January 2003

[>>>]

Rev. Myo, the resident practice teacher at Hartford Street Zen Center, has his very own weblog to keep both the diligent and non-diligent practitioner equally up-to-date with temple matters.

The non-diligent label certainly applies to me, at least for this week. Okay. Deep breath. Try harder next week. More trips to the City. More sitting. More breathing. In and out.

Next week, also, another therapy session with T. Something from this week's session to continue to talk with her about and while talking, at the same time, continuing to learn "how" to talk through things...to be still with "the stuff that comes up"...not to run away...or change the subject...and how to be okay ~~when~~ that I have no answer.

All this on next week's practice agenda. Plus, y'know...life.

[24 January 2003]

[>>>]

One of my favorite websites is boingboing and one of its "primary contributors" is Cory Doctorow. An interview with him is a feature on today's sfgate. He also works for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization that everyone who cares about freedom and the 'net should join. Like, what are you waiting for? It's a no-brainer!

[23 January 2003]

[>>>]

"I bow to buddhas Who teach contingency (No death, no birth, No nothing, no eternity, No arrival, no departure, No identity, no difference) And ease fixations." - Nagarjuna

[23 January 2003]

[>>>]

Though no longer a boy, I do like to think of myself as a girlie boy. Soooo, I am excited that a bunch of us are planning to go see Hedwig this weekend. It would probably be just way, way too much goodness to visit Esta Noche afterwards!

[23 January 2003]

[>>>]

From the I Scare Myself Department: Even scarier than the Appointed One's pick of Jerry Thacker to serve on his Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS, is the thought that George might believe that this is a "middle of the road" choice. Nooooooo. I mean do George and Laura's pals, Lynne and Dick believe that their daughter is living a deathstyle? Of course, the memory hole gremlins have been hard at work. The reference to Mr. Thacker's sermonette has been edited off of the web page at BJU. Thank you Google cache!

[23 January 2003]

[>>>]

Jeanette Winterson, the author of one of my favorite books, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, has a wonderful website that I just came across this morning.

And Meg at megnut unintentionally reminded me that she had introduced me to this powerful poem by Marge Piercy.

[23 January 2003]

[>>>]

Patrick over at homoLudens has a second installment of his slide show from Saturday's march, prefaced by a quietly moving essay about himself and a decision that dumb luck spared me from having to make.

[22 January 2003]

[>>>]

Alright, this just in from the eating crow department: I was able to access the City Council webcast archive through Mozilla. I just needed install the latest Windows Media Player. But, based on my own experience using the City's website, I think I'll hold to my comment regarding the overall tendency of the IT staff to "standardize" on Microsoft, even if it means that other browsers can't fully access the site. But to close on a positive note, the webcasts are a way cool addition to the information-stream regarding City government.

[21 January 2003]

[>>>]

My friend Drew points out that the City of Berkeley now offers webcasts of City Council meetings, along with an archive of past Council meetings. It's pretty cool, however, I couldn't get it to work in Mozilla, although it might be possible. I did get to try it out using Internet Explorer. It is interesting to me that the City of Berkeley's own Department of Information Technology seems to prefer to make the City's website more accessible for those citizens using Microsoft products than for us hoi polloi out here who prefer alternatives that don't contribute to Bill G's positive cash flow.

[21 January 2003]

[>>>]

Patrick over at homoLudens has a nice slide show of photos from Saturday's peace march. And I agree, more like 200,000 than 50,000. And...it seems there have been further developments in the crowd estimation issue.

[21 January 2003]

[>>>]

"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with a lost opportunity. The "tide in the affairs of men" does not remain at the flood; it ebbs. We may cry out deperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residue of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on..." We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation." - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

[20 January 2003]

[>>>]

I didn't make it over to the City this morning but I did manage to sit for 25 minutes at work. A zafu is a handy item to have stashed away at work. So is an alarm clock. Just part of my on-going attempt to have a sitting practice on my own, parallel to my "formal" sitting in the zendo at Hartford Street. I find that sitting alone requires a certain amount of personal discipline, which, ahem, has so far proved to be a challenge for me. Sitting with other people, on the other hand, imposes a kind of social discipline, which helps constrain my tendencies towards laziness, towards doing something "another time". There is an intimacy in sitting with others in a dimly lit room, at 6 a.m., or for that matter, 6 p.m., for 40 minutes at a stretch. An intimacy I am only beginning to appreciate. A long 40 minutes in which you become aware of not only your own breaths and body noises, but of those others with you in the zendo. I also need to feel the same, alone, by myself, armed only with zafu and alarm clock.

Later on, I managed to get myself upstairs for a matinee showing of Morvern Callar. I knew it would be on the bleak side and my expectations were met. Samantha Morton was great. The film was suitably bleak. What more can one ask for?

[20 January 2003]

[>>>]

I'm looking forward to tomorrow's holiday for Dr. King. If the BART is running its regular weekday schedule, and if my body responds to the wake-up call, I'll likely go over to the City early - that's real early - for morning meditation. Then I'll come back over to Berkeley and work for a few hours on several reports that I need to finish, then top it all off with going upstairs to the cinema and seeing Lynne Ramsey's Morvern Callar.

Sometime during the day, I will try to find a audio link for Dr. King's speech at Riverside Church against the Vietnam War. I'm old enough to remember the recruiters coming to my high school and making their enlistment pitches. I never burned my draft card, but when I was sweet seventeen I started hanging out around someone who was active with the War Resister's League. And in July 1970, while I was in Denver, I remember my elation when my birthdate was picked with a very high number, 338, in the draft lottery.

Of course, retrospectively, that remembrance of my joy turns bittersweet when I think about the cost of that conflict, for Americans and Vietnamese alike. In the late 1970's and early 1980's I became acquainted with many homeless vets who carried deep deep scars, both physical and emotional, from that war.

Thinking about that, and the precipice that the current administration has placed us upon, makes these words from Dr. King even more relevant:

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. n the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood."

[19 January 2003]

[>>>]

Another cynic confronts hope.

[19 January 2003]

[>>>]

Mothers don't let your sons grow up to be district attorneys! Or your daughters! This week's Village Voice has Richard Goldstein writing on the persecution of Paul Reubens.

This sad tale reminds me of my long held belief that people who serve as prosecuting attorneys should be forever prevented from serving in any other capacity in government, elected or otherwise. They probably should still be allowed to vote, however.

[19 January 2003]

[>>>]

"...Predicting the future, Gibson has always maintained, is mostly a matter of managing not to blink as you witness the present..."

I read the review of the new William Gibson book in today's New York Times. Seems I have yet another book on my "to read" list.

[19 January 2003]

[>>>]

More Stephen Batchelor on Nagarjuna:

"Each chapter of Nagarjuna's Verses from the Center is an audacious excursion into the sublime landscape of contingency along the track of emptiness. Nagarjuna invites the reader to accompany him along the twists and turns of pathways he has created through this landscape. Just as a path is nothing but a space that has been cleared of those obstacles that prevent freedom of movement across a terrain, so emptiness is nothing but a space cleared of those fixations that prevent freedom of movement through the dilemmas and ambiguities of life. To follow the track of emptiness is to discern the living contours of contingency as they unfold from moment to moment."

[18 January 2003]

[>>>]

What if we could not imagine peace? As Diane di Prima wrote in Rant:

"...the war that matters is the war against the imagination all other wars are subsumed in it.

the ultimate famine is the starvation of the imagination..."

[18 January 2003]

[>>>]

I went over to the City this morning. I started late, having some family errands to run first and by the time I made it down to BART, the parking lot was full. And this on a Saturday morning! There was a big crowd at the station and the train was packed all the way over to the City. I didn't march, but did find my way over to Civic Center, along with many thousands of others...

On the way back to Berkeley, catching the train at Civic Center station there was an amusing sight: An entire BART car seemingly taken over by a hippie meets Weimar-era cabaret meets band of gypsies marching band.

[18 January 2003]

[>>>]

Tomorrow, you can join with other Buddhists and with non-Buddhists, at the San Francisco March for Peace To Stop the War Against Iraq.

[17 January 2003]

[>>>]

Here's a little blast from the past: "... Drew King isn't just the studliest blogging buddhist online, he's one hell of a nice guy and I did love hearing about his tales from the nudist colony. ..."

And by the way, happy birthday Drew!

[17 January 2003]

[>>>]

Three poems by John Giorno, via The Barcelona Review.

[17 January 2003]

[>>>]

Reading Stephen Batchelor this morning:

"Herein lies the dilemma Nagarjuna addresses in his verses: how can we make sense of life without literalizing the very concepts we need in order to make sense of life? For Nagarjuna, this is not just a semantic riddle. A sense of life as essentially composed of discrete bits and pieces appears to be embedded in the grammar of the languages we speak. It may lie deeper as an instinctual survival mechanism, or, as Nagarjuna would have believed, as an inborn, delusory tendency that binds us to a repetitive cycle of death and rebirth. To experience life, even for a moment, in a way that is no longer in thrall to such a mechanism or tendency would require a shift of perspective in the core of one's being."

[16 January 2003]

[>>>]

I had a chance last night to be present with other people as they grappled with the day to day concerns that support their practice, my practice and that of others in the community. I was struck by the similarities with my own work place, how each of us, perceiving ourselves as coming from a place of congruence with shared values, must still work intentionally at blending our individual points of view into a collective effort. How hard is it to do that? In my experience, hard, very very hard. I don't know where I am going with this...but it seems important.

[16 January 2003]

[>>>]

Now I'm deep into the Stephen Batchelor translation of Nagarjuna's Verses from the Center.

[15 January 2003]

[>>>]

I finally read my way through Abbot Obora's commentary on the Heart Sutra:

"When it is said 'there is no ignorance nor extinction of ignorance nor any of the rest including age-and-death', it means that from the standpoint of Emptiness there is no ignorance to be cut off, to be taken away. In Mahayana, if there is ignorance it is no obstacle. And so with the rest. If there is age-and-death, it is no obstacle. There is no extinction of ignorance and no extinction of age-and-death. The true nature of ignorance is Buddha-nature, the passions are the Bodhi, so it is not a question of extinction of ignorance. Birth-and-death is Nirvana, so it is not a question of extinction of birth-and-death. There is no suffering, cause of suffering, extinction of suffering, nor Way. There is no suffering, no cause to be reduced to nothingness. So there is no Way by which to put them away. Still less need there be some world of nothingness called Nirvana.

No wisdom, no attainment. In Hinayana the highest wisdom is realization of the cutting off of delusion and karma-action, but there is no such wisdom and no realization-attainment of some Nirvana-nothingness in which everything ceases to exist.

We have to experience the world of release at each step in life, and live lightly without leaving a track. There is still the present world of ignorance and age-and-death, the world of pain and the causes of pain, but they are no longer impediments. Rather it is just through them that we get the deep experience of being unburdened, and this is the secret of the repetition of the words 'no, no'."

[15 January 2003]

[>>>]

My Saturday was full of old bones and sea shells:

I sat at Hartford Street Zen Center yesterday, beginning at 9 a.m. and going until 5 p.m. Okay. We didn't sit the whole day. There would be breaks for walking meditation, kin-hin, a dharma talk, a delicious lunch, an afternoon rest break and chanting. But a lot of sitting for my old joints, in any case.

The pain began with the first sitting after the afternoon rest period. The pain started as a general discomfort with my half-lotus position and proceeded to grow and grow. The longer the sit went the more I felt as if I was feeding some hungry monster. On top of it, I felt sleepy, and my thoughts took on a dream-like quality. My mind seemed in television reception mode. A seemingly endless stream of thoughts layered themselves between the aching pain in my legs and my sleepy mind. Where went the stillness, the attention to breath? The call to kin-hin was a relief!

The second afternoon sit was much the same. How to tame something so ephemeral as mind? The ache in the legs was not as intense, since I changed my sitting position. Still the streaming dream-like thoughts and the sleepy mind.

It was only with the last sit of the day that I felt, again, attentive to the task of breathing in and out. The stream of thoughts slowed to a trickle. The bell rang. We ended the day with bowing and chanting.

Afterwards, I took Muni to BART, BART to Oakland, and joined an old friend and his brother for an incredible show of music at Yoshi's, hearing the sounds of Steve Turre's Sanctified Shells, a rhythmical, swirling, soulful, confluence of musical cultures, almost impossible to describe, impossible to resist.

[12 January 2003]

[>>>]

Hartford Street Zen Center is having an all-day sit this coming Saturday which I am planning to attend. This will be my first all-day practice event. Fortunately for public transportation dependent me, the sit officially begins at 9 a.m., although I understand that the zendo will be open for sitters at 6. Of course, the dear folks at BART don't open for business on Saturdays until 6. Alas!

[9 January 2003]

[>>>]

I've been carrying Philip Whalen's, Canoeing Up Cabarga Creek around in my backpack for much of the week. There's one poem that I especially like, which begins:

"We open the zendo at six p.m. Sometimes people come. Here we are stillness parked in silence Great big nothing happens in imaginary void."

[9 January 2003]

[>>>]

Sad and bummed to learn that a good friend and current colleague has decided to leave the area. Just another reminder about impermanence and all that...

[9 January 2003]

[>>>]

On a brighter note, I'm really glad that gmtPlus9 is back from hiatus. There are always treasures to be found there.

[9 January 2003]

[>>>]

Comfort the dying, help the homeless, assist youth transition into adulthood, help people survive with HIV/AIDS...it's never too late to write those end of the year checks!

[2 January 2003]

[>>>]

I went to a "Rock! for the Environment" benefit last night, a fundraiser for the Eyak Preservation Council, a native group fighting to preserve the environmental integrity of their ancestral lands. A good cause, fighting long odds, especially given the rapacious embrace being given to Mother Earth by the current administration. Of course, over the long haul, perhaps Mother Earth does have the upper hand.

[2 January 2003]

[>>>]

Lately, I've been reading a commentary on the Heart Sutra by Abbot Obora, published in a book of writings translated by Trevor Leggett. The Chapel Hill Zen Center also has some reflections on the Heart Sutra, by the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center, Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi.

Lately, I've been trying to meditate more, finding my way more often, though still infrequently, to Hartford Street Zen Center.

It's hard getting my body up at 3 a.m. so I can get my body and mind over to the Castro by 6 a.m., which is why I rarely make the morning sit. Then it seems hard keeping my mind awake...I count breaths, one to ten, and when I get off track my thoughts seem to have the quality of dreams...was I asleep?

It's also hard getting over to the City in the late afternoon, for the 6 p.m. sit. It's differently hard...hard letting go of the workday, letting go of the rush rush to get over to the City...

After meditation, there is a series of prostrations and then we usually chant the Heart Sutra. I have to read from one of the printed copies that the zendo has handy...for those like me who don't know the words by heart.

This afternoon I read a poem by Philip Whalen, "Obsolete Models" which ends with these lines:

"What do I want What am I really after Sometimes a tree answers."

[1 January 2003 Happy New Year!]

QueryLily