Good Video: Не могу оторвать глаз от тебя

Though it's generally unknown to Western Buddhists, Russia is one of the formative homelands of our religion. Not only has Buddhism been practiced there for as long as many another Asian nation – for example, the Volga republic of Kalmykia is the only region of Europe to have a historical Buddhist majority – Russia also hosts today what is likely the most fervent and productive conversion movement in the Eurosphere (i.e., nations with white majorities).

I was reminded of this while, for the first time in years, rewatching the above video. I originally encountered this song via primeval Internet radio, and it first appeared on Rusty Ring away back in January 2011, at the bottom of my third-ever post. (Those earliest articles sometimes ended with a premium, called the Cereal Box Prize. When, inevitably, finding and formatting this treat began to eat appalling amounts of blogging time, I abandoned that quirk, though not without regret.)

But having listened to Не могу оторвать глаз от тебя again (and remarveled at that awesome video), I figure it's due for a 14-year bump.

Аквариум (Aquarium) are a seminal Russian pop group, with roots deep in the perilous (for rock musicians) Soviet era. Today they're one of a handful of contemporaries routinely compared to the Beatles. Although founder Boris Grebenshchikov's precise religious convictions remain elusive, he's published multiple translations of Buddhist and Hindu texts and has a long history of including consequent themes in his music.

Just what (or whom) he is singing to here is a bit enigmatic. That chanting refrain suggests your standard love poem; you know, to another human. But the moiling mysticism of those verses opposes that hypothesis.

Still, his repeated second-person appeal at least seems to rule out a Buddhist theme; the author is clearly addressing an interlocutor he can see and calls "you". Our religion generally, though not categorically, refuses to speculate on such things.

The Eastern church, meanwhile – Russia's majority faith – has spoken of and to God in tones very like these for two thousand years.

So there it is: the song is Christian.

But what about that video? Seriously, fellow Buddhists, what about that awesome video? That's not just patently Buddhist, that's outright Zen.

Bodhidharma if ever I saw him.

So maybe "you" is enlightenment. Or the Path. Or the Great Matter. Or Kanzeon. Or some other glib Buddhist euphemism for God.

I don't know.

(See what I did there?)

Anyway, it's in front of you. Watch it. Hear it. See if it doesn't key your bodhisattva nature as hard as it does mine.

The video is of slightly – if very – higher quality than the one shared all those years ago. I was unable to find better, even on our Currently Superior Internet. But no trouble; it still works.

More irksome is the lack of reliable English interpretation. I can grasp the thrust of these lyrics, but my Russian is not up to translating them, at least not accurately. But I can tell that the translation supplied here is a little better than several others I found, by a slim margin.

I'd bet all were generated by artificial ignorance. Buy human, folks.

But for the moment, it seems our only recourse is to accept the best of them, however flawed. Just bridge the gaps with your koanic intelligence.

It's worked for me for 20 years.

Reflections On The 23rd of February

Today is День защитника Отечества (Defender of the Fatherland Day) in Russia. The date always leads me to a bit of a "on the one hand" contemplation, because over time it's gained more significance than simply Veterans' Day. To wit, it's come to honour all men, whether veterans or not. For example, on this day women in the workplace perform small gestures of appreciation for their male colleagues – gifts, compliments, cursory favours – regardless of civil status.

This is a good idea. The denial of universal human value implied by identity warring is, as Dr. King taught, backward and ultimately suicidal, and in my era at least, gender warriors have been most vocal and least corrected in this delusion.

(I should pause to point out that the Russians have observed International Women's Day since the Bolsheviks, which is why at some point they felt compelled to balance the equation in this fashion.)

So fair play to them. But I'm unsatisfied with glossing armed service with manhood. To begin with, Russia has famously employed large numbers of women in military combat roles for at least a hundred years. But the deeper issue is the unchallenged custom of pegging a man's intrinsic human worth to the presumed privilege of killing him at discretion. In wars, certainly, but also on the job, or in emergencies, or when non-men require defending, or to assuage collective rage, or basically any time we need more grist for Hollywood movies. Loudon Wainright III nailed this many years ago, and I haven't seen any progress on that front, to invoke an apt metaphor.

Like most men – virtually all; I've never heard one object – I accept this status implicitly. It doesn't annoy me, really, this notion that I might get a sword run through me at any time, whether protecting others or making a buck for the boss. We're all literally raised to die. And so it's always passed as the Way of All Things with me. It's just the pretexts arrogated by some non-men that make me grumble.

Life is hard all over. That's why everyone requires compassion.

And bodhisattvas are also all over. That's why everyone requires appreciation.

I respect the Russian people for understanding that – a vestige of their Communist past, perhaps. But the conflation of men with soldiers is disturbing. It's not true that soldiers are a gender – and to suggest otherwise devalues both.

It'd be great if we could receive every newborn as endless potential, promising everything and owing nothing.

But while we're waiting: С 23 февраля! to all my brothers and those who love them. The feast may be a little flawed, but it's a start.


(Photo of a US Navy corpsman in 1st Medical Battalion USMC, feeding his daughter at an on-base Father's Day event, courtesy of Lance Corporal Sarah Wolff, the United States Marine Corps, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Квас из черного хлеба

(I've been making kvass [квас] more or less weekly for the past five months. This photo, from my first batch, is квас из черного хлеба, or classic rye-bread kvass. I've since made a few fruit kvasses too, but my mainstay is still the basic bread-based brew. Since that fairly blond first effort I've taken to roasting the bread hard, resulting in a dark, bitter, muddy concoction with vaguely coffee flavour. Ironically I don't like coffee, except apparently when it's kvass.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Koan: Liberation

One day a man found a battered lamp by the roadside. As he polished away the grime, a genii came streaming out of the burner in a pillar of flame.

"For liberating me from that prison, I will grant you any wish!" he cried.

"Make me the richest man in the world!" said the man.

And POOF! The genii took away his desire.





(From an old Russian story. Photo courtesy of David Falconer, the US Environmental Protection Agency, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Красный угол

(Photo by Thomas Gimlin. Offered in honour of Mothers' Day.
Because every so often, when you least expect it,
an ikon happens.)

A Brief History of the Stick

You can't beat the stick for longevity. (Actually, you can't beat a stick at all. Think about it; it's like biting your teeth, or seeing your eye.)

This is our first tool. Humans have been using it since before we were human. Even people without trees go somewhere else to get one. Picture an Inuit on the move. Guy has a stick, right?

To this day, the walking stick occupies a profound niche in our psychology. Some time ago I read a blog by a professional craftsman of walking sticks, which sadly I can't find to link to now. In it, he pointed out that an elderly person holding a walker or aluminium cane comes off as disabled, mentally and physically, while the same person with a natural wooden stick becomes an Elder, a curator of wisdom and judgement. He's right. Do the thought experiment yourself.

Amazing, eh?

Sanding is a meditative process

It's true that wise old rustics are usually depicted this way in the media, but I'm going to go out on a limb (get it?) and suggest that this phenomenon is rooted in our genetic matrix. After hundreds of millennia, the Spiritual Stick of Authority runs deep in blood memory.

With apologies to the Freudians, I don't believe any of this is phallic. The thing simply made us, and, back when other animals had a competitive edge, even defined us. When was the last time you saw a lion, or a kangaroo, or even a chimpanzee, walk with a stick? (UPDATE! Turns out we ain't so cool after all. Read all about it here.) That's why the pursuit of a higher life, to this day, is signaled by taking one up.

Bigleaf maple sands very nicely

My stick is on both orders. That is, it's a symbol of my hermit practice, and a working tool. It's a limb in every sense of the word, an extension of my body; I feel unbalanced when I'm without it. It used to be a bigleaf maple sapling, until I did some yard work at the zendo. As a wood it's light, strong, and takes a polish.

The hook on the end greatly extends the stick's usefulness. With it I pull down fruit, hang fudos, drag apart wads of stuff on the beach, and hang up the stick when at home or rest.

The blank was stripped and allowed to dry in a stable climate for several weeks, then trimmed and machine sanded with medium-grit sandpaper. Then it was hand-sanded with medium grit, and again with four successively finer grits.

To keep your monk stick strong Eeeeeyou must whip it!

The ground end was whipped with tarred seine twine and coated with PVC cement to prevent splitting. (Update on this experiment here.)

Finally the whole thing was rubbed several times with trinity tar and hung near the woodstove for half a day between coats to cure. The ultimate polish was done with nothing but my hands, rubbing vigorously enough to raise heat, for about an hour total. (Though not all at once.) Naturally, my hands also continue to polish it with daily use.

I now have a renewable finish that raises the natural grain of the wood, pleasing to the hand, with a silky feel and deep, three-dimensional luster you can't beat with a... well, you just gotta admire.

Behold, I have mastered humanity's earliest technology!

I already had a stick, so I made myself one.

Gassho!

This week's cereal box prize: Terrific video by Russian Buddhist Boris Grebenshchikov and his band Аквариум (Aquarium). It's called Не могу оторвать глаз от тебя ("I can't even look away from you"), but in spite of the pedestrian boy-girl title, it's a love song of a different kind. One of my favourite vids of all time.