Contemplative Photography part 2
If you read part one of this book review and were wondering when this book is going to be released, you are in luck as it’s just around the corner…like next week April 12th, according to Amazon.com. If you are a person who enjoys the process of photography, it’s a worthy read. If you are interested in a Buddhist perspective on how we envision the world, it is a worthy read. I was lucky in that both of those things interest me, so I thoroughly enjoyed going thru this book.
The last few chapters of the book are mostly technical with details on basics like the mechanics of the camera and the workings of light. It’s not enough to overwhelm you, but if you are reading the book for the reasons I mentioned above, you may find your eyes glazing over and it’s ok to skip those chapters, tho do be sure and check out the pictures.
This book overall has been a nice intersection for me of where meditation, study, and real world action all come together in a beautiful and harmonious way. This intersection is, for me, the type of sweet spot I look for in all spiritual paths I’ve skipped along over the years. Andy Karr shared with me in some of his emails that this kind of sweet spot is what his teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche emphasized in his teachings. The Practice of Contemplative Photography, for this reason, is again, a read worth your time and money.
Profiles in LGBT Spirit
Image via Wikipedia
I’m starting a new type of post to put up periodically here called Profiles In LGBT Spirit in which I send out a list of questions to a willing LGBT participant to answer and become a post. Initially I thought I’d make it have a Buddhist focus, and initially it may well be, but I don’t want it limited to that.
If you are a an LGBT person would like to do this, please email me a freedomrocks1969 at yahoo dot com. So you’ll have an idea of what you are committing to, I’ll post the questions below. I’d like for this to become a regular posting here, so if you even KNOW an LGBT person who would be willing to do it, please pass my contact info along to them. All spiritual paths are welcome.
My first posting will be from @foolishbeing as soon as I get it put together. I want to thank him for being the first participant.
The questions:
1) Spirituality often evolves over time. It can start with what tradition we grew up in, or if there was no tradition, it may be bits and pieces we pick up on our own. What was your spiritual timeline before you found your current path?
2) What attracted you to your current path and how long would you say you’ve been following it?
3) Initial attraction is sometimes fickle. What keeps you on your current path?
4) Do you talk about your path with other people? Practice with other people? Or is it a private experience for you? If you do interact with others regarding your path, in what capacity do you do that? If your practice is more private, what form does it take?
5) What teachers and/or teachings resonate the most with you on your current path?
6) How do you live your path on a daily basis? (in the bathroom, at work, with friends, with partners, etc)
7) What external resources, if any, do you use on a regular basis? (websites, blogs, twitter feeds, etc)
8) If you had to explain your path to someone from another planet, what would you tell them?
Book Review – The World is Made of Stories
The World is Made of Stories by David R. Loy was sent to me from Wisdom Publications for review. This makes another of those books that they have asked me to look over that I had not a clue about and was just hoping I’d not have to give negative feedback on. I was again, for the second time, pleasantly surprised.
David R. Loy, a teacher in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition of Zen, has written a cool little book. It’s not terribly long and it is written in what I would call mind bytes. Those are like sound bytes but they are just the right size for your brain to grip on to without getting overwhelmed with too much data at once. Each paragraph is a blend of thought, explanation, question, and koan.
His aim in this book is an exploration of what Buddhists might label as attachments. He does this by renaming them “stories”. Stories are the ways we make sense of the world around us and inside us. There are stories of all sizes from why my tummy hurts, to why I don’t get along with my brother, to where I fit in the universe. The linking of attachments to stories became very interesting as the book progressed for me because he makes the point that we can never be separated from our stories…we can never be totally free of attachements…because they are what we make and they are what makes us. It comes back to the samsara is in nirvana and nirvana is in samsara and they cannot be separated.
One of the things I really appreciated about his writing style is that it was rarely a harsh declaration and more of an open invitation to chew on the thoughts he lays out one by one. At the end I felt like a good Zen lesson had slipped into my experience when I wasn’t even looking.
Interspersed with his writings are quotes from a wide variety of authors, thinkers, and spiritual leaders. In fact, the book almost reads like a quotation book at times, but they are woven together in a way that tells the great story of the book.
This book is a perfect bedside reader as the snippets are brief enough that you can swallow a whole lot of them or you can read a few and put it down and still feel like you absorbed some good and thoughtful information. When I finished it, I began searching for other things he has written. (The Great Awakening, The Dharma of Dragons and Daemons, and Money, Sex, War, Karma…if you are wondering too).
Book Review: Zen Radicals, Rebels, and Reformers
I recently was asked by Wisdom Publications to review a not yet released work called Zen Radicals, rebels, and Reformers by Perle Besserman and Manfred Steger. I was a stoked on the one hand because I love rebels and a bit apprehensive because I pretty much don’t like history books. I wasn’t sure where this one was going to fall exactly, but I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. This is really a good read.
The book focuses on 8 men who changed Zen in various ways over the past thousand or so years. The list of 8 is not, of course, exhaustive, as the focus is greatly Rinzai focused more so than anything else, so Dogen is not in it at all. Nevertheless it was a good read for me.
Each chapter focuses on one man and each begins with a look not at the man at all, but the politics and culture he was born into. Before you ever meet the Zen dude, you know what was going on in his culture and the Zen practice of the time. Often, these men were disillusioned with the state of affairs in their province and in the way Zen was being corrupted and co-opted into politics.
My favorite came right at the first example, that of Layman Pang who kept a family and taught while living life (in fact his whole family were well versed in zen practice). This is the man who gave us the example of Zen as being “Drawing water and chopping wood”.
My second favorite would be potty mouth Rinzai who said Zen is “just shitting and pissing and becoming ordinary”. “If you base your understanding on secondhand notes from some dead old guy…you are nothing but a blind idiot” he is also quoted as saying.
Bassui impressed me as well with several quotes: “I became a monk to understand the great matter of life and death, not to wear Buddhist robes”, and “Reciting part of a sutra with the desire to benefit others is like reciting a recipe in the hope it will prevent people from starving”. It was here, as well as many other places in the book that I busted out laughing. It was Bassui’s point as stated in the book that “Buddha…did not gain buddhahood from reading and reciting sutras, but from meditating”.
If there was a common thread amongst these men, it was that they promoted practice as the Buddha way, not specific rituals or chants. I think this is why I liked the book as much as I did. It felt like these dead old guys were echoing my thoughts on why I practice Zen. Well, that and they have a lot of bathroom humor. It seems that talking about poop was a popular way to shake people out of their calcified modes of thinking.
When this book comes out in January of next year, it’s definitely worth a look even if you hate history books as much as I do.
Day 98 of 100 – Genjo what?
Over the years I have been a spiritual vagabond, I’ve had this unspoken feeling in me that as a human, I am the perfect intersection of spirit and matter. I don’t think I would have ever put that into those exact words until recently, but that is the gist of how I felt. Maybe ‘spirit’ would be more like whatever I could not see or understand. It didn’t matter what I didn’t know about it, it was very much present and not in some obtuse way, but like something in my cells or dna. I can feel it, I just don’t know how the equation works to unlock it…yet.
There has been something about Zen that seems to address this for me in an unspoken way. That’s probably why I was so drawn to Zen as opposed to anything else, because it got me at that non-verbal level in my bones.
In what I’ve studied up to now (in books, not zazen) this idea has mainly been hinted at like words swirling around a black hole in space. A thing only discovered by the effect it has on other things.
Ok, so I told ya that to tell ya this:
Recently my Zentor recommended a book to me…Realizing Genjokoan by Shohaku Okumura. It is a study of this pithy bit of Dogen’s work and I’m finding it quite awesome (and I’m only on page 38). 
It’s got the feel of one of those kinds of books you read many time and study…some of the pages are getting weak from the amount of highlight ink I’m putting on them.
The reason I’m mentioning it now as opposed to just doing a single review is because early on, he hit the nail on the head regarding my spirit/matter thing I talked about above. Okumura starts the book off by analyzing the kanji Dogen used to write the title, Genjokoan, with. Apparently Doggie Diddles made very particular choices in the characters he used and they were not the everyday choices, either.
Anyhoot, I normally find this kind of analysis quite boring as shit, but Okumura actually held my interest. He works the word koan down to a definition based on the particular kanji Dogen uses and this is where the quote comes in that this post is centered around.
…the word koan expresses the reality of our own lives; we are the intersection of equality (universality, unity, oneness of all beings) and inequality (difference, uniqueness, particularity, individuality). Reality, or emptiness, includes both unity and difference. –Shohaku Okumura
This struck me as significantly as when I read Thich Nhat Hanh’s interpretation of the Heart Sutra form/emptiness phrase as “wave is water, water is wave…” The two quotes really help me validate what feels like one of the squishier bits of the Buddhist teachings and that’s Dirty Dharma, baby.
I’m nowhere near done with this book. In fact, I’ve only scratched the surface, but I already have to recommend it. Put your paws on it if you can.
Day 86 of 100 – Sometimes Buddha is Tricksy
To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by everything – Dogen
so…Buddha nature can be anything anywhere at anytime
My cat Ruby found this out recently when Tricksy Buddha snuck up on her while she was sleeping.
It looked like he might be trying to be mischievous or on the road to some havoc. I think sometimes life does appear threatening that way. When what’s really happening is Tricksy Buddha is trying to give a good belly rub.
Or even give you full Dharma Transmission.
Where did you find Buddha today?
Day 85 of 100 – Seeing Buddha Everywhere
That Old Guy, Dogen is often quoted as saying “To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by everything”. I’ve come to understand this to mean that when you teacup is empty, you can put anything in it (Miss Queer Divine Dissatisfaction gave a recent example of the teacup filled with shit and grumpy drag queens). This also means that you can find Dharma and Buddha everywhere if you look…well if you look by not looking or with eyes that do not see or some cryptic Zen shit.
Anyway, the point is, I was out on the front porch this morning and I’ll be damned if I didn’t find Buddha right under my sage bushes.
Where will you find your Buddha today?
Even Zen Drag Queens Get the Blues
Hello Pumpkins,
I wanted to write you a note and let you know that even zen drag queens get the blues. I know sometimes if you read a lot that it sounds like the practice of zen can mellow you out and make you simply delicious to be around at all times, but it’s just not the way it is. I think it’s important to see the dirty side of Dharma just like Zenfant does here on this blog.
Zen can empty out your teacup just fine but, honey, that means some days it’s gonna fill up with shit.
Today is DEFCON 1 for me. In case you don’t know what that is, I’ll explain: Dharmic & Equanimity Failure Coming On Now.
Case in point, we are in the middle of a weeklong retreat here at Dharma Diva Monastery and I have found myself simply done with bitchy queens. That’s right, I am done with it for the moment. I have left my right hand woman, Juwana Nirvana, in charge for a while. Let me tell you when Miss Queer Divine Dissatisfaction gets her last gay nerve worked down to a nub, it’s time to for her to go do the ritual of last resort so nobody gets hurt. So you guessed it, I’m eating at Ramone’s Mexican Restaurant in lovely Pagosa Springs, Colorado.
Don’t nothin’ relieve stress like a steaming pile of enchiladas.
The last straw was our Chinese exchange student, Sindy Lu Hu complaining for the 15th time about how her legs hurt during meditation. Well there’s gonna be some pain when you sit with your stilettos on, damn it. We sit with the pain and if you pansy ass queens can’t get that thru your wigs, you’ll never get enlightened.
So I’m sitting here penning you this letter with my usual eye liner and parchment…I may be pissed, but I don’t have to give up my panache. Dora Jean Trujillo just took my order…took three tries to get it right…says she just got back from giving platelets over at the clinic. Platelets? What the fuck are platelets? Is that something munchkins eat off of? I don’t care about your platelets, bring me my enchiladas. “Dora Jean,” I said, “get me my food now. I am thru with this day. THA-REW”. I am so done it took two syllables to get the idea across.
Yes I would like to shank someone and I do have one built into my left stiletto. That’s why they tell you don’t make a drag queen take of her shoes…she’s probably about to cut you. My food is here, let me pick this letter up after I eat otherwise it might get stained with Dora Jean’s blood.
Ok, so I’m much better now. Like I said, sometimes an empty teacup can get filled with shit and you have to deal with it as it is, but it is ok to eat your way to some equanimity first if you need to.
So I’m headed back now to kick some ass and take some names and whip these bitches into shape. I think I’m gonna find me one of those big sticks like Jomon uses on her people when they get out of line. I may even tell them that Jody’s depilatory method is a necessary but very secret zen ritual they have to master before they can leave.
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. … No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others -Martha Graham
Day 78 of 100 – An Experiment
Image via Wikipedia
I’ve been thinking about the aim of zazen meditation being the quieting down of the neural net of the brain lately. Suzuki Roshi suggests meditating with no gaining thought…no holding on, no expectations, no goal, etc. But it occurred to me that when I sit with a timer for my meditation, I do have a gaining thought, a goal…getting to the end of the meditation, wondering when the bell is going to sound, etc.
So for today’s first meditation, I ran a stop watch app rather than my timer app. I wanted to see how long I would go without a predetermined ending. I would stop sitting when I felt “done”, but I had no definition of done. I just sat. I used my Zentor’s instruction of resting in awareness. That was all I did. No timer. No set end point. No goal. No gaining thought.
What a total mind blower! Meditating this way changed the entire energy of my sitting. I was able to just sit…shikantaza…didn’t have to cut my eyelids off or nothin like you know who in the pic.
The space it opened up was like a breath of fresh mountain air while looking out over huge blue skies.
Cool shit.
