Stuart bows

Deep Bow

It's been a disco ball of a month. First on tour for a week, then home in Colorado for one day, then in Hollywood for ten days recording the new album, then immediately upon flying home to Colorado, rushing off to the Integral Spiritual Center gathering this past weekend in Denver with Ken Wilber and dozens of Mystery filaments from all over the planet gathered to explore integral spirituality in the modern age. Genpo Roshi conducted Big Mind process on Friday with dozens of teachers from various traditions -Christian Contemplative, Zen, Shambhala, Vajrayana, Anglican, Morman (yes, Morman), Kabbalah, and more- and our collective mind did indeed go Big.
(Via stuart davis's blog.)

Oh my! To have been there. Do tell more!!

3 Steps

I LOVE YOU
when you realize that love radiates in all directions you can drop the Object...

I LOVE
then you realize that the I dissolves in love and the statement becomes:

LOVE

and according to the Beatles that is all you need...

Berliner - Tibetan

If the Tibetans can't have their country back, let's make the world Tibetan.

I propose that the Tibetan Government in exile sell symbolic Tibetan passports to anybody who wants one. $500 donation gets you a passport with your photo, and stamps and words you can't read, and a picture of the Dalai Lama... and you become a symbolic Tibetan. Maybe you can get a symbolic Tibetan ID card for $200 etc...

Maybe a number of shops and restaurants around the globe could start giving discounts to shoppers who have a Tibetan passport... A web site could list all establishments that offer such a discount...

1,000 Tibetan passports would bring in half a million dollars. In a few years there might be hundreds of thousands of new Tibetans roaming the globe. Tibet as a state of mind rather than a country. 10,000 passports would bring in 5 million dollars...

And maybe these new Tibetan people, even if it is only symbolic, will be more passionate about their country and petition the UN, the US and China to save what is left of their country...

Don't bring your Tibetan passport on your vacation to Shanghai, though...

Jon said something beautiful about this idea today: China can't eradicate the essence of a people. They can invade the land, they can raze all of the buildings, they cut down the trees, but they cannot destroy the spirit of Tibet.

Indeed! J.F.K. said Ich bin ein Berliner - let's all say I'm a Tibetan.

Gorilla Suit

Since I was a kid I have often noticed the gorilla suit...

it's a funny feeling - when your body appears to be a gorilla suit and you are peering through the eye-holes out into the world.

Delightful to breath, marvelous to move the arms or run, a joy to smile, beautiful to hear 360 degrees, amazing to see the world and all of its shapes...

I like this gorilla suit. It is very useful. I can sit and I can play guitar. I can eat and I can sleep. Tasting stuff is nice and smelling is great, too. Smiling at strangers is fun. Making music with a band is most exhilarating! And it is really great to get a standing ovation for something I love doing!

How do you like your gorilla suit? I hope you are also enjoying it very much. It is all there is, you know!

Or let me phrase that differently for those who disagree: (in the voice of Jack) What if this is as good as it gets!

Would you dig your gorilla suit more, if you positively knew this is it? Would you enjoy the light, the sounds, your family more? Would you take care of the animals, the environment?

Relationships

Usually when people look at the Buddhist precepts, they understand them in terms of human relationships," Daido Roshi said in a talk last year at Naropa University. "Do not kill. Do not steal. Do not lie. Of course these are about human relationships, but what do they mean in terms of the environment? There is a particular kind of stealing that we do when we clear-cut forests, when topsoil is washed into rivers. There is a particular kind of killing that we do when we wipe out whole species. These precepts are taught not only as they relate to humans but also how they relate to the environment, to the ten thousand things. Not only the sentient, 'feeling' beings-deer, muskrat, beaver-but to the rocks, trees and river. All of it.
Daido Roshi in Shambala Sun

Sitting in a cafe in Santa Barabara, in between soundcheck and show, I ran across this quote on the net...

Five Buddha Families

I spent a little time in my hammock this afternoon - for the last time until July 8th or 9h. Current reading: The Five Wisdom Energies by Irini Rockwell, which I am enjoying quite a bit. It's a more feminine approach compared to the more masculine zen writings I have been inhaling. Recommended!

Read some more, and have to raise the review to Highly Recommended.

Stuart on Computers

M is for 'Mac'

You use a Mac for ONE day and that aspect of your life is fatalilstic pre-determined from then forward: Everything else is like using a typewriter with dead baby trapped inside it. I'm Mactually not exaggerating here. Maccept it. The fact that so many people use the myriad models of flaccid, UGLY, com-putrid PCs is a self-defeating wonder that ranks up there with fast-food binging and drug addiction.
(Via stuart davis's blog.)

I am not sure the dead baby thing is working for me, but I hear you. Speaking of Stuart, I think we should start the betting. Will Stu go huge in 2006? I am betting he will go mega.

Words

When I looked through my 25 year old copy of the book One Robe, One Bowl - the Zen poetry of Ryokan, I found a bunch of stuff I had written in the margins of the book. I used to carry this book everywhere with me, including to work. At the time I was working as a bank teller in Boston. I am not a poet, but these lines brought me right back to the feeling of working in a bank.

One day like another at the bank
giving money, taking money
looking at many faces
I wait for a break
to write this poem.

Or, here is a remix of a Ryokan poem:

The rain has stopped, the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If you heart is pure, then all things in your world are pure.
And the traffic lights and neon signs
will guide you along the way