Book Recommendations

Here are a couple of excellent books I have been reading this month:
Opening the Hand of Thought by Kosho Uchiyama.
Living with the Devil by Stephen Batchelor - not a great title IMO. The sub-title is better: A Meditation on Good and Evil

Sitting on Air

Hogen Sensei came to the sesshin last week and sat on one of these air cushions. I ordered one, because they are very light, completely collapsable and are great to travel with - much better than carrying a bulky 5 lb.. buckwheat zafu around.

Dharma Name

Last Friday at Kanzeon I received a new dharma name from Genpo Roshi: Zenho

Zen ho(u)
ぜん ほう
全放　

全 (zen) = whole; all, complete, entire
放 (ho) = release, free, liberate

Many thanks to Yumiko for the explanation and kanji.

Sesshin

I walk into a pub. On the way to the bar I notice a woman sitting at a table by herself. She looks neither old nor young and smiles at me. Ignoring her, I find an empty bar stool, sit down and order a beer.

Looking up from the drink I notice that the woman winks at me. I look away, ignoring her. When I am finished with the beer, the bartender brings me another and indicates that the woman ordered it for me. I look in her direction and nod. Time passes and I make my way to the restroom, which leads me by the table where the woman sits. She smiles again, but I ignore her - I have other things on my mind.

On the way back from the restroom back to the bar the woman sticks out a foot and trips me. I fall and when I stare at her in disbelief recognize her at last.

The bar is my life. The woman is the dharma, but in fact me, and she really isn't male or female, or she is both... What trips me up is the birth of my son. The point of the story is that the dharma wants to be recognized, the dharma does everything imaginable to help us recognize it. Or rather, for me to recognize me...

Undoing

Undoing a week of Zen training...

Hellish Destiny

When reality is seen, neither subject nor object exists.
And in a moment a hellish destiny is averted.
Yongjia

Enlightenment

An enlightened person has an insight into the nature of things. That's cool and very well and desirable. But, in the big picture that alone doesn't mean that much.

Take a mechanic for example. S/he has an insight into the nature of a car, it's inner workings and how stuff gets connected. But that does not make that mechanic a nice person or even just pleasant to be around. One might be in awe of their understanding of the vehicle, but hey, they might even suck at driving that very car they understand so well.

These thoughts were provoked by a couple of books I have looked into, interesting books on Zen, or rather regarding the fact that Zen doesn't fix people, and enlightenment does not fix people... :

Zen at War is about the involvement of Japanese Zen Masters in WW2, specifically the Chinese invasion by Japan. It seems obvious that some Zen people got a little attached to nationalism. An enlightened fascist is still a fascist. Some very basic buddhist insights were being ignored...

Shoes outside the Door - the subtitle says it all: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center. I met Richard Baker in 1986, when he asked me to play guitar at his short-lived Desert Cafe in Santa Fe on New Year's Eve. Went to a Dharma talk by him - in a house that is now part of the Upaya compound. Didn't do anything for me, so Zen had to wait until I met Genpo Roshi.

The brain is a big gland and thoughts tumble out 24/7 as I wrote in my last post. Why would any group of people be that different from an individual? Any group is a bunch of brains - they are going to have the same silly, stupid, brilliant, evil thoughts. And often groups are more willing to act on a silly notion than an individual might. I think history has repeatedly proven that.

The Big Gland

Here is something I have been tripping out over recently. In buddhist philosophy a thought is a secretion of the brain. How different is that from the Western I think therefore I am!!!

In other words, just like our glands spew forth hormons, our thoughts are merely the product of a large gland, the brain.

Have you stood on a bridge or a tall building and thought jump? Sure you have. I have and everyone has. It is what the brain does... 24/7. Think up stuff. The brilliant and the horrific. The sublime and the stupid. It is all the same to the brain. The brain comes up with ideas. Some great, some bad, some very very bad.

Here is what I think. It should not be: I think therefore I am - it should be: I am what I do and choose not to do. Because that is what really defines us.

Big Mind

Here's the list of upcoming Big Mind Workshops around the country to be conducted by Genpo Roshi. Further information about these events can be found here and here.

Big Mind Workshop - Salt Lake City
Utah Kanzeon Zen Center
May 7 Saturday 10 am - 5pm

Big Mind Workshop - Southern California
Encinitas
May 28 Saturday 10 am- 5pm

Big Mind Workshop - Texas
High Hope Ranch - Glen Rose
June 11 Saturday 10 am - 5pm

Big Mind Workshop - Southern California
Santa Monica Zen Center
June 18 Saturday 10 am - 5pm

Big Mind Workshop - New York
Omega Institute
July 24-29

Big Mind Workshop - Santa Fe
Upaya Zen Center
August 26-28

Reality?

Implant gives artist the sense of "magnetic vision"

Steve Haworth implanted a magnet in his finger and now claims to have the ability to sense electric fields.

In one sensory incident, I was walking out of the library, and I sensed the inductive anti-theft device. I have walked in and out of dozens of libraries hundreds of times, and never once have I thought about the magnetic fields passed through me to prevent me from stealing a book. I have been intellectually aware of the mechanism, but never paid attention until now. Another time I opened a can of cat food for my girlfriend’s pets, and I sensed the electric motor running. My hand was about six inches away from the electric can opener, and I was able to sense where the motor was inside of the assembly. Again it brought my attention to a magnetic source that I understood intellectually, but would have otherwise been unaware of. I feel I am one step closer to fully grokking the reality I inhabit.

Link
(Via BoingBoing.)

Hilarious!

Pebbles

For better or worse, for whatever reasons, I have a real sticking point with judging things. To begin, I have a big ego, a strong personality, and a flair for drama and emphatic definitives. For someone who's supposedly a Zen practitioner, I exhibit an incredibly capacity for Judging, which is very different from Discerning. Discerning is when you're wise enough to take the pebbles out of your rice. Judging is when you go off on a crusade about the evils of pebbles. Pebbles are pebbles, they SHOULD be pebbles. Don't eat them. End of story.
Stuart Davis

Yes, yes, I know those pebbles well, and I also have spend too much energy railing against them.

Upaya

This evening I sat Zazen for an hour at Upaya in Santa Fe, as I often do. I brought my camera, because it was raining and if the rain stopped by the time the Zazen period was over, the light might be really nice. The sitting started with the drumming of rain drops on the roof, which was quite beautiful. When we emerged into the evening, the rain stopped briefly and I took some photos. It was very interesting to look through the lens after sitting in a darkened room. The above photo is my favorite image from tonight. I have lived in Santa Fe almost twenty years, since April or May of 1986, and I have never experienced this much rain. It is like discovering a whole different town.