Day 68 of my 43rd year and a book review

Dang I’m a busy boy.  So strange for a person for whom laziness is an art form.  Out of the Memorial Day long weekend, I had only one day of nothing to do.  I sat twice today since the weekend got away from me and I missed a day of sitting in there somewhere.  Something seems wrong about that.  One good thing though, I finished a book that Wisdom Pubs sent me for review.  It’s called If You’re Lucky, Your Heart Will Break.  It’s a Zen memoir by James Ishmael Ford.  According to the advanced copy, it’s due out in September this year.  I call it a memoir but it’s more of a collection of essays and blog posts like many of these types of Zen books are I’ve read lately.  I’ve come to appreciate this format quite a bit as it shows a variety of situations in which the author works through in words the way Zen penetrates your life like a “slow rolling explosion” (those are Roshi Joan Sutherland’s words).

Like most books of this type, there are chapters on his early life and introduction to Zen.  He also becomes a UU minister as well as a Zen priest along the way.  His writing shows that this is one very educated man as well as a Zen lineage holder.  There were times where I had to really think about what he was saying as he had used an obscure reference or used a complicated turn of phrase that most writers seem to shy away from.  I think there was only once I felt something he said really went over my head that I may have gotten if I were more academic.

The gem of this book is in the last chapters where he blends together Christian teachings and Zen precepts into what he calles the seven suggestions.  He goes through these as a Zen practitioner would but he is very explicit about it in a way that most are not.  He tells you ahead of time that he’s going to take them first literally, then through the eyes of the non dual state of mind, then thirdly with a blended vision of the two in a perspective he calls the compassionate view.  I found this to be the best treatment of the precepts (in Zen there are 5…don’t kill, don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t misuse sex, don’t become intoxicated) that I’ve seen in a while.

When this comes out in September, I’d say it’s a recommended read…and I say that without reservations or qualifications like I have to on a lot of books that get sent my way.

What ya want me to write about? Day 56 of my 43rd year

zen (Photo credit: mkebbe)

Huh?  what?  tell me in comments…

something silly?

something serious?something seriously silly?

something you just wanna know about in my dorky voice?a lot of meditation puts me in a place where i don’t generate a lot of words on my own, so help me out.  be a coconut of wakefulness for me.  i’m not like the Zen gods who can be both nondual minded and have lots to say on my own power…which makes it kinda funny that 2 people now have said out loud i should write a book.

 

So,

how are you?

Genjokoan Stanza 5 and Day 47 of my 43rd year

Interesting experiences the past few days:

I go out several times a day to play ball with the dog.  It keeps him exercised and theoretically more calm and it’s one of the little rituals

that I attend to that form the container of my life. There have been several times in the past few days where I’ve engaged that ritual and found myself looking up at the clouds and watching a solitary bird gliding around on thermals just being a bird.  That was not the interesting part, however.  The interesting part is that there was no thought of “bird” or “clouds” or “thermals”, I just used those words because that’s what this format is about.  The experience was just that, a pure experience.  No concepts.  No labels.  I looked up and my eyes took in birdglidingontheramalscloudsasbackground as a total experience of eyes doing what eyes do while bird does what birds do and clouds do what clouds do.  There was no sense of being separate from those things either.  Shane was as much birdglidingontheramalscloudsasbackground as birdglidingontheramalscloudsasbackground was Shane in that moment.

The same thing has been happening on the cushion.  When I look into the wall, the wall is looking into me.  Sound familiar?  “…when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you” … Friedrich Nietzsche.  Or the Zen picture of the donkey staring into the well and the well staring into the donkey?  There are times when boundaries of self and other fall away and they seem to be falling away more commonly for me lately. 

It occurred to me during one of these times to go back to Genjokoan and pick up stanza five which is where I left off many months ago because it just eluded me, but this time around it seemed pretty plain. Makes me think Genjokoan could be translated as “you better get your meditation on before you pick this shit up, kid”.

Anyway, stanza five is currently speaking to me as an expression of walking the world minus concepts.  More practice may have me see it differently later, but at least it isn’t totally puzzling me anymore.  Here it is as translated by Shohaku Okumura in the fabulous book Realizing Genjokoan.

When buddhas are truly buddhas they don’t need to perceive they are buddhas; however, they are enlightened buddhas and they continue actualizing Buddha.  In seeing color and hearing sound with body and mind, although we perceive them intimately, [the perception] is not like reflections in a mirror or the moon in water.  When one side is illuminated, the other is dark.

Chew on that shit.  It’s made my brain hurt for months.

If there is anyone out there who studies Genjokoan, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this stanza as well in comments.

As for the picture, it came up in WordPress’s media gallery based on words I used in this post and frankly it was just too damn funny not to use.  Go Nietzsche go!

Day 44 of my 43rd year

My eyes are changing

 I have found at times, more often than not, I squint.  Not like the sun is in my eyes squint, but the squint that comes from trying to strategize survival in the world.  The squint that says behind this squint I’m trying to figure out how to move from A to B without getting screwed over, hurt, or manipulated. 

I spent a lot of my early years in life being very much afraid.  Not so much afraid of something tangible as being afraid of the what could happen, what might happen, etc.  I spent a lot of time with anxiety in my stomach based on very little real input.  Now some of it was real…I was teased and bullied for being overweight, a fag, had curly hair, you name it…I was the kind of kid that just kinda walked around with a target on his back.

So somewhere I learned how to squint when being invisible didn’t work.  Maybe I was hoping if I looked severe enough, I would just ward off danger before it could manifest.  I probably pursed my lips a bit too or sneered just a touch.

Lately my eyes are changing, though.  I don’t squint near as much.  In fact, I’ve noticed I’m not squinting much at all.  It’s not like I feel like I’ve gotten anything licked, I’m just not nearly as prone to fear as I used to be.  I’m fairly certain that no matter what comes up, I’ll be able to handle it.  Is that meditation or just growing older?  I’m not sure, but frankly, my face feels weird. 

Book Review – Average Buddhist

 

Have you seen the Average Buddhist on facebook at www.facebook.com/averagebuddhist or at her blog www.averagebuddhist.com?  If you haven’t you owe yourself the time to at least go check those places out.  They are the home of Barbara Wilson Arboleda and she’s quite the hoot.  Being a hoot myself, I was drawn to her facebook when I somehow fell across some time ago.

Well check this out, woman done did write a book and she asked me to read it.  It’s called, don’t be shocked..Average Buddhist.

This is a short book of a little over 90 pages and for those of you partial to pictures, it’s got those too.   Her chapters explore several facets of Buddhist practice but not in the way you would think.  Barbara’s not a Buddhist teacher or guru, she’s…average.  She’s like you and me.  She’s Average Joanna Buddhist and her book doesn’t teach Eightfold nothins or four noble thus and suches in the way you’re used to.  It’s a book about life through a Buddhist lens and I promise you there is plenty of everyday application in every story she tells.

Want to know how a dead vole can teach appropriate compassion?  How Staples can help learn a lesson on craving?  How the barista can teach about sangha?  What can a ballerina, a singer and an actor teach you about ‘don’t know mind’?  Well, you gotta read the book.  Much like blog musings, each chapter revolves around an idea we all either struggle with or have to consider as we explore our individual Buddhist paths.

The book ends with a variety of practical exercises you can try on your own…not meditation practices so much as real life experiments for trying on some of these ideas just to see how your mind reacts and maybe give you some insight on how to deepen your own practice daily.

I have a deep appreciation for the efforts of the Average Buddhist because this book, her blog and her facebook page are working towards a more real and grounded daily Buddhist practice.  They move us towards a more whole and organic practice where we are all simultaneously students and teachers for each other.

So go check it out http://booklocker.com/books/6071.html

No, like now…go check it out, really http://booklocker.com/books/6071.html

Day 40 and it’s nothing special

Greetings, Pumpkins,

I wanted to check in with you since it’s been a while since I’ve posted last.  I am on day 40 of my 43^rd year and I’ve been sitting every day as I committed to.  As usual with these extended practices for me, I have a hard time putting things into words because words just don’t seem terribly important right now.

I have noticed that negativity doesn’t stick very well in my brain and that has given me more energy than usual.  It’s interesting to note how each little negative thought and worse yet, negative thought pattern creates a drag on my mental ease.  There are a number of metaphors I can think of, but the one I’ll offer at the moment is like throwing boulders into a river that would ordinarily be calm and flowing.  They jam it up and create rapids.  They make drama where before there was just a calmly flowing process.  Without those boulders of black energy, I sleep better and have more energy during the day.

I used the word ordinary just now because that’s what I find during extended my practices.  I get in touch with how ordinary the mind is underneath.  Meditation clears the clutter and the outdated software code that ego has laid on top of it.

There is a book, I think by the late Joko Beck, called Nothing Special.  I used to think it was either very boring Zen talk or very depressing, but now I understand it more than ever.  I appreciate it more than ever.  I like ordinary mind because it’s primordial.  It’s what’s there before I got my grubby paws on it.  It’s what’s there before some magazine or commercial tells you how to feel or dress or act.

It’s nothing special and that’s cool as shit.

A Birthday Gift to Myself

Today is my birthday.  I’m 43.  As you know if you have ever read my ‘About’ page, one of the motivators behind this blog was to explore what means to be in my forties as a gay man…or as I have told people in person, this blog is about being a fag over forty through the lens of Buddhist practice.  It’s one of the reasons I keep blogging.  It has become part of my practice.

Another practice I have is that on or around my birthday, I get contemplative about my life.  I consider where I am versus where I want to be.  That particular idea has gotten a bit more ridiculous to ask as I have gotten more experienced in Zen.  After all, Zen has at it’s core the skill of accessing non dual consciousness through regular meditation and out of that skill grows the concept of No Self.  It becomes increasingly awkward trying to get a compass bearing on your life when a major life activity is to erase all reference points.  And, strangely enough, it also gets easier because your compass begins to accurately tell you that you are always right here, right now which is exactly where you have to be to move forward anyway.  Simple, huh?

In an effort to keep that simplicity going in my life, I’ve made a commitment.  You may remember if you have read this blog for a while, that I did 100 days of practice some time ago.  I sat twice a day for 100 days.  It was at times easy, hard, or just no big deal.  I certainly learned a lot.  During that time and because of that process, I’ve often wondered why do I even need to make that kind of commitment?  If I’m a practicing Buddhist, my practice IS meditation.  All that other stuff…the eightfold path, precepts, compassion, whatever…those are all developments that come out of meditation.  They are actions and ideas created and taken by humans for the past 2600 years that are gestated in the womb of meditation.

If this is my life path, that path needs energy.  That energy comes from meditation.  100 days?  I should be doing it daily as regularly and with as much impetus as I have for eating to give my body fuel.  My commitment is to put this idea to the test for my 43rd year on the planet.

For year 43, I’m going to sit every day at least once and better yet twice.  The picture here is my zafu and zabuton taking their dharma position at the wall, where I will be taking my dharma position on top of them.  I’ll write about it as the mood strikes.  This commitment is part of all the motivators that started this blog in the first place.

This is my birthday gift to myself and if you get anything out of my writing about it, that is my gift to you.

Book Review: Living Fully

The PR folks for New  World Library asked me to print an excerpt from a new book called Living Fully by Shyalpa Tenzin Rinpoche recently, but having no idea who this person even was, I recommended that they send me the book itself for me to even consider putting anything about it on the blog.

Shyalpa Tenzin is a Tibetan lama trained in their version of Zen which they call Dzogchen.  By whatever name, it is the non dual mind training of the Tibetan cultural Buddhism.  Being that, this book reads like a Zen book but with a lot more use of fluffy words like sublime, purity, taint, and jewels.

Sixteen chapters are made up of many small subchapters most of which barely stretch beyond a page.  It is, by the editor’s preface, a collection of teachings collected over years.  It makes for easy night table reading since no chapter takes more than couple minutes to take in.  There were many good points covered from a non dual/Zen perspective but none so Earth shattering that I wanted to print a quote or excerpt here.

If you are new to non dual teachings and want a primer on how non dual experience plays out in reality, you may find this book helpful.  It is not a meditation instruction though, so if you are looking for a how to book, this is not it.  If, however, you are allergic to flowery language and examples, you may want to avoid this one.

2nd Verse, not quite the same as the 1st

If there is an issue that has plagued me over the years, it has been my weight.  I’m quite sure I’m not in the minority here.  A lot of times, gay men treat ourselves as badly as women do in regards to our body images.  American women are often held to the Barie mold while gay men hold ourselves hostage to the Adonis or Ken doll model (not really cool when you realize Ken doesn’t have a penis…just sayin).  Anyway, you know the story…I’m not good enough or pretty enough or buff enough or thin enough or what the hell ever enough because I can’t airbrush my ass into some kind of perfection.

It was Zen practice that broke my slavery to these types of models and stories I held myself up to.  It’s incredibly freeing to throw down measuring sticks that were never mine in the first place.  My relationship to my body image and my weight was no longer a war to be waged and it gave me the freedom to take appropriate action.  One of the definitions given by a Zen master of the distant past was that Zen is the ability to respond appropriately.  You know from past posts that my response to my weight was to start counting calories and dance Zumba three times a week.  More recently I chose to become a Zumba instructor.

All this activity and work on myself has left me in a weird gray area in relation to my clothes.  I’m between sizes.  My regular stuff is too loose but the next size down is just a smidge too tight.  So responding appropriately, I chose to start counting calories again today until I shrink another ten pounds and see if I can get into those size 32 pants.

The difference in working with myself as opposed to battling myself is tremendous.  What I can get done and the energy I have to get it done is like nothing I’ve experienced before in my life.  There is a quote out of the book I just reviewed, The Buddha Walks Into A Bar, that totally hits this issue on the head and I want to quote it here.

One way to tell if discipline is connected to virtue is to consider whether it bears a feeling of gentleness.  If it feels like you are being hard on yourself, this is likely a form of discipline that is rooted in aggression.  Such a neurotic strictness is based in confusion.

It’s so nice to not be flogging myself anymore.

and by the way, i’ve been posting a lot.  what the hell?