Think I’m Gonna Be a Little Sick

I learned recently that Elaine has not read either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. For me, this is a cardinal sin that must be corrected (I love The Silmarillion as well, but it tends to be a tough first read). One day I will take her up to Marquette to view the original Tolkien manuscripts in all their glory.

So as I am getting my books together, I look at my Millennium Edition of The Lord of the Rings, published as seven books. If you are unaware, The Lord of the Rings is Six books plus an index, traditionally published as three volumes (The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King). Well, as it turns out I was doing my traditional annual autumn/winter reading of the books (been a tradition of mine since I was 13) when I helped rescue a lost puppy. During that time, she got a hold of book two and used it as a chew toy. The corners are all mangled and four pages midway through had about a quarter of their pages torn out. Well, since I want my girlfriend to read a good copy without any words missing I looked up the replacement on the set.

As it turns out, this particular edition (which cost me $50 at the time) is currently going for anywhere between $150 and $600. I nearly puked when I saw that. At least now we know that she is the $600 dollar stray. Would I do it again had I known the outcome, well, yes, in a heartbeat. She is a great dog (now lol). I can get a replacement seven book set, soft cover from the UK for about US$60-ish with shipping, so not too bad after all. Takes me back to the grad-school days when one of the roomies dogs though my brand new Molecular Evolution textbook was a chew toy, two days before classes started.

Keep your eyes peeled here folks. It seems that dogs only eat my books if their current or future value is at least US$100. The next time a book is used as a chew toy, the book, edition, publisher, and other pertinent information will be published here first. You can then check your inventory and see if you want to seal it up an maximize its condition to maximize its resale value!

Saturday Morning, With Special Teaching by Henry

Janine and Scot frequently bring Henry, their son, with them to Zen. Henry is about 18 months old now, so he loves to run around, pick stuff up, and make lots of sounds including his limited vocabulary. During the past few weeks, he has shown that he is pretty good with a moktak, and keeps the beat pretty good with the chanting, odds are he will be the first three year old moktak master at ORZC.

At the end of chanting and meditation on Saturdays, there is a reading from one of several books. On this particular Saturday, the reading was taken from Master Teacher Tony Somlai’s  book PEACE Vigil: Living Without Hesitation from Dragon Mountain Press.

 

Peace

Teaching peace to our children

and each other

is the purest form of love.

There are many ways to bring peace to the community – pick one.

Teaching peace has an infinite number of conduits. It can be in a classroom setting or at a picnic. It can appear in a scholarly journal or at a slam poetry contest. You can teach peace while cooking or cleaning the house. If your life is peace, every moment is an opportunity to teach peace. The generosity of teaching peace helps build a cultural norm that “peace” is not a naive or antisocial activity. If peace is to be sustainable and of service to the next generation, we need effective and gentle methods to educate each other.

Childlike: My goodness, we have become crusty and cynical as adults. We have been fighting wars for so long that we have forgotten what it is like to be a child. We have repressed the purity of that early love in our consciousness. Watch children over the next few days and see what they teach about peace. Also look closely at what adults are teaching them about peace.

 

As soon as Janine had finished the reading, Henry chimed in by saying “Peace…..Peace.” As far as any of us know, that is the first time that Henry has ever uttered those words. After he had said that, everyone in the Dharma room just busted up laughing. Henry’s timing was impeccable, and the joy he brought to the community is without value. An 18 month old child taught the community a thing or two about peace, joy, and love by just being a child, and connecting to the child in all of us.

In that one moment, Henry reminded all of us that teachings come in all shapes and sizes, and frequently unexpected. If you are not paying attention to the moment, the teaching is lost. I know that I have missed many an opportunity to learn in my lifetime. But never before has that realization been so clear, nor a teaching so powerful, as that of a child, just learning to walk and to speak, that teachings are all around us if we just pay attention.

Another Wonderful Garden Retreat

On Sunday another Garden Retreat at the Original Root Zen Center came to a close. It started out with a brief Dharma talk on Friday night with the Guiding Teacher giving us the rules for this years Garden Retreat, basically, be present, help each other, get out of the ‘me, my, mine’ mind, and bring joy to all that you do. The Abbot followed up with basically, ‘Don’t be a dick, focus on the task at hand and help each other, it’s not about you.’

Saturday started at 7 am with bows, chanting, and some sitting, followed up by breakfast. For this retreat, I had my first pass as Assistant Kitchen Master, so I did get to learn a thing or two about cooking for a large group keeping special dietary requirements in mind. One of my highlights was getting to prepare Master Teacher Linda’s Olive Oil for her pasta. While the menu called for Pasta with Olive Oil, I just could not do that while the rest of us were eating a BBQ-chili pasta. So after breakfast, I got to go out to the herb garden and picked some herbs. They soaked in the oil until dinner time, so about six or seven hours in total. They imparted a wonderful, subtle flavor to the oil which the Master Teacher was quite pleased with.

So for Saturday and Sunday, many a weed was pulled, many a tree was trimmed, and many a new feature was added to the garden.

 

 

 

A new stupa was put in place.

 

 

 

 

A new rock garden was put in place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stones were put in the ground front and center.

 

 

 

 

 

Some paths were cleared and weeded.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And pretty much everything is in bloom.

 

 

Other additions include a new sitting area, a spiral cut topiary, and some additions to the trellis. A great deal of work was done in a fairly short amount of time.

In all, everyone enjoyed themselves. We got a lot done, without too many things left on the continuing projects list. Pretty soon we’ll get that table done for our elevated herb garden, and things will be looking really good there!

‘Twas A Good Night at Zen

I would like to give a big thanks to Mathew, Janine and Henry, and Anne. With the start of ‘summer,’ I’ve found myself helping out by covering other meetings and missing out on my Zen time this month. By next week things should be more or less back to normal, but this particular night seemed to be full of teachings for me.

First off, let me apologize to Janine, I was unable to keep Henry entertained/distracted, and I assume that you did not even get your interview started, or if you did, it went on for all of 30 seconds before you realized I was not up to the task of caring for the mini-humans. I do fear that this is largely my fault. Some of you may have noticed that I tend to be a bit on the quite side. In general, this does not seem to work well with the mini-humans, they tend to gravitate towards the more boisterous ones in the crowd. A notable exception has been Adi, who has actually spoken to me and addressed me by name. Let’s be honest, this is still difficult for me, so Mat, for our next interview, the question has appeared.

This evening, I did learn that some formalities have changed. I had never ‘led’ a meditation practice before with more than one other person present, and learned some formalities that have changed since my return. I think I was also extended the opportunity to get some moktak coaching, thus far, I have only done it twice, with only me in the room, so some coaching would be nice so I don’t butcher it if there is more than one.

And finally, in my mind (hahaha, lol) the biggest thing was the kung-an (koan) I was given. I have to admit, it has been a long ass time since one has stumped me as good as this one has. This actually makes me wonder, does this particular kung-an reflect a ‘major’ karma for me? Hell, it’s probably just a regular karma for me. I guess I’ve become used to ‘seeing/feeling’ the ‘proper’ answer, or at least close enough to it that it can be worked out in a couple more interviews (of course when you don’t request them, you typically have plenty of time to meditate on them). This one, from the outset, has been like staring at a blank wall. It is always interesting when someone offers you something you did knot know about yourself, along with the challenge to figure it out. The funny thing about kung-an’s, is that the ‘answer’ is always so simple and obvious, I think the term “Face Palm” fits quite nicely.

L-Day is nearing…

I think that next weekend I may well make the full conversion to Linux. I’ve been playing around with a dual boot for a couple weeks now and am pretty comfortable with most everything. Just need to get a couple things working properly in the virtual machine and all will be good. It will be good to finally do this, deep down, I’ve been wanting to for awhile, but have always held back because Sue does not like change. Since she is now on her laptop 100% of the time, there should be no issues. Actually, since Christmas (when she got it), she has been on here once to order a pizza when she let a friend a work borrow her laptop. I think she can live with suffering through Linux once every six months at most.

Just this past Saturday, I went down to the folks house, took care of a few computer issues, then we all went down to Chicago for dinner. Oh, and as it happens, by sheer coincidence, cousin Dave was in town on business, so we picked him up and went on out. Traffic was typical for heading into the city on a Saturday night so we got to his hotel around seven. Then is was a fairly short ride to Kuma’s Corner for dinner. The wait was only 1.5 hours, so we got to sit out back in the open on the picnic tables. I am glad for that, because that place is both small and loud!

We started out with two orders of the Buffalo Strips chicken (oh, did I mention there were six of us). Let me tell you, that was some damn good chicken. I personally would have liked the sauce to be a bit hotter (I loves me some spicy food), but that chicken was very well prepared, moist, tender, perfect. If you are not familiar with Kuma’s Corner, virtually every item on the menu has the name of a heavy metal band, which goes with the music that is played there.

All the burgers are one size, 1/2 pound. You have your choice of roll, as long as it is a pretzel roll. For a side, you can pick waffle fries, homemade chips, or a salad. I had the chips and I can state for a fact that they were made there and that they blew me away. For my burger, I opted for the BLACK SABBATH Blackening Spice, Chili, Pepper Jack, Red Onion. I dare say those things are 1/2 pound after cooking, not before. Their reputation is well earned, and the wait is worth it.

As much as I hate to admit it, just the day before we had a massive thunderstorm. A roads closed, emergency vehicles traveling about type of massive storm, complete with county sirens blazing and emergency broadcast system alters on. During said storm, I have 100+ pounds of Rottweiler on my lap. During one particularly loud thunder crash, he flung his head around, which happened to catch my chin, and drive my lower jaw into my upper one. Let’s just say my lower jaw still hurts, and when I bite, the front two bottom teeth still report that they are not pleased. If I’m ever back down there with a jaw and teeth that actually work, I’ll be a bit more adventurous with my selection. I’m thinking the Pantera Burger…

Red Bench

Spent most of the day with fellow Zen folk out at Kim’s River Sand Studio. He does a lot of excellent work out there, mostly woodworking and calligraphy, go figure the odds on those two combining.

Anyhow, we had a number of people throughout the day, many thanks go out to Mathew, Darin, and Jay for all of their contributions to the work that was done throughout the day. The work on the six benches kind of exceeded what was planned, and we did not get to start on the table for the herb garden. To keep the energy and excitement for the project going we have the following press release:

Red Bench

As part of a community art work project, the first phase ‘Red Bench’ has been completed. As part of as of yet unnamed art installation, ‘Red Bench’ is a significant milestone of this work.

‘Red Bench’ is part of a neoclassical interactive display. This work is not meant to be merely observed, but to be touched, even sat upon, so that the “observer” not only feels the art, but actually becomes a part of it.

We hope to have the art completed by late July and have the project installed at the Original Root Zen Center so that the general public may enjoy the interaction with this art installation as much as we have had in producing it.

So keep your eyes peeled. this is a very exciting addition to the ORZC garden that has been brought to you by the blood, sweat, and tears of the community. We do this simply wishing to bring you happiness, peace, and compassion while you are in the garden. And if you see someone there tending the garden, please feel free to say hi!

Class is over

Well last night marked the end of the six-week class at the Zen Center for Tony’s latest book, Peace Vigil: Living Without Hesitation.  Not surprisingly, the class consisted mainly of regular Zen practitioners, but we also had four who stop by for classes and the occasional practice session or two. One has been testing the waters much more as of late, and one has become much more interested so he may well start exploring a bit more, I feel he may try out the Sunday evening classes for a bit.

Anyhow, back to the subject at hand, the class. It was an excellent class that pretty much challenges the conventional notions of peace, and challenged us to actually do something other than contemplate peace. The most involved of the homework assignments occurred on week four. The homework was to create a “Peace Network.” Some things were simple, such as sending the following text message to three people, “I Wish You Happiness” (better know as IWUH for those of us who do this frequently with each other). Others involved finding a space to sit quietly and observe, the idea being not the couch, rather someplace else, a park, a museum, a waiting room, someplace with some energy going. The most difficult one to arrange, but by far the favorite was the ‘Peace Picnic.” This involved finding three people will to get together for a meal. Each person would bring one dish that has a story behind it. During the meal, each person would take their turn to tell the story behind the dish. While this was the most involved of the homework's, I think it was also the favorite.

During the class, several of the passages were reviewed and discussed. One that I quite enjoyed was given yesterday:

 

Conceal

The truth is hidden

because we refuse to admit

it isn’t about us.

Peace is not a secret teaching.

The only reason peace appears hidden is because we try to think our way to peace. That idea is an obstacle based on a faulty assumption that loving-kindness is logical when it isn’t. Look at all the great teachers. Each one of them seems a little daft in their rational mind, and the reason for that is because their lives defy logic. Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed would find themselves locked up today with their “crazy” talk about peace and love. Peace is concealed because we are addicted to violence. It is in our movies, entertainment, sports, and politics. peace is boring, conflict is exciting. Would you stay up all night watching CNN’s coverage of peace? Of course not, your violently habituated mind would be bored. And yet, when we invaded Iraq, for the second time, you stayed up all night being entertained by the death created at the hand of “shock and awe.” Peace is hidden because you are selfish and that is no longer a secret.

 

I enjoyed this one because it points out so many things. Typically, we are the reason that peace does not appear. We get in the way with what we want, try to superimpose our personal ideas of what peace should be on any situation. Peace is not about be, it is about us, about community. I also love the bit about Jesus, Buddha, and Mohammed, mostly because I had that argument when I was a teen living in Texas. My friend, who was very devout, said that there was no way that Jesus would be committed and put on Thorazine because he would know, heck, everybody would know, after all, it’s in the bible. Ah, the childhood memories.