Thanksgiving Recipe

"Gratitude to squelch my anger, and tenacity to overcome the obstacles."

Henry Winkler's recipe for success. Note that the first one is bodhisattva awareness.



(Photo of Yorkshire coble "Gratitude" ["There's Gratitude for you!"] courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

In Nerd We Trust

This is a preaching Buddha (not to be confused with a teaching Buddha). As you can see, he's enumerating something on his fingers.

Which makes me smile. I've always been amused by the fixation in my religion with numbered lists.

We're not alone in this, of course. The 99 Names of God; the 10 Commandments; the 7 Deadly Sins; the 285 Rules of Acquisition: didacticism is a hallmark of scripture-based faiths.

But we take the prize. To be precise, we take it to town. Then we get on a ship and take it 'round the world, three or four times. And we're currently working on a way to shoot it into space.

Because we have an astonishing number of numbers. (Though I can't actually report that number here, because – ahem – we've never counted them.)

The impulse is honest, of course. Our insistence on rational analysis and objective experience over revealed truth is, in my opinion, our greatest strength. Several of these lists (the 8 Worldly Dharmas, the 7 Factors of Enlightenment, the 5 Recollections, and certainly, the Eightfold Path and 4 Noble Truths) have made cameos in these pages.

It's true that the power of these teachings is somewhat diffused by our Ancestors' equal passion for the 6 Aspects of Spiciness, the 9 Manifestations of Unrealised Déjà Vu, the 17 Origins of Pre-Supper Sleepiness, and the whole Buddhist canon of catalogues – which somehow exceeds our zeal for verifying whether those things actually exist before we catalogue them.

But if our compulsive Asian bookkeeping does at times get a little precious, it's merely an over-enthusiastic response to a very cogent teaching: that religious practice is for here.

Because if you're really doing a real religion, you're not waiting for some imagined afterlife to see results. Nor do you fabricate evidence of results in this one.

You pay attention. You watch the world turning and you turning with it, and you document daily if and how this crap is working.

And you better believe you count those beans.

Because as any boffin will tell you: in faba veritas.


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

WW: Teasel

(Back in July I uploaded a photo of an uncanny field of green growing teasel [Dipsacus fullonum], encountered unexpectedly in rural country. Here's a shot of the way we usually see it: sparse, dead, and dry.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Western Zen At Its Western Zenniest

I recently stumbled on a Wikipedia entry entitled, somewhat nebulously, Zen Narratives. Among the things that might have meant, the article turns out to be a survey of innovations effected in Zen by Western adherents, and their probable origins. For those of us who find ourselves simultaneously in the West and practicing Zen, it's essential reading.

As the lede of the Buddhist Modernism section puts it:

"In the 20th century the Traditional Zen Narrative was transformed into a modern narrative, due to the power of the Western colonial forces and the modernisation of Japan, and the popularization [of Zen] in the Western world."

The fact that the article is brief and non-technical makes it signally useful. And if you want to delve into a tributary point, the embedded links can keep you page-hopping for days.

For an even more candid snapshot of Western Zen at its Western-Zenniest, check out this Talk page, linked obliquely via "Zen Narratives'" own, wherein live Western Zen practitioners address the same issues, with varying degrees of scholarship and intellectual honesty. See how far you get before the room starts spinning and you have to sit zazen for half an hour to regain clarity.

In any case, I have no idea who chose not to call this piece "Movements in Western Zen", but it's well worth a stop. Surf in and see if you don't agree.

Gasshō.


(Photo courtesy of Makia Minich and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Climate disruption on the North Pacific

Salal (Gaultheria shallon)

Western red cedar (Thuja plicata)

(A particularly disturbing consequence of global climate disruption is the rapid perishing of species unique to the North Coast.

Because we have until recently had a specifically regional climate, a great many types of plants and animals have evolved to live only here. [Or here and and similar places they've invaded, such as the UK and the South Island of New Zealand.] These species have become emblematic of this place and the human cultures that developed here.

Like the disappearance of our starfish and the dying crowns of our bigleaf maples, watching these symbols of my homeland suffer and die in the arid blast-furnace heat of the new "normal" is heartrending. Other key examples are the salal and Western red cedar pictured here.

I saw several abnormally hot, dry summers in my youth, but the salal and cedars never died.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

The Jackalope Koan

If you think a horned rabbit exists, then you know nothing. For there is no such thing.

And if you don't think a horned rabbit exists, then you know nothing. For it clearly does.


(Extrapolated from versions of a teaching found in three sutras [Surangama, Platform, and Lankavatara], in which the Buddha or an Ancestor is said to have referred to a horned rabbit.)

(Graphic courtesy of MaxPixel.com and a generous contributor.)

WW: Jack o' lantern 2022

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.