WW: Before the plague

(I took this photo on the beach in front of my house in 2009. Pretty much every subtidal rock on the North Coast looked like this then; it's a scene deeply rooted in my childhood.

Pisaster ochraceus, the purple sea star (variation notwithstanding), is among the species most vulnerable to sea star wasting disease. Over the last five years that horrific plague, which literally causes infected individuals to melt into a tapioca-like substance and flush away with the tide, has wiped out virtually all intertidal starfish in the northeast Pacific.

The epidemic is associated with an invasive virus, which is itself believed to be symptomatic of rising ocean temperatures and related conditions.

Regional outbreaks of SSWD were recorded in 1972 and 1978. Continued monitoring of the latter suggests that permanent extinction, at least on this coast, is not off the table.)

Used-To-Do Zen

I often meet people who "used to do" Zen.

Many were deeply engaged, once; some were students of famous teachers. It's an inherent weakness of institutionalised practice. Where Zen is a social act it becomes a lifestyle, and like all lifestyles it demands a weighty sacrifice of time, money, and freedom. Your whole existence becomes Zen Centre. And Zen Centre always wants more: more time, more money, more obedience.

That wears people down, uses them up. And when they reach the end, they don't just drop the kowtowing and the koo-koo-ka-choo. They drop Zen.

Hence the risk of the ordained path. It can displace real Zen, at the cost of old suffering unhealed and new suffering inflicted.

It doesn't always end that way, of course; many find a healthful home in the zendo.

But wherever my hermit path leads, it guarantees one thing: I will never used-to-do Zen.

There's nothing for me to stop doing.


(From my notes for 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Bodhidharma painting courtesy of Sojiji Temple and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Righteous cluster of oyster mushrooms

(Pleurotus ostreatus.)

Koan: Shame

Who told you that you were naked?

Genesis 3:11











(Plate from the Escorial Beatus courtesy of Deutsches Archäologisches Institut and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: We have spring. Repeat...

Attitude Adjustment

How do you know you're a decent person? Because you're afraid you're not.

People who aren't decent never fear they're indecent.

If they were capable of that... they'd be decent.





(Artwork courtesy of Erik Pevernagie and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Antenna launcher

(Been refining this fundamental design, which is fairly universal in ham radio, for a few years now. This latest iteration works incredibly well. It'll shoot a line a hundred feet into a tree, accurately and usually on the first attempt. Afterward you use that line to raise a heavier one, and then that one to raise a wire antenna.

And that's not all it does. Any time you need to link two inaccessible locales [ship-to-ship transport on the high seas, suspension bridge construction, rescue operations, telephone and electric wiring, installing zungas and zip lines...], this is the tool for the job.)