Zen « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Saturday, October 24, 2015

Religion ... Zen ...

I haven’t gotten around to posting anything here lately, this is my first post in almost 2 weeks. What have I been doing with myself lately? Oh, cooking, cleaning, going to work, paying bills, and thinking about life and death. I mentioned in a previous blog that I had a “direct-to-consumer” DNA evaluation done a few years ago on 23andme.com, and along with the genealogy information, 23 also gave you an assessment of your genetically-related health risks. (Since then, the US FDA has stopped them from providing health reports — 23andme still offers genealogy tests). My own results on 23 seemed fairly benign — one or two things that might eventually become an issue, but nothing all that terrible.

Recently, however, I learned that you can access your digital DNA results from 23andme and upload them onto a site called Promethese.com, and for $5 they will give you a very detailed list of how your “SNP pairings” stack up against the SNPedia.com “wiki” database of health-related genetic studies. This seemed like a good idea to me, since my health reports from 23andme were based on a pool of gene studies that appears to have last been updated in 2011 (many months before I sent in my saliva, in mid-2013; incidentally, that was only about 6 months before the FDA shut 23’s health service down). A lot of new knowledge about genes and health must have come out since them. So, I got my results from Promethease (it takes only a few minutes, actually) and have spent a lot of time pouring over them in the past few weeks. Bottom line . . . in great detail, they paint a much darker picture of my susceptibility to a wide variety of diseases than 23andme did.

In comparing some of the Promethease / SNPedia results with the 23 reports, it turns out that 23andme wasn’t always considering the full range of DNA studies available up through 2011, and in some instances, it misinterpreted them!!! For one condition involving eyesight » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 2:26 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Friday, September 4, 2015

◊ To Everything There Is A Season . . . And Eternity?

Religion ... Spirituality ... Zen ...

It’s time once again to think about the Big Question: what should you ultimately believe about YOURSELF (and about the world around you)? About where you are heading, why are you here . . .

In the Zen tradition, there is no self, no eternity, no personal transcendence of death (although through karma, something of one’s behavior does achieve transcendent manifestation). Time is a mental abstraction, a product of the mind. As such, it is discouraged from any use other than making sure that you get to the dentist on time, and other such quotidian things. The ultimate psychological emphasis should be on the present, on the now, on living in the moment. The future, the eternal . . . that is all just “mind stuff”.

In a lot of ways, the Bible’s Old Testament isn’t all that far removed from Zen; at least the early stages of it (i.e., the core “Torah” books). There is little philosophy in it, little struggling with the nature of God and the Universe and the meaning of one’s existence. There is a creation story along with some stories of tribal deliverance, but after that, the Torah has little worry for the future. With all its codes and social edicts, the Torah is mostly about getting by in the present — and about getting along with God. No promises of eternal paradise, just » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:53 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Monday, June 29, 2015

◊ Please Tell Me, Oh Sensei

Photo ... Zen ...

I’ve been involved in American Zen for more than 5 years now. I’ve listened to and talked with a handful of “teachers”, and I’ve read various books and internet sites about Zen; what I’ve experienced seems pretty typical of Zen in the USA.

But what is Zen really about? I can’t say that I’ve grasped it. Some teachers say that such befuddlement is a good thing. Sure, but is befuddlement helpful to my life? I’m not getting the sense that Zen is really making me a better person in any particular way. Just what is the point of Zen, of its rituals, of its teachings, but especially of its meditation, given that zazen seems to be the core of it? Most of the teachers I’m familiar with are psychotherapists, so it’s no surprise that they couch Zen in terms of achieving psychological health.

But that seems just so “American”. Psychological health — was that what the ancient masters in Japan and China were after? Is that why the » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:34 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, April 16, 2015

◊ December 8, a Date That Will Live . . .

History ... Zen ...

My Zen group recently held a “zazen-kai”, which is basically a long day of meditation and other Zen ceremonial accoutrements. Our normal weekly zazen service lasts 2 hours; zazen-kai goes about 6 and 1/2. Most of the extra time goes to sitting quietly in meditation. And that’s a good thing, as far as I am concerned. But some of it goes into more chanting, more walking around (i.e. “kinhin”), breaking for refreshments (in silence, thank goodness), and listening to the wise teacher ruminate on the contrarian glories of the Zen / Buddhist traditions. During our zazen-kai, our sensei talked about the traditional December sesshin commemorating the anniversary of the Buddha’s enlightenment. The last day of this week-long ceremony marks the morning when Buddha awoke before dawn, saw the morning star (the planet Venus) shining brightly over the horizon, and decided that he was finally seeing the big picture. I.e., the Buddha realized enlightenment.

Enlightenment is the holy grail of the whole Buddhist enterprise, so the date on which this happened is treated as a holiday in many parts of the East. During his talk, sensei named the date on which the big man supposedly had his great celestial insight — i.e., December 8th. Being a supposedly anti-intellectual tradition, it’s a no-no in Zen to stimulate the mind (or let it be stimulated). But my mind was nonetheless stimulated by this little factoid. December 8th — pretty close to December 7th, the day of infamy, Pearl Harbor Day.

Hold on a minute — Zen is largely a Japanese tradition; it has ancient historical roots in China and India, but Japan is where it all came together during the Middle Ages, where the legendary Zen masters such as Dogen and » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:34 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, March 14, 2015

◊ We’re On A Mission

Personal Reflections ... Practical Advice ... Zen ...

At the zendo that I regularly sit at (despite my being something of an internal outcast there), they recently held a “practice circle” discussion regarding a chapter from Suzuki Roshi’s book “Not Always So”. The chapter is entitled “Enjoy Your Life where the good Roshi uses the then upcoming (1969) first manned lunar space mission as a point of departure by which to make his point. He says that “to arrive on the moon may be a great historical event, but if we don’t change our understanding of life, it won’t have much meaning or make much sense”. The Rosh concludes that by practicing zazen (meditation), “you can enjoy your life, perhaps even more than taking a trip to the moon”. At the start of his lecture, Suzuki opines that “Instead of seeking a success in the objective world, we [need] to experience the everyday moments in our lives more deeply”. And yet, he also admits that “I want to speak about the moon trip, but I have not had any time to study it”.

Here’s my question: did the Apollo 11 flight and its follow-up moon-landing missions represent a delusion, a sort of false success within the objective world, one that impairs our ability to know more deeply the value of the everyday moments of our life? In 1969, Roshi Suzuki admitted that he didn’t know too much about the moon-bound straw men that he was setting up. But it’s 46 years later, plenty of time to have studied what happened with the Apollo astronauts and the other people and things that made this endeavor possible. Despite the wise Roshi’s diminution of the Apollo program and its achievements, perhaps it is still possible to see that the astronauts of the Space Race days really did have a lesson for us on how to deeply experience and enjoy our lives.

I offered some comments during the zendo discussion about how the Apollo mission might in fact relate to an appreciation of everyday life. I’m not an expert on it, but as a life-long space enthusiast, I watched a lot of documentaries and read some books and went thru a lot of articles on the United States’ efforts to get to the moon in the 1960s (before the decade was out, as per the mandate from President Kennedy). So I think I can offer a bit more on just what those spaceflights actually entailed.

Basically, they were military exercises. The US manned space program was » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:20 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

◊ Takuan Soho, Interesting Zen Master

Spirituality ... Zen ...

Although I belong to a local Zen sangha and attend their zazen meditation service every week, I don’t really consider myself to be fully involved with and devoted to the Zen tradition. I don’t have a guiding teacher whom I meet with regularly, I don’t take time off for weekend or full-week retreats, I’m not studying the Buddhist precepts with a group or sewing together a prayer bib . . . basically I’m doing my own spiritual thing (which I’ve always done).

Still, I have good feelings about the overall Zen establishment and I appreciate the tolerance of the local group in allowing me, something of a Zen non-believer, to rub elbows with the devotees. Even if I don’t consider myself bound to Zen, I am still quite interested in it. And when I’m interested in something, I try to learn more about it, eternal student that I am. So over the past month or two, I’ve been pecking occasionally through a big old book about the history of Zen in Japan, picking up a few random details about a particular setting or group or figure who played a significant role in Zen’s thousand years or so of existence.

I thus took something of an interest not long ago in a Zen master from the late 1500 / early 1600’s named Takuan Soho. Soho is intriguing to me in that he was actually a rather scholarly and worldly figure, unlike the classic Zen luminaries who devote all of their energies to Zen practice, monastic life, and the temple rituals. Many of these roshi’s also » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:24 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

◊ A Schizo Essay for the Holidays

Brain / Mind ... Religion ... Zen ...

This is going to be one of those schizophrenic essays, where it is time to speak of many things: ships, shoes and sealing wax, walruses, etc. But actually, I want to start out with something about brain activity during meditation, and then talk about why I finally understand atheists (a little better, anyway). Just in time for the holidays! (Well, a little late for Hanukkah, admittedly . . . )

So, first off – meditation. There was an interesting article in the November 2014 issue of Scientific American about “The Mind of the Meditator”. The article was something of a puff-job about the many psycho-physical benefits of meditation. It cites all sorts of positive effects in the brain and with behavior; but despite the alleged focus of SciAm on hard science, the authors forgot to ponder which way the lines of causation were running here.

I.e., were these benefits the RESULT of the meditation practice, or did they help allow the meditator to meditate? The unsaid presumption behind the article seems to be that anyone can practice meditation and everyone should. But life is usually more complicated than » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 2:27 pm Read Comments (5) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, October 19, 2014

◊ Just Another Sunrise

Photo ... Zen ...

Many of us have done this more than we can remember, but every once in a really blue moon, I still enjoy getting up in the darkness and finding somewhere to watch the sun rise. So I did it yesterday morning (oh, and the moon wasn’t blue — it was in a crescent phase up in mid-sky as I drove over to Eagle Rock park in Montclair). Here’s a little taste of what I saw today as the sun came up over Manhattan on the far horizon. To paraphrase one of the Zen gathas, this is one less dawn that I’m going to see in this lifetime. Glad that I made the best I could of it.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:06 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, September 20, 2014

◊ Beer, Peanut Butter, Zen, Dung, and the Sacred

Food / Drink ... Zen ...

Way back in November, 2002, I started this blog. My first blog post was a quick introduction to the world, but my second post was a review of some craft beers that I liked. Since then, I haven’t posted a lot of beer reviews; I guess I’ve had “bigger fish to fry” over the years (pardon the carnivorous food allegory, since I’m still a committed vegetarian). I still like beer though, especially craft-brewed beers. Since 2002, I’ve tasted a whole lot of different ones. Most have been pretty good, a few were pretty great, and some were OK . . . almost none were terrible. If one good thing has happened to America over the past 25 years, it has been the comeback of good beer choices (although the basic mass-produced stuff like Bud, Coors, Corona and Heineken still rules the sales charts).

There are a whole lot of beer varieties available these days (you can find beers made from a range of different grains, including wheat, barley, rice, sorgum and rye, combined with most any flavoring you can think of in addition to the usual hop flowers, including apples, milk, watermelon, coffee, Italian spices, strawberries — most anything besides broccoli or turnips, and who knows that someone won’t figure out a way to even make that taste good!). Still, very rarely does a beer make a memorable impression on me. But I just had one that really was worth remembering. So, I’m going to go back to the original intent of this blog, and talk a bit about a beer.

The beer in question is called “Sweet Baby Jesus“, from DuClaw Brewing in Baltimore. This is a porter style beer, meant to be a bit dark and substantial (but not quite as substantial as a stout). The gimmick to this one is that it is flavored with chocolate and peanut butter. Well, as I already said, there are lots of flavored beers out there, but » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:23 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Friday, August 15, 2014

◊ Soen’s Mu

Art & Entertainment ... Photo ... Zen ...

I was leading the “kinhin” walking meditation line this past Sunday at my local zendo, and my mind was pretty much on auto-pilot. I’ve led kinhin a good number of times before, and I can mostly do it now in my sleep. Actually, I hadn’t gotten enough sleep for the past 3 or 4 nights, so I wasn’t all that far from sleep. I wasn’t thinking about much, but I wasn’t “in the moment” either (such as the Zen teachers keep babbling on about). Just keeping count on how many circles we had made and how many we had left; 3, 2, 1, back into the sitting hall.

When you have your mind in neutral like that, however, you never know when something previously unnoticed will suddenly capture your attention, just because of the random, chaotic “churning of attention” that goes on in the brain. I was walking towards the wall, leading the group into a turn, when my eyes quickly focused on the brush painting on the wall. Specifically, a brush calligraphy character representing the famous Zen-word “mu”. The painting was by the late but well known Soen Nakagawa, a Rinzai roshi from Japan who made frequent visits to the USA during the 50s, 60s and 70s, as Zen was takiing root in America amidst the Beats and then the Hippie and New Age cultures of the 60’s and 70’s.

Soen was known for being an eccentric but well-loved Zen teacher. Amidst his typical Japanese Zen students he supposedly was just another tough “Rinzai bastard”. But with Americans, he reportedly showed a lighter, more » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:29 am Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

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