Grow Up

The more practice I get under my hara, the more I notice that most Zen really isn't very revolutionary, or even revelatory. It's just common sense.

Anatta – no-self – is just what happens to successful adults. We get less selfish, less self-centred, less self-interested, less self-satisfied, less self-righteous. Just… less "self".

If you don't do this, you're not a grown-up. And as I've come to understand, lots of otherwise tall people never attain that.

So Zen is nothing more or less than maturity. Alright, it's a bit accelerated, and especially, deeper.

But that's what we're doing on the cushion.

We're growing old.

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

WW: US Navy telegraph key

(Model 26003a flameproof telegraph key. Same one used in the radio rooms of American merchant and military vessels during WWII. Still works great, too.)

The Bee Koan

A bee was browsing the clover blossoms in a pasture one fine spring day when a cow ate her.

"Well," she said, "this is one micro-aggression I am not disposed to enable. I'm just going to sting this stupid cow 'til she throws me up."

But the darkness was warm and moist in the cow's stomach, and in point of fact she'd been working rather hard that morning.

At length she thought, "I suppose I could take a short nap first. You know, to renew my strength for the battle."

And when she woke up, the cow was gone.


Wu Ya's commentary: This too will pass.

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

WW: February bud

(After living in Québec, where it's 40 below now and will remain until May, I'm always amazed to meet this sort of thing in mid-February on the North Coast.)

Preference Meditation

According to an Internet commenter, when Thais encounter food they don't care for, they don't say, "I don't like this."

They say, "I don't know how to eat this." (กินไม่เป็น)


(Photo courtesy of Wilfredo Rodríguez and Wikimedia Commons.)

Walden Kyôsaku

"The greater part of what my neighbours call good I believe in my soul to be bad, and if I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behaviour."

Henry David Thoreau


(Early 1900s postcard of the cairn marking the site of Thoreau's cabin on the shores of Walden Pond courtesy of the Newberry Library and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Lebanese poutine

(Because the restaurant where I ordered this is in the States, it calls this dish "shawarma fries". When my plate arrived I was unsurprised to find that it is in fact Lebanese poutine. I didn't ask the staff where they got the idea, but Québec boasts a large Lebanese population, and immigrant families tend to split on entry, with some going north and others south. So it may ultimately be a Canadian invention.

Given that the whole "sauce and cheese on fries" thing isn't a thing in the States, you gotta give them credit for audacity, to say nothing of skill. This stuff is darn good; it would fly out the door in Montréal. Hope it catches on here, too.)