Thursday, 31 December 2020
Víspera de Año Nuevo
"Que la hoguera en la noche recuerde
la luz de las estrellas fallecidas."
Pablo Neruda
(Translation here.)
la luz de las estrellas fallecidas."
Pablo Neruda
(Translation here.)
Wednesday, 30 December 2020
Wednesday, 1 January 2020
Thursday, 3 January 2019
Seedling Year
New Year's pine
Issa
(Pine Tree by Pan Dawei courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
Wednesday, 2 January 2019
WW: Straight Key Night 2019
(Every New Year's Day brasspounders observe Straight Key Night. During this 24-hour period [1 January UTC, 0000 to 2359], we eschew our fancy-pants electronic keyers – such as the one shoved back against the wall in the picture – and pull out a classic old-style Morse key, for auld lang syne. The example in the foreground above is the very one I started on, all those years ago.
It's been humbling. In my young days OTs [old-timers] complimented me on my skills, but it turns out that several decades of laziness plays hell on one's fist. My New Year's resolution is to remedy that.)
It's been humbling. In my young days OTs [old-timers] complimented me on my skills, but it turns out that several decades of laziness plays hell on one's fist. My New Year's resolution is to remedy that.)
Thursday, 4 January 2018
Happy Kerstboomverbranding!
As the holiday season softens into memory, we North Americans might pause to consider whether we've quite finished the job.
We're pretty good at initiating our great annual solstice commemoration: it starts cleanly on the first of December (American Thanksgiving weekend in the US). Then we slowly build through the darkest month, drumming on themes of fellowship and good will, revering the season's natural beauty and that of our decorations, celebrating family and childhood, and invoking Christmas past.
That's all excellent practice, as I've opined before. Christmas Eve and Day – one of the few moments in our cultures when quiet intimacy with family is upheld – crown these worthy preparations. Some engage in the equally hushed and moving ritual of Midnight Mass.
Then we wisely stand down for a week to digest, literally and figuratively. It also helps us rebuild strength for the final assault: our salute to the dying year and our survival of it, in a gay but determined vigil to the bitter end.
Whereupon Guy Lombardo sounds keisu, and Solstice Ango is over.
And that's always found me aching for closure next morning. For New Year's Eve is a lament for people, places, and conditions we can never see again. It's a very healthy reflection – especially for Americans, who oblige a kind of adolescent nihilism the rest of the year – but it's only half the truth.
The other half is the new people, places, and conditions that are evolving at the speed of life, and our lot and luck to carpe the crap out of that diem. Before it too passes and is mourned on another New Year's Eve.
Therefore, I advocate Kerstboomverbranding. That's the early January rite of Dutch and Belgian communities, who create an epic bonfire from the mass of their dessicated Christmas trees on which to cremate the bones of the past. Children jump up and down in the searing light while neighbours mill about, sharing New Year's wishes, leftover Christmas cookies, and warming libations.
It's a brief-enough party; dry conifers burn violently, and fast. The whole ritual takes about an hour of early seasonal darkness, leaving folks plenty of time to put the children to bed and sweep any residual needles out of the front room.
Similar things are already going on in a few places here; at Ballard's Golden Garden Park, for example, where participants are supposed, in theory, to burn their trees individually in picnic ground fire rings. But where's the fun in that? To the best of my knowledge, the City of Seattle has yet to shut down the spontaneous combustion that tends to result instead.
But wouldn't it be great if this sort of thing happened in neighbourhoods across the hemisphere: small local initiatives, informal and fleeting, to provide runway lights for the in-bound future.
It's the button we're missing.
Cheers to all as we reach for another calendar.
(Photo of Kerstboomverbranding in Berchem, Belgium, by a local photographer.)
We're pretty good at initiating our great annual solstice commemoration: it starts cleanly on the first of December (American Thanksgiving weekend in the US). Then we slowly build through the darkest month, drumming on themes of fellowship and good will, revering the season's natural beauty and that of our decorations, celebrating family and childhood, and invoking Christmas past.
That's all excellent practice, as I've opined before. Christmas Eve and Day – one of the few moments in our cultures when quiet intimacy with family is upheld – crown these worthy preparations. Some engage in the equally hushed and moving ritual of Midnight Mass.
Then we wisely stand down for a week to digest, literally and figuratively. It also helps us rebuild strength for the final assault: our salute to the dying year and our survival of it, in a gay but determined vigil to the bitter end.
Whereupon Guy Lombardo sounds keisu, and Solstice Ango is over.
And that's always found me aching for closure next morning. For New Year's Eve is a lament for people, places, and conditions we can never see again. It's a very healthy reflection – especially for Americans, who oblige a kind of adolescent nihilism the rest of the year – but it's only half the truth.
The other half is the new people, places, and conditions that are evolving at the speed of life, and our lot and luck to carpe the crap out of that diem. Before it too passes and is mourned on another New Year's Eve.
Therefore, I advocate Kerstboomverbranding. That's the early January rite of Dutch and Belgian communities, who create an epic bonfire from the mass of their dessicated Christmas trees on which to cremate the bones of the past. Children jump up and down in the searing light while neighbours mill about, sharing New Year's wishes, leftover Christmas cookies, and warming libations.
It's a brief-enough party; dry conifers burn violently, and fast. The whole ritual takes about an hour of early seasonal darkness, leaving folks plenty of time to put the children to bed and sweep any residual needles out of the front room.
Similar things are already going on in a few places here; at Ballard's Golden Garden Park, for example, where participants are supposed, in theory, to burn their trees individually in picnic ground fire rings. But where's the fun in that? To the best of my knowledge, the City of Seattle has yet to shut down the spontaneous combustion that tends to result instead.
But wouldn't it be great if this sort of thing happened in neighbourhoods across the hemisphere: small local initiatives, informal and fleeting, to provide runway lights for the in-bound future.
It's the button we're missing.
Cheers to all as we reach for another calendar.
(Photo of Kerstboomverbranding in Berchem, Belgium, by a local photographer.)
Thursday, 28 December 2017
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Neujahrsmeditation
„Die Zeit hat in Wirklichkeit keine Einschnitte, es gibt kein Gewitter oder Drommetengetön beim Beginn eines neuen Monats oder Jahres, und selbst bei dem eines neuen Säkulums sind es nur wir Menschen, die schießen und läuten.“
Thomas Mann
(English interpretation here.)
(Title courtesy of sangha sister Eva Neske. Photo of a traditional Seattle New Year celebration courtesy of James Chen.)
Thursday, 31 December 2015
Thursday, 11 June 2015
Graduation Meditation
I made this fistful of fudos for a friend's daughter who just graduated from high school. Graduation is an odd rite; we tell young people their lives have changed overnight, utterly and irreversibly, and encourage them, by our silence if nothing else, to party like all their problems are over.We really don't do this in any other context. We celebrate New Year's, we celebrate weddings, we even celebrate graduation from other institutions, but we never say "all is attained!" This already bothered me when I graduated. I get it that we want to emphasise the accomplishment and celebrate the opportunities. I'm for that. But "free at last!" is simply – maybe even tragically – a lie. (As I put it myself all those years ago, the truth is more like: "Responsible at last". But I guess that doesn't look as festive on a cake.)
And now that I'm old, I've noticed something even more sinister: the near-universal insistence of grups that a person knows nothing at 18. Yet people that age are in fact not children. (Neither are 16-year-olds, or even 14-year-olds for that matter, but that's another rant.) I don't know if we do this because it makes us feel inadequate to see these dynamic young adults gallivanting about, or because we still have a retinal image of them in diapers, or maybe we just like wielding power over others. But 18 is grown-up. Newly grown-up, sure. Still in need of counsel, of course. But grown-up. (And let's be honest, homies: that second one never changes.)
Therefore, by way of conceding to this young lady some of the power that's hers by right, I included the following note:
At your age there are a lot of older people telling you that you haven't had any life experience, and therefore you have no wisdom. Now that I'm old, I can tell you that 18 is in fact not as much as 50. (And I'm beginning to suspect there may be numbers even larger than that.) But 18 is still a lot – much more than old people think. (Or maybe just more than they remember; the years take things away, too.) Fact is, I had wisdom at 18 that I've since lost, somewhere along the way.
So here are 18 fudos, one for each year of wisdom you've accrued. Hang them in places that are special to you, or will become special to you later; mark your own trail, blaze it for others who follow; give some to friends and strangers. They're yours to do what you want with.
Remember that the more abused the ring, the more power it has. Just like people. Some of these have added meaning as well. The diamond one recalls the Diamond Sutra. The square one proclaims the Four Noble Truths. The Chinese coin with cord in the colours of the Three Bardos of Death is a cemetery fudo. And the one with the broken ring and four Franciscan knots is my own proprietary design. All fudos say, "The world is full of bastards, but an army of compassionate seekers has your back." Mine adds: "… and they'll have to get through me first."
All peace and good fortune to you, young sister. No time for small minds; eyes on the prize.
Eighteen is enough.
Robin
PS: And if anybody still tries to tell you it's not, tell them you won't hear until they've made 18 fudos. That crap takes forever.
Thursday, 1 January 2015
New Year's Song: Et dans 150 ans
To commemorate this New Year's Day 2015 I offer a meditation on the passage of time. My brother's poetry here is so powerful I first took him for a Canadian. But on second listening I thought, no.
No. The prosody, the peculiar flow of his French; his unflinching insight, his cool under fire. This-here is a Frenchman.
Except better. Raphaël Haroche's father is a Moroccan Jew of Russian descent; his mother is Argentine. In other words, dude's a perfect storm. Prepare for bone-crystallising kensho.
Having said that, I should warn non-francophones that, as Canadian literary critic Mavis Gallant pointed out, "When poetry is translated, the result is either not faithful, not poetry, or not English." Here the author spins kaleidoscopic metaphors and convoluted word play (e.g., "bad choices" can also be "wrong guesses"; "let's drink to the street trash" becomes "let's leave them our empty coffins" when you turn it a certain way); as translator, I could only pick a shade and run with it. With luck the music and intonations will salvage some lost depth (and soften the stilted, un-English sequence of images) for non-French-speaking readers.
Finally, since the visuals in Raphaël's videos are famous for being a whole second song, I strongly recommend that you first just listen, without viewing, while reading the lyrics (below). That way your own impressions won't get wangled. Then, play the video again and just watch it, without reading. Mind blown a second time.
ET DANS 150 ANS
par Raphaël
| Et dans 150 ans, on s'en souviendra pas
De ta première ride, de nos mauvais choix, De la vie qui nous baise, de tous ces marchands d'armes, Des types qui votent les lois là-bas au gouvernement, De ce monde qui pousse, de ce monde qui crie, Du temps qui avance, de la mélancolie, La chaleur des baisers et cette pluie qui coule, Et de l'amour blessé et de tout ce qu'on nous roule, Alors souris. Dans 150 ans, on s'en souviendra pas De la vieillesse qui prend, de leurs signes de croix, De l'enfant qui se meurt, des vallées du Tiers monde, Du salaud de chasseur qui descend la colombe, De ce que t'étais belle, et des rives arrachées, Des années sans sommeil, 100 millions d'affamés Des portes qui se referment de t'avoir vue pleurer, De la course solennelle qui condamne sans ciller, Alors souris. Et dans 150 ans, on n'y pensera même plus À ce qu'on a aimé, à ce qu'on a perdu, Allez vidons nos bières pour les voleurs des rues! Finir tous dans la terre, mon dieu! Quelle déconvenue. Et regarde ces squelettes qui nous regardent de travers, Et ne fais pas la tête, ne leur fais pas la guerre, Il leur restera rien de nous, pas plus que d'eux, J'en mettrais bien ma main à couper ou au feu, Alors souris. Et dans 150 ans, mon amour, toi et moi, On sera doucement, dansant, 2 oiseaux sur la croix, Dans ce bal des classés, encore je vois large, P't'être qu'on sera repassés dans un très proche, un naufrage, Mais y a rien d'autre à dire, je veux rien te faire croire, Mon amour, mon amour, j'aurai le mal de toi, Mais y a rien d'autre à dire, je veux rien te faire croire, Mon amour, mon amour, j'aurai le mal de toi, Mais que veux-tu? |
And in 150 years we won't
remember Your first wrinkle, our bad choices How life screwed us over, and all those weapons dealers Who work for the men who pass laws for the government This pushy world, this screaming world The march of time, the melancholy The warmth of the kisses, and how the rain trickled And the love lost, and the ways they get you And so we must smile. In 150 years we won't remember How age subtracts, and hypocrisy crosses itself The dying children, the depths of the Third World The asshole hunters who blow away doves How beautiful you were, and the things ripped away The years without sleep, and 100 million hungry How doors swing shut if people see you cry The universal impulse to condemn without qualm And so we must smile. And in 150 years, we won't even recall The things we loved, and those we lost Come on, let's drink to the street trash! My God, we'll all end up in the ground! Such a disappointment! Just look how those skeletons sneer at us But don't glare back; don't make war on them They'll keep nothing of us -- or themselves -- in the end As well cut off my hands, or burn them And so we must smile. And in 150 years, my love, you and I Will be – softly, dancing – two birds carved on a tombstone In this high school prom for dropouts, I'm looking beyond Maybe we'll come back some day; shipwrecked, perhaps But there's nothing for it, and I don't want to lie My love, my love, I'll miss you so But there's nothing for it, and I don't want to lie My love, my love, I'll miss you so But what can we do? |
He's right, brothers and sisters. In 150 years, no-one will remember a thing we've done or said, or that we ever lived; for the vast majority of us, our very names will never be pronounced again.
You can take it for cruelty or compassion, but you can't change it. Our human being survives time like a beetle survives a millstone. And in the same form.
May we all cultivate, in the coming year, that which endures.
Thursday, 2 January 2014
Kanzeon Meditation
Fictional bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (Kuan Yin, Guanyin, Kanzeon, Kannon, Gwan-eum, Quan Âm) incarnates a specific insight about the nature of reality, chopped down to a simplistic platitude for the marketplace. The platitude is "Bodhisattva of Compassion", a role most evident in one of his many avatars: the Virgin Mary. (This primordial figure has both genders, befitting the quality she represents. Unfortunately this is more insight than the average monkey can chamber, so in India he's usually called a man; Western Buddhism, with its Christian influence and largely female direction, almost always cleaves to the East Asian tradition that she's a woman.)
But the original Sanskrit – "Lord Who Looks Down" – is a better description of what this bodhisattva actually does. Avalokiteshvara doesn't intervene on anybody's behalf; she's not a patron saint (actual existence being a prerequisite for that job) or goddess. He just, like, looks down. Why? Because she's a compassionate dude.
The more active face of this universe is something sailors readily perceive, because they have an ongoing relationship with another infinite, unfathomable entity that will happily kill you without a second thought. No, not happily. Indifferently. To have contempt for you, it would have to realise you exist. And it's 'way too busy for that.
But the universe has another nature that's just as important: opportunity. In this infinitely generous life, we can grow, learn, change. Practice. An endless stream of bricks bounces off your skull, but every one of them has a note wrapped around it. Kuan Yin looks down from heaven, sees your suffering, and says, "Come on, crow meat! You're hurting both of us, here. Practice, dammit!"
Because the universe wants you to succeed. It may not be snuggly and cute and sweet-smelling, but every problem here is its own cure. And if it weren't for the pain, we'd never be motivated to reach it.
As one of Fudo's crew, I don't meditate much on Avalokiteshvara. But the new year puts me in mind of her. In this moment, more than others, folks think about the paths they arrived on, and those that lie ahead. Along the way we acquire great weights of resentment, and an equally crushing load of denial. We ignore life's windfalls, and our own role in pumping pain into it. But mostly, we deny the simple opportunity it gives us.
This ain't hell. We can get out of this.
Some time ago the following meditations invented themselves while I was sitting. I return to them from time to time, when the burden grows great. Therefore, in steely Fudoesque anticipation of the coming year, I offer them to all seekers, in the hope they may be of help to other enlightenment practices.
I.
I forgive myself for not being perfect.
I forgive others for not being perfect as well.
I forgive my judges for not knowing the whole truth.
I forgive humanity for containing evil people.
II.
I honour the progress I've made.
I honour the roads of others as well.
I honour those who evolve with courage.
I honour this life for the opportunity to practice.
(Photo of Guanyin Bodhisattva statue courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Southeast Asian Art Collection, and the Walters Art Museum.)
But the original Sanskrit – "Lord Who Looks Down" – is a better description of what this bodhisattva actually does. Avalokiteshvara doesn't intervene on anybody's behalf; she's not a patron saint (actual existence being a prerequisite for that job) or goddess. He just, like, looks down. Why? Because she's a compassionate dude.
The more active face of this universe is something sailors readily perceive, because they have an ongoing relationship with another infinite, unfathomable entity that will happily kill you without a second thought. No, not happily. Indifferently. To have contempt for you, it would have to realise you exist. And it's 'way too busy for that.
But the universe has another nature that's just as important: opportunity. In this infinitely generous life, we can grow, learn, change. Practice. An endless stream of bricks bounces off your skull, but every one of them has a note wrapped around it. Kuan Yin looks down from heaven, sees your suffering, and says, "Come on, crow meat! You're hurting both of us, here. Practice, dammit!"
Because the universe wants you to succeed. It may not be snuggly and cute and sweet-smelling, but every problem here is its own cure. And if it weren't for the pain, we'd never be motivated to reach it.
As one of Fudo's crew, I don't meditate much on Avalokiteshvara. But the new year puts me in mind of her. In this moment, more than others, folks think about the paths they arrived on, and those that lie ahead. Along the way we acquire great weights of resentment, and an equally crushing load of denial. We ignore life's windfalls, and our own role in pumping pain into it. But mostly, we deny the simple opportunity it gives us.
This ain't hell. We can get out of this.
Some time ago the following meditations invented themselves while I was sitting. I return to them from time to time, when the burden grows great. Therefore, in steely Fudoesque anticipation of the coming year, I offer them to all seekers, in the hope they may be of help to other enlightenment practices.
I.
I forgive myself for not being perfect.
I forgive others for not being perfect as well.
I forgive my judges for not knowing the whole truth.
I forgive humanity for containing evil people.
II.
I honour the progress I've made.
I honour the roads of others as well.
I honour those who evolve with courage.
I honour this life for the opportunity to practice.
(Photo of Guanyin Bodhisattva statue courtesy of Wikimedia Commons, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Southeast Asian Art Collection, and the Walters Art Museum.)
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