Zen and the Art of Occupying

Richard Schiffman (Huff Post), Occupy Zen, Globalrevolution.TV, Wisdom Quarterly

Occupy Wall Street vs. The Media (theinquisitr.com)

Zen is all about being. Being here. Being here now. We'd rather be-here-now. Having missed the Sixties, and having longed for that time our whole livea, it is a tremendous opportunity to sit in bigger more peaceful demonstrations against war, corporate greed, and cultural hypocrisy. That's all ww need do to be true to ourselves as practitioners of Zen. Sit. Schiffman gets it:

As a card carrying member of the Woodstock generation, it was like falling into a time warp: hundreds milling around armed with home made placards, the throb of African drums, young, half naked bodies sprawled on tarps, a teach-in under a tent, strains of Woody Guthrie.

For a veteran of the 1960s, it was deja vu all over again -- with one key difference -- computer banks and hand held cameras live-streaming the event, and emails of support flashing on large screens from similar encampments as far afield as Seattle, Berlin, and Buenos Aires.

• Maybe it will be televised (Globalrevolution.TV)
• Tibet is still a hidden kingdom in the Internet Age

At the entrance to the square, a circle of [demonstrators] was meditating cross-legged around a makeshift altar replete with didgeridoos and crystal skulls -- not to levitate the Pentagon, but to move some equally implacable edifices, the fortress-like financial institutions which ring Zuccotti Park.

Instead of a black bearded and ascetic Allen Ginsburg, the baseball-capped Russell Simmons was exhorting demonstrators to take back their government and their own increasingly imperiled futures. More

(All tees are ironic of course)

One More Violent Revolution?

Wisdom Quarterly (EDITORS)

A man sitting on his sofa was badgered by his wife to get rid of the dead weight around the house. "What dead weight?"

"Like your parents, for instance," she answered.

"But they're my parents!" he protested.

"They're nothing but dead weight," she argued. Finally, she convinced him to do away with them by pushing them over a cliff and into an abyss.

So one day he tossed them into an old wheelbarrow and trudged up the mountainside.

They were happy about the adventure, the great view, and the time spent with their son, not realizing their fate. He pushed on silently resigned to what he felt he had to do.

They finally reached the top where the view was grand in the dimming light. And they realized why they had been brought here.

They looked at their son, who was silent, and asked of him one final favor.

"What is it?" he moaned.

"Son, make sure that when you throw us over, nothing happens to this old barrow," they pleaded.

"Why!?" he demanded.

"Because, my boy, one day your son is going to need it."

They turned back with tears in their eyes and together and discussed how they might grow in peace, each playing a part, each expressing gratitude, each remembering how we are all part of one another.

Because we cannot thrive apart, we have to thrive together. A violent revolution never accomplished anything but more violence.

Bulls focus on a goal, not Riders (Zen video)

Shambala SunSpace, Rage Against the Machine


Sit-a-Long with Taigu: The Ten Oxherding Pictures (IX)

Rev. Taigu again takes us for a ride with the next of the Ten Oxherding Pictures. He writes:

“Riding the bull home… As one mounts the bull, rides the bull, the world and practice itself are not experienced as obstacles anymore. The bull as an object to grasp, a goal to reach has disappeared. Practice and self are intimate. In this, carefree-ness, detachment, joy arise from the silence space of sitting. The boy is not worried anymore about where he should go, where the bull takes him to, what the Bull-boy will become. As the comment sates: this struggle is over; gain and loss are assimilated. The song of the flute is played by ten thousand things met and released. Forms and sounds play and are played. This dance is nothing but the Bodhisattva stepping into the world, freely playing with what comes and goes, fully interacting with things and beings without being caught by any…”

(Click through to watch today’s talk, and to “sit-a-long.”)

"Bulls on Parade" (Rage Against the Machine)
His microphone explodes, shatterin' the molds
Either drop the hits like De la O or get the [fudge] off
The commode, with that sure shot, sure ta make
The bodies drop, drop and don't copy yo don't call
This a co-opt, terror reigns, drenching, quenchin'
The thirst of power dons that five sided fist-a-gon
Tha rotten sore on the facade of mother gets
Bigger the trigger's cold, empty your purse

Rally around the family
with a pocket full of shells
They rally round the family
with a pocket full of shells

Weapons not home not food not shoes not need
Just feed tha war cannibal animal I walk the corner to
The rubble that used to be a library, line up to the
Mind's cemetery now what we don't know keeps
The contract's alive and movin, they don't gotta
Burn the books, they just remove while arms
Warehouses fill as quick as the cell
Come wit it now. BULLS ON PARADE!

The Zen Zero (ensō)

Wisdom Quarterly edit of Ensō Wikipedia entry

Ensō is a Japanese word meaning "circle" and a concept strongly associated with Zen Buddhism. It is one of the most common subjects of Japanese calligraphy even though it is a symbol and not a character.

It symbolizes absolute enlightenment, strength, elegance, the universe, and the void. It can also symbolize the Japanese aesthetic itself. As an "expression of the moment" it is often considered a form of minimalist expressionist art.

In Zen Buddhist painting, ensō symbolizes a moment when the mind is free to simply let the body/spirit create. The brushed ink of the circle is usually done on rice paper or silk in one movement. But the great Bankei used two strokes sometimes. And there is no possibility of modification: It shows the expressive movement of the spirit at that time.

(ioannasalajan.com)

Zen Buddhists "believe that the character of the artist is fully exposed in how s/he draws an ensō. Only a person who is mentally and spiritually complete can draw a true ensō. Some artists will practice drawing it daily, as a kind of spiritual practice."^{[Ref. 1]}

Some artists paint ensō with an opening in the circle, while others complete the circle. For the former, the opening may express various ideas -- for example that the ensō is not separate, but is part of something greater, or that imperfection is an essential and inherent aspect of existence. (See also the idea of broken symmetry).

The principle of controlling the balance of composition through asymmetry and irregularity is an important aspect of the Japanese aesthetic: Fukinsei (不均斉), the denial of perfection.

The ensō is also a sacred symbol in the Zen school of Buddhism. It is often used by Zen masters as a form of signature in their religious artwork. More on the philosophy see The Way of the Brush or Zen Calligraphy (Hitsuzendo).

(Eric_Wang_colorful_world/Flickr)

Labor Day: 20 foot waves hit California (video)

(CLICK FOR CBS VIDEO) The Wedge (surfline.com)

Great white sharks, LA County Fair (Pomona), wildfires (El Cajon Hills), monster waves, smog, Thich Nhat Hanh, traffic, sunburn -- all on the same day! As summer ends, the waves call us to meditate on California surf and sand.



Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen [dhyana] on the Sea

• VIDEO: Killer waves hit California for Labor Day Weekend
• These waves are Heavy Metal Buddhism Hawaii-style
• Surfing and the Zen Art of Happiness (Zen Waterman)
• Buddhism, meditation, srufing - Ride of a Lifetime
• Review of Saltwater Buddha: Surfing and Buddhism...

Forget about surfing these meatgrinders

A Very Buddhist Summer

Ashley Wells (Wisdom Quarterly)

Hotei Bodhisattva, the Japanese Zen "Santa Claus" often mistaken for a buddha, hanging ten (Emerson Rauth/Flickr.com)

SANTA MONICA, California - While Republicans vote and gays parade on the east coast, summer is heating up on Southern California's beaches.

I used to think I understood Buddhism. Four of these, eight of those. It was easy. And good. I didn't always realize each item had an exact meaning.

It was when my religious studies professors and Buddhist friends (kalyana-mitras) started to point directly to sutras (discourses) that were used to make these handy lists that I realized there was a lot I might not know.

One day Seven, one of our editors, was vividly talking about Buddhism's "Dependent Origination." The rest of us thought that was a Buddhist explanation, or speculation, about the origin of the universe. First cause of this illusory separate-existence? Ignorance. Easy!

But that's not what the 12 links of the formula are actually about. It's not a treatise on a First Cause, prime mover, origin, prakriti, or nurturing birthing Goddess concept who gave rise to the universe.

There's actually a reason to meditate, to cultivate calm-and-insight. It's actually something personally verifiable, which in my book makes it better than physics. I don't have a Large Hadron Collider. I don't even have a small one.

I'll never know for sure if there's a "God particle," a boson, muon, gluon, or comicon, even if I had a degree from Atheist College. at NCHUM. Speaking of atheism, I always liked the Buddha for being an atheist. But he wasn't. I'm not. He was a nontheist. And that's what we've become around here. There is? There isn't? Doesn't matter to the attainment of enlightenment and liberation.

Even the "gods" and goddesses (devas and devis), Gods (brahmas), and other higher-order beings throughout space are trapped. Most do not have the Dharma, they certainly have no Sangha, or sufficient incentive to practice. They don't see disappointment (dukkha).

And without insight-wisdom to break free of the fetters and defilements that bind us all to rebirth, there is enlightenment for them. God, who is often credited with omniscience, is not enlightened. That's amazing. I would have thought that God was.

The Buddha was a "teacher of gods and men." But in the original wording, it's devas and humans. The Gods (brahmas) won't listen. They're proud, and jealous, wrathful, subject to defiled states like lower-order beings. They don't mind calling themselves the Ultimate, the beginning and end, the All. In fact, in Buddhist cosmology, which we're always talking about at Wisdom Quarterly, they're just very well placed in the grand scheme of things... for now. Nontheism freed me from worrying about it. Good for God. Good for devas. But humans might be luckiest of all.

That's the way it seems on the beach. In California. Under the Sun as summer begins and I've stopped watching MTV. I merge with the sea on a surfboard and practice the rest of the time on a skateboard. I just wish I looked better in a bathing suit after being tattooed. And meditated more regularly.