Holidays in Japan

The current update so far… (Jane and I will continue our adventures until Jan. 5)

My sister Jane and cousin Katie visited me for the holidays. This, I feel, was a great sacrifice on their part, not being with their families and friends on Christmas, so, I wanted to make their vacation to Japan the best that it could be. My Job was also to kind of prove to them that Japan is a very magical place full of miracles and surprises, thus crediting my decision to live here another 2 or 3 years. So I planned a short tour to as many sacred places in Japan as possible on a relatively cheap budget. I chose to stay in and around Shikoku, to save money and time (no Tokyo or Kyushu this trip). Although I did dicide to include a ride on the Shinkansen, or what we call the "Bullet Train," which was very expensive, and softly skated across the Japanese landscape, from Himeji to Kyoto, smooth and fast as a dragon.

First, I picked up Jane in Osaka on the 16th and we stayed there two nights waiting for Kate to arrive on the 18th. Luckily, my friend Ben put us up in his one room appartment for the weekend. The first morning we went to see one of Ben’s Aikido practices. His local Aikido Dojo is actually the Dojo Steven Segal built while living in Japan, before he became an actor. Now it's run by his beautiful, and powerful, ex-wife, pictured standing next to Ben. Later that day Jane and I watch a Steven Segal movie in Ben’s appartment: The…something Man. The Glimmer Man, I forgot the name for a second, it wasn't very good, but he did finger his Tibetan prayer-beads through the entire film, giving it a kind of spooky quality for me, because whenever I see prayer beads I trained myself to bring attention to the clear nature of mind, so the movie turned into a strange kind of prolonged meditation, back and forth, back and forth, from the drama and action going on in the space of mind to an awareness of the space of mind. We also saw the Osaka Castle and America Town—a shopping district thick with modern Japanese culture (fashion, haircuts, music, and art). America town is a trip. Check it out if you can.

When my cousin Katie arrived we took the overnight Ferry to Niihama. Thankfully Yasu, the Super Friend, was at the port at 8:30 in the morning to pick us up and play all day. He was shining, as usual. And, as usual, his kindness and gentleness caused Jane and Katie to fall into a delightful love, jut like I thought it would. Everyone falls in love with Yasu because he is a real angle.






We ate lunch at one of my favorite restaurants, visited my office and boss (who gave me a hundred bucks in yen and said “Merry Christmas. Use this for drinks!”), the Zen monastery where I sometimes meditate on Sundays, and one of the four waterfalls nestled deep in mountains. Leaving the waterfall we saw a large, red-faced monkey run acros the road.
Little did we know, it would not be our last.

I took them to Matsuyama, saw the castle and onsen, then to Hiroshima, where we ate Okonomiyaki and visited the Peace Park and Museum. One memorable object in the museum was a clump of burnt skin and leftover fingernails once part of a little boy. His mother kept them for his father for when he came back from fighting in the war. It was said that this boy was so thirsty he sucked the puss from his burnt fingers. At the museum I found many stories and pictures about people so thirsty they went to the river and laid down to drink, only to die shortly after, all lying along the banks with their heads in the water. And, the story goes that when the tide came in from the sea, it picked up their burnt bodies and carried them away. Bodies were also found floating in water troughs, ponds, and rice patties. I bought a book of drawings and paintings by Hiroshima survivors. I'll post some of the drawings later. They are quite telling.






Then we went to Miyajima, a sacred island primarily dedicated to the Goddesses. This island, as many of you know, is home to many friendly, free-roaming deer, and some of the most amazing, most beautiful shrines and temples…There is a temple there called Daisho-in, a Shingon Buddhist temple, once visited by Kukai, and, surprisingly, also by the Dalai Lama. I was a bit confused when I saw pictures of His Holiness on the walls of the little gift area inside the entrance, as well as a Tibetan Buddhist teaching throne with his picture propped up on the top of it, signifying the fact that he had actually taught there recently. Also inside the main temple hall was a sand mandala created by Tibetan Monks. Also, all across the island I saw for the first time an almost obsessive ritual of draping prayer beads around some of the Buddhist sculptures. I took many pictures of the beautiful beads wrapped around the gesturing hands, frozen in wood or stone. Each one of the sculptures then had an even more eerie realness, the details so refined. Here are some close-ups.












We then visited Kieran in Himeji, saw the famous Castle there, and then headed over to Kyoto, which I kind of thought would probably be the highlight of the entire trip.
As it turned out, I was right.


Kyoto performed beautifully for us, dancing and singing and revealing her secret passageways and cemeteries deep inside her dark wooden interiors, her polished precious stone breasts, golden fingers, cobblestone legs, and necklaces made from tunnels of orange gates wondering madly into the forests of her moss-covered mind.








After walking through one such tunnel, I tried to start a conversation with Jane: "Isn’t it profound that these are TUNNLES made out of GATES, so that it's as if you are perpetually passing though a gate, from one side or experience to another, endlessly, just like we do in our lives or Bardos?” She was not impressed with my idea.
In fact, traveling with my sister and cousin was very humbling. It was painfully humbling sometimes, because, you know, I have an ego bigger than the sun at times and both my sister and cousin are so much smarter than me and know me well enough to see when I'm full of shit. And not "full of shit" meaning I'm lying or not being totally honest, but full of shit as in full of unnecessary garbage that doesn't need to be said. “David, most of the time you talk just so you can here yourself talking” my cousin told me with a striking authority one day on the train after I had tried to defend the importance of the moral position ascerted by Christian Scientists in a little debate with Kieran. But God, dispite me sounding like a total nerd, we all had great conversations! The whole trip was filled with childhood memories; good conversations, little fights and flurries, early spring winds and biting winter rain, sleeping deer, dogs in sweaters, and stairs in nature. And, icing on the cake was Rick Winfry, who met us at Nijo castle (famouse for the nightengale floors).



Many stories from Kyoto I will reserve for the oral tradition, but I must tell you about Christmas Night when we met a few of my absolutely beautiful friends for a night of dancing to Beatles and Stones music. It was Beatles/Stones night, and the djs played all the best, and we were dancing hard and wild into the dark cold Christmas night. And then, to our surprise, a Beatles cover band appeared and played live music from the soul of the Sixties, songs that acted as collective archetypes pulling us all into an ecstatic embrace of song lyrics, melodies, rhythms, and cross-cultural friendships. The club was called the Metro.



Rick’s last day in Kyoto we went to Monkey Mountain, spent some quality time with our distant relatives. The baby Monkeys were very cute. I wanted play with them, but I was afraid they’d hurt me. We also stumbled upon this temple next to Sanjusangendo famous for the visible blood stains across its ceiling. The temple was built using wood soaked with blood from and ancient castle floor onto when 310 samurai committed ritual suicide. A cute old Japanese lady pointed out to us the dark red outlines of hands, heads, arms and legs. It was creepy and beautiful and worth telling you about, I think. Also, we saw Charlotte’s Web, which was beautiful and made me cry.

Well, that's all for now.

Fam in Japan

here are a couple pics Yasu took of us. ill have more up later, as well as a vivid, exciting description of our trip so far.

Oosaka, Robots, Virtual Clothing, and some Engrish

BBC says this: “US President Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair say new policies are needed on Iraq after a damning report." I’d say that the humility will take hold soon, and the conflict will shift into a less aggressive attack. Bush’s confidence and unchanging determination to follow the previously crafted path is finally loosing its death-grip on innocent human lives. This change of mind occurred from the final acceptance of new information and aftereffects of actions some people say were horrible acts of murder and repulsive, ignorant, blind aggression. Bombs killing poor people, “Collateral damage,” the term actually being applied like a sticker to the soft, fleshy bodies of the dying people of the other side. Children burning to death because of a strategy of war and benefit. The Long War is rapidly changing like a flipbook before our very eyes.
Also in the news.

The timetable for NASA’s Moon Colony is announced.

alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5005174386645452226" />Oh, and I’m teaching the junior high school kids about Christmas now. I ask the class, “how many of you believed in Santa Claus when you were little?” and all of their hands go up. However, and interestingly, I have learned that Japanese children have no idea about the elves or what they do. (They live with Santa at the North Pole and make all the presents). Japan knows and promotes Santa, and all the reindeer, but no elves! It’s like a huge chunk of the story is missing.
(And, of course, they don't have the Virgin Mary and Baby Jesus, the nativity scene burned into my head. They have the tree though, for sure. No pie. But they do have a ‘Christmas Cake” which has fresh strawberries and is very delicious. Also, in Japan they sell Christmas Boots, made out of plastic and holding lots of snacks and candy…their translation of the Large Socks we use. There are no fireplaces in Japan, if you didn't know. SO they don't have the Stockings, warm and soft, left empty on Christmas Eve and then found filled with presents in the morning. They also find it fascinating that we would leave milk, cookies, and carrots for Santa and the deer; offerings to some imaginary deity. ANd it is fascinating.



Of course I'm also teaching about Christmas’s pagan origins. A little info found on the internet: “The Winter Solstice was the season of a major celebration of fertility in ancient Rome called "Saturnalia," starting on December 17th. This honored the "good old days" when the god Saturn ruled a supposed "Golden Age", and there were no masters and no slaves, and everything was easy. Thus, it became a reversal-holiday, when the masters served the slaves, and a slave was chosen to temporarily rule the household. The Romans were civilized enough to not kill him afterwards, as seems to be the custom with such holidays in more primitive cultures.” (A great description of this sacrificial version is in Tom Robbins’s book Jitterbug Perfume I started reading last week).

So, it appears that we still celebrate the winter solstice, with tree worship, music worship, food, lights, and merriment, every year. And why not? I know that I still feel a warm eggnog sensation around my chest and belly when I smell mothballs, see holly and her tiny red balls, or feel my ears turn crispy red from the biting cold.

Also, I told one of my team-teachers about the origins of Easter, which, like Saturnalia, is another, more literal, fertility festival, Eggs and Bunnies, and she found that extremely interesting. And it is, isn’t it? Those symbols are pretty obvious, and are also full of many layers of meaning. We might ask ourselves though, where do the rabbits and eggs fit into the death and resurrection of Jesus? Well, if you consider the death and resurrection as a symbol for rebirth, then, yeah, (Fucking fits into the festival snug as a bug in a rug stretched out next to a fire burning in a Colorado log cabbin.

In conclusion, it appears that we, as people living in the world, chronically participate, and feel good about participating in ancient rituals and festivals. Lets not forget our roots! We can imagine our ancestors, our Roots that stretch back deep into time, into the darkness and dreamy mist of Past, way back, to when we were still young and inexperienced animals, back, following our roots like a highway Deep into the earth, into the universe, into ourselves. Where, if you reach back far enough, was none other than our bodyrock or bedrock, rocks spinning and singing around a fire.

We have been singing around trees for a long time, too. And dancing, spinning around fires. Nature is ancient.


I believe an early form of “Santa “ is a tall, skinny Austrian man who wore green robes and twinkled with jolly kindness and generosity wherever he went. (He was much like the Green Tara or Kannon Bosatsu images, baring gifts and happiness to give to each and all.)


One of my students asked me today why we say “Amen” after praying and what does it mean anyway? I told him I didn't know the original meaning, but that it now actually has no meaning, that is, no conventional meaning defined by more words in a definition.) I said it is used as a closing or concluding sound, placed at the end of a prayer or song (prayer being defined here as, and those of you who pray can please agree or disagree with this, ideally prayer is none other than the action of opening up to the very core of who we are and what is Real in every moment. The Communion with the Source).

Lets google it.
“The meaning of Amen”
Wikepedia: the word Amen (Tiberian Hebrew "So be it”) is a declaration of affirmation found in the Hebrew Bible, the New Testament, and in the Qur'an. It has always been in use within Judaism and Islam. It has been generally adopted in Christian worship as a concluding formula for prayers and hymns. In Islam, it is the standard ending to suras. Common English translations of the word amen include: "Verily", "Truly", "So be it", and "Let it be".

A declaration of affirmation, eh? That's great. But it is within this last definition (which is also, incidentally, the name of a popular song we sometimes sing together) that I am vividly reminded of the Aum, or Om, and how it is used in Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. The last definition points out one of the Aum's more “spiritual” functions, I think, where the very shape of the sound represents (and can actually generate the experience of) complete embrace or inclusion of all possible things. Beginning with the “Ah” symbolizing the beginning of the universe, and the first sounds a baby makes at the beginning of life, and then ending in “mmm”, representing the ending, and the last sound we make as we fade away from our deathbeds. Beginning and Ending, birth and death, both embraced and created out of a vibrating silence. The attitude that sings “Amen,” or “So be it!” is a kind of surrendering to the universe As It Is, not as we wish it or want it or dream it to be. “Let it be,” is to say, “Leave it as it is” or ‘So be it.” “It is truly so.” “Leave it be.” And why leave everything be as it is already? Maybe because not to would be a kind of insanity, or frustrating contradiction of logic. After all, everything is already…it, the World, the All, the Everything. And we can see that
Everything is already Clear Light Emptiness reflecting a limitless depth and clarity. With the "self-perfecting" nature of it all, leaving it be and watching in unfold is also exciting. The greatest movie in town. What more can you do or ask for than a glowing and evolving universe of infinite diversity?

So, resting in the non-seeking, already complete and universe-affirming mind, the Amen arises, carrying a sense of “let it be,” like a spider carrying silk within its belly.


And to pull this idea further out of or into the mind, lets just bring up the idea of the Enlightened “Mirror-Mind” of the Buddha. This aspect of your mind right now is said to be just like a real Mirror, which changes nothing it effortlessly reflects. It leaves everything exactly as it is, and by doing so, it completely embraces everything as it is, and everyone as they are. And this Mirror-Mind also embraces any impulse or action to change things. And It is also aware of, or is “reflecting,” any passivity or laziness occurring, too.

And yet, because it effortlessly “lets everything be” self liberating within their own reflections, exactly as they are, naked in their own existence and place in the mind-story of life, this Mirror-Mind can embrace and abide within each and every reflection. Look carefully at a mirror. The mirror surface is within each of its reflections/forms, and, paradoxically, the objects in the mirror never leave a mark or trace on the mirror’s surface. That's an important aspect of the mirror and of the mind that is worth some investigation, in my opinion.

Amen. Ahom, Very similar, no?


I was going to talk about my trip to Osaka. Let me go there now.

I took an overnight ferry to Osaka to visit my friend Ben and to meet his girlfriend visiting from Germany, Joanna, pronounced “Yohahnah”. We went to a robot and technology exhibition. The electric cars seemed stylish and beneficial/useful (check out the picture of the car above). The robot waitress (also pictured) seemed disastrous, not because it was unsafe or incapable, but because serving is really good money, I think, and a good job for people, not robots. Maybe the shallowest thing at the exhibition, and also embarrassingly probably the most interesting exhibit, was a cloths rack holding several laminated pictures of clothing that you hold up to the mirror, which is actually a TV, and see a 3-D version of the clothing dangling hauntingly from your hand. You move the laminated picture up to your chest, and the sweater moves on the screen as if you are really holding it (see pictures for further detail. Ill have a new movie out soon about my trip to Oosaka and you can see more of it then). This is the same new technology I read about on Nerdshit.com.

There were also, of course, robot-dogs that played soccer in a small field. I also got a free sample of some new super-moss that needs no care. Its super moss, for places like corporate lawns and gardens, and you need not do anything to care for it! Imagine if we developed grass that needs no cutting or watering. Another disaster, perhaps, or, the change of something big. The revolution could be said to have begun that way.

We then went to the aquarium. I felt so good looking at those living creatures. The greatest art really is nature, and when you have the most magnificent of the world’s jellyfish rhythmically pulsing and humping the water-world right in front of you, the universe seems a bit more serious and involved than before. I spent a lot of time watching the dolphins talking to each other, and playing like children with the water trickling from a pipe in the ceiling. Sharks and seals and stingrays all competing for your attention. Its like I got to go underwater, walk through underwater hallways, in a submarine body that doesn't get wet.



On Sunday in Oosaka I walked around Namba and “America Town”. Bright Yellow Gingko trees lined the streets and fresh, cold morning sunlight. Showering the air with yellow peddles, sunlight flashed me her body, and tiny yellow freckles rolled down her clear crystal stomach with a city tattoo.

Look! Light happening all around, shining across a vast space. This rainbow blanket gloves forms of the darkness. The blanket gives shape to the clear stillness—the canvas beneath this rainbow creation, and listen! The vibrations of color hum the song of winter hushed cicadas, or the shouting silence shining silver string twisting together a hammock to abandon in the blue winter forest.


This is a difficult idea to express, but I'll try. Imagine that you are feeling very bad about something. The world is awful and you are just sick of life. And then, quite surprisingly, you notice a small weed growing next to the sidewalk, and this weed is not just a weed but is some rather lovely design in nature. Or supposing you are bothered by war, and you are sitting on a bench next to a river, and you become aware of the water caressing hundreds of brown and silver pebbles. And inside you, the water running over the pebbles points to a golden river or spontaneous Beautiful Emptiness and spaciousness going on forever and ever and ever. Or, put it this way, the Simplicity of the beauty of the water, or the sunlight on leaves, opens a door to the intuition of something very simple and present issuing forth a vivid sense of the…Reliability in nature. Nature is totally safe. Its Natural, and is thus naturally perfect in its naturalness. Nature, and the things that go with it, is a kind of amazing eternal reliability that, in a very humble form, goes on and on and on forever, and whatever humans do, this everlasting Sanity persists. Chogyam Trungpa sometimes called the Enlightened Mind ”Basic Sanity.” And perhaps “Amen” is a word that is supposed to be uttered from the same basic, sane state of mind. Perhaps the honest speaking of that word, which is only truly spoken and thus true in itself if spoken from a complete state of Trust and Union with Nature or the Real. If that is so, then uttering the word in whisper above your hands is the very proof of the existence of a completely effortless state of existence or Being.


Another winter observation is that of Death. It all comes back to death, sometimes. DO you believe that everything is change, and nothing at all can be held onto or possessed forever? Let it be, open your hand, reflect it as it is, Amen, the sanest thing we do, is it not? Its at least one of the sanest things we do.


And, come on, the mental attitude “Let it be” totally comes from a sense that there is Perfection! An Eternity, A Presence or Spirit, or a very simple, basic Sanity, that existed way before we were born or thought of, way before this universe every exploded into existence. This presence can never be known by the thinking mind (in the same way the eye can never see itself), but it is felt, or intuited, isn’t it? All is Well. Let it be. Amen.




Don't you like all this Engrish I found? I'll post more later. You can also go to Engrish.com. What’s interesting about Engrish is that even though it may be grammatically wrong, some of it is trying to express very profound ideas.

Bobby and Bona

Dalai Lama essay

When I attended his yearly spring teachings in India (which were, incidentally, the Lamrim teachings compiled by Atisha, or so I have heard), I found an essay by the Dalai Lama in the form of a small pamphlet sitting in a free section of a tiny, dusty bookstore next to the Monastery. Its was titled "Compassion and the Individual.” I read it and fell into love again. Please read this. It's long, but it is so important. www.john-bauer.com/dalai-lama.htm


Thanks,
David

The Raigo, Omens, death, Meister Eckhart, Paintings, and more.

The Raigo

Buddhism has many very interesting beliefs about death. For example, and first of all, different Buddhist traditions focus on different experiences of death, all maintaining that whatever you believe and practice will happen at death will happen. And so, some traditions choose to believe and dream that Amida, the Buddha of Infinite Light, flanked by the Bodhisattva of Wisdom and Compassion, (Kannon and Manju), will arrive and merge with your mind at the moment of death, transporting you instantly into a “Pure Realm.” This scene is known as the Raigo.
Now, what if we restated that to say that the moment you die God appears to you flanked by Wisdom and Compassion to take you away to paradise. Sound familiar?
This idea of what will happen the moment you die is not unique to Pure Land Buddhism at all. All major religions have a scene like this, I think. but what is particular to Pure Land Buddhism is the way they use this belief: They use it as a way to prepare for the moment of death.

By focussing and imagining deeply and often what will happen at death, we co-create our death experience as well as prepare for it. Some people, if they really want to see Jesus at death and have prayed for that, as their mind dissolves durring death, it will produce that image or dream. "The Archetypes" or deeply rooted psychological images are also said to surface during death, because the surface layers of the conscious mind dissolve and uncover these deeper patterns or images. In this way, you may come face-to-face with "The great Mother" and then watch her dissolve into your mind. And there is, of course, the unanimously agreed upon experience of the "Great Light" and "Tunnel."

The Tibetan tradition emphasizes a series the visual phenomena and interior experiences that occur at death. Some traditions believe you will dissolve into a rainbow of light. Other say you will meet many deities, some peaceful and some wrathful, but all merely creations of your mind. Some say that your consciousness will condense into a tiny ball of light and shoot out the top of you head and then mix with All Space. And some believe you will dissolve and die in the same way you fall asleep every night and wake up in another body. This new oil panting is one popular version of the “Raigo” or the scene at death where Infinite Light comes down to you as you die to transport you into the Mind Realm of Heaven.

And here are notes for a book I am working on.


Intro to Part 2: Omens
The individual identity, or who you THINK you are, wants things. This
Identity is suspended momentarily when beauty is apprehended, for the moment of beauty is a moment of satisfaction. Beauty suspends all desires and therefore, it suspends the identity that desires. We become at once, instead, a simple opening, a naked awareness, or a mirror, simply and naturally reflecting whatever light or sound is happening around (or within) its reflective surface. We become the eye of Spirit, which can only see itself, and thus, can only see beauty, because no dirty or ugly or
evil thing can be seen or be present with Godhead, and because Godhead is, of course, perfect or complete in every way, even in the imperfections. Whatever is touched by light becomes light.
Beauty, then, can be seen as a trigger, an omen, a portal, to that pure realm, to that pure awareness, to that Glimpse or awakening to the Lucid Wakefulness that is Godhead.

CH. 3 The Practice and Use of Omens
OMENS are Triggers
Part 1. Ways to use omens.
First, designate any animal to be your omen. I often use rabbits, crows, cranes, and dead things. But you choose whatever animal is meaningful for you. And make sure it is an animal that you see often. (Like at least once a week, or better, once a day.) Seeing your omen will actually take place more and more frequently as you use this practice.) Designate your animal as a certain kind of omen. Whenever you encounter your omen, think:
--Oh, my omen! Something important is happening.
Or for dream trigger omens:
--Oh, my omen! I am dreaming.
Or for death reminder omens:
--Oh, my omen! I am going to die. Could be today.
Or for angle omens:
Oh, my messenger omen. I will think about love, the love my mother
had for me, and fill up with appreciation right now.
Or thunderbolt omens:
Oh, my thunderbolt omen. I will wake up and be alert to what is
happening right now, and will BAM! break through my time infatuated thought train!.
Or a mindful omen:
Oh, my mindfulness omen. I will bring my attention to my breath and my
walking. Thank you omen for reminding me.
It is good to talk to your omens as if they are alive and can
Communicate with you.

In this way, omens will be like tiny mirrors scattered across your day. Or like tiny teachers. Other omens could be litter, babies, old people, barking dogs, dandelions, feathers, road kill, clocks, beautiful stones, the moon, the smell of flowers, the smell of shit, dejavou, or crazy coincidences. If you don't know what omen is
best, pay attention today at what tiny objects catch your eye and create a pause or a glitch in your experience. Feathers do this for me all the time. I am walking or riding my and I suddenly see a beautiful gray feather, smooth, elegant, and slicing into the sidewalk like a knife. If you ask the universe to send you an omen, then it will and an omen find you shortly afterward. And your omens will follow you into your dreams. This is one of the most important uses of omens, known as Dream Omens. Which is why “dream trigger” or “reality testing” omens are very good to have plenty of. When you come across the omen in your dream, you will stop and habitually say, "Hey, my dream omen. I'm dreaming!" You use dream omens to become lucid. A great dream omen for me is lust. Every time I have a sexual or lustful desire, like if I see a beautiful person and I imagine them naked or something, that is an omen that I am dreaming. Hah! Cause I am dreaming! I use my habit of lusting as a habit of awakening. Then, when I have a sexual dream, I can recognize the image as a dream, wake up in the dream and become lucid. As the Tibetan book of the Dead says over and over, “Recognition and Liberation are simultaneous.”


If you use omens you are simply utilizing the phenomenal world appearing in your awareness in a positive and empowering way. The mind will always take an object. You might as well give it something positive. And that includes thinking about death. If you think about death every time you see a baby, or an old person, or a crow, you will be well prepared when the actual moment of death comes. Also, you
will become more aware of the fleetingness of life and an appreciation and powerful motivation to live everyday to the fullest will arise. Death omens are the most powerful teachers.

Mindfulness omens. Bring your mind back to your body, your present experience, your life, your being, and your identity. Not lost and scattered amongst the hallucinations, hypnotized by memories and dreams, worries and concepts, but bring your mind back to itself, which is an awareness, clear, present, open and full of immediate reality. What a wonderful gift to give yourself and the universe.

CH. 4 Paintings
Have you ever encountered a scene, like an old lady feeding birds at the park, or an eagle sitting on top of a naked tree, or a single flower growing out of the sidewalk, or a range of maintains sitting on top of a river of clouds…have you ever encountered such a scene and thought "Wow, this looks like a beautiful painting." Why does it look like a painting, of all things? Because paintings also contain the same capacity to blow you away; to take you away and away and away, all the way out of your clinging, dissatisfied mind and into an awareness of infinite release and spaciousness and acceptance. These beautiful scenes can enliven our creative core, that empty, creative field where all quarks and thoughts and moons get their power, get their body, get their existence, reflect their beauty, and merge with everything
else. This is the creative nature in us that is identical to God, for in the beginning God created us in Its image, which means It created us creative. I love Meister Eckhart, a Christian mystic: "When God made man, he put into the soul his equal, his active, everlasting masterpiece…God's is-ness is my is-ness, and neither more nor less." And in the same way that God
loves Its creation, not as Its creation but as Itself, when we see beauty, we love it, not because it is out there and separate from us, but because it is in us, it is our very nature being project out and then shining back at us. Beauty, like
everything else, comes from our own minds, our own Beingness.

And why does this happen so vividly during beautiful scenes or beautiful paintings? Maybe it is because these things bring us into the present moment. And, to quote Eckhart again, "The soul who is in this present moment now, in her the Father
bears his one-begotten son and in the same birth the soul is born back into God.” Eckhart then says, “It is one birth, as soon as she is reborn into God the Father is begetting his only Son in her."
Paintings can usher us into the deep depths of Presence, into Reality, into the present
moment, or contemplation, or mindfulness (and, to add an important point, a connection I make between Buddhism and Christianity in order to be pointing to similar referents is that "mindfulness" is anther word for "the holy spirit"). And from there the art can shine a light onto the surface waves and you can see, even if just for a moment,
that all the waves are made out of water, or are made out of Now, and are, Mysteriously, made out of You.



So, beautiful scenes can help you descend into the still depths of
Being, the most subtle and powerful dimension of life. And here you
can come face to face with God, with Goddess, your own deepest core, your own truest essence, unborn, undying.

Nature can show us directly that there is only unity for there is not a
wall or line or boundary anywhere in nature. Artists know this well,
because whenever we try to draw a still life or a nude figure, we look for
lines that we can copy, but we can never find any. All the contours
are always shifting, changing, falling off into space. Just look at your hand. Try to find the edge of your hand and you will fall off into infinity. Outlines
become transparent. Reality seems to shimmer as a rainbow colored
cloud of smoke, a seamless flow and flux of light. One Blood rolls
and unrolls an endless circulation of being through All. "I am a
fountain of blood in the shape of a girl." Sings Bjork. The great
Emptiness, the Great Spirit, sings "I am a fountain of blood in the
shape of a universe."

And who would deny this? The mystics stun and astonish us by simply
declaring the basic, divine fact: God is within.
But not just within our very being, but within every single
manifestation ever. And not just present as some eternal Oneness, but as the Present Moment Now. And not just within everything, but also embracing everything, as a cell embraces molecules, as trees embrace cells. Every stone, every leaf, every nook and cranny is embraced by infinity, is imbued with Spirit, bathed in Spirit, in the same way the earth is bathed in light. There is no point anywhere that is not totally permeating with Being, with Spirit, with Suchness. For, as Eckhart put it, "God is not only a Father of all good things, as being their First Cause and Creator, but
He is also their Mother, since He remains with the creatures which have from Him their being and existence, and maintains them continually in their being. If God did not abide with and in the creatures, they must necessarily have fallen back, so soon as theywere created, into the nothingness out of which they were created." He then adds "God is infinite in his simplicity and simple in his infinity. Therefore he is everywhere and is everywhere complete. God is in the innermost part of each and every thing."

The Christian Mystic has it right! I sing with my heart!

But then my friends asks me, "So what if there is unity? How does this knowledge of unity benefit the world in any practical way?" That is such a good question. And there are many ways to approach the answer. My first intuition is towards compassion. It is my strong belief that by piercing through the veil of separation we can discover a vast wellspring of power and love within. An immeasurable source of joy, peace, love, compassion/fearlessness (Also known as the "Four Immeasurable" in Buddhism). And this allows us to care for others like we never have before because we can now honestly,
without any doubt, see others as intimately connected to ourselves. I have heard that Jesus, for example, said that there are two laws that we must obey. One, love the Lord (which is our own highest or deepest nature) and two, love
others as you would love yourself. Well, by seeing the unity beneath (or above) we can love others as we love ourselves because we can see clearly that ultimately the others our self. There is only one Self, one Soul. One Love, One Being. One Universe, One Is. Love others AS yourself, for there is only one Self, or God. Emerson: "It is one Light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one Soul which animates all men."
"From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things and
makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all."

Stunning, Emerson. Very clear.

And it is my belief that we all intuit this truth. We all know we are
divine. We all know that we are not mealy our bodies. We all see beauty and know that we are thus beautiful.

When I am asleep, my physical body is asleep, is nowhere to be found, but I am
still here. I am in a dream body, sometimes flying over the world,
sometimes swimming with whales, but I am still there.

a nice little quote from Eckhart:

"I have occasionally spoken of a light in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable. . . . This light is not satisfied with the simple, still and divine being which neither gives nor takes, but rather it desires to know from where this being comes. It wants to penetrate to the simple ground, to the still desert, into which distinction never creaped, neither Father, Son nor Holy Spirit. There, in that most inward place, the light is satisfied, and there it is more inward than it is in itself, for this ground is a simple stillness which is immovable in itself."

Stilling.

And what if I want to contact this "light in the soul which is uncreated and uncreatable," which is actually identical to God, or in god's image? Where do I find it and how? Well, the spiritual teachers tell us it is within and it is through meditation or contemplative prayer that we can discover it. But that is not the only way, for this essence or soul is our very nature, and thus can be felt or known inwardly as our own truest self right now. Now! Not sometime in the future like after death or after years of spiritual practice. For anything that has a beginning in time, including a spiritual realization, will have an
end in time, and thus is not ultimate and permanent and "uncreated," but is passing and relative and just another experience (as apposed to the SPACE in which all experiences come and go. and that SPACE in which everything arises, like this room and these thoughts and words and that sound, is the Empty Clearing or Field of the Soul or Godhead. To quote Eckhart, a Christian!, again, "the Soul that is one with God is free of all names and barren of all forms, totally free and void, just as God is void and free in himself. It is totally one and simple, as God is one and simple, so that we can in no manner gaze upon it." And I would say that we cannot gaze upon it or see it because it is the ever-present Seer, not anything seen. And the Seer
is (in Buddhism) pure Emptiness, Empty Consciousness, out of which seen objects emerge.
("If you see the Buddha, kill the Buddha!" because no object seen can
ever be the true seer, or your own real Buddha nature.) Eckhart continues, "There the "means" is silent, for neither a creature nor an image can enter there. The soul knows in that place neither action nor knowledge. It is not aware in that place of any kind of image, either from itself or from any other creature...You should love him as he is, a not-God, not-mind, not-person, not-image, even more, as he is a pure, clear One, separate from all two-ness. You should love God mindlessly, that is, so that your soul is without mind and free from all mental activities, for as long as your soul is operating like a mind, so long does it have images and representations. But as long as it has images, it has intermediaries, and as long as it has intermediaries, it has neither oneness nor simplicity." In this state of formless and silent awareness, ( nirvikhalpa
samadhi or formless absorption, or pure awareness without and object), one does not see the God or Soul, for one IS the God or Soul, and knows it from within, feels it from within, knows it more than anything else, for it is the one thing it has never not known, the one thing that is always known. The simple feeling of being. What is there before any memory or though, before any inward story is told. (God can know his creations, but he can only BE himself. you can know relative truths, but you can only BE the Ultimate truth or Condition or Self). This quote from Eckhart made me immediately think of the twelve-link chain of causation in Buddhism. The similarities are fantastic, actually. Eckhart says that mind creates images which create intermediaries which create multiplicity or separation. Buddha put it this way: Ignorance creates Mental Formations which create Consciousness which creates Name & Form which then creates the Sense Gates (senses), which create Contact which creates Feeling which creates Craving which creates Clinging which creates Becoming (a separate-self sense or ego that then can suffer from clinging and wanting permanence in a world that is impermanent) and this then creates “Birth” which leads to “Aging” “Sickness” & “Death”. (and this happens every moment, not just at the beginning of your life). And it SHOULD happen, dog gonnit, for if none of that happened, we would not get to manifest at all, let alone grow and evolve in compassion and love and discover our individuality and therefore our divine essence and so it is not bad that the chain of causation happens. It is a little funny and maybe ridiculous to break it all down like that. (the Buddha loved breaking stuff down. He loved using numbers to organize and teach about Enlightenment), And it is said that if you are sensitive or mindful enough you can actually see all twelve stages of causation take place every moment the idea of a separate self arises and then has a thought. (out of the Empty ground of Pure Awareness or Soul, the
self-sense arises as an idea that then wants something, feels separate, and suffers, was born, will die, and thus fears its death. This self, you, then completely forgets its origin, the empty awareness that is aware of the room and these words right now and was not born or created and thus will never die. And then death is a dissolving of that separate self-sense or movement of mind into the empty ground of Pure Mind, or I-Amness. Omens can help dissolve that self-sense throughout the day and into the night.

CH. 5 Omens

We could say that the universe is primarily composed of quarks or atoms. A scientist or an atheist might favor that view. An artist, or postmodernist, or even a mystic might say that the universe is really composed primarily of our symbols, since symbols is all we really know and see.

And it seems that the tendency of these symbols or their “perceivers” is to issue
forth meaning. I put “perceivers” in parentheses because it is ridiculous to say Perceiver as if it is separate form the perceived symbols. How the symbol is perceived, experienced, cognitively registered depends so much on the perceiver, their language and cultural background, etc. but anyway, it appears I am condemned to breathe meaning into whatever I can get my hands on, even the great Meaningless. We first project the separate symbols onto the seamless emptiness and then reflect the symbols back, reflect about the symbols, and make them meaningful.

But don't ever ask an artist "what does that mean?" for to put a symbol (that is not a word) into word form is to some degree kill or extinguish its communicative power. If it stays a symbol then its reach can extend way past our linguistic or thinking mind, past our language, deeper into the deepest depths of our being.

And the deeper dimensions are what are communicated by symbols, not words. Symbols and images came to us before words and language. They are deeper, or more fundamental structures in our minds. (Actually, I’ve read that in evolution it went irritability, sensation, perception, impulse, image, symbol, then concept. )
However, there is also no denying that words can also transform us. Words actually trigger images, feelings, transformation.
Sometimes after reading great scripture or poetry I feel my interior depth reach deep into the heart of the world, and, at the same time, I feel my heart open to embrace more of the world, of the Light, of the mystery and the love.

Amida Buddha and the Bodhisattvas.

Amida (or God: the higher or deeper self) can only work his grace and enlightenment into this world through the Bodhisattvas, and the Bodhisattvas can only work because of the grace of Amida.

Jesus came to earth. He did not want to stay in the absorbed Union Bliss and completion with God, with Eternity, but wanted instead to enter the stream of time and suffer with us all. That is the bodhisattva. And, in my opinion, any soul that actually
wants to stay on earth and suffer and give help to others is already in Heaven. There head or their heart is Heaven, breathing love and compassion in and out of the body, which is the earth.
Abide as heaven,
Embrace the earth.

And lonely heaven can embrace the earth in a wise and compassionate fassion. The sky embraces the clouds. The ocean embraces the waves. The body embraces the cells. The one embraces the many. "The sun sheds his light upon all creatures, and anything he sheds his beams upon absorbs them, yet he loses nothing of his brightness." Eckhart.

As soon as you begin to embrace the earth, embrace your pains, embrace your relationship problems, your sexuality, embrace your suffering, as soon as you begin to embrace your self, you begin to operate from a more spacious, higher, or deeper identity. As you ascend into the One Eternal Presence, you also descend, identify with, and care for the many, mortal presences, (the presents!).

Gifts of grace.
Each glowing with the inner light of a sun, of the son, born directly out of god as God. Eckhart the Christian mystic speaks of
the three types of knowledge. The first is empirical from the senses, the second is cognitive and rational form the mind, and the third is soul intuition, "the exalted power of the soul, a power so high and
noble it is able to see God face to face in his own Self. This power knows no yesterday or day before, no morrow or day after (for in eternity there is no yesterday and no morrow): therein it is the
present Now."

Can you, right now, feel into how thick and pregnant the present moment is, a luminous womb out of which all you senses are buzzing with activity, all worlds are arising and falling; can you see the mirror condition beneath all changing things, or What Eachart calls "the simple core which is the still desert onto which no distinctions ever creep." "The unnamable nothingness that is God." Lets plunge into the abyss of nameless nothingness. The light in the sole that is uncreated.

Sometimes I think Jesus is a character made up by the disciples as a symbol for the tries and terrors and pains and responsibilities and transformations our own souls will unfold as—each one born directly out of God, as God, each one awake in a body on earth, God's Body, our Body, suffering, teaching, doubting, and ultimately dying, but only to be resurrected, reborn in a union we had from the beginning. And, the important point is that after the torture, after the crucifixion, the
humility and sacrifice and surrender , Jesus, (the Christ in us(our own compassionate nature), ascended into heaven WITH his body. Not without it. He left nothing behind. He, as well as his human body filled with sex and suffering and flesh and separation, ascended, or descended, or transcended into a heaven awareness embracing it all as creations of itself. "God loves all creatures, not as creatures, but as God."

D.T. Suzuki "Love enters into the enlightenment experience as one of
the constituents, for otherwise it could not embrace the totality of
existence. The enlightenment does not mean to run away from the
world, to sit cross-legged at the peak of a mountain, to look down
calmly upon the bomb-struck mass of humanity. It has more tears than
we can imagine."

Detachment is important though. It is the first step. Fleeing the many and returning to the One. Detachment is very important, for as long as you are attached to something, or many things, there are others you are pushing away, and so complete detachment soon turns into complete embrace. A powerful quote from our Christian friend
Meister Eckhart, "Perfect detachment is without regard, without either lowliness or loftiness to creatures; it has no mind to be below nor yet to be above; it is minded to be master of itself, loving none and hating none, having neither likness or unlikeness, neither this nor that, to any creatures; the only thing it desires is to be one and the same. For to be either this or that is to want something. He who is this or that is somebody; but detachment wants altogether nothing. It
leaves all things unmolested."

Once the self can empty itself and be selfless, or once it can live in
total freedom and release, equanimity, or "perfect detachment," God
(your higher self or potential) can take hold of the soul without any
resistance, wherein the soul can then discover its unity with all
things, resulting in an infinite embrace and compassion toward all
things, sacred and profane, just like Jesus had. Or so it seems.

almost finished

Bathroom Surprise, My Daily Schedule, and Thanksgiving

I was at a bar the other day singing Karaoke with the Yanagis (my Japanese “God Family”) and I found this picture in the bathroom. It's a print of one of my paintings. The owner bought it at my exhibition last summer. Also, here are some photo pieces I have hanging around my apartment.

And for those of you who need to know, here is my schedule.
I wake up round 6 usually, right before the sun gets up. I like to be present for the beginning of the day. I imagine it’s like being present when a baby is born. I get to meet the day right as it begins. If I don't lie in bed for an hour listening to classical music,
I sit up, get into child’s pose, and think about my dreams and recite my morning prayer: “May I enter into this new dream with kindness, compassion, care and consciousness. May I use the day to benefit others.” Then, I do kryia yoga, (breathing exercises/ pranayama), brush my teeth, turn on the stove for tea, and then I meditate in front of the shrine in my room for about 30 minutes (sometimes only like five min. And sometimes I only do some walking or biking meditation on my may to school). However, meditation is not just done on the cushion, and I try to bring attention to my breathing and be as mindful as possible through the entire day.

My meditation always begins with anna-panna and zazen, and then I will sometimes chant and do visualizations like guru yoga or deity yoga. I might also do tonglen. And sometimes I just sit and watch my mind think about stuff.

After sitting meditation I usually check the news and my email, drink my favorite kind of green tea, eat breakfast (usually cereal or nuts and fruit) after which I take a shower and/or shave, if I need to. It’s cold here now so I like to take a shower to warm up (even though the pranayama and yoga really warms me up and enlivens/clears my mind. I’m really awake after the “lion breathing” and kriya, more than any coffee could make me.

So then, around 7:30, I take out the trash of the day (either paper, plastics, pet bottles, cans and glass, burnanbles (food and old clothes), or non-burnable items such as batteries, broken ceramics, or dirt.) Then it’s off to school on my bike. I must be at school by 8. I usually have 3 or 4 classes all day, and the rest of the time I'm either studying Japanese, reading, napping, or hanging with the kids. At 4 I go home, relax, read, paint, email, write. I might go to the public bathhouse with a friend or alone. I might go shopping for food. If it’s Monday, I go to a restaurant to teach the owner’s eleven-year-old son English for an hour, and then I eat a free dinner (a bagel sandwich with pepper and cream cheese and egg and vegetables, salad, and pumpkin soup. Yum yum!) . If it’s Tuesday I will go to a private Japanese lesson at the community center (five bucks for an hour!) and, if it’s Wednesday or Friday I’ll try to go to Shorinji Kempo. Oh, and every Wednesday I visit an elementary school during the day.

You could say I have lots of free time. FREE TIME! Sounds like a kind of spiritual protest slogan. But I usually feel like I don't have much free time. I always have something to do. Especially with this blog and a painting show to prepare for in January and a solo show next fall. And re-reading the Harry Potter books is also very time consuming.

I had the Yanagis over for Thanksgiving dinner. They gave me a beautiful sweater and lots of food. I made a vegetable curry, bbq tofu, fruit salad, rice, and trail mix. Mrs. Yanagi, this beautiful woman who is always laughing and smiling, showed me photo albums of her wedding, pictures of their father (who died last year of cancer) and of there other son (who died about ten years ago when he was four. A drunk driver hit him after the fireworks festival). Their 15-year-old son, who is also one of my students, is the only man in the house now. He lost his brother and his father. So Sad. And yet he is one of the most charming guys I know. The entire family seems happy and peaceful. And they sure are generous. It’s incredible.

I woke up early Friday morning to meet my American family with the I-cam for Thanksgiving and it was kind of sad because I could imagine how much fun they were going to have seeing all the extended family later that night. I had to go to school. However, I realized for the first time that it isn’t just talking to family that is so wonderful. It’s just standing next to them in the food line. Handing them a plate. Smiling at them. Being with them. Feeling the atmosphere of family.
I missed out this year, but I at least got to spend time with a family here in Japan. And thankfulness still filled me up and sent tears running down my face.

waters

All these videos have been compressed so the quality and sound are pretty bad. sorry.

Here is a video I made a while back about water and light.


and one about the Saijo festival, Chiiori, Naoshima, and a japanese car garage


and the video of Rick and Shikoku


and the short version of my Trip to Kansas

Rick and Shikoku Video

I've just posted the video 'Rick and Shikoku" on youtube. link to the right. Unfortunately, because the video had to be reduced in order to share, the quality is pretty bad, and you miss much detail (like the crows flying across the sky near the beginning) but I think you will all get the general idea. If anyone knows a better way to convert imovies to export, let me know.