The Human Animal

I liked this paragraph from Barbara Kingsolver's essay High Tide in Tucson

It's starting to look as if the most shameful tradition of Western civilization is our need to deny we are animals. In just a few centuries of setting ourselves apart as landlords of the Garden of Eden, exempt from the natural order and entitled to hold dominion, we have managed to behave like so-called animals anyway, and on top of it to wreck most of what took three billion years to assemble. Air, water, earth and fire - so much of our own element so vastly contaminated, we endanger our own future. Apparently we never owned the place after all. Like every other animal, we're locked into our niche; the mercury in the ocean, the pesticides on the soybean fields, all come home to our breast-fed babies. In the silent spring we are learning it's easier to escape from a chain gang than a food chain. Possibly we will have the sense to begin a new century by renewing our membership in the Animal Kingdom.

Advice to the Cook

Doing some research on Oryoki and found this in an article giving advice to monastery cooks -

"Do not discriminate between the faults or virtues of the monks or whether they are senior or junior. You do not even know where you stand, so how can you put others into categories. Judging others from within the boundaries of your own opinions, how could you be anything other than wrong?"

Monkey Mind

As I sit down to read yesterday's mail, I notice my mind is madly ticking off a list of other things I could (and should) be doing. It seems pretty irritated that I haven't yet learned to bi-locate.

Is this what Buddhists call monkey mind? Chattering on and on, not always making a lot of sense. Either nagging and dissatisfied or off in its own little world, going on about one thing or another. Making up stories. Trying to get me to believe they're real. Relying on dubious premises to cobble together "the way things are."

It takes careful investigation and tireless effort to begin to unravel the tangle of thoughts woven over the years by a relentless monkey mind.

Relax

Found this wonderful paragraph on deep relaxation in Chogyam Trungpa’s Shambhala.

If you are able to relax – relax to a cloud by looking at it, relax to a drop of rain and experience its genuineness – you can see the unconditional quality of reality, which remains very simply in things as they are. When you are able to look at things without saying, “this is for me or against me,” I can go along with this,” or “I cannot go along with this,” then you are experiencing the state of being of the cosmic mirror, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. You may see a fly buzzing; you may see a snowflake, you may see ripples of water; you may see a black widow spider. You may see anything, but you can actually look at all of those things with simple and ordinary, but appreciative perception.

Indra's Net

I’ve always liked the Buddhist story of Indra’s net. Here’s a short version by Francis H. Cook from his book, Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra.

Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.

Not long ago, I realized what a brilliant illustration of interconnectedness this is. I’d known about the metaphor for years and had some intellectual understanding of it. But thinking about it recently, I felt the reality of it like an electric shock that shook me from the top of my head right down to my toes. Every action, every thought we have changes the world; subtly no doubt, but certainly nonetheless. Changes not just our world, but the world. It can’t be other than that. Yikes!

The Garden of Eden

I like this poem a lot:

Paradise is not a place
where we are going.
It is a place
where we are from.
We can go there
at any time.
It is our beliefs
that lock us in our hell.

It is the sacredness of this moment
that is the key to freedom.

~John Squadra
from This Ecstasy

Heroes

Yesterday I read an article about Shoji Hamada, a real hero for me and many potters interested in the Mingei tradition. The article spent some time detailing how he worked, how he got his start in pottery, even what he wore.

I read the article carefully because my tendency is to try to emulate the people I admire. I actually considered wearing a samue for work, just like Shoji. I wondered again what it would be like to have his mindset, his attitude, his lifestyle. Yet, I know exactly what it would be like. Just like it is now.

Not that I think I’m anything special, just the opposite really. I can imagine how it would feel to be a living legend as Hamada certainly was. I can make up stories for myself of how I’d think, how I’d spend my day, what I’d say to my friends and colleagues, but I know that if I really were that person I’d feel exactly as I feel today. I’d spend my days just as I spend them and say the things I say. It would be nothing special.

I don’t think we can really live out our stories. We have to live in the real world as ourselves, doing what we do. And no matter how remarkable we may be, to ourselves we’re just us, living everyday the way we live it. Nothing special.

Tangle

This painting by Tiffany Liu does a nice job of illustrating the problem with my brain. Knotted, tangled, convoluted ideas upon ideas, upon more ideas. Some of them old, rotting and gathering flies.

The tangle as a whole is an object of my own making. New ideas are added daily and quickly find their way into the tangle that is . . . well, me. My job, as a person who spends some time trying to see things the way they actually are, is to sort through the mess, untangle the ideas, painstakingly, one at a time.

Once a thread is separated from the tangled mess, I aim to look at it, consider its relevance in the here and now, discard those ideas that don’t pass the test and keep the relevant ones from again becoming part of the tangle. It’s going to take some time . . .

Passion

I’ve always been passionate about many things. My work, animal rights, my kayak, the water it floats in, and coconut meringue pie. And there are those things I hate – war and torture come to mind today, also flippancy about important things, and Brussels sprouts Strangely, the fact that I’ve really never tasted a Brussels sprout doesn’t stop me from hating them.

So this morning I’m reading* an article titled Smile at Fear by Tibetan Buddhist writer Carolyn Rose Gimian. In it, she mentions the Buddhist teaching of the three poisons – passion, aggression and ignorance. Poison passion?

I’ve always felt good about being passionate. After all isn’t the opposite of passion apathy? Or is the opposite of passion nonattachment? The thing about passion is that it keeps us from seeing things the way they are. We view things we’re passionate about as if through a curtain that blurs the shape, obscures the details and makes it easy for us to see pretty much just what we want to see rather than what’s really there. Just trying to see things as they are is a lifetime occupation.

*Shambhala Sun , March, 2009

Feel the Burn

I don’t like feeling pain.

When in pain I want to distract myself and will more often than not do whatever it takes to serve the purpose. I know I’m not alone because our economy depends on this rather chicken-shit human tendency. I’m talking about drug manufacturers, of course, but they’re not alone.

The entertainment industry distracts and amuses us, and makes us care about its stories. We can be so completely engrossed that we succeed in forgetting our own pain; and even more readily cease to care about the pain of others. Frighteningly, our willingness to avoid, seek pleasure, forget and be apathetic is essential for our economy.

In the hope of avoiding fear and pain, I am at this moment trying to not think about the implications of this . . .