Monday Night Zazen

In Sung-Dynasty China, the term "householder" refers to gentlemen who had not left their families.  Some of them live in houses with their wives, while others are single and chaste, but anyway we can say  that they are all immensely busy with dusty toil.  Nevertheless, if one of them has clarified the Way, patch-robed monks gather to do prostrations and to ask for the benefit of their teaching, as they would a Master who had left home.  

We should be like that, even towards women, even towards an animal. - Zen Master Eihei Dogen, 1240 AD

White Rabbits

I've been conceiving a film in my mind, a reimagining of the zombie genre, in which the zombies aren't the gross, flesh-eating undead of most horror films, but normal-appearing persons who's minds have simply gone blank, while those who are unaffected, the non-zombies, are the monsters based on how they treat the defenseless victims.  The film was just a thought, a wondering of how much one could change the conventional genre and still have something recognizable as a zombie movie.

Anyway, the only reason I bring this up is that the first 20 or 25 seconds of the video for White Rabbits' Heavy Metal is almost exactly the visual image I had in mind for the beginning of the film.  It totally shocked me to see what was only a thought experiment of my own device suddenly made manifest, and frankly, done far better than anything that I had imagined.

And the only reason I bring all that up is that this evening, Brooklyn's White Rabbits are playing Variety Playhouse, a great venue for live music.  I'm fascinated by their Spoon-like sound, and have been looking forward to hearing them.

As if that weren't good enough, The War On Drugs, who put on a marathon show at The Earl last Rocktober, are also on the bill.  Someone on YouTube commented that if Mark Knopfler made a baby with Bob Dylan, and Bruce Springsteen with Win Butler, and than if those two babies would meet and make a baby of their own, you'll get The War On Drugs.  Very amusing, and I couldn't describe their sound any better.  They're so good that I would go to tonight's show anyway, even without White Rabbits on the bill.

But it just keeps getting better and better.  North Carolina's The Love Language are opening.  Not to be redundant, but I'd go out just to hear The Love Language, even without The War On Drugs and White Rabbits on the bill.  

For those wondering, last night's Fanfarlo set was incredible.  Pictures and reviews of both of these shows soon.

Fanfarlo

Tennis are playing a sold-out show at The Earl tonight, with the charming newcomers Hospitality opening.  I'm not going. 

Nothing against the bands, but I've already seen Tennis twice, about this time last year at The Earl and again at Bumbershoot, and although I really want to see Hospitality, I will get the chance when they open for Eleanor Freidberger at The Basement on April 21.  But those aren't the reasons I'm not going. 

The reason I'm not going is that London's Fanfarlo, whom I haven't yet seen, are playing this evening at Vinyl.  Fanfarlo plays "lushly romantic pop songs that they find personally inspiring, incorporating horns, strings, mandolin, and vintage instruments in their live sets," and I've been wanting to see them for a while now.

Since the release of their debut album, Reservoir, in 2009, Fanfarlo has incorporated both earnest, orchestral pop and a more muscular, less emotive rock into their music, "an intoxicating combination of melancholy and wonder," according to The New Yorker.  It's also been said that Fanfarlo's precise spot on the rock-pop-folk spectrum is hard to identify.  To me, they are part of a group of bands, including Beirut and Typhoon, who employ multiple instruments and multiple genres to create joyous music of a fundamentally approachable nature.  All music, without exception, is a direct expression of the Buddha-dharma, and it's easy to hear that sound in the music of these bands.

During their Tiny Desk Concert, Fanfarlo covered Low's superb holiday song, Just Like Christmas.

The band turned up the intensity on Rooms Filled With Light, their new album.  The songs are more aggressive and there are fewer mandolin and harmonium fills, but the band still wears its artsy heart on its sleeve.

Videos Worth Watching

Cults

New York's Cults played a set last Tuesday, March 6, to a sold-out crowd at the redoubtable Earl in Atlanta, Georgia.  

West Yorkshire's Spectrals opened.

I don't know if anyone knew quite what to make of Spectrals.  I don't know if Louis Jones knew what to make of Spectrals.  He had intended to tour the States with a drummer, but his drummer had passport problems and couldn't make it, so Mr. Jones made a last-minute decision to tour alone.  I was surprised, with all the gear and instruments on the stage, to see a single musician take the stage alone and play accompanied only by his own guitar.  

Spectrals plays slightly skewed, reverb-heavy pop and garage rock, sometimes with some dazed surf guitar thrown in because, why not?  Something about Mr. Jones' endearing and sincere-sounding  voice and songs reminded me a little of some of the solo material by Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys.

Tuesday was only Mr. Jones' second day in America, and he had breakfast in an Atlanta Waffle House.  No telling if he'll come back.

Between Spectrals and the headliners was San Diego's Mrs. Magician.  There is no "Mrs." is Mrs. Musician - just four guys playing slightly psychedelic, garage rock.  They were loud and lots of fun.

Mrs. Magician closed their set with a song called There Is No God,a brave move on Super Tuesday in the Deep-South Bible Belt.

Cults took the stage a little before 11:00 pm, opening with an instrumental Intro before launching into Abducted.

Madeline Follin:

The band was quite capable in capturing the 60s nostalgia of their girl-group sound live.  Ms. Follin's voice rose nicely over the instruments, and everything seemed to effortlessly fall into place.  Ms. Follin even seemed to be having some fun, toying with the hem of her dress as she swayed to the music and later  teasing one guy in the audience who was shouting especially loud (not me).

It was reassuring to see that the xylophone sound in Go Outside was actually made with a real xylophone (see above).  Below, Brian Oblivion:

Everybody in the band (except the drummer) has admirably long hair.  And straight.  If they ever lose their taste for touring, they can always make a living supplying wig makers.

Only disappointment of the evening: no encore.  The capacity crowd didn't even try.  Everyone just kind of filed out, even before the house lights and music came back on.

We've gotta do better than that.

Two Tibetan Women Die After Self-Immolation

"Buddhism is a way of compassion, not of hatred, and one of peace, not of war.  A dictatorial government that tries to control or repress its people by hatred and bloodshed will not be supported by its Buddhist base.  When one Buddhist lights the match that sets their robes on fire and makes them a human torch, other Buddhists feel that dedication and take it upon themselves." - Rev. Zengaku Soyu Matsuoka, Roshi, November 3, 1963

I don't usually like to blog about the situation in Tibet - not that I don't care, but I don't want to perpetuate an impression of Buddhists selectively worrying about the rights of only other Buddhists - but two Tibetan women killed themselves by self-immolation in two different regions of occupied Tibet over the weekend.

The two self-immolations were the first by Tibetan laywomen in Tibet’s history - previously, only nuns or former nuns had set fire to themselves. The two deaths bring the number of Tibetans who have died by self-immolation in Tibet since last March to at least 24; at least 16 have died.

According to reports, a woman who attends a middle school in Maqu County in Gansu Province set herself on fire in a vegetable market on Saturday.  An exile advocacy group identified the woman who killed herself as Tsering Kyi, age 19.

On Sunday, a 32-year-old widow and mother of three known as Rinchen, killed herself by self-immolation in front of Kirti Monastery in the town of Aba, known in Tibetan as Ngaba Town. Rinchen had four children, and while in flames she reportedly called out, “Tibet needs freedom and Gyalwa Rinpochen (the Dalai Lama) needs to return to Tibet.” Local people have taken her body into the monastery.

Recent reports describe an increase in military presence in Tibetan towns and villages, in addition to the 300 officials already stationed at Kirti Monastery.  According to Tibetan sources, people in Ngaba Town have been beaten and detained by security personnel just for the "crime" of being Tibetan.  Since last year, large numbers of Chinese state security personnel are present on the streets of Ngaba Town, manning roadblocks and conducting house-to-house searches. The town and the surrounding area are closed to independent observers. Communications, including internet and mobile, have been blocked for much of the last year.

The self immolations are reminiscent of the monks who set themselves on fire in the 1960s to protest the South Vietnamese governments' persecution of Buddhists.  As a young boy, I was both shocked and strangely fascinated by the calm countenance of the monks as they sat cross-legged in flames.  In fact, that was my first real exposure to Buddhism, and for years, the word Buddhist in my mind was associated with Buddhist monk, and Buddhist monk manifested the image of the monk in flames.  Speaking in 1963, Matsuoka Roshi, my teacher's teacher, explained:

"It was not too long ago when I spoke to you about the self-sacrifice of a Buddhist monk, Quang Duc.  Since his death by fire on the streets of Saigon, four more monks and a Buddhist nun have followed his example.  Four Buddhist monks and the first woman to offer her life in protest of the religious persecution of the Buddhists in Viet Nam by the government have all done so out of religious aspirations and heroic self-sacrifice.  Their lives have not been wasted, as some might think, even if the government does not take immediate steps to stop the persecution of others of their faith.  It is an ignorant person who thinks their deaths have been in vain, for they have not known the world in which these monks and the nun have spent their days.  Theirs is a spiritual world in which there is no death - only life - and there is no suffering or pain.  They have found the spiritual power that is Zen, even though they live in the land of Southern Buddhism.  Zen is to be found anywhere, in any place, by any one, and it makes a life of selfless concern for others.  In Viet Nam, the people have been showing their admiration and gratitude for the sacrifice of the monks and the nun by holding demonstrations in the places of their death and demanding that the bodies of the dead be given to them for a funeral and memorial service.  Even though the government has been taking stringent action against further demonstrations, they have not been able to squelch them, for the spirit that inspired the sacrificed monks and the nun has been caught like a fever by the common people. The lives of the sacrificed continue to live in the lives of their countrymen.  Knowledge of Zen, and its spiritual power, enables one to live such a life in this world."

Encouragingly, Matsuoka Roshi points out that the monks "sat in meditation, and as their minds became empty, all fears left them.  In Zen, there is no pain or death; no fear of anything. The mind that has become empty from meditation does not know these fears.  They are left behind at some unknown time, and never remembered.  You and the monk in the photograph can be the same.  His meditation posture in the flames and yours in this comfortable room can become one if you really concentrate.  Anyone can achieve the same empty mind and fearlessness.  You have the potential within you, but do not know it.  In meditation, you begin to know your Buddha-nature, and unbelievable power comes to you, like the burning monk had."

Oblivion, Brian Oblivion

Is there any band more subversive than Cults, the collaboration between musicians Brian Oblivion and Madeline Follin, playing a sold out show this evening at The Earl?

One quickly overlooks the sinister-sounding band name as soon as one hears their sweet, girl-group inspired music, but pretty soon the lyrics start to paint a darker picture, especially in songs like Abducted and Bad Things, bringing one back to the darker implications of the name.

"But to me, death is not a fearful thing.  It's living that's treacherous," says the sampled narration at the beginning of Go Outside.  The voiceover is replaced by a cheerful, pretty, xylophone figure as the song kicks in, but the speaker, one learns, was the Reverend Jim Jones of the People's Temple in Guyana - Jonestown, the person for whom the term "drinking the Kool-Aid" was first coined. 

Abducted is similarly subversive but uses different tactics.  In addition to a pretty tune masking dark subject matter, the song starts at a very low volume, tempting one to turn the speakers up, before the music suddenly kicks in at top volume.  I'm sure more than a couple cubicle workers had to scramble to turn the music back down as heads in the office turned toward them.

So tonight's concert will be by Cults, with the bands Spectrals and Mrs. Magician opening.  Pictures later this week.

Oblivion, Part III

If you've already connected all of the dots in the koan of Hui-Neng's Think Neither Good Nor Evil, then I apologize for this unnecessary explanation.  If, like myself, you're still putting it all together, then please read on, and let me know if there's anything that I missed.

The Fifth Patriarch had acknowledged the deep understanding and awakened mind of the simple, illiterate Hui-Neng.  Hui-Neng's lack of education and lack of knowledge are, in all likelihood, no exaggeration -   apparently, he could not read or write even to the end of his life.  In his commentary on this koan, RH Blyth says that in Hui-Neng, "we see the ordinary Chinese at his best."  We can clearly see in Hui-Neng the meaning of the saying that an ordinary man is the Buddha.  He has little of that love of paradox for its own sake evident elsewhere in Zen; no shouting or beating; no attempt to pack the whole meaning of existence into a single syllable.  Therefore, he is able to stand up or sit down and address a crowd of people, rich and poor, educated or uneducated, and say in simple, modest language what Zen is and what it is not.  Kindness, simplicity, honesty, directness, politeness - these are what Hui-Neng has.  He lacks poetry.

To commemorate the recognition, the Fifth Patriarch transmits to Hui-Neng the bowl and robe once owned by the Buddha himself.  Now, there's no reason to suppose that such a sacred relic somehow came to leave India (if it still even existed) and came to reside a millennium later with the Fifth Patriarch in China.  But as Hui-Neng explains to his pursuer later in the story, the bowl and robe are but representations of the Buddha's teaching, symbols of the dharma.  Do not mistake them for the literal bowl and the literal robe once worn by the Buddha.  So when the story says that the Fifth Patriarch transmitted the bowl and robe to Hui-Neng, it is saying that that Fifth Patriarch recognized Hui-Neng's grasp of the Buddha's teaching and made him, in effect, the Sixth Patriarch. Ceremonial garments and trinkets may have been exchanged, but "the bowl and the robe" in this story refers to the Buddha-dharma, not the material things.

The other learned and quite accomplished monks, who had been studying with the Fifth Patriarch for many, mnay years, even decades in some cases, were naturally upset over this.  It was always assumed that one of these other monks would become the next in succession.  Discord in the sangha is apparently not a 21st Century, western innovation - it happened in China, too, as well as in Japan, and even, apparently, in the Buddha's own sangha back in India.  I know from sad experience that it has happened in the very sangha within which I practice now.

As I wrote the other day, though, do not mistake these angry monks for vainglorious little men jealous of the success of others.  There were, instead, struck by a very real sense that something was wrong - that there was a right way and a wrong way, and this had clearly gone the wrong way. Someone from outside of their learned and contemplative society had come in and taken what rightfully should have been given to one of them.  Their minds distinguished what should have been from what was, and discriminated between good and evil, justice and injustice, and honesty and deceit. If that simple, illiterate Hui-Neng had somehow managed to convince their teacher that he was the next successor, it must have been though some sort of treachery or deceit.  Full of self-righteous indignation, and convinced that they were defending the true dharma, doing what was right, they set off to capture Hui-Neng and take back those ceremonial garments and trinkets, mistaking the symbols of Hui-Neng's understanding for understanding itself.

In other words, they were not very different than you and I, if we are honest with ourselves.

So Ming, the former general of the fourth rank, pursued Hui-Neng relentlessly, and finally, using his superior military skills, managed to corner his prey.  Upon being cornered, Hui-Neng, the good bodhisattva, sets the robe and bowl down in front of him, giving his pursuer what he wanted, and said, "The robe and bowl merely represent the teachings; what is the point of fighting over this?  Go ahead and take them away."  But Ming was unable to lift them - they were as heavy as lead.

"Go ahead and take them away."  Hui-Neng allowed Ming to choose to do what he wanted with the objects - not in context of taking them away from some other but to act on his own accord without reference to self and other.  Hui-Neng had skillfully taken his self, Ming's "other," out of the equation, and left Ming by himself to act on his own.  But once the other side of the imaginary line disappears, so does the line itself and so does whatever was on the near side of the line.  What the story is saying here is not that he literally could not pick up a robe and a bowl - this isn't Camelot and a sword stuck in a stone - but that when Hui-Neng took himself out of the equation, the construct of self and other, right and wrong, good and evil, fell away, and it shattered Ming's rage.  And once the fire of rage was extinguished, Ming did not know what he was doing there, how to proceed, what to do next.

Trembling for shame, Ming admitted that it was the true teaching, not the symbolic robe and bowl, that he was really after all along.  Recognizing that which the Fifth Patriarch saw in Hui-Neng, he bowed down and asked to be taught the dharma, that is, he requested, not demanded, the true treasure.

Hui-Neng's lesson to him was as direct as it was brief - "Think neither good nor evil.  At such a moment, what is the true self?" 

Ming, like the other monks, had fallen into discriminating between what they believed to be good from what they believed to be bad.  These sure convictions, in turn, divided themselves from others - in this case, divided Hui-Neng as an outsider from what they considered to be the true followers of the Way.  But this sense of self righteousness arose from their discrimination between good and evil.  What, Hui-Neng challenged him - and challenges us today - is the true self beyond dualistic concepts like good and evil?

Ming immediately understood (See? He was a good monk after all!) and experienced realization at that moment.  He described his experience to Hui-Neng as being like one who drinks water and knows for oneself, without doubt, whether the water is warm or cold and asks Hui-Neng to be his teacher (practice does not end at enlightenment - practice and enlightenment are one).  Hui-Neng kindly acknowledges that Ming's understanding is like his, and says that they both have the same teacher.  They are peers.  They are both students together of the Fifth Patriarch.

To Hui-Neng, there was never any difference or separation, no lines drawn in his imagination, between himself and Ming.  To Hui-Neng, his pursuer and tormentor of but a few minutes earlier had always been his dharma brother, and he invites him to practice with him in accordance with this holistic view.

So right now, what is separating you from the rest of the world?  What is separating me?  This is the challenge of this koan.

Tornadoes Rip The South (again)

In one of those ironic moments bordering on cognitive dissonance, last Friday night, as thunder, lightning and hailstones were crashing down outside my house and my cats were hiding beneath the living-room sofa, the television newscasters on the local news channels were warning the residents of certain North Georgia towns that they had less than one minute to seek shelter before a new wave of tornadoes tore through their communities, while on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, automobile icon Bob Lutz was denying global warming and any increase in hurricane activity over the last 10 years.

According to the news reports, Friday night's storms touched down in at least a dozen states, killing 19 people in Kentucky, 14 in Indiana, three in Ohio, and one each in Alabama and here in Georgia.  The National Weather Service said the four twisters to hit Kentucky with wind speeds up to 160 mph were the worst in the region in 24 years.  In Indiana, an EF-4 tornado, the second-highest category on the Fujita scale that measures tornadic force, stayed on the ground for more than 50 miles.

My deepest condolences go out to those who lost loved ones in the storms.

But this does raise the question: were these tornadoes, which occurred so unusually early in the year, a result, at least in part, of climate change?

The scientific jury is apparently still out. As temperatures warm, air holds more water vapor, which adds fuel to the storm, so to speak. Last spring, when the Southeast was struck by multiple deadly outbreaks, the Gulf of Mexico was warmer than average and the same situation is occurring today. This is important because it means there is more moisture flowing northward from the Gulf, and a humid environment is necessary for severe thunderstorms to form. According to a sobering article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, increases in atmospheric water vapor suggest a future increase of 100% or more in severe thunderstorm activity at locations in proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and in Atlantic coastal regions, such as Atlanta and New York.

On the other hand, although recent research has yielded insight into the connections between climate change and tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, these relationships remain mostly unexplored, largely because of the challenges in observing and modeling tornadoes.   As explained in an excellent article on the Climate Central blog, while hurricanes can be hundreds of miles wide, tornadoes are often less than a mile in diameter, which requires much more computing power in order to accurately model their behavior.  Although scientists are currently working to overcome that challenge, rather than simulating tornadoes themselves, they have made more progress in studying the conditions that give rise to the formation of severe thunderstorms (the Buddha taught that all things arise from conditions). 

The other necessary ingredient for tornado formation, in addition to increased water vapor, is wind shear, which was present in abundance during this week's tornado outbreak.  However, wind shear is projected to decrease as the climate warms. This would suggest that tornadoes will become less frequent in the future. Which factor wins out in the end - the increase in water vapor and heat energy, or the decrease in wind shear - may determine how tornadoes fare in a warming world.

Now back to Bob Lutz for a moment (warning: here come the maps and graphs).  He seems to be a good man and this isn't an attack on him but rather on the widespread assumption, which he expressed, that 2011 didn't produce many hurricanes.  The fact of the matter is 2011 was tied with 2010 for the third most active hurricane season on record.  This may not be readily apparent, as most of the tropical storms and hurricanes fortunately never made landfall on U.S. soil.

But just because we were lucky enough to not have the hurricanes make landfall doesn't mean that they didn't exist.  Climate change predicts there will be more tropical storm and hurricane activity, but not necessarily more tropical storm and hurricane activity where you live.   The active 2011 hurricane season was completely consistent with climate change predictions.

Mr. Lutz also scoffed at other predictions made by climate change scientists, and challenged the rest of the panel on the show to name just one prediction that the IPCC got right.  His skepticism was probably bouyed by a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, which presented this graph:

It looks pretty bad, doesn't it?  The dotted lines are purported to be the prediction global average temperatures of the IPCC models of different years, while the red line is the actual recorded average.  Clearly, the 1990 model was way off, and while subsequent models performed a little better, they can't explain an apparent decrease in temperatures from 2005 through 2009, and from 2010 to the present.

Prof. Barry Bickmore of Brigham Young University, an active Mormon and an active Republican (he was a County Delegate for the Republican Party from 2008 through 2010), in his most impressive blog, Anti-Climate Change Extremism in Utah, explains, "But let’s look at the graph. They have a temperature plot, which wiggles all over the place, and then they have 4 straight lines that are supposed to represent the model predictions. . . What the authors don’t tell you is that the lines they plot are really just the average long-term slopes of a bunch of different models.  The individual models actually predict that the temperature will go up and down for a few years at a time, but the long-term slope (30 years or more) will be about what those straight lines say.  Given that these lines are supposed to be average, long-term slopes, take a look at the temperature data and try to estimate whether the overall slope of the data is similar to the slopes of those three lines (from the 1995, 2001, and 2007 IPCC reports). If you were to calculate the slope of the data WITH error bars, the model predictions would very likely be in that range."

Here are the individual model predictions along with the error bars (margin of error), depicted as the grey envelope around the individual lines:

Tellingly, the Wall Street Journal editorial did not provide error bars of any kind.  If it did, it would clearly show that the global mean temperature has wiggled around inside the margin of error for the models, just as predicted.

"So before I go on," Prof. Bickford writes, "let me be blunt about these guys. They know about error bars. They know that it’s meaningless, in a 'noisy' system like global climate, to compare projected long-term trends to just a few years of data. And yet, they did. Why? I’ll let you decide."

The truth of the matter is that global average temperatures have responded precisely as the climate models predicted due to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, and yet a deliberate misinformation campaign, as most recently promulgated in the Wall Street Journal, is trying to convince the public of just the  opposite.  And as a result, a well meaning but misinformed Bob Lutz appears on television convinced that the IPCC predictions missed the mark, and further spreads confusion and doubt to the American public, even as they seek shelter from severe thunderstorm and tornado activity.

Why?  I'll let you decide.

Shearwater - The Earl, Atlanta - February 29, 2012

"That was so good!" somebody spontaneously yelled out after the second song of Shearwater's Wednesday night set at The Earl - I think it was You As You Were, but my memory might not be correct - and he was right, it was so good.  Shearwater played an absolutely transcendental set in support of their new album, Animal Joy.  It might be too early to declare their performance as Concert of the Year, but they set the bar pretty high for those who follow.

Atlanta's Lily and the Tigers opened.  I like this band - I saw them open for Viva Voce during last year's Rocktober, and was glad to hear them again.  I like their somewhat unusual instrumentation - guitar, violin, oboe, stand-up bass, and drums - and their commitment to acoustic performance, and singer Casey Hood (there is no "Lily" in the band) has a great voice.  They're playing tonight at The Goat Farm, opening for Atlanta's Little Tybee, but I probably won't go as I'm fighting a cold.

My only disappointment with Shearwater's set was revealed as they set up - the band's line up had changed since they last played Atlanta, and charismatic percussionist Thor was not with them, nor was their innovative bass player, Kimberly.  Both musicians made significant contributions on Shearwater's previous albums, but as the band started playing Wednesday night, their solid musicianship made up for the loss of any familiar faces.

Shearwater's music can simultaneously convey drama and bliss, beauty and strength, and live, their songs are far more dramatic and daring then they sound recorded.  The leaner, no-frills band on this tour rendered the music brawnier than their past efforts.  The new songs from Animal Joy, which made up most of the set, positively snarled at times, even as Jonathan Meiburg's falsetto singing gracefully glided over the instrumentation.  Leviathan Bound is the only song from their earlier albums, the Island Arc trilogy, that I recall them playing (although to be fair, there might have been more). With the sparer instrumentation on this tour, Shearwater's performance is more focused on Meiburg's singing than ever before, and this is a good thing, as his voice is one of indie rock's current treasures.

As I've said before, all music without exception is a direct expression of the buddha-dharma, although it's easier to realize that with some musics than other.  It's eminently apparent with Shearwater.  If you aren't familiar with their music, you really owe it to yourself to check out the full album stream for Animal Joy as long as they leave it on line - I've posted it here for your convenience.  I'm not sure how long it will remain available.

The show was a bit of a homecoming for Mr. Meiburg, who's originally from Atlanta (the band is based in Austin) and the audience was very receptive and enthusiastic - they were all obviously fans of the band. The camaraderie between performers and audience allowed for a lot of very relaxed and spontaneous banter between songs - it was apparent that Meiburg and the band felt very comfortable, both in their relationship with the audience and with the obvious quality of their new material.  They even made a playful reference to covering Stop Dragging My Heart Around with Sharon Van Etten at the Bowery Ballroom in New York last weekend.

Mr. Meiburg's birthday was the next day - he turned 36 at midnight, just after they concluded their set, and the audience sang Happy Birthday to him before the encore.  It occurred to me that being born on March 1 means that every four years, you have to wait one extra day before your birthday.  It must be frustrating on a child.

As he did last year, Mr. Meiburg sang the first song of the encore solo (or nearly solo, he was accompanied only by their fine keyboardist), before the rest of the band joined him on stage for their final number.  

After the set, the smiling audience wandered out of the club and into the wet Georgia night, blissful and satisfied, and happy in the knowledge that Shearwater are coming back to Atlanta on May 19, when they open for St. Vincent at Variety Playhouse.

Love and Space

   

Oh, look.  2012 concert kick-off band and returning Friday night video champion Akron/Family were recently featured in an acoustic set up in Nashville, Tennessee.

You can see more from this set over here.

Oblivion, Part II

What's often overlooked in the Zen story about Hui-Neng, his pursuer, and the robe and bowl on the road is that the pursuer, Ming, is not just a stock character whose only purpose is to add a villain to the story.  Our minds so quickly disregard Ming, deny - or rather don't consider - his buddha-nature, and forget that he was a flesh-and-blood person just like Hui-Neng, just like you, just like me.  That the story is obviously legend doesn't excuse us from overlooking him.  In the story, we sympathize with the imaginary Hui-Neng and despise the imaginary Ming.

The story tells us that Ming was once a general of the fourth rank.  I don't know what "the fourth rank" means, but it sounds fairly impressive.  He left the military and entered the monastery, and was obviously close to his teacher and Hui-Neng's benefactor, the Fifth Patriarch.  And although the story says that he and other monks became jealous of Hui-Neng's being presented with the robe and bowl, in his mind, he was likely protecting the dharma and the honor of his teacher and the monastery as he pursued Hui-Neng.

He fell into the delusion of drawing lines where none existed, which gave rise to anger and violence.  In his mind, there was "right" and there was "wrong," and he was "right" and Hui-Neng was "wrong."  His mind also gave rise to divisive concepts such as "vengence" and "injustice," and "good" and "evil."  In reality, there are only things as they are and as Shakespeare noted, it's our mind that divides things one from another.

We are like this ourselves.  We separate "self" from "others," "friends" from "enemies," "neighbors" from "foreigners."  Once these divisions are made, we cease to regard the one on the other side of our imaginary line as a person, as having buddha-nature, and this gives rise to brutality and ultimately to the unspeakable atrocities performed by men.