My weekend with Nori

here are a few pics from my weekend with Nori, my friend from Tokyo. Explanations and more pics coming soon.

New Work

Hello! My wonderful, wonderful Aunt just updated my website! Please go check it out. (the link is to the right.)

Coffee and Kukai

My friend Nori came to visit me yesterday from Tokyo. The night before I could barley sleep because my body was hurting so much (all my muscles, particularly my back, aching) and when I woke up to meet him at the bus stop I could barely walk I was in so much pain. So, I did some research on the internet and found that quitting caffeine cold turkey can cause all sorts of horrible withdrawal symptoms such as body aching and vomiting and headaches, and its better to reduce your amount slowly. So, with that in mind, I went to mister donut (called misudo in Japanese) and had two cups of coffee and, I'm not kidding, in about one hour my body was back to normal. Scary. I will drink one cup of green tea today at the temple after meditation, and then Nori, Dennis and I are off to visit Zentsuji, birthplace and home temple of Kukai. (Kukai is primarily credited for establishing the escoteric teachings of the Buddha in Japan. His sect, called Shingon, is the one that most resembles Tibetan Buddhism, with visualizations of deities and elaborate mandalas and chanting sacred sanscrit sylables and making mudras or hand signs, etc . I will write more about it later.

Graduation

Today i went to one of my school's Graduation. It was really sad. Most everyone cried, even the “tough” kids. The ceremony was essentially identical to ours; except it took place in the middle of the school day. And, of course, the fact that it was Middle School and not high school. In Japan, after Middle school you are done. Although most kids go to high school. And to get into high school there are interviews and entrance examinations. It is so different form our system. Another example: middle school and highschoolers done have lockers but instead have homerooms (like our grade school) and the teachers move around from class to class.

Anyway, the ceremony lasted maybe an hour and a half. And it was quite painful for me because my back hurt from I have no idea what, but I think it might have to do with quitting caffeine four days ago. I quit cold turkey-no chocolate, coffee, or tea. I got offered all three of those things this morning at school. I have been caffeinated for the past ten years or so, so I thought I would quit for a month and see what happens. So far, my back hurts, and my arms and legs are a bit sore too. and i really miss my morning cup. im drinking lots of hot water. sometimes i can imagine that the hot water is coffee or green tea and for a second it actually kind of tastes like it. Anyway!

After the graduation ceremony we all went outside to wave goodbye to the graduates, much like we did in collage. I wanted to hang out with the kids I like most, since, you know, I will never see them again probably, and of course, they could care less about me. They were busy enjoying each other. I felt left out! But then again, when did I ever hang out with my cool Japanese teachers in high school? I wonder if ever longed longed to hang out with me and my friends. But I found myself attached to so many of the students. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a real teacher
And have to lose your kids every year! Yikes! I guess today was good practice
For when my parents and friends all die. We all have to let go eventually. We will even have to let go of our own bodies and minds. Life is full of this kind of suffering. The suffering of losing the ones you love. I was also brought back to my own graduation, then to to my life in high school, then middles school, then I though about how I will never be that again. At the same time as I was thinking all these lonely, nostalgic, existential thoughts about the fleetingness of my life, spring arrived, blooming the early cherry blossoms, her warm winds and sunshine covered the parking lot in spring blanket of friendliness and tears. Im going to go for a walk.

mountians today

Here is my office. Outside those windows are the mountains watching over the city of Niihama. The mountians are different everyday. coming from Kansas means that i am not used to having mountains around all the time. they change just like the sky. A morning mist. a day moon. Here is also a pic of my friend Ren and me. Ren is in the fourth grade.

a tiny blue stone

At work the other day Jackie and I were talking about these blogs, how they are a great chance for people to express themselves, and how this whole internet thing is really like another life that people can live though, a job, a relationship, a religion, a conversation…
On this blog I usually write spiritual insights and philosophy—conversations I would normally have with some of my friends back home. But really, most people who read this blog probably don’t really want to hear about that kind of stuff. They want to know about what I ate today, and who I talked to, and what my boss looks like and what my office looks like—the more personal day-to-day stuff.

But I usually don’t write about that stuff in my real journal (even if I should). So it is tough to write about it here. But I took some pics. Here is my office at City Hall (I go there when I don’t have school). Reading Ender’s Shadow right now, loving it. You can also see my cell phone and ipod on the desk. (And how the hell do cell phones work? How does it get to the satellites so quickly, and then why don’t I hear all sorts of other conversations? If it is a wave, why isn’t it disrupted by other waves? How do phone numbers work? Questions..) Here is Jackie, my co-Jet. Here are some students who were watching me drink coffee in the teacher’s room. Pics of Dave and Mayu when we visited a nearby waterfall. More stones I found at the river. Every stone is different. And there were millions of them, reaching all the way out to the sea, and all the way back to the mountains. And now, let us take that image into a more typical style of journal entry:


A god’s eye view

Imagine you are the size of the Milky Way Galaxy, and you look inside yourself and you see a tiny, beautiful blue stone glowing next to a yellow star. When you examine the blue stone you see all sorts of beings living on its surface. You see storms and clouds and waves crash. You see wars bloom like flowers and die like flowers. You see fires burn out and the smoke dissolve into the air and the ashes into the ground. And you are there to watch it all happen, watch all the beings crawl and cry and grow and love and laugh and kill and cry some more, and you do the same, feel the same feelings that ripple across the surface of the stone. And you look at this tiny stone in your body with infinite compassion, infinite love, infinite acceptance, infinite forgiveness, because you know that all of it is in you, and you are in all of it.

If you stand back far enough, you can see this earth as a beautiful blue stone covered in flowers, blooming and dieing. Hold that stone like a precious jewel found nowhere else in existence, and have compassion for it, for what else can you do, really? Slowly place the jewel inside your heart and see how it generates a love without end.

When I emerge from a fantasy like that one, I really feel a new urge to embrace this world with all my heart. To appreciate all of it, even the pain. To let my heart beat and break. Let it break, because this is the only chance I might have to even have a heart. The fantasy actually changes the quality of my life. It reminded me (re-minded me) I must use this time I have here, this precious, limited time I get to witness this incredible play of forces and forms and feelings, to help others, to love others, to help others see just how beautiful they are, because they are so beautiful.

“This is the impossibility of the existence of anything!” Indeed, indeed. Kerouac expounds what I often forget. And what I feel explode inside me whenever I remember that is an incredible sense of excitement. This is it! WOW! And, not only am I alive, holy god, but I am alive with others just like me--others that feel and fear and dream and die—others that want to be happy and don’t want to suffer.
“Why is there something rather than nothing?” Is a great question to never stop asking, even if it might never be answered, because within it can be the idea that there might not have been anything at all? There could have been none of this stuff, so all of it is a gift. The Multiplicity, the variations, the infinite diversity—no two leafs are the same, no two rocks, no two insects, no two people. Atoms might all be the same. I don’t know. I can’t see them (I don’t even know what the hell they are! Clouds of probability?). There could be a single energy running beneath all these multiple forms. Makes sense. But, forgetting that "unifying essence," just looking at all the diversity is enough to conclude that this is a universe of infinite creativity, a truly magnificent design, even if it is just a hologram, an illusion. Even if it is a dream, it is a glowing, luminous dream, full of feelings and beings and depth and diversity. It is infinitely deep, infinitely diverse, and so infinitely divine, and infinitely here. Behind it all may be the Great Unformed Abyss, the same Nothingness that was there in the beginning, in the beginningless beginning and as it was in the beginning forever shall be, world without end, amen, but it doesn’t matter in the least, not when I am looking at the stones along the riverbed, each one a different color, a different shape. And when I look up at the clouds. And at the mountains. And at all the people, and I can see diversity, and therefore, I can see infinity.

Ali Farka Toure

Ali Farka Tour, one of my favorite musicians, died of cancer today.

here we are

images

Pictures: a Matta, me with the kids, a Magritte, a crane I saw on my way back from matusyama, a dali, me and a student, a popular pencil case, Amma, two kids, the Ah.

Today I went to a surrealist exhibit in Matsuyama. Magritte, Dali, Chagall, Matta, Man Ray, Arp, Ernst, some of the greatest artists in history. Some of these painting really effected me, especially Magritte and Dali, there was a small Dali painting that I could not stop looking at, it held me so long, he really is a master. And Magritte seemed to be communicating "One Taste, " the Unifying Essence of all events, the paradoxes, the peace, the nature and divine light, Magritte!

Longchempa

Well, today I had to witness something very disturbing. Three 8th graders were caught smoking. I was sleepy, fading in and out of consciousness reading my dream yoga book in the teacher’s room. It was about 4:00, the three young boys were quietly standing frownyfaced in the corner, then suddenly I heard a teacher yelling, one of my favorite teachers, he is usually very funny and kind, but they get very angry and I almost feel like laughing because I know it is just a show. Only this teacher also began to slap the students over and over in the face. I was shocked, and almost stated to cry. One kid in particular always has bruises on his face. He is missing most of his teeth and is very angry all the time. His parents are “Crazy” says one of my teachers. So, like he really needs his teachers to hit him around too. Damnit. Of course, the teacher who did this smokes everyday on the balcony of the school, his own cigarettes sitting on the desk nearby.
And this morning I also was surprised when another teacher pulled in a troublemaker by his ear, ow!, then made him kneel on the floor, slapped his face, and then drew some eyebrows on his face with a marker. Students here often pluck their eyebrows for fashion, sometimes till they are a thin line, sometimes till they are gone. I guess this boy‘s eyebrows were too thin. The problem is he will receive this punishment every morning until they grow back. Same school has black hair spay paint that they use on kids whose hair is not dark enough (again, many students like to lighten their hair for fashion).

And in the middle of it all, I’m trying to read Dzogchen teachings like these from Longchempa, the great 14th century Buddhist saint from Tibet.

“Know the state of pure and total presence to be a vast expanse without center or border. It is everywhere the same, without acceptance or rejection. Blend the nature of mind and its habit patterns into non-duality. Because entities, whether subjectively conceived or directly experienced, are present as ornaments of one's own state of being, do not accept or reject them. And, because they are not divided into self and other, the apparitional, spontaneously present objects are the play of pure experience.
Listen: this majestic awareness, freely transforming itself, displays the integrated structure centered around the inner reality of form.
Everything that exists and appears displays itself in the space of unborn reality. In this inner reality there is nothing to accept or reject. All that exists is displayed by me, the supreme ordering principle.
Listen: this teacher of teachers, the majestic creative intelligence,
Displays the integrated structure centered around the inner reality of communication. Everything that exists and is designated displays itself as linguistic communication coming from the unborn field and is gathered into this inexplicable inner reality of communication, the supreme ordering principle's symphony.

Listen: this teacher of teachers, majestic creativity displays the integrated structure centered around the inner reality of awareness. Know everything thought or attended to to be the substance of the unborn ordering principle itself. The realms of form, communication, and awareness of the creative intelligence are the three naturally occurring, uncontrived integrated structures of reality. One who understands the reality of these integrated structures as complete in a moment without having been set up, has understood the core meaning of the spontaneously complete inner reality.
Thus, because all that is present as form, sound, and thought ever since they appeared in time has existed as these three unborn integrated structures, from the start live this great natural non-duality without going into any conceptual analysis. Through realizing beings and their worlds to be these integrated structures, affirmations, negations, antidotes, and hindrances will definitely be freed in their own place.”

Longchempa was most famous for never having any possessions and just living off of the land. He preferred sleeping in caves and in the forest, and did not believe in building monasteries, even though he had many followers. He saw solitude in nature as a source of spiritual awakening.
For him, nature inspired peace and clarity, enabling practitioners to unite with ultimate joy, to attain the oneness of universal openness and luminous clarity. Reminds me of my friend Eli.