Chiiori

Yasu’s going away party was a total success. At about 2 AM he left in tears.
Early the next morning Stacey and Sebastian picked me up and we headed down to Chiiori, the 300 year old farmhouse deep in the mountains. Please visit www.chiiori.org if you havent already. its a wonderful read.) On the way there we stopped by one of the famous vine bridges in the area and played on the rocks below it.
Chiiori is one of my favorite places in Japan because beyond the quiet isolation, the breathtaking landscape, and the earthy feel of the thatched roof and terraced farmland, the house is adorned with humans that are interested in such things. Beautiful, beautiful angels show up from all over the world to help farm, learn the ways of ancient Japanese architecture, or just be there to watch and rest. I was there to spend time with my friend Junya who I met there last time, as well as, of course, to retreat to the mountains.








And JETs from all over the world meet there. I met Matthew, a Canadian graphic designer, brilliant theologian, and devout Christian (in the best sense) with whom I shared hours and hours of discussion. He told me about his town in Takamatsu and how they have to separate their trash into 32 different categories (resulting in a decrease in waste by 80%!) A few spiritual questions we discussed: If we are the Image of God, made in his likeness, then is the universe some sort of cosmic mirror, and when God looks in he sees a reflection of himself? And when we look at God, are we finally looking directly at ourselves. (Eckhart: “The eyes through which I see God are the same eyes through which god sees me.”) And does that mean that we are to find God (or fully actualize God), by becoming as fully human as we can, finding salvation by complete involvement and immersion into this Life? (As apposed to the popular belief that is it in denying or avoiding or escaping from the human emotions and feelings and desires that causes salvation.) Matthew also helped fill in many gaps in my understanding of Christian history (he was a true biblical scholar), explained his form of Christian prayer “waiting in silence,” explaned some of the ways God communicates answers, and, the fascinating etymology of biblical words such as Jesus, Christ, and Satan. We discussed what humans have accomplished up until the present, and then, together we strained to see into tomorrow. We decided that nothing can stay long removed from God, the Timeless Being outside of which nothing exists anyway. Our very nature is to worship. With this understanding, we both relaxed (or at least I did) trusting that God is indeed the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the ground and the goal. We also agreed that without suffering we could not grow, so we should thank God for the good and the bad things that happen to us. (and we agreed that one of the major mistakes people make is only thanking god for the good.)
























It was so wonderful. I must say that it is quite impressive that we can have inter-religious dialogues, arriving at profound points of agreement, when so much of the world is still bickering, fighting, and killing over what name to rightly call the Nameless, or what word we should attach to That which should probobly just be called "the Word." Or what we should know about the “Unknowable.” It is also my belief (and I share this with many others), that if we can find truths that all the religions agree on, then we might want to pay close attention to those points of agreement, considering those, above all else, as real truths, for they are not confined to any one language or culture. So, where all the world's religions agree is perhaps where we should spend a considerable amount of attention. Not to discard the diversity. No. In my opinion, the more diversity, the better. The more religions, the better. The rich multiplicity and variations in all the world's cultures and languages is proof that we are indeed creative (and therefore, we are indeed created in the image of God).



Anyway, in the early evening we took a break from the talking and all visited the nearby onsen. This one, if you remember, is co-ed. About ten of us all naked enjoying the sunset from a large, hot stone bath overlooking the mountains. I love getting naked, especially with a group of young, beautiful people from around the world who I just met in a three hundred year old farmhouse deep in the mountians of Japan.

The painful part of Chiiori house (and Life) is that it is like summer camp; You go there, you fall in love, and then, its over, and you return home. As the Buddha said: what comes together will fall apart.

I also got to meet some chickens that live on the farm, spend some quality time talking with Jackie the dog, and also one of the owners of the house, Mason Florence, who is, umong other things, a writer and photographer for Lonely Planet. All in all, (“God is the All in all.”) and it was a fuckn great night.

IN the morning I got to drum and sing on the porch with Matthew and Junya to the clouds that were dancing and spiraling upward like ballerinas skating across the valleys. The ever so soft pitter-patter rain and the roaring river below played deep within the music, as well as beneath and beyond it. And a crow, to our utter amazement, flew by and called out right on beat. Kaw kaw kaw. And after we all laughed and shook our heads in disbelief, the same crow did it again, kaw kaw kaw.


Matthew, Junya, and I left Chiiori round noon, and in the car we discussed the importance of Satan and sin for showing us exactly what not to be, and for showing us a more direct path to the light, to the truth (“Don't go this way.”) IN this way we depend upon Satan and therefore we can see why he was created and why he is an indispensable part of God’s plan. I made the comment, “so we could actually thank Satan for showing us exactly how not to be.” And Matthew casually replied, “I don't think we should give attention or thanks to Satan. We can thank God for creating Satan. Its important to always keep our attention on God.” Good Point.




Junya took us to his favorite vegan (!) café. That's right. A vegan café in Japan. The owners were a gorgeous couple who love world music, vegansm, health food, alternative energy, simple living, rare musical instruments, and Indian Philosophy. We had a “Live,” (“raibu”), a jam session on the tatami, and I tell ya I couldn’t have been happier. After that I felt like I was family. They made me some coffee out of roasted brown rice, with sugar made from sweet radish (Hokkaido daikon), spinach curry, and delicious banana tofu cake. I really want to open a Vegan Café with Charlie Meers someday, so this was another affirmation that it is doable and important.

For Trisha

This is a response to Trisha’s comment (Which I love, especially the idea of a gallery of murals of personal unfoldment (and enfoldment). I got the idea for the new painting (see below) from a number of places, one of which would have to be my own "unconscious" because much of the actual painting was "doodled,” or unplanned, but instead occurred directly out of my presence. The planned part, the birds, was only planned as subject matter (and even that thought "Oo, put in the birds!" occurred to me out of some unknown dimension). Their placement in the trees was spontaneous, as was their magical number and balance. The composition, that is, the hemisphere on the bottom with circles detaching (or returning) and trees at the top) I came up with at work yesterday. It appeared in my mind, I drew it, and I liked it. Ever since childhood I have painted and studied underwater worlds (maybe an infantile oceanic thing), and bubbles have a very profound spiritual meaning for me (they are glorious spheres, so other worldly, perfect reflection mirrors, reflecting a single light a thousand times, and they are empty, illusory, fleeting, like a dream, like a thought, like life itself). So, intellectually, the blunt, but beautiful reality of crows sitting in a naked tree is rooted in a world of illusory, impermanent dream bubbles, arising from the depths of the great Void Abyss Nothingness that was there before the Universe Began, and is there right now in the deepest part of you, reading this page, and thinking these thoughts (the Source of all). Or maybe it’s about evolution, from darkness to bubbles to birds. But that is all intellectual-- words describing something that did not come up intellectually (I didn’t have any of those THOUGHTS while painting or drawing. I worked on intuition, on feeling, on flow, on presence. I just did what felt right at the Moment.

My upcoming weekend and childhood

I started a new painting and finished another.
I would love to hear suggestions for titles.

Spring
Spring in Japan is a very stressful time. This is when teachers are changing schools, as well as positions at work. The teachers get transferred to a new school or the BOE every two or three years. Just the other day one of my favorite English teachers showed up at the board of Education (where I work during Spring Break) to find out what his new there will be. He was so pissed off. “Hey Sensei, how are you doing?” “Not so well. I’m having a hard time coping with this change. Not to mention I will never teach an English lesson with you again.” He will be there for three years or so, in front of a computer, far away from any child or English lesson. Same thing applies within the schools. Teachers move to different grades or move to a different school. And, no teacher knows who assigns the transfers. That is the Mystery. Within a company people get transferred all over the place as well. This is the time when families are moving to different cities. Can you imagine working for a school district that moves you around to different school and different grades? That is how they do it here. .
At the same time, this is the season for Hanami, the flower viewing festival. This is the most beloved festival in Japan, I think. It is a week long event that takes place when the Cherry blossoms come out. The cherry trees are bread to be the most beautiful things on the planet, and during the festival people spend all day eating and drinking sake beneath them, watching the pedals fall. It will be fun to see everyone sloshed in the middle of the day. They even devote a portion of their TV news to “tracking the blossoms” and little cartoon trees with electric energy lines emanating from their flowers appear dancing around the screen.

Tomorrow I am hosting a going away party for Yasu (he’s moving to Tokushima for Grad school)) and on Saturday I am going back to the Chiiori House( a 300 year old farmhouse nestled deep in the mountains of Iya Vally. (www.chiiori.org.) I really want to climb naked through the mountains and lie on the ground, letting the leaves and the dirt hold me like a mother would. I love being naked in nature. I just read about the Jains in India and It's funny that in India if you walk around naked you are considered a holy man. People may feel blessed to be able to offer you food. But in the West one would be locked up as a lunatic or pervert for walking around naked in public.

I am that lunatic. I used to take my close off in the neighborhood creek and submerge myself in mud. I was never afraid of what kind of biting animals were lurking deep inside those mud holes (or that I might not be able to get out!). It was the lowering of my little body into the cold, thick mud, (the symbolic returning to the earth) that was so... (I used to sometimes paint mud on my body as camouflage before running around the creek or neighborhood). The feeling of the mud touching every surface of my body was so....well, you know. I also used to drink the dirty creek water in an attempt to become more one with nature (that was actually the reason I would drink it) This was all between the ages of 7 and 11 i think.
IN collage one night a friend and I went to Potter’s Lake on the KU Campus and I suddenly had a burst of this incredible earth energy and I took off my clothes and climbed a tree. I felt like hugging the tree so I could feel its cold hands scratch my entire body. I love the mud sex scene in the movie I heart Huckubees. Do you ever have this earthy kind of eroticism arising within your compounded body/mind? Or this unrelenting urge to take off your clothes and lay naked beneath a blanket of sunlight? It’s kind of equal to my impulse to burst out singing or my impulse to make art when I am inspired.

Imabari, dinner party, and a new painting

Yesterday Jackie and I went to Imabari to visit our friend Trisha who fractured her knee. She is staying with a family while she recovers. The family is a young couple, very cool, with their daughter, and the husband’s mother, who lives upstairs (she is in front of the TV). Then, at night I had a little dinner party which was so good, and then this morning after zazen I worked a little bit more on my new painting (See finished version above). My mom wanted me to explain this painting a little bit so here we go (but keep in mind that this explanation is not in any way the painting. If we could put paintings into words there wouldnt be any need for the image. Symbols and colors and lines communicate to a level of the mind that is differnt than that of words and intelect. So, with that said, the symbol at the top is a vajra, a mystical thunderbolt or diamond. It represents a wisdom that is crystal clear and cuts through all delusion, or a wisdom that illuminates reality instantly like a thunderbolt in the night. The crystal ball represents the nature of mind (see "note" for more details). The central figure is modeled after Jizo san, a very, very popular deity found all over Japan, most commonly known as the protector of travelers and dead children (More about Jizo later). My mom says it looks like a penis. and she is right. In his hands he is cradling another crystal ball as a baby or as a gift. The warm colors are supposed to be the active heat and fire of passions (anger, suffering, movement, flames, illusions, excitement,) and the cooler greens represent stillness, freshness, cooling peace and heavenly softness . We feel draw to both. I plan on making the hub of the vajra a light blue. I love the saying that goes something like this: "Red, Green, Blue... those are colors. Yellow is a mystical experience shared by everyone."
Note: I began using crystal balls in my art when my root teacher Khamtrul Rinpoche, during the traditional "pointing out instructions," (which is when a spiritual teacher talks you through your own present experience (in a very investigative way), eventually pointing out exactly that aspect of your awareness that is already one with eternity), after talking me through it, simply held up a crystal ball and said, "See how the nature of this crystal ball is already clear?" He then put the glass ball in front of his red robe and said, "See how the crystal ball turned red? In the same way, the mind becomes whatever it is on, and simultaneously remains clear and pure." That teaching, that moment was very meaningful for me. He later added that this “clear nature of mind”, which never comes and never goes, is instead an already completely present condition or trait of everyone's mind. It was also never born, and thus, will never die. It is Eternity itself, the nature of the present Now, existing outside (or above) time. And therefore, it is this same "clear light mind" that will alone remain after the moment of death, after every memory and object and color existing within it dissolves and fades away. Discovering this clear nature of your mind is very liberating to say the least. And it is very easy. Just look!. (See "pointing out instructions" posted Thursday, May 19th, for more information about this stuff).

Zigenji

Today I discovered Niihama’s “secret garden” which is behind a Zen temple called Zigenji. Guarding the front gates of the garden are two ferocious dogs. I snuck around through the cemetery and entered the garden from the back. I was all by myself. It was both peaceful and sketch, with the chronic barking of the dogs, and the eerie fact that I was the only on in this garden that makes the ones in Kyoto look tiny. This garden was a masterpiece. After exploring the grounds for about an hour I met the man who lives in the temple house (many temples have a house that is connected.) I saw him as he was getting out of his Ferrari. He told me that this temple (which was huge!) has no services, and he told me that in one of the large buildings exists his famous art collection, after which I immediately asked if I could see it sometime and he said it’s not open to the public, and that the dogs and the many surveillance cameras (!) are for protection. Very, very sketchy. I think the temple is completely private, owned by this wealthy family, and so nobody really goes there. But I will, for the garden is absolutely breathtaking. After that I went to the nearby park to see the swans in the lake and to visit the caged animals in the sad little rusty playground zoo. There was a den full of rabbits, some cages of chickens and roosters, some big, beautiful peacocks, a turkey, a big beautiful mountain goat, and a swan with a gimp leg sitting all by himself in his cage next to a bathtub sized bucket of a pond. Spiritual teaching: you can always imagine someone worse off then you.