Our governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, had announcements to make yesterday. I've never been fond of her elementary school principal presentation, but I guess she thinks it's effective. The point was to drive home the importance of shutting down much of the state's economic and transportation activity in order to contain the spread of the Outbreak. There was an apparent case of community transmission yesterday. That triggered a raft of new restrictions.
Thus, while not being confined to their homes -- unless they have the virus -- New Mexicans are urged not to travel (especially not out of state), not to gather in groups of 10 or more, and not to work outside the home unless necessary. Many businesses and activities were ordered closed including most that would have more than 10 people on premises at a time. Restaurants can no longer serve patrons inside, they can only provide take out and delivery. Bars must close. Casinos must close. Social distancing is encouraged. Wash, wash, wash. Retailers are directed to put limits on purchases of paper products, soap, sanitizing supplies, and so forth (3 per at one time), and they are encouraged to provide special shopping hours for the old, the halt and the lame.
Schools have been closed for some time. Hand sanitizer has not been available for weeks, so distilleries are making it themselves -- since they have stocks of alcohol, after all, and apparently can get quantities of aloe vera gel -- and distributing it for free to first responders and police. Doctors' offices and hospitals are limiting contact with routine patients in order to prepare for possible corona virus patients. Dentists are cancelling routine appointments. I got a call from my pulmonologist yesterday asking me to postpone my appointment -- if I was feeling OK -- until this situation calmed down, as she would likely not be able to provide more than observational service. The pulmonary function test equipment was being reserved for those in immediate distress.
Yes, I am feeling OK, so I agreed to postpone, and then went ahead and postponed oncologist and rheumatologist appointments until September, when I hope things settle down somewhat, but who knows. I have not yet scheduled semi-annual rituxan infusions that would ordinarily be done in June and December. June will probably be impossible, but we'll see when the time comes.
Ms. Ché went to visit with friends in Albuquerque yesterday and they had a video call with their friend in Delaware. She's self-isolating for two weeks because she believes she's been exposed, though she has no symptoms, then she is thinking of heading to North Carolina to stay with a friend there. Delaware doesn't have a lot of cases, but our friend has been exposed to half of them, and there are many more in New Jersey and Maryland. So far, North Carolina has some dozens of cases, but the number isn't growing fast. Of course knowing the number requires testing, and in many places it is still not available or being done.
A neighbor came over to check on us yesterday while Ms Ché was gone. We keep an eye on one another. It's what you do. We're all in the elders with chronic conditions demographic. One of our neighbors is a long distance trucker who's usually gone five days a week or more. Younger than us, but probably at more risk, we give him a call now and then just to be sure he's ok. Ms Ché's relations in California and Nevada are hunkering down, too, either because of official policy or out of an abundance of caution.
And so it goes.
Stay home to the extent you can, wash and wash, check on neighbors and relations, and be safe.
I've referred to what's going on as a paradigm shift as consequential as those following 9/11 and the financial crash of 2008. I have no idea how we'll come out on the other side, but the signs don't bode well. And yet, there's always the potential for something better in the end, no?
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Anticipating the Cull
Now that the US death toll from the Outbreak has passed 100 and all 50 states have reported infection (announced totals close to 6000, but actual totals may be 10-20 times higher) it's time to consider both the immediate future and the mid-term as well as a post COVID-19 future.
As I researched my ancestors, I was struck by how many of them and their relations died between 1918 and 1920. Some were old but most weren't. Hm. Spanish flu victims, probably. As was the case with many families, this loss wasn't discussed much while I was growing up. It must have had an effect, but nobody talked about it, and if I asked questions about it, I don't remember any answers if there were any.
I suspect it will be like that with regard to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a huge cull of Americans and many, many others around the world on top of the devastation of WWI due to the Spanish Flu, but it seemed to fade from memory fairly quickly. There is every sign there will be a significant cull due to the current pandemic -- how big is yet unknown. The incomplete statistics suggest an overall death rate of about 3%, but estimates of the real death rate vary between 1% or less to 5% or 6%. This is much higher than seasonal flu, and could mean as many as 2-3 million deaths in the US alone before the epidemic burns out (assuming it does). Deaths will be concentrated among the sicker of the old.
"Boomer Doomer" they call it.
This is only partially a joke, and the fact is, the loss of so many oldsters is not an unpleasant thought to some of the younger survivors. Indeed, surviving members of the ruling class might well appreciate the passing of a large percentage of the Boomer generation.
A major cull of humanity has long been seen by nihilists as necessary for the good of themselves or the earth, after all, and if the Outbreak can accomplish it, so much the better. If it's primarily a cull of the olds, how much more beneficial for the younger survivors would that be?
The immediate future is one of isolated anxiety for many millions of Americans. Out here in the wilderness, we've been under semi-lockdown, but most services are still operational, and while Ms. Ché and I stay in most of the time, we aren't limited to home confinement by any means. We go out for groceries, cat food, and supplies in our little town or in the next one, not that there's much on the shelves. We go into town for medical appointments or to socialize with friends. We could go to local and in town restaurants (most are still open) if we wanted. UPDATE: This afternoon, the governor ordered the closure of all bars, restaurants, casinos and so forth due to the enumeration of the first case without an identified source. Community transmission is assumed to have begun.
But we're very conscious of the risks, and we try not to push our luck. Ms. Ché and I are prime targets, not just Boomers, but Boomers with chronic underlying conditions.
In a telephone town hall with our congressmember yesterday, we learned that there is no community spread in New Mexico -- yet. The23 28 currently identified cases are all in isolation and they are all due to travel-exposure and/or exposure within the household of someone infected. See update above. So far, no one has died, though I seem to recall at least one is hospitalized in critical condition.
Just north in Colorado, it seems the virus is raging, so I'm not at all sanguine about the likelihood of New Mexico escaping eventual widespread infection. It's not just Colorado. Texas and Arizona have cases and because of political ideology I strongly suspect they are underreporting cases and refusing to implement various mitigations. Sadly, we've seen this pattern throughout Trump-country, following the lead of the rightist media and Trump himself until recently. Ah but because there has still been very little testing, no one has any idea what the real infection rate is.
The immediate future is likely to include a good deal more "lockdown" procedures, but how strict it will become is hard to say. In fact, it seems as if Our Rulers, like Boris Johnson in Britain, are toying with the "herd immunity" fantasy by letting the virus infect a substantial percentage of the population and let nature take its course, along with triaging the ill and letting the young and strong survive. The old and frail? Not so much.
Boris was apparently shamed off that approach as it would be overwhelming to the health care system, and it would mean literally millions dead in Britain alone. Ultimately there may be no choice, as the spread of the disease appears to be out of control in several locations, and so far there's been no real effort to end travel between these locations and the rest of the country.
China's experience, however, indicates that closing off travel between hot locations and elsewhere in the country seems to work, though it takes a while. The Chinese brought their infection rate and death rate down substantially by strictly limiting travel within China, indeed within cities and even apartment blocks. They also put up numerous temporary hospitals to treat those who became infected. It wasn't perfect, it still isn't. But it's been effective.
The Korean experience has been different, but it has also worked to lower the infection rate and death rate.
So far, though, the English-speaking countries and Western Europe have largely been failing, no matter what they try. There are mitigations, but they seem to be too little, too late. How that will translate into infection and death rates remains to be seen. But given the sense of calamity out there, we can expect rates to increase in every area, and substantially increase in some areas. For example, the Seattle area, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and a few other areas are having a very hard time right now and the expectation is they will get much worse before they get better. Many other places may not see a high infection/death rate, or even much of an effect at all. People may get sick but most or all will recover.
There will be a cull, no doubt, and most of the dead will be the old and unwell. How many? Who knows? And what will the world be like afterwards? That's the question.
As I researched my ancestors, I was struck by how many of them and their relations died between 1918 and 1920. Some were old but most weren't. Hm. Spanish flu victims, probably. As was the case with many families, this loss wasn't discussed much while I was growing up. It must have had an effect, but nobody talked about it, and if I asked questions about it, I don't remember any answers if there were any.
I suspect it will be like that with regard to the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. There was a huge cull of Americans and many, many others around the world on top of the devastation of WWI due to the Spanish Flu, but it seemed to fade from memory fairly quickly. There is every sign there will be a significant cull due to the current pandemic -- how big is yet unknown. The incomplete statistics suggest an overall death rate of about 3%, but estimates of the real death rate vary between 1% or less to 5% or 6%. This is much higher than seasonal flu, and could mean as many as 2-3 million deaths in the US alone before the epidemic burns out (assuming it does). Deaths will be concentrated among the sicker of the old.
"Boomer Doomer" they call it.
This is only partially a joke, and the fact is, the loss of so many oldsters is not an unpleasant thought to some of the younger survivors. Indeed, surviving members of the ruling class might well appreciate the passing of a large percentage of the Boomer generation.
A major cull of humanity has long been seen by nihilists as necessary for the good of themselves or the earth, after all, and if the Outbreak can accomplish it, so much the better. If it's primarily a cull of the olds, how much more beneficial for the younger survivors would that be?
The immediate future is one of isolated anxiety for many millions of Americans. Out here in the wilderness, we've been under semi-lockdown, but most services are still operational, and while Ms. Ché and I stay in most of the time, we aren't limited to home confinement by any means. We go out for groceries, cat food, and supplies in our little town or in the next one, not that there's much on the shelves. We go into town for medical appointments or to socialize with friends. We could go to local and in town restaurants (most are still open) if we wanted. UPDATE: This afternoon, the governor ordered the closure of all bars, restaurants, casinos and so forth due to the enumeration of the first case without an identified source. Community transmission is assumed to have begun.
But we're very conscious of the risks, and we try not to push our luck. Ms. Ché and I are prime targets, not just Boomers, but Boomers with chronic underlying conditions.
In a telephone town hall with our congressmember yesterday, we learned that there is no community spread in New Mexico -- yet. The
Just north in Colorado, it seems the virus is raging, so I'm not at all sanguine about the likelihood of New Mexico escaping eventual widespread infection. It's not just Colorado. Texas and Arizona have cases and because of political ideology I strongly suspect they are underreporting cases and refusing to implement various mitigations. Sadly, we've seen this pattern throughout Trump-country, following the lead of the rightist media and Trump himself until recently. Ah but because there has still been very little testing, no one has any idea what the real infection rate is.
The immediate future is likely to include a good deal more "lockdown" procedures, but how strict it will become is hard to say. In fact, it seems as if Our Rulers, like Boris Johnson in Britain, are toying with the "herd immunity" fantasy by letting the virus infect a substantial percentage of the population and let nature take its course, along with triaging the ill and letting the young and strong survive. The old and frail? Not so much.
Boris was apparently shamed off that approach as it would be overwhelming to the health care system, and it would mean literally millions dead in Britain alone. Ultimately there may be no choice, as the spread of the disease appears to be out of control in several locations, and so far there's been no real effort to end travel between these locations and the rest of the country.
China's experience, however, indicates that closing off travel between hot locations and elsewhere in the country seems to work, though it takes a while. The Chinese brought their infection rate and death rate down substantially by strictly limiting travel within China, indeed within cities and even apartment blocks. They also put up numerous temporary hospitals to treat those who became infected. It wasn't perfect, it still isn't. But it's been effective.
The Korean experience has been different, but it has also worked to lower the infection rate and death rate.
So far, though, the English-speaking countries and Western Europe have largely been failing, no matter what they try. There are mitigations, but they seem to be too little, too late. How that will translate into infection and death rates remains to be seen. But given the sense of calamity out there, we can expect rates to increase in every area, and substantially increase in some areas. For example, the Seattle area, the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and a few other areas are having a very hard time right now and the expectation is they will get much worse before they get better. Many other places may not see a high infection/death rate, or even much of an effect at all. People may get sick but most or all will recover.
There will be a cull, no doubt, and most of the dead will be the old and unwell. How many? Who knows? And what will the world be like afterwards? That's the question.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Things Change
Spent part of today on the phone with a friend in Delaware. There are four confirmed cases of the virus at the University of Delaware where she is getting her MA, and the campus is essentially closed for the duration. She was thinking of coming home to New Mexico, but it's difficult. She'd have to drive. She doesn't want to fly. And she's afraid if she did drive, she'd run into travel restrictions and barriers on the highways because things are changing so fast. She saw people panicking at the grocery store this morning, hoarders piling up all the meat they could cram into their carts, pushing, yelling, scaring the old people, just crazy. This is what we're descending to?
So after some long talk, she thought she'd take a break and go to the beach, maybe go stay with a friend in North Carolina. Or just tough it out in Wilmington. She finally said she was afraid to come to New Mexico because she might be a carrier and she didn't want to bring any harm back home.
Jeeze that sucks.
We told her that things are still relatively calm here, but there are changes. Gatherings of 100 or more are prohibited. All K-12 schools are closed. "Social distancing" is the rule. Reduce travel. Drive thru testing facilities are open in Gallup and Albuquerque and will expand statewide. Coronavirus tests are still in short supply, but more are "coming." You don't need a doctor's referral to use the drive thrus. But if you don't have symptoms, they'll turn you away. 24 to 36 hours for results.
There are officially ten positive patients in New Mexico, all of whom are either self-isolating or in the hospital. But it is believed there are probably many more people with COVID-19 in the state.
Services are being arranged to provide food and supplies to those who aren't able to get their own. Schools in Albuquerque are closed, but many will provide take away breakfast and lunch for students at no charge, and some even provide three meals a day and will provide adult meals for $4.00.
Stores continue to be picked pretty clean. Most are limiting purchases of supplies like toilet paper and bottled water. There are no wet wipes, hand sanitizer and in some places no hand soap to be had.
Ms. Ché and I are OK and not out and about much in any case. We have pretty good neighbors, but they're not well off, and we'll be doing the best we can to look after one another. It's still hard to believe, though. We're living in interesting times.
So after some long talk, she thought she'd take a break and go to the beach, maybe go stay with a friend in North Carolina. Or just tough it out in Wilmington. She finally said she was afraid to come to New Mexico because she might be a carrier and she didn't want to bring any harm back home.
Jeeze that sucks.
We told her that things are still relatively calm here, but there are changes. Gatherings of 100 or more are prohibited. All K-12 schools are closed. "Social distancing" is the rule. Reduce travel. Drive thru testing facilities are open in Gallup and Albuquerque and will expand statewide. Coronavirus tests are still in short supply, but more are "coming." You don't need a doctor's referral to use the drive thrus. But if you don't have symptoms, they'll turn you away. 24 to 36 hours for results.
There are officially ten positive patients in New Mexico, all of whom are either self-isolating or in the hospital. But it is believed there are probably many more people with COVID-19 in the state.
Services are being arranged to provide food and supplies to those who aren't able to get their own. Schools in Albuquerque are closed, but many will provide take away breakfast and lunch for students at no charge, and some even provide three meals a day and will provide adult meals for $4.00.
Stores continue to be picked pretty clean. Most are limiting purchases of supplies like toilet paper and bottled water. There are no wet wipes, hand sanitizer and in some places no hand soap to be had.
Ms. Ché and I are OK and not out and about much in any case. We have pretty good neighbors, but they're not well off, and we'll be doing the best we can to look after one another. It's still hard to believe, though. We're living in interesting times.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
And So It Begins
The first three coronaviris patients in New Mexico were reported yesterday, and the governor declared a state of health emergency. The panic appeared to begin all but immediately, though it was muted. How things proceed from here we'll see. I loaded up on some supplies at the grocery store, but we can't really anticipate what will happen can we? There seemed to be a good-sized supply of paper products on the shelves, though, so there's that. The store was packed with old folks. Some of the staff was showing real stress. The cases are not close by, they are all self-isolating, but transmission seems to be almost random at this point.
More and more of Ms Ché's planned events are either canceled or postponed. The campus where she's completing her MFA is effectively shut down for the rest of the school year. No more in person classes, possible canceling of graduation ceremonies, no tours or visits from outside. Students living on campus can stay, but those who left for Spring Break are encouraged not to return except to pick up their things.
Gathering of Nations has been postponed. It's one of the biggest Native American events in the country. The Cherokee group in Albuquerque will not have its scheduled meeting this weekend. Friends coming from various parts of the country have been advised to hold off.
There are a lot of other actions being taken, some I'm unaware of or only vaguely aware of. Things are changing fast, yet some things are not. The fear is there but for now is low-key.
And then there's the regime in DC and its constant fraud and bungling. Trump made a major gaffe in his speech to the nation last night, stating that neither shipments nor passengers from Europe would be allowed into the USA, only to have to tweet -- or someone twitted on his behalf -- that he didn't mean that shipments were banned, only passengers. OK. Sure, whatever. And I've seen that in any number of appearances lately, backed up by all these health professionals, he lies about everything, assuring falsely, and so on, and no one corrects him in real time, and all these experts first have to ensure they don't cross him before they sometimes tell something like the truth --carefully parsing their words so as not to enrage the man in the big chair. It's nightmarish.
There are said to be 2500 test kits in New Mexico, and we are instructed to call a triage hotline before doing anything else if we suspect we have symptoms of the virus. Then and possibly only then we will be brought a test or be referred to a clinical facility for testing. We are not to go to hospital ERs or in some cases even to our own doctors. Interesting.
The shortages of tests and protective gear for medicos is a big part of the restrictions. There simply isn't enough materiel to address the looming crisis. And it may get worse as the bungling continues. The oil price free fall will severely affect New Mexico's public funding ability too.
And it's happening all over the country in one way or another.
The paradigm shift is and will be significant.
Take care.
More and more of Ms Ché's planned events are either canceled or postponed. The campus where she's completing her MFA is effectively shut down for the rest of the school year. No more in person classes, possible canceling of graduation ceremonies, no tours or visits from outside. Students living on campus can stay, but those who left for Spring Break are encouraged not to return except to pick up their things.
Gathering of Nations has been postponed. It's one of the biggest Native American events in the country. The Cherokee group in Albuquerque will not have its scheduled meeting this weekend. Friends coming from various parts of the country have been advised to hold off.
There are a lot of other actions being taken, some I'm unaware of or only vaguely aware of. Things are changing fast, yet some things are not. The fear is there but for now is low-key.
And then there's the regime in DC and its constant fraud and bungling. Trump made a major gaffe in his speech to the nation last night, stating that neither shipments nor passengers from Europe would be allowed into the USA, only to have to tweet -- or someone twitted on his behalf -- that he didn't mean that shipments were banned, only passengers. OK. Sure, whatever. And I've seen that in any number of appearances lately, backed up by all these health professionals, he lies about everything, assuring falsely, and so on, and no one corrects him in real time, and all these experts first have to ensure they don't cross him before they sometimes tell something like the truth --carefully parsing their words so as not to enrage the man in the big chair. It's nightmarish.
There are said to be 2500 test kits in New Mexico, and we are instructed to call a triage hotline before doing anything else if we suspect we have symptoms of the virus. Then and possibly only then we will be brought a test or be referred to a clinical facility for testing. We are not to go to hospital ERs or in some cases even to our own doctors. Interesting.
The shortages of tests and protective gear for medicos is a big part of the restrictions. There simply isn't enough materiel to address the looming crisis. And it may get worse as the bungling continues. The oil price free fall will severely affect New Mexico's public funding ability too.
And it's happening all over the country in one way or another.
The paradigm shift is and will be significant.
Take care.
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Life Changes
The progress of The Outbreak is continuing to change the way we behave and to control more and more of what we do and don't do, even way out here in the wilderness. There have been no cases of The Disease reported in New Mexico, but still.
Things have been disappearing from the stores -- we have a few -- for weeks. Hand sanitizer has long been hard to come by or unavailable. Stocks of toilet paper have been declining, but you can still get some. OTC pharmaceuticals are iffy, depending on what they are. Vitamins -- particularly B12 and D3 -- are spotty at best. Masks? Forget about it. Ordering online is not much better, as availability is limited and price gouging is not uncommon. No one is panicking that I've seen, but there seem to be fewer people out and about.
We live a few miles from the Interstate, and there are three truckstops and a number of motels for travelers in "town" up the road. That means, of course, that transmission is almost certain -- eventually. What happens then, we don't know.
There is an urgent care and a public health office in "town" so there is that. What they can or will do if there is an outbreak here is anyone's guess. So far, no announcements have been made, and concern is still modest. We may not be safe, but there is time to prepare.
I've been essentially housebound for several years due to my condition. That condition requires me to take a lot of immunosuppresant medication -- which keeps me relativeley pain free, but it means I'm at very high risk of succumbing to the disease given my age and compromised immune system.
Ms. Ché is also at high risk due to age and diabetes. She didn't go to a writers' convention in San Antonio because of the risk, and now she's learned that several other conventions and conferences she was planning to attend this month and next have been canceled. We're wondering if her graduation ceremonies will be canceled in May when she's supposed to be getting her MFA. She long ago made plans, bought tickets to a concert and arranged lodging in Las Vegas for June. That might be canceled too. She lost her pre-paid nonrefundable hotel charges in San Antonio (about $500) and she may lose much more if the Las Vegas trip doesn't materialize as she prepaid all of that almost a year ago.
I was planning on making one more trip to California to close down our storage there, but it may not happen this year at all. We'll see.
It's definitely an odd sensation, knowing something (may be) coming, knowing there's not a whole lot we can do about it, knowing the regime is concerned primarily with appearances, and knowing this could be an end game. But then, realistically, it's always an end game, isn't it.
Things could change in an instant -- or not.
Stay well out there.
Things have been disappearing from the stores -- we have a few -- for weeks. Hand sanitizer has long been hard to come by or unavailable. Stocks of toilet paper have been declining, but you can still get some. OTC pharmaceuticals are iffy, depending on what they are. Vitamins -- particularly B12 and D3 -- are spotty at best. Masks? Forget about it. Ordering online is not much better, as availability is limited and price gouging is not uncommon. No one is panicking that I've seen, but there seem to be fewer people out and about.
We live a few miles from the Interstate, and there are three truckstops and a number of motels for travelers in "town" up the road. That means, of course, that transmission is almost certain -- eventually. What happens then, we don't know.
There is an urgent care and a public health office in "town" so there is that. What they can or will do if there is an outbreak here is anyone's guess. So far, no announcements have been made, and concern is still modest. We may not be safe, but there is time to prepare.
I've been essentially housebound for several years due to my condition. That condition requires me to take a lot of immunosuppresant medication -- which keeps me relativeley pain free, but it means I'm at very high risk of succumbing to the disease given my age and compromised immune system.
Ms. Ché is also at high risk due to age and diabetes. She didn't go to a writers' convention in San Antonio because of the risk, and now she's learned that several other conventions and conferences she was planning to attend this month and next have been canceled. We're wondering if her graduation ceremonies will be canceled in May when she's supposed to be getting her MFA. She long ago made plans, bought tickets to a concert and arranged lodging in Las Vegas for June. That might be canceled too. She lost her pre-paid nonrefundable hotel charges in San Antonio (about $500) and she may lose much more if the Las Vegas trip doesn't materialize as she prepaid all of that almost a year ago.
I was planning on making one more trip to California to close down our storage there, but it may not happen this year at all. We'll see.
It's definitely an odd sensation, knowing something (may be) coming, knowing there's not a whole lot we can do about it, knowing the regime is concerned primarily with appearances, and knowing this could be an end game. But then, realistically, it's always an end game, isn't it.
Things could change in an instant -- or not.
Stay well out there.
Saturday, March 7, 2020
The Outbreak
It's looking more and more like we might have a real problem just down the road with the global outbreak of COVID-19, the new coronavirus that's been spreading in the US with few or no barriers as the Trump regime botches the public health response in order to curry favor with or not to contradict El Caudillo.
It appears that what is being done is completely --and deliberately -- inadequate because Trump gets cross if anything happens or is reported that makes him look bad. So tests are slow-rolled, numbers of patients and spread of the virus are kept artificially low, officials who try to tell the truth are smeared and denounced -- or ignored. And Trump relentlessly campaigns for his show's renewal in the midst of the unfolding tragedy.
Everyone has to kow-tow to him, for if they displease him in any way, they're out. More and more incompetence is rewarded. As more and more people contract the disease and/or die from it, the regime insists that's what's really important is the stock market and the economy, and some wags point out it would be better if "everyone" got the disease at once so that it could be over with faster and the stock market would stabilize. Or something.
So far, there haven't been any cases reported here in New Mexico, but who knows, really? We faced a decision last week, however, when Ms. Ché was slated to go to San Antonio, TX to attend a writer's and publisher's conference. While she was getting prepped to go, it was announced that a woman who tested positive had been released from quarantine (there are two sites near San Antonio where cruise ship passengers were quarantined) and had gone shopping in town. Oh. Then it was realized that thousands of people were coming to this conference from all over the country and the world, and many of them could be carriers. What to do? There was lots of discussion on the tweeter machine, and for a time it was touch and go whether the convention would be canceled altogether. Dozens of presenters backed out, hundreds of attendees canceled. In the end, the organizers and the city said the conference would go ahead but that attendees should be aware of the (then slight) risk and practice protective behavior (no hugging, kissing, handshaking, wash and wash and wash, keep distance from one another and a greater distance from anyone sick, don't bother with masks -- unless you're sick), and so on.
Ms. Ché and her travel companion discussed it at length and ultimately decided not to go. Ms Ché herself is high risk as an elder diabetic, and even if they didn't get sick, they could potentially bring it back with them. It wasn't worth the risk. Not going meant the pre-paid hotel wouldn't be refunded, but oh well. Better to lose some money than a loved one.
Then we heard that SXSW in Austin was problematical as the big ticket attendees withdrew. Eventually, it was "ordered" canceled altogether as too great a risk. We'll see more of this, and Trump will rage and insult and things are bound to get worse because no one will know enough about what's going on to do anything much about it.
And so it goes. Welcome to the new normal.
It appears that what is being done is completely --and deliberately -- inadequate because Trump gets cross if anything happens or is reported that makes him look bad. So tests are slow-rolled, numbers of patients and spread of the virus are kept artificially low, officials who try to tell the truth are smeared and denounced -- or ignored. And Trump relentlessly campaigns for his show's renewal in the midst of the unfolding tragedy.
Everyone has to kow-tow to him, for if they displease him in any way, they're out. More and more incompetence is rewarded. As more and more people contract the disease and/or die from it, the regime insists that's what's really important is the stock market and the economy, and some wags point out it would be better if "everyone" got the disease at once so that it could be over with faster and the stock market would stabilize. Or something.
So far, there haven't been any cases reported here in New Mexico, but who knows, really? We faced a decision last week, however, when Ms. Ché was slated to go to San Antonio, TX to attend a writer's and publisher's conference. While she was getting prepped to go, it was announced that a woman who tested positive had been released from quarantine (there are two sites near San Antonio where cruise ship passengers were quarantined) and had gone shopping in town. Oh. Then it was realized that thousands of people were coming to this conference from all over the country and the world, and many of them could be carriers. What to do? There was lots of discussion on the tweeter machine, and for a time it was touch and go whether the convention would be canceled altogether. Dozens of presenters backed out, hundreds of attendees canceled. In the end, the organizers and the city said the conference would go ahead but that attendees should be aware of the (then slight) risk and practice protective behavior (no hugging, kissing, handshaking, wash and wash and wash, keep distance from one another and a greater distance from anyone sick, don't bother with masks -- unless you're sick), and so on.
Ms. Ché and her travel companion discussed it at length and ultimately decided not to go. Ms Ché herself is high risk as an elder diabetic, and even if they didn't get sick, they could potentially bring it back with them. It wasn't worth the risk. Not going meant the pre-paid hotel wouldn't be refunded, but oh well. Better to lose some money than a loved one.
Then we heard that SXSW in Austin was problematical as the big ticket attendees withdrew. Eventually, it was "ordered" canceled altogether as too great a risk. We'll see more of this, and Trump will rage and insult and things are bound to get worse because no one will know enough about what's going on to do anything much about it.
And so it goes. Welcome to the new normal.
Saturday, January 4, 2020
Houses Again. This one in particular...
Some additional thoughts about this house. The photo is from the Google Street View taken sometime last year. The exterior of the house hasn't changed much at all in the nearly 100 years since it was built. The front door has been painted gray, but it appears to be the original oak plank door, 2" thick, very heavy. The carriage lights on either side of the front door were added when the house was renovated after my sister's husband's grandmother's estate sold it c. 1962.
The floor plan, which you can barely make out, is of the house in Scarsdale. The one built in Sacramento was nearly the same, but there were some slight differences.
The upper floor plan is the first floor. You entered into a large terra cotta tile floored entrance hall. To the left, in the Sacramento house but not the one in Scarsdale, was a powder room, very tiny but adequate for doing one's business. It took up a small portion of the fireplace recess in the floor plan.
You went up a step into the main part of the house, specifically into the stair hall. From there you could turn to the right and go under the stairs into the butler's pantry, turn left into the living room, or go straight into the dining room, passing by the stair landing. There was also an entrance into the pantry from the stair landing.
The living room entrance was framed with a heavy fumed oak archway. Fumed oak is very dark. In the plan it looks like there is a step down into the living room, but in the house in California there was no step down. The room was approximately 27' x 16' not counting the bay window which probably added another three feet in length. The ceiling was 20' above the floor. There were three french doors leading to a long screened loggia. The fireplace was in a corner opposite the french doors, in a deep recess. On either side of the entry arch were built in bookcases, also fumed oak. The room was heated with radiators which were built in to the walls, one under the window on the wall where the fireplace was, and two others between the french doors. Each radiator had a wrought iron grille.
There was a Sarouk rug filling most of the dark-stained oak floor. The draperies were heavy wine red velvet, and the ones at the bay window and near the fireplace were hung on wrought iron rods. A Steinway "3/4 grand" piano was in the corner beside the bay window.
I remember three double branch electric candle sconces and two single branch ones, all in wrought iron with gilded leaf decoration. With all of them on, the room was dimly lit. It looked quite medieval, even chapel-like.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Houses Again
This house in Scarsdale, NY, is the model for the house where my sister and her husband lived in Sacramento from 1956 until (about) 1962, when the house was sold after the death of my brother in law's grandmother who owned the place.
It's too bad there are no interior pictures of the house. It was really rather grand, especially the two story living room with a huge bay window at the far end.
There is at least one other version of this house in Greenwich, CT. It was listed for sale a few years ago, I believe at an asking price just under $3 million. It had been expanded and partially remodeled in a more contemporary style, but it still retained a number of original attributes.
The house in Scarsdale is Norman French style, though because the house in California had a red tile roof, I thought it was Spanish when I first saw it in 1957 on a visit with my mother from Southern California. Wrought iron lighting fixtures, some gilded, heavy oak woodwork, old gold wall coverings, oriental rugs, wine colored velvet draperies, a Steinway grand piano, I think I was stunned when I first stepped in the oak plank front door.
The house was built in 1923 by the general manager of a local department store. He was the grandfather of my sister's husband. He died in the late forties, I think, and the house was inherited by his wife. Their son went on to manage department stores in Sacramento and Seattle, while their grandson was at boarding school. When he graduated, he moved in with his grandmother while he attended college. He married my sister while both were students. She moved into this house with him and they had three children before they moved out.
The house was purchased by a doctor who did some remodeling and updating and added a lot of what I thought were excessive French accessories like chandeliers and so forth. I toured the house while it was being renovated and I remember being aghast at some of the things that were done to it. On the other hand, it could have been worse.
My sister was not unhappy to leave it at all. She called it a monster. Way too big to care for by herself, especially with kids, and she was still going to college for her masters. She hired a housekeeper/nanny, but even so, she always felt overwhelmed by the place.
When they moved out, though, they moved to a new but even larger house. I think the stress of maintaining it was at least equal to that of the older house.
There are more stories I could tell about this house -- I have a lot of memories there -- but for now I just wanted to preserve the record from House Beautiful magazine, since I stumbled on it quite by accident today.
Happy New Year.
It's too bad there are no interior pictures of the house. It was really rather grand, especially the two story living room with a huge bay window at the far end.
There is at least one other version of this house in Greenwich, CT. It was listed for sale a few years ago, I believe at an asking price just under $3 million. It had been expanded and partially remodeled in a more contemporary style, but it still retained a number of original attributes.
The house in Scarsdale is Norman French style, though because the house in California had a red tile roof, I thought it was Spanish when I first saw it in 1957 on a visit with my mother from Southern California. Wrought iron lighting fixtures, some gilded, heavy oak woodwork, old gold wall coverings, oriental rugs, wine colored velvet draperies, a Steinway grand piano, I think I was stunned when I first stepped in the oak plank front door.
The house was built in 1923 by the general manager of a local department store. He was the grandfather of my sister's husband. He died in the late forties, I think, and the house was inherited by his wife. Their son went on to manage department stores in Sacramento and Seattle, while their grandson was at boarding school. When he graduated, he moved in with his grandmother while he attended college. He married my sister while both were students. She moved into this house with him and they had three children before they moved out.
The house was purchased by a doctor who did some remodeling and updating and added a lot of what I thought were excessive French accessories like chandeliers and so forth. I toured the house while it was being renovated and I remember being aghast at some of the things that were done to it. On the other hand, it could have been worse.
My sister was not unhappy to leave it at all. She called it a monster. Way too big to care for by herself, especially with kids, and she was still going to college for her masters. She hired a housekeeper/nanny, but even so, she always felt overwhelmed by the place.
When they moved out, though, they moved to a new but even larger house. I think the stress of maintaining it was at least equal to that of the older house.
There are more stories I could tell about this house -- I have a lot of memories there -- but for now I just wanted to preserve the record from House Beautiful magazine, since I stumbled on it quite by accident today.
Happy New Year.
Thursday, November 21, 2019
The Impeachment Thing - Round 2
Gordon Sondland testified before the committee today, and he seemed like a decent sort, not terribly savvy but certainly eager and well-enough meaning to be considered credible. He offered his honest-ish opinion of what was going on during the summer when the White House ordered withholding of some $400 million in military aid to Ukraine while, supposedly, the new president Volodymyr Zelensky was vetted for... well, that's the question, isn't it?
He said the White House -- ie: Trump -- had an ask that needed to be satisfied before the funding would be released: Zelensky needed to clearly and publicly state that he was ordering the opening of investigations into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and the corruption of gas company Burisma with a focus on the Bidens, père et fil.
That was the deal, the whole deal, according to Sondland. And even though Trump never used the exact terms with Sondland, he did with Zelensky in the infamous July 25 phone call with Zelensky. Case closed.
Sonland basically confirmed the allegations being investigated by the committee. Therefore, there is nothing much more to say, is there? Trump did what he's accused of and "everyone" in the loop at the time knew it. The argument from the Rs is basically "So what? This sort of thing goes on all the time, BidenClintonClintonObama. Nyah nyah."
And they might get away with it.
The way Trump conducts the business of government is outrageous, but quite a few people inside the government (and not just Rs) are fine with it. He gets them a lot of what they want, and a lot of what they want is a change in the way government and foreign policy operate. There's a lot of resistance from inside the government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy does not like change and doesn't adapt well to new things or people who don't "fit" the standard models.
Bureaucracy considers itself permanent and indispensable, but there is a faction within government and without that believes the bureaucracy is intrinsically wrong and out of control and should be destroyed and/or rebuilt.
Trump has taken upon himself the task of fixing things the way he wants and he's now facing impeachment for it.
I predict right now that neither the bureaucracy nor the White House will win this one. Trump will be impeached for what amounts to the least of his crimes, but he won't be removed (nor will he be reelected barring the unforeseen) and the government bureaucracy will be overhauled to serve the president much more than the institution or constitution.
There's no going back from where we are. That's the problem. A grossly authoritarian president has been put in office and has been allowedto get away with pretty much whatever he wants, and there is very little that can be done about it now. He's instituted strong-man, indeed gangster rule at the top, and a lot of those who might otherwise object are fine with it. He's packed the courts with right-wing ideologues who share is proto-fascist beliefs, and from them the institutionalisation of the Trumpist authoritarianism will flow for at least a generation to come. There's no going back, and the republic is effectively kaput. This is it. We've reached the long-anticipated end-point of the US experiment in self-government.
He said the White House -- ie: Trump -- had an ask that needed to be satisfied before the funding would be released: Zelensky needed to clearly and publicly state that he was ordering the opening of investigations into Ukrainian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and the corruption of gas company Burisma with a focus on the Bidens, père et fil.
That was the deal, the whole deal, according to Sondland. And even though Trump never used the exact terms with Sondland, he did with Zelensky in the infamous July 25 phone call with Zelensky. Case closed.
Sonland basically confirmed the allegations being investigated by the committee. Therefore, there is nothing much more to say, is there? Trump did what he's accused of and "everyone" in the loop at the time knew it. The argument from the Rs is basically "So what? This sort of thing goes on all the time, BidenClintonClintonObama. Nyah nyah."
And they might get away with it.
The way Trump conducts the business of government is outrageous, but quite a few people inside the government (and not just Rs) are fine with it. He gets them a lot of what they want, and a lot of what they want is a change in the way government and foreign policy operate. There's a lot of resistance from inside the government bureaucracy. Bureaucracy does not like change and doesn't adapt well to new things or people who don't "fit" the standard models.
Bureaucracy considers itself permanent and indispensable, but there is a faction within government and without that believes the bureaucracy is intrinsically wrong and out of control and should be destroyed and/or rebuilt.
Trump has taken upon himself the task of fixing things the way he wants and he's now facing impeachment for it.
I predict right now that neither the bureaucracy nor the White House will win this one. Trump will be impeached for what amounts to the least of his crimes, but he won't be removed (nor will he be reelected barring the unforeseen) and the government bureaucracy will be overhauled to serve the president much more than the institution or constitution.
There's no going back from where we are. That's the problem. A grossly authoritarian president has been put in office and has been allowedto get away with pretty much whatever he wants, and there is very little that can be done about it now. He's instituted strong-man, indeed gangster rule at the top, and a lot of those who might otherwise object are fine with it. He's packed the courts with right-wing ideologues who share is proto-fascist beliefs, and from them the institutionalisation of the Trumpist authoritarianism will flow for at least a generation to come. There's no going back, and the republic is effectively kaput. This is it. We've reached the long-anticipated end-point of the US experiment in self-government.
Saturday, November 16, 2019
The Impeachment Thing
[Note: Buddhism, in some cases especially Zen, doesn't preclude one's interest and involvement in the material world. It does, however, affect one's sense of the importance of this or that aspect of it. 🕉]
The current impeachment inquiry is the third in my lifetime. There have only been four attempts at impeachment of a president in the history of the United States. None have been successful [Nixon resigned before the impeachment resolution went to the floor of the house]. The betting is that this one won't be, either, but of course you never know.
The charges likely to be included in any House resolution to impeach Trump are being laid out day-by-day, pretty much as follows:
The current impeachment inquiry is the third in my lifetime. There have only been four attempts at impeachment of a president in the history of the United States. None have been successful [Nixon resigned before the impeachment resolution went to the floor of the house]. The betting is that this one won't be, either, but of course you never know.
The charges likely to be included in any House resolution to impeach Trump are being laid out day-by-day, pretty much as follows:
- Abuse of power -- impeachable, not criminal
- Bribery -- of Zelensky/Ukraine; impeachable, criminal
- Intimidation of witnesses -- impeachable, may be criminal
- Suborning perjury -- impeachable, criminal
- Defying Congressional subpoenas -- impeachable, may be criminal
- Probably violations of emoluments clauses -- this might be a throwaway
- Misprision of felony -- impeachable, criminal
And so on. The charge-list could get quite long indeed. But there is no likelihood, whatever Trump does, that a Republican-controlled Senate would vote to convict and remove him from office. At least not now.
It's possible that not even a Democratic controlled Senate would do so.
Here's the problem as I see it:
Trump has been allowed to get away with just about anything he wants to do during his tenure in office -- just like he's largely been allowed to do whatever he wants throughout his life. He's a terrible person and a rotten president, but.... he gets away with it, just like he always has.
As president, he's changing the presidency and the nature of the federal government. He's making the presidency over into a highly authoritarian position (it's always had such elements) in command of not just the government, but of the nation as a whole. In other words, the point is to make the president a ruler rather than a servant of the people. Opposition to be crushed rather than co-opted or negotiated with.
In this remodeling of the presidency by Trump, the president is to have full and personal control of the federal government independent of any advisors, systems, precedent, Congress, or the courts. S/he will personally direct and control every aspect of the federal government (something no individual human being can do, but that's beside the point). The president becomes a de-facto emperor. Something that again is inherent in the position, but which until recently has been suppressed in action.
These are among many aspects of systemic changes we're seeing in real time under Trump's presidency, and they will become precedent for future presidents. Trump may be a bad emperor -- oh yes -- but what he's being allowed to do can lead (in time, if we're very, very good) to a Good Emperor. But Emperor it will be, good, bad or indifferent.
I came to this conclusion while watching part of the Yovanovich testimony yesterday. What it boiled down to was a question of whether the president has the power and authority to emplace anyone he wants in an ambassadorship (yes), and whether it is appropriate for a president to engage in the smearing of an ambassador in the process of having her removed (could be.)
In this case, the ambassador is the avatar of any federal officer, the smear is the symbolic means of removal/replacement that could affect anyone in federal service. We've seen examples in the past (Shirley Sherrod comes to mind, but there have been many others, especially since the 2000 election.)
But now it seems the smear-and-removal will be codified.
These are big changes to what the presidency is, not so much what it could be, and I predict they will be permanent. Trump can go or stay, it really doesn't matter. The governing system is what is being overhauled-- mostly without the knowledge or consent of the governed -- and there will be no going back. Impeachment may just fade entirely from the conception of checks and balances. After all, the consistent argument during the Trump reign is that ONLY impeachment can be used to control the actions of the president, and if impeachment fails to remove him (likely), there's no remedy under the constitution or law. That's it, he gets away with it.
Ambassador Yovanovich was quite eloquent in defending norm, process, propriety, etc., but I don't see a future in which those things are considered necessities for governing. Indeed, just the opposite may become normalized. The reasons are simple enough. We're entering into a rough transition period in which the consequences of climate change and decades of neoliberalism become one continuous crisis. There's really no escape at this point. Past norms and processes will have to be jettisoned in order to deal with the inevitable crises, or the permanent crisis. No way around it. Trump is crude and awful, but he's doing what the ruling class believes is necessary to cope with the transition and beyond. That's why he's been protected and allowed to get away with so much harm.
Better it should happen now. So that we can become accustomed to it. It's only going to get worse for most of us.
Trump won't be in the Big Chair forever. And whoever comes after him -- whenever that happens -- will almost immediately be considered a "savior". Because he or she won't be as terrible a person nor as incompetent and chaotic a ruler.
But Ruler/Emperor the follow-on president will be. And most of the hoo-hah during the Trump years will seem silly in retrospect. We have serious business to attend to.
So, that's my theory of what's really going on...
🕉
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Guided Meditation
For the last few days, I've been participating in guided meditation sessions. At times they make me laugh.
This is a practice I haven't done for decades, and I'm finding it difficult to return to. Guided meditation can be useful, I think, to people who are unfamiliar with the practice of sitting meditation, or to people involved in a therapeutic situation, but I'm not sure it works very well for someone who doesn't fit those fairly narrow categories. It's a technique that's often used as introduction and motivation, and not solely in a Buddhist context.
Introduction to what? Motivation for what? In my case, I was looking to dealing with some habits I'd built up over the years I've been dealing with chronic health conditions. I was in so much routine physical pain for so many years that I had consciously and unconsciously developed habits to cope with the pain. Habits that continued even when the pain was gone. They restrict my movements and actions and my thinking, ultimately interfering with living a relatively full life in my dotage. As I explained to a relative not long ago, I'm pretty much housebound these days, even though the original reason for limiting my activities (pain) has almost completely dissipated.
The pain has been all but gone for the last three years or so thanks to a whole lot of medication and treatment, but the habits I developed to cope with the pain continue. I could say that about a lot of habits I've developed as coping strategies. But I specifically wanted to deal with the habits of pain-coping when there was no longer any pain to speak of.
I thought guided meditation could be useful, and to some extent it has been, even if the guides from time to time unintentionally spur my laughter. One, for example, started the session with a very long introduction, claiming over and over we would be doing a two minute guided meditation, starting "now," and then doubling back on himself and introducing and "starting" the meditation again, and so on repeatedly, so that in the end, the two minute meditation took a good ten minutes and maybe more. Each time he went around the introduction circle I laughed. I don't know whether he was conscious of doing that, and I doubt he saw or understood how funny it was to people like me.
On the other hand, by participating in the sessions (a few more to go) I've been able to focus my attention much better on my particular goals for starting these meditations, and gradually some of the habits that are no longer useful are dissipating or lifting.
Just yesterday, I was able to get up and do things consciously and mindfully without falling back on coping mechanisms that had stymied me in the past. It's going to take some time to work through all of this, though, and that's OK. I can see progress already, and because the necessity to cope is lessened if not altogether gone, I can more easily visualize a forward path.
Many years ago, I had guided meditation tapes that were useful to begin a series of zazen sessions, but I was encouraged not to rely on them, ultimately not to need them. I don't recall how long I used them -- I don't think it was very long -- but it was a little odd to be put back in that guided context again after so many years. My laughter, I think, was prompted in part by the realization that this was something I hadn't done for so long but with which I was very familiar. Is it like riding a bicycle? You never forget? Well, guess what? I can't ride a bicycle very well anymore.
As I gradually become re-accustomed to the dharma, all sorts of things are changing, coming back to me, new paths opening. Christians refer to being "re-born". That isn't quite what's happening. But it is very interesting to witness a kind of automatic youth reversion that carries me back to another time. Or at least evokes it.
Wonders never cease.
This is a practice I haven't done for decades, and I'm finding it difficult to return to. Guided meditation can be useful, I think, to people who are unfamiliar with the practice of sitting meditation, or to people involved in a therapeutic situation, but I'm not sure it works very well for someone who doesn't fit those fairly narrow categories. It's a technique that's often used as introduction and motivation, and not solely in a Buddhist context.
Introduction to what? Motivation for what? In my case, I was looking to dealing with some habits I'd built up over the years I've been dealing with chronic health conditions. I was in so much routine physical pain for so many years that I had consciously and unconsciously developed habits to cope with the pain. Habits that continued even when the pain was gone. They restrict my movements and actions and my thinking, ultimately interfering with living a relatively full life in my dotage. As I explained to a relative not long ago, I'm pretty much housebound these days, even though the original reason for limiting my activities (pain) has almost completely dissipated.
The pain has been all but gone for the last three years or so thanks to a whole lot of medication and treatment, but the habits I developed to cope with the pain continue. I could say that about a lot of habits I've developed as coping strategies. But I specifically wanted to deal with the habits of pain-coping when there was no longer any pain to speak of.
I thought guided meditation could be useful, and to some extent it has been, even if the guides from time to time unintentionally spur my laughter. One, for example, started the session with a very long introduction, claiming over and over we would be doing a two minute guided meditation, starting "now," and then doubling back on himself and introducing and "starting" the meditation again, and so on repeatedly, so that in the end, the two minute meditation took a good ten minutes and maybe more. Each time he went around the introduction circle I laughed. I don't know whether he was conscious of doing that, and I doubt he saw or understood how funny it was to people like me.
On the other hand, by participating in the sessions (a few more to go) I've been able to focus my attention much better on my particular goals for starting these meditations, and gradually some of the habits that are no longer useful are dissipating or lifting.
Just yesterday, I was able to get up and do things consciously and mindfully without falling back on coping mechanisms that had stymied me in the past. It's going to take some time to work through all of this, though, and that's OK. I can see progress already, and because the necessity to cope is lessened if not altogether gone, I can more easily visualize a forward path.
Many years ago, I had guided meditation tapes that were useful to begin a series of zazen sessions, but I was encouraged not to rely on them, ultimately not to need them. I don't recall how long I used them -- I don't think it was very long -- but it was a little odd to be put back in that guided context again after so many years. My laughter, I think, was prompted in part by the realization that this was something I hadn't done for so long but with which I was very familiar. Is it like riding a bicycle? You never forget? Well, guess what? I can't ride a bicycle very well anymore.
As I gradually become re-accustomed to the dharma, all sorts of things are changing, coming back to me, new paths opening. Christians refer to being "re-born". That isn't quite what's happening. But it is very interesting to witness a kind of automatic youth reversion that carries me back to another time. Or at least evokes it.
Wonders never cease.
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Unless We Are Japanese
Much of Western Zen practice is modeled on that of Japan -- as would be expected given its origin in the West among immigrants from Japan in the 19th century. Too often, though, I think Zen practice in the West is completely divorced from its Japanese cultural, political and economic context, though not necessarily divorced from its history.
The history points to lines of transmission of the dharma from the Buddha through various teachers in India, then China, thence to Japan where three main schools of Zen developed from Chinese Cha'an Buddhism, and so here we are today. Most Western Zen practice amalgamates these Japanese schools without getting into the weeds of how they came to be and what their differences are and the many and sometime bloody struggles between them.
When the roshi tells you about the peaceful intent of Zen Buddhism, question it.
I've mentioned that Zen is in some respects a warrior cult, and Zen monasteries are partly modeled on samurai training. Zen's origins in China provide the foundation, but the development of Zen in Japan was closely tied to the samurai and feudal Japanese culture. Zen flourished (and was sometimes repressed) under the Shoguns, particularly so, it would seem, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, the ruling power in Japan from the 1600s until the Meiji Restoration of Imperial rule in 1868.
Zen declined from that point as did all Buddhism in Japan. The Imperial Shinto cult took its place. After the War in the Pacific, as it is called, the Imperial cult declined, but Buddhism, for the most part, did not revive much. Irreligion and secularism became the model to follow under American occupation after the war, but gradually Buddhist and Shinto practices reasserted themselves.
Zen, it must be understood, was never universal or even the dominant school of Buddhism in Japan. It isn't now. It is a special practice meant for a certain class or quality of individual. In old Japan, that was generally the samurai and some elements of the Shogun, Daimyo and Imperial households. In other words, very much upper class. Of course the lower orders could practice zazen, anybody can. But the hierarchy of Zen teaching and transmission, and admission to the monasteries was not open any but the "right sort", and the right sort usually meant high born and wealthy.
Monastic Buddhism can be criticized for being very class conscious. It's hard not to be, I think, given the Buddha's own princely origins. His example may apply to all classes, but he couldn't help being the aristocrat he was. His monastic life was outwardly poor and simple, but it was an aristocrat's expression of poverty and simplicity, not at all something grown from the bottom of society.
And so it has been with most monastics in the West as well as Asia. I don't criticize Zen or Buddhism for its classism, but I do acknowledge it, just as I would with Catholicism or any other religion.
St. Francis, my adopted patron saint, was also the son of an Italian merchant-aristocrat and a high-born French woman.
To see these high-born men and women putting on robes and going out begging is rather stunning when you think about it. But that's the way of monastics. Has been for many long centuries.
That aside, I think it's critical to recognize -- and honor -- Zen's Japanese origins without necessarily "turning Japanese." We in the West don't have more than a very superficial and probably erroneous understanding of Japanese society and culture and how Zen is integrated within it. We may be able to see and touch its outer shape and form, but Zen teaches us that's an illusion. We see nothing, really, because there is nothing really there.
Why would we put on robes or go on pilgrimage or chant the sutras? There's nothing to find, is there? No merit is gained.
There's nothing to learn, nothing to gain, nothing to have, nothing to be. Zen teaches knowing nothing.
There's a cow-kitten at my feet playing with a catnip fish taco.
That is Zen.
Other household cats will practice zazen randomly. We could ask "Does a cat have Buddha nature?" But why? Do the cranes flying overhead know and practice the dharma?
The history points to lines of transmission of the dharma from the Buddha through various teachers in India, then China, thence to Japan where three main schools of Zen developed from Chinese Cha'an Buddhism, and so here we are today. Most Western Zen practice amalgamates these Japanese schools without getting into the weeds of how they came to be and what their differences are and the many and sometime bloody struggles between them.
When the roshi tells you about the peaceful intent of Zen Buddhism, question it.
I've mentioned that Zen is in some respects a warrior cult, and Zen monasteries are partly modeled on samurai training. Zen's origins in China provide the foundation, but the development of Zen in Japan was closely tied to the samurai and feudal Japanese culture. Zen flourished (and was sometimes repressed) under the Shoguns, particularly so, it would seem, under the Tokugawa Shogunate, the ruling power in Japan from the 1600s until the Meiji Restoration of Imperial rule in 1868.
Zen declined from that point as did all Buddhism in Japan. The Imperial Shinto cult took its place. After the War in the Pacific, as it is called, the Imperial cult declined, but Buddhism, for the most part, did not revive much. Irreligion and secularism became the model to follow under American occupation after the war, but gradually Buddhist and Shinto practices reasserted themselves.
Zen, it must be understood, was never universal or even the dominant school of Buddhism in Japan. It isn't now. It is a special practice meant for a certain class or quality of individual. In old Japan, that was generally the samurai and some elements of the Shogun, Daimyo and Imperial households. In other words, very much upper class. Of course the lower orders could practice zazen, anybody can. But the hierarchy of Zen teaching and transmission, and admission to the monasteries was not open any but the "right sort", and the right sort usually meant high born and wealthy.
Monastic Buddhism can be criticized for being very class conscious. It's hard not to be, I think, given the Buddha's own princely origins. His example may apply to all classes, but he couldn't help being the aristocrat he was. His monastic life was outwardly poor and simple, but it was an aristocrat's expression of poverty and simplicity, not at all something grown from the bottom of society.
And so it has been with most monastics in the West as well as Asia. I don't criticize Zen or Buddhism for its classism, but I do acknowledge it, just as I would with Catholicism or any other religion.
St. Francis, my adopted patron saint, was also the son of an Italian merchant-aristocrat and a high-born French woman.
To see these high-born men and women putting on robes and going out begging is rather stunning when you think about it. But that's the way of monastics. Has been for many long centuries.
That aside, I think it's critical to recognize -- and honor -- Zen's Japanese origins without necessarily "turning Japanese." We in the West don't have more than a very superficial and probably erroneous understanding of Japanese society and culture and how Zen is integrated within it. We may be able to see and touch its outer shape and form, but Zen teaches us that's an illusion. We see nothing, really, because there is nothing really there.
Why would we put on robes or go on pilgrimage or chant the sutras? There's nothing to find, is there? No merit is gained.
There's nothing to learn, nothing to gain, nothing to have, nothing to be. Zen teaches knowing nothing.
There's a cow-kitten at my feet playing with a catnip fish taco.
That is Zen.
Other household cats will practice zazen randomly. We could ask "Does a cat have Buddha nature?" But why? Do the cranes flying overhead know and practice the dharma?
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Palace Zen
Katsura Rikyu (Katsura Detached Palace, Katsura Imperial Villa) is one of several historic properties in Kyoto overseen by the Imperial Household Agency. As the former capital of Japan and a strong spiritual center today, Kyoto boasts many historic and important cultural sites. Katsura Rikyu is considered the purest and most expressive example of Japanese "traditional" architecture and an almost perfect example of Zen and Ma in the material world.
Katsura Rikyu was built and expanded over a number of decades during the 1600s by members of the Imperial family -- not the Emperor -- as a retreat and part-time home for its members. It is a complex of buildings situated in a park along the Katsura River several miles beyond the historic center of Kyoto and the historic Imperial Palace. When the capital was transferred to Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s, the Kyoto palaces and temples remained behind and the spiritual and cultural life of Japan stayed rooted in Kyoto as it had been for centuries. Indeed, for the recent enthronement of Emperor Naruhito, the thrones of the Emperor and Empress, kept at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, were carefully dismantled, transported to Tokyo and re-erected at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo for the ceremony. And then they were taken back to Kyoto.
It's worth noting that the Emperor and Imperial family had little public profile and no power in the 1600s when Japan was ruled and controlled by Shoguns and Daimyos. At best, the Emperor was a figurehead. Typically, he was captive to Shoguns.
That's a context that often is not clarified in the sometimes rapturous consideration of the Katsura Imperial Villa as a shining ideal of "traditional" Japanese design and architecture. The Emperor was rarely put on display, and the members of his extended family were, to be blunt about it, "nobodies."
Luckily for the Imperial princes who had Katsura Rikyu built, they married money and so were able to carry out their ambitious though severely ascetic plans.
The result has been preserved nearly intact for us to admire to this day. The Imperial Household Agency -- essentially the Emperor's management organization -- conveniently makes it available for public tours from time to time, along with the other Imperial properties in Kyoto as well as the current Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
Their website hosts some very nice videos of the Imperial properties in Kyoto, and I urge readers to vicariously visit them in order to compare and contrast Katsura Rikyu with the other Imperial palaces from approximately the same time.
I've said that Katsura Rikyu is all but unique. There's nothing else quite like it in Japan or anywhere else, though it was certainly influential in its own time as it still is.
The other Imperial palaces in Kyoto seem excessive and over-done compared to it. Yet in some ways, the others are just as "empty." They are presented with no more furnishings than Katsura Rikyu. The construction module is nearly the same, floor plans are not dissimilar, the stark black and white exteriors evoke one another though they are not the same, and even the gardens and tea houses are similar between the Katsura Rikyu and the other Imperial palaces in Kyoto.
In other words, there is a family resemblance, but Katsura Rikyu is on another plane.
The difference may appear subtle but it's there and it's profound. The difference is Zen.
Zen was a practice deeply ingrained in the samurai warrior culture of the era. It was a form of mind discipline that helped enable and maintain the warrior's supremacy in battle and in life. The Shogunate was an outgrowth of Japan's feudal warrior culture. The Emperor and all things Imperial were outside it, almost irrelevant to the Shoguns and Daimyos. And yet at Katsura Rikyu, some members of the Imperial family took on the task of showing what Zen would look like in the material world. Not at all like the overdecorated and heavy-roofed, vermilion, gold and gem encrusted palaces of the Emperors, Shoguns and Daimyos nor like their temples but rather it evokes the lean, spare, stark, and "empty" houses and gardens of the samurai and the primitive accommodations of the Japanese peasant.
Of course the scale of Katsura Rikyu is quite different, and the materials, fit and finish are on another level altogether, and yet... that can be considered Zen as much as anything else about the place.
As a means of "showing" Zen, Katsura Rikyu puts the many monasteries and Zen temples around Japan to shame. By reducing decorative elements almost exclusively to nature and the moon (very important in Buddhist iconography) and emptying the residence (body and mind) of everything that isn't the "Now", Katsura Rikyu becomes the embodiment of Zen, even more so than its models in samurai and peasant houses and gardens.
But in the end, it's an Imperial palace, quite beyond the wherewithal of any ordinary person or family to undertake and maintain. When it came under Imperial Household Agency control and authority it was partly because no one else could afford to maintain it. It has to be renovated and restored periodically -- at breathtaking expense -- and the gardens, gates and teahouses require constant maintenance in order to maintain an appearance of Zen perfection.
It takes an army of servants even now to keep the place in order and looking its best.
That doesn't come cheap.
As an embodiment of Zen, Katsura Rikyu, of course, is not Zen. The appeal to the senses is undeniable, but it's an illusion. Everything you see, feel and experience there evokes a sensation which is not Zen, and in the end, as captivating as the great emptiness and stark beauty of the site may be, it is neither Zen nor enlightenment.
The perfection of Katsura Rikyu may indeed prevent enlightenment.
That preventional problem has been noted of much of Zen practice. Monasteries, teachers, roshi, the whole panoply of Zen practice has long been criticized as the perfect means to ensure that practitioners, sensei and roshi never achieve satori or enlightenment but remain forever trapped on "the path."
When I initially engaged my interest in Zen in the early-mid '60s in California, I corresponded with someone at the San Francisco Zen Center. I believe he was from Japan, but as I never met him, I cannot say. I informed him that I could not come to San Francisco at the time, and so I could not be part of the community (sangha) in person. I was told there was no need. One did not have to be there in person to participate, but also one did not have to participate in the community to practice Zazen. Not everyone who could did, and not everyone who did should.
Zazen was a practice that existed independently of Zen sites and communities.
And I've wondered if Katsura Rikyu was an intentional alternative to "monastery/temple Zen;" we might call it "Palace Zen." In many ways, it seems to represent the interest of an individual, rather than a community, in the practice of zazen. A prince could sit himself down essentially anywhere at the site and practice zazen, with or without company, and it seemed to me the whole place might have been intended for just that purpose and no other.
The thought made me smile. 😊
And this gets us into the influence of Zen and especially Katsura Rikyu has had on modern thinking about architecture, dwellings, and so forth.
I mentioned that initially my exploration of Japanese design and architecture which led to my interest in Zen was driven by the fact that the house I was living in at the time featured elements of Japanese design in the roofline and decorative appliques on the facade. The living room also featured a 16' wall of glass with a sliding door, and there were various Japanese or Frank Lloyd Wright inspired touches here and there in the interior. This was fairly radical for the time.
This is a Google street view of the house taken in 2011. You can't see much of the "Japanese" look of the house, except for the roofline over the garage. The rest has either been painted out or replaced as in the case of the garage door which originally had an applied "shoji" design.
We moved in in 1962, but the house was built in 1957, only two years after the publication of "The Japanese House and Garden", and from the outset, I was quite astonished by its Japanese-ish features. The builder was previously known for building thousands of nondescript post-war houses in Sacramento and the Bay Area with no style at all. Then suddenly in 1957, he started offering new houses and floor plans, with a choice of three stylish exteriors -- Farmhouse, Contemporary, and Japanese -- that sold quickly and at a premium price, although the Japanese-ish model was not the favorite. Nevertheless, it was influential, and you started seeing Japanese-ish features on many houses built by other builders until the late '60s-early '70s.
I was taken enough with the minimal Japanese-ish features of our house to eventually add elements like verandas, attempts at extended eaves, and a small Japanese-ish garden behind a Japanese-ish reed and bamboo screen-fence. The front garden was still there in 2011, pretty much as I planted it, but the screen-fence is long gone.
None of it was Zen, of course, but it was pleasing.
The interior of the house was a mish-mash of "builder styles" that was pretty chaotic but late in my residency there, I attempted a minimalist-ish re-design that got rid of most of the accumulations of the decades and limited the chaos. I see it in my mind's eye better than I remember it, though!
My practice of zazen started while I lived there, and it continued for a number of years after I moved out, but by 1973 or 74, I'd pretty much stopped the practice, though probably I should have continued. Or maybe not.
Zazen creates conditions within the practitioner that can lead to satori (sudden enlightenment) and once it does, if it does, the question arises: what's the point of continuing with zazen? Of course. There is no point. So. One can continue or not after enlightenment, just as one can continue or not before enlightenment. (One chops wood and carries water regardless.)
How liberating! 🕉
My carved wood image of the Kamakura Daibutsu is painted gold so it will glow in the light from Kanthaka. Hotei smiles. A laughing sage stands under cherry blossoms made of silk. The scent of nag champa wafts in the perpetual breeze. Reminders one and all.
Katsura Rikyu was built and expanded over a number of decades during the 1600s by members of the Imperial family -- not the Emperor -- as a retreat and part-time home for its members. It is a complex of buildings situated in a park along the Katsura River several miles beyond the historic center of Kyoto and the historic Imperial Palace. When the capital was transferred to Tokyo during the Meiji Restoration of the 1860s, the Kyoto palaces and temples remained behind and the spiritual and cultural life of Japan stayed rooted in Kyoto as it had been for centuries. Indeed, for the recent enthronement of Emperor Naruhito, the thrones of the Emperor and Empress, kept at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, were carefully dismantled, transported to Tokyo and re-erected at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo for the ceremony. And then they were taken back to Kyoto.
It's worth noting that the Emperor and Imperial family had little public profile and no power in the 1600s when Japan was ruled and controlled by Shoguns and Daimyos. At best, the Emperor was a figurehead. Typically, he was captive to Shoguns.
That's a context that often is not clarified in the sometimes rapturous consideration of the Katsura Imperial Villa as a shining ideal of "traditional" Japanese design and architecture. The Emperor was rarely put on display, and the members of his extended family were, to be blunt about it, "nobodies."
Luckily for the Imperial princes who had Katsura Rikyu built, they married money and so were able to carry out their ambitious though severely ascetic plans.
The result has been preserved nearly intact for us to admire to this day. The Imperial Household Agency -- essentially the Emperor's management organization -- conveniently makes it available for public tours from time to time, along with the other Imperial properties in Kyoto as well as the current Imperial Palace in Tokyo.
Their website hosts some very nice videos of the Imperial properties in Kyoto, and I urge readers to vicariously visit them in order to compare and contrast Katsura Rikyu with the other Imperial palaces from approximately the same time.
I've said that Katsura Rikyu is all but unique. There's nothing else quite like it in Japan or anywhere else, though it was certainly influential in its own time as it still is.
The other Imperial palaces in Kyoto seem excessive and over-done compared to it. Yet in some ways, the others are just as "empty." They are presented with no more furnishings than Katsura Rikyu. The construction module is nearly the same, floor plans are not dissimilar, the stark black and white exteriors evoke one another though they are not the same, and even the gardens and tea houses are similar between the Katsura Rikyu and the other Imperial palaces in Kyoto.
In other words, there is a family resemblance, but Katsura Rikyu is on another plane.
The difference may appear subtle but it's there and it's profound. The difference is Zen.
Zen was a practice deeply ingrained in the samurai warrior culture of the era. It was a form of mind discipline that helped enable and maintain the warrior's supremacy in battle and in life. The Shogunate was an outgrowth of Japan's feudal warrior culture. The Emperor and all things Imperial were outside it, almost irrelevant to the Shoguns and Daimyos. And yet at Katsura Rikyu, some members of the Imperial family took on the task of showing what Zen would look like in the material world. Not at all like the overdecorated and heavy-roofed, vermilion, gold and gem encrusted palaces of the Emperors, Shoguns and Daimyos nor like their temples but rather it evokes the lean, spare, stark, and "empty" houses and gardens of the samurai and the primitive accommodations of the Japanese peasant.
Of course the scale of Katsura Rikyu is quite different, and the materials, fit and finish are on another level altogether, and yet... that can be considered Zen as much as anything else about the place.
As a means of "showing" Zen, Katsura Rikyu puts the many monasteries and Zen temples around Japan to shame. By reducing decorative elements almost exclusively to nature and the moon (very important in Buddhist iconography) and emptying the residence (body and mind) of everything that isn't the "Now", Katsura Rikyu becomes the embodiment of Zen, even more so than its models in samurai and peasant houses and gardens.
But in the end, it's an Imperial palace, quite beyond the wherewithal of any ordinary person or family to undertake and maintain. When it came under Imperial Household Agency control and authority it was partly because no one else could afford to maintain it. It has to be renovated and restored periodically -- at breathtaking expense -- and the gardens, gates and teahouses require constant maintenance in order to maintain an appearance of Zen perfection.
It takes an army of servants even now to keep the place in order and looking its best.
That doesn't come cheap.
As an embodiment of Zen, Katsura Rikyu, of course, is not Zen. The appeal to the senses is undeniable, but it's an illusion. Everything you see, feel and experience there evokes a sensation which is not Zen, and in the end, as captivating as the great emptiness and stark beauty of the site may be, it is neither Zen nor enlightenment.
The perfection of Katsura Rikyu may indeed prevent enlightenment.
That preventional problem has been noted of much of Zen practice. Monasteries, teachers, roshi, the whole panoply of Zen practice has long been criticized as the perfect means to ensure that practitioners, sensei and roshi never achieve satori or enlightenment but remain forever trapped on "the path."
When I initially engaged my interest in Zen in the early-mid '60s in California, I corresponded with someone at the San Francisco Zen Center. I believe he was from Japan, but as I never met him, I cannot say. I informed him that I could not come to San Francisco at the time, and so I could not be part of the community (sangha) in person. I was told there was no need. One did not have to be there in person to participate, but also one did not have to participate in the community to practice Zazen. Not everyone who could did, and not everyone who did should.
Zazen was a practice that existed independently of Zen sites and communities.
And I've wondered if Katsura Rikyu was an intentional alternative to "monastery/temple Zen;" we might call it "Palace Zen." In many ways, it seems to represent the interest of an individual, rather than a community, in the practice of zazen. A prince could sit himself down essentially anywhere at the site and practice zazen, with or without company, and it seemed to me the whole place might have been intended for just that purpose and no other.
The thought made me smile. 😊
And this gets us into the influence of Zen and especially Katsura Rikyu has had on modern thinking about architecture, dwellings, and so forth.
I mentioned that initially my exploration of Japanese design and architecture which led to my interest in Zen was driven by the fact that the house I was living in at the time featured elements of Japanese design in the roofline and decorative appliques on the facade. The living room also featured a 16' wall of glass with a sliding door, and there were various Japanese or Frank Lloyd Wright inspired touches here and there in the interior. This was fairly radical for the time.
This is a Google street view of the house taken in 2011. You can't see much of the "Japanese" look of the house, except for the roofline over the garage. The rest has either been painted out or replaced as in the case of the garage door which originally had an applied "shoji" design.
We moved in in 1962, but the house was built in 1957, only two years after the publication of "The Japanese House and Garden", and from the outset, I was quite astonished by its Japanese-ish features. The builder was previously known for building thousands of nondescript post-war houses in Sacramento and the Bay Area with no style at all. Then suddenly in 1957, he started offering new houses and floor plans, with a choice of three stylish exteriors -- Farmhouse, Contemporary, and Japanese -- that sold quickly and at a premium price, although the Japanese-ish model was not the favorite. Nevertheless, it was influential, and you started seeing Japanese-ish features on many houses built by other builders until the late '60s-early '70s.
I was taken enough with the minimal Japanese-ish features of our house to eventually add elements like verandas, attempts at extended eaves, and a small Japanese-ish garden behind a Japanese-ish reed and bamboo screen-fence. The front garden was still there in 2011, pretty much as I planted it, but the screen-fence is long gone.
None of it was Zen, of course, but it was pleasing.
The interior of the house was a mish-mash of "builder styles" that was pretty chaotic but late in my residency there, I attempted a minimalist-ish re-design that got rid of most of the accumulations of the decades and limited the chaos. I see it in my mind's eye better than I remember it, though!
My practice of zazen started while I lived there, and it continued for a number of years after I moved out, but by 1973 or 74, I'd pretty much stopped the practice, though probably I should have continued. Or maybe not.
Zazen creates conditions within the practitioner that can lead to satori (sudden enlightenment) and once it does, if it does, the question arises: what's the point of continuing with zazen? Of course. There is no point. So. One can continue or not after enlightenment, just as one can continue or not before enlightenment. (One chops wood and carries water regardless.)
How liberating! 🕉
My carved wood image of the Kamakura Daibutsu is painted gold so it will glow in the light from Kanthaka. Hotei smiles. A laughing sage stands under cherry blossoms made of silk. The scent of nag champa wafts in the perpetual breeze. Reminders one and all.
Monday, November 4, 2019
The Japanese House and Garden and The Space Between
I received the book promptly, despite the electricity blackouts and wildfires in California, and I've been reading it in sections since it arrived. This is the 1955 edition, second printing 1956, so it's not quite the same as the version I read in the '60s. But it's close enough. According to the author's preface, it's a re-do of the original 1935 German version, published in Berlin. In fact, some of the illustrations have German captions. It's a little disconcerting given the circumstances in both Japan and Germany at the time of the original publication, and even in 1955, the bitter taste from the late war -- referred to as the War in the Pacific by the author, Tetsuro Yoshida -- still lingered.
I'm given to believe that Yoshida died in 1956 and he was quite ill during the revision process for the 1955 edition. Thus, I'm somewhat puzzled over how the revisions in the 1962 and 1969 editions came about. Oh well, it's hardly important now...
Yoshida treads lightly on the topic, but he does try to inform his Western readers of how -- and when -- "traditional" Japanese domestic architecture came about. He puts it delicately, but he points out that these "traditional" tatami rooms so beloved in the West have an origin-point in Zen practice by the Japanese warrior class or samurai. The style was developed from prior hybrid Japanese-Chinese styles, but without the Zen and warrior overlays, the asceticism of the "traditional" style would have likely been much less if not completely absent.
Like most people, Japanese love their ornament. The "empty" style was something else again. It isn't entirely ornament free, but it is stripped to the bone. Such ornament as there is is confined to specific places (the tokonoma, eg) and specific times (the tea ceremony, eg.) Otherwise and at other times, there is practically nothing to experience but the bare structural elements of the room or building and whatever people happen to be there at any given time. Not to forget, however, the natural world all around and interpenetrating the empty spaces of the tatami/Zen rooms.
This extreme emptiness captivated Western observers starting in the 19th century and continuing to this day.
The "empty style" is partly the product of the tea ceremony and the tea huts built in gardens of noble properties in the 16th century in imitation of peasant houses. The tea ceremony itself is partly a product of Zen asceticism dating back much earlier but adopted by the samurai and noble classes in feudal Japan starting in the 13th century and becoming almost universal among them by the mid-1600s.
The "empty style" was not the rule among the common people then, nor is it today. Like contemporary minimalism -- which is itself founded in the "empty style" of feudal Japan (::waves at Marie Kondo::) -- it is an important style but not the ultimate or universal style of the entire people.
In fact, if you visit a traditional "empty style" Japanese house today, you'll find they're not so empty at all. By contrast to the illustrations of the "empty style" in books like "The Japanese House and Garden", contemporary lived-in examples are rather cluttered. Lots of things accumulate during living, and despite an apparent abundance of storage in these "empty" houses, there''s really no place to put it all. The "empty" rooms start filling up. In addition, no one today, and hardly anyone back in the day, has or had the wherewithal to employ the army of servants necessary to maintain an "empty" household.
I suspect that originally, these "empty style" houses could be just as cluttered if not more so than what we see in traditional Japanese houses today. And to pile on the criticism, they were, and in many cases remain, extraordinarily uncomfortable.
Of course discomfort was part of the asceticism of the style.
Which goes back to Zen. Let the circle be unbroken....
One of the principal examples of the style, frequently referenced by Yoshida and many others, is the Katsura Imperial Villa in Kyoto, now a museum but formerly a pastoral retreat for the Imperial family, a complex of residential and ceremonial structures and gardens built in the 1660s, and about as Zen as you can find anywhere in Japan, more Zen in some ways than the Japanese Zen temples.
Yoshida uses it as a primary example of traditional Japanese architecture, but in fact it's rather unique. Though there may be some others, I'm unaware of a single comparable complex anywhere in Japan -- or elsewhere for that matter.
Katsura Imperial Villa (aka Katsura Detached Palace) stands essentially alone in its stark simplicity and exquisite emptiness.
A five minute video tour:
Of course it should be noted that the "exquisite emptiness" of the Katsura Imperial Villa is part of the long time museum presentation, not necessarily how it was used by the Imperial family in the 17th century.
But then again, the emptiness of the palace today is part of its charm. And there are many examples of Japanese traditional tatami rooms in houses of all classes, spanning a wide range of eras, including today. A tatami room is ideally "empty" though in practice the rooms are not empty at all.
And there is a concept of "ma" -- the space between -- that is found throughout Japanese culture, Shinto and Zen.
This discussion has become more and more circular, so I'm going to put it to rest. There may be more to come. Or not. 🕉
Friday, November 1, 2019
50 - Again
Today is our official 50th wedding anniversary. Ms. Ché and I were married in Reno on November 1, 1969 and returned to Stockton where we were then living late that evening after dropping my best man off at his house in Citrus Heights. It was a whirlwind day that started off with Ms and I both sitting in meditation in the darkened dressing room of our tiny apartment -- the first "home of our own."
We got together two years before we were married and we celebrated that anniversary as our 50th and the following year we celebrated another 50th. Now we've arrived at the 50th anniversary of our legal marriage.
In order for Ms to get a driver's licence earlier this year, she had to produce a marriage certificate since her last name at birth is different than her married name. She had no idea as there is nothing on the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Dept website that even hints at such a thing. Well, she stormed home when she was told she needed to bring her marriage certificate, and stewed for a bit, wondering what to do. Where was that thing, anyway? What if it was still in California amongst our other possessions still stored there?
She fumed for a while and then got to work in her library/office/workroom where she keeps a lot of our important papers. She had never been asked for a marriage certificate before, at least not in the recent past, so she had no memory of where she had put it. But after about 20 minutes, she came forth with the document (and her birth certificate, SS card, two proofs of residency and her expired driver's license and stormed back to the MVD office up the road.
I've had to deal with that office a few times, and the personnel is very nice. But they're strict when it comes to "Real ID" requirements, and they brook no workarounds. You either have the proper documentation or you don't get a "Real ID."
The thing was, Ms. Ché could find nothing on the MVD website requiring the presentation of a marriage certificate by married women who use their husband's last name, and she printed out the MVD web page to prove it.
The clerk expressed surprise that it wasn't on the website and assured Ms. Ché that she would promptly inform Santa Fe of the problem. Of course I figure the same issue has come up thousands of times before, so I doubt Santa Fe gives a good gott-dam about it, but whatever. Ms. Ché got her driver's license, and there you go.
Yes, we started that day 50 years ago in sitting meditation -- Zen -- but a few years later we would stop practicing, she before I did, and have our adventures, what I'm now thinking of as "life pilgrimage."
A couple of years ago, Ms. spent a few weeks at Naropa Institute (University now) at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where daily meditation sessions were offered, not required. She took them up. Oh yes.
She reported back that it was the most amazing thing, a reminder of what we did so many years ago, but also different because of the sensei and the sangha context, the large Tibetan singing bowl to signal the beginning and end of meditation, and the talks given by sensei. She said it was not the easiest thing for her elder bones to get up and down from the cushion on the floor, but she did it, and every time she meditated at Naropa, she felt both peace and whole.
When she came back, she brought her renewed Buddhist insight with her, and she was going to set up a meditation corner in the house, with cushion and bell and our painted wooden sculpture of the Daibutsu but realized she couldn't do it because of the cats.
We have cats of course. We've always had cats. Cats are elemental creatures for both of us, we could argue they are totem creatures, as both of us see our selves and our natures reflected in the cats who live with us. More and more of them have become house cats, which was not the plan -- we had one house cat at first and took care of many ferals. But gradually one or another feral cat was tamed and began tentatively to join us in the house. We were given a pair of kittens by the neighbor boys. Others have just arrived on their own. Ms. Ché has a strong adoptive instinct, and as more and more cats join us in the house, we have to make certain adaptations to their ways and needs. One of them being a soft, warm place to snuggle. A cushion for sitting meditation would be perfect. In fact, the one Ms. Ché got for that purpose is now a cat-bed. Of course.
Some of our house cats practice Zenning on their own account, Larry being a prime example. He was very hyper when he arrived, apparently after wandering a good long time. An older feral we called Joe adopted Larry and took it on himself to instruct the younger cat in Zen meditation. I kid you not. Joe had been Zenning out in the yard for a long time, and when he took on Larry, he literally taught him step by step what to do. And gradually, Larry learned. He is now wise and calm, and he goes into Zen state randomly, like a tested master, and he's showing some of the younger cats what to do.
It's almost as if the feral colony is becoming a monastery. But like many other monasteries, not everyone can handle the challenge and they go about their cat-business on a lower plane. Some are clearly ascended masters, though. Larry is very nearly the Abbot of this group though he rarely puts on airs.
When the meditation cushion was given to the cats it meant we would not have a dedicated meditation corner in the house, but oddly that's been liberating. Since we don't have this singular place for meditating in the house, we can and do meditate wherever we are. Randomly. It's a kind of liberation that many practitioners seek but never find. They need and want the structure of regular meditation times and places, wearing regular meditation robes sitting on regular meditation cushions, and all the trappings of "actual" Zen meditation. Otherwise, perhaps, they can't do it. It doesn't feel right.
That's one of the common hazards Zen masters pointed to long ago: attachment to particular places, things, needs and wants. Attachment to people like your sensei or roshi. Without them, you can become lost. 🕉🕉
Indeed. It's true. Learning to practice without the structure you may be used to is a definite challenge which not every Zen practitioner can master or necessarily wants to master.
So, no. We don't have a meditation corner in the house, but we have our workarounds. The sound of the singing bowl is the signal we use for meditation -- just as a small brass bell was 50 years go. We may still have that bell, but if we don't, we have others like it. The singing bowl, however, is a recent nod to Naropa, and I must say, small as it is, it has an impressive tone. Not quite as deep and long-lasting as the one at Naropa's meditation room, but as effective just the same.
When one or the other of us strikes the tone (it is usually Ms. who does), the meditation moment begins.
Not only do we shift into a sitting meditation mode, so do some, not all, of the house cats.
Could we do it without the tone of the singing bowl? Of course.
Our shrine to the Buddha is also one of the helpful elements as it is a reminder to meditate. The gold painted wooden statue of the Kamakura Daibutsu is so eloquent that a mere glance is sufficient to put me in that meditative space.
And so it goes. It's our official 50th, and so we will celebrate in various ways today and tonight. It's a reminder of our long time together and how very challenging and rewarding that time has been.
🕉🕉🕉
We got together two years before we were married and we celebrated that anniversary as our 50th and the following year we celebrated another 50th. Now we've arrived at the 50th anniversary of our legal marriage.
In order for Ms to get a driver's licence earlier this year, she had to produce a marriage certificate since her last name at birth is different than her married name. She had no idea as there is nothing on the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Dept website that even hints at such a thing. Well, she stormed home when she was told she needed to bring her marriage certificate, and stewed for a bit, wondering what to do. Where was that thing, anyway? What if it was still in California amongst our other possessions still stored there?
She fumed for a while and then got to work in her library/office/workroom where she keeps a lot of our important papers. She had never been asked for a marriage certificate before, at least not in the recent past, so she had no memory of where she had put it. But after about 20 minutes, she came forth with the document (and her birth certificate, SS card, two proofs of residency and her expired driver's license and stormed back to the MVD office up the road.
I've had to deal with that office a few times, and the personnel is very nice. But they're strict when it comes to "Real ID" requirements, and they brook no workarounds. You either have the proper documentation or you don't get a "Real ID."
The thing was, Ms. Ché could find nothing on the MVD website requiring the presentation of a marriage certificate by married women who use their husband's last name, and she printed out the MVD web page to prove it.
The clerk expressed surprise that it wasn't on the website and assured Ms. Ché that she would promptly inform Santa Fe of the problem. Of course I figure the same issue has come up thousands of times before, so I doubt Santa Fe gives a good gott-dam about it, but whatever. Ms. Ché got her driver's license, and there you go.
Yes, we started that day 50 years ago in sitting meditation -- Zen -- but a few years later we would stop practicing, she before I did, and have our adventures, what I'm now thinking of as "life pilgrimage."
A couple of years ago, Ms. spent a few weeks at Naropa Institute (University now) at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where daily meditation sessions were offered, not required. She took them up. Oh yes.
She reported back that it was the most amazing thing, a reminder of what we did so many years ago, but also different because of the sensei and the sangha context, the large Tibetan singing bowl to signal the beginning and end of meditation, and the talks given by sensei. She said it was not the easiest thing for her elder bones to get up and down from the cushion on the floor, but she did it, and every time she meditated at Naropa, she felt both peace and whole.
When she came back, she brought her renewed Buddhist insight with her, and she was going to set up a meditation corner in the house, with cushion and bell and our painted wooden sculpture of the Daibutsu but realized she couldn't do it because of the cats.
We have cats of course. We've always had cats. Cats are elemental creatures for both of us, we could argue they are totem creatures, as both of us see our selves and our natures reflected in the cats who live with us. More and more of them have become house cats, which was not the plan -- we had one house cat at first and took care of many ferals. But gradually one or another feral cat was tamed and began tentatively to join us in the house. We were given a pair of kittens by the neighbor boys. Others have just arrived on their own. Ms. Ché has a strong adoptive instinct, and as more and more cats join us in the house, we have to make certain adaptations to their ways and needs. One of them being a soft, warm place to snuggle. A cushion for sitting meditation would be perfect. In fact, the one Ms. Ché got for that purpose is now a cat-bed. Of course.
Some of our house cats practice Zenning on their own account, Larry being a prime example. He was very hyper when he arrived, apparently after wandering a good long time. An older feral we called Joe adopted Larry and took it on himself to instruct the younger cat in Zen meditation. I kid you not. Joe had been Zenning out in the yard for a long time, and when he took on Larry, he literally taught him step by step what to do. And gradually, Larry learned. He is now wise and calm, and he goes into Zen state randomly, like a tested master, and he's showing some of the younger cats what to do.
It's almost as if the feral colony is becoming a monastery. But like many other monasteries, not everyone can handle the challenge and they go about their cat-business on a lower plane. Some are clearly ascended masters, though. Larry is very nearly the Abbot of this group though he rarely puts on airs.
When the meditation cushion was given to the cats it meant we would not have a dedicated meditation corner in the house, but oddly that's been liberating. Since we don't have this singular place for meditating in the house, we can and do meditate wherever we are. Randomly. It's a kind of liberation that many practitioners seek but never find. They need and want the structure of regular meditation times and places, wearing regular meditation robes sitting on regular meditation cushions, and all the trappings of "actual" Zen meditation. Otherwise, perhaps, they can't do it. It doesn't feel right.
That's one of the common hazards Zen masters pointed to long ago: attachment to particular places, things, needs and wants. Attachment to people like your sensei or roshi. Without them, you can become lost. 🕉🕉
Indeed. It's true. Learning to practice without the structure you may be used to is a definite challenge which not every Zen practitioner can master or necessarily wants to master.
So, no. We don't have a meditation corner in the house, but we have our workarounds. The sound of the singing bowl is the signal we use for meditation -- just as a small brass bell was 50 years go. We may still have that bell, but if we don't, we have others like it. The singing bowl, however, is a recent nod to Naropa, and I must say, small as it is, it has an impressive tone. Not quite as deep and long-lasting as the one at Naropa's meditation room, but as effective just the same.
When one or the other of us strikes the tone (it is usually Ms. who does), the meditation moment begins.
Not only do we shift into a sitting meditation mode, so do some, not all, of the house cats.
Could we do it without the tone of the singing bowl? Of course.
Our shrine to the Buddha is also one of the helpful elements as it is a reminder to meditate. The gold painted wooden statue of the Kamakura Daibutsu is so eloquent that a mere glance is sufficient to put me in that meditative space.
And so it goes. It's our official 50th, and so we will celebrate in various ways today and tonight. It's a reminder of our long time together and how very challenging and rewarding that time has been.
🕉🕉🕉
Thursday, October 31, 2019
"Y" - Zen.2
I started Zen practice when I was in high school -- in the early-mid '60s. The high school period was a really bad time for me. I won't go into details at this time, but I may at some point. Now that I have "let go" of it I can speak of it, but for now, no.
In fact "letting go" was part of my impetus for practicing Zen. And indeed, in my mid-twenties, a point came when I could do that. Almost all of the bad things that had practically consumed me, indeed, practically killed me, before that moment (and it was a moment) I "let go" went away as if they had never been, and through Zen practice one learns that those bad times had never been. The sense of liberation was profound. And that's when I gave up and let go of Zen practice as well.
It was available at any time, but I felt it wasn't necessary any more.
I went on a wholly different path, a pilgrimage of sorts, which ultimately led me to where I am now, circling back to my youthful Zen era.
The Enso is apropos, no?
The dharma talk I mentioned and criticized and reconsidered in the previous post was in part about pilgrimage and how in many cases the pilgrim is a "nobody" (consider the word) among "nobodies" on the way to something/nothing different, or not. We don't have to get into the details of "some/nothing." It's not really a contradiction, but some would see it that way. The dharma talk proposed that all of us are ultimately on pilgrimage, even if the pilgrim is only taking one step. That step itself can be or represent the whole of a pilgrim's passage.
In Zen practice, the pilgrimage is an important activity, and many Zen practitioners, sensei and roshi go on pilgrimages to Japan, to India, to Tibet, and some now to China (other places too, but those are mentioned frequently) to, I suppose, inhale the same air as the Buddha, trod the same paths as Bodhidharma, explore the same hills and woods as Dogen and thereby... wait, what's the point of it?
Hate to say it, but there is no point. One goes on pilgrimage... because one goes on pilgrimage. The choice of where to be a pilgrim -- if there is a choice -- is almost always a product of desire. And desire, as the Buddha discovered, is the source of suffering.
Letting go of desire relieves suffering and... can lead to enlightenment.
Yet in my mid-twenties I began a life-pilgrimage not driven by desire, at least not desire I was conscious of, that was often a wild ride, yet was always instructional. Every step -- well, nearly -- a learning experience.
Much of it was risky as if on a mountain precipice. Teetering so close to the edge, then somehow falling back toward if not exactly to safety, then teetering again. And again and again.
The nature of a life's pilgrimage can be that of risk, but it isn't always. A single step, for example, can embody an entire pilgrimage, and that step may or may not embody risk. The individual experience is what it is. We don't know and can't say in advance what it will be. Afterwards, we won't necessarily know what it was. In some Zen traditions, we never know and can never know. It never begins, it never ends.
But I don't much want to get into that right now. There will be a time for koans and contradictions. But not right now.
Instead, for the moment I want to focus on the "Y" of Zen -- the "why." Note: "I want to..." is an expression of desire, and I accept that for the moment.
And because it's Halloween and the little ones are swarming at the door, I'll have to put off that "why" for a little while longer.
In fact "letting go" was part of my impetus for practicing Zen. And indeed, in my mid-twenties, a point came when I could do that. Almost all of the bad things that had practically consumed me, indeed, practically killed me, before that moment (and it was a moment) I "let go" went away as if they had never been, and through Zen practice one learns that those bad times had never been. The sense of liberation was profound. And that's when I gave up and let go of Zen practice as well.
It was available at any time, but I felt it wasn't necessary any more.
I went on a wholly different path, a pilgrimage of sorts, which ultimately led me to where I am now, circling back to my youthful Zen era.
The Enso is apropos, no?
The dharma talk I mentioned and criticized and reconsidered in the previous post was in part about pilgrimage and how in many cases the pilgrim is a "nobody" (consider the word) among "nobodies" on the way to something/nothing different, or not. We don't have to get into the details of "some/nothing." It's not really a contradiction, but some would see it that way. The dharma talk proposed that all of us are ultimately on pilgrimage, even if the pilgrim is only taking one step. That step itself can be or represent the whole of a pilgrim's passage.
In Zen practice, the pilgrimage is an important activity, and many Zen practitioners, sensei and roshi go on pilgrimages to Japan, to India, to Tibet, and some now to China (other places too, but those are mentioned frequently) to, I suppose, inhale the same air as the Buddha, trod the same paths as Bodhidharma, explore the same hills and woods as Dogen and thereby... wait, what's the point of it?
Hate to say it, but there is no point. One goes on pilgrimage... because one goes on pilgrimage. The choice of where to be a pilgrim -- if there is a choice -- is almost always a product of desire. And desire, as the Buddha discovered, is the source of suffering.
Letting go of desire relieves suffering and... can lead to enlightenment.
Yet in my mid-twenties I began a life-pilgrimage not driven by desire, at least not desire I was conscious of, that was often a wild ride, yet was always instructional. Every step -- well, nearly -- a learning experience.
Much of it was risky as if on a mountain precipice. Teetering so close to the edge, then somehow falling back toward if not exactly to safety, then teetering again. And again and again.
The nature of a life's pilgrimage can be that of risk, but it isn't always. A single step, for example, can embody an entire pilgrimage, and that step may or may not embody risk. The individual experience is what it is. We don't know and can't say in advance what it will be. Afterwards, we won't necessarily know what it was. In some Zen traditions, we never know and can never know. It never begins, it never ends.
But I don't much want to get into that right now. There will be a time for koans and contradictions. But not right now.
Instead, for the moment I want to focus on the "Y" of Zen -- the "why." Note: "I want to..." is an expression of desire, and I accept that for the moment.
And because it's Halloween and the little ones are swarming at the door, I'll have to put off that "why" for a little while longer.
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
"Y"-Zen
 |
| Daibutsu (Big Buddha) Kamakura, Japan c. 1867 |
Zen Buddhism has often been referred to as a form of psychotherapy rather than a religion, and its practice is seen as a form of self-discovery and repair rather than idle ritual.
Zen practice can be alarmingly difficult, even brutal, particularly in sesshin, but typically it's not. Most people who practice Zen are not destined to become monks or nuns, nor will they become sensei or roshi (teachers or wise leaders). That is neither their purpose nor ambition in practicing Zazen. The goal, if there is a goal, for most Zen practitioners is an inner peace which may -- or may not -- be or lead to satori, sudden enlightenment.
I found in practicing Zazen many years ago that the presence of any desire inhibited practice. One cannot desire enlightenment, for example, or desire to count one's breaths, or desire to clear one's mind. These supposed benefits or objectives of Zen practice cannot be desired while in sitting meditation or the whole point of the meditation is lost. In fact, it quickly becomes apparent that meditation itself is impossible in the context of desire.
This is a conundrum and paradox in the Buddhism, one that the Buddha himself wrestled with constantly -- until he didn't. Desire itself, he learned, was the cause of suffering. Lose desire and you lose suffering. But how do you do that?
Luckily we have guides including the Buddha. In Zen many additional threads are woven together. In other words, we learn to practice not just from the Buddha but from a long lineage of disciples, devotees, teachers and masters, each of whom provides a distinct and ultimately necessary insight into the practice we call Zen today.
Why Zen then and not some other Buddhist school or practice? There are quite a few different versions of Buddhism after all. Zen is often considered the severest and most difficult. Oddly, or perhaps not, I didn't find it so at all.
In fact, it seemed remarkably easy.
That's not to say there wasn't inner struggle. Of course there was and still is. Sitting meditation (Zazen) itself, however, is not really hard to do. It's hard or impossible for me now to assume the correct posture sitting on the floor on a thin cushion. Nope, no can do. But it's not necessary. Sitting, yes, but not necessarily on the floor in the lotus or semi-lotus position. No, any position that is not too comfortable for you (so you don't go to sleep!) in a chair or sofa or bench or what have you is fine. The proper Zen meditation position (which I won't elaborate here, but which is quite detailed and complex, at least at first) is a necessity only for monks and nuns in training, and even then, exceptions can sometimes be made. The notion that every Zen practitioner must adhere to the proper form of sitting is laughable.
One sits as one will.
One sits though, and one allots a length of time, usually half an hour, for quiet meditation as one sits. Typically, the meditation period is announced with a bell or other signaling device at the beginning and end of the period. Years ago, we kept a small brass bell for the purpose, but now we use a Tibetan "singing bowl" -- from Nepal, of course. Anything can be used though, anything that makes a distinct sound when struck, preferably one that holds a tone for a time.
One sits, eyes closed, head down; one focuses on one's breathing and counts one's breaths. That, almost entirely, is it. One does that for half an hour and at some point during the meditation, without really noticing it, one stops counting, one stops noticing one's breathing, one is liberated from thought, concept, presence, and perhaps only momentarily one stops being "one."
Is that satori? Mmm, could be.
Of course when you're doing this at distance, not in company with a sangha or in close communication with a roshi or sensei one doesn't really know whether what one has experienced in sitting meditation is this or that. And in the early-mid '60s, while there were a number of Zen communities in California, they were not directly accessible to me, so I had to do a remote and individualized practice which at the time seemed perfectly acceptable. I started on my own using a thin book as a guide, and then corresponded with a Zen teacher affiliated with the San Francisco Zen Center who encouraged my individual practice and didn't seem at all put off that I was doing it on my own. Many people did.
I'm not sure whether I still have the guide book (I suspect not, but with thousands of books accumulated over the years and no card catalog to sort them, who knows?) but at some point, it seemed unnecessary, even superfluous to my practice. Once you get into a sort of meditation groove as it were, guidance becomes more and more problematic.
That's because one's path in meditation is one's own. There are no universal absolutes. Satori is what it is, but it isn't necessarily the same for each individual. The Buddha seemed to understand that. My own Zen teacher certainly understood it. And when I reached a point we no longer needed to correspond, I honestly didn't know whether I had reached satori or not. And here's the thing: It doesn't matter. Because one still chops wood and carries water before as well as after enlightenment.
I thought of attending a dharma talk at a Zen center in Santa Fe a couple of weeks ago. The topic was interesting: The freedom to be Nobody. Turns out I didn't go. It's an hour-twenty to get there, maybe more giving allowance for traffic and possibly getting lost, and I ran out of time. But that's an excuse, as I could have arranged my time more carefully that day than I did, and I could have made it before the start of the talk.
I was put off, however, by some of the non-welcoming attitude, shall we say, of the Center's operation as reflected by its website. Certainly a serious Zen community will have rules, but in this case, it seemed obsessive to the point of absurdity. The dharma talks supposedly welcome anyone who wishes to attend, oh but...
One must arrive by a particular time, one must park in a particular place, one must dress in a particular way, one must observe particular rituals and practices that one might not be familiar with at all, one must engage in zazen as well as kinhin, one is expected to give dana to the speaker... wait, this is crazy. This is not a welcome to anyone who wishes to attend. This is a barricade against that very thing. Deliberately so. It's clear enough to me that this particular Zen Center desires most of all to keep people in general out, and wishes to welcome only a select class of participants and only on very strict terms.
If you don't follow the rules pretty much exactly, you are not welcome.
No, I'd put it more generally: you, a "nobody", are not welcome there at all.
Ironic given the topic of the talk.
A few days later, I listened to the talk on podcast, and I was not sorry I missed it. Well, there are many points at which Zen by its nature is a contradiction. The contradictions and occasional absurdities are part of the practice, and the whys are interesting, but I won't get into them here.
In the case of this talk, which I intend to listen to again, the speaker was not prepared, ran off on several tangents that weren't necessarily interesting in themselves, and ultimately he indulged his own personal desires (yes!) because he didn't know what else to say.
In fact, I'm listening to the talk again now because I suspect I must have gotten it wrong. We'll see.
...
RECONSIDERATION: All right. My first impression of this dharma talk was wrong. I have listened to it again, and for all its faults, the talk is actually on point, coherent and.. helpful. As a Bodhisattva, the speaker is illuminating the Diamond Sutra with many different lamps in many colors. As a "nobody" on pilgrimage, you may not be welcome everywhere or anywhere, but what's to worry?
I listened before with one ear closed, and I missed much of the talk through distractions, of which there were (are) many. I listened with both ears today, and found a far more complete.talk. Letting go is a perpetual issue. It may have been simplistic and based in desire, but it was fuller than my initial impressions, and it was not because he didn't know what else to say or because he wasn't prepared.
I may have more to say about pilgrimage and letting go in due time. Which also has to do with my continued reluctance to join a sangha.
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Tuesday, October 29, 2019
Zen and the Roots of Minimalism
Minimalism is a Thing thanks in part to TeeVee celebs like Marie Kondo and others, as well as the roller coaster ride of the ever more expensive and luxurious tiny house movement. The message is that we don't need all the stuff we accumulate, and we don't need big houses to live well, especially after we've disposed of the bulk of our accumulations.
Simple (albeit possibly elegant) living is a good thing in and of itself.
Zen Buddhism is often cited as one of the main source-points of modern simple living ideals and minimalism.
It's not the only one, but it is an important one, especially to people on the US west coast who were influenced by Japanese immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Japanese domestic architecture, itself influenced by and influencing Zen Buddhism, first came into prominence in the West in the 1880s as the island nation was being extensively explored and remarked upon by observers from the United States, England and Germany.
Japan was for them a revelation. Its contrast with Europe and the United States was widely admired though often discounted because of the general racism of the era. The Japanese and their domestic architecture might have some admirable qualities but they could not match the extraordinary accomplishments of civilized nations.
Could they?
In some ways Japanese domestic accommodations exceeded Western ones -- particularly in honesty, simplicity, cleanliness, artistic effect, and comfort, so long as you were accustomed to it. In fact, Western observers were often distinctly uncomfortable in Japanese domestic accommodations, as there was essentially nothing in them with which the Westerner was familiar. There were no chairs or beds or rugs or window hangings. There were no doors or windows as a Westerner would recognize them. There was no paint or paper on the walls, and in fact there were few walls at all. There were no glittering and glaring light fixtures, no bric-a-brac, no high plastered ceilings, no effort at all to imitate the style, look or finish of any previous era or location.
And yet once the Western observer was able to let go of his expectations of domestic accommodations and accustom himself to the Japanese ways, he found himself astonished and entranced. Disbelieving and yet delighted.
For all the absence of things in Japanese domestic accommodation, the result was liberating. The revelation of this liberation was to be immensely influential as it still is today.
Minimalism had long been practiced as a kind of rule in the West -- think monasteries and such-- but in Japan it found a style.
Zen Buddhism was at the root -- and yet Japanese domestic architecture could be said to be at the root of Zazen: sitting meditation. The Empty Center.
The fact that Western observers remarked upon most often was that Japanese houses were almost completely empty -- or at least appeared to be in contrast to the superabundance of stuff that filled and overfilled typical Western houses in the Victorian era.
Another phase of Western minimalist living was about to be born.
Minimalism in the West had always been associated with religious and monastic life. So it would be with minimalism derived from Japanese domestic living, a lifestyle at least in part derived from Zen Buddhism, but also helping to influence the practice of Zen.
The only thing is, Zen is not a religion, it's more of a practice.
One sits.
One counts ones breaths.
One empties ones mind.
Anyone can do it almost anywhere at almost any time.
One sits, meditates and then goes about his or her day.
That day may include any number of different activities, all of which/none of which have the potential to lead to satori. Enlightenment. Sudden, unanticipated.
But then, maybe not.
The minimalism of Zen Buddhism can be an aid to satori. But then, anything can. Or nothing.
And so it goes.
Simple (albeit possibly elegant) living is a good thing in and of itself.
Zen Buddhism is often cited as one of the main source-points of modern simple living ideals and minimalism.
It's not the only one, but it is an important one, especially to people on the US west coast who were influenced by Japanese immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Japanese domestic architecture, itself influenced by and influencing Zen Buddhism, first came into prominence in the West in the 1880s as the island nation was being extensively explored and remarked upon by observers from the United States, England and Germany.
Japan was for them a revelation. Its contrast with Europe and the United States was widely admired though often discounted because of the general racism of the era. The Japanese and their domestic architecture might have some admirable qualities but they could not match the extraordinary accomplishments of civilized nations.
Could they?
In some ways Japanese domestic accommodations exceeded Western ones -- particularly in honesty, simplicity, cleanliness, artistic effect, and comfort, so long as you were accustomed to it. In fact, Western observers were often distinctly uncomfortable in Japanese domestic accommodations, as there was essentially nothing in them with which the Westerner was familiar. There were no chairs or beds or rugs or window hangings. There were no doors or windows as a Westerner would recognize them. There was no paint or paper on the walls, and in fact there were few walls at all. There were no glittering and glaring light fixtures, no bric-a-brac, no high plastered ceilings, no effort at all to imitate the style, look or finish of any previous era or location.
And yet once the Western observer was able to let go of his expectations of domestic accommodations and accustom himself to the Japanese ways, he found himself astonished and entranced. Disbelieving and yet delighted.
For all the absence of things in Japanese domestic accommodation, the result was liberating. The revelation of this liberation was to be immensely influential as it still is today.
Minimalism had long been practiced as a kind of rule in the West -- think monasteries and such-- but in Japan it found a style.
Zen Buddhism was at the root -- and yet Japanese domestic architecture could be said to be at the root of Zazen: sitting meditation. The Empty Center.
The fact that Western observers remarked upon most often was that Japanese houses were almost completely empty -- or at least appeared to be in contrast to the superabundance of stuff that filled and overfilled typical Western houses in the Victorian era.
Another phase of Western minimalist living was about to be born.
Minimalism in the West had always been associated with religious and monastic life. So it would be with minimalism derived from Japanese domestic living, a lifestyle at least in part derived from Zen Buddhism, but also helping to influence the practice of Zen.
The only thing is, Zen is not a religion, it's more of a practice.
One sits.
One counts ones breaths.
One empties ones mind.
Anyone can do it almost anywhere at almost any time.
One sits, meditates and then goes about his or her day.
That day may include any number of different activities, all of which/none of which have the potential to lead to satori. Enlightenment. Sudden, unanticipated.
But then, maybe not.
The minimalism of Zen Buddhism can be an aid to satori. But then, anything can. Or nothing.
And so it goes.
Thursday, October 24, 2019
"O"- Zen
I started Zen practice in high school, sometime between 1964 and 1966. I had become intrigued with traditional Japanese architecture, as so many Westerners are, in part because the house I lived in at the time had a few Japanese style details.
My interest was sparked, though, by a large format book -- not quite coffee table size -- that I either bought or checked out of the library (probably the latter) that covered traditional Japanese domestic architecture with numerous extraordinary black and white photos, floor plans, and scholarly text that I found fascinating. I believe one of the authors was Japanese; indeed, the entire book may have been a Japanese production. I believe the title was "The Japanese House and Garden" (*) published in 1962. But my memory is so full of holes and blank spaces these days, don't take my word for it.
Thanks to the inspiration of that book, I must have designed and drawn dozens of houses in the Japanese style. I think I still have one or two of them in a portfolio out in the studio.
The text made numerous references to Zen Buddhism as part of the motivation for the style of many Japanese houses as well as the often hyper-minimalism of their interiors and gardens. I was constantly amazed at how empty seeming these houses and gardens were -- especially in comparison to typical Western style -- and yet how abundant all this emptiness seemed. There seemed to be so much space, even in tiny 4.5 mat rooms, or 3 X 7 meter gardens. Construction details were fascinating, particularly the construction of houses and tea-houses that utilized no nails or other metal fastenings.
The constant reminders of "abundant emptiness" led me eventually to start studying Zen with a detour or two through Jack Kerouac's ramblings on the road and as a dharma bum. I found a master I could correspond with as there were no Zen centers near where I was, and I began to sit in meditation, counting my breaths and clearing my mind. I was no more than 17 years old. I ceased practice in my mid twenties. I was never really good at it, to hyper and ADD most of the time, but the elements of Zen practice never really leave you once you've taken them in. You just don't do it all the time.
I spent the next 40 years or so doing something else.
That led me down a variety of different paths and all over the country, learning and teaching all the way. One of the things people noticed about me was how calm I could be under stress. Yes, well... that's part of what "letting go of attachment" means. It doesn't mean you don't care. It does mean you're not attached to a particular state or set of circumstances or people or things. You're just there in
the moment.
What I call "O"- Zen is in part that absence of attachment. It's also "abundant emptiness." The "empty circle" -- Enso -- which symbolizes the center: some/no thing.
Enlightenment. Not that that was a state I ever achieved 😃🕉
"O"- Zen is also my term for the way space is shaped and used in traditional Japanese architecture.
So here we are, many decades down the road, and slowly, slowly, I'm returning to the practice, but so far only intermittently and only in part. First, I'm unable to sit in proper Zen posture. There are plenty of things I'm physically unable to do anymore, and that's all right. I'd usually been doing too much anyway. Or trying to. But being unable to assume the correct Zen sitting posture, and being unable to rise from that posture if somehow I was able to do it is difficult to accept. I'm not 17 anymore!
I take a shit-ton of powerful medications to control my condition -- so far, doing good -- but there are noticeable side effects, one of which is apparently memory loss and brain farts. I brought it up with my rheumatologist earlier this month. He was... concerned, especially when he witnessed one of the problems I had remembering and saying the name of another specialist I see from time to time. I just couldn't get it out. It wasn't coming into my conscious mind, and so I couldn't say it, though only moments before we were speaking about her as if she were in the room.
Well, that's an example of how holey my memory has become, especially regarding short term matters, so there may come further tests and medications. We shall see.
And then, "O"- Zen. 😃🕉
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(*) NOTE: I did some research, and by golly, that is the title of the book that pointed me to the dharma path. Surprisingly, it was first published in Germany in 1935, during Hitler-time, and I vaguely remember its German origins. Its original publication in the US was in 1955, but the edition I was so taken with was from 1962 or 63. I haven't found any reference to a 1962 edition but I have seen references to 1963 and 1969 editions. I have not found any illustrations from the book on line, but I remember the photographs, plans and drawings as remarkable, some even breathtaking. They live in what's left of my mind to this day. The link in the post is to Questia's online excerpts, text only, but quite a bit of it is included in the Table of Contents on the right of the linked page.
I'm wondering how it was received in Nazi Germany. I know I was astonished by it.
FURTHER NOTE: I just ordered a copy of the 1955 edition, but the outfit selling it I think is in a portion of California currently under power blackout thanks to PG& E. We'll see whether it arrives...
My interest was sparked, though, by a large format book -- not quite coffee table size -- that I either bought or checked out of the library (probably the latter) that covered traditional Japanese domestic architecture with numerous extraordinary black and white photos, floor plans, and scholarly text that I found fascinating. I believe one of the authors was Japanese; indeed, the entire book may have been a Japanese production. I believe the title was "The Japanese House and Garden" (*) published in 1962. But my memory is so full of holes and blank spaces these days, don't take my word for it.
Thanks to the inspiration of that book, I must have designed and drawn dozens of houses in the Japanese style. I think I still have one or two of them in a portfolio out in the studio.
The text made numerous references to Zen Buddhism as part of the motivation for the style of many Japanese houses as well as the often hyper-minimalism of their interiors and gardens. I was constantly amazed at how empty seeming these houses and gardens were -- especially in comparison to typical Western style -- and yet how abundant all this emptiness seemed. There seemed to be so much space, even in tiny 4.5 mat rooms, or 3 X 7 meter gardens. Construction details were fascinating, particularly the construction of houses and tea-houses that utilized no nails or other metal fastenings.
The constant reminders of "abundant emptiness" led me eventually to start studying Zen with a detour or two through Jack Kerouac's ramblings on the road and as a dharma bum. I found a master I could correspond with as there were no Zen centers near where I was, and I began to sit in meditation, counting my breaths and clearing my mind. I was no more than 17 years old. I ceased practice in my mid twenties. I was never really good at it, to hyper and ADD most of the time, but the elements of Zen practice never really leave you once you've taken them in. You just don't do it all the time.
I spent the next 40 years or so doing something else.
That led me down a variety of different paths and all over the country, learning and teaching all the way. One of the things people noticed about me was how calm I could be under stress. Yes, well... that's part of what "letting go of attachment" means. It doesn't mean you don't care. It does mean you're not attached to a particular state or set of circumstances or people or things. You're just there in
the moment.
What I call "O"- Zen is in part that absence of attachment. It's also "abundant emptiness." The "empty circle" -- Enso -- which symbolizes the center: some/no thing.
Enlightenment. Not that that was a state I ever achieved 😃🕉
"O"- Zen is also my term for the way space is shaped and used in traditional Japanese architecture.
So here we are, many decades down the road, and slowly, slowly, I'm returning to the practice, but so far only intermittently and only in part. First, I'm unable to sit in proper Zen posture. There are plenty of things I'm physically unable to do anymore, and that's all right. I'd usually been doing too much anyway. Or trying to. But being unable to assume the correct Zen sitting posture, and being unable to rise from that posture if somehow I was able to do it is difficult to accept. I'm not 17 anymore!
I take a shit-ton of powerful medications to control my condition -- so far, doing good -- but there are noticeable side effects, one of which is apparently memory loss and brain farts. I brought it up with my rheumatologist earlier this month. He was... concerned, especially when he witnessed one of the problems I had remembering and saying the name of another specialist I see from time to time. I just couldn't get it out. It wasn't coming into my conscious mind, and so I couldn't say it, though only moments before we were speaking about her as if she were in the room.
Well, that's an example of how holey my memory has become, especially regarding short term matters, so there may come further tests and medications. We shall see.
And then, "O"- Zen. 😃🕉
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(*) NOTE: I did some research, and by golly, that is the title of the book that pointed me to the dharma path. Surprisingly, it was first published in Germany in 1935, during Hitler-time, and I vaguely remember its German origins. Its original publication in the US was in 1955, but the edition I was so taken with was from 1962 or 63. I haven't found any reference to a 1962 edition but I have seen references to 1963 and 1969 editions. I have not found any illustrations from the book on line, but I remember the photographs, plans and drawings as remarkable, some even breathtaking. They live in what's left of my mind to this day. The link in the post is to Questia's online excerpts, text only, but quite a bit of it is included in the Table of Contents on the right of the linked page.
I'm wondering how it was received in Nazi Germany. I know I was astonished by it.
FURTHER NOTE: I just ordered a copy of the 1955 edition, but the outfit selling it I think is in a portion of California currently under power blackout thanks to PG& E. We'll see whether it arrives...
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