Thomas Merton

Just watched a documentary on Netflix about Thomas Merton.  (In the USA, not sure if Netflix is around the world.)  He seems like a very interesting spiritual person, who didn't necessarily conform, and followed his conscience.  He was open to eastern insights and was impressed by any tradition's spiritual depth.  

I glossed his Wikipedia entry.  He had a tragic death. Wikipedia (today): "On December 10, 1968, Merton had gone to attend an interfaith conference between Catholic and non-Christian monks in suburban Bangkok, Thailand. While stepping out of his bath, he reached out to adjust an electric fan and apparently touched an exposed wire and was accidentally electrocuted. He died 27 years to the day after his entrance into theAbbey of Gethsemani in 1941. His body was flown back to the United States and he is buried at Gethsemani Abbey."

(Also interestingly he fathered a child, who has not been identified, before his conversion.)

One of my therapists, who died while I was in treatment with him, said the beginning of The Seven Storey Mountain is difficult, but I got a used copy recently, so I'm going to give it a try. I read 50 pages into it and it's pretty interesting.  He's a good writer, I can see why this was a surprise best-seller.  He lived in Flushing for a while, where I live.  His father was a painter, who took him all over the world.

I haven't been able to find any free audio or videos of him, but the Netflix movie has some good footage of him, and other people.  It's not too long.  Britannica has an entry on him.  They only let you read the first page.

Dualism

"Any kind of life that is making no effort to evolve is escapism." (Sangharakshita)

I was visiting a friend who lives on the beach, and we listened to Margaritaville Radio.  I had a little resistance to it, but then I read the Jimmy Buffett wikipedia article.  They describe his music as "island escapism".  Jimmy Buffett has best sellers on the fiction and non-fiction best selling list, which only 7 other authors have done before, the likes of Hemingway and Steinbeck.  A famous musician, author, business man and philanthropist, he's seems like he's not a bad guy.  I asked myself why I would have a kind of antipathy towards his "island escapism" style of music.  

What's wrong with escapism?  It's not like you go to his concert and somehow escape you life.  Any kind of escapism is only temporary.  Like everything there are extremes and of course the middle way is perhaps the best.  The Buddha had the middle way really refer to between asceticism and hedonism.

My understanding of the talk about dualism is that it's bianary thinking and there are grays in life.  That we do better with Keat's negative capability.

In the spiritual life there are extremes of confrontationalism and consolation.  I used to think confrontationalism is the only way, but then when I reflected, I thought consolation is OK, we don't have to be ascetics.  The Buddha talks about tightening the lute strings not too tight and not too loose, when he comes across an extreme ascetic.

In the above quote by Sangharakshita, he doesn't say only give effort to evolving or no effort to evolve.  He just says effort.

There is the idea that no effort is a kind of spiritual laziness, and that being really busy with worldly life is a kind of busy laziness.

Most people see monks or religious people as extreme.  When I see someone in religious garb, I wonder, have they gone too far.  Why can't they just be spiritual on the inside, why do they have to wear special clothing that marks them out in a specific sect or religion.  But then again, why not try to show on the outside your effort on the inside.

I remember a movie (Kadosh) where this guy is pleading with God to help him in his spiritual life, it's kind of touching, even though I didn't like the character in the end, there was a kind of brutality to his parents and another family forcing a woman to marry him without love (even if that is my modern conceit about marriage).  But I digress.

I was in Fat Cat celebrating two years of a relationship.  (We'd been to the Cloisters and Awash already.)  I have been there in many years and they tore down the walls of the jazz room, so you could hear all the people playing ping pong and billiards and all the other games there.  (The place was jammed btw, on a Wednesday night in the mid August.)  I have a kind of reverence for jazz.  Each musician is a composer, their solo is a unique composition.  They play between the rules of a song, how long they get to solo, and in what keys they can solo, and yet there is a kind of freedom and expression of individuality.  Asians and Europeans usually pack jazz clubs, Americans don't so much appreciate this unique contribution to world culture.  That makes me sad.  So this place has people walking in front of the musicians with their game equipment.  At times it's hard to hear the music the hubbub was so loud.

But then I liked the buzz or an active social life.  It reminds me of old recording where you can hear people talking in the background, when jazz was the popular music, it was the rock and roll, the hip hop music of it's time.

Jazz is a uniquely live art form.  You can crystalize it, but seeing live jazz is a million times better.  Every moment is unique.

It's a lovely dance between individualism and collectivism.  The way a well honed quartet plays off each other is a beautiful dance of collaboration.  It's a model of working together and harmony to create art, the beautiful.

And I found myself annoyed at these yobbos disrespecting the artists.  And yet, it was cheap vibrant jazz, it only costs $3 to get in.  They have a normal bar, but a lot of people seemed to be drinking PBR.  I like beer, and I like beer with flavor, which goes against perhaps modern American beer making culture with it's various brands that I won't list.  I guess I'm starting to sound like a snooty aesthete.  I backed down.  Maybe all the cover money went to the artists.  Maybe these people dabbled in listening to a form they might not have, while they waited for a table to become available.  I talked myself out of a negative mental state.

I really enjoyed watching the musicians and telling myself stories about about how they talked to each other, the pecking orders, the silent rules.  I loved seeing their collaborations and solos.  

I've drifted away from jazz because in a way it's so complex, that in middle age and with meditation, I've sought out simplicity.  And I don't know the song forms or keys, the rules underneath what might seem like chaos to people who don't know jazz.

I thought about Dharma Punx, and how Noah Levine's presentation of the Dharma comes out of his subculture of punk.  I love all forms of music, but I think Dharma Jazz is a really cool idea.  I know Herbie Hancock is a Buddhist and there are others.  Spirituality can be a private thing, I'm sure there are others.  My friend who is a jazz and music aficionado, references an article in a major jazz publication, which I can't find on line.  If anyone knows of the article link feel free to comment below.  

Jazz is the opposite of John Cage's music, which I read in Nothing and Everything - The Influence of Buddhism on the American Avant Garde: 1942 - 1962, with it's silences.  You can make up your mind whether you think avant-garde is indulgent or revolutionary.  

I heard Stanley Crouch quit the jazz scene because too many people were showing up to jam who didn't understand the rules of jazz and thought free jazz was an opportunity for people without talent, supposedly.

I've recently let go of a relationship I've over-invested in, and I feel a kind of freedom to express myself, so I hope you've enjoyed the musings.  

And end for Jayarava's Raves?

Jayarava writes, "So that's it for Jayarava's Raves. I have nothing else planned out to say on Buddhism. In a sense I feel I've said what I wanted to say about it. If you read one essay a week it would take you six years to read them all. I have been working on packaging some of the essays up into a book (or perhaps two) but I have no deadline in mind at present."

Critical Ecumenicalism

Subhuti came out with a Buddhist Manifesto.

Go read it, and process what you think, ponder on it.

My feeling was that not much new was said, but it's cool to see it all in one place, but then as I read it, I could feel the spiritual energy coming from it.  Subhuti has a fantastic mind, and he's very active in India and Turkey, and probably a lot more stuff that I don't even know about, including pumping out these amazing essays.  I wish Windhorse would just go ahead and collect them all in a book.  (And reprint Meeting The Buddhas, an awesome awesome book.)  Subhuti is an admirable man.  And by the end of pounding away, he has me wanting to take over the world, create a pure land.  Awesome.

Here is a quote from it:

"The challenge Buddhists face today is to find ways of communicating and practising the Dharma that are truly effective in these new circumstances."


I'm actually having trouble getting quotes off my iPad, so I'll just leave you with this one.  It's a rich document that doesn't really lend to quoting, though there's a lot of interesting stuff in there.  


Googling "Buddhist Manifesto" you only get references to Glenn Wallis' Buddhist Manifesto, from 2009, other than Subhuti's, 2012.  Mr. Wallis has similar themes of getting back to basic Buddhism, which accepting modern developments, founding things on Gotama's teachings.  He sees meditation as the basis, he references the Anapanasati Sutta, and, "careful analysis of the categories of lived experience."  He's afraid that "skillful means" could easily lead to "anything goes":  What would stop us from saying that something was Buddhism?  From there he goes off on solutions that have a faint whiff of recognizability to me, but honestly, I didn't connect ultimately with this manifesto as much as I did with Subhuti's, and therefore I highly recommend Subhuti's as the best on the internet in the summer of 2012--and likely much beyond.

Sangharakshita on the Sciences within Triratna

In The Mail: Obama Karma

"Ultimately, Obama's Karma is the way in which his inner world is manifested in the outer world. It's the same for all of us.  The one thing--perhaps the only thing--we have control over is ourselves; but that is all we need."  p.6 Obama Karma: Lessons on Living Inspired by the 44th President


I'm skeptical reading the introduction, he writes loose and fast, but I'll read some further.  Why can't people use footnotes?  Why can't they share where they learned their information?  


The more I learn about Obama, the more I like him.  The more I learn about Mitt, the less I like him.


Russell Razzaque is a psychiatrist from UK.  He has some videos of the meditations he suggests to consolidate the lessons from each chapter.  The Password is "launch".


BTW, I found a course on line that looks interesting.  It doesn't say when it's going to start, but it looks like an interesting course on Coursera.  I'm tempted to take a poetry course or a history course, or a class on irrational behavior.

Time lines

I've been looking at time lines of Buddhism, and I came across this photo of all religions:




You can see my linking of timelines in my twitter feed.

I'm reading Mythology by Edith Hamilton, and I was looking at Greek timelines, and then I moved to Buddhist timelines.  There's some amazing information out there, presented visually.  I watched Ken Burn's documentary on baseball, so I've been thinking more about history.  Of course his one on the Civil War is, I think, his best one, but the Jazz one is also awesome because there's nothing else like it.  He can get a little stuck on Armstrong in my opinion.  And his others documentaries are great too, the one on the Brooklyn Bridge is pretty good.  He's really quite amazing, even if I was a bit bored at the beginning of the baseball one, at times.  He puts it at a leisurely pace, he doesn't pack information in at a breakneck pace.  These were all done before the internet took off, I think.  I think now I'm used to being bombarded with information.

In a side note, seeing Bhante on Skype yesterday, in NYC, Aryaloka and Mexico City, was awesome.  I didn't learn anything new (not the point anyway) but did have some human contact with him.  I did however learn he likes Sea-Drift, from Leaves of Grass.  I didn't know he liked Whitman.  I'd just read that he didn't like Walden, so it's good to see he does like some American.

It's hard to imagine he came out with Survey of Buddhism: Its Doctrines and Methods Through the Ages
 in 1947, which for my money has the most spiritual heat of any book on the earth.

If I could have gotten one question to ask him, I would have asked him what it felt like when he went forth, that first step after he'd given all his stuff away, and went off into India.  Must have been liberating and scary, exciting and worrisome.  Where am I going to sleep tonight would be my first question.  Going forth...  awesome.  

solo practice day

Not my weekend for my kids, and my partner was out of town, so I had some rare solitude.  To make the most of it, I decided to have a practice day.  Here was what I did:

Dedication puja from TBC puja book
Body scan from FBA
Mindfulness of Breathing (40 min)
Breakfast, walk, break time, read Dharma
Confession puja from the Sutra of Golden Light
Just Sitting (30 min)
Lunch, break time, read Dharma
Metta Meditation (40 minutes)

I read Thubten Chodron's book on the Chenrezig sadhana.  In my order, you don't do the sadhana until you're been witnessed to be effectively going for refuge, but it doesn't hurt to read about it.  I've wanted to read something from her.  She's not a bad writer.  I have a tanka of Chenrizig, that my wonderful partner gave me, and I look at it from time to time.  Thubten Chodron's teacher also added in the eight point mind training to their lineage of practice, and I like that too, so I enjoyed reading about that.  I've studied that on a GFR retreat, and even before that, so it's a text I treasure.  I am so grateful for all the retreats I've been on.  I don't have the money to go on the GFR retreat in California this year, but my heart goes out to those who will be on it this year, I'm sending you my best wishes.

It was a hot day yesterday, but I didn't turn on the AC until after the Metta meditation.  For some reason when I meditate, the heat doesn't bother me as much.  I think I get some sensory integration from meditation.  I also get what my friend called, "coming out of warp speed," feeling in my head from meditating that much.  It was only 3 meditation, but it was bolstered with a body scan and 2 pujas, and Dharma reading.

On my walk, aside from enjoying my body in motion, I look at the beautiful flowers people so kindly plant in front of their homes.

I felt a little lonely in the evening, but it was too late to connect with anyone.  I could have made a phone call, but I just went to bed.  My dreams intensify when I ramp up my practice, and that's always interesting.

I'm going to take it a little bit more easy today, but I'm going to try and do the 4 Brahma Viharas. But I'm going to be more worldly today, listen to music, and maybe get a Sunday Times, do some errands and tasks.  I'm going to read about Vairocana, because his head is above Chenrizig and below Amitabha in the visualization, in Vessantara's excellent book, Meeting the Buddhas: A Guide to Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, and Tantric Deities.

Padmabandhu in Spanish and translated by Manjunatha

I watched and listened to this video this morning on my practice day.  I like the diversity in the TBC!  It's 17 minutes and it's funny sometimes when the translation is botched and fumbled, the translator is gracious in his fumbling, and the speaker is funny too!  It's a personal account on why he's an order member.

8th Anniversary

I started this blog 8 years ago.

I've had a lot of ups and downs over the last 8 years, and this blog has been a sort of public notebook of my spiritual journey.  This blog has actually afforded me some wonderful experiences, reading books, going to the opera, watching movies.  I am grateful for that.  I think about how far I've come, and how much more work I have to do on my spiritual journey.

Anyway, happy anniversary blog!

In The Mail: The Misleading Mind

I got The Misleading Mind today, written by Karuna Cayton.

Karuna Cayton was trained in the Tibetan Gelugpa tradition in Nepal with Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.  He spent 12 years in Nepal.  Karuna means compassion.  Cayton is a village in England.  Not sure which names were given to him and which names he changed.  Some people get a name like Karuna, but I doubt he was named that at birth.  He's from Soquel California, near Santa Cruz.  He does counseling, coaching and business workshops.

I will let you know if I have any worthy thoughts on this book.

What follows are some links of reviews and interviews already done about this book:

Here is a review on Digital Dharma:  "The ideas covered in The Misleading Mind will not come as anything new to those who have even casually perused the Buddha’s teachings."


Here is an interview he put on his blog.


Here is an audio interview on The Secular Buddhist:  “Because we constantly and immediately superimpose our interpretation upon experience, we never really experience things as they are. We experience things as we are.” — Karun Cayton, The Misleading Mind.


Here is another interview, if you can bear the 30 second advert.

Here is written interview on Spirituality and Practice website.

sexual ethics article

Sangha night we read an article by Winton Higgins from BuddhaNet.

We had a lively discussion, not about celibacy, but which got me to thinking about what I've read about celibacy in the order.

Here's a 21 minute video by Manjuvajra where he discusses celibacy, among other things.

And there's a bit in one of the female memoirs, (Breaking Free: Glimpses of a Buddhist Life by Srimala) where she talks about dating Subhuti and his attempts at celibacy at times, which led to her attempts.  Seemed like it was his idea the way she told the story.

Thirdly I'm reading Through Buddhist Eyes: Travel Letters(a book of Bhante's travel letters to Shabda in the 80's and 90's, which is not always exciting reading, and oddly disappointing at times, though good in others), and in it Sangharakshita recommends in 1989 Liz Hodgkinson's Sex is Not Compulsory.  Bhante, "....I strongly recommend the book to those of you who have not yet read it.  Those who have read it, but who have still not given serious consideration to the question of celibacy, should, I think, read it again." (p. 89).

I would also add, that in Gautama Buddha: The Life and Times of the Awakened One. Vishvapani Blomfield, an excellent biography of the Buddha, he quotes in the Pali Cannon an incident where a monk sleeps with his ex-wife so she can have a child.  The Buddha says he would do better to stick his penis into a snakes mouth, than to procreate with his ex-wife, which seems pretty intense.

So I'm not about to go celibate, but it's interesting to see how the order deals with this in public.  Inside the order, and not public, is another matter, probably deeper and personal.  It's quite a strong quote from Bhante about the Hodgkinson book, and a strong quote from the Pali Cannon in the Vishvapani book.

sangha

I went to sangha night for the first time in ages, and it was wonderful to be around everyone.  I'd forgotten how much I like everyone.  I'd forgotten how important it is to meditate with others.  I'd forgotten how cool it is to read something together and discuss, and get to know each other better.  Yay, sangha.  I take refuge in the sangha jewel.

Thomas Jefferson with a Buddhist advisor?

What if Thomas Jefferson had a quasi-Buddhist advisor (who focuses on wellness) and his letters were recently discovered?  Suneel Dhand has written a book that explores these themes in a pleasant and clear little book.

Suneel Dhand is a doctor who has focused on wellness.  You can follow his tweets about wellness.

At times reading Thomas Jefferson: Lessons from a Secret Buddha I was a bit incredulous.  This Buddha friend participated in the Boston Tea Party?  I mean, I believe in engaged Buddhism and all, but the Buddha didn't get involved in the various kingdoms of his time beyond advising kings on how to deepen their spirituality.  He didn't take to modern political protesting.  As revolutionary as he was, he operated mostly on a personal level, he was a revolutionary of the internal world.

In many ways, this wasn't the Buddha I recognize, he was more like a modern wellness guru, and a political activist.  Like Dr. Suneel Bhand perhaps.  Perhaps I took the word "Buddha" too literally regarding the historical Buddha.  There were many politically active buddhist including Ashoka The Great.  There's no telling what the Buddha would have done in Revolutionary America.  And this is an honest act of imagination.

Dr. Bhand says the quotes are from the Buddha, but I have the feeling they were more along the lines of fake Buddha quotes.  I can't actually prove that, but I do know the "live in the now" stuff isn't so much exact Buddhism, but a vague kind of modern version.  Mindfulness in the Buddhist context is much more specific.  Not that I mind different definitions of mindfulness and wellness.  And you can create any kind of Buddha you want, there's no such thing as blasphemy in Buddhism.  "My thinking was so uptight," as the Dude says.  I think it's a kind of western thing to be such a fussbudget.  In the east syncretism is much more acceptable, I imagine.  Alas, that was my initial reaction to this fine book.  He's really trying to put forth the positive wellness aspects of certain approaches of Thomas Jefferson that are congenial to eastern ways.

When I settled in to this Buddhist inspired wellness guru (instead of quibbling about his vision of the Buddha), Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution, I enjoyed this book on revolutionary history and the wellness of one of our great founders.  Dr Bhand is also the author of a book on wellness, and I take his comments about wellness seriously.  I think I would like Dr. Suneel Dhand if I ever met him, and I think he's tackled an awesome project of retranslating eastern spirituality into western culture by weaving into Thomas Jefferson's life a kind of eastern guru of wellness.  A very impressive book.  Thank you.

I always appreciate a book that gets me thinking and this one did.

I kept singing Shot Heard Round The World, after I read the book.

Which of course lead me to this video

which of course lead to this video

the impact of technology TED talk by Sherry Turkle

beautiful video

Landscapes: Volume Two from Dustin Farrell on Vimeo.

Bhikkhu Bodhi interview quote

"What sort of training have you had in meditation practice?


"During my early years in Sri Lanka I did very little intensive meditation. This was not my ordination teacher’s mode of practice; he integrated regular periods of meditation into his day-to-day life. When I later practiced intensive retreats on my own, I used anapana-sati [mindfulness of breathing] as my sole meditation subject. But after some time, I found my mind became dry and rigid, and I felt the need to soften and enrich it with other types of meditation. Thus, at different times and under different circumstances, I learned the practices that constitute the “four protective meditations”: recollection of the Buddha, the meditation on loving kindness, the contemplation of the repugnant nature of the body, and the recollection of death. Throughout my life as a monk I have made extensive use of these four meditation subjects. I have also done occasional extended retreats at hermitages in Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Regretfully, though, because of my poor merits and the debilitating headache condition, I have not reached any attainments worthy of a true practitioner."

(I got this from Theravada Dhamma Blog, which I was alerted to by Bodhi Tree Swaying Blog.  Here is the Wikipedia entry on Bhikkhu Bodhi.)

In my order it's always said you should alternate Mindfulness of Breathing with Metta Bhavana, and I find it interesting that only doing MOB he said, " my mind became dry and rigid, and I felt the need to soften and enrich it..."  Perhaps it is a simple point, but concentration leads to emotional positivity and then spiritual death, a la Sangharakshita's System of Meditation.  It's possible to develop concentration and not use it for the good.

I don't follow Bhikkhu Bodhi's ideas of literal merit.  It's possible it's an quirky accident that was a cultural belief of the times.  Maybe not, and maybe Bhikkhu Bodhi has a more sophisticated and deep view than I am aware of.  But it doesn't seem that way in this post.  Remember sometimes it's other's merit that causes things, or physical causes or systems that don't have to do with one's purity of heart.  I think the point of over interpreting merit is that purity of intentions is so important, and it's hard to tie up all the disparate strands in oneself, it's not a simple effort, we are never a finished project, IMHO

a simple prayer

(I'm reading Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche's Living Fully, (p 25), and it has the following prayer in it I wanted to share:)

May I act with pure motivation.
May I part from selfish ways.
May I bring Joy and happiness to others.
May I free them from pain and sorrow.
May I have a big and open heart
That encompasses the whole world.




[end]




He's from the Dzogchen tradition.  I can't find much about him that is not from his website, so don't know much more than reading the book and watching the video.




Here's a video of him:





He reports he sees himself more as a westerner than a Tibetan.  He says, "what we need here is the essence of Tibetan Buddhism."  Which implies that he can take away the cultural aspects of Tibetan Buddhism.


"The essence of the book is to be natural."


The project of building a a western buddhism continues, so fascinating to me.  What is cultural, was is the essence? What are the cultural and devotional expressions that we will develop in American, and in the TBC?

informal book review on goodreads

Alone with Others: An Existential Approach to Buddhism by Stephen Batchelor
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I thought--what do I want to read? and I wanted to read this book.  It's a book that tries to update Buddhism with existentialism, among other things.


I've read it before, after I read what I think is his best seller, Buddhism Without Belief.  I wanted to see if it stood up the way I remembered it.


Batchelor is skeptic, doesn't want to just follow the herd, and is an original independent deep thinker.  I've met him in person and he's a swell guy.  I think my only criticism of him is that he hasn't built a movement, and doesn't seem to value deep friendships the way my order does.  Now, I can't actually know how deep his friendships are, but when asked who was sangha to him, he reported other celebrity Buddhists.  I find that hard to believe.


At times the jargon of Existentialism feels a bit forced, but for the most part this book is filled with gems of insight.  It touches on all the major important ideas of Buddhism, and feels congenial with my tradition, which is inclusive, but it also hits home at similar points.  While this is a short book, it is jam packed with important stuff, that makes it hard to write a general review.


This rich book will be reread by me, hopefully in the future.


Like many books, this book leads to other books.  I want to read Heiddiger's Being and Time, I think a better understanding of that book would help me to see more what this book is trying to do.  But this books stands on it's own.


I'm not tempted to read the Christian theologians he does, but I'm happy to read the nugget he finds.  I've read all his Buddhist books, and reread Buddhism Without Belief, and this one.  I think this one might be his best, though for the average reader I'd probably read his last one Confessions of an Atheist Buddhist, which is the fullest memoir to date.


View all my reviews

Rereading: Alone With Others

I've really been enjoying rereading this book by Stephen Batchelor:  Alone With Others.  I've read everything of his  on Buddhism, some of his translations, but not his books his Ancient Greek for Dummies, Medieval History for Dummies and Tibet Guide.  I've reread Buddhism Without Belief.  And now I felt this book call to me from the bookshelf, and I've been thoroughly enjoying it.  It's short too, you could absorb it over a day.