Zen and the Vultures of Anxiety

Not enough is said, at least in the Buddhist blogosphere, at least as far as I can perceive, about the role of relaxation in Zen practice.

It's a very important part of a practice that is life itself.


I'll be having more to say about it in the very near future.

Lost in the forest

=

I've not been blogging a lot lately because of extreme business, both with work and with other activities.  

But yesterday something interesting happened, and it's worth, um, noting.

I was going running; lately the weather in the Pacific Northwest has been spectacularly good, which is somewhat odd for this time of year.  It seems summer has come early, and I'm making the most of it.  

As is my habit when I go running, I run outside on trails not far from my home. Yesterday, I chose one in Lacamas Lake Park, whose "map" is pictured above.  Note that the trails' signage isn't well laid out.

I got lost.

It's only a couple of miles or so on each side, but after running 40 minutes, about 3.5 miles, well, you can imagine how I viewed the prospect of another 2-3 miles of walking before I found my car.  I was not happy with the signage, to illustrate dishonestly how I deal with frustration sometimes. And all the Middle European folktales came to mind.  Hansel and Gretel. Ah! So that's why they have these tales,  I thought; it's a bit unnerving to be lost in the forest, and if it's a big one you could get dead.  And in fact every year in the Pacific Northwest it happens to at least one or two people.

And after a while, with my legs aching, I realized there was nothing I could do except continue on to try to get out; asking people I saw for the right path out (who said, not particularly helpfully, "There's signs.")  So I kept trying, and luckily had a practice that I kept as I kept trying.

And I realized it was a metaphor for life; we're all lost in the forest, and trying to get out, and there's nothing we can do but keep trying.  We don't want to be there, and it's not entirely "our" fault, but  we're there and we have an honest to goodness plight.  We all have a plight. And the signage may or may not be reliable. Even when it says "YOU ARE HERE" you may still not be where you think you are, and may not know where you're going.  But you've got to keep on the path.

I don't know if there's a koan about this but there really ought to be.  Sometimes it's amazing how existence just has these nice scenarios laid out so you can assign a metaphor to it related to practice, you know? They're there so you can remember to practice.

And yet...

I can't really fault Dogen for his sentiments.  But that bearded guy from India said the certain things to Emperor Wu immediately pointing to something profound. Peace, love, and understanding all come about in the same way as greed, ignorance, and hatred.  It's more expeditious to practice one set than another.  But regardless of which set is met, it's expeditious to maintain equanimity, though at times it can be awfully trying.  Attachments are the ecosystem of flypaper in which we dwell.

Be careful out there.

It's easy to see how to screw up.  It's harder not to screw up.

On being authentic ... "and relevant"

An article in the Sunday NY Times discusses the attempts by evangelical/fundamentalist churches to become "relevant" by morphing into cafes, yoga studios, movie theaters, whatever.

According to a recent report by the Pew Research Center, the percentage of Americans who are not affiliated with any religion is on the rise, including a third of Americans under 30. Even so, nearly 80 percent of unaffiliated Americans say they believe in God, and close to half say they pray at least once a month.

The “spiritual but not religious” category is an important audience that evangelical leaders hope to reach in a culture that many believers call “post-Christian.”

So they arrange meetings in movie theaters, schools, warehouses and downtown entertainment districts. They house exercise studios and coffee shops to draw more traffic. Many have even cast aside the words “church” and “church service” in favor of terms like “spiritual communities” and “gatherings,” with services that do not stick to any script...

For new leaders coming out of seminary, “the cool thing is church planting,” Mr. Bird said. “The uncool thing is to go into the established church. Why that has taken over may speak to the entrepreneurialism and innovation that today’s generation represents.”..,

That strategy, blending religion with everyday activities, disarms people put off by traditional notions of church, said Scott L. Thumma, a professor at the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

“It’s pretty low risk to wander into a bar or movie theater or hotel,” Professor Thumma said. “It ends up delivering the message of relevance: we’re just like you, we’re struggling, we might have a beer together — and our faith is also relevant.”

Disarm, indeed.  There's a lot to criticize in the article ,  and it's trivially easy to criticize  as well.  You have incredible arrogance: "Jesus went out of the synagogue, and therefore we should..."  "The uncool thing is..." You have this idea that you should be "low risk" and "disarming" to people.  And their "faith" is "relevant." 

Yeah, true true true...and...what of ourselves? There is a value irrelevance, kind of like a mathematical proof.  Many times you start out with several lemmas,  which don't necessarily seem related at first.  Usually, there is a "bridge" built with other intermediate steps between these lemmas, which, applying other axiomatic principles or lemmas leads to the final proof.  But sometimes, a proof can be constructed with seemingly unrelated lemmas, and the final proof just falls into place, kind of like an "Aha!" moment in print.

You have bills to pay, demands to other people to be met. It doesn't always seem relevant to wash the dishes or do the laundry - some demands on time and wants will always seem contradictory to one another. 

Being at peace with that can be a real pain in the butt.  To be in reaction to the fact that others are not at peace with it is also a want that is contradictory, etc. etc. 

It used to be important to me to point out how all those other folks "were wrong" and I was...etc. But...it's not as important as it used to be, partly because I realize that my reaction to the above is a pointer to my own inauthenticity.  And I can be pretty inauthentic and hypocritical. 

Don't get me wrong. It's important to attempt to see things and do things as they are.   But as they are, the illusions of others are important only to the extent that transcending all beings dukkha should be done expediently. 

Let them have their movie theaters and coffee houses.  I want to help us here.  I want to help me as well as you.  If that here is in a coffee house, and it's in an emergent whatever, there it is.  I won't be oppressing people there because of their beliefs or not, and won't countenance others' oppression likewise. I will help you if I can, or at least I intend to.

So today that means some odd yard work. It's the day before New Years' Day. Stuff has to be removed.

Changing the world...

I have recently been involved in trying to do something new in my work life.  This new thing is kind of evolving with a bunch of people.

There's obstacles.  The obstacles are being maneuvered in a 功夫 kind of way - "being like water."  Obstacles are a form of dukkha.  There's one particular obstacle that has been bothering me...but I think I figured a way around that obstacle - and it requires a profundity in what we are doing.

I think I may be on to something - the degree to which one can transcend the obstacles in life is the degree to which, in being like water, we make a profound radical change (not necessarily an arduous one.)

Thanks everyone for your continued support on this blog!

What's in your mind?

In doing my day-to-day practice, I've been noticing that indeed my mind doesn't do anything I know about except for the "5 Aggregates."

This is fascinating to me.  But even  more so, it is the fact that my mind does this and "mediates things" in such a way that a heck of a lot of wants tend to come up. It seems that so much  of my day-to-day awareness is driven by the "Oh, no I'm going to die under a bridge" kind of feeling arising from me not liking that I may not "get" what "I" want.

But it's all empty, void of substance anyway.  Everything "I" want is impermanent, imagined, a thought construct.

Isn't that strange? And yet, I'd bed most people are exactly the same way much of the time.

Is there any wonder then that this wanting, wanting, wanting, leads to suffering, suffering, suffering, and why one might want to transcend it?

What do you value? What do you keep? What do you get rid of? How?

As I stated below, I recently returned from NY;  I was with most of my large family going over details of the "personalty" from my mother's estate.

My parents were hoarders.

They had a lot of stuff,  much of it with very little value at all, although some of it had great value.  Don't ask though about the really valuable stuff - diamond rings and such.  That's the subject for another koan. 

There are some items that appear to be made of jade.  The price of jade has gone up in value astronomically, as China's fortunes have gone on the upturn in recent decades.

There's also silver coin, and maybe-not-silver-but-definitely-stuff not made anymore. Like the above coin that (forgive the poor photography) in real life sports 2 swastikas.

There's other things, too, some of which might have gone up in value a great deal, some of which was wisely sought after by my parents, and some of which even now seems hideous to me. 

My parents were the sort of people who had certain ideas about "fashion" and "style."  That is, they wore whatever they wanted to however they wanted to (or was available? on sale?) and they simply did not care how it looked.  Oftentimes it seemed the idea was calculated to shock, if you can imagine how extremely conservative 2nd generation East European late middle age/elderly folks might shock one.

My wife tells me some of this stuff has gone up in value - there is apparently a strong market in China for bolos, inter alia. 

All of this brings up a few interesting koans, i.e., the title of this post.  Does one keep a Nazi era coin? Does one sell it? Throw it out? What about my father's idiosyncratic clothing/accessory tastes? 

One item was a no-brainer: My parents had saved - like many Americans do - about $45.00 in pennies in jars.  They went right to Coinstar. The silver was heavy enough, thank you.

But back to the koan. We "inherit" a lot of things from a lot of people.  Some things we can profitably give away to other people. Some things we can use to our benefit and enjoyment and the benefit and enjoyment of others. Some things we can sell, because the economic value of the thing sold is worth more than keeping the thing.

Among the items I received was a 硯 (suzuri, or yàn) that was apparently purchased in China back in the 80s.  It is very close in size to the kind that I had seen a Japanese master use, though this one has a minor flaw.  I am told it may be valuable to sell, but if I used it it would have less value.  But I do wish to continue a practice of 書道.   But I also am quite an amateur.  It's not quite but sort of in the same direction as if you were to give an 11 year old kid a vintage Gibson guitar...of course you don't give an 11 year old kid a vintage Gibson.  Or if you do you make sure he damn well knows how to use it.  Then again my kid has a rather pricey violin.

I'm keeping the 硯, of course, and know enough about 書道 to be able to understand how to take care of it. 

Much of the problems we have both with ourselves and with our families/communities can be attributed, I'd suspect, to a lack of understanding of what should be valued, what should be kept, what should be disposed of, and how things should be disposed. 

The effort thing and resolution in practice...

In reading what Brad Warner wrote here about the Geshe thing (ugh, I can't believe people fell for this nonsense), it reminded me of a side comment that Nathan wrote here:

In the minds of many Buddhist men historically, and even some still today, enlightenment was a man's domain. And any man who wanted it better "man up" in his practice. The obsession with marathon meditation retreats and hardcore, "balls busting" koan studies you see in some convert Zen communities reminds me a lot of this ancient mud. 

 I had lots of other issues with Nathan's post as well; but I've made related points (w.r.t. those other issues) in the past and I'll make related points (w.r.t. those issues) again.   To bring out the point I want to make, though, I want to go to Ven. Warner's post:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, when you’re getting into meditation practice you’re dealing with some serious mojo. This is not to be taken lightly. And if you think you need a more intense or extreme practice to get you into the deeper stuff faster… you most assuredly do not. It’s absolutely crucial to take this stuff slowly. If you try to rush it, bad things will happen. We’re all full of lots of bad stuff. If you think you can push right through into the great enlightenment of Lord Buddha without first dealing with your own accumulated negative shit, you’re dead wrong.

I've seen unbalanced people in those places...they have them in Christian churches too.  It happens.

Ven. Warner has a point. People with issues shouldn't push themselves beyond their limits. It happens, and it will continue to happen, if only because this sort of guidance is guided towards generation of actions from which there are no words - "how much effort" or "what is my resolution to practice" begins - before there is a verbally expressible idea. I'm trying to say that, for at least the reason of how ideation is verbalized,  that someone with a less than titanium composure might commit to more than effort than he is able to commit, because he can't ideate the notion of "too much."  If you don't like that,  there's one of those quotes from William Blake, about how you never know how much is enough until you know how much is too much.

But the other comment, well, I think that comment is not informed by the experience of which I know.

The fact of the matter is, the historical Buddha himself went to extremes in his practice. Eventually he realized a middle-way course of action, but not before hitting the rails.   Typically that's the way practitioners work.  Again, you can't say "how much is right" without addressing areas from which motivation comes.   Note: the point is not to go anywhere near the rails! The point I'm trying to make is without an ongoing commitment, a resolution to effort no fruits of effort are ever realized.  

Yeah, Soto folk: I'm saying even to just sit that requires effort. At the very least the effort required to make the commitment to do so. 

But...how much effort?

Well, I'll get to that, but  first off, but in the spirit of Bill Maher, I'd like to posit a new rule: Soto folks shouldn't opine about koan ( 公案) practice.  Seriously folks, what is your point about writing about it if you don't know what it is, and  if you haven't practiced it. And just because a Soto teacher "told you" about 公案 practice doesn't mean that teacher knows anything about 公案 practice.   Brad Warner's a Soto VIP (how about that instead of 老師?) and even he's written things that were uninformed about 公案 practice.  And I can say this and stand by my point above about just sitting requiring effort because there are places where 公案 practice is 只管打坐. And yes, there are schools - White Plum, the Yasutani-based, but also Rinzai temples, where both 公案 and 只管打坐  practices are cultivated, not to mention those outside of the Japanese tradition, especially the Chinese and Vietnamese traditions, where something else entirely is going on.  I'm talking about Soto purists here, and especially those who'd rather come uncomfortably close in their practice to the notion of buji zen (無事禅.)

Oh, yes, wait, I know, the comment in question was only denigrating the "balls busting" 公案 studies. It may be that there are 老師 and such that promote unrealistic   コブラ会 ("Cobra Kai") types of practices...but a useful teacher will be getting you to have this practice as it arises from you, yourself.

And any useful giver and evaluator of 公案 practice will encourage very strongly effort to be made to get to a resolution of the 公案 - at the very least one must have the resolution to resolve the 公案.

So all of the above means that one's resolution to practice should be cultivated as much as one can without going superego on one's self. (Yes that's a self-referential statement - one shouldn't be bothered if one's going too much in one direction or the other, just resolve to practice. And then follow through.) 

Yes, 3 year silent retreats are hoo-hah. No, it's not sexist or damaging to learn how to make a great effort via resolution.   In fact it's vital for the practice of living one's life.  And don't forget Soto folks: those vows to help other sentient beings are vows.  And they come with a high barrier.  For a reason.

The Way is found in the tiny bits in your everyday life.

In retrospect, it seems sort of obvious that this Michael Roach story would take the turn it did.  A Japanese girlfriend from long ago advised me that her family were "just Buddhists," never mind the crazy Aum Shin Rikyo cult.

The thing is, many practitioners, at a relatively small level of experience, get into thinking that what they're doing is going to have some rather grand results in terms of "universal enlightenment" or the "emerging Buddhism," or some utopian notions of re-making society or what-not.  I too have had such notions from time to time in a time long ago.   It's the kind of thing that makes one fodder for a spiritual huckster.  These notions and wants encourage one to want to glue to a "teacher" one's  notions of what they want their existence (and the existence of everyone they know)  to be. 

But

it

is

not

the 

Way.

A guy with more cred than me once said "Everyday mind is the way."  

You don't need to do anything special to find the path in which to go; it's right the heck in front of you.  You don't need to go into the desert for a year, you just have to get yourself to work in the morning.  Woody Allen said something to the effect of "Eighty percent of success is showing up."  It's generally not a good idea to make one's case with a guy that ran off with his 19 year-old adopted step-daughter to be sure, but this was said before the auteur did that fateful deed.

I'm still planning to get back to writing about the story behind this post here.  But one of the points behind that post is apropos for this post: everyday life is the Way, and doing something in everyday life can help transform the rest of your life, as long as it's not taken to extremes.

Here's a reference about which I'll post sometime in the future:

 There's points here to which  I'm very eager to respond, to say the least, especially the issue of "spirituality" and the martial arts, but, as I've said, I'll save that for another post.

"A scheme is not a vision..."

Well, I'm finally back sort of kind of ...that is at the moment I have an ability to write a blog at home, which was absent for about a week after I got back, much to my extreme frustration.

Yes, yes, yes, the frustration was transcended, as well as my frustration at my frustration.

Some guy once realized enlightenment when he stubbed his toe.

Do you get that one?

It hurt when he stubbed his toe.

I was going to write about many things over the past few days, but now there's no time.  The title though refers to one post I may write about how the Catholic Church sees ex-Catholics - I cannot believe it. (Heh heh.)


Have a relatively pain-free day.

Being Daylight Savings Time

Every year, here in the USA, sometime in late winter or early spring, we set the clocks forward 1 hour...or at least most of us in the USA, do, but that's a level of detail irrelevant for this post.  What I do want to very briefly point out is that 1 hour, every year, year in and year out, is missed for about 1 week or so.  I'm running quite late today; things are notoriously out of place and time.  And this happens every year.  Well, at least almost all the clocks are showing more or less the correct time at the moment.

 Yet, on the flip side of daylight savings time, when the clocks are set back an hour, the "extra" hour doesn't seem to be realized; it seems to be immediately gobbled into experience.

It'd be tragic save for the fact that right now is right now, whatever the clock says.

The Hua-t’ou (話頭） and Zen Meditation

Well even the Zennist can be read with profitability once in a while.  Today, the Zennist points to a paper on the 'net by Stuart Lachs, who unlike the Zennist, or perhaps the author you're reading at the moment, is a pretty reliable source for what it is when it comes to the facticity of Zen, though my intent is to be at least as skillful at disseminating of the true core of Zen as Lachs.  I quote:

The Chinese term Hua-t’ou can be translated as “critical phrase.” Literally it means the “head of speech” or the “point beyond which speech exhausts itself.” In Korean, hua-t’ou are known as hwadu and in Japanese as wato. In this paper I will use the Chinese term hua-t’ou exclusively. A hua-t’ou is a short phrase (sometimes a part of a koan) that can be taken as a subject of meditation and introspection to focus the mind in a particular way, which is conducive to enlightenment...

A hua-t’ou however is a stand alone, always short phrase or a part of a koan that can be taken as a subject of meditation and introspection. Though teachers may give talks about working on a hua-t’ou, there are no standardized collections of huat’ou with poetic, often complex commentary as there are with koans that require explication and some knowledge of ancient Chinese metaphor.
 

Though not widely known in western Zen circles, hua-t’ou meditation is popular in Korean and Chinese Zen. Since the famous Korean monk Chinul (1158-1210)   discovered hua-t’ou meditation late in his life, it has been the favored form of practice for Korean Zen monks to the present day. In China the practice began before the 11th century. Hsu-Yun (1840-1959), the most famous Zen monk in the 19th and 20th centuries, practiced and taught hua-t’ou meditation as his favorite form of meditation
practice.

The hua-t’ou, though popularized a long time ago, is a good method for people today: it does not require a group or regular meetings with a teacher and besides being practiced in formal seated meditation, it can or really should be practiced throughout the day, even while at work. Hence, it allows for a full time Zen practice while living and working in the world.

Lacks goes on to note the difference between koan　(公案) practice, which leads to focus on the 話頭, and shikantaza (只管打坐) practice.

I'm not really certain that 話頭 practice is largely unknown in Western Zen circles - there are a bevy of Rinzai Zen temples here in the West nowadays, as well as Korean Zen temples (not to mention descendents of Hsu Yun and others.)  Too, anyone who reads D. T. Suzuki's works on Zen will come across the 話頭 sooner or later.

But I can't but agree with Lachs' later point: the 話頭 - a way of orienting the mind, putting it in a place where critical thought is held in abeyance,  is ideally suited for being carried throughout the day.  I think it's somewhat of a disservice that is done in focusing on the "sudden enlightenment" aspects of Rinzai Zen.  If the thought of "sudden enlightenment" arises in your head, you've lost the 話頭.  So yeah, I think the Soto folks sometimes mischaracterize Rinzai practice because they really don't understand it.

And sometimes, descendants of teachers trained in Rinzai Zen make this mistake: it is a fact that some teachers in the White Plum lineage have tried to dissuade students from practicing mu (無 ) throughout the day, but yeah, Lachs is right: doing this in the midst of activity is what teachers from Ta Hui down to Hakuin have recommended.

Over on Barbara's site today, there's an exposition of the religious aspects of Buddhist practice,  triggered from a discussion with Petteri and myself.  Me, I've been very lucky to come across the 話頭, and a teacher who "teaches" it, to help me get from point A to point B, no matter how close A is to B.  There are other ways, to be sure, but this way, done with attention, is well suited for my place in life. And yes, it even is done as a way of quieting the critical mind during the rituals of Zen itself.

What do you know?

I went to bed last night after playing the guitar last night, with the thought of "We're all largely empty space," because that's one of those things you learn in physics class that astound you when you start to think about it.  It also tends to be the spark, I think, for lots of folks injecting all kinds of woo - reinforcing memes into their thinking as a result.

I was playing guitar well last night. I haven't really been playing much in the past few years, but oddly enough, hearing of Miyavi, it must have brought back some muscle memories or something connected between the cerebellum and cerebrum. It reminded me of this:

 At the same time, I'm still reminded of how woefully inadequate I am of my 詠春拳 (Wing Chun Ken) skills.

It's easy for us to think we're experts...or not - it's hard overall to assess our level of skill.

Ah, just do it.

Some days are pretty black...

I woke up feeling extremely inadequate...to put it mildly.  I'm too attached to many things, of course: not making enough progress in my outside of work activities, the state of business activities of my present position,  various things not currently in my control that put me in  a place where I don't want to be, etc. 

And of course it's a case of seeing the glass mostly empty when it's largely full, because, dammit, after all, it's not full!  And because I want to be the center of attention, THE Guy Who Can Do Anything. It's totally absurd and unrealistic.

But that doesn't de-legitimize the feelings. Those damned feelings, are of course universal - they are part of the hum of life itself.  All of us are born in tears and nakedness, and that's just when we're getting started out in life. 

And I'm writing this as I'm eating a wonderful breakfast of  barbecued pork, yogurt & fresh blueberries (no doubt harvested by people I could not be able to trade places with in my worst nightmare.)

The Great Way might not be difficult if one does not pick and choose, but that's not to say it's a walk in the park on a sunny summer's morning.  Some days I so want to pick and choose that it's difficult to choose not choosing.

And that too is practice - being satisfied in unsatisfaction.

Daily Life and Truly Engaged Buddhism...

I'm not big on the engaged Buddhism thing. It's not that I am not politically in tune with many of the engaged Buddhists' goals.  But rather, too much of it is cause tourism - and by that I mean it's something people use as an escape from their own position, if the issues in which they're engaged are far removed from their own existence.

It's kind of like the left-wing version of the right wing's fixation on abortion and contraception, and for all I know serves many of the same goals - that is to say, there may exist those that instigate such things for the sole purpose of distracting.  The latter point though is not important at all - that is, whether or not there are people who are intentionally cranking up some kind of Wurlitzer is irrelevant.  If there's crankers, let 'em crank - that's not my problem per se.  My problem is simply keeping in mind the answers to the three questions, more or less, in such a way that things get done that actually benefit beings. 

I'm in the midst of all the things that come with family life at my age in this time, the whole shebang  and its various accretions thereon as it were: the joy, the humor, the teaching all around, the frustration, the problems, the worries, etc.  This is where practice is. Other folks, I'm sure, have other practices suited to where they are in life.  But in no way should we substitute practice where we are, at this point in time, for alienation via distraction.

Why are you a Buddhist?

Tricycle has had/is having some kind of campaign to encourage meditation.  All well and good, I say, but how about a campaign to realize the Way moment to moment in one's life?

Quick quotes for the day...

I came across this; I think it's from Tropic of Capricorn, because I remember reading it before.  Henry Miller's writing might seem very politically incorrect today, but these words are just so what's good about being human:

 Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

Then I came across this; a quote from Jack London, and it's really quite an expression of non-separation, and, uh, why I'm politically left of center.:

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. 

That's it for today.

Traction in the rain...

Last night, as I was heading out the door for my drive to wing chun class, I breathed in the air; the air was just right.  It was also just right the night before, when there was no rain.

You can smell it in this part of the Pacific Northwest: the air is alive. It is darkest January, and the air is alive.

In much of the USA, and certainly in almost all places I can imagine North of me - even in New Mexico, if I recall correctly - wintertime takes on a gray, dark, cold demeanor.  Sometimes it happens here too.  Yeah, now and then we get snow.

But so far this year it is a mild winter. It's dark early, and yeah, there's the rain, but the idea of unrelenting cold for the next 8 to 12 weeks...doesn't happen here.

I have traded off the wonderfully predictable summer heat and humidity of the Northeast for the mild stasis of the wet and dry seasons of the Pacific Northwest.  It's a good tradeoff.

Looking back at blogging, Buddhist style...some 7+ years on

I look at some of the early posts on this blog, and I'm slightly (but not entirely) appalled.  There was a heck of a lot of propaganda back then, and the content of this blog was, I think, more necessarily political then than it is now.  Back then there was still a sort of koan going on in my head, which was basically, "How political does a Buddhist get?"  It's a complementary question to "Why hasn't the revolution come?"

I'm still much more political in my speech and writing than, say, Brad Warner and others who wish to be "centric" but who don't get that revolution both outside and inside isn't always a bad thing,  just as long as nobody gets hurt, and property becomes more equitably distributed, and people that labor aren't ripped off while those that cannot work are cared for by society.

I had read a bit more about these things perhaps than others. 

But in the intervening time many things have happened.  Today the New York Times sort of trumpets Willard "Mitt" Romney's "victory by 8 votes" in the Iowa caucuses, and my first thought was, "Ya think they don't steal elections now in America, righties?"  My second thought was "Why am I reading this?" I mean, Matt Taibbi nailed this thing before it happened.  Our "elections" are pretty much as meaningless as those of regimes which are decried in the American mainstream media. (There was a curious scene in the Iowa caucus results being broadcast on CNN, in which a military Ron Paul supporter started saying something about how Israel can defend itself...until "technical difficulties" "disrupted the audio feed" or something. I'm sure it was a coincidence.)

Nowadays, though I think "revolution" will take care of itself; I think "the personal is the political" is best expressed - as well as it can be with politically controlled media - with a movie like "Ip Man."

The personal is still the political. It's largely a mind thing first and foremost. Anyway, sitting...

Why 書道 is so difficult, and why I do it

It was over 8 years ago that I met Sogen Roshi, who at that point had had some medical issues. He was a pretty accomplished calligrapher in Japan; and he graciously made for me 2 works. To see him work, putting his "spirit" into the works, was simply amazing to me. Years earlier I had gone to Zen Mountain monastery on a beginner's retreat, and there was about an hour or so where calligraphy was practiced. I'd thought I had no capability in this area, but one of the folks there had encouraged me, saying in essence that one's "capability" in this area was a preconceived notion, especially if one hadn't done it before. So, after seeing Sogen Roshi do this, I was quite intrigued. This man could put ink - handmade, mindfully made ink - on paper with a brush and he could leave himself everywhere. 

After returning home I started every now and then to use the 書道 set I'd acquired a couple of years earlier. And it's difficult. Forget the issues of stroke order in 漢字　 - stroke order is vitally important to writing the characters, but it is hardly even the beginning of doing this well. There is also the issue of "seeing" the characters on the paper before they're written, getting each character in proportion to the next. Then there are the variables of the type of brush being used, the type of paper being used, the quantity of ink on the brush, and the viscosity of the ink, what part of the brush is being used, and how much force is used to apply the inky brush to the paper. All of these play a role in how the ink is transferred to the paper, and each encounter of human, brush, and paper is unique. So yeah, it's good mindfulness practice. But beyond that, like 詠春拳, it's something difficult, and it's good to learn something difficult outside of one's own experience.  Oddly enough, though, the selection of subject matter seems to be pretty easy compared to the execution of it all.

I hope in the coming year to do much more of it.  Thankfully every now and then something gets on paper that's better than I thought it would be.  I also keep meeting experience when I do this, and practice continues that way.  Hopefully that's true in my day to day interactions with others as well.

Another day...

I don't have much at all to say today, and practically no time say it, but I do hope, that despite all our innumerable faults, we can get through the day with a minimum of difficulty, and with a bit of mindfulness.