Gift of Gab from “4000 Miles” (Blackalicious featuring Jurassic 5 and Latyrx):

The final destination used to be my main question
But then I looked and all that I was searchin for was present

Every day priests minutely
examine the Dharma
and endlessly chant
complicated sutras.
They should learn
how to read the love letters
sent by the wind and rain,
the snow and moon.

- Ikkyu (1394-1491)

(via Daily Zen)

There’s a great piece titled “In Praise of Melancholy” (from a book that comes out tomorrow titled Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy) in The Chronicle Review.  It’s a well-reasoned piece arguing that in all the new agey search for eternal happiness and contentment, our souls are being sucked from us.  The author says that melancholy feelings are often mistaken for depression and that if that’s the case, the feelings should be embraced.  Feelings of sadness, being overwhelmed, and just being “down” are healthy and can often drive the creative urge.  This paragraph sums it up best, I think:

Melancholia pushes against the easy “either/or” of the status quo. It thrives in unexplored middle ground between oppositions, in the “both/and.” It fosters fresh insights into relationships between oppositions, especially that great polarity life and death. It encourages new ways of conceiving and naming the mysterious connections between antinomies. It returns us to innocence, to the ability to play in the potential without being constrained to the actual. Such respites from causality refresh our relationship to the world, grant us beautiful vistas, energize our hearts and our minds

What I like most about Zen is that it doesn’t try to hide melancholy feelings.  It doesn’t encourage you to distance yourself from them.  It makes you see them for what they are and accept them as they come.  No doubt, it’s challenging to do this, as I’m finding to be the case an awful lot recently, but it’s essential in maintaining a life that’s not devoid of feeling but isn’t wallowing in constant sorrow, either.

The world exists as it is all across the spectrum, from extreme sadness to extreme happiness, and we’re doing ourselves a disservice if we run because we’re afraid to be sad.

From Akrobatik’s “Time” (2004):

Time: the essence of existence,
Everybody’s time comes, no resistance,
Enter into the equation the rate into distance,
Thousand-year period of split-second instants

That last line struck me, making me think of the “in a snap of the fingers” measurement of a moment.

Right now, I’m reading How to Cook Your Life: From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightenment (I hate that subtitle). It’s Dogen’s Instructions for the Zen Cook and then a bunch of commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi. I like his writing style and came across a particularly good section yesterday (emphasis mine):

With the definition of mind that I have explained above, it is necessary to take another look at the expression, “The dharma should be grasped so that mind and object become one.” This expression means that we must learn to see all phenomena (everything in life) from the foundation of a pure-life experience. All too often we while away our lives, creating general assumptions and ideologies out of the thoughts that arise in our minds, and, after having fabricated those ideas, we finally dissipate our life energy by living in the world we have abstracted from them. “The dharma should be grasped so that mind and object become one,” means that we must see all of the worlds that our lives encmpass from the foundation of our own personal life experience; our life experience is or mind. This means that all things in life function as parts of our bodies. This is also th emeanin of toji, holding all things equally.

On the way into work this morning, I was listening to the 43rd episode of the Dharma Podcast and was struck by Beate Stolte-Overtheil’s mention of graffiti near a busy road that read, “This is not traffic.  You are the traffic.”  Coincidentally, I was sitting in traffic at the time (er, I was being traffic at the time).

This simple statement really sums up the idea of taking responsibility for the moment, accepting the role that you play in shaping the way the world is.  We might want to blame the traffic on all those other drivers, but that traffic wouldn’t exist without each individual driver being there, just like a world of violence wouldn’t exist if not for the collaboration of those perpetrating the violence, those remaining silent about the violence, and those benefiting from the violence.

Of course, maybe this graffiti was just making a statement about the environmental impact of cars, but hey, we have us to thank for that, too.

From today’s Daily Zen:

People who study Buddhism
Should seek real, true perception
And understanding for now.
If you attain real, true perception
And understanding,
Birth and death don’t affect you;
You are free to go or stay.
You needn’t seek wonders,
For wonders come of themselves.

- Linji (d. 867)

As a side note, I was going to let this domain expire just because I hadn’t been writing here much and I don’t think there’s anyone reading.  But I’m going to give it another year.  Maybe I’ll write some more, maybe I won’t.  Maybe people will read it, maybe they won’t.  I’m not seeking wonders, for wonders come of themselves.

Like how I tied that back in?

I particularly liked today’s Daily Zen quote:

Over the ages
You have followed objects,
Never once turning back
To look within.
Time slips away;
Months and years
Are wasted

- Kuei-shan Ling-yu (771-854)

It is a great pity we are surrounded with so many things that distract and dissipate our attention. In the face of avarice which appears boundless, Zen recommends “plain living and high thinking.” To put ourselves in samadhi, it urges with Thoreau that we simplify our lives. While eating, we should maintain eating-samadhi, by not doing something else, such as watching television at the same time. Reading a newspaper will dispell shitting-samadhi. Eating and shitting are the sacred ceremonies of reception and repayment, and thanksgiving to Nature; don’t they deserve our single-minded respect? Become food! Turn into shit!

Soiku Shigematsu in A Zen Harvest

After we talked for a while, he asked, “Have you had a death in your family?”

“No, I just left someone.”

I spoke meekly. I did not mind that he had seen me crying. I was not thinking about anything. I simply felt as though I were sleeping quietly, soothed and contented.

This comes from Yasunari Kawabata’s short story, “The Dancing Girl of Izu.” It’s kind of an odd choice, I realize, since the “someone” that this college-aged student left is a 14-year-old girl he initially mistook for several decades older. Still, this small piece is particularly evocative.