I Know Victoria's Secret

In these times of rampaging fundamentalism, with its emphasis on “moral values,” creationism and the blurring of the line between Church and State, it’s refreshing to see that Victoria’s Secret has managed to make an industry out of selling sensuality in the suburbs. Any time I’m in a mall, their store is always chock full of soccer moms, brides-to-be and teenage girls buying lacy bras, stockings and garters, and thongs.

Sensual craving is a fundamental human condition; indeed, the Buddha identified craving as the source of mankind’s suffering. Of course, he was referring to all forms of craving, including sensual, but also craving for comfort, craving for food, craving to avoid the unpleasant and craving to associate with that which is pleasurable.

The internet is as good a representation of the varieties of human craving as anything. Surf around a while and you will see sites catering to craving for knowledge, craving for material possessions, craving for popularity, and craving for sensuality. Of course, many of the sites in the latter category fall into the realm of the pornographic.

Pornography can be distinguished from erotica based on yogic principals. Pornography tends to redirect our energy from the fourth (heart) chakra down to the lower two chakras (anal and sexual). Erotica, like all art, raises the energy level to the heart and upper chakras.

More specifically, porn typically depicts the human body as merely a vessel for sexual gratification. However else we might otherwise react to the person depicted in porn, it causes our response, physically experienced in the genitalia, to be primal and singularly sexual.Erotica, on the other hand, depicts the sexual and sensual and presents it is a way that engages the heart and mind, raising the energy from the lower to the middle and upper chakras. The best erotica turns you on, but also makes you aware of more than just your arousal. Some artists, such as Robert Mapplethorpe, can tease us by simultaneously drawing the energy both ways and cause one to consider the conflicting emotional distinctions in novel ways.

This is not to say that one is bad and one is good. Moral distinctions such as this are products of the sixth chakra and the thinking mind. However, the effect of constantly striving to fulfill one’s cravings only leads to an increased appetite. Cessation of craving is not found in indulgence. In the case of pornography, the subliminal message of seeing people reduced to their lowermost (in the yogic/chakra sense) urges dehumanizes the subject, and after a while dehumanizes the viewer as well. In the case of some erotica, the impossible standards set by the artist’s vision or the photographer’s model creates unreal expectations. However, these are not “moral” consequences, just the conditions that arise from causes.

The soccer moms, brides-to-be and teenage girls buy their lingerie, but very few find themselves looking like the Victoria’s Secret models when they wear if at home. Their craving leads ultimately to disappointment, and their suffering has karmic consequences on their lovers, family and friends. And thus we have anorexia, bulimia and the whole cognitive body-image dissonance so rampant in our society.I’m not sure this posting has anything to do with Zen, although I did try to bring it up a few times. Maybe I’m just writing this as an alibi to post some nekkid pictures on my blog.

Oh, by the way, a happy New Year’s to everyone.

And happy birthday, Jackie! Thanks for the pictures of your Special K!

More Synchronicity

Could synchronicity be categorized as "any experience that unsettles you by demonstrating that some of your 'rules of reality' are not complete or just plain wrong"?

In the typical Western non-superstitious view of the world, there are rational and scientific reasons for everything that happens. So when a long-lost friend calls us on the telephone just as we were thinking about them, when two people speak (or blog) the same thing at the same time, when it turns out the woman serving you coffee at Starbucks was born in the year and same hometown (many states away) as you, and there is no obvious causal reason and the probability of chance seems too remote, it unsettles the mind. Could our understanding of reality be wrong?

The Mayan Calendar predicted that the pale-faced god Quetzalcoatl would return in the year 1519 to reclaim the city of Tenochtitlin. That very year, Hernan Cortez arrived in Mexico and easily captured the city. Was his arrival coincidence, or was there merit to the prophesy? If the latter, what are we to make of the fact that the Mayan Calendar ends on December 21, 2012, and that there have been predictions of meteor impacts to the Earth that same year? The most notable of these impacts, Comet XF11, was originally predicted to catastrophically strike the Earth in September 2012.

That prediction was quickly revised, and we are now told that the comet will be a "near-miss." However, the distance between synchronicity and conspiracy theory is not that great. Are we to believe the NASA's "revised" calculation or should we assume that the government is simply trying to avert a panic? ("Shop normally, and avoid panic buying.") While it is more reassuring to believe the former ("everything's under control, the world will continue as always"), is it really that improbable that the government would lie (does the term "weapons of mass destruction" sound familiar)?

Spooky stuff. I'm not saying the world's going to end in 2012, I'm just saying most people don't accept the probability of an approaching Armageddon because it's more comforting to believe we're all safe and secure than to accept the possibility of a government conspiracy to suppress the realization of an ancient Mayan prediction.

But then, how do you explain that Cortez thing?

So synchronicities, acausal coincidences where something other than the probability of chance is involved, can poke little holes in our limited concepts of reality, and cause us to question our most fundamental, underlying assumptions. This is not a bad thing; this is good.

Question reality, ask difficult questions, raise great doubt.

Most people unquestioningly assume that they exist as a self somehow separate from everything else. "I am me, and everything that is not me is something 'other.'" Zen practice shatters this illusion. Based on the view that of the world being something "other" than the self, most people assume that the world existed before they were born, and that after they die the world will go on without them. Hoxever, the late Zen teacher Kosho Uchiyama taught that when you are born, your world is born along with you, and when you die, your world dies with you and nothing is left behind. Although this is a logical conclusion of self and other being one, it is a startlingly different view of reality than we are used to.

So in the universe created in your mind, that came into being with your first breath, you can look at synchronicities and coincidences however you like: as sort of black holes in the fabric of reality, as proof of divine intervention, as cosmic hiccups. Or you could ignore them . . . but that doesn't mean you shouldn't be watching the stars in 2012.

A lot has already been said and written about the newly-released recording of this 1957 session, so instead of repeating what's already been stated, allow me to provide some excerpts from the best review that I've seen to date:

Critic's Notebook
December 21, 2005
Jazz Gem Made in '57 Is a Favorite of 2005
By Ben Ratliff
The New York Times

". . . [Many people] believe, or have heard, that jazz crinkled up and collapsed after Coltrane. That the musicians have defaulted on audiences, going deep into their own heads instead. That there's been no successor, because Coltrane broke the mold, threw away the key, set the bar too high, stretched the envelope as far as it would go, established a holding pattern, and other truth-obscuring clichés.

. . . There are a lot of great jazz musicians in New York, and in the world. But the number of great and economically sustainable bands has declined, along with an international audience and a circuit of clubs that encourages those bands to feel a sense of competition, and opportunities for those bands to play repeatedly for regular audiences in the same small places. A. J. Liebling once wrote that French food declined after World War I with the rise of highway driving, since small restaurants weren't committed to satisfying the same clientele night after night. Instead, they could serve the same dishes and not worry about improvement; regular waves of new diners would chew away, unaware of the stasis. In a way, the same goes for jazz. . .

Monk and Coltrane played as many as 75 nights within a five-month stretch at the Five Spot Cafe in the East Village. The Coltrane Quartet played 14 weeks at the Half Note in the span of a year, from spring 1964 to spring 1965. Fourteen. It was a different time in many ways: it seems that anytime I meet someone who saw either of those bands at those clubs, they won't say that they went once, as if to cross it off a list; they went twice or three times a week, as part of their lives. (No Internet. No TiVo. Cheap rent. No risk of being thought a loser if you liked to go to jazz clubs at night.)

Monk's quartet with Coltrane recorded three songs in the studio in summer 1957, at the beginning of that band's short existence. They can be heard on "Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane." They're very good, and they contain a newly advanced Coltrane. But they are dry-runs when set next to the 51 minutes from Carnegie Hall, which were discovered for the first time in January.

The Carnegie tape comes from late November 1957, after five rigorous months of Five Spot gigs, toward the end of the band's six-month life. (Very little taped material of this band in that year at the Five Spot, and with low fidelity, is known to exist.) On the Carnegie album the band is relaxed, limber, magnetic; the tempos are more wakeful. Compare the tune "Nutty" between the studio and stage versions, and you will hear it quickly. Coltrane has become agile, finding a flexible way of running his original patterns. Monk balances an inscrutable serenity against driving, almost violent figures. And everything coming from Shadow Wilson, the drummer, is to be savored: he guards and upholds the groove, while building small, richly detailed accents around it.

But the band ended a little more than a month later, and contractual issues between Coltrane and Monk's record labels made it impossible for them to record again. We're lucky to have this. . .

This is how jazz works. It is not a volume business. (Its essence is the opposite of business.) Its greatest experiences are given away cheaply, to rooms of 50 to 200 people. Literature and visual art are both so different: the creator stands back, judges a fixed object, then refines or discards before letting the words go to print, or putting images to walls. A posthumously found Hemingway novel is never as good as what he judged to be his best work. But in jazz there is always the promise that the art's greatest examples - even by those long dead - may still be found."

David Nason is an Australian journalist living in New York. Last November, he interviewed Kurt Vonnegut, the sci-fi novelist, 60s counter-culture icon and champion of gloomy adolescents.

A narcissistic and self-absorbed interviewer, Nason’s style is of the “Well enough about me. What do you think about my career?” school. The interview itself doesn’t even begin until almost halfway through the article; that is, Nason apparently felt it more important to first discuss his supermarket shopping on the Upper West Side, the issues he intended to discuss with Vonnegut, and the fact that he hadn’t read the book that Vonnegut was meeting with him to promote. When he finally gets around to describing his meeting with Vonnegut, Nason notes that the author appeared to be an “unshaven, dishevelled man with wild, curly grey hair and frayed clothing. He looks as if he has just crawled out from under a bush in Central Park.”

“Don't get me wrong,” he adds, returning the spotlight on himself again, “I don't mind how people look and I often give money to beggars on the subway.”

Whatever. The only reason that this interview is noteworthy is that toward its end, Nason breezily recounts,

"Next I ask him about terrorism. It's not for any particular reason. It just seems a relevant thing to ask a writer who has seen war, who has written of war and who lives in New York City, where terrorism's horror is understood so well.

‘What about terrorists? Do you understand where they're coming from? Do you regard them as soldiers too?’ I ask.

“Vonnegut's reply is startling. ‘I regard them as very brave people, yes,’ he says without a moment's hesitation.

"'You don't think that they're mad, that, you know, anyone who would strap a bomb to himself must be mad?’

"'Well, we had a guy [president Harry Truman] who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, didn't we?’ he says. "What George Bush and his gang did not realize was that people fight back. Peace wasn't restored in Vietnam until we got kicked out. Everything's quiet there now.’

“There's a long pause before Vonnegut speaks again: ‘It is sweet and noble - sweet and honourable I guess it is - to die for what you believe in.’

“This borders on the outrageous,” Nason feels obligated to point out, before asking rhetorically, “Is the author of one of the great anti-war books of the 20th century seriously saying that terrorists who kill civilians are ‘sweet and honourable?”

“I ask one more question,” Nason teasingly promises, although the interview does continue with a couple more:

“But terrorists believe in twisted religious things, don't they? So surely that can't be right?”

"'Well, they're dying for their own self-respect,’ Vonnegut fires back. ‘It's a terrible thing to deprive someone of their self-respect. It's [like] your culture is nothing, your race is nothing, you're nothing.’

At this point, Nason notes “there's another long pause and Vonnegut's eyes suggest his mind has wandered off somewhere.” This is, of course, pure speculation on Nason’s part about the 84-year-old author. Vonnegut’s eyes may have just as easily been suggesting that he has realized that he allowed himself to get caught by a third-rate journalist out to trap him.

“Then, suddenly, he turns back to me and says: ‘It must be an amazing high.’

“’What?’ I ask.

“‘Strapping a bomb to yourself,’ he says. ‘You would know death is going to be painless, so the anticipation ... must be an amazing high.”

Nason ends the interview with editorial comments, again starting with himself:

“At this point, I give up. I can't be bothered asking him about any of the things I'd thought about: his mother's suicide, how he raised his sister's kids, the great writers he knew and partied with, how he looks back on Dresden. Vonnegut has been many things: a grandmaster of American literature; a man who worked hard to support his family; a soldier who fought for his country. But now he's old and he doesn't want to live any more. You only have to read his book to understand that. And because he can't find anything worthwhile to keep him alive, he finds defending terrorists somehow amusing.”

But Nason still needs to get one last shot in. Earlier in the conversation, he notes, Vonnegut had talked about French writer Albert Camus, stating, "He got a Nobel Prize for saying essentially - among other things - that life is absurd, so the only philosophical question is whether to commit suicide or continue to participate in absurdity. But I feel absurd is too weak a word. I think life is preposterous."

“That's a matter of opinion,” Nason says in closing, “but if Vonnegut in his old age persists in defending terrorists, preposterous may be precisely how people remember him, and that would be unfortunate.”

This interview, along with Nason’s editorializations, has become fodder for right-wing pundits and bloggers. “Vonnegut defends terrorists!” they exclaim. “He believes killing innocent civilians is sweet and honorable.”

Well, killing innocent civilians was not exactly what he was describing as “sweet and honorable” if you go back are read what he said and the context in which he said it. But further, the reference - you can see he’s struggling to recall the exact words - was to "Dulce et Decorum Est," a poem from the First World War that depicts the horrible death scene of a man who has been gassed in battle, with a last line that translates: “The old Lie: It is sweet and honorable to die for your country.” It was Vonnegut’s way of saying suicide bombers were dying for a foolish cause, but it went over Nason's head.

The ensuing controversy has caused Vonnegut’s son, Mark, a pediatrician living in Milton, Massachusetts, to write a somewhat apologetic, somewhat defensive editorial in today’s Boston Globe. “At no point did he say that blowing yourself up in a crowd of people was a good thing to do,” the younger Vonnegut notes. “What most outraged his interviewer was Kurt's disinclination to dismiss the terrorists as mentally ill. He said that suicide bombers believed that they were dying for a just cause and that he imagined they were probably brave people. It was all speculation. Neither he nor his interviewer had any knowledge about suicide bombers or radical Islam. Nowhere in the interview did he say anything in support of terrorism, though I'm quite sure he enjoyed horrifying his interviewer by skating around it. Kurt, every so often, will play with people a little.”

“What Kurt can do better than most people is reframe things and turn them around in a way that creates a new perspective. Even if you disagree with that perspective, the plausibility and novelty of his vision are enough to make you think. We need to think a little more, not less.”

Exactly. But my point here is not to defend Vonnegut nor to attack him. I’m neutral here. Like many people of my generation, I was a big Vonnegut fan in my teens, and his dark, pessimistic world view matched my adolescent gloominess well. However, like many people of my generation, I outgrew my fixation, and hardly consider him relevant any longer to my current outlook or the present times.

But I do share Mark’s concern that Vonnegut’s detractors are trying to twist his provocative statements to support their view that anyone who is critical of the war must therefore be pro-terrorist. It’s that sort of divisive duality that’s making the current dialog on our involvement in Iraq so impossibly shrill.

We don't need more name calling. We need more thinking.

Soma-Ephedrine

Soma was the mass-produced narcotic-tranquilizer in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. In the 1932 novel, this "opiate of the people" is regularly taken by all members of a peaceful high-tech society of the future in order to produce feelings of euphoric happiness, and replaces religion and alcohol.

The term "soma" derives from a stimulant drink used in ancient Aryan (Indo-Iranian) rituals, in particular those of Vedic India. Soma was a ritual drink of importance among these cultures, and is frequently mentioned in the Rig Veda, which contains many hymns praising its energizing and intoxicating qualities.

In both Indian and Iranian tradition, the drink is identified with the plant, and also personified as a god, the three forming a religious or mythological unity. The plant is the god and the drink is the god and the plant is the drink — they are all three the same. Soma is similar to Greek ambrosia; it is what the gods drink, and what made them deities. Mortals also drink it, giving them access to the divine.

Soma was apparently prepared by pressing juice from the stalks of a certain mountain plant. The plant probably grew in the homeland of the Indo-Iranians, possibly the Hindu Kush, but the migration of the Aryans into the Punjab region removed them from the area of its occurrence, and it had to be imported. In the Rig Veda, soma was described as growing in far-away mountains and had to be purchased from traveling traders. Later, knowledge of the plant was lost altogether, and Indian rituals reflect this in expiatory prayers apologizing to the gods for the use of a substitute plant (rhubarb) because soma had become unavailable.

There has been much speculation as to what was the original soma plant. Although it was generally assumed to be hallucinogenic, soma was also associated with the warrior-god Indra and appears to have been drunk before battle. So it might also have been a stimulant. For these reasons, energizing plants as well as hallucinogenic plants are among the candidates that have been suggested.

Several mushrooms have been suggested, including Amanita muscaria (fly agaric or toadstool) and the psylocybin-containing Stropharia cubensis. The mushroom theory is supported by later Tibetan legends connected with urine drinking, and it is indeed possible that in Tibet, the shamanistic practice of eating psychedelic mushrooms, and subsequently drinking the urine of the one who has taken the mushroom, still containing much of the agent substance, has been connected with Vedic terminology surrounding soma.

The Tibetan word for “cannabis” is derived from the Sanskrit soma-raja ("king Soma") and cannabis has also been suggested as a soma candidate based on the Tibetan evidence. The choice of cannabis is further supported by the traditional Zulu use of this drug for energizing warriors.

The most likely non-hallucinogenic, stimulant candidate plant is a species of the genus Ephedra, shrubs with numerous green or yellowish stems growing in mountainous regions. The native name for Ephedra in most Indo-Iranian languages of Central Asia is derived from soma- (e.g., Nepali somalata). Archeological excavations have found ceramic bowls yielding traces of both Ephedra and cannabis, and Ephedra and the pollen of poppies. These finds support the theory that the soma plant was Ephedra, and the soma drink was a composite comprising Ephedra and cannabis or opium.

Ephedrine, the primary active substance, is an alkaloid with a chemical structure similar to amphetamines. Ephedrine results in high blood-pressure and has a stimulating effect more potent than that of caffeine. It is still used in Iranian folk medicine, and the traditional Chinese herb Ma Huang, used in the treatment of asthma and bronchitis for centuries, contains ephedrine as its principal active constituent. Anecdotal reports have suggested that ephedrine helps thinking or studying to a greater extent than caffeine. Some students and some white-collar workers have used ephedrine (or ephedra-containing herbal supplements) for this purpose, as well as some professional athletes and weightlifters.

Ephedrine molecules occur as two "mirror images," or isomers, much like a pair of hands. The very potent (-) isomer mimics the effects of adrenaline and is responsible for the amphetamine-like stimulation characteristic of Ephedra products. The (+) isomer, also known as pseudoephedrine, is far less potent as a stimulant. However, it retains much of ephedrine's ability to open airways and nasal passages. For this reason, pseudoephedrine is marketed as a decongestant, such as Sudafed.

Pseudoephedrine works by stimulating receptors (alpha-receptors) in certain areas of the body, particularly in the lining of the nose and sinuses. Pseudoephedrine shows greater selectivity for the nose and sinuses and a lower affinity for the central nervous system than other Ephedra alkaloids. When the alpha-receptors present in the walls of blood vessels are stimulated by pseudoephedrine, the vessels contract and narrow. In the lining of the nose and sinuses, this results in less fluid being pushed out of the blood vessels into these linings. This reduces the production of mucous, thereby relieving the symptoms of nasal congestion. Other beneficial effects include increasing the opening of obstructed Eustachian tubes. Pseudoephedrine is also used as first-line therapy of priapism, a painful and potentially harmful medical condition in which an erection does not return to its flaccid state.

Pseudoephedrine should not be used by anyone who has taken monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOI) within 14 days or who intends to take such a medication in the next 14 days. It’s a really, really bad idea to take pseudoephedine and MAOIs and eat mistletoe berries at the same time.

The similarity in chemical structure to the amphetamines has made pseudoephedrine a sought-after chemical ingredient in the illegal manufacture of methamphetamine. In an attempt to inhibit meth production, federal law prohibits buying cold preparations containing pseudoephedrine in quantities greater than 3 packages in any 24-hour period.

Due to the current methamphetamine epidemic, Georgia law now requires that pseudoephedrines such as Sudafed be removed from the shelves of pharmacies and supermarkets and stocked behind the counter to prevent people from buying (or stealing) mass quantities of the drug. In essence, the bill placed Sudafed in a class of drugs somewhere between "Rx only" and OTC. The funny thing about this legislation is that despite being put behind the pharmacy counters, sales of Sudafed have remained strong. And last I heard, the meth epidemic in Georgia has not ended.

As I blogged last March 23, I have been taking Sudafed on a daily basis since early 2004 to clear chronic sinus congestion. Once I learned that the behind-the-counter legislation was pending, I started stocking up on Sudafed, buying the maximum-allowable two packages every time I went to the supermarket or drugstore. However, my stockpile has since been depleted, and now I am forced to go to the pharmacy, wait at the prescription check-out line, and request the drug by name in order to purchase it. It is a good opportunity to observe the practice of the kshanti paramita (the perfection of patience).

On December 15, 2005, Senators Jim Talent (R Missouri) and Dianne Feinstein (D California) attached a strict "anti-meth" bill to the latest iteration of the refuses-to-die Patriot Act. On top of making Sudafed a behind-the-counter drug in the entire US, the new legislation would require the purchaser to show a photo ID and sign a purchase log to allow a pharmacy to track how much they've purchased. How store-hopping would be prevented is not identified in the proposed amendment, but one disturbing possibility would be data-basing and tracking Sudafed consumption.

If the legislation is removed from the Patriot Act, or if the Patriot Act doesn't make it through the Senate, Talent and Feinstein have vowed to attach it to another bill at some point down the road. Their legislation, another example of compromising civil liberties for the illusion of “safety,” will do nothing to stop the meth epidemic in the United States and will only serve to frustrate consumers, make law enforcement agents out of pharmacy personnel, and further erode American freedom, while letting legislators take credit for doing “something” about the meth situation.

Pfizer, the manufacturuer of Sudafed, spent $12 million trying to develop additives for Sudafed that might make it harder to remove the pseudoephedrine it contains. They abandoned the project in 2003, seven years after announcing its existence. In late 2004, Pfizer publicly disclosed its plans to make available a new OTC product, Sudafed PE, which does not include pseudoephedrine. Sudafed PE contains a different decongestant called phenylephrine in a formulation sold for years in Europe. The new product became available on January 10, 2005. Sudafed products which combine the decongestant with other ingredients will be completely converted to phenylephrine later in 2005, though original Sudafed will still be offered.

So let’s review what we’ve covered here: Aldous Huxley, the Vedic scriptures, psylocybin mushrooms, Tibetan ritual urine drinking, Zulu cannabis use, traditional Chinese medicine, non-stop erections, mistletoe, alpha receptors, the methamphetamine epidemic, my Sudafed stockpile, the Patriot Act and the kshanti paramita. Next I may have to blog about the dangers of web surfing while ingesting too much caffeine.

Naughty or Nice?

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I got up around 6 a.m. this morning because I had to open the Zen Center at 7:30. I wasn't sure if we were going to have anybody, but seven people did show up. I even gave a short dharma talk, not on the meaning of Christmas or any other topical theme like that, but instead about lineage.

But whatever else people claim is the real reason for Christmas, I maintain that it's all about magic. And the joy of children. Christmas is the one magical day of the year for children to revel all day in the affection of their parents and to have their undivided attention as they open their presents. Sure, it's about materialism too, I can't deny that's creeped in there, but for children only a little bit - the real magic is in a day of unending joy, the one day when everything is special and different.

What's not magic about a day when a tree is dragged into the house and covered with lights and shiny ornaments, when the whole neighborhood is decorated with wreaths and snowmen and santas and other displays? What's not magic about waking up and finding gift-wrapped presents for you under a tree that was barren the night before? What's not magic about the one day of the year you actually hope that it snows?

Well, it didn't snow in Georgia this year. There was a single crack of thunder last night, signalling the start of rain, which was still coming down as I left the house this morning. It stopped during the morning service, but the day has been otherwise cold and grey.

Which brings me around to the other magic of Christmas - for many children, it's the first lesson in Zen. However great the day was, it comes to an end (impermanance), and even during the magical day itself there is often sadness because one's desires become so great, they can't possibly be satisfied (the first and second noble truths of the existence and cause of suffering).

There are Zen lessons for parents, too. Despite all of their expectations, desires and cravings, they learn that the real joy is when they stop thinking of themselves and instead devote themselves to giving (the dana paramita). Selfless joy abounds in the act of gift giving and of no longer putting the self first.

"The true body of buddha is spread out over the land, naked, for all to see."

A Completely Random Survey of My Experiences With On-Line Dating

Synchronicity

William S. Burroughs tells the story of meeting a ferry captain named Clark who claimed to have sailed the same route without an accident for 23 years. That very day, however, the ferry sank. Later that day, Burroughs was thinking about Clark's ferry accident when he heard that a Flight 23 on a New York-Miami route had crashed. The pilot's name for the flight had also been Clark.

What is the relationship between "coincidences" and synchronicity in our lives? To answer this, first we need to consider what "coincidences" are.

Coincidence: William Shakespeare was born on an April 23, died on an April 23 and had his first portfolio published in 1623. His first play, Titus Andronicus, was performed on a January 23.

But are there deeper meanings to any of this? Consider the 23rd book of the Old Testament -the Book of Psalms. Psalm 23 is the famous "Lord is my Shepherd" psalm. 23 times 2 is 46, and the 46th word of Psalm 46 is "shake." The 46th word from the end of Psalm 46 is "spear." Is this a sly reference like some have supposed that Shakespeare translated the King James version of the Book of Psalms? Or was this a tribute to the Bard, a 17th Century "shout out" by the real translator?

Next, what is synchronicity? In his classic work, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Carl Jung defined synchronicity as "...a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved."

The classic example of synchronicity concerns one of Jung’s patients, a woman whose highly rational approach to life made any form of treatment particularly difficult. On one occasion, the woman related a dream in which a golden scarab had appeared. Jung knew that such a beetle was of great significance to the ancient Egyptians, for it was taken as a symbol of rebirth. As the woman was talking, the psychiatrist in his darkened office heard a tapping at the window behind him. He drew the curtain, opened the window, and in flew a gold-green scarab, also called a rose chafer. Jung showed the woman "her" scarab and from that moment the patient’s excessive rationality was pierced and their sessions together became more profitable.

Another well-known example of synchronicity involves plum pudding. In 1805, Émile Deschamps was treated to some plum pudding by the stranger Monsieur de Fontgibu. Ten years later, he encounters plum pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant, and wants to order some, but the waiter tells him the last dish has already been served to another customer, who turns out to be M. de Fontgibu. In 1832, Deschamps is again at a diner, and is once more offered plum pudding. He recalls the earlier incident and tells his friends that only M. de Fontgibu is missing to make the setting complete, and in the same instant the now senile M. de Fontgibu enters the room by mistake.

Jung articulated his synchronicity theory primarily in terms of the I Ching. According to the philosophy behind the I Ching, every moment has its own character, and everything that occurs in that moment shares in that unique quality. The "inner reality" of our psychological state corresponds to the "outer reality" of events taking place in our surroundings at the same time. Jung employed the I Ching as a device to discover the external world as the psychic "atmosphere in which we live," and he began to use synchronistic events as an essential element in his practice of analysis.

None of this would be news to a Zen master. In Zen, it is recognized that the "inner reality" of our psychological state is not governed by the "outer reality," but actually the other way around. According to a sutra:

"This moment arises from mind,
This moment itself is mind."

Everything is part of the present moment ("everything is connected" as Dennis Hoffman's character would say in the movie "I [Heart] Huckabees"), and it is all a manifestation of mind. Synchronicities occur if one looks for them, but they occur because one is looking for them. The mind is running the whole show, and one can directly perceive this during zazen. With the mind stilled, everything else in the whole universe slows down, and as the mind once again engages itself, the universe reappears. This may sound strange, but try it and see for yourself.

Is there meaning to the synchronicities that occur in your life? Yes, if you want them to be meaningful; no, if you don't want them to be.

After all, it's all you.

What I've Been Listening to This Week

John Coltrane
The Classic Quartet
The Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings

After listening to a 16-disc box set of Trane's Prestige recordings of the 50s, and the 7-disc set of his Atlantic recordings of 1959-61, I have moved on to his recordings with the John Coltrane Quartet from 1961 to 1967 on the Impulse! label.

This 8-disc set captures Trane at the height of his intensity. The music varies from the moving and beautiful "A Love Supreme" to the challenging "Sun Ship." Perhaps fortunately, some of his most difficult music of this period, such as "Ascension" and "Interstellar Space," was recorded with additional personnel beyond the Quartet, and is therefore not included in this set. But while even the most intense and dissonant of his recordings demands one's full attention (it simply cannot function as "background music"), it amply rewards that attention.

All this Coltrane I've been listening to (he's the only musician so far played in my new car) may sound like I've only recently discovered his music. Nothing could be further from the truth. I first started listening to Trane around '74 or '75, and the Quartet - John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones - became my John, Paul, George and Ringo for the decade.

The journey that's chronicled on the 31 CDs of these three sets is remarkable. All the cliches about innovative musicians "expanding the vocabulary of his instrument" and "taking his music into new frontiers" could well have been first coined for Coltrane. After leaving Prestige and the hard- and post-bop music he recorded at that label, he began experimenting more and more at Atlantic, both with the compositions, the modes and the very sounds that he would coax out of his instrument. By the time he got to Impulse!, he was exploring just where the limits of self expression might be, and every time he approached those limits, he found that he was also pushing them further. It would not be correct to say that he was the Jimi Hendrix of the saxophone; Jimi Hendrix was the John Coltrane of the guitar.

By the end of his career, it seemed as if he had succeeded in blowing not only his heart and soul out through his horn, but finally even his mortal existence. Nirvana, literally translated, means to extinguish or blow out, as a candle. Coltrane's intensity got to the point where it seems as if he extinguished his own existence and found nirvana - Coltrane did not die so much as just blow himself out of this mortal realm.

Writing in The New Yorker about British type designer Matthew Carter, Alec Wilkinson recently said, "In the spring of 1960, the John Coltrane Quartet played its first engagement. Carter was in the audience. Over several weeks, he heard them three or four times. 'Sometimes they played the same songs in the second set as they played in the first,' he says. 'Not because they were lazy but because they wanted to surpass themselves, or find something in the music that they hadn't found earlier in the evening. They were that acute.' Listening to them, he decided that he owed it to himself to try and stay in New York. 'Their seriousness of purpose was a lesson,' he says. 'Four great geniuses who would knock themselves out every night when instead they could have coasted. I felt I could have been dishonest enough to return to England and say I hadn't seen great design. But I couldn't somehow pretend that I hadn't heard the John Coltrane Quartet.'"

That's the kind of thing that listening to this music does to one. That's what it does to me . . . and what it can do to you.

What with Christmas coming and all, much of the talk around the Zen Center has revolved around the teachings of Christ, and any Zen interpretations one might infer there from.

On the one hand, one can look at the story of Jesus and draw similarities to the life of the Buddha. An interpretation of Jesus' life could be that he was a normal, average Aramaic carpenter, living a normal, average Aramaic carpenter's life, when for some reason he went out into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights. The Gospels indicate that he fasted, and had visions of the devil tempting him. It is not written whether or not he meditated, but he must have been profoundly alone and quiet. In any event, when he came back, he was markedly changed, and began his preaching career saying things like "I and the Father are one," and "The Kingdom of Heaven is all around us." Granted, the latter is only in the Gospel of Thomas, one of the so-called Gnostic Gospels suppressed by the Roman Catholic Church, but we'll get to that in a moment.

Like the Buddha, then, who sat and meditated under the bodhi tree and achieved enlightenment when the morning star arose, one could presume that after his experience alone in the desert, Jesus too achieved a sense of unity with the universe. Unfortunately, his preaching career was cut off quickly by an unfortunate martyrdom, and his teachings were kept by a small and persecuted sect for many years before they were written down, so we may never know what he really taught.

Now at this point in the conversation, someone usually interrupts and says that you can't interpret the Gospels from a Buddhist perspective. It's dangerous, it's not respectful of the beliefs of others, and it ignores certain other unpleasant teachings, such as Jesus' statement that "No man enters into the Kingdom of Heaven except through me." You can't, the argument goes, smorgasbord among the teachings you like and ignore those you don't.

I disagree. First of all, I intend absolutely no disrespect and if others take offense, it's an unfortunate effect of their narrow mindedness, not my provocation. I am not trying to make fun of or belittle Christ's teachings, but instead embrace them, find commonalities instead of differences, and incorporate them into the Buddhadharma.

Second, the entire history of Christian dogma has been selecting texts that meets the needs of those in power, from Popes to Kings to charismatic preachers, while expurgating the rest. At some point, at least in the English-speaking world, the scripture became "frozen" into the popular King James translation and selections, but other Gospels, such as Thomas, have been dropped, while epistles of his followers have been added. There's no reason not to continue this process of selection to fit the times and one's wisdom.

On that note, someone once pointed out to me that Americans in particular have become uniquely literal in the interpretation of the Bible. This may be, it was reasoned, because of our roots as a frontier society, far removed from the churches and scholars, and our only authority was the written text. So we came to rely on that text to a far greater extent than, say, our European brethrens.

And as for exclusive and dualistic statements like "No man enters into the Kingdom of Heaven except through me," one needs to look a little deeper. If Jesus also said "I and the Father are one," what did he mean when he said "through me?" Just his mortal self? Or he and the Father? And if he and the Father are one, what does the Father not also encompass? What limits can one place on God? Could not his "me" actually refer to the entire universe?

If one considers this all-encompassing view, the statement "The Kingdom of Heaven is all around us" no longer sounds heretical or suspect. The Kingdom of Heaven is all around us, and no one enters into the Kingdom because we're all already there. There is no arriving.

How Zen is that?

Tyramine

Tyramine is a poisonous alkaloid found in the holiday plant mistletoe. While it is useful in some medicinal applications, the berries of the mistletoe plant contain poisonous amounts of tyramine.

In humans, if tyramine metabolism is compromised by the use of monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and foods high in tyramine are ingested, a hypertensive crisis can result. The first signs of this were discovered by a neurologist who noticed his wife, who at the time was on MAOI medication, had severe headaches when eating cheese. For this reason, the crisis is still called the "cheese syndrome", even though other foods can cause the same problem.

A large dietary intake of tyramine can cause an increase in systolic blood pressure of 30 mmHg or more. Dietary tyramine intake has also been associated with migraine in select populations, so if you're suffering from a headache this holiday season, don't blame the kids pleading for an Xbox 360, but instead make sure they haven't been sneaking mistletoe berries into your fruitcake.

The Fantasy:
The Reality:

George Bush Gets the Endorsement of the Hair Club for Men

This Ought To Piss Off the Religious Right

Godless Bureaucracy Debases Christmas

It appears that the U.S. Geological Survey, a government agency in the Department of the Interior, has used your tax money, dollars that you earned, at a job, to post the following:

"The plant's common name - mistletoe - is derived from early observations that mistletoe would often appear in places where birds had left their droppings. 'Mistel' in the Anglo-Saxon word for 'dung,' and 'tan' is the word for 'Twig.' Thus, mistletoe means 'dung-on-a-twig.'"

Now what does this have to do with geology? Absolutely nothing! Yet the U.S.G.S. is using your tax money, dollars that you earned, at a job, to call Christmas mistletoe "shit on a stick."

It's obviously part of a vast left-wing government conspiracy to rob Christians of their constitutional right to celebrate Christmas. Never mind that Christmas wasn't even declared a federal holiday until the 1880s - the founding fathers still intended every living American to have Christmas rammed down his throat until he can't breathe anymore.

"Mistletoe is toxic to people," the U.S.G.S. goes on. "Many commercial foresters consider the mistletoe as a disease that reduces the growth rates of commercially important conifer species, such as the ponderosa pine."

It seems that the grinch-ologists, not content with insisting on evolution over Intelligent Design, are launching a new attack to turn us away from Christmas by attacking the cherished mistletoe.

Never mind that mistletoe has been nicknamed the "vampire plant" because it can probe beneath tree bark to drain water and minerals, enabling it to survive during a drought.

Never mind that mistletoe figured prominently in Norse mythology and that the modern Western custom of kissing under bunches of it hung as holiday decorations began as pagan rituals.

Never mind that the god Baldur was killed with a weapon made of mistletoe.

Never mind that in Celtic mythology and in Druid rituals, it was considered an antidote to poison, and that contact with its berries produces a rash similar to poison ivy.

Just remember, you paid for this. With your tax dollars, money that you earned, at a job.

What I've Been Listening to This Week

John Coltrane - Heavyweight Champion
The Complete Atlantic Recordings

Seven CDs (7!) of everything Coltrane recorded at Atlantic Records between 1959 and 1961, including Giant Steps, Naima, Bags and Trane, and My Favorite Things and much, much more. There's even his album with Don Cherry, The Avant Garde. There's one whole disc of outtakes and alternate cuts. While on the Prestige set, you can hear Trane developing his sound, by this time he had fully found his voice, including the "sheets of sound," and the clusters of notes played so fast they almost sound like chords. The man was playing with fire.

Listen to his rendition of My Favorite Things. I can hear it in my head. After a brief piano introduction by McCoy Tyner, Coltrane steps in and takes the first solo of the piece on soprano sax. Not too long a statement - just the basics, a few bars of improvisation and out - selflessly turning the piece over to Tyner barely two minutes into the song. Tyner's ensuing piano solo is a classic - he takes his time with it, and lets it build according to its own momentum. At first, he's just playing the very basics of the melody - all left-hand chord progressions with almost no "fill" or improvisation. But when the right hand finally does come in and begins tickling out some high counter melodies, it seems to be floating in another dimension over the left-handed chords. Tyner alternates between these two modes - simple vamping on the chords and embellishment with the higher keys - teasing the listener back and forth. Tyner was clearly also a master of his instrument, and knows that he has the listener in the palms of his hands.

After Tyner's piano masterpiece, Coltrane comes back in, briefly restates the melody and then lets his soprano sax soar into the stratosphere with long and lovely phrases, while never losing touch with the ground. This is the Main Event, the Heavyweight Champion floating like a butterfly as Ali would have said. His playing ascends into a pure meditation on the potential of the soprano to sing and to soar, and yet it never becomes a challenging listen. The man was clearly in love with the beautiful sounds he was making, and he lets each long line take flight - you can almost hear the flapping of wings beneath the sound as each line takes off. And when he finally comes back to the chorus and restates the melody to close out the piece, the notes are still the same but everything's now different: after having carried the listener with him into the heavens, life back on earth never seemed more beautiful.

Amazing . . .

That's what I was playing as I drove over to the fabulous Atlantic Station this evening to go to a presentation at the Fox Sports Grill on, appropriately, the development of Atlantic Station. The head architect gave a slide show on the history of the project, from the mid '90s when it was still an steel mill eyesore adjacent to downtown Atlanta, through its brownfield development, to its current mixed residential-office-retail ("live, work and play") status. The best part is that it's only about two miles from my house, which was nice and toasty and warm when I finally got back in on this particularly cold, raw evening.

Puzzling Evidence

I read in the news today that a pregnant woman fell 3,000 feet when her parachute didn't open, and landed on her face. And survived. The baby is doing well, too.

I went to a neighborhood holiday dinner party tonight. Community chat, pork roast, coffee and cheese cake. While there, I got to talking to a woman who told me that a box of checks had been stolen from her mailbox, too. The first one was cashed at a casino, but all the rest were cashed at local supermarkets and drug stores. Sounds quite a bit like my episode.

What was most disturbing was that her checks weren't stolen from her mailbox until after the last check had been cashed on my account, meaning that the thief, if it was the same person, has returned to the neighborhood and repeated his M.O. I wonder if he looked in my mailbox again. I wonder how he can cash checks in both a man's and a woman's name.

If only I could give him the moon.

My odometer turned over its 500th mile today as I drove home from work.

I came to Monday Night Zazen prepared to talk about Dogen's comments on the importance of the Buddha's teaching, on how the "special transmission outside of the sutras" is misunderstood by those who don't understand that there is no "inside" and "outside" of the sutras, and on how practice embodies dharma studies as well as zazen. Instead, we wound up talking about the "meaning" of life, the existence of God, the origin of the universe, the limitations of language, and the limitless potential of the mind.

I bought one of those new Razor phones today. On top of my television, computer and car all needing replacement these past few months, last Tuesday night the hinge on my old flip-phone gave way, creating two basically useless devices where once there was one (thus proving its emptiness). The good news: for some reason I had a $100 credit at Verizon, which together with the $100 manufacturer's rebate, rendered the phone (and the cool earpiece attachment) quite affordable. The phone is Blackberry compatible, so I can read my email with it, text message, send photos, surf the web, and possibly even update this blog (can't I?).

Mountainous Plateau Creates Ozone 'Halo' Around Tibet

Source: University of Toronto
Date: 2005-12-08

Not only is the air around the world's highest mountains thin, but it's also thick with ozone, says a new study from University of Toronto researchers.

In fact, say the scientists, the ring of ozone that exists around the Tibetan plateau, which rises 4,000 metres above sea level and includes such famous peaks as Mount Everest and K2, is as concentrated as the ozone found in heavily polluted cities -- and may put climbers at risk. The findings are published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"Around the circumference of Tibet, there's a halo of very high levels of ozone," said Professor G.W. Kent Moore, interim chair of the Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and lead author of the study.

Study co-author John Semple, an associate professor of surgery and an avid mountaineer, was initially interested in how weather changes at high altitude can have a medical impact on climbers. Along with Moore, he examined earlier data and found several studies that alluded to higher ozone levels. Ozone is a highly reactive gas that can cause coughing, chest pain and damage to the lining of the lungs.

"In meteorology, it's a fairly well known phenomenon that when you get storms, quite often the tropopause -- which is the flexible boundary between the stratosphere and the troposphere -- descends," Moore says. "Its usual height might be 12 kilometres, and it might decend to nine or 10 kilometres. If you're on Mount Everest, you're eight or nine kilometres up. It might be that you're sometimes in the stratosphere."

The stratosphere is where most of the ozone that protects the globe from the sun's ultraviolet rays can be found;for this reason stratospheric ozone is often referred to as "good" as opposed to the ground-level ozone from pollution which is referred to as "bad". When the tropopause decends, the ozone descends with it. "Most people think about the mountains as one of the areas you can go to get clean air," said Semple, head of the Division of Plastic Surgery at Sunnybrook and Women's College Health Sciences Centre, a teaching hospital affiliated with U of T. "It may be that when you're up high in the mountains that the good ozone actually becomes bad ozone--because no matter where ozone comes from you don't want to breathe it."

Semple climbed the Yeli Pass in Bhutan in the autumn of 2004 while collecting data on weather and atmospheric changes. He measured the levels of ozone between 3,000 and 5,000 metres above sea level and discovered that instead of falling (as pollutant levels normally do with altitude), ozone levels were rising.

Moore examined satellite measurements of the ozone levels above the plateau during October and November of the years 1997 to 2004. He found that while ozone levels were low over the centre of the Tibetan plateau, high levels of the gas could be found around the periphery of the plateau -- forming a halo.

Moore believes that the halo is the result of a pattern in fluid dynamics known as a Taylor column -- a phenomenon that is normally seen underwater. When water passes around a submerged obstacle, like a seamount, the flow of water forks around the obstacle. This forked pattern also continues above the top of the obstruction to the surface of the water, leaving a column of still water above the object.

Scientists treat air as a fluid, and Moore says that the Tibetan plateau acts like an obstacle, creating a column of stagnant air above the mountainous region. Because the plateau's influence extends into the upper troposphere and the lower stratosphere -- where the Earth's layer of UV-protectant ozone resides, Moore suggests that the plateau forms a halo of ozone-rich air in the upper-troposphere around Tibet. "As far as we know, this is the first one that's ever been found in the atmosphere," he says.

The ozone concentrations measured in this study are still considered quite low in relation to levels that are known to cause significant changes in lung function at sea level. The presence of such higher levels of ozone at extreme altitudes may add to the medical dangers faced by mountaineers. "We can only imagine that hypoxia [lack of oxygen] and the rate of hyperventilation that people have at extreme altitudes would actually make the effects of ozone worse," Semple says. "You probably need less ozone to cause a significant change in the lungs."

Providence Canyon

Today was the Zen Hike down to Providence Canyon. Seven of us showed up for the hike, and we were able to all fit into one van with reasonable comfort (albeit with a rather low back end). The drive down was over two hours, but the ride was not unpleasant.

It had been a cold morning (30 degrees when I left the house), but when we got to the park a little before noon and began the hike down to the canyon floor, it had warmed up into the low 60s. The cliffs and walls of Providence Canyon do not display themselves to the visitor immediately; instead you have to hike in a little ways, and at first get only glimpses and glances of the canyons. But gradually they reveal themselves in all their erosional splendor. We all hiked together at first and found a sunny spot to sit down and eat our lunch. After the meal, we split up and one group explored some poorly maintained trails on the west side of the canyon, while the other group followed the main trails to the easternmost canyons. The two groups crossed paths again after a short while, and together we hiked up off the canyon floor and started around on the rim trail.

We came across several old abandoned and rusted cars sitting in the woods. According to the Parks Department, they are from an old, pre-state park "homestead," and since have become home to several small mammals and birds, and removing the cars would cause more damage to the environment them leaving them. We found a young tree that was growing up through the rear window of a truck cab, and on up and out the driver's-side window.

The automotive graveyard seemed as good a spot as any to sit, so we practiced zazen there for a half hour among the trees and old cars (30 minutes of enlightenment). Just before the half-hour ended, I heard the voices of some other hikers approaching, so I rang the bell, ending the period a few minutes early, as I didn't want to create the impression that we were "worshiping" old cars or anything.After sitting, we hiked the rest of the way around the rim trail, taking in the great many beautiful vistas of the canyon. Although the canyon looks like rock, it's actually all sand. The "canyons" are in reality runaway gullies resulting from bad soil management practices by 19th century farmers - Providence Canyon did not exist in the 1850s. The exposed sands are Cretaceous and Tertiary aged sediments of the Providence Formation and Clayton Group. When the erosion cut down through the fairly resistant Clayton, the Providence quickly washed away, creating the interesting landscapes found today - a unique terrain in Georgia.We left the park after 3:00 and took the ride home, arriving back at the Zen Center around 6-ish.

Zen Hike
Providence Canyon
Saturday December 10, 2005

The Atlanta Soto Zen Center offers a one-day hike around and through the valleys and rim land of the amazing Providence Canyon, Georgia's "Little Grand Canyon." The rare Plumleaf Azalea and other wildflowers, as well as the pink, orange, red and purple hues of the soft canyon soil, make this unique locale a beautiful natural setting for exploration and for zazen. The massive gullies - up to 150 feet deep - were caused by erosion due to poor farming practices in the 1800s.

In contrast to previous hikes, the canyons will allow each participant to explore at their own pace and in a direction of their own choosing. “The way of others is not always the way. Following is dangerous.” Therefore, this is an excellent hike for all, regardless of hiking experience or physical fitness, a good opportunity for the sedentary as well as an exciting challenge for the athletic.

Transportation: We will be carpooling from the Atlanta Soto Zen center – please let us know if you can provide a vehicle for carpooling.

What to bring: Lunch, water and hiking supplies will be the responsibility of each participant. Please bring a daypack with your own food and water. As the weather may turn chilly and wet, please dress in layers and bring extra fleece or other warm clothes (it’s better to have it and not need it than the other way aound!). Other common items include good comfortable hiking shoes, long pants (jeans), a rain jacket, hat & insect repellent. Your daypack can double as a zafu.

Schedule: Saturday, 12/10:

Depart ASZC: 9 a.m.
Arrive at Trailhead: 11.00 a.m.
Depart from Trailhead: ~3.00 p.m.
Return to ASZC: ~ 5.00 p.m.

Meals: Please pack your own lunch and at least one liter of water. Trail mix, granola bars and chocolate make good trail snacks.

Registration: If you are interested in joining us, please send an email to shokai.atl@gmail.com. Please also indicate whether you are willing to volunteer to drive, and if so, how many passengers you can accommodate.

Departure Location:
Atlanta Soto Zen Center
1167-C/D Zonolite Place
Atlanta GA 30306

Questions?: Send email to shokai.atl@gmail.com.

"It is futile effort to linger in thought over the action of a lighting bolt: when the sound of thunder fills the sky, you will hardly have time to cover your ears... Some people lower their heads and linger in thought, trying to figure it out with intellect. They hardly realize that they are seeing ghosts without number in front of their skulls." --from The Blue Cliff Record

Happy Bodhi Day

Apparently, baby Kaya was born at 11:26 p.m. on December 7, 2005. Mother and child are both doing fine.

This evening, Uncle Shokai went to the MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) Transit Planning Meeting to represent the neighborhood in the on-going deliberations on the Beltline and other mass-transit options. There was no heavy politicking, but it was fun putting dots on maps for where we wanted rapid transit stations to be. However, the MARTA folks are still undecided as to whether that rapid transit would be buses, streetcars, light rail or commuter trains.

Today is Bodhi Day, the anniversary (2,500th or thereabouts) of the Buddha's enlightenment. There's an all-night sitting at the Zen Center to commemorate the event, but I'm not going (list of excuses includes: had to go to the MARTA meeting, have to work tomorrow, & it's cold and rainy out). I wish them well.

Haven't done political satire for a while . . . that felt good. With the Republicans set to lose control of the House and possibly the Senate next year, at least according to all the news outlets (except of course for Fox), it seems that I need to get any last kicks in now, before they become too pathetic to flog any further (I know - mixed metaphor, but I liked the alliteration) .

I had lunch with Sensei today at Atkins Park. We had a good conversation about a lot of the issues that have been coming up in my practice.

Meanwhile, over on the left coast, my sister is undergoing a c-section, possibly even as I'm writing this, so I don't have too much to say tonight. I wish her and her baby, Kaya, the best of health. Live long and prosper, sis.

What I've Been Listening to Lately

John Coltrane -
The Complete Prestige Recordings

Sixteen CDs (16!) of great music recorded between 1956 and 1959. Everything from Tenor Madness, his only recorded meeting with Sonny Rollins ("Did you hear what happened to Sonny? He got run over by a Trane!") to the Coltrane-Red Garland-Paul Chambers-Art Taylor quartet.

Heaven . . .

According to new research by the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 99% of Alaska’s 2000 glaciers are now retreating or stagnating, and Alaska’s glaciers now contribute more water to raising sea level than Antarctica and other polar areas.

This glacial retreat involves a newly recognized process known as "disarticulation" at more than a dozen large, retreating Alaskan glaciers. This process, first observed at Bering Glacier, is the passive, rapid separation of large pieces of ice from the terminus of a thinning glacier, resulting in its rapid retreat. It occurs when a thinning glacier termini reaches a state of buoyancy and separates from its bed. Dozens of very large tabular icebergs have been observed separating in a single event. The results of disarticulation are very similar to those of the collapses observed at several Antarctic ice shelves.

Sesshin wrapped up without any further incident. Sensei conspicuously avoided any further mention of rebirth or reincarnation in his Sunday morning dharma talk, even though the topic was "Old Age and Death." I only got to sit for one 45-minute period, though, because I was tapped to be the dokusan attendant. No other meals were served oryoki (spell-check, Bob) style.

It's raining like mad outside.

I appreciate the very kind comments, as always (always appreciated and always kind), from Greensmile and Kathleen. One of the really great things about Zen is that I can tell the teacher to his face that I think he's full of shit, if that were what I thought, and he would merely smile and ask me what kind - bull or horse? These philosophies (rebirth and karma) and practices (oryoki and liturgy) are not the point, they're just more upaya, fingers pointing at the moon.

A wise teacher will not become upset when the student doesn't like the finger being used to point, but may instead offer another finger if needed.

I was a bad boy at sesshin today, although I did complete 6 1/2 hours of zazen.

During dokusan (one-on-one interview with the roshi), I expounded on my views on reincarnation. He said that the Buddha did not teach reincarnation (transmigrating souls), but rather taught rebirth, and went on a long, long dissertation about the scriptures on the topic (such as the Buddha recalling his millions of past lives). But I held my ground and threw the cold water of science on the scriptures - human beings have only been on this planet about 2 million years; the Buddha couldn't possibly have had a million prior incarnations (unless each one only lasted 2 years).

He conceded that the teachings on rebirth, like all dharmas, are just upaya - a skillful means of encouraging practice. I argued that it may have been skillful in 500 B.C., but now it's just plain, well, embarrassing, sort of like "Intelligent Design" or creationism.

How else though, he asked me, can one account for the unfortunate things that happen to good people, if not bad karma in prior lives?

There's no need for prior lives to enter the picture. The Buddha's First Noble Truth is the existence of suffering - even the most devout, sincere practioner is not exempt from the First Noble Truth. It may appear unfair at times, but those are the consequences of existence. It's not the karma from past lives, it's the karma from living this life.

If I die, it has nothing to do with someone else being born later, and it's silly to think so. I pointed to a tree out the window. If I cut that tree down, that doesn't mean that a new tree will suddenly appear somewhere in, say, the Pacific Northwest.

"True," the roshi said, "but the tree drops seeds, and those seeds will become new trees."

Your humble narrator agreed, but I have seed to, and I've spent significant years of my life trying to spread it around as best I could - plant it in as much soil as I could plow. But if and when my seed encounters the right conditions, specifically a fertile womb and an egg, a new life arises. And as the cells of that new life subdivide and develop, the whole chain of dependent co-origination is recapitulated: form gives rise to senses, senses give rise to sensation, sensation gives rise to craving and so on and so forth to becoming, birth, and eventually old age and death.

And as for karma, it is also passed down from parent to child - the crack whore's bad karma, for example, is manifested in a future life by the bad luck of being the child of a crack whore.

"But that's just parenting . . ." he protested.

"Exactly," I agreed. "Don't overlook its miraculous and significant nature."

We finally agreed to disagree, although he admitted he could see the logic of my position.

But that wasn't being a bad boy. That's just the honest, intimate dialog of dokusan. I was a bad boy because I walked out on the oryoki meal.

Oryoki, if you don't know, is a very ritualized Japanese eating style - all bowls-in-bowls, utensils held just so and precisely folded napkins, culminating in drinking the rinse water (tea actually) from each bowl to return everything "clean" for the next meal.

It was all getting just too precious and stylized for me. There are those who say that oryoki brings awareness to the eating process, but if you need all that ritual to raise your awareness, I suggest more practice, not more ritual.

Look, if I were living in feudal Japan, say in a monastery without running water, I could see it. But let's not pretend there aren't knives and forks in the next room, and a sink and water in which to wash the dishes (not to mention a dozen or so sesshin attendees looking for work to do during samu period). We don't need to lick our bowls "clean." Life is complicated enough without having to worry whether I should be lifting the left fold of the third napkin with my right hand or left.

So instead I went home, nuked some lasagna, raked the leaves off my driveway, and went back to the zendo at 3 p.m. for the next sitting period.

Okay - I'm not interested in pretending that I'm Japanese and eating oryoki - does this mean that I will be reincarnated as a crack whore?

Tomorrow when you're old and your mouth is paved with gold,
You'll begin to feel the cold inside.
- Viv Stanshall

Today was the first day of the Ruhatsu sesshin. I drove to the zendo directly from work, and was still late because of the notorious Atlanta traffic. I sat in the meditation room for an hour, alone while others ate, in order to unwind.

The service began at half past seven; I was asked to lead the chanting and time the periods for the evening. We sat for 90 minutes - two 45-minute periods with kinhin (walking meditation) between, and a talk by the abbott during the first sitting period.

The theme, in addition to the Buddha's enlightenment, was the 12th link in the chain of dependent co-origination (old age and death). But this led to talk of future lives, accumulated karma and so on - the whole unquestioned reincarnation ball of wax.

I wonder if I'll be able to keep my mouth shut during the rest of the weekend.

Happy December!

Practice opportunities:

Rohatsu Sesshin - December 2-4, 2005. Atlanta Soto Zen Center. The December weekend sesshin will commemorate the Buddha's birthday. Deepen your practice.

Monday Night Zazen - December 5, 2005. Atlanta Soto Zen Center. 60 minutes of enlightenment/30 minutes of delusion to start off your week.

Zen Hike - December 10, 2005. Providence Canyon, Georgia. Come explore nature and geology on this day-long, self-guided hike and outdoor meditation opportunity.

See? This blog doesn't just talk at you, but actually gives you stuff to do. Come join in!