The Grandfather Paradox

This graphic illustrates the grandfather paradox, a secular koan demonstrating the inability of the human mind to grasp reality.

Alright, it's actually La avo-paradokso, which means "the grandfather paradox" in Esperanto, because it's still July and I'm still licensed to go a bit off the rails. And as we'll see, those rails can be hard to discern, anyway.

For starters, let's acknowledge from the outset that the above premise cannot be tested, because we don't have a tempomaŝino (time machine). But that doesn't stop us using it to challenge our mental faculties.

So, starting at 12 o'clock and proceeding horloĝdirekte (clockwise):

I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past.
I kill my grandfather.
My father isn't born.
I'm not born.
I don't invent a time machine.
I don't travel into the past.
My grandfather is born.
My father is born.
I'm born.
I invent a time machine.
I travel into the past...

You can see that though the proposition is (science-)fictional, the conceptual challenge is real. It's an example of a reality that the human mind can't perceive:

– It's impossible to kill your grandfather, because if you did, you wouldn't exist.
– But you do exist, so if you could go back in time you could totally kill your grandfather.
– Except you couldn't, because if you did, you'd never exist in the first place, so you couldn't kill anybody.
– But you do exist, therefore…

The solution? There isn't one.

Not if you're human.

Because your primitive reason runs on logic, which is why all the Vidyārājas are sniggering at you.

(However, consider that we might come to realise even this concept if we could live it. The human brain has the capacity to pencil out and penetrate circumstances that utterly lack logical sense, if it stands in front of them. I only hope our grandfathers arm themselves well if ever that comes to pass.)

Buddhism has long taught that time is neither linear nor universal; timelines are numberless, each running at its own speed and in its own direction. The variance between the classical reincarnation of Hindu and some Buddhist worldviews, and Zen's messy ad hoc concept of transmigration, originates in this contention.

That's why we developed koans, which are meant to jazz that part of the brain that can't grok the great stretch of reality that lies beyond dualistic perception. ("What was your face before your grandmother was born?" seems an appropriate example.) This also goes a long way toward explaining those wild tales of monastery practice: the decades of mu-pondering, the dharma combat, insight expressed by farting and slapping and barking like a dog. Because extracranial notions exceed language.

You can find an in-depth philosophical exploration of the grandfather paradox, as well as similar thought experiments, at BYJU'S page about it. And while you're there, take a moment to marvel that this page was uploaded by a company that educates children. I've got a feeling India's going to be running this popsicle stand in another generation.

In the meantime, why not just be nice to your grandfather? So maybe you can build your time machine without him, but who decided we needed that more than we need him?

See if you can wrap your choanocytes around that, Spongebob.

The End of All Things

"I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds."

Krishna, in the Bhagavad Gita

(A variant Hindu translation of the Oppenheimer quotation more famous in the West.)


(Photo courtesy of Robert Couse-Baker and Wikimedia Commons.)

Don't Do Anything

As non-Vajrayana Western converts to Buddhism will tell you, we have a slightly awkward relationship with Tibet. Not that we have any real bone to pick with our Tantric brothers and sisters. It's mostly just a difference of style. Practice models in the three other common convert denominations – Zen, Vipassana, Theravada – are pretty stripped-down, with Zen probably being the most "gorgeous" of the very Puritan lot. Tibetan forms, meanwhile, are downright High Church.

More prosaic is the simple fact that the Dalai Lama is the only Buddhist most Westerners can name, and since our media regularly imply that he's the "boss of Buddhism", we're all generally believed to owe him fealty. Thus, non-Buddhists are often surprised to learn that I don't really follow the guy's news – he's fine as far as august spiritual figures go, but carries no greater weight with me than the Pope or other sincere religious celebrities.

Similarly, Tibetan Buddhist stereotypes often pass for Buddhist, full stop. Yet I rarely chant "om"; I don't own a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead; my Zen teaching embraces transmigration (which I don't necessarily buy, either) rather than reincarnation; and therefore we don't believe past masters can inhabit children.

All of which to say, non-Tantric Neo-Buddhists tend to know fairly little about that tradition or its teachings.

So I was grateful when a fellow Mastodonian shared a particularly provocative passage from Tilopa, an Indian sage whose wisdom looms large in Tibet. Upon further exploration I learned that the posted lines are actually the heart statement of the great Tantra master's programme.

The interpretation presented can be traced to Alan Watts, and reads as follows:

No thought, no reflection, no analysis,
No cultivation, no intention;
Let it settle itself.

Certainly a Zen-friendly sentiment, in that we-say-these-things-a-lot-but-never-do-them kind of way. And other translations found elsewhere enrich the context:

Don’t recall.
Don’t imagine.
Don’t think.
Don’t examine.
Don’t control.
Rest.

A bit more Soto in flavour than Watts' Rinzai-esque lines, perhaps, consisting of nuts and bolts exhortations ("act this way") rather than a self-absent explication of phenomena. But taken together – as is usually the case with these two schools of Japanese Zen – they bring greater insight.

And finally, this fraternal take:

Let go of what has passed.
Let go of what may come.
Let go of what is happening now.
Don’t try to figure anything out.
Don’t try to make anything happen.
Relax, right now, and rest.

(Both of the non-Watts translations quoted here are the work of Tibetan Buddhism teacher Ken Mcleod.)

So I'm paying this forward, as a particularly valuable meditation for Zenners, regardless of source.

Because it's not just good stuff, it's Zen stuff. And also good Zen stuff.



(Tableau of Tilopa courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Homo SNAFUensis

According to Wikipedia's Chàn article, Zen's progenitors identified not one but two paths, or "entrances", to enlightenment. The first is via teaching, an intellectual process in which one reasons one's way to freedom. The second is practice, a Zen synonym for meditation and supporting effort.

This œcumenical perspective is undoubtedly Indian in orgin. Contemporary Hinduism, for example, recognises four equally-valid devotional systems, amounting in essence to four discrete religions, but all accepted as legitimate Hindu worship.

But modern Zenners will find that First Entrance challenging, given that intervening generations have rejected all but practice as authentic Zen. We may attend to teachings – particularly those given in-person by ordained masters – but we justify that as fuel for our Second Entrance zazen practice. (Although to be entirely candid, Soto for one has allowed a substantial whack of intellectual pursuit back in through the kitchen. So perhaps we should call the two Chàn approaches the Front Entrance and the Back Entrance.)

As for the Second Entrance, the Wikipedia entry illuminates four levels of primordial Chàn meditation:

• Practice of the retribution of enmity: to accept all suffering as the fruition of past transgressions, without enmity or complaint
• Practice of the acceptance of circumstances: to remain unmoved even by good fortune, recognising it as evanescent
• Practice of the absence of craving: to be without craving, which is the source of all suffering
• Practice of accordance with the Dharma: to eradicate wrong thoughts and practice the six perfections, without having any "practice"

The continuity here is stunning, as all of that's readily recognised in current Zen. If it's true that we've largely abandoned the First Entrance, here we are 1600 years later, still practicing the crap out of the Second.

And it's still working.

Proof that in spite of our comfortable fallacies, the human mind hasn't changed over the past several millennia. That all by itself is sufficient cause to mind the Ancestors.


(Photo courtesy of Kari Shea and Unsplash.com.)

Good Song, Good Movie: Sabhyata and Sita Sings the Blues

Here's a neat convergence of genius, for a little customary Rusty Ring summer fun.

First off you've got Sabhyata, by Indian/Algerian group Karmix. That all by itself is awesome, but a YouTube artist had the good sense to double down on its awesomeness by creating this compelling video for it, by sampling animation from Sita Sings the Blues.

Which is undangerously legal, because that excellent film is public domain, by unambiguous declaration of Nina Paley, its author. (If you missed the whole ridiculous attempt at corporate piracy against Paley, read about it here.)

And that move begat an opening for the luminous work embedded here. So screw you, rights-scalpers.

And if you haven’t seen it yet, check out Sita as well. It's a really entertaining riff on a tale from Hindu scripture; the hip, wisecracking shadow puppets alone are worth the price of admission.

Roger Ebert loved it. So do I. Free o' charge and at full resolution, right here.

Watch both at full screen on your computer, bare minimum. Television is even better. Good speakers will also greatly enhance the experience.

Happy July to all, from all of us here at Rusty Ring.

The Koan of Tradition

An aspect of Meditation in the Wild (Rusty Ring review here) that I greatly appreciated was author Charles S. Fisher's relentless pursuit of verifiable history in our practice models. This, as he points out, is hard to come by, given the piecemeal nature of early Buddhist documentation. Nevertheless, Fisher found many thought-provoking differences between current teaching and historical fact; I listed several in my review.

But I left out the most compelling, for more thorough consideration later:

The Shakyas, Fisher says, had no king.

Let that settle in for a minute. This is the approximate Buddhist equivalent of saying that Christ wasn't poor. It throws shade on a central element of our world view, and poses some provocative questions.

And as it turns out, my brother Charles was precise: not only were Gautama's people – a northern nation called the Shakyas – democratic, they weren't even Brahmins. In other words, the entire Buddhic origin story is false; Gautama was not in fact a prince. Nor was he a member of the immutable, unattainable Indian overclass. He was probably a Kshatriya, that is, an ordinary citizen, albeit at the top of the common heap.

Per Palikannon.com:

The Sākyans evidently had no king. Theirs was a republican form of government, probably with a leader, elected from time to time. The administration and judicial affairs of the gotta [clan] were discussed in their Santhāgāra…

(Note that final word, which clearly shares etymology with "sangha".)

This inconvenient truth may well be a gift, that employing authentic Zen don't-know-mind will smelt into usable gold. Therefore, may I respectfully suggest we question ourselves on this matter – without, as is our practice, answering – in the following vein:

• How does our renewed knowledge of the Buddha's true origins change our understanding of his perspectives and motivations?


• Why did we change the story?


• What does it mean that we changed the story?


• How does the factual version challenge us?


• Scare us?


• Uplift us?


• How about the mythical version?


• Are we required to correct this misconception?


• In what ways might the "enhanced" story endanger authentic practice?


• Can facts endanger authentic practice?


• Can both versions coexist in our practice?


• If so, how?


• If not, what are we called to do, as individual Zenners?


• Is this a problem?

And so on.


Peace and progress to the nation of seekers.

(Photo of morning in Kapilavastu, Nepali city of the Buddha's birth, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Hermitcraft: Trailer Park Samosas

Just in time for holiday entertaining, here's a killer recipe for an easy, addictive appetiser or side dish. Both the "Quick" and "Better" versions can be filled with either hamburger or lentils, suitable for omnivore and vegetarian alike, and the ingredients are readily available from most any North American supermarket. The "Quick" recipe is indeed quick: about half an hour from groceries to piping hot, fragrant samosas. The "Better" one takes a little longer, but is well worth the extra time if you've got it. (Note: both are also fairly spicy; for milder results, dial back or omit the jalapeños.)

Pastry for both versions:

2 tubes ready-bake crescent roll dough, for 16 rolls in all. Keep tubes chilled until the moment of use.

"Quick" filling:

1 tablespoon ghee or cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced onion
1 1/2 teaspoons jarred jalapeños, minced
a few good grinds of fresh black pepper
2 teaspoons prepared curry powder
pinch each ground cinnamon and cloves (just a pinch; you shouldn't taste either in the finished product)
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon minced celery
1 pound very lean ground beef, or cooked lentils (about 1/2 cup raw)


"Better" filling:

1 tablespoon ghee or cooking oil
1 inch grated gingerroot

"Better" spice mix; beef or lentils will be stirred into this

1 garlic clove (about 1/2 teaspoon), minced
1 tablespoon minced onion
1 1/2 teaspoons jarred jalapeños, minced
a few good grinds of fresh ground black pepper
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon turmeric
good pinch garam masala, if available
1/2 teaspoon coriander powder
pinch each ground cinnamon and cloves (just a pinch; you shouldn't taste either in the finished samosas)
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 cup diced tomatoes
1/4 teaspoon thyme
1 tablespoon minced celery
1 pound very lean ground beef, or cooked lentils (about 1/2 cup raw)

Instructions for both (all four?) filling recipes:

Preheat oven to 375F.

Warm ghee or oil in a heavy skillet over medium-low heat. Add all ingredients up to tomatoes, in order, and simmer gently until onion is translucent and spices are fragrant. Add tomatoes, thyme, and celery, raise heat slightly, and cook until celery is soft and mixture is pasty, scraping it frequently about with a spatula.

Add beef or lentils, mix thoroughly with spice mixture, and simmer until beef is browned or lentils have thickened, about 10 minutes. Scrape frequently with the edge of a spatula; if the mixture gets too dry, add a little water .

To make samosas:

Unroll crescent roll dough and separate into triangles.

Put a heaping tablespoon of filling in the centre of the wide end of each triangle. Pull up the short corners and seal them together on top of the filling; pull the long last corner over the top of the sealed short ones and around the back to form a round, filled pastry; pinch and seal all seams closed so that no filling shows. Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375°F for 10 minutes or until golden brown. (Take care they don't burn; these bake very quickly.) Serve warm, wrapped in a tea towel, as finger food.

Good Book: Meditation in the Wild

In Meditation in the Wild: Buddhism's Origin in the Heart of Nature, Charles S. Fisher writes:

"Buddhism was born in the forests of India. [...] The Buddha found his original revelation while practicing as a forest monk. [...] He developed an understanding of nature which would become part of the remedy he proposed for the problem of human discontent. [...] He chose wild nature - the evolutionary context in which humans arose - as the place to do this. [...] He went to the place in the human mind where there is understanding without words."

The next 315 pages go on to prove his thesis.

Not that it's easy; as a quotation from Theravada scholar Richard Gombrich points out:

"So much of the material attributed to [the Buddha]… is so obviously inauthentic that we can suspect almost everything. In fact, it seems impossible to establish what the Buddha really taught. We can only know what early Buddhists believed he taught."

And this, as it happens, is very different from what we've been told. For example, some of their records maintain that Gautama encountered his famous Four Sights on the way to the forest, where he sat and pondered what he saw. Others suggest that the pivotal debate between Mara and Gautama on the eve of his Enlightenment was actually about the Devil's contention that the young man had no right to strive to end suffering. All those statues of him touching the earth, they contend, depict him saying, "Check it out, dipstick: I'm home. Go find someone who cares."

But outdoor practice was hard – even harder than it is now – with dangerous wildlife and tribal warriors still ruling the outback, and the impulse to organise was strong. Yet The Kindred Sayings of Kassapa show the Buddha "bemoan[ing] the passing of the forest way of life and criticis[ing] those who depart from it"; he may have gone so far as to advocate a straight-up return to hunter-gathering, according to texts that describe his sangha living off the land, hunting game, and never returning to the Red Dust World. The fact that Buddhism spread to new lands precisely as Indian forests were clearcut leads one to wonder what exactly the motivations of those first "missionaries" were. (It also throws intriguing light on the Bodhidharma story. Canon holds that when asked why he came all the way to China to sit under a tree, he replied: "Because this is the best tree in the world." Perhaps his actual words were something like, "Because you still have trees.")

Conjecture aside, the founding generation of Buddhists exhorted aspirants to imitate Gautama literally. Mahakasyapa, a member of the Buddha's inner circle, died a loud and proud hermit, as did no less than Sariputra, of Heart Sutra fame. Finally, reports of early Western observers – Greek travellers – confirm that the first Buddhists were itinerants, without clergy or temples.

But as the movement grew respectable and sedentary, hermits were increasingly viewed as "unsocial, possibly antisocial, and potentially dangerous to established Buddhism." This last repeated pious tales of the Buddha's forest practice, but openly discouraged others from emulating it. Old-school monks, known as "mahallas", were accused of backsliding and dissolution and reviled by the ordained. (Some verses quoted in Wild are stunningly similar to the rant St. Benedict unleashed on Sarabaites and Gyrovagues at an identical stage in Christian history.)

To be sure, over the past 2500 years Buddhist back-to-the-landers have continued to crop up; modern Zen and Theravada are remnants of two such rebellions. Possibly Wild's greatest gift is the two and half millennia of these forgotten reformers it lifts from obscurity. Along the way its author weighs the relative merit of individual cases. He reviews Issa's suburban eremiticism, which echoes most current hermit practices, with guarded approval, but – interestingly – takes Bashō, Ryokan, and Kamo No Chomei firmly to the woodshed.

And that's where I get off the train. In these passages, Fisher reminds me of Thoreau's critics, calling down suspects for claims they never made. His indictment of Bashō does ring, but he repeatedly spins individual innovation in self-directed practices as weak or duplicitous; in the case of Ikkyu, he indulges in crass bourgeois morality. Somehow, in all of his research on us, he missed our core vow: "I will neither take nor give orders." I may raise an eyebrow at others (OK: I do raise an eyebrow at others) but ultimately I have no right to deplore them. Licence to judge is a delusion of the ordained.

But this mild annoyance in no way diminishes the significance of Fisher's work. His journalism is both intrepid and thorough, penetrating the Thai forest lineage – a modern restoration movement – at length and documenting the gradual deterioration of Zen, from Bodhidharma's boldly-planted hermit flag, to the dismissal of 19th century hermit Ryokan (his own beefs with him aside) as a "lunatic". He finishes with an account of his own brushes with eremitical practice (Fisher is not a practising hermit per se, but is attracted to our forms) and a light survey of four contemporary American hermits. All in all, it's the most comprehensive treatment of the subject I've found anywhere.

And I found it impossible to put down. With any luck, Meditation in the Wild will stand for many years as Eremitical Buddhism 101 for sincere students of the Buddha's way.

Poem: As You Like It (The Hermit)

Through the magic of Twitter, I recently met Prabhu Iyer, a poet in Chennai (India). Among his many compelling works is a Hermit cycle that succinctly encapsulates the eremitical impulse and mindset. He has graciously given me permission to post a movement I particularly like here, and so I'm sharing it with you.

The envoi alone could serve as the motto on the Great Seal of the Nation of Seekers, if we had such regalia.


AS YOU LIKE IT (THE HERMIT)
by Prabhu Iyer

Let the film end before intermission
characters be underdeveloped
let the plot lie open like cut veins

and let the background score
resonate in the hall at its shrill note

It's a broken piece of the heart
cracked into two:
two faces reside here now
on either sides of the chasm.

Make whatever you wish out of it
Sweet or bitter end,
tragedy, comedy or farce
or thriller or horror,
write your own story, make it up.

take any road up the hill
to eternity beyond.


(Скит [Hermit Dwelling], by Аполлинарий Михайлович Васнецов [Apollinary Vasnetsov], courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

Street Level Zen: Where It's At

"The only Zen you find at the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there."

Robert Pirsig

(Photo of Royal Enfield Thunderbird on a Himalayan mountain pass courtesy of Gopal Vijayaraghavan and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermitcraft: Chai

It's Christmas, when thoughts naturally turn to chai. Well, they do if they're mine. Chai is not in fact a Christmas drink; it's the daily beverage of India, a nation that hardly has Christmas at all. (And the word itself simply means "tea". Like salsa [sauce] and baguette [stick], it's a humdrum, general term that English turned into a fancy, specific one.)

But chai is warm like Christmas, sweet like Christmas, and spicy like Christmas. It's the ultimate comfort food, and as good as it is all year, it's especially good now.

The trick to good chai is to mind the honey and not be Nordic with the spices. Hence the downfall of commercial efforts here in North America: too sweet, too bland.

Many years ago I set out to develop the perfect chai recipe. I spent months at it, pushing this, pulling that, until I arrived at the recipe below. I have since received favourable reviews from a wide variety of guests, from tea and chai connoisseurs to rank beginners. And from more than one Indian, a fact of which I am inordinately proud.

So in honour of the season, I share with all interested my most valuable possession. Wield it wisely.

PERFECT CHAI (or: Kensho in a Cup)

For one oversized mug or two teacups:

1 1/2 cups cold water
1/2 cup milk
2 teaspoons strong black loose tea, or two teabags of same*
1/2 teaspoon minced gingerroot
Two inches of cinnamon stick, shredded
2 cloves
1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds
2 cumin seeds (I mean it. Two seeds.)
2 peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon whole cardamom seeds
1 teaspoon anise seeds
a pinch of orange zest, if desired (adds bitterness if the tea leaves aren't strong enough, but go easy)
Enough honey to make drinking pleasant; typically about two teaspoons.

For a pot:

3 cups cold water
1 cup milk
4 teaspoons strong black loose tea, or four teabags of same*
1 teaspoon minced gingerroot
4 cloves
2 teaspoons whole coriander seeds
3 cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon plus 1/4 teaspoon whole cardamom seeds
3 inches cinnamon stick, shredded
3 peppercorns
2 teaspoons anise seeds
orange zest, as above
About four teaspoons of honey.

*Any strong black tea will do. If using teabags, cut them open and dump the leaves in loose. (Always the best policy, even when brewing ordinary tea.)

Place all ingredients in a saucepan and warm gently. Mind that the chai doesn't boil; it shouldn't even bubble. Heat for a minimum of 20 minutes; 45 or better is optimum. (If you plan to steep the chai more than two hours, omit one peppercorn.) Strain into cups, returning the spices to the pot between rounds.

Chai can be made ahead and refrigerated, as long as it's reheated gently. It's also good chilled.

Chai arhats know that success in this powerful alchemy, regardless of recipe, relies on the Four Noble Truths:

1. All ingredients must be infused together. Do not add milk or honey at the table.
2. Chai is all about the spices; if you can taste the honey, it's over-sweet.
3. Boiling is fatal. It flattens the water, exhausts the spices, and burns the milk.
4. A good masala is equal parts quantity and variety. Cumin and peel counter sweetness, and should be just barely detectable. Cloves, pepper, cinnamon, cardamom, and coriander provide mouth and aroma and should be pronounced, without however overpowering the cup. And, crucially: the digestives (anise, ginger, milk, honey) make the whole thing possible. Without them you've got a harsh, even nauseating, stew. If your chai comes out coarse on the tongue or hard on the stomach, pump these up.

Chai goes wherever cocoa does. Take it carolling, or to football games, or serve it at parties. It's also a famous after-meal digestive. I have chai with breakfast most Sundays, steeped during the morning sit.

So from all of us here at Rusty Ring, many happy returns of the season, and best wishes for the new year.

Hermitcraft: How to Make Ghee

I had never made ghee before I went to the mountain. In the planning stages of that project, having been raised on tales of people who starved eating rabbit, I believed I needed a source of dietary fat. (Wild rabbits have no fat, according to backwoods lore, hence you can die on a full stomach if you eat only that.) I'd heard about ghee for years, how versatile it was, how good it tasted, and how it kept for months without refrigeration. So that spring I put up four pints of the stuff, for use during my ango.

I found instructions on various Internet sites, but most or all of them were more complicated than necessary. Therefore, because ghee really is useful, especially for people who don't have refrigeration, I submit my recipe.

HOW TO MAKE GHEE

First, copy the following list of ingredients exactly and procure them from a licensed full-service grocer.

Full List of Ingredients:
1. Butter.

Next, melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. When liquefied, turn the temperature up to an active simmer. You're cooking off the water, which is in all butter, and so it will spit and carry on like any hot fat with water in it. DO NOT STIR. (Reason follows.)

You're also allowing the milk solids in the butter to congeal and sink to the bottom. This is the difference between ghee and drawn or clarified butter; many websites mistakenly equate the two. Ghee is cooked beyond simple separation, until all the water has steamed away and -- very important -- the milk solids have browned. This is what gives ghee its rich flavour, sometimes described as nutty, sweet, or lemony.

The only delicate part is telling when to take the pan off the heat, and that's only delicate because you have to do it by smell. First the ghee will go still; water gone, the bubbling stops. Not long after that, the kitchen will suddenly fill with a buttery scent some associate with baking croissants; to me, it's the smell of shortbread. It's a rich, sumptuous fragrance that takes no prisoners; you'll know it when it happens.

Tilt the pan gently at this point and note that the even layer of gunk on the bottom has a pastry-like, toast-brown aspect. That's your cue to take it off the heat.

Filter the ghee immediately, while still hot and thin. I use a paper coffee filter for this, for its fine mesh and ease of clean-up. (Woodstove Dharma strikes again.) You can also use muslin, cheesecloth, or a steel-screen coffee filter.

Pour the filtered ghee into a lidded jar or tub, and you're done.

Fact is, there are only two ways you can screw this up:

1. By becoming distracted (for example by drying paint, which is more exciting than watching butter melt) and allowing the milk solids on the bottom to burn rather than brown, giving the ghee an off flavour.

2. By boiling the ghee so vigorously that some slops on the stove and sets your house on fire, rendering flavour problems relatively moot by comparison.

The fix for both is the same: never leave the kitchen until the ghee is off the stove. I wipe down the counter, wash a few dishes, start another recipe, whatever I can do without stepping more than a metre away from the simmering pot. Adventure averted.

So, what kind of butter is best? Again, details are important: you must only use butter made from the milk of some animal. Do not attempt to make ghee from roofing tar, modelling clay, margarine, or old tires; the flavour will be disappointing.

Aside from that, any butter will do. Many websites insist the butter be unsalted; some insist it be expensive; some say it must be organic. The fact is, all butter works. On the Indian subcontinent, ghee is commonly made of yak butter, but the stores where I live tend to sell out of that before I get there, so I use cow butter. The sole difference between the salted and unsalted is purity: marginally-refined butter must be salted to stop all the solids that have been left in it going rancid. Unsalted butter must be more refined, to remove the spoil-prone proteins that would otherwise require salt, and this extra processing raises the price.

Because it has less by-catch to precipitate out, unsalted butter renders the most ghee per pound of butter. (Typically just a shade less than the original amount.) Good-quality salted butter renders slightly less ghee than that, but the ghee is not salty; the salt drops out with the rest of the solids. Even the cheapest, crappiest, scariest butter you can buy (that infamous single paper-wrapped rough-hewn slab that smells like cheese and tastes like salt paste) makes excellent ghee. There's just less of it. (Much less; you'll get about two thirds the original amount. In other words, a third of that machete butter, isn't butter.)

Ghee has less cholesterol than butter and keeps well without refrigeration if stored in a cool dark place. Since the crust left on the bottom of your pan is also what makes butter burn at high temperature, you can fry in ghee. And it can be used at the table like whole butter. The flavour is pleasant but subtle, and is compatible with most dishes.

Now that I'm initiated, I gotta have ghee. I fry potatoes in it, pop popcorn, and of course, sauté my masala. A pound or two put up, and I'm fixed for the year.

What was it they used to say on TV? "Try it, you'll like it."

Why Doesn't This Barbarian Have a Beard?

This blog brought to you by the
Loyal Order of Crazy White Boys.

Recently a sangha sister said one of the nicest things I've heard in a long time. She compared me to Bodhidharma. Like the best of kind words, it was "soit dit en passant," an aside dropped on the way to another point. But for a modern hermit, it was sustenance.

Bodhidharma was the founder of Zen. A war veteran from India, or possibly Persia, he left for darkest China in the early 5th century, having grown disgusted with the violence of the "civilised" world and the self-satisfied nature of established Buddhism. Determined to practice exactly as the Buddha instructed, he sat zazen for nine years, eschewing all outward forms of practice. In the end he was enlightened, and his "just sit" teaching opened the path of Chàn (Zen).

As you can see, my man Bodhidharma was a white guy, with the big nose, spidery hands, and full beard typical of his race. This fact remains central to his historical identity,

Photo taken months ago in
front of my meditation hut.
I swear I had no idea.

as he is often referred to in Asian texts, somewhat redundantly, as "the bearded barbarian from the West."

Apparently, other unruly Caucasian monks may also raise his iconic image in some minds. Of course, I got a long way to go before I'm Bodhidharma. Any round-eyed rebel can go around in a robe and beard and sneer a lot; it's the sitting that makes the saint. But in a world and tradition where hermits are often suspected and rejected, it's nice that someone noticed the family resemblance.

Real Men Drink Tea

(This is one of my most popular bylines. It's a bit dated now; anybody else remember that "Coffee Achievers" ad campaign, wherein the coffee industry tried to flog their product as health food? But the sentiments remain mine, and I still get kind words about it from time to time. For any friends who missed it, and those who have asked for a valid URL, here it is.)

For a nation whose birthing cry was an act of vandalism protesting the high price of tea, Americans are strangely ambivalent on the subject today. While working-class guys in India, Japan and the UK belt down tea by the thermos-capful with nary a qualm, American men write it off as wimp juice. It's a historical riddle, really. The mere suggestion that tea might be unmanly would have prompted those paint-smeared, buckskin-clad Bostonians of yesteryear to heave the sceptic into the harbour like so much top-grade pekoe, yet their descendants fear the stuff like tight briefs. How did we fall so far?

It's tempting to pin the demise of the noble leaf in America on coffee. As a he-man beverage, coffee brings a lot to the party. It looks bad. It tastes bad. It smells... OK, it smells pretty good. But coffee boasts up to four times the caffeine of black tea, as well as lurid health hazards that the laid-back tea leaf can only dream of. In other words, coffee is macho. All told, it logs in slightly below blowfish and a little above football on the Pain-Indexed Virility Scale. Madison Avenue knows this, at one point hiring no less a guy-icon than the great Joe DiMaggio to hawk one of the first drip coffee machines.

But none of this explains why simple, honest tea strains under the stigma of unmanliness. Maybe signing Joltin' Joe to push caffeine was a no-brainer, but would someone tell me why Mr. Coffee's manly glass belly now reflects the dainty porcelain curves of Mrs. Tea? She's not even Ms. Tea. This alleged machine (just what does a "tea maker" do, anyway?) isn't just targeted at women, it's targeted at old women.

Not that it really makes a difference. A TV ad for bottled tea ran in heavy rotation a few summers back. The spots initially captured my attention because they featured a shouting male voice-over of the sort usually heard bellowing, "Sixty-four MONSTER TRUCKS!!! Meet Playboy's MISS AUGUST!!! BE THERE!!!" over your car radio. Unremittingly masculine... until you notice that the rebellious young tea-slammers are three unremittingly feminine supermodels. "This ain't no SIPPING TEA!!!" sneers the announcer. Apparently, being gulped is all the envelope-pushing that tea can stand.

I don't get it. Time was, men were men, and men drank tea. (When they weren't launching it into the bay, that is.) The intrepid mountain men of the Hudson's Bay Company so relied on tea to maintain their masculine mystique that they seeded the West with the Labrador tea plant, whose leaves they used to stretch or replace precious stores of black tea. That's right: rugged outdoorsmen, known to go a year between baths, collapsed in a quivering mass if a tea bog were more than a day's schlep away. Think of it as the early-nineteenth-century equivalent of the latte stand. And, hold on to your boxers, brothers: now we're talking about herbal tea.

Of course, guys used to wear wigs and face powder too, habits generally frowned-upon in locker rooms today. But let's face it: for the man of action, tea beats the pants off coffee. All you need is reasonably tasty organic matter and boiling water. No fuss, no gizmos, no blackboard with x's and o's on it. Hot water. Leaves. Tea. Yet somehow, between Lewis and Clark's tea-fueled expedition to the Pacific and the Civil War, American guys stepped off the tea wagon. And we've been chumps ever since. Yankee and Rebel soldiers brewed coffee over their tiny campfires, packing the clanking paraphernalia in their marching kits and waiting, feet ice-cold in the snow, while it took its sweet time perking up. Ditto the cowboys. American soldiers in this century dipped barely-drinkable boiled coffee from a huge cauldron; the last GIs in line got half a cup of grounds. These days, soldiers fall back on MRE packets of "instant coffee-type beverage, hot."

This beats a pot of tea? Given a fistful of decent leaves and a heat source, a guy can brew the same cup of darjeeling on Mt. Everest that he enjoys in his living room. And he can drink it before he succumbs to hypothermia. Now how much would you pay?

In the end, logical arguments are really beside the point. This is ultimately an emotional issue, turning less on what men do than how we feel about it. Given that the words "I feel" frighten us even more than tea, it may be some time before American men come home to tea. But it's a shame. My own British background steeped me in "tea sense," a Pavlovian reaction to tea's aromatic khaki swirl that science has yet to confirm. But you can take my word for it. As long as tea is up, I'm all right. You say my girlfriend ran off with my record collection? I put on the kettle. Have I slogged ten miles in mud and freezing rain, with ten more yet to go? My backpacking stove heats a quart of water in two minutes. My agent called to say she could sell my manuscript on auto maintenance, if only it had a sex scene? A splash of hot water and a spot of milk restore equilibrium to an unbalanced world.

The re-hinging power of tea is real, and real men respect it. A retired US Army officer I once interviewed remembered watching Royal Air Force pilots blast enemy fighters out of the North African sky for hours on end. At the first lull, the Englishmen would land their Spitfires, leap onto the sand, and pour a hasty cup of tea. Forty years later, the American still remembered how the twentysomething flyers called each other "old man" and chatted like businessmen on an evening train. But not for long. Soon, another squadron of Messerschmitts would come snarling over the dunes. Exhausted, grimy, hungry, the RAF men dumped the lees of their cuppa in the dust and, with a quiet "Tally ho!", roared off to defy death again.

Coffee achievers, indeed.

(Text previously appeared in The Herb Tea Book, Interweave Press,1998. Photo of Pietro da Cortona's Ananias Restoring the Sight of St. Paul [NOTE BOY ON RIGHT SERVING TEA -- COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT] courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)