50 in Paris
There was a little celebration in Paris on Monday night. Check it out at the Zen blog created by my dharma brother Man of No Rank: http://pariszen.wordpress.com/
décembre 2008
Ungovernable in Venice
In Venice, everywhere is land's end. Around each corner, water provides direct evidence of the absence of solid ground. Every step is bottomless. But on Monday, we awoke to a deluge in this marvel of a city. Swelled by rain and the tide, the canals and the sea had flowed into the labyrinth of narrow [...]
novembre 2008
How things real-ly are not
Nearly lunch time. Another bus passes outside the window, and a green VW Polo parks beside the linden tree. Fewer and fewer leaves are clinging to its tangle of limbs. The cat snores curled by the radiator. A colleague asks at work yesterday whether there is anything that is not conditioned. I wait, let him [...]
Enter where you are
Another busy day: work, appointments, house chores, Métro rides, sitting group, meals... When sitting I see the revolution at hand. I see how this Zen practice is subversive. I love it! Think of the 9th-century Zen master Gensha: A monk asked him, "Where can I enter Zen?" Gensha replied, "Can you hear the babbling brook?" [...]
Peter Matthiessen, true man of no rank
Peter Muryo Matthiessen Roshi, a successor of Bernie Glassman Roshi in our White Plum lineage, was awarded the prestigious National Book Award in New York last night for his novel "Shadow Country," a revision of a trilogy published in the 1990s. A marvelous honor for a marvelous writer, who, at 81, is one of the [...]
Life is unconventional
Here is Giacometti pinned on my bulletin board sculpting, his one intention being, as Yves Bonnefoy notes, "exhumer des aspects visibles l'invisible de la présence" (to exhume from the visible aspects the invisible presence) of what is before him. His drawing, painting or sculpture are his response to this experience of the "invisible presence" in [...]
Hotei’s bag
The wild and wandering Zen master Hotei was confronted in a marketplace by another Zen master, who asked him to present his understanding of the Zen teachings. Hotei put down his bag. The other master then asked him to present the practice of Zen. Hotei picked up his bag and continued on his way.
Portugal is a thought away
Back from Portugal, a journey across five days, two countries, many encounters old and new. In Lisbon, up hills and down, along the river, then into the deepening night where I am pressed with questions about form. Which might better be called expressions of attachment to form in the guise of rejection of a particular [...]
Obama, the most perfect union
It's a new day. Can't let this marvelous moment go by without a word or two. Obama's election brings tears of joy to my eyes in front of the computer at 5:30 a.m. My country's capacity to reinvent itself by picking this wise and inspiring man to lead it moves me more than any political [...]
octobre 2008
The art of Zen: A humbling lesson
The art of Zen is none other than the art of life. As Brando so aptly noted, Hamlet's soliloquy, Act III, Scene 2, says it all: "Let your own discretion be your tutor. Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of [...]
