NEW SUICIDE GIRLS ARTICLE (May, 2008) and more on MINDLESS MINDFULNESS

Got a new SuicideGirls article up now. Yet another one about porn. I swear I'm gonna stop writing this article over & over one of these days. Maybe when people stop asking me to.

I just woke up, so I'm not gonna try and expound anymore about mindfulness until maybe later. The thing with most words used in Buddhism is that once the general public latches onto them and defines them in their own way they're dead. I think it's time to bury the word "mindfulness." It's just a cliche anymore. And, as I said (see below), seems to indicate in practice a state of fuzzy headed thinking and thinking and thinking and thinking while congratulating yourself on how mindful you're being. Lock the God damned doors and close the windows when you leave somebody else's house!

In the only place I know of where Dogen uses the word mindfulness he goes, "Mindfulness is the donkey looking at the well. It is the well looking at the donkey. It is the donkey looking at the donkey. It is the well looking at the well." He also says, "Without knowing who taught you, you think that mind is a function of the brain. When I say that mind is grass and trees you don't believe it." And, of course, Dogen did not use the word"mindfulness" at all. Neither did Buddha. The word did not even exist during their lifetimes. The English language itself didn't even exist in Buddha's day. Later on I'll go look up the Japanese word Dogen used that's translated here as "mindfulness" by Nishijima/Cross*.

Thing is, though, the "mindfulness" being taught nowadays seems to imply that we need to be mindful. As if we could somehow enact mindfulness. Nope. Can't be done. Mindfulness is occurring always. We need to get out of its way.



* It looks like I was wrong! First time in my whole life (hi, trolls)! I'd always thought the donkey-well line was about mindfulness. I even put it in my book Sit Down And Shut Up that way. Which goes to show you can never trust what's written in books! Shameful!!

In fact, the donkey-well stuff occurs in the chapter titled "Not Doing Wrongs" (諸悪莫作　SHOAKU MAKUSA, (chapter 10 in book one of the Nishijima/Cross translation of Shobogenzo) and says, "[The relation between] wrongs and not committing is not only a well looking at a donkey; it is the well looking at the well, the donkey looking at the donkey, a human being looking at a human being, and a mountain looking at a mountain." Nishijima explains this chapter on his blog right here. Although he makes a spelling mistake and keeps using the word "will" instead of "well" at one point (I gotta go fix that).

This is a reference to a koan that appears in Eihi Zenji Goroku (永平禅師語録　The Recorded Sayings of Eihi Zenji, a.k.a. Dogen). The koan goes, "Master Sozan once asked a monk, 'How is it when the dharma body of reality is manifesting form in accordance with beings, like the moon reflected in the water?' The monk said, 'It's like a donkey looking at a well.' Sozan said, 'You have said quite a lot, but you have only said eighty percent of it.' The monk then asked, 'What do you say, teacher?' Sozan answered, 'It's like the well looking at the donkey.'"

The only instance I can find where Dogen uses anything like the word "mindful" occurs in a piece he wrote called Zazengi（坐禅儀), or "Method for Zazen Practice." In Kazuaki Tanahashi's translation, which appears in Moon In A Dewdrop it says, "be mindful of passing time." I checked it out and the actual line is: 光陰を護惜べし. Carl Bielefeldt translates this as, "hold dear the passing days and nights." Both the words 光陰 and 護惜 are no longer in common use. 光陰 means roughly "light and darkness." And, by the way, for those of you who think of me as a smutty minded perv, I happen to know the character 陰 from the word 陰毛 which means "public hair" or, literally, "hair in darkness." The word 護惜 is a combo of two characters that mean "protect" (護) and "dearly" (惜). That's the word Tanahashi translates as "mindful." It's not as much of a stretch as Brian Victoria translating the Kodo Sawaki's statement meaning "we were fed up with killing" as "we gorged ourselves on killing." But it is a slight, though perfectly acceptable, stretch to use the word "mindful" here.

Be careful not to get stuck on words (says a guy who just devoted a couple hours of his holiday morning to looking up some words). Don't say I never looked up nuthin' for you!

MINDFULNESS SCHMINDFULNESS

I'm so happy Nishijima Roshi put up this post about mindfulness. It's the May 24, 2008 posting if I've just sent you to a generic link to his blog. Anyway I'm so fed up with this whole mindfulness thing it's wonderful to see somebody else feels the same way. And, no, we never discussed this particular topic.

I've been saying lately that I want to destroy the whole cult of mindfulness that's grown up in Buddhism these days. As Nishijima points out, the word "mindfulness" has come to mean getting deeper and deeper into your own head and that's not Buddhism at all. I think I've bitched about this before. But I live in a meditation center where several teachers do their thing. I can't tell you how many times I've been in my room listening to someone rattling on about mindfulness then come out after they've gone to find they've left the door unlocked, the windows wide open, the chairs all over the place... What the hell kind of mindfulness are they studying out there?

It's such a crap word. Anyway, just a little plug for Nishijima's blog. And speaking of plugs, see below for one about the Zero Defex CDs.

ZERO DEFEX CD

No time to write, people coming in for all-day Zazen in moments.

But I wanted to remind all of you that the new Zero Defex CD is available now from CD Baby or you can get a copy personally autographed by me on eBay right here!

You think that's cheezy. I think me and Jeff and Mickey spent a whole lot of money making the bastards...

GUESS I'M DUMB

I've spent pretty much my whole morning staring at my computer and scratching my head. I bought this thing called Fab Four, by East/West. It's a virtual instrument thngamajig with samples of all the instruments The Beatles used. The demo sounded really cool and I had good fun with M-Tron, a virtual Mellotron plug in. I figured I'd give this a go. I read the specs & they said you need 13 gigabytes of hard drive space to install it. Well, I don't have that much space free on my laptop or desk top, but I do have an outboard drive that I used to make Cleveland's Screaming and it has plenty of space left. So OK.

When I tried to install it on the outboard drive, I got a message saying it can only be installed on the "running hard drive." Ugh. So I sat and tried to figure out a solution. Here's what I came up with. But I don't know if it'll work or not. I dumped all my iTunes stuff from the desk top computer since I never listen to music on it anyway. That freed up the needed space on the HD. I'm now installing it there. When it's done I can (I hope) copy everything onto the outboard drive. Unless it's got some kinda restriction against that. Looking at the nearly useless FAQ on their site, they recommend in several similar (but not exactly the same) circumstances copying stuff to other drives.

If it doesn't work the way I hope I guess the worst scenario is the thing is forever on my desk top & whenever I need to use it outside my house I gotta move that. It's easier than moving a Hammond organ, so I guess that's not so bad.

Anyone out there smarter than me about this stuff is invited to write me with a better solution.

Some random thoughts for the day:

I was reading a few of the responses to the previous post. I find it remarkable how I'll say something, then someone embellishes what I've said with their own imagination, then that person proceeds to comment upon the stuff they've imagined as if I said that stuff. That's such a weird thing to me.

On this blog I've opened up my life to a tremendous degree. But there's no way I could possibly report everything that happens to me. I had a really good poop this morning, for example. But I don't usually report those details. Even when I report what's going on, you're really only getting like a millionth of a percent of what actually happened. When I described that meeting, for example, I didn't tell you about the strange dude who came up to me in the lobby saying, "Kenny! How ya doin'? Don't you remember me? I went to school with you. Yale, class of '76!" I didn't tell you about the weird security system in the lobby & in the elevator that screamed of intense post 9/11 paranoia. I didn't say much at all about what the meeting was intended to accomplish. And so on and on and on and on. You'll never know any of that stuff. And, if you're sane, you probably don't care.

I'm just wondering how much trouble we human beings cause each other by reading into things, by embellishing what we hear and see with our own invented details and then acting upon what we've invented. A great blessing/curse in my own life is that I'm too stupid to do that to any great degree. I mean if you intend to insinuate something to me, watch out because I probably will not get what you're driving at. Stuff has to be spelled out really clearly.

One thing that's helped in my practice has been that I no longer try as hard to figure out what people "really mean" when they say something to me. I just take nearly everything totally at face value. I don't usually "get" sarcasm, for example. I can tell when people are using it. But more often than not I have no idea what they're implying with it. And I won't usually put in the necessary effort to try and work it out.

I think Zen practice tends to make you more like this over time. I've noticed my teachers do it even more than I do. You develop a kind of dumb approach to life.

Anyway. Whatever.

My friend Leilani who's staying up at Tassajara says that girls tend to leave the place quickly, more so than guys. She asks if Zen is a macho thing. It's a good question. I don't think it's inherently macho or masculine. Yet I do see more guys take to it than gals. Like heavy metal or punk. I don't have any real comment about that. I wish more women would show up to the classes and suchlike. Any suggestions on how to make Zen more user-friendly to women?

HELL MEETING AT WORK TODAY

I’m back in L.A. Back home. I started an article about the Buddhist concept of "home leaving" this morning. And maybe one of these days I’ll finish the bastard thing. But I stopped working on it so I could go to a meeting related to my “real job.” And after coming back, I feel like an article about that meeting might be more relevant, or at least more interesting to me to sit down and write. I don’t really like to write abstract stuff.

Anyway, this meeting. Jesus God in Heaven what a fucking nightmare! Whenever you try to explain the problems you have at work to someone outside your company or outside your specific industry they never make much sense. In fact they always seem incredibly trivial to anyone not directly involved. That’s because they are. And the problems we’re talking about are trivial beyond all bounds of trivia. Nobody fucking cares about the rights to pictures from monster movies. In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Most of the stuff most of us face at work falls into this category, I think.

Anyway, my approach to the meeting was to try to keep things as friendly as possible and to have a reasonable discussion in order to arrive at a solution that satisfied everyone involved. Unfortunately I was facing a guy who wasn’t interested in talking like a reasonable human being. I spent about 15 minutes in the offices of the company who are complaining to our company about a bunch of monstrously trivial crap before it was utterly obvious that no discussion could possibly take place. I think they believe they threw me out. I guess maybe they did. They made a point of not showing me to the door, which I thought was just silly. But I was every bit as glad to be out of there as they were glad to have me gone.

The whole scene was beyond silly all the way to the realm of high comedy. And I felt bad for the guy I had to talk to, let’s call him Mr. Koksukka. Because he really seemed to be getting himself worked up into a lather over the whole thing. Of course it’s mostly an act. But it takes a lot of energy to sustain and it must be extraordinarily painful, a sad way to live and work. I suppose he gets paid well for it. But it’s got to be extremely damaging and I can't imagine it's really worth it. I could see the damage it had already done to him and it was hard not to want to try and help. But there wasn’t really anything I could do.

Mr. Koksukka kept trying to drive the discussion into very abstract areas that didn't really lead anywhere good, namely the past. There was a whole lot of "Why did you do XXXX six months ago? Why didn't you do YYYY at that time?" Is this a Japanese thing? Or does everyone do this? Because I always refuse to go there. There's no point. In point of fact in this case I did not make any of the past mistakes he wanted me to admit to. But even if I had there would be no real point in discussing them. And the people I'm talking to never seem to really get that. I want to fix the problem that exists now given the conditions that exist now. That seems to be one of the hardest areas to move these kinds of discussions into, though. In the past I've gotten drawn into that sort of trap and it never goes anywhere useful.

Anyway, as I sat there, trying to talk like a human being to someone who reacted to everything I said with (mostly fake) outrage and anger, I felt my own mouth start to dry up. I thought that was a bit odd because I didn’t feel much emotional involvement in the situation. But Mr. Koksukka’s demeanor was such that it produced a number of the kind of involuntary responses one feels when one is faced with actual danger. At one point I reached for my notebook and accidentally knocked over a remote control thingy that was sitting on the table. Again I thought, weird. I was actually losing a certain degree of coordination because of this. My field of vision also seemed to narrow in a way, as if my peripheral vision was somehow compromised. All of this with only the slightest degree of actual emotional involvement.

Now I’m not trying to tell you how enlightened and “Zen” I am. Just trying to describe the situation. I entered this coming out of two two-day Zen retreats in two weeks and about 25 years of daily practice, including 45 minutes just before I left for the meeting. Though it’s certainly not impossible to fluster me, it’s a lot more difficult than it used to be. Yet the situation was such that an entire array of involuntary responses came into play anyway.

As I walked out I started thinking that there are lots of people who must have to face this kind of nonsense day after day after day. It's soooo sad. To a large degree a lot of the problems that face humanity are caused by so many of us engaging in this kind of desperately silly behavior on a regular basis. I used to deal with a lot more of it than I do nowadays. I’ve tended to cut those things out of my life as much as possible.

But I’ve been lucky. I’ve developed certain abilities and skills that allow me to minimize my interaction with that world. Still, there’s no sphere of human activity that’s free of such stupidity. Sometimes you can find a place to be where people are aware of these things and make their efforts to minimize such behavior. Yet it seems to always surface to one degree or another in spite of our best efforts. It doesn't help that our society rewards people who act like Mr. Koksukka so richly.

Throughout my Zen career my teachers have encouraged, almost demanded, that I continue to work in the film business. I always wondered why because if there’s any business in the world that’s more prone to useless displays of emotionalism, well, I don’t want to go there! It seems like the movie business attracts drama queens like shit attracts flies. Why would my teachers want me to stay in such an environment?

I think it’s because I can make a difference here. And that’s important. And it may be just as important for those of you out there reading this who practice Zen and work real jobs to continue making little differences wherever you are. That’s why I’m not really sold on the idea of people running away from whatever it is they do for a living in the work-a-day world to go and, I dunno, help the starving children in Africa or whatever it is. As if helping the starving children in Africa is better than whatever it is they’re doing now. In most cases I have doubts.

I kind of feel like having one grounded person in an otherwise insane company acts a little like having a gyroscope in the bottom of a ship. The gyroscope is a tiny thing, but it steadies the whole ship somehow. As ineffective and ineffectual as I usually feel, I have faith that I make just a little tiny difference by remaining steady.

I wonder what effect I had today. It certainly wasn’t easy to see. I’m sure Mr. Koksukka has his own view of the meeting. I wonder if he has any clue what transpired. I wonder if I do. Although I'm arrogant enough to suspect I have a bit clearer of an idea than he does. Does it matter? Well, I’m writing this right now. So maybe the meeting had some meaning, rather than none at all.

I dunno. Whatever. This isn’t really one of my best elucidations on the nature of human interaction. But I wanted to post it while it was still fresh. Hope you enjoyed it.

I’m gonna go play in the sun for a while.

Bye!

Fuck Institutionalized Zen

I picked up a little newsletter from the magazine rack at a Zen center I visited, a publication put out by the Soto Zen Buddhism International Center in San Francisco. And there was an article in there that, to me, spelled out why institutionalized Zen sucks dead donkey puds.

The article was by a European Zen monk who tells how he got invited to participate in the 2007 Sotoshu Ango in Europe. What on God’s green Earth is an ango, you may ask. I did. I had to go look it up. Turns out an ango is an intensive 90-day Zen training period. In this case it was a very special training period organized by the Soto Sect’s central governing body (Sotoshu) in Japan to be its very first official duly licensed training period in Europe. That’s Soto Zen®, to you buster! So basically we’re talking about the Zen equivalent of a tractor and farm implements trade show or an annual meeting of the Midwestern Nabisco Cookie Company sales reps.

The guy writes that just before he got the invitation, “my 72 year old father was diagnosed with spreading colon cancer.” Nonetheless he elected to go to Soto-shu’s big party. “I wished my father a peaceful death and went on my way,” he says. His dad died the first day of the big to-do. Our friend did not leave the festivities to attend the funeral. All along, he says, he asked himself, “what importance do I give my greatest desire of simply living a religious life, and how is this deep desire obscured, pushed away in a far away corner by some idealistic or romantic desires that disperse my attention and bring along so much suffering and frustration in this life, in this society?” Like maybe the frustration of a dying parent? God I hate it when that happens. It’s worse than hangnails.

Now look. Pay attention to what I’m about to say, Internet trolls. I am not addressing this blog entry to the guy who wrote that article. If I wanted to communicate with him I’d write him a letter. You’ll notice I haven’t named the gentleman in question. Nor do I have any reason to believe he reads this blog. What I am addressing here is the presence of an article like this in an official publication of the Soto organization and the utterly fucked message it sends. Got that? I know some of you don’t. But I’ll keep going anyway.

I have no idea what this guy’s relationship to his dad was. For all I know maybe dad beat him with a coat hanger every day until he was big enough to hit back, and that’s the real reason he skipped out on him during his last moments on Earth. But even if that was the case, all of us have a far bigger commitment to our families — our real families not our fake “spiritual families” — than to some big corporate religious institution that’s throwing a jamboree.

The article makes it sound as though our friend was so dazzled to be one of the elite few allowed by the Masters in far off and oh-so-truly-Zen Japan to participate in the event that he lost sight of his real duties. The Soto organization seems to want to promote the idea that we should run away from the suffering and frustration of our real lives and hide in the warm and protective bosom of big mama Sotoshu. This is what whacked out religious cults do. There is no place for this kind of nonsense in Buddhism. If only this were the only instance where the Sotoshu acted this way…

And just FYI, the folks in most Western Zen institutions have Yellow Fever so bad they need high dosage antibiotics stat. Whenever someone from the magical land of Japan steps into the room they’re all ready to slaughter each other to be the first to stick their tongues up his ass. Look, I lived in Japan for eleven years. I’ve seen more homeless guys in stolen black robes collecting spare change for booze money in train stations than I can count, and more “real” Buddhist monks in flashy imported cars bought with the money they charge to give peoples’ dead relatives Dharma names in Heaven than I could possibly vomit over. Get over it, people. But I digress…

The ancient Buddhist teachers often talked about leaving home and family for the religious life. Fine. But this is not an example of “leaving home and family.” As presented, the story given in this article is an example of getting sucked into the power games of a corporate elite with a vested interest in expanding their authority and control. “Leaving home and family” means switching your focus from trivial materialistic entanglements towards a larger more universal purpose. It doesn’t mean skipping out on your dying dad because you might miss the opportunity to kiss the asses of the higher ups in your cult. And this is sure as heck what the article seems to be promoting. Once again, trust me, I know there are a lot of legitimate reasons people might want to miss out on the death of a parent. I’ve heard stories that would curl your toenails. But getting invited to a big pow-wow by the sect bosses is not one of them. Never. No.

The guy goes on to gush about how the experience of the ango promoted the development of compassion and wisdom towards oneself and towards others. Huh? Compassion and wisdom is when you tell the big guys at the home office in Japan to stuff their party invitation, your dad is dying. Again (again), as much as it might seem like it, I am not, not, not addressing the guy who wrote the article. He gives hints that other factors were involved in his decision. But if the editors of the magazine did not want to send the message that cult activities take precedence over dying parents they should have asked for a rewrite. They didn’t.

Organized religion can bite me. The Sotoshu can bite me. I’ll go to their clambakes from time to time just to see how much distance I need to put between me and them. That is, if I ever get invited to one again. But more and more I’m seeing just how great the gap really is between the kind of Buddhism I learned and now teach and the stuff the higher ups in the Soto Organization World HQ want to spread. I remain a card-carrying member of the cult for now. But, man-o-man do I regret it sometimes.

LEAVING AKRON

I'm at the Akron-Canton Regional Airport taking advantage of their free, uncensored wireless Internet service. If you follow this blog you'll learn which airports in this country have it. Not only can I look at all the tits and ass on Suicide Girls (and cock if I were to so desire, they now have Suicide Boys) that I want, I can also read this article about war protesters invoking Lucifer for their cause. Wonderful. I often wonder if some of these people aren't just hired by the Powers That Be specifically to make their opposition look bad. Sadly, as attractive as that explanation sounds, I highly doubt it's true. People are really, really, really, really, really, really dumb.

The talk at Visible Voice Books was fun. A wonderful time was had by all.

I spent a lot of time with my first teacher Tim this week. That was very nice. He is the genuine article. How I managed to come across someone like him and later Nishijima Sensei boggles my mind.

They're playing "Take It Away" by Paul McCartney and Wings (I think that one was released under the Wings moniker). A pretty obscure tune for airport muzak. I'm pretty much of a Beatle geek, tho I haven't followed Paul's solo career that closely. In Akron I spent lots of money at Time Traveler Records stocking up on Beatle bootlegs. I got a double set of rough mixes and out-takes from George Harrison's All Things Must Pass album. And a 3 disc set of out-takes from Public Image Limited's early works including the entire Commercial Zone album, the great "lost" PiL record that went unreleased after John Lydon and and guitarist Keith Levene quarreled. Levene issued his version of the record, Lydon sued and the record disappeared.

Speaking of unreleased things, I got a chance to read my friend Dave Materna's novel Big Yellow Car. The book was almost issued by a major publisher back around 1992. But the dorks got cold feet at the last minute. Too bad for them because it's a work of genius! A real portrait of punk rock in Akron, Ohio.

In a few hours I'll be in Milwaukee where I'll lead a two day mini-sesshin this weekend. That should be hoppin'. Show up and buy a copy of the new Zero Defex as a souvenir (and help pay my expenses in the bargain). Or order a copy from CD Baby. (But buy it from me personally if you're there)

Oops! It'll be more live several hours before I get to Milwaukee. The flight has been delayed and they didn't mention that little wrinkle to me when I checked in. See, the woman behind the counter was being hassled by her supervisor to make sure she charged extra for any bag over 61 inches. My bass came out to 61 and a quarter inches and I was duly charged $50. I coulda sent it to myself cheaper! Oh, and her flustered-ness also caused her not to check it thru to Milwaukeee, which, luckily, I noticed when I, uncharacteristically, looked at the tags she gave me. The supervisor needed to be told to focus on important issues instead of dicking people over for extra change for their bags. This I did not do. Not a major failure on my part. But I could have achieved the necessary communication without being harsh or nasty and I should have done so.

So it's airport food for me tonight. Oh boy. I'm sure glad I didn't elect to spend six months in Tassajara. Not. But you really can't remain in places like that very long anyway. You eventually have to leave. I met people up there who'd successfully hidden from the outside world for three or four years. But it never lasts. If you are the kind of person who gets rankled by things you will find things to rankle you no matter where you go. Guaranteed. It's not the surroundings that need changing.

I got called today by a reported from NOW magazine in Toronto. This getting called for quotes is becoming a regular thing. Weird. I'm an expert, I guess. Anyway, her article was about gossip and she wanted a Buddhist perspective. I told her that there is a precept against spreading gossip. I've always found that one sort of funny. I mean, the other precepts cover big issues like killing and stealing. But they chose to include a vow not to gossip in there too, right with the "grave precepts." It seems kind of trivial by comparison. But it must be important. Even so, every Buddhist temple or retreat center I've ever been to is a non-stop gossip factory. It's like being at a hair salon or something!

I think the key thing is that gossip always points way from yourself. You pick out faults in others. But you do not know the lives of others. There is no sense in pretending you do. It's a waste of everyone's time and energy. You can't say, for example, "That guy over there is violating the precepts!!" You do not know what the precepts are for that guy. Never. Ever. No. Forget it. If someone's hurting someone else maybe you should intervene. But such cases are very rare. Mostly it's none of your business. Even in such cases it's never good to assume an air of superiority. Just do what needs done. Gossip always assumes the gossipper is morally superior to the gossippee.

She also asked about thinking before you speak. I told her that in Buddhism we don't really view thinking as the best basis for deciding what to do. In my own case, rather than thinking before I speak, I tend more to look at my state of mind and body before I speak. If I feel that I'm about to say something defensive or hurtful, I usually stop. If that means not speaking at all, fine. Most of what most of us say doesn't really need to be said anyhow.

Here's what's left of the gigs:

On May 17th and 18th I'll lead a 2-day retreat at the Milwaukee Zen Center.

I'll be one of the teachers at this year's Great Sky Zen Sesshin August 9-16. Check out their webpage for details.

The annual Dogen Sangha retreat in Shizuoka, Japan will be September 20-23.