zenscribe

Soccer is known as "the beautiful game." Yet violent behavior is often displayed by opposing players and fans, like in Cairo recently before an Egypt-Algeria match. What is that all about?
"Be a lamp unto yourself," the Buddha is said to have responded when asked what people should do after he died. This is not different from what he always said, from what the essence of this teaching is: Wake up to who you really are. Simply and truly be.
Then we see things just as they are. We see who we are, who the other is. And we see there are no winners or losers, nothing to get or miss.
"Rivals" are in perfect accord and the whole of life is the beautiful game.

A weekend of studying the Heart Sutra went something like this:
Boundless, we go around and around, and back and forth, with words and silence, speaking and not, we move from cushions to chairs and from chairs to cushions, we start in one place (a house) on Saturday and move to another (an office) on Sunday, we shift from French to English, English to French, "old" translation to "new" and back, I talk, another talks and another and another, we each bring a dish, a contribution to consume as one, many parts together make a single splendid meal.

So it's Thursday, and I had a sandwich for lunch. At a desk in front of the daily news: secret prisons in Beijing, oil profiteering in Iraq, U.S. Marines on Okinawa, Obama, Bush, John Kenneth Galbraith, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Shiites in Iran, Maoists in Nepal, heavy snow in northern China...
Not bound by a notion of what this is or that, or what this or that is not, I deal with this or that directly. Except when I don't. Which of course sometimes I don't.
And as Bernie Glassman says: "Seeing notions for what they are, use them as devices; don't be used by them."

Today is the day that everyone has been discussing for days, the 20th-anniversary day of the night when that strange wall "fell."
Little has been said of how that wall came to be. Or how any wall comes to be. Or what constitutes a wall, or what constitutes a fall.
Much has been said of the division, the split, the separation, the two sides of the wall.
Remarkable, though, is how that wall in fact is/was a link, not a separation: Berliners were/are united by that wall, all of us everywhere were/are united by that wall --- just as today memories of that night are recalled everywhere (or not recalled), by any number of disparate people, young and old. We are all sharing this moment, under the same sky, breathing the same air.
Just as we are all sharing every moment, under the same sky, breathing the same air.

I would like to post something here, but what?
We all seem so involved with getting and spending, pursuing distraction. I see it, I see me do it as I enter into a discussion about office intrigues or a football match or read about politics in the paper or shine my shoes. And so what?
It's a fine wet evening under clouds.
Have in mind what the master Nansen said to Joshu: "Knowing is illusion; not knowing is blankness."
Like the big band leader Benny Goodman said, "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got swing."

Upon seeing the Pierre Soulages exhibition in Paris, I am struck by the continuous reverberations that I am still feeling from what was essentially a painterly presentation of black substances (not only paint).
"Le noir a des possibilités insoupçonnées et, attentif à ce que j'ignore, je vais à leur rencontre," Soulages says. ("Black has unsuspected possibilities and, conscious of what I do not know, I go to meet them.")
So it does. And so does white, yellow, blue, every color. And so does every moment. Go meet them and see.

Late in the afternoon I go out: for a walk, to run some errands, feel the air, see the sky, experience the relationship of being among persons and things, move away from the writing I do all day, alone. I choose a way I have never gone before, in a neighborhood where I have lived for 15 years. (Sometimes I choose the same way I have always gone and step into as if for the first time.)
Everything has a new slant, like entering a new city. I see the same buildings from new angles. A wall overlooks a vast construction site I hadn't seen before. There are trees I never knew existed. They are new, I am new. Who are these people I pass and where are they going? Who am I and where am I going?
I think of a Cartier-Bresson photograph in which Giacometti is a blur, in motion among his apparently static works, advancing like his tall walking man, leaning into the flux that is the undercurrent of all things.

Yesterday I read about a guy in the United States who preaches something that he calls practical mysticism. Apart from the fact that he is in big trouble because three people died and many others are hospitalized after one of his practices in a sweat lodge turned bad, I've been wondering what "practical mysticism" could be. Seems to be what we call in English an oxymoron (two contradictory terms). By nature, what is "mystical" is not "practical" and what is "practical" is not "mystical."

Meanwhile, here in Europe, while we sleep tonight what we agree is the "time" will not follow our usual notion of its pattern. It will "fall back." Does that mean we will all be a bit younger? Or what if we are actually neither young nor old, the hour not ahead or behind? What if we are in fact time?

Hours and dates advance, from night to morning to afternoon, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, September to October, in an indecipherable flow. Calendar and clock keep the count for me: I believe I can see time and space move!
Activities unfold, my attention floats and holds, floats and holds as I answer a knock at the door, make tea, sort through mail, manage bank accounts, blow my nose, watch the drizzle fall on passers-by. These are the irrational facts of my experience.
In the newspaper this morning there is a photograph of the president and his men in shiny black shoes, blue ties, dark well-cut overcoats, among a gathering of notables in some provincial city yesterday. The headline says Sarkozy wants to mark his territory. What territory? Who?
Once a student asked a teacher, "What is the Body of space?"
The teacher replied, "Your old teacher is underneath your feet."

Wild Flower Sangha retreats and one-day practice sessions
led by Amy Hollowell Sensei:

Paris
31 Oct.
14-15 Nov.
13-14 Feb.
26-27 June
Normandy
15-18 April
20-27 August
Portugal
27 Nov.-1 Dec.
17-21 March
25 July-1 Aug.

Introduction to Zen in Paris Oct. 28, 19h30-21h30, and other dates by appointment.

Méditation en semaine à Paris/weekly meditation in Paris
Lundi/Monday, 20h-22h, 4 passage Courtois, 75011 Paris (Métro Charonne)
Vendredi/Friday, 19h30-21h, Red Earth Centre, 235 rue Lafayette, 75010 Paris (Métro Jaurès, Gare du Nord)


For day, weekend and weeklong retreats, registration is required.
Infos/inscriptions: zenscribe@free.fr

It's been such a busy week. My nose is running all over the place. I watch the clouds skid across the sky as day seems to be drawing to a close more quickly than ever.
The need to stand from my desk and go grows, due to worldly obligations. The funny thing is, I have to rush off to go sit and "do nothing."

This weekend I traveled to Amsterdam and back. People, places and things were not where and what they were supposed to be, and yet everything was in its place.
I read poems with other poets and musicians as a packed room and Proust in a painting listened. I don't remember the applause, but I'm sure there was some. Reading fills my mouth and heart as I become the words I've put on the page. Thus I realize I am the poem.

Today the sky is a color I can't really call blue, although I can't not call it blue, either. Tears are the same color sometimes. And in any case, the sky is spectacularly just what it is, this afternoon still the luminous splendor that met me this morning while still in my bed. Day advances, and sun and wind and I, although none of us are going anywhere.

Since 7:30 this morning in New York, John Daido Loori Roshi is no longer as he had been known since birth in 1930.
It was raining tonight as I emerged from the Métro to go sit with my Wild Flower friends, innumerable drops endlessly falling, "general all over," as Joyce wrote of the snow in "The Dead."
"All over" is unfathomable, as is the last breath "out," and the next breath "in" that doesn't come.
All we can say, as Bernie Glassman Roshi wrote, is that John Daido Loori Roshi has passed from this realm of practice.
Bernie's eulogy can be read here: Daido Roshi

Am moved at the response regarding a chant for Daido Roshi in what appears to be his final days. Thank you all.
His sangha asks, "Please continue your practice during this time and keep Daido Roshi in your mind and heart."