Ox Herding

Maps, Part 3

How do we trace the path of a human life?

Some people write autobiographies, while a famous few have biographers. Some people research genealogies, while others compile scrapbooks or possessions. Today's video (a promotion for a camera) suggests a different way of considering a life, a kind of map of life itself.

I don't want to suggest that it's profound in any special way. But I found it engaging and even, briefly, moving.

This clip required 60,000 photographs, the making of 9,600 prints and re-shooting over 1,800 images.

Thank you for reading Ox Herding. May you enjoy your path over the weekend!

Barry

Maps, Part 2

As I wrote yesterday's post, I remembered this passage from Lewis Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. In it, Carroll cleverly reveals the inherent contradiction of mapping - the more detailed the map, the less useful it may be.

This certainly applies to the Buddha's mapping initiative, and it's another reason why we must walk the spiritual journey on our own - strange as the landscape may be at times.

I hope you enjoy this charming bit of reasoning.

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?" 

"About six inches to the mile."

"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yard to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr. "The farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."

Maps, Part 1

During a recent visit at our usual coffee shop, my friend Bob and I spoke of the spiritual journey and the role of conceptual teaching in that journey.

The Buddha, of course, gave an eloquent and precise description of the path to awakening, and his teaching remains the best available map of that journey.

But since he left behind such a brilliant map, why are so many of us lost?

Perhaps because, for a map to guide us from one place to another, we must first know where we are.

Sadly, most of us don't quite know this, not most of the time.

That's why practice brings our attention to the experience of this very moment.

Once we're here, now, then we might know where next to step.

Buon viaggio!

Lama Surya Das

Last Friday evening, Susann and I went to a talk given by Lama Surya Das, one of the great American Buddhist teachers. There was a nice turnout - maybe 150 people.

Lama led us in practice for about 30 minutes, talked for 45 minutes and then took questions. I appreciated his clarity, of course, but also his use of humor to penetrate the resistance that each of us knows all too well.

Here are a few of his teachings that have stayed with me since the talk, burrowing into my practice. Maybe they'll open a passageway for you, as well.

• God hides herself in the one place no one ever thinks to look
  
  
• We get bound up by the sphincter of self
  
  
• Nowness awareness is the primordial Buddha
  
  
• Right Livelihood is doing what needs to be done
  
  
• When a questioner said that he would Google some information, Lama encouraged him to Yougle it, instead.

Pain

The Buddha, as the great healer of human suffering, might have turned this cartoon on its head:

Would you describe the pain you cause everyone else as dull and throbbing or sharp like a knife?

That's the problem with the Buddha: he insists that we're the problem, not someone else.

It's bad news for the ego.

And if the diagnosis is terrible, the medicine is even worse!

Although, if we take the medicine, the prognosis is quite promising.

Hand Wash Cold

At some point in the last year, I began following the writings of Karen Maezen Miller, a Zen priest and teacher at Hazy Moon Zen Center in Los Angeles. In her teaching, Miller focuses on the ordinary moments of life, as they appear in washing clothes, cooking meals, playing with children, and caring for animals.

Because Miller draws inspiration from the activities of everyday lay life, her teaching has a distinctly Western quality that I appreciate very much. You can learn more about Miller at her blog, Cheerio Road.

And here's a short video about her most recent book, Hand Wash Cold. I haven't read the book but her essays and this video point to its value.

Thank you for reading Ox Herding! May your clothes be clean!

Barry

Cherry Blossoms

As we enter the last week of April, Seattle's cherry trees have dropped their blossoms and leafed out.

In bloom, the trees are magnificent, lining streets throughout the city with delicate pink clouds. Everyone admires them.

Then, as the winds of April kick up, the clouds take to the air and drift down city streets, swirling around passing cars like powdery pink snow.

And, now, the remaining flaky pedals cluster in the gutters, pushed along by rainwater, streaked with brown.

It's so easy to admire the beauty of a cherry tree in full bloom. But are the rotting pedals of late April any less lovely?

Books: Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships

Those of us who commit to intimate relationships know the many obstacles and challenges that inevitably arise from this commitment.

Bookstores contain numerous books that promise help in working through these obstacles. While I'm no expert on the literature, most of these seem to ignore the impact of rage, greed and delusion (the three poisons) in relationship.

Several years ago I read an article on relationships by John Welwood in one of the Buddhist magazines and it struck me as wise both in the ways of the dharma and of relationships. Later I came across Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships, Welwood's exploration of the wounds that relationships inevitably uncover.

As a dharma practitioner, Welwood seeks to expose the true nature of relationships. And he recognizes that love requires us to set aside our patterns and projections so that we can relate responsibly with our partners. This is nothing but painfully hard work, as he describes in this passage:

George Orwell once wrote that the essence of being human lies not in seeking perfection but in being "prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one's love upon other human individuals," who are just as impossible as we are.

Orwell is of course describing the poignant, bittersweet quality of relative love. Human relationships often seem utterly impossible because they never seem to fit our ideals and expectations.

Again and again they force us to face heartbreak and defeat, until finally the only alternative is to let ourselves be broken up, so that we may remain more open and loving in the face of life as it is.

This "breaking up" is the work of practice. And what better place to practice than in the intimacy of relationship?

I have turned to this book when my own poisons have surfaced and found great guidance in its teaching. Perhaps it will benefit you in your relationships.

Books: No River to Cross

Recently Marcus arranged for me to receive a review copy of No River to Cross, Zen Master Daehaeng's new book. I was glad to accept this gift, if only because I'm not aware of another English-language book written by a female, Asian Zen master. (Female Zen masters in Asia - who knew?)

Now that I've read this book, I'm even happier. It's one of the clearest, most inspiring books about practice life that I've read in recent months.

The book begins with an explanation of terminology used in the Korean Seon (Zen) tradition. Zen Master Daehaeng explains these terms with great precision. For example, in her discussion of the Korean term for Buddhism, Bulgyo, she writes:

The first syllable, Bul, refers to the fundamental source of every single life, including even a blade of grass, and the second syllable, gyo, refers to learning from each other; we communicate with each other through speech, mind, and actions. So the word "Buddhism" means communicating with each other through the foundation, the fundamental source of life [Buddha-nature, Juingong], and through that, listening to each other and learning from each other.

The master's precision continues as she explains other key notions of Seon Buddhism, including Mind, samsara and even concepts such as evolution. Then she turns to the important matter of Seon practice.

Zen Master Daehaeng strips away any notion that practice consists of technique. Instead, she views practice as a more expansive and ultimately more profound type of engagement with the world.

She writes that practice has two qualities:  entrusting and letting go. To summarize (perhaps misleadingly), we entrust our lives fully to the Buddha-nature that inheres in all things and we let go of all fixed ideas and beliefs.

While No River to Cross contains an extensive commentary on entrusting and letting go, this paragraph describes why these qualities establish the basis of genuine practice:

If you try to practice by depending on some specific regimen or physical method, in the beginning you goal may seem clear and close at hand. However, as you go further, your path becomes hazy and eventually it will lead to a dead end. On the other hand, if you keep letting go and entrusting, and experiencing the results of this, then the path that seemed narrow at the beginning will gradually widen, and in the end will become a great avenue and gateway to the truth.

This teaching echoes that of my own root teacher, Zen Master Seung Sahn:  "If you don't hold onto anything, you will get everything." Let go.

The book concludes with a wonderful chapter on "Religion and Daily Life," which looks at how practice comes alive in our daily relationships. Again, Daehaeng Kun Sunim's teaching on these matter is clear-eyed and fresh.

For example, in a discussion of the Five Precepts, she cuts through layers of cultural history by describing the precepts in this way:

If it is dirty, clean it. If it is disorganized, straighten it up. If it is broken, fix it. This is keeping the precepts.

I hadn't heard of Zen Master Daehaeng until I began reading Marcus' former blog. This kind of discovery is one of the great blessings of the Internet.

By the way, Chong Go Sunim, Marcus, Joseph and others write a fine blog based on Zen Master Daehaeng's teachings, Wake Up and Laugh!

Books: Zen Ox-Herding Pictures

In an earlier incarnation, I studied dance with a woman who worked closely with Merce Cunningham and John Cage in the 1940s and 1950s. She introduced me to Cage's work in music and art, and Silence, Cage's first book, played an important role in moving my life toward Zen practice.

So I was excited to learn of the recent publication of a book of Cage's drawings. Zen Ox-Herding Pictures contains five sets of drawings that Cage made in preparation for other work. Each set contains all ten ox herding pictures, in Cage's creative interpretations of them.

Cage used brown paper towels for each of the fifty drawings, giving them a warm tone and a disposable air. These are intense, mysterious images. Cage forgoes the traditional representational style employed in most versions, in favor of something more deeply felt.  

Each image is partnered with text taken from Cage's written works. The editor, Stephen Addiss (editor of Zen Sourcebook), has chosen lines that hauntingly echo the original poems by K'uo-an Shih-yuan (who was not the first to write ox herding poetry - the creator of this cycle of poems and images appears to have been Ch'ing-chu, around 1050).

Here are three examples of Cage's poetry, as matched by Addiss to the images:

First Set, Image 1 - Searching for the Ox

feelings
    empty

being lost.

Second Set, Image 8 - Transcending the Ox

                    What
    we've already done conspires against
what we have now to do

Fourth Set, Image 4 - Catching the Ox

               gift
            of self to self

If you have interest in the art of enlightenment, you might check out this beautifully produced and inspiring book.