The written word

I wanted to share a small window into a slightly more private part of me: my private written journal. I want to share it as it truely is, so please forgive the images sizes for thoes with a dial-up connection.

Update: Ok, the loading of my page over dial-up was quite painful so I've transcribed the text of my journal entries and posted them rather than the images to the main page.

Click the links to see the actual scanned in journal page images.

Journal Page #1:

When you find yourself distracted in your practice...

Come Back. reconnect.

Just Simply Begin Again.

The essence of all meditation practice is the ability to begin again.

Let go of any judgement of how or why you got distracted and just begin again.

There is no distance to traverse, there's no rehabilitation necessary to simply begin again. You can begin again right in the moment that you realize you've been distracted.

You don't have to judge yourself, or analyze it, try to figure out how you got to be where you went. Again, let go and begin again. The art of the practice of meditation is beginning again. And again. And again.

Sun, May 2^nd 2004

As I am here in the bedroom putting away the clothes, I'm experiencing a strong urge to turn on the T.V. as I am doing the laundry. I try to gently coach myself into remaining in silence and just be fully present with myself and my task as I put away the clothes.

Be fully present with the fact that I can practice within the activity of putting away the clothes. Then the thought occurs to me, "this practice is boring, ordinary; I don't want this practice, I want the Zendo practice!" For me, Zen is still something special. The romantisized notion of sitting as the great masters of China and Japain sat. I truely need to have more experience with the practice that is percieved as boring and nothing special.

Journal Page #2:

Nothing Special.

Ordinary, Everyday Living.

Mon, May 3^rd 2004

Didn't sit zazen yesterday. I sat on my zafu in the correct posture while going through my buddhist magazine collection. But I didn't spend time in silence on the zafu.

If I can't do this practice on the weekends, when my time restrictions aren't so many, how can I expect to ever develop a daily habit of sitting zazen?

Wed, May 5^th 2004

"The regularity of sitting zazen is more essential than the length of time we devote to it."

Tue, May 18^th 2004

Here I am again in this same familiar place, at work and not wanting to work. Instead I want to be researching Dogen.

Wed, May 19^th 2004

Let's do better today ok John? Let's try to let go of the blog obsession, ok? I'm not living the way of Dharma when I spend hours at work on my blog.

16:00 - Doing better today. Closed out 5 help calls so far today. And I'm back to working out the issue with 240 QA version.

Blocked

I'm tired tonight. I have so much going on inside me on an emotional level, but it's just not ready to come out in any orderly or even understandable way yet. Haven't had much time to myself to allow things to work themselves out. Hopefully the long 3 day weekend will afford me some time to myself. Maybe to take a walk in the park? Maybe even to get 30 minutes of uninterrupted time on the zafu? We'll see what life in the next few days will allow.

May all beings find happiness, may I help them do so.

Now you see me

Allrighty then! I finally scanned in a photo of myself for my blog profile. Not at all what you had in the mind's eye now is it?   ;-)

Undiscovered Wisdom

I started reading 'The Three Pillars of Zen' again. I have never really read this book in it's entirety in all the years that it's been on my book shelf. I originally purchased the book cause it was required for my 'East Asian Philosophy' class at R•I•T back in 1991. I had only read parts that were required reading for the class and never really had the interest for some reason to give it a comprehensive read.

Until now. I picked it off my bookshelf last night to take a look at the posture pictures that were referenced in another article on beginning a sitting practice. I started skipping through the book and got really excited for some reason about what I was reading. I'm hooked now and can't put it down.

It feels good to be finally reading this book that I've owned for all these years instead of impulsively running out to Barns & Noble to buy the book 'Cultivating Stillness' that I was leafing through the other day on the internet. I need to curb my Zen book buying in favor of actually spending the time putting it into practice as well as taking advantage of all the wisdom that is already sitting there on my bookshelf going undiscovered (or un-rediscovered, if there is such a word!).

What undiscovered wisdom do you have waiting patiently on your bookshelves?

Pass the Mayo Please

Alright, this is silly, yes. But I just had to find out what condiment I was!! Found this on Lisa's site.

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You are: MAYONNAISE! You are chill, laid back and
easy going. You don't want to start trouble if
you don't have to.

---What fast food condiment are you?---
brought to you by Quizilla

Party Weekend

Spent a wonderful, fun and BUSY weekend with my family.

Saturday was the graduation party for my wife Deb (nursing school). The morning was spent setting up and running around getting the food, balloons, decorations, etc. In the afternoon my parents arrived from Penn Yan, NY and the party started at four. Much fun and merriment followed. It was so good to see everyone show up to celebrate Deb’s awesome accomplishment with us!

Then it was off to Riegelsville, NJ on Sunday to a party for my niece Jessica’s 18th birthday. Again, much fun and merriment (tons of food too)! It was fun to watch the kids getting soaked by the sprinkler as it was pretty hot (92). It felt more like August then May!! Wheeew!

Even though I was looking forward to some solitude (that I didn’t really get), the weekend we enjoyable nonetheless. Just trying to meet life on life's terms instead of my own.

Living the Moment

Exhaust the little moment.
Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold
it will not come again
In this identical guise.

~ Gwendolyn Brooks

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I just heard this quote on an audio program I downloaded from Audible.com called "A Short Guide to a Happy Life" by Anna Quindlen (good program by the way).

The words of this poem just struck me right down to the marrow. Talk about summing up the way to practice Zen and the art of mindfulness!! I'm going to try and pratice this to the best of my ability today.

Silence

"There is a silent self within us whose presence is disturbing precisely because it is so silent: it can’t be spoken. It has to remain silent. To articulate it, to verbalize it, is to tamper with it, and in some ways destroy it.

Now let us frankly face the fact that our culture is one which is geared in many ways to help us evade any need to face this inner, silent self. We live in a state of constant semi-attention to the sound of voices, music, traffic, or the generalized noise of what goes on around us all the time. This keeps us immersed in a flood of racket and words, a diffuse medium in which our consciousness is half diluted: we are not quite “thinking,” not entirely responding, but we are more or less there. We are not fully present and not entirely absent; not fully withdrawn, yet not completely available. It cannot be said that we are really participating in anything and we may, in fact, be half conscious of our alienation and resentment."

~ Thomas Merton, Love and Living, p.40

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As I strive to find this place whenever I can throughout my day, when I do find it, I'm ever more grateful to have settled into it than the time before. It's becoming such an exquisite place to live from, yet after I'm there for a few minutes it feels like nothing special. Before I arrive it's special, after I've arrived and been there a bit, nothing special. Finnally some of the Zen 'nonsense' is beginning to make sense.

Give yourself the wonderful gift of silent sitting today. Just 10 minutes of zazen, that's all. 10 minutes, of being with yourself in the gentle compassion of silence.

today i cried

today i cried
i cried
for the little iraqi girl
who had her face
burnt off

i imagined her
as my daughter
screeming in pain
and i
screeming in anguish
at the americans
whose errant mortar
was the cause

i'm running with her
in my arms
as fast as i can
for help
to save her

why?
why did this have to happen...
to her?
to me?
to US?

Leaving to go Meditate

Something I need to keep in mind the next time I get the urge to escape life and head to the Zen Monastery to do some 'serious' meditation.

"I went all over looking for places to meditate. I didn't realize it was already there, in my heart. All the meditation is right there inside you. ...I traveled all over untill I was ready to drop dead from exhaustion. Only then when I stopped, did I find what I was looking for ... inside me."

~ Ajahn Chah

Sex and Zazen

Ever heard of a guy who has trouble falling asleep after unbelievably awesome sex? We guys are notorious for wanting to just collapse, snuggle for a bit, then fall asleep. We'll, not me, not last night. I just couldn't fall asleep!! So what did I do? I got up in the dark, felt around for my zafu and sat zazen for a while. I've never done that before! I tried not to judge the fact that once on the cushion, I was still having a hard time settling myself down. I just practiced with my breath as best I could in that moment and that was good enough. After a while, what must have been only 5 or 10 minutes or so, I finished the sitting with 3 full prostrations before returning to bed. Shortly after returning to bed I fell asleep.

When my alarm went off this morning at 5:45, I found myself just getting up and getting right into my day without hesitation. I wouldn't say that's a first too, but it's certainly not the norm! I felt really alive and awake this morning. It felt good. So, was it the sex or the zazen? I think probably it was a little bit of both!! :-)

Dogen on Morals

• The ancients thought it shameful to seek advancement or to want to be the head of something, or the chief or senior.
  
• No on should torment people or break their hearts.
  
• Just regard people's virtues, don't be obsessed with their faults.
  
• People should cultivate secret virtue.
  
• No matter how bad a state of mind you may get into, if you keep strong and hold out, eventually the floating clouds must vanish and the withering wind must cease.
  
• Do not be so proud as to hope to equal the great sages; do not be so mean as to hope to equal the ignoble.
  
• If one pursued selfish schemes to stay alive, there would be no end ot it.
  
• There is fundamentally no good or bad in the human mind; good and bad arise according to circumstances.
  
• Though a nobleman's power is greater than that of an ox, he does not contend with an ox.
  
• To plow deep but plant shallow is a way to natural disaster; if you help yourself but harm others, how could there be no consequences?

~ Zen Master Eihei Dogen (founder of Soto Zen in Japan)

How Rich are You?

Plug in your salary to find out just where you rank. When I plugged in mine, I was stunned that I am in the top 0.833% richest people in the world!! And there are 5,949,991,435 people poorer than I am. Whoa! Now there's a reality check for ya!

I have A LOT to be grateful for today!

Everything Changes...

Anitya (Anicca, Pali): Impermanence, the ever changing nature of all phenomena (even weblogs).

Emotional Views

Students of recent times cling to their own emotional views and go by their own subjective opinions, thinking Buddhism must be as they think it is, and denying it could be any different. As long as they are wandering in illusion seeking something resembling their own emotional judgments, most of them will make no progress on the way of enlightenment.

~ Dogen

ZEN FAITH

Zen In The American Grain - AN HONEST DOUBT - I have always been plagued by the idea of having to have faith as a Zen Buddhist practitioner. What to have faith in? God? Buddha? Dogen? Kannon Bodhisattva? The method of Zazen itself?

This article helps me along the path to figuring out for me what my faith is ultimately going to be based on. I don't have it all figured out just by reading the article, far from it. Actually, for the time being, I think I actually have even more questions on the subject. But at least now I have some more insight into how Soto Zen approaches the subject of faith to help me along. Maybe it will help you too?

{bow}

Ministering to the Sick and the Terminally Ill

Ministering to the Sick and the Terminally Ill - This link to a wonderful article on the Lord Buddha himself attending to the sick and dying came across the wire on one of my discussion lists and I wanted to share it here. I know several of my readers might take a keen interest in it. Some really good stuff to contemplate here.

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The first line of the text says:

"He who attends on the sick attends on me," declared the Buddha, exhorting his disciples on the importance of ministering to the sick.

Sounds vaguely similar to what Jesus said as well doesn't it? I knew there would be more evidence cropping up for me that these two enlightened masters are truly spiritual brothers. I just love it when I can once again tie into the spiritual tradition I was born into through the teachings of Buddha!! Cool!

Sharing some Teachings...

Silence is the language that God speaks; everything else is just a bad translation.

~ Father Thomas Keating

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The way to study true Zen is not verbal. Just open yourself and give up everything. Whatever happens, study closely and see what you find out. This is the fundamental attitude.

~ Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

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True Zen consists of sitting quietly in the correct posture. It is not a special state, it is the normal state: silent, peaceful, without agitation. Zen means to put the mind at rest and to concentrate the mind and body. In zazen there is no purpose, no seeking to gain something, no special effort or imagination. It is not knowledge to be grasped by the brain. It is solely a practice, a practice which is the true gate to happiness, peace and freedom.

~ Taisen Deshimaru Roshi