Time Again for a New New Beginning

Well, another birthday and another year closer to death. Now on the 11th year of this erratic blog. I suppose there are still other blogs out there but you just don’t hear that much about them anymore. So much easier just to tweet I guess.

Here is my 11th year status check...

So I’ve been reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari after listening to him interviewed on Russell Brand’s podcast. Between the podcast and what I have read so far I gather one of his main points is that the thing that makes us homo sapiens so successful is that humanity can take collective actions because all the things that motivate such cooperation is the use for “fictions”. Like a legal fiction, as in corporations are people, to the very notion of nations and states and corporations, and a bunch more. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20873740-sapiens

I don’t want to go into what may be wrong or right about his thoughts, but just provisionally accept it as true. Interestingly it echos the stuff Nathan Gill was saying with his “non duality” stuff. Like the bit where there is no history or future, only “NOW” only “being” (https://youtu.be/9Wo99sa8C4Q). Even though we spend so much time thinking about what we did wrong, or good, in the past, or so much worrying about what we will do and what we might do, those are all just stories we tell ourselves as we live..NOW. We carry all of that with us at each present moment. But really we are already living in the NOW! We are already enlightened and it would be clear if we could just drop the stories that drown out our true vision. Really it is these stories that are the internal Virtual Reality goggles that we wear in our brain.

So both past and future are fictions of a sort. Yes stuff happened and will happen and there are consequences to actions and karma is a bitch, what goes around comes around, all that kind of thing. BUT...LIFE LIVED happens now! And it is only because we carry these stories along with us to each present moment that these fictions (stories) have such power. If we could let go of these stories, assholes could stop being assholes at once, but those stories overpower us.

So the thing that makes us modern humans are the stories we tell ourselves. The good and the bad of it is that we live by and cannot escape this story telling, it is what makes us human (and that is not an all good thing).

Some of the stories are horrible and enduring, as exemplified by Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2059048703

Or how we as a people can’t deal with Climate Change… explained in Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change by George Marshall https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1350742534 where basically climate deniers have more effective stories that take advantage of humans natural short shortsightedness.

How financial wizardry rules and ruins the world as told in I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay by John Lanchester https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1721638422 it only works because of the stories bankers tell themselves.

And of course our our brains are wired to react to stories and not actual evidence…

But against all this negativity is the idea that there is also a strain of compassion and empathy buried in our DNA. Part of which I get from The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society by Frans de Waal. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1481801657 Like there are situations that draw out empathy in the great apes and we humans can also be drawn into compassion IF we work to encourage those situation in our society. IF we did that of course.

AND there is science behind it like in studies of Vagus nerve where compassion starts BEFORE the brain so we feel compassion first and the impulse is then sent to the brain after that. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/forget-survival-of-the-fittest/ .

Sooooo...humans have both an impulse to disorder but also a tendency toward cooperation and compassion and it is up to ourselves to construct a society that encourages the good over bad...IF we wanted to, but mostly we don’t.

But the galling thing is that all the suffering is simply driven by dumb stories.

End part 1.

Just Sitting

So I'm on life version 3.0, 4.2, 54.2 or maybe 0.0. Anyway the first week of trying to change habits and find a way of a healthier life...but a way that I can do. To that end on Monday and Tuesday I rode to the lake and was pretty pooped, pretty quickly. Today it was cool and I rode around the lake which is about 10 miles.

Along those lines, tonight I returned to the Maria Kannon Zen Center for an hour and a half of Just Sitting. 90 minutes of no purpose, no nothing...just sitting and breathing.

So if I can get my body in a good place and my mind in a good “no place”....maybe I will be well enough to try Aikido again.

But now I will try to “Just Sleep”

Aimless Aim

Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A slim book with some really wonderful insights, but the good stuff takes up less that half of the tale. The parts where he simply describes himself learning Japanese archery and what the teacher told him are really, really great.

I especially like this...

"The right art," cried the master, "is purposeless, aimless! The more obstinately you try to learn how to shoot the arrow for the sake of hitting the goal, the less you will succeed in the one and the further the other will receed."


But whenever he tries to go beyond that it just seems a bit pretentious.

View all my reviews

manifest one true nature when you see a stone; or 無

On my way to Aikido class last night I happened to be listening to a podcast from Living Zen where the teacher was talking about Case 1 form the Mumonkon. The Koan MU.

Here are a few excerpts from Living Zen-podcast Zen talks but Eshu Martin, abbot of the Victoria Zen Center in Victoria, BC Canada

Whenever we throw up a barrier that makes it "me" and "that", "inside" and "outside", "me" and "them", whenever we have solidified something and said this is what I like, what I am, the practice of mu is to burn it. Open your hand and just let that solid object flow.

Maintaining the presence of this case (mu) is a really difficult thing. But it requires we take this practice out of the Zendo into our day to day lives. Into the way we are eating breakfast the way we are doing our work. Really developing the awareness of when we grab on , when we throw up the barrier whenever we polarize, objectify, make solid anything. This is where we have to do this practice of “mu”, where we pull down the wall, open our hand, allow that solid object to flow. We step forward into the difficult situation we want to be a part of

What struck me was the part where we “step forward into the difficult situation we want to be part of” which so reminded me of Irimi Nage or Entering Throw. All the Aikido techniques are hard for me but Irimi seems particularly elusive. I heard one explanation that said something like you enter uke's attack and turn an blend into it, almost in a loving embrace



The podcast also re framed the famous koan MU to say

how do you manifest one true nature when you see a stone?

How do we acknowledge on an experiential level how do we affirm oneness?

We are (incorrectly) making mu into an object. It is a simple practice and it actually helps to be soft as we practice it. The practice of dissolution it is not a practice of punching It is not a plus activity it is actually a minus activity. We do the plus activity with ourselves, we fixate and oppose what we come up against. The practice of Mu is to catch it when we put something into a box and let it go. This is a practice of Melting

It reminded of Sensei talking about how Aikido is a reactive art, we shouldn't meet force with force, although ironically last night he told us to be the dominant part of the technique, not forceful but somehow dominant. Oh well, go figure.

The character 無 in seal script

Sitting

Tonight I went to MKZC (The Maria Kannon Zen Center) and spent 90 minutes sitting in an almost lotus position (with short silent walking breaks every 30 minutes).

Back in the 90s I spent 7 years or so regularly sitting on my own and going once a week to the Zendo and the occasional retreat (aka sesshin). So after being away for nearly 8 years it was interesting to get back in the sitting swing of things.

The teacher (Ruben Habito) was there tonight and offered dokuson (individual interview) so I took advantage of this treat. The ability to have one on one time with an official Zen Teacher who has the “Imprimatur” to teach from Zen masters is really quite amazing. Who would think Dallas, TX would have such an opportunity?

The ritual of going to dokusan adds weight to the activity but since Ruben is so welcoming you are instantly at ease.

MKZC follows a relatively modern lineage in that it officially started in 1954 which is WAY new as far as these things go. The founder is famous from Roshi Kapleau's Three Pillars of Zen. The twist for Sanbo Kyodan is that it blends the two main types of Zen, Rinzai and Soto. Rinzai is best known for the use of the zen riddles called koans while Sōtō usually just focuses on “just sitting” or “Shikantaza”

I don't know if I'll totally switch my Wednesday routine form Aikido to Sitting, but I will probably at least return next week