Murmuration

The Buddha

Lama Surya Das discusses what the Buddha is in a brief essay at HuffPost. He cites Karen Armstrong on the Buddha as achetype:

As an archetype, Buddha represents what is actually possible for each of us -- our full flowering. It's helpful to think of the message of this archetype on three different levels. On the external level of form, Buddha is the historical teacher. On the internal level, Buddha is innate and ever-present awareness -- which is typically obscured by discursive and repetitive thoughts. On the innermost or secret level, Buddha is our deepest nature: radiant Being or Nowness-awareness, beyond gender, nationality, religious affiliation, or other local distinctions. This is what the historical Buddha meant when he said, "I am awake": awake to the radiant Buddhaness within himself and every sentient being.

Buddha means the "enlightened one" or Awakened Wise One -

For Buddhists, wisdom is not merely a form of belief or a particular truth or historical attribute but a living, breathing, functioning quality inherent in the mind of each of us, waiting to be explored, exploited and developed and in the pursuit of liberation, healing, and happiness. Anyone can become a Buddha...Anyone can develop oneself through practicing the two Buddhist wings of wisdom and compassion and be transformed by mindfulness and other loving practices, regardless of religious persuasion -- even agnostics and atheists.

Enlightenment means to awaken out of illusion's dream and the snares of conceptual thought, and into a directly lived moment-by-moment experience. 

And how do we do this? "Practice makes perfect" -

Who then is Buddha for us here and now? He/she/it is the one who practices resting in, as, and eventually realizes that all is luminous awareness and nothing else. This can be called meditation practice, and includes the cultivation of mindfulness, a lucid moment-to-moment vigilant state of intentional attention. What is mindfulness, really? It is simply an alert presence of mind, the opposite of and antidote to mindlessness. Mindfulness is the key ingredient in Buddha's recipe for wisdom's development and conscious evolution.

With properly practiced mindfulness, we can practice such virtues as non-attachment, compassion, personal integrity, patience, loving-kindness, respect for others, and living according to our deepest principles. By such a practice we are called not to just be Buddhists, but to be Buddhas!

Mindfulness

Larry Yang on Huffpost has a great essay on the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, "Now More Than Ever We Need Mindfulness." He speaks of the need for this Buddhist practice now, especially as the divisive presidential campaign revs up and intensifies over the coming year. Even in the midst of such terrible and angry times it seems we can find a place of serenity, one that helps, not just ourselves, but the society and world at large:

We need the Freedom that Mindfulness invites for us -- the freedom that we do not have to follow the unconscious patterns of acute reactivity. We need to remember that it is possible to notice deeply what is happening, understand it with some wisdom, treat it with some of the compassion inherent in our humanity, and move into responses and actions that are of benefit -- that is, to move toward that which lessens suffering and creates happiness, not just for us as individuals, but us as a collective world.

Our Mindfulness practice, whether it is on the cushion paying attention to the emotions and thoughts that weave between the breath and bodily sensations, or whether it is in the world paying attention to our actions and behaviors which emerge from our emotions and thoughts, is always a reminder that in order to change any unhealthy or harmful patterns -- in order to transform any suffering -- we have to first become aware of the patterns themselves. We cannot change anything that we are not aware of. This is also true of our collective transformation into a culture that meets the needs of greater numbers of people and beings: We first have to become deeply aware of the conditions that we are living within, and then that will guide us into transforming the world into a better place to live.

I recommend the entire essay, as it goes into both the psychological and social implications of this practice, and ways to put it into effect.

Poem of the Day

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

 

- Emily Dickenson

Courage

 Peter Hitchens on his brother, Christopher:

Here’s a thing I will say now without hesitation, unqualified and important. The one word that comes to mind when I think of my brother is ‘courage’. By this I don’t mean the lack of fear which some people have, which enables them to do very dangerous or frightening things because they have no idea what it is to be afraid. I mean a courage which overcomes real fear, while actually experiencing it ...

[T]he word ‘courage’ is often misused today. People sometimes tell me that I have been ‘courageous’ to say something moderately controversial in a public place. Not a bit of it. This is not courage. Courage is deliberately taking a known risk, sometimes physical, sometimes to your livelihood,  because you think it is too important not to. My brother possessed this virtue to the very end, and if I often disagreed with the purposes for which he used it, I never doubted the quality or ceased to admire it. I’ve mentioned here before C.S.Lewis’s statement that courage is the supreme virtue, making all the others possible.

It should be praised and celebrated, and is the thing I‘d most wish to remember.

Christoper Hitchens: R.I.P.

Christopher Hitchens, "Hitch" to us admirers, died today at 62. I have to say, right out, that he was one of my heroes - and one of my few living heroes. There will be many obituaries and postmortems, so I won't go into everything one can say about him (who could?), restricting myself to how he affected me.

What I most admired about him - how he inspired me - was his unrelenting dedication to truth, and the witty, engaging, and graceful way he went about it. He was fearless, and didn't shy from confronting the vicious stupidity, mediocrity, cruelty, and hypocrisy which mark so many in power and who would wield power over others. But he also had something substantial to offer in the place of the cowardly cant which passes for wisdom in our society: the rigorous search for truth, no matter where it takes one; a zest for life; the humanist love for a truly liberal society and the blessings it bestows on us all; the courage to be himself whatever the conventional wisdom may demand; the intellectual and moral knowledge that, as Socrates put it, the "unexamined life is not worth living." He formulated one of the ideas which remain, for me, a guiding light: "That which is asserted without evidence may also be dismissed without evidence." He will remain, for me, a model of living in the world to which I aspire.

Zen and the Art of Landscape

Music and Life - Alan Watts

Christless Christmas

At Slate.com, Torie Bosch has a fun and insightful essay explaining a Christmas joy without the accoutrements of religion: "No Reason for the Season: the joy of celebrating a godless Christmas." This notion, so boldly stated, has been slightly liberating. Indeed, why can't I just enjoy the fun parts of the season without the need for Christian "meaning" ruining everything. Sure, for Christians, this is the primary "reason for the season," but the rest of us can also enjoy it, guilt-free - no matter what the screaming, indignant, religionist pundits think! -

There was no one moment that crystallized my thinking or relieved me of my guilt. Rather, it was a series of observations: Most of the classic songs and movies that celebrate Christmas don't even mention God or Jesus. Santa doesn't check church attendance to decide whether he's going to give a child a present—he checks whether she's been naughty or nice. He's the perfect secular judge of moral fiber. To say that the secularists injure the Christmas spirit is much like the claim that two men getting hitched will besmirch the sanctity of marriage. Why should the way I mark Christmas bother anyone? Christians appalled by my secular holiday will no doubt argue that I am depriving myself of the greater joy that comes with accepting Jesus into your heart. But I'm not attempting to take away anyone's right to go to church or to display a Nativity scene. All I need to celebrate Christmas is a tree, stockings, baked goods, some people I love, and some gifts to give (and, yes, receive).

And, of course, there's the idea that so-called "pagan" festivals preceded the modern Christmastide, and that symbols we now associate with it (eg, the Christmas tree, yule log) also had other origins. So, I say enjoy the holiday season any way you want (I recently reread Dickens' "A Christmas Carol), and practice tolerance of the ways others celebrate. It's a time for fun and reflection...and presents!

Mind At Peace

When the mind is at peace,

the world too is at peace.

Nothing real, nothing absent.

Not holding on to reality,

not getting stuck in the void,

you are neither holy or wise, just

an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

P'ang Yün (龐蘊 Hõ Un) (The Enlightened Heart 34)

 

Quote of the Day

"As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind. " - Marcus Tullius Cicero

The Mystery

Atheism, says Adam Frank, is not incompatible with the sense of life's mystery, of  the magic I've spoken of here. Speaking at a public debate with another scientist, he encounters the other man's refusal to see any hint of mystery in life:


  I had made it pretty clear that, being an atheist, I was not arguing for a "God" of the gaps. Neither was I arguing that limits to knowledge (if they exist) imply we should be worshiping before some choice of deity. Instead I was simply pointing to that fundamental weirdness, that "stranger-in-a-strange land" quality of being human. I was pointing to that mystery because I think its best part of the whole trip.
 We just find ourselves here. With our individual birth we just "wake-up" and discover ourselves in the midst of an extraordinary world of beauty and sorrow. All around us we see exquisite and exquisitely subtle orders played out effortlessly. From the lazy descent of fall leaves to the slow unfolding of cloudscapes in empty blue skies, it is all just here and we are just here to see it.
  Day after day we wake again to find the world still here, waiting for us as we play out our own small dramas with their small triumphs and terrible heartbreaks. And then, remarkably, astonishingly, just here just ends.

This is just remarkable. While reading it, I experienced something that happens so seldom: the recognition of a fellow thinker, a person who experiences life in much the same way myself. I have often spoken of the "Mystery" as that Ultimate Reality I sense and at times experience. Frank discusses this as entirely compatible with the project of art and science, and is something we can experience regardless of our religious affiliation. It is the essence of Awakening.

 For me that is the mystery. No amount of explanation, be it a "Theory of Everything" or a religious theology, will reduce the power of its experience. The primitive quality of feeling, the presence of life and its luminosity, is the mystery and I am damn thankful for it.
 It is the essential and unalterable question mark saturating the verb "to be" that makes science worth pursuing and gives art its potency. It sets our loves and loss into a context that has no context and somehow makes it all bearable.

Quote of the Day

Zen and the Art of Landscape

The magic of Chinese sumi-e landscape painting...

I've put pictures of Zen landscapes here, but little in the way of the artist's rendition of landscape. Here's one in motion, creating an evocative scene with a few sure brushstrokes in ink. Magic!

Gratitude

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.
John Milton

My Work

Just a couple of my paintings...

The Universe

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." - Stanley Kubrick

Religion, a Debate

Slate has a brief article describing a formal debate in New York City between atheists and believers about whether religion does more good than harm in the world.  I find this an interesting conversation because it sidesteps the question of whether the religions are true or not, and concentrates on the effect religious belief actually has in the world:

   Chapman and Grayling argued that anything good religion does—encouraging ethical behavior, providing comfort and community, promoting charity—nonreligious groups do, too. But along with the good stuff, religion also consigns women to a second-class status, foments division and conflict, oppresses gay people, encourages credulity, and stunts scientific progress. Of course, not all religious people share the same insular perspectives, but most extremists do, Grayling argued. “The extremists are the most honest of the people who have a religious view because they commit themselves to what their tradition tells them, and they stay closest to the text,” he said, explaining that moderate believers often “cherry-pick” the best parts of their religion, ignoring the rest. “Now, if that’s real religion, that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off without it.”

    Wolpe and D’Souza maintained that religion does a vast amount of unrecognized good in the world—unrecognized because media outlets won’t run an article with the headline “Religious Man Feeds Hungry Man.” Religious wrongdoings, on the other hand, are exaggerated and overhyped in the news. Wolpe rattled off study after study showing that religious people are more likely to volunteer and participate in civic life, and less likely to do drugs or get divorced. Apparently, believers are even healthier and live longer. Oh, and if you think religious fundamentalists are evil, they’re nothing compared to the atheists. “The crimes of religion, even of Bin Laden, are infinitesimal compared to the nightmare of atheist regimes,” said D’Souza, naming Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Chernenko, Ceaușescu, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot as a few examples. “[They] have killed far more people, in far shorter of a time, and are still doing it right now.”  The world without religion, the men said, would be a bleak and impoverished place.

It seems to me that both sides are, at least, partially right. This is a complex question and impossible to deal with in depth here. But I think that religion is inherent in what it means to be human, that we can't really escape some manifestation of it, and that it can be a force for good, as least in individual lives. However, organized religion on the large scale lends itself to the establishment and enforcement of power - religious, governmental, social, etc. - and has much to answer for. I think one can be "spiritual" without being religious - which means we can take what we want from religion and leave the rest. It's when it becomes an organized entity that religion has the most potential for evil.

If Awakening is the goal, we must use any tools available. But we must also avoid the very tools that kept us asleep in the nightmare - and it seems to me that religion is too often one, if not the main, tool which works to keep us asleep.

Zen and the Art of Landscape

I found a great site put up by Bowduin College about the Zen gardens of Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto was not attacked during WWII, and is known for its original architecture, particularly the Buddhist temples and monasteries.

   The web site is dedicated to the gardens of Japan, and primarily to the historic gardens of Kyoto and its environs, including Nara...Although many of these gardens are located within Zen Buddhist monasteries, this site is not intended to explore the influence of Zen thought on Japanese garden design, an influence that is often a matter of conjecture rather than historical evidence. Instead, the site is designed simply to provide the visitor with an opportunity to visit each garden, to move through or around it, to experience it through the medium of high-quality color images, and to learn something of its history.

Magic

Altucher has an intriguing post on Magic - short but intensely sweet. He speaks of himself as a kid, desiring, not to be a CEO or a lawyer or a doctor or whatever mundane thing takes over our lives, but to be "be a hobbit. Or a prince of the world of Chaos. Or a minor demi-god on Mt. Olympus. Everywhere I looked I saw opportunities for magic." This child's heart, he maintains, can be regained and maintained in the face of all the debased "adult" concerns. Money quote:


   We forget quickly the sense of magic. The power of daydreams. But the truth is: the world that seems so real when we are adults still contains just as many mysteries, if not more, as when we were kids.

   The key to restoring that magic: just for this second, forget the stresses caused by yesterday. The worries brought about by tomorrow. Right now, this second, picture any scenario you want and imagine it already exists. It takes practice to find it, and the demons from the past and the future will fight you. But ignore them for just this second. Practice.

This is fantastic (in every sense of that word). Magic, in this sense, is not just the trick of the magician or the falseness of magical thinking. Rather, it denotes the enchantment with which the child views the world - a freshness of being and perceiving that cuts through the fear and anxiety and depression and boredom which haunt the lives of so many adults. Altucher's remedy returns us to the Now - freed from the haunting past and fearful future - and gives us the ultimate joy of the imagination which connects us to the Magic which lives in the heart of all sentient beings. As Mencius put it, "The great man is he who does not lose his child's-heart." 

The child lives on in us. As Jesus put it, "anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it." The kingdom of God - the realm of magic - is only accessible to those who live in their child's heart. Thus, we awaken to the Reality which transcends the real and transforms our lives.

Bach Visualized

Prelude from Cello Suites

The Kiss

A fascinating article on kissing:

A passionate kiss causes our blood vessels to dilate as the brain receives more oxygen than normal. Our cheeks flush, our pulse quickens, and breathing becomes irregular and deepens. Our pupils dilate, which may be the reason so many of us close our eyes. We also activate five of our twelve cranial nerves that spread out intricately to different parts of the face. The nerve pathways guide the way we interpret the world by helping us see, smell, hear, taste, and touch.

On top of that, our lips are associated with a disproportionately large part of the brain. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey even reported that some women could reach orgasm from prolonged deep kissing without genital contact. While this sounds unusual, it likely has to do with the way our lips are packed with sensitive nerve endings so that even the slightest brush sends a cascade of information to our brains that often feels very good. Although we often don’t think of them in this way, our lips are the body’s most exposed erogenous zone.

The kiss is a universal language that transcends time and boundaries. 

The whole article is well worth the read.

Zen and the Poetry of Landscape

 

“To what shall

I liken the world?

Moonlight, reflected

In dewdrops,

Shaken from a crane’s bill.”  

Dogen

Fear and Buddhism

A great article by Rev. Zesho Susan O'Connell about fear, its effects and causes, and the Buddhist answer has given me much insight. She reminds us that the Buddha saw fear as at the base of all sentient beings inner suffering, and is fed by our resisting impermanence:

So how does this align with the Buddhist teaching of offering fearlessness to others? What exactly is fear? What is fearlessness? According to the Abhidharma-Kosa, fear is an unwholesome state of infatuation. Another definition is: thinking vividly about what we don't want to happen in the future or dwelling on an unhappy past event. Fear is a mental attempt to control a negative outcome. And I would add that, to me, "worry" is the shark fin of fear. 

It seems to me that all beings - especially myself - suffer from this delusional way of thinking: it is almost part of the definition of "sentient being." However, as the Buddha taught, there is a way of dealing with suffering - in this case, caused by fear.

In order to overcome our delusions around fear we need to practice both calming and insight: samatha and vipassana.
Samatha is practiced in the Zen tradition as "radical acceptance"...Radical acceptance is supported by vipassana: the insight into and confidence in adaptability.
 ...

Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says that "worry is a misuse of he imagination." In his essay on fearlessness he proposes the several ways to constructively use this very same imagination in insightful and adaptive ways: accept the facts with realism; know that we can always do better, that we can limit the damage, find an alternative, and rebuild what has been destroyed; take the current situation as the starting point; know how to rapidly identify the positive in adversity; be free of regret. All of this can be easily discerned against the background of a serene mind.

"A Lamp in the Darkness"

I found a short excerpt from Jack Kornfield's book at the Huffpost which I really like. He speaks of awakening to the wonder and love of the everyday, and of going through the experiences of difficulty and pain and coming out the other side to the awareness of which the Buddha spoke:


"The world offers perennial renewal, in the grass that pushes itself up between the cracks in the sidewalk, in the end of every torrential rainstorm and in every newly planted window box, in every unexpected revolution, with each new morning’s light. This unstoppable spirit of renewal is in you. Trust it. Learn that it flows through you and all of life. The ultimate gift of our suffering is to teach us how to properly grieve, heal, and learn compassion. But finally we come to the realization that in any moment we can step out of the body of fear and feel the great winds that carry us, to awaken to the eternal present. It is within our power to experience the liberation of the heart offered to all by the Buddha in these words:"

Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate.

Live in joy,
In health,
Even among the afflicted.

Live in joy,
In peace,
Even among the troubled.

Look within.
Be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
Know the sweet joy of living in the Way.

   This sounds like a book I'd like to check out. Mindfulness is a took which helps us awaken from the nightmare which is both our personal history and that of the world, and he seems to speak of that here. And the words of the Buddha: "Look within." That is the place where stillness and freedom can be found. As they say in the Program: happiness is an inside job.

Tao Te Ching (The Way)

The Way that can be told
is not the eternal Way
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.

Yet mystery and manifestations
arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.

Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.


- Lao Tzu

Religion and Sexuality

Shorter University has established an official policy banning gay employees:

Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school in Rome, Ga., is forcing its 200 employees to sign a statement declaring that they reject homosexuality. Anyone who doesn't sign the pledge risks losing their jobs.

They also demand their employees several other behaviors they deem "against biblical teachings." Of course, they are a private school and can do as they please. But this illustrates the problem I examined in my post below: modern fundamentalist religion in a panic to keep modernity at bay with a selective interpretation of their holy book and religion. Mind-control, persecution, threats, the abandonment of reason, cruelty - all in the name of preserving something that cannot be preserved. And, of course, gays get it in the neck as usual with the christianist agenda. Of course, why would any self-respecting gay
person want to have anything to do with such pernicious nonsense anyway?

Shorter President Don Dowless told WSBTV that the goal wasn’t to offend people, and that lots of Christian schools have similar pledges. "These are biblical positions," he said.

Interesting how selective the reading of the Bible can be. Here, biblical positions mean exclusion and persecution. Yet, it can also be read, selectively, to mean inclusion and the defense of the persecuted. Why bother with it at all? The beneficial values can be had without all the ignorant crap, after all. 

21st Century Religion

   The Philosopher's Beard blog has a fascinating essay on present-day religion and its discontents. The great thing about this kind of discussion is that it clarifies for me my feelings and views on religion in the west - here, the Judeo-Christian view:

Once upon a time religion was in the world and made the world. Religion made the messy chaotic world legible to human understanding and amenable to human purposes. It fixed things in place, like the stars in the sky and the distinction between men and women. It ordered the flux into the cycle of life: the turning of the sun, seasons, and harvests; birth and death. It explained and justified the social order: why one man is born to wealth and power and another to be a serf. It told us with all the force of a mighty and all-encompassing metaphysics what our lives really meant, and how we should act, think and feel. But no more. Religion has been brought low by its old enemies, philosophy and politics. Religion persists and is even popular. But it is now in the mind, a matter of personal belief projected outwards. In short, religion is now secular.

    I focus here on the trajectory of the Abrahamic style of theological religion (other forms of religiousish behaviour require their own accounts). This kind of religion rests on a metaphysical unification of the divine, the social-order, and nature. It gives us an enchanted world and a guarantee that we know our true place in it. The enemies of theological religion have always been philosophy and politics because both present inherently secular ways of grappling with the nature of the world that bypass religion. Their rise has shattered both enchantment and Truth. Religion still creeps about the place, but in a thoroughly subordinate role.
Indeed, this explains what has happened to religion in the west, and the current frenzied attempts to recall the unified view the past (read, Medieval Europe) offered. Still, as he points out, this attempt is doomed: modern philosophy and science has replaced this all-encompassing role with a more coherent and accurate view of how the world works. In this secular age, belief has been fragmented and individualized - even the fundamentalists are affected (thus their rigidity).

But what we have gained from the loss of unified view where belief was felt as well as known, is, in my view, the possibility of a grander and deeper (and more accurate) experience of reality. It has opened us up to many other possibilities for our worldviews and spiritual experience. I can, for instance, investigate Buddhism without fear of official punishment for heresy or civil prosecution (a "religion" which eschews rigidity and forced unity and actively seeks out and accommodates "chaos"). I can also express my sexuality without the fear of religious-inspired persecution (oppression, imprisonment, torture, the stake). I rejoice in the downfall of the Judeo-Christian hegemony and its reduction to creeping about the place in a subordinate role! Who needs dictatorship and mind-control? We are now free to investigate reality without the blinkers and bridle of religion.

Zen and the Art of Landscape

Zen and the Art of Landscape

The Non-Way

Well versed in the Buddha way,
I go the non-Way
Without abandoning 
My ordinary person's affairs.


The conditioned
and name-and-form.
Are all flowers in the sky.

Nameless and formless,
I leave birth-and-death.

Layman P'ang (740-808)

"Aritotle" by Billy Collins

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning...

 

 

Read the rest here.  It's really fine.

Let There Be Light!

Beautiful Magnum photos of illumination at Slate.  (Above, followers of the Dalai Lama await his visit in Taiwan.)

Reclining Buddha

 

The 16-foot image of the reclining Buddha was sculpted by Shinnyo-en's founder, Shinjo Ito, in 1957 and was first inspirited that year marking the beginning of Shinnyo-en as a spiritual community based on the last teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, as its central text. A second inspiriting ceremony was conducted in 1968 following additions and renovations to the head temple complex in Tachikawa, in western Tokyo prefecture. The most recent renovations and expansions of Oyasono were begun in February 2008. 

See a slideshow at the Huffpost site. Fascinating and beautiful! (I particularly like the smile on the Buddha.)

Serenity

If you wish to see the truth
Then hold no opinion for or against.
The struggle of what one likes
And what one dislikes
Is the disease of the mind. - Sosan

Quote of the Day

"There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence. "
Meister Eckhart

The Water

Spiritual Atheists and Thinking Believers

Over at Salon, physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, is participating in an interesting discussion about religion and science. His latest is worth a look:

...we should continue to oppose those practices of religion that do damage, we should continue to oppose irrational thinking on issues that require rational thinking and evidence. But, at the same time, I would argue that we should allow our existence to encompass some things that we cannot explain by rational argument and proof. We live in a highly polarized society. We need to try to understand each other in respectful ways. To that end, I believe that we should make room for both spiritual atheists and thinking believers.

I would agree. Even though I oppose the irrational and harmful aspects of organized religion (and they are legion!), I also think I can benefit from the teachings and experiences of thoughtful and thinking believers, especially when I can define spiritual in as wide and expansive a manner as possible. In fact, I think this division between believer and atheist is harmful and unnecessary. To me, the spiritual and the material are simply different ways of looking at the same thing, and, in the final analysis, are merely artificial terms which try (inadequately) to describe the same thing.

Mindfulness

David Nichtern has an interesting piece at Huffpost about mindfulness as a practice which recommends being present to the here and now, even when it has its unpleasant aspects. Thus, the mind attains and maintains a sharp edge instead of sliding into a dreamlike state where we cease to be aware.

...there is a regular and recurring invitation to bring our attention back to the present moment and relate to what is right in front of us. Practicing mindfulness is simply recognizing this invitation to be present, and being willing to accept the invitation when it comes.
     In the Buddhist tradition, one recommendation for practicing mindfulness is to lean into its sharp edge -- so that we're not seduced into going back to sleep, back into our daydream. It's like the movie "The Matrix" -- the red pill or the blue pill -- one will wake us up and the other will let us continue in the dream world. Do we want to go back into that daydream, or do we want to wake up? When we become aware it doesn't necessarily mean we're waking up into a paradise. 

Awakening is thus a process, a daily practice, that we consciously engage in. It takes effort, and it has its unpleasant aspects, but is definitely worthwhile. 

SHISENDO AUTUMN LEAVES

	Shisendo is a delughtful little temple in the northern part of the Higashi-yama mountains. It was built in 1641 by the poet Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672) as a moutain retreat for hermits. It now belongs to the Soto sect of Zen Buddhism. The temple is famous for its Japanese azalea ("tsutsuji") garden and its tranquility

Cartoon of the Day

National Coming Out Day

Keep Calm...

"Keep Calm And Carry On" was one of three similar posters produced in 1939, but the first two were so unpopular that Keep Calm never made it into circulation. Maria Bustillos tells the story of its recent rise to fame: in 2000, Stuart Manley, the owner of Barter Books in Northumberland, found a folded poster at the bottom of a box of books he had purchased at auction. (Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

Zen and the Art of Landscape

Loneliness vs. Solitude

Paul Tillich wrote:

 Loneliness expresses the pain of being alone and solitude expresses the glory of being alone.

Being in solitude, going apart from the crowd and into oneself, is the only means to accessing that inner source where the authentic self can be found - awakening. What Benes, in the post on cell phone use I cite below, describes is the opposite: fleeing that inner journey. Of course, this can be a fearful and strangely wondrous voyage, full of monsters and joys, but it the only voyage. Here is where creativity can be found and cultivated, and where the authentic self, the true inner awakened self, connects to that higher power which can only be inaccurately described and never caught in a web of words - "Buddha Mind," the "Great Void," "God" etc. Cell phones and all modern technology are some a few of the means by which we avoid this journey and hide in the outward "history" of the ego. Meditation, prayer, study, creativity - all of which occur in solitude, are tools we use facilitate that journey. If we avoid them, we are soon drowned by waves of anxiety and alienation in our loneliness. I resolve to continue that journey inward, and ignore the shoals of fear and ignorance!

Cell Phone Angst

Louis Rene Beres at OUPblog has a fascinating meditation on the association between use of cell phones and the anxiety and alienation in modern American culture. I can see myself a bit here, and definitely some people I know. As he points out, the cell phone is just an electronic instrument, but certainly can magnify what's going on in the people who use it. Money quote:

Perhaps half of the American adult population is literally addicted to cell phones. For them, a cell, now also offering access to an expanding host of related social networks, offers much more than suitable business contact, personal safety, or even a merely prudent ability to “stay in touch.” For these anxious legions, conversing or messaging on a cell phone grants easily accessible personal therapy. It permits both the caller and the called to feel more important, more valuable, less anonymous, and (above all else) less alone. With “rugged individualism” now reduced to a convenient national myth, cellular communication in its many forms promises to provide almost everyone who is “linked in” a direct line to stature, inclusion and happiness.

And...

Although never widely recognized, the inner fear of loneliness expressed by cell phone addiction gives rise to another huge problem. Nothing important, in science or industry or art or music or literature or medicine or philosophy, can ever take place without some loneliness. To be able to exist apart from the mass – to be tolerably separated from what Freud called the “primal horde,” or what Nietzsche termed the “herd,” or Kierkegaard the “crowd” – is actually indispensable to exceptional intellectual development, and determinative creative evolution.

I recommend the entire article...

The Art of Steve Walker

Cartoon of the Day

For the life of me, I don't see how any decent person can vote Republican anymore.

Zen and the Art of Landscape

Not much to say about this. Take a look here for a brief introduction of Zen gardening in the person of Zen priest Shunmyo Masuno. I'd like to make this a continuing project of this blog, occasionally posting pictures of beautiful landscapes infused, consciously or not, with the Zen Buddhist sensibility.

Letting Go of the Past

A hard, but necessary, thing to do for awakening to occur. A story:

     Two Zen monks, Tanzan Ekido, who were walking along a country road that had become extremely muddy after heavy rains. Near a village, they came upon a young woman who was trying to cross the road, but the mud was so deep it would have ruined the silk kimono she was wearing. Tanzan at once picked her up and carried her to the other side.
     The monks walked on in silence. Five hours later, as they were approaching the lodging temple, Ekido couldn't restrain himself any longer. "Why did you carry that girl across the road?" he asked. "We monks are not supposed to do things like that."
     "I put the girl down hours ago," Tanzan replied." Are you still carrying her?"

This is akin to Buddha's comment, "Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned." Why carry the burden of anger, judgement, resentment, fear, etc. around like the woman Ekido carried around in his mind long after Tanzan had put her down? I resolve to ferret out these burdens, these hot coals, and let them drop.

Hot Man of the Day

Palin

So the wicked witch of the north finally gave in to reality and declared her non-candidacy of prez. I think we really dodged a bullet here. What could have been worse than months of her narcissistic, extremist, whiny, bullshit? I can't recall anyone who was less qualified to be president (well, maybe Pat Robertson). Good riddance!

Recruitment?

A collection of suggestive recruitment posters from the past. Sure, they weren't consciously gay, but they certainly contain a real undertone that I'm sure was picked up by gays at the time. I'm reminded of E.M. Forster's discussion of this topic, where gays have a secret understanding of the world - both the surface and the hidden, gay sensibility.  Check it out.

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers

So it's a rainy day and I'm on a classic music kick. Here's a mash-up I came across on YouTube. Enjoy!

Rainy Day

So it's raining today? I love it! Look what stormy weather inspired:

Hot Man of the Day

Real Conservatism

David Cameron, Tory (Conservative) Prime Minister of Britain, just gave a speech to his party conference which, to put it frankly, astounds me. Why? -

"I once stood before a Conservative conference and said it shouldn't matter whether commitment was between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman, or a man and another man. You applauded me for that. Five years on, we're consulting on legalising gay marriage. And to anyone who has reservations, I say: Yes, it's about equality, but it's also about something else: commitment. Conservatives believe in the ties that bind us; that society is stronger when we make vows to each other and support each other. So I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative."

So different from the wingnut, fundamentalist, extremism that masquerades as conservatism in this country. Sometimes I really wish I lived in Europe, that my Swedish grandmother had stayed put. 

Cartoon of the Day

Pain and suffering, a graphic representation indeed. I found this attached to a discussion of pain at the Wisdom Quarterly website. Interesting in its relations to Dukka, or the First Noble Truth.

"Occupy Wall Street" Group Meditation

At Huffpost Wendi L. Adamek has an interesting article on the flashmob group meditation at the Wall Street protest. She writes,

Yet in these struggling bodies that fall so short of our imaginings, we can sit down and connect with what can't be grasped by imagination. Meditation brings together -- mind and body, simplicity and complexity, self and other. The flashmob meditators mobilized as a group, and words can be said about what they were doing. But meditation also resists enclosure into a single idea. Meditators sit down and cease feeding the cycles of fear, anger and desire. Instead, they sit quietly with fear, anger and desire. They sit with all beings, each other, the Wall Street bankers, the protester, and the moment.

Hot Man of the Day

Cartoon of the Day