Eat Sleep Sit

Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple has had an effect on me. I was feeding the cats, and I wondered if I could be more intensional with it, if I could create a ritual. I made sure to scrape out everything in the cans. Preciousness without waste seems to be part of the ritual. At work I wash my hands and then use to towel to clean the toilet, even though it's not my mess. Ananadi said, "why don't you do that at home?!" We don't have paper towels.

The Vinaya is the part of oral teaching, written down hundreds of years later, that encapsulate all the rules the Buddha came up with to help people live together with mindfulness as the monastic tradition was beginning. Dogen's Shobogenzo is the rules for conduct in the Eihei-ji are derived from this book. Every act seems to be prescribed. In a way that could be comforting to not have to think, but just learn the routines, rituals and manners. They meditate 3x a day for 40 minutes, and there are work periods and study and there are rotating duties, and no duty is considered less, and it's just a matter of taking turns. You can get up at 130am to study, but everyone goes to bed at--I forget, I think it's 9pm. Most get up at 330AM. Each day has a confession of mistakes, and the violence that happens is off putting for Ananadi, and she doesn't buy the justification, but the author seems to feel like it strips away his imperfect outer shell.

There's a brief video on YouTube, of a monk tearing around the monastery ringing a bell, waking everyone up, that stuck in my head.

When someone makes a mistake ringing a bell, everyone knows. One time the bell broke and the guy ran around trying to vocalize the sound. It seems pretty intense. Supposedly you can do a 1 or 3 day retreat, and I've put that on my list of things to do when I win the lottery, which is to say I can't afford to follow my interest unless I get weirdly wealthy suddenly.

The refuge tree of teachers and inspiration for the TBC does not mean we have to sit facing a wall because that is how Dogen does it. It is an option and if you do a retreat in this sect, it helps to know what you're getting into. Dogen's example is an inspiration for us, and helps us to learn the tradition of Buddhist greats. I bet everyone could write a Shobogenzo of sorts for their particular circumstances. The Vinaya is not so much taken literally in the west, and is more about thinking about mindfulness and harmony in your actions. The TBC is working to define the essential elements, but Bhante has often talked in terms of principles, so there's a reluctance to explicitly define actions. I imagine a TBC ceremony looks pretty sloppy to Soto Zen eyes. Or maybe not. I've felt great harmony in being in the shrine room with my dharma brothers, and thought their actions were mindful.

More than other memoirs of zen, this book explicitly shares the nitty gritty of Soto Zen, and is therefore valuable for the praxis information. You learn about Dogen, Japanese culture and a form of practice that stretches back into time, that is strangely attractive to me.

That many of the people who do the 2 year training course at Eihei-ji are the eldest sons of father's who own temples, is not as much to my liking, I prefer choosing, but again, like the rules, having a strict plan in some ways is appealing the way an arranged marriage. All the strum und drang is taken away from choices. But there are people who go who are not eldest sons, and they are valued too. I don't know where they end up, but they are welcome.

Here is another video on this topic.

Kauru Nonomura

Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple is a memoir, translated from Japanese, of a year at a Soto Zen monastery, following the tradition of Dogen. I read the beginning to Anandi and she thought the violence was not very Buddhist, the way the senior monks treated the new people. It's against the rules to resist the beatings. The rules for going to the bathroom are quite involved, and you snap your fingers three times before and after, and recite bathroom prayers. I do'nt want to say this is an anal sect, but it seems about control. I think discipline is important and each tradition has it's own ways. This is the sect where you meditate facing a wall.

I've always had the fantasy of joining a monastery. A friend who actually lived at one for some time said it was more challenging than you'd think. I haven't really read a memoir of being in one, so this book is greatly appreciated, even though I doubt I would enter such a violent monastery. I wonder even if that is a possibility in the USA. What attracts me is the simplicity and commitment to the path. What repels me is the retreat from the world. I've been thinking about the Bodhisattva path recently, one of engagement with others. Maybe that's why I'm interested in seeing the other side of things.

The back blurb says this 1996 book was a sensation in Japan. It's taken 19 years to get an English translation by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Not that she took that long to translate this book. (Click on this link to learn more about JWC.)

Quote from Ta-Nehisi Coates

P. 98 Between the World and Me:

"To acknowledge these horrors means turning away from the brightly rendered version of your country as it has always been declared itself and turning towards something murkier and unknown. It is too difficult for Americans to do this. But that is your work. It must be, if only to preserve the sanctity of your mind."

Between the world and me

Coates doesn't take the turn into religion and I thought, well, his journey is very spiritual. He doesn't go into conventional religion, but questions, and delving into the self and the nature of humanity and ideals and all spiritual in my book. Religious institutions don't own spirituality. My atheist friends are some of the most spiritual people I know. And they do better on religious quizzes.

But I was thinking about something I read in social work school about how some immigrants turn to spirituality and high religiosity because of feeling dispossessed by society, powerless.

I thought about the connection between mental health and high religiosity--that can be a symptom of someone going round the bend. But I had a patient once that just talked about the bible the whole time and I really liked him. He was exploited by others, and was too passive, but he had schizophrenia. His spirituality was well developed and beautiful.

My own turn to spirituality happened when I was moving from teaching to social work, that's a challenging time, but certainly not the most challenging.

We have to distinguish between crazy, disempowered and desperate spirituality and effective spirituality, and I think Coates has effective spirituality.

Coates spirituality is about curiosity. One of the ideas of Zen is utmost wondrousness. That is one of my slogans. That is what I would call my books if I had the attention span to finish a book.

Just as the great documentaries by Ken Burns (Jazz, Civil War and Baseball) are about race, race is at the heart of American history. Curiosity about race is what it means to be American, from the closed end solution of exploiting it, to ignoring it, to addressing it, there is a continuum.

Coates explorations is specific but it raises to the great universal in it's fierce engagement in what it means to wake up. I wonder if my son, when he turns 15 and I tell him to read this book, will even know who Treyvon Martin is. It was his son's bitter grief, the disillusionment, the unconsolable injustice, that gets Coates to write this heartfelt letter to his son.

I read about the book in a NY Times book review, and then from a Buddhist blog. Waking up includes racial consciousness in America. I'm only on p. 70, but this is a can't miss book in my humble opinion: Between the World and Me  

square kivas

I asked the ranger at the Coronado Historical Site why the kivas were square. He said they don't know. Reading The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion That Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest, David Roberts suggests that they stopped doing round Kivas because the Conquistadors built their churches over them. So don't make them round any more and the stupid colonizers won't know about them. They found one pueblo where the invaders didn't put the church over the kiva. They used it as a land fill for trash.

The disrespect for people's spirituality and the worldly use of spirituality for worldly gains in the "new world" the colony of New Mexico. The murder, rape and general big bowl of wrong of colonization.

I think about open source Buddhism, the idea that secrets should not be kept and hoarded by the hierarchy. On the other hand we can get spiritual digestion from eating too many rich practices, that you don't really do.

The pueblos don't aspire to a universal religion--they want to manufacture their own and don't feel the need to proselytize or vet their practices by converting others. Sounds like a healthy stable self esteem.

The suggestion is that secrecy is part of the power of spirituality. There is also a culture of not standing taller than others, not showboating or maybe some kind of institutionalized chopping down strivers.

My son told a story. There was a Jewish kid in his class. When ever anyone offered him something, the kid asked if it was kosher. The kids started joking, "is that chair kosher?" That is cruel, but there are aspect of religion that are meant to keep people different, that slides people towards only being with their community. "Goy" is the word for non-Jews.

Walking down the street there were a bunch of children coming out of a nursery school. The teacher asked, "Do we talk to strangers?" A bunch of kids said "YES!" I've started to talk to strangers to the chagrin of my kids.

The way you childhood went has a big effect on whether you see others as positive or threatening.

Watching The Divergent Series: Insurgent last night the group abnegation, they are farmers who think positively in a jungle of a world. They are steam rolled by the police.

There are so many variables of circumstances in spirituality, in the age of the internet, and more flow of information. I can't help thinking about Secrets and Lies, in my flight of ideas, and how the the Pueblos control of information about their spirituality seems a bit prescient.

Kwan Yin

Mary in the new world

We went to the New Mexico History Museum to see paintings of the divine. They have a book: Painting the Divine: Images of Mary in the New World. I wondered if you could consider Mary a Kuan Yin, but then I decided we did not need to reduce one tradition to another. You could says the archetypal giving female divinity, the divine mother, but they are rather distinct traditions with different stories.

The imagines that got Ananadi crying were at the Verve Gallery, where pictures of oil spills and the consequences of our fossil fuel hunger are evident.

Views and clouds are fun to see:

The mountains that end her are called the Sangre De Cristo.

I'm reading a book about the Pueblo Revolt in 1680, and lasted for 12 years: The Pueblo Revolt: The Secret Rebellion That Drove the Spaniards Out of the Southwest  

Coronado Historical Site

The Coronado Historical Site is a multicultural settlement, that has round Kivas and a square kiva. You can go into the kiva with a ranger. The ranger Ethan was very knowledgable and communicated very well. The little bit sticking out of the square is the air shaft, and faces east, where the sun rises. We need a spirituality that reveres nature, does not see it as something to exploit and master.

You can't take pictures inside because they are sacred. I compared the Tibetans, who when they were driven out of their country by anti-religious Chinese, began to spread their wisdom because they were dispossessed, and like the Jews, became nomads, people without a country.

The ranger said the natives were originally open and shared their spirituality and it was used against them. Reminds me of work a little. I remember once I asked a woman what she was renouncing during lent, and she said that was private. I respect that. So I think thinking about that today I felt more respect for the desire for privacy in spirituality.

Inside the square kiva there's a hole, and I can't help but think that there are spiritual rebirth ceremonies, among other things. It's a sacred space. They did all this complicated taking of the wall stuff, and peeling off the layers. There was a book that was printed in 1963 that has photos of all the murals: Sun Father's Way. The Kiva Murals of Kuaua. Beautiful amazing stuff.

My boys put on some conquistador armor. There was a beautiful barrel cactus in bloom.

You could see the Sandia mountains that are next to Albuquerque:

And the Rio Grande.

climate justice

There's a really good section in Mind in Harmony about hatred, and how it's a confusion. Seems to hit it right on the head. This book is amazing to me, I savor it, I can't just plow through it.

I'm also enjoying Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth -- The Buddha's Life and Message through Feminine Eyes (Sacred Activism). She talks about her experiences of trying to blaze a trail into the Dharma, in a tradition that does not have female teachers.

I was reading Tricycle. There's a fascinating interview of Naomi Klein. Her suggestion is that since narrow viewpoints have not stopped the climate crisis, we need a larger view, one that eliminates systems of exploitation. We have to care about everyone to address the climate crisis. We won't solve the climate crisis if it's OK for some people to suffer, and others not to suffer. Climate Justice is the concept she puts forth.

Santa Fe

Off to visit my parents (half of them) in Santa Fe. There are three books I have read that give me a feel for Santa Fe:

Banana Rose: A Novel is by Natalie Goldberg is perhaps the most famous novel set there in recent times.

Savage Pilgrims: On the Road to Santa Fe is a quirky memoir by a guy who really like D.H. Lawrence.

The crown jewel of book, perhaps not about Santa Fe, but by an author who spends some of her time in Santa Fe is The Fruitful Darkness: A Journey Through Buddhist Practice and Tribal Wisdom. This is basically a modern Buddhist sutra that cannot be missed. I love this book.

And if you'd like a historical potboiler, I've enjoyed Santa Fe Passage.

Please add some books in the comments, I need books to read about Santa Fe.

Silence by Shusaku Endo

"It's easy enough to die for the good and the beautiful; the hard thing is to die for the miserable and corrupt" p.38 Silence.

I picked up this book by the Japanese Graham Green because Stephen Batchelor recommended it on his Facebook page. It's about missionaries in Japan in the 17th century when Christianity was forbidden.

Shusaku Endo died in 1996.  Reading in the age of the internet is fun, I've looked up a lot of things to learn more about Japanese culture. I did not know about the twenty six martyrs of Japan, for instance. I've got a hard copy, which I enjoy the feel of, but I am coming to appreciate the ability to look something on my reader without having to switch devises. Is that lazy or what?

My mother was born in Japan during the occupation, and there were always Japanese prints in my grandparent's homes. I have read quite a bit about Japan, and have always been fascinated by other countries outside of the USA. The USA seems so provincial sometimes, it's a huge country and many people don't even bother to get passports. I love living in NYC where the world comes to live.

I have not detected any traces of how Buddhism effected the efforts to spread Christianity in the east yet in the novel, but that's why I'm reading it. I'm struck at how sexy it is to smuggle something in, and how suffering for your religion has it's appeal. It kind of informs my buddhist practice in a Christian country. NYC is more than Christian, there's a holy war with Islam and Judaism, hedonism and materialism as well. It's easy to make fun of the spirit of multiculturalism and tolerance, but that is what I love about NYC. Unfortunately multiculturalism is often boiled down to food, and my favorite Sushi place is Kyoto in Kew Garden Hills. I haven't been to the new Sushi Yasu since it moved to Austin Street, but I bet it's the same.

looking into the sun

It's not easy to see yourself clearly. There's a kind of confidence one needs in oneself to connect with the Sangha, to go for enlightenment. Pureland Buddhism feels foreign, feels like you're relying too much on other power, hoping to reborn in a pureland just because of your devotion to a mantra. I believe more and more in mappo more and more as I go along. It's hard to read Pureland texts. There's one free on Amazon that I downloaded: Wisdom of the East Buddhist Psalms translated from the Japanese of Shinran Shonin. There is so much free Dharma it's hard to feel like paying for a book. Reading this book I have tried to go past my knee jerk reactions to Pureland. This is a major tradition in Buddhism and I'm curious about it. I'm still not super connecting with it. I've been exploring the idea of faith in Buddhism after reading about it in the lovely book of Subhuti's: Mind in Harmony. I can't gobble it down, I need to savor it and chase all the trails of thought as I read though it. And one of those detours was into Shinran. I prostrate to Shinran when I do the refuge tree prostration practice, which is an maximalist practice that is about faith in the tradition. I need to learn more about the TBC refuge tree. You can read more about the practice in Teachers of Enlightenment: The Refuge Tree of the Western Buddhist Order.

Simplicity

I'm at once impressed and feel like I could never do what the Amish do in rejecting technology.

Lancaster County is a center in Pennsylvania of Amish. The Amish are similar but different then the Mennonites. These Pennsylvania Dutch speak a Swiss-German, and aren't Dutch but are German or Swiss in origin. They probably don't have more than a quarter of a million people in the USA. Their rules for order is the called the Ordnung. Their relationship to technology is supposed to be following the will of god. Anyway, in our modern world it's a curiosity that such a community can exist. You can see the simplicity of their lives in the signs they have. A wonderful book to see that is Signs of Lancaster County: A Photographic Tour of Amish Country.

Security

Watching that documentary on Chogyam Trungpa, I thought it was silly that he created a kind of military unit, for a Buddhist community. But I know someone who is involved in the famous church in Brooklyn and he's part of the security team there. He talked to me about the bible study group in South Carolina, where a guy sat for an hour with people studying the bible and then shot everyone but a witness that he spared out of a sadistic desire for someone to tell the story of everyone being shot. This is the world we live in here in the USA. Where you need security at your place of worship.

In the show The League, one of the wacky characters Taco, thinks Security is a football team. He says he's a fan and chants "go security" when ever a security guard goes by. But he doesn't help out a woman when she is being robbed even though he's wearing a security jacket. I love absurdist humor because I feel the world can be so absurd. That a beloved community needs security breaks my heart.

Quote

"Without taking the humble journey of inclusiveness, our spirituality will tend to be idealized, disembodied projections and immature escapism." p. 19 Time to Stand Up by Thanissara. 

Quote

"We need to see how easy it is for us to be manipulated by the media toward prejudice against others whom we designate as nonhuman with no right at all, or less than human and unequal. We need to understand how when we objectify and denigrate those "outside" ourselves we find an easy receptacle for our unacknowledged fears, aggression, and pain; how in that process we miss so many opportunities for more consious solutions to conflict." p.19 Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth -- The Buddha's Life and Message through Feminine Eyes (Sacred Activism)  

ordinary

Reading The Making of Buddhist Modernism, there was lot of talk about enchanting and re-enchanting, losing meaning and valorization of the ordinary.

Then I started watching Daredevil on Netflix. The ordinary is something that the hero sees past, deeply into even though he's blind. His super power is his hearing and focus. He can sense so much that he's unstoppable. It's just the ordinary that he senses more deeply. The fight for justice is portrayed in comic book simplicity, and then with moral ambiguity and confusion. There is an interplay between enchantment and disenchantment, ordinary and extreme.

Sherlock Holmes sees past the ordinary and collects information to create penetrating insight (into a crime).

James Joyce has a layer of the ordinary and the mythic in Ulysses. The interplay between sacred and profane is a very modern dance.

I can choose to be bored by my commute home, or find all the mystical opportunities.

You don't hear people use the word profane that much, as an opposite of sacred. "I had a profane day." I'm trying to dip into The Sacred and The Profane: The Nature of Religion, but I haven't gotten that far. 

Engaged Buddhism

Reading Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth -- The Buddha's Life and Message through Feminine Eyes (Sacred Activism) feels somehow important. Thanissara is articulating an engaged Buddhism that makes sense to me. I need things articulated, it's hard to articulate everything for yourself, we really stand up on our civilization that supports us.

She presents an alternate imagining of the Buddha's life to The Buddha's Wife: The Path of Awakening Together, where the Buddha consults with his wife before he goes off. She imagines that to be more compassionate, they were partners.

She focuses on how there is a strand of Buddhism with leads to quietism and withdrawal from the world, and that that might have worked in the past, but today our world is in danger. Samsara is burning. Why get involved in the illusionary world? But Nirvana is the same world. We are living in climate change, and we can see a kind of momentum that is suicidal. We need to consciously change that momentum together.

Is it inevitable that I drive to work, instead of take mass transit or walk or bike? I suddenly thought about the carbon imprint of my next vacation. My partner has been into the local food movement, locavore for quite a while, but we still shop in our plush supermarkets where everything is always in season.

I like the way Thanissara connects colonialism, slavery, and all the various forms of exploitation are part of the equation as we scramble at the crumbs of our dying earth. The book I'm dying to read after reading interesting reviews is Between the World and Me. There is such a dismissal of race in this society by the dominant culture, that is utterly startling.

I think of Danny Fisher, who blogs and writes and tweets about various global issues, I'm sure there are other blogsattvas, but he's one I've read a fair amount of.

Joanne Macy's Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory: The Dharma of Natural Systems (Suny Series, Buddhist Studies) was an empowering revelation. I might feel puny in this world, but I'm also not without ability to impact others.

I grew up with a connection to the natural world. I was on my bike and in trees from an early age. I live in NYC, and feel a bit alienated from nature, but at least I'm not like some of my relatives building a house where there was none, further decreasing unsettled land. I think one of the most environmentally friendly things you can do is move to the city, use mass transit, don't have a single family dwelling. And yet paradoxically that causes my children not to be as connected to nature as I was. There is hope for them yet, hopefully the hikes and camping and explorations of the world give them a sense of the world and it's complex and interlocking systems that are currently in great peril. They seem so smart and capable, full of potential.

Watching Jupiter Ascending, there are aliens that harvest earth's energy, because life is about consumption. There are larger universe problems than earthlings exploiting the earth. It's hubris to think we're alone in the universe.

Anyway, I read a lot of books at once, and I've just started Time To Stand Up, but I am finding it quite interesting and recommend it based on what I've read so far.

First chapter of Buddhism for Couples.

One of the many gifts of mindfulness is that as you get older, there can be a feeling that you've seen it all before. Surprisingly Buddhism for Couples: A Calm Approach to Relationships had some information that I had not read before, and I have a little quibble after reading the first chapter. My quibble was that "studies after studies" show that a two parent family is the best. For a writer who uses footnotes, it was curious that she didn't footnote that.

I think better than the nuclear family is the extended family and a support network and friends who help out. I moved to NYC to help out my aunt and uncle with her twins and it was quite a wonderful experience. Sure there were times it felt like drudgery. It's also quite a good birth control. There are quite enough children in the world, go help someone else out. Why do they have to be yours? The responsibility of your children is that you're the last line, when nobody else cares. I think the best and simple way to be a good parent is to be present. From there all else unfolds.

But beyond my little quibble that it's more the support network, there were many interesting insights that I won't give away in the first chapter. I enjoyed it.

Mindful Driving

Mindful Driving

The other day I tried to drive mindfully after meditating. I've had a series of reflections after that.

I know people who don't drive because they are scared. It's the risk taking adolescent that helped me to get into this guided missile that could kill someone very easily. So the first tension I feel is between safety, and thrill seeking. Smokey and the Bandit was a formative movie in my tween years (I was 10 when it came out). I like the phrase "petal to the metal".

But that part of me that speeds through dicy traffic situations is also the part of me that sometimes gets almost in accidents. New York City is pretty crowded, and to drive here is not an easy thing. It's not for shrinking violets. But we can become intoxicated with the impatience of NYC, where someone can give you a pre-emptive honk just before the light changes, so you look up from your phone to see it. The powerful beast of a car that in Montana would give you great power to travel distances, in NYC is reduced to a slow crawl, that can be beat by pedestrians and bicyclists. The beast is leashed, and though the speed limit was recently lowered from 30 to 25, I don't see any evidence that this rule is being followed. When there is open road ahead of you, it's not hard to get up to 60mph before awareness creeps in. You often see cars shooting down a road and think "that's too fast." It's all that pent up energy and power being unleashed for a second.

But I'm not that adolescent any more, in fact I'm dealing with the sequelae only, ghosts and residue, not that person. I would absolutely feel terrible if I ever hurt someone with the car. I have been in a few fender benders,  but nobody was hurt, and of course insects are killed. I'm not sure if I've killed a rodent, I know I've wondered a lot if I killed something, but there's been no confirmation.

So after thrill, safety, there is the question of fuel efficiency. How you drive a car can really matter. I had one co-worker who had a very heavy foot. I enjoy the excitement of acceleration sometimes. You can accelerate to a low top speed to get a flavor of the excitement in the city. But once again thrill is the opposite of fuel efficiency as it is for safety: To lift my foot from the accelerator when I see a red light. Sometimes car will go around you with annoyed irritation. Accelerating to the red light seems like a waste to me. There are times when I drive with the best fuel efficiency and I see the mile per gallon go up on the fancy readout. But then I feel too much pressure, and I can't sustain that attitude for very long. It's a deeper state of driving and my resolve and concentration are not yet good enough. I know there is room for growth in my mindfulness, and that reminds me of the surprising depth that keeps me on this path.

Then there is driving taking into account the emotions of the people you're driving. I know sometimes I've been too close to another car, or went to fast for the comfort of the person in the front seat. Sometimes people are impatient with my show safe driving. Taking into account the passengers, but not getting carried away is another axis of mindfulness for me.

Then there is the kindness, a kind of opposite of road rage. You let someone in, you don't get irritated at their selfishness. You don't get angry at someone driving erratically, you worry about them and give them a wide birth.

I like to give people rides. Transportation is a real issue in NYC and giving someone a ride can be a small kindness that helps one move toward the gladdening.

The question of destroying the planet with car exhaust is a real one. Fossil fuel dependence is a significant problem. I love that character in I Heart Huckebees. Tommy Corn. I have faith that humanity will find a solution when the fossil fuels run out, and I hope it's not a Mad Max kind of world. The dystopia movies warn us against what might happen, as resources become more scarce. The dependence of fossil fuels is of concern. I accept it that I'm using them and have a level of dependency. As someone who rode my bike through high school and college, I have a lot of biking under my belt, but not recently. I yearn to go back to the days when bikes were so convenient. The crazy traffic in NYC does not make me feel very safe riding a bike, even where there are bike lanes. Maybe that's where I need to rechannel my thrill seeker, my risk taker. I don't like being sweaty when I get to work, that's another barrier. Sweat was pouring down my shirt once on the subway and I felt really embarrassed. It can get hot in NYC in the summer. I love it when the 5 borough bike ride goes past and you seen tons of bikers. I've always yearned to live in a carless city. Until that day, I will try to drive mindfully.