WW: Christmas in July

(It's difficult to see at this resolution, but this tree – overhanging an idyllic spot on a swamp – is richly decorated with fishing tackle. Bass gear, for the most part. This in spite of the fact that as far as I know, no-one has ever pulled a fish out of here. But catching fish is not really the point in a place like this, at this time of year.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hermitcraft: Mint

Inexplicably growing in a field

A great blessing of summer is the bounty of wild mint that appears during this season in most parts of the world. Various Menthe species are native to virtually every place on earth, and owing to their pleasant fragrance and flavour, exotics too have been introduced alongside them. And because they grow exuberantly, they tend to take the highway.

And I do mean highway, since roadsides are the most common place to find them. Second are the banks of lakes, rivers, and streams. (In fact, roadside mints are usually growing in the ditch there.)

That said, I'm constantly amazed to find mint in the most unlikely places, such as open fields or forest clearings, for no evident reason. As a hiker, biker, and forager, I'm forever stumbling across it.

Because they cross-pollinate promiscuously, no two colonies of wild mint are alike. And that makes each discovery a new resource with its own nuanced taste; more useful for some things, less for others.

And so every clump is worth cataloguing and revisiting as need dictates.

I mostly use my mints in tea, either alone, as the entire teastock; as a mixing ingredient in herbal blends; an amendment for hot black or green tea; or – my personal favourite – an anchor ingredient for sunshine tea.

It's also delicious in fruit drinks, particularly lemonade. I have a vivid memory of painting a house one summer in my university years, where a riotous patch of tall, large-leaved peppermint had overtaken one of the flower beds. I'd show up early in the morning with a vacuum jug of well-iced lemonade, into which I would stuff a fistful of this mint, after first bruising it by rolling the bunch between my palms. Then I'd ditch the jug in a cool dark recess and paint away. By lunch time – a good three or four hours later – I had as much of the most delicious lemonade I've ever tasted as I could drink. It made working through the hottest part of an August afternoon almost pleasurable.

But even that wasn't as potent as it might have got. I've since seen Middle Eastern recipes that are basically a paste of pureed mint and ground ice, suspended in pungent, whole-lemon Arab lemonade. I haven't tried this yet, but it sounds brilliant.

The Arabs really know how to take the edge off a stiffling day.

Mint also makes interesting sauces, vinegars, wine and cordials, and jelly, and can be used as an accent in salads. Lebanese tabbouleh – a go-to dog-day dish for me – amounts to a blend of cold bulgur or couscous, tomatoes, onion, and mint, served chilled. Really fine barbecue fare.

For all of the above you're best off with fresh mint, but it also dries famously and isn't bad like that in hot drinks, though the flavour fades after six months. Mint-enhanced cocoa is particularly nice on winter days.

So keep your eye out for wild mints along the way as you go about your summer peregrinations. It's a timely asset.

WW: COVID country, part II

(Behind another school.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Dukkha

"As my gramma, Nana Roseannadanna, used to say: it's always somethin'."

Gilda Radner


(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Monks' graveyard

(Brothers' cemetery in the forest behind the Benedictine monastery in my home town. One of my favourite places since childhood. Plus I saw a mountain beaver here today.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Rock Groups 2020

God help us, here we are again. There but for the grace, &c. And if ever we needed rock groups – as many rock groups as possible - this Periodic Year of Spontaneous Karmic Adjustment is it.

And so, in continuing public service to my suffering species, I offer yet again, with gratitude and unbowed defiance, the list of pre-born groups still waiting in the bardo as of this date.

With respect, please liberate them.

The rules again, for those distracted:

• All proposed names are available to any taker. I hereby repudiate all ownership, overt or implied, of any of them, nor is any trademark, copyright, or other legal superstition attached.

• However, do recall that nefarious others sometimes steal my ideas without informing me, often – and this is particularly low - before I've even had a chance to think them up myself. So if you find something you like, be sure to Google the crap out of it to verify it isn't already somebody else.

• Now how much would you pay? Don't answer yet, because you also get the added privilege of telling reporters that your group name was bestowed by a Zen hermit monk. That alone oughta get you press.

For the rest, names that suggested genres when they occurred to me are so identified in the list below, but you aren't bound to respect that. If you fancy an entry, but sing another song, just smash and grab.

Therefore, look smart, demons that bedevil us. For here comes…

Rock Groups 2020

Kino Neutrino
William's Axe
Black Like Him
Raging Atoll
The Kill Count Kiddies
Kiss Mary Kill
The Xiphoid Process
Third Bird
Ouroboros
Whipsnake
2020
Mainframe
Bob War and the Post Pounders (alt country)
Hammerblossom
Energetic X
Häzmät
Ghillie Dhu
2Ys
Juggler
Wildebeest
Logical Lizard
Spindletop (Southern country rock)
Sporadic E
Headbone
Earthstar
Leatherhead
The Mongrels
Satanic Panic
Aero-Dynamic
Rinderpest
Tubafor
Dire Wolf
Dachschünd
C. Klamp
Rubber Feat
Isometric
The Practice Babies
Numb Chuck
Anorak
Buffalo Jump
Hat Trick
Экраноплан
Bang
OEM
C-Horse-7

(Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com and a generous photographer.)

WW: Albino foxgloves

(Digitalis purpurea comes in four shades: purple, pink, white, and albino. [Which isn't white, though it's white.] That last is in the photo.

Here on the North Coast we often see entire hillsides covered in this species at this time of year, and typically presenting all four phenotypes. What the casual onlooker may not notice, however, is that it's not just the blossom that displays the variation. If you look closely, you'll see that the purple plants also have deep purple leaf and stem veins, the pink ones faded purple, the white ones dark green (with purple spots inside the blossom), and the albinos very pale green – nearly white – with yellow spots inside the blossom.

Thus, though the flower spikes are of course most showy, the phenotype is actually expressed in the entire plant, not just the blossoms.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Foreign Invasion

Greetings, honoured sangha. This week I offer Japanese for Zenners, with this basal concept:

マインドフルネス 。

Can't read it? Let me help:

Ma-i-n-do-fu-ru-ne-su.

I think what threw you is that it's written in kana, unlike other elemental Zen concepts, which are usually expressed in kanji.

"But," you say, "that's not hiragana!"

Ah, but I didn't say hiragana, did I?

In a fascinating Tricycle magazine article, writer Karen Jensen reports that Japanese Zen teachers are pinning their hopes on a patently unAsian remedy to their religion's problems.

You see, in contemporary Japan, Zen – like most religions there – has devolved into something more akin to a fraternal lodge than a spiritual practice. Today it's more associated in the public mind with the national obsession with rites of passage, than anything higher. And this shallow, agnostic role naturally obscures the Path in Japan.

Faced with this challenge, some Japanese teachers are resorting to desperate measures. To wit: for the first time since Dogen, they are injecting foreign practice into their teachings.

That's why maindofurunesu (say it aloud with me; feelin' it?) is written in katakana, the syllabary of foreign words.

Because it is a foreign word. For a foreign concept.

To be brutally precise: a Western one.

At this point, some Zenners are probably rushing into the street, looking for a statue of me to push over.

But the joke's on them. Hermits are pre-cancelled.

That's why we're hermits.

Anyway, yeah. "Mindfulness" is not a Zen thing. It's a purely Western one, albeit one that's been kneaded into non-Asian Buddhist practice over the last 50 years.

Which means, among other things, that when you advocate it, you're being Eurocentric.

And thank God for that, because mindfulness is darn good practice.

Not that it's exactly absent from historic Asian models, mind you. At the root of Japanese Zen, for example, is the notion of nen, which refers to spontaneous thought, and by extension, delusion, and by further extension, awareness of same and the necessity of waiting for that second thought, which entire process leads to "clear-seeing". That insight, and its implications, are fundamental to enlightenment practice; some seekers call it the entire path.

But as Brad Warner has pointed out in his excellent essay on the distinction, "mindfulness" is not nen. It's a little less hard-core (no pun intended), a little less "religious", and a lot more accessible. Which, as he says, makes it packageable, and therefore marketable.

Which is why he avoids it.

I'm hip. I too am deeply suspicious of bourgeois Buddhism, with its feel-good bandwagon hustle. But I'm not ready to toss out mindfulness on that basis alone. After all, the local nursery sells concrete garden Buddhas to a decidedly non-monastic clientele, but I still have a Gautama statue on my altar.

But I do insist that mindfulness practice imposes recognition of the fact that Asian Zen is not all Zen. Let's have done with beating others about the head over bowing and chanting, or Dharma transmission, or ascetic practice, or submission to human beings, or other non-Buddhic calculus that accreted over the two millennia we were a uniquely Asian religion.

Because if it's true that Buddhism can't be "just anything" (and it is; this is a defined path, with fundamental teachings), it's also true that the response to those teachings is as varied, and as valid, as anything else in this universe.

And that's a blessing.

(Fortunately. Because ain't crap you can do about it.)


(Photo of a sign on the grounds of the Mid-America Buddhist Association courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Foxglove

(Digitalis purpurea.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.