Street Level Zen: Effect

"It's not that the wind is blowing. It's what the wind is blowing."

My friend Brent.

[Who informs me now that he originally got this mot d'ordre from comic Ron White.]


(Photo of dust storm swallowing Phoenix, AZ courtesy of Wikipedia Commons and a generous photographer.)

WW: Winter waterdog

(Taricha granulosa. One of the many good things in life.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

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.

WW: Licorice fern

(Polypodium glycyrrhiza. Common fern of the North Pacific Coast, usually spotted as an epiphyte of broadleaf trees. When growing on a rock face, as here, you're looking at a site that gets above average rainfall. The common name reflects the use of its rhizomes as a "chaw" and tea mixing ingredient.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

A Precept For The New Year

"Here’s my new year’s wish to all those of genuine good will and decency:

"May you have the strength and the courage to oppose what should be opposed."

Heidi Li Feldman

(To my sister's succinct and sufficient statement I would append that this be a precept to our enlightenment practice, a reaffirmation of the call to right action, for the impending year and those that follow.)


(Photo courtesy of Sneha Cecil and Unsplash.com.)

St. Stephen's Day Meditation

"I have learned silence from the talkative,
toleration from the intolerant,
and kindness from the unkind;
yet, strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers."

Attributed to St. Stephen, in honour of this his feast, 2024.






(Page from a mediævel manuscript on the martyrdom of St. Stephen courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum and Rawpixel.com.)

Three Paradoxical Truths

Funerals are for the living.
Graduation is for the parents.
Holidays are for the children.


(Photo of two children in Cambridge Bay standing next to a decorated inukshuk in their treeless homeland courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)