is allowing space for development, for creation. That space is defined as emptiness-that-allows-movement or emptyness-which-gives-rise-to-movement.

Somewhere between paralyzing aimlessness and a rigid conviction that allows no movement, there is a middle way that beckons.

Living

Following the step by step instructions of a recipe is not cooking.
Achieving technical mastery of an instrument is not making music.
Going through the motions of your life is not living.

Ryokan

Where there is beauty, there is ugliness.
When something is right, something else is wrong.
Knowledge and ignorance depend on each other.
It has been like this since the beginning.
How could it be otherwise now?
Wanting to toss out one and hold onto the other
makes for a ridiculous comedy.
You must still deal with everything ever-changing,
even when you say it’s wonderful.
- Ryokan

Carrying Wood, Chopping Firewood

Maintaining a household, raising a child, driving a car, having relationships — these are the activities that we spend most of our daily lives engaged in. If our practice is not making a difference in these areas, then it’s not really working.
Dharma Discourse by John Daido Loori, Roshi

Nice web library of Dharma talks.

Where does it all end?

Is enlightenment it? Is being a Buddha it?

I suspect it is an ongoing process of transcend and include, a spiral without end. And Sidhartha Gautama Buddha has a nice head-start of 2,500 or 3,000 years - who knows what he can do now!

Really, there is no such thing as finishing any job, is there! I release an album when I feel I can't go any further with these compositions at this time... because otherwise I would never finish a CD...

Think of your mind as the dishes - they are clean for a brief moment only, then they start piling up, to be scrubbed once again. In fact, if they stay clean for too long you haven't been eating!! And that means you haven't continued your slow walk up the spiral. Maybe you have become too comfortable. Get up and get moving. Frank Howell used to say: When you stop learning you begin to die.

Transcend and include. Do the dishes and eat. And don't hope that you will get somewhere - because there is no there there. Just a new vista and the next hill...

And when you do become a Buddha, you will have a great vista in front of you... of the next hill...

Anger

Kill your Rage
So what does one do about anger? When I first heard one of my Buddhist teachers say that anger should be repressed, it sounded not only absurd but positively unhealthy. Everyone knows you don't bottle up your anger, you let it out. Now I can see what he meant. When I looked a little more carefully it became apparent that anger wasn't some substance that built up inside of me and which I could 'let out' and be rid of. There was nothing in which anger could be bottled up. The process of letting anger out was actually the process by which more anger was produced.
- Brad Warner,hardcore punk musician and Zen priest

Go read the whole article. It is brilliant.

Becoming

Recorded melody and solo for the piece in 21/8. What has always worked well for me is to listen to something over and over until it is internalized. I learned bulerias when I was in my late twenties, and what helped me then was to program a drummachine with a bulerias pattern and to let it play softly while I was sleeping.

With the 21/8 piece, as with all music in odd time signatures, I felt it was important to feel the rhythm rather than counting along in my head. For a few weeks I have been listening to the music and yesterday I was able to come up with a nice melody and solo that simply flowed.

This is from this morning's entry in my diary. That oneness I am able to achieve in my work, when my fingers know where to go, when I become the music, when I am non-thinking - is something that I dearly want for the rest of my life, as a person, as a husband and as a father. To feel, and know in your bones, what the appropriate action is at all times, to feel the current of right action...

I realize that the same pattern of learning applies, and since I can get there in music I will be able to get there in life eventually. All I need is perseverance, time and effort... New vistas are opening up.

Self-creation entails imagining ourselves in other ways. Instead of thinking of ourselves as a fixed nugget in a shifting current of mental and physical processes, we might consider ourself as a narrative that transforms these processes into an unfolding story. Life becomes less of a defensive stance to preserve an immutable self and more of an ongoing task to complete an unfinished tale.
- Stephen Batchelor (found here)

I dream music. I also dream the tale of ottmar.

Rakusu Rings

This is a scan, not a photograph. My friend Keith Vizcarra made these Rakusu rings for me out of cedar - the wood I prefer for my guitar tops. He finished them yesterday, on Buddha's birthday. I'll keep the one on the left because it has a little blemish and will hold onto the other one for Stuart, should he ever want one for his rakusu. Just let me know when you want it, Stu.

I traded the rings for two old 40GB FireWire drives and about 5 dozen sets of strings. Keith drives a hard bargain - must be the Basque in him...

Happy Birthday

Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical founder of Buddhism, was born in India 3,000 years ago. There are various opinions concerning the exact dates of his birth and death, but according to Buddhist tradition, he is said to have been born April 8, 1029 BC and died on February 15, 949 BC, although other Buddhist scholars place his birth five hundred years later. No definite conclusion has been reached.
Link Link

Here is a nice tribute by the Tricycleblog.

What's the difference...

...between making music and being a Zen Buddhist? Just the scope really - the musician wants to be one with the music and the Buddhist wants to be one with the universe. Same thing - just bigger.

What's your name?

Regarding Soul/Spirit any answer using language could be wrong and potentially misleading.

The word Atman means individual soul in India - as opposed to Godhead, which is Brahma. And yes, this led to many interesting conversations when I was in India:

What is your name?
Ottmar.
Atman, ah very good name.
No, it is Ottmar.
Huh?

Buddhism is said to be An-Atman, meaning no soul. I believe the Buddha was after a singular experience and did not want the idea of an individual soul to get in the way of experiencing non-duality, oneness. I mean how could there be more Duality than by having those two separate names: Atman and Brahma...

If I remember correctly - it's been thirty years since I was a catholic altar boy... many Christians are taught that they have a little white soul in their hearts and that this particular individual soul will either go to heaven or hell when they die - depending on their deeds. This soul is separate from every other soul, separate from anything else on this planet, and certainly separate from the Father, the Son and the holy Ghost. If you do good your soul goes to heaven. You are separate from all others and even if this planet suffocates in war and pollution, your soul will be OK, because you are completely separate from all that.

Now, it is understood that many Christian mystics have overcome this dialectic, but I believe Buddha didn't want people to fall into the dualistic quagmire in the first place. I believe that An-Atman does not mean no spirit, rather it means no individual spirit, no spirit separated from all other spirit. No dualistic view.

One can only ignore the suffering of others when one separates oneself from them.

So, to start with the first quote from my earlier post:

For Buddhism the movement from this life to the next is more like a flame being passed from candle to candle rather than the same person getting out of one taxi and into another.

I think the imagery works for the most part if one considers each flame to be inherently the same as any other flame. Why are our experiences of this so different? Well, I think that's where Karma comes into play. As science continues to show us, everything is connected, everything influences everything - or using that ancient word Karma, meaning reaction to an action - everything acquires Karma.

Damn, this is hard. Writing about spirit is like dancing about architecture and trying to write about it makes me appreciate Ken Wilber's incredible ability even more. Most people talk about the philosopher Ken Wilber, but I think of him as a poet most of the time. I mean, check out this:

If the doors of perception are cleansed, the entire Kosmos is your lost and found Beloved, the Original Face of primordial Beauty, forever, and forever, and endlessly forever. And in the face of that stunning Beauty, you will completely swoon into your own death, never to be seen or heard from again, except on those tender nights when the wind gently blows through the hills and the mountains, quietly calling your name.
- Ken Wilber

OK, I shall stumble on. Many Zen masters are very radical when it comes to Duality... here is a quote from Master Dogen, a 12th Century Japanese Zen master, who is also the founder of Soto Zen:

The ancient Buddha said: "Mountains are mountains, waters are waters." These words do not mean mountains are mountains; they mean mountains are mountains.

Alrighty then. I am reading a translation of Dogen's Moon in a Dewdrop and it is a wonderful book. What I love about it is its timelessness. It was written 800 years ago and yet could be written last week.

Back to our spirit: Our spirit is identical to each other and to ALL spirit. No separation between my spark and yours and ALL sparks. But, our experience of that is different, because we have each accumulated different Karma. The only thing that separates my spirit from yours is that we have accumulated different Karma. The Buddha did not want people to fall into that trap of dualism, MY spirit, YOUR spirit, Atman versus Brahma...

I think that is what makes Buddhism in general and Zen specifically, so wonderful for me. Non-duality is being pushed by the literature, by one's teacher, by Zazen. The experience of oneness is the greatest source of happiness, for even when we don't think about philosophy and spirit and duality, aren't we the most happy when we feel connected, in touch with friends and the world?

One last thought about Karma. Everyone who has been in therapy knows that most of the time one only has to shine a light into that dark corner we fear, to look at and to name what is hiding there - in order for it to lose its power over us and either disappear or become unimportant. I believe Karma is similar in that by acknowledging one's Karma, it becomes unimportant. It becomes something we then simply deal with - whatever it may be.

All evil Karma comitted by me since of old
because of my beginningless greed, anger and ignorance,
borne of my body, mouth and thought,
now I atone for it all.

Or maybe, now I am at-one with it all.

Forgive my rambling. Peace.

Grieving for the present?

A quote by my favorite poet - the monk Ryokan (1758-1831):

Now when I take the Record of Dogen and examine it,
the tone does not harmonize well with usual beliefs.
Nobody has asked whether it is a jewel or a pebble.
For five hundred years it's been covered with dust
just because no one has an eye for recognizing dharma.
For whom was all his eloquence expounded?
Longing for ancient times and grieving for the present, my heart is exhausted.

Make me one with everything...

- said the Zen practitioner to the Hot Dog Vendor...

Duality is the very basis of language which dissects and separates in order to describe.

It is such a paradox: to become one with everything, to experience the oneness, the unity of the UNIverse is the most personal statement any person can make. A person can only reach that oneness by themselves, alone - a teacher can only point...

Thus the most individual act is also the most selfless act...

Last night I wrote page after page in my notebook. Will it make sense in the cold light of day?

So many possibilities... so little time...

buddhism.about.com
For Buddhism the movement from this life to the next is more like a flame being passed from candle to candle rather than the same person getting out of one taxi and into another.

experts.about.com
Zen does not believe in reincarnation and admonishes that if it is true then it is of the utmost importance that you awaken in this life due to the fact that you might not be human again. There is no soul in Buddhism so this too creates a problem. Buddhism also teaches that the self has no substance that it is merely a collection of aggregates that perceives itself as self. So there is no true substance to self so what then reincarnates?

experts.about.com
Please do not waste your time with concepts like this, they accomplish nothing. What you must deal with is who it is that even asks me this question, who is it that reincarnates, was born and will die? Answer this and you will have no problem.

zenmind.com
Your spirit is eternal! It learns, grows and develops in each lifetime through experiences in daily life and spiritual practice. Your spirit can never die. Unlike your physical body, which becomes sick, grows old, and eventually dies, your soul lives on forever. Each person’s eternal spirit is on a journey, which has no beginning and no end.

zenmind.com
In each lifetime, the spirit comes into a physical body at birth, and has experiences in the world. At the end of life, the physical body is left behind, and the journey continues into a new life with a new physical body. Your state of mind at death determines the condition of your next life. This process of birth, death, and rebirth, called reincarnation, is a fundamental belief in Buddhism.

digitalzendo.com
Death does not disturb the continuity of life; for karma and rebirth are continuous, the one implying and being inseparable from the other. As sin and suffering bring death, so does death bring rebirth. To attain Nirvana, however, is to attain a state in which there is no more birth and no more death.

A simple search gathered this cornucopia of conflicting information. You have a spirit, you have no spirit, there is rebirth in Buddhism, there is no rebirth in Buddhism. Don't bother thinking about it in the first place etc. etc.

I shall get more into this tomorrow.

Keep Trying

Keep Trying
i do believe that in the dharma coming to the west, we are seeing psychology and mysticism woven into each other in a way that strengthens the fabric significantly. psychology is a uniquely western offering to the traditions, and perhaps more than anyone Genpo Roshi has utilized and included it in a way that can really increase the health and viability of the lineage, and the flowering of love in the world. I really feel him discovering a way of teaching that is right for THIS culture, at THIS point in history, it is American Zen. Maezumi told him he would have to discover this for himself, that he would have to find the way that is right for the West, for Western students. You can't just import Japanese Zen to America and transplant it. We're not Japanese. What is Zen? I don't know, but it's not duplicating and replicating what has worked somewhere else, for some other people in another time in history. I believe it's crucial that psychology is being included as the Dharma finds its roots here in the West. I believe there are many, many authentic paths to awakening, and many true paths available to us right now, all over the World. I know that for me, this lineage (White Plum), this teacher (Genpo Roshi), and my very dear family and friends is the right way for me. I think it's an unbelievably curious, surprising time to be a practitioner, here in the West, in Zen, in Integral, in the middle of a family living in the World! I'm really glad that I can stumble, struggle, and screw up, and still be loved and supported to keep trying.
(Via stuart davis's blog.)

In case you missed it. Right on!

Rakusu

Last month I started working on my Rakusu for the Jukai ceremony, during which one receives the Buddhist precepts and "officially" becomes a Zen Buddhist. I have found some interesting information regarding Rakusus and Precepts on the net, which I would like to pass on:

Fukudenkai by Diane Riggs - 46 pages - download the PDF here.
Apparently Soto monks and laypeople in Japan do not sew their own rakusu and robes - they buy them from officially licensed commercial manufacturers who follow the Soto specifications. Members of a group called Fukudenkai do sew their own robes, but they differ in style somewhat - for example they do not use the wooden or plastic ring the official Soto rakusu's have. Members of the White Plum in North-America and Europe do sew their own rakusu's, which was instigated by Genpo Roshi in 1987.

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies - lots of essays and book reviews to be found here.