Hungry Ghost

(These are the lyrics to one of my Buddhist country and western songs, offered here in honour of Hallowe'en.)

If you come 'round late
By my back stairs
When the moon is full
And there's no-one there
You might hear a sound, like footsteps on the floor
But when you turn around
It won't be there no more

No, it ain't everyone
That can see him there
Mostly kids and dogs
And folks in despair
But I give him board, and that makes me the host
To a gentle friend
And a hungry ghost

Refrain:

'Cos he's a man of hope
And a man of peace
He's a man of faith
And not the least
He's a man of heart, and that's what matters most
'Cos he's a man apart
So he's a hungry ghost

Folks down in town
Say it's all a hoax
Just a trick of light
In the prairie oaks
Say it's just the wind, blowed down from off the ridge
And if you'll buy that
I got a bridge

[Bridge]

So if you got a roof
Against the storm
If your belly's full
And your heart is warm
Then say a word of grace, and keep your loved ones close
And spare a thought
For the hungry ghosts

Refrain to end



(Copyright RK Henderson. Detail of the hungry ghosts that walk amongst us from the 12th century scroll 餓鬼草紙、平安時代 ; photo courtesy of the Kyoto National Museum and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Venus flytrap

(In honour of Hallowe'en, here's a shot of my latest pet. I adopted this flytrap [Dionaea muscipula] two years ago, when it was in dire straits. In its first summer with me, it reached a high of five healthy traps before lapsing back into the mandated winter coma. Today, on the cusp of the next hibernation period, it has twelve.

Caring for a Venus flytrap is great fun, and not terribly difficult if you uphold a few basic rules. I'm hoping this one comes through its incipient cryostasis in good form and ready to build even greater health on the other side, in the spring and summer sun.)

Koan: Attaining Enlightenment

The hermit Hyung asked, "How do you find something that isn't lost?"

Wu Ya's commentary: "Go to the last place you didn't see it."



(Photo of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array [ALMA] courtesy of Babak A. Tafreshi and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Mountain beaver den

(When I was a kid, the forest floor in my neck of the woods was full of big ragged holes like this one. When I asked the grups what made them, they said "mountain beaver".

I never saw the actual animal, and couldn't find mountain beaver in any book. My teachers – few of whom were of Old Settler stock – were no better help.

I concluded that "mountain beaver" was a cryptid, if not an outright jackalope, and wrote it off. But I still wondered what made those holes.

It would take the advent of Google to solve the mystery at last.

Aplodontia rufa – the mountain beaver – is an ancient proto-rodent, with multiple features missing from modern mammals. Last of its genus, the remaining Aplodontia have for the last 10,000 years been confined to the small stretch of the North Coast where I grew up. Hence the silence of the guidebooks, which never covered our stuff back in the day, and the ignorance of my teachers, who had been educated in the same imperialistic Eastern curriculum.

I've since laid eyes on a few of the little guys, which is ironic given that their habitat is vanishing fast and taking them with it. When I was surrounded by them, on ground long since scraped flat for housing estates, they never showed their faces.

I took the above shot last summer, on a cruise through another forest not far from my childhood home. It turned out to be rife with irregular holes scratched out under low vegetation, surrounded by heaps of glacial spoil. Just as I remember.

So I guess there are a few holdouts. Remains to be seen for how much longer. )

Product Review: Harry's Razors.

Five years ago I got tired of paying the ridiculous prices razor blades command these days. As trivial as that sounds, like many Buddhist monastics I shave my head on a regular basis, and the cost adds up. I'd also heard that Internet-based businesses were popping up to service the growing general demand for relief.

It was just about that time that promos for Harry's Razors began running on the Cracked podcast.

Their product was said to be competitively priced. It was also said to be good; better than the storebought twin-blades I'd been using. The podcast host assured us he'd been using the starter kit the company had sent him, and it had changed his life. Or at least his grooming.

So I ordered one.

To say it also changed my life, in a small but significant way, is no exaggeration. That's why, in the interest of supporting others' practice, I'm sharing my experience here.

Harry's Razors, which mount on a high-quality handle that probably won't need replacing before my descendants are my age, feature four ganged blades in a flexible head that conforms remarkably well to face and scalp. You just lather up as usual (I use a particular kind of hand lotion, because it doesn't dry, works in cold water, and is made to nourish skin) and have at it. My head-and-face routine, which used to take 45 minutes, now takes 20(!).

What's more, I rarely get nicked – anywhere – with Harry's. (See elaboration below.) That's down to the bendy head, which nails the sweet spot between too stiff and too floppy. The result is full control, with just enough forgiveness to keep you intact, as long as you proceed with ordinary due mindfulness.

Finally, the blades are in fact competitively priced, especially if you shell out for the big 16-blade box. It'll set you back $30 Yank, but that works out to $1.88 per blade, or between 24 and 31 cents a shave, if you preserve the blade by drying it thoroughly each time you finish.

That's cheaper than name-brand twin-blades, for a much better shave.

Which brings me to my other reason for writing. My last shipment came emblazoned in several places with a strident "NOT FOR HEAD-SHAVING!". This alarmed me, since the whole reason I use Harry's is that it's perfect for head shaving. I'd even sent fan mail to the company soon after I discovered their product, thanking them for marketing the tool that we Buddhist monks have been waiting for, and was told in the reply that head-shavers were a demographic the company was particularly keen to reach.

Has something changed?

I checked out the thing online, and found to my dramatic lack of surprise that Harry's has indeed become a fetish among head-shavers. Some of these were similarly worried by the new turnabout, while others assured them it was all a pack of nonsense, cooked up to deflect some unspecified liability threat.

Well, the new blades looked and flexed like the old. I chucked one up and fell to.

Same fantastic Harry's shave. Face, neck, and head.

In the interest of full disclosure I must say that over my five Harry's years I've drawn blood twice, both times on the head. One was so trivial it scarcely bears mention; the other less so. But the telling bit is that in both cases I was hacking away like a Japanese chef, just 'way too impatient and irresponsible to expect Harry's to pay me a living pension for this. And that second incident involved not only the afore-mentioned Ginsu schtick, but also a worn-out blade that a less Scottish monk would long have discarded.

And hey, if it's campfire stories you're into, I can rummage back over the 35 years I was a twin-blade man. The fact that I can recall and enumerate the times I've got into trouble with Harry's tells you everything you need to know about their relative safety. Head or no head.

So I don't know why Harry's has suddenly turned head-shavers loose. Fact is, Hairless Brothers the 'Net 'round have been lauding this product since it came out, and I don't recall a single sour note.

Anyway, here's the deal: boy, does this thing work. And it would be disastrous if head-shavers didn't know that, because shaving your head is a pain in the butt. (Acupuncture thing, I guess.)

Just don't sue Harry's if you manage to slice an ear off.

Or me. Because that would be a very dodgy business decision.

WW: Radio receiver

(This is a 40 meter Morse code receiver I recently put together from a kit. [Sorry for the low resolution; it's a phone shot.] Not a big deal for some operators, but for me, with little talent for this stuff, a major achievement. And it works!)

Bodhi

Life is an incurable disease, from which we all eventually heal.




(Photo courtesy of Frank Gualtieri and Wikimedia Commmons.)

WW: Boletes by the trail

(I believe these are Suillus tomentosus. One way or the other they're edible and choice. We got a great harvest this year thanks to heavy rains at just the right moment, followed by several sunny warm days.)

Military Meditation

Some time ago I surfed into What You Need to Know about Mindfulness Meditation, an article made available to military personnel (and everybody else) by the US Department of Defense. It leaves me a little conflicted.

As far as the information it contains is concerned, there's little enough to carp about. Yeah, dhyana probably didn't start with the Buddha, but that's minor and arguable. And the whole thing has a pronounced "meditate to get stuff" bias, but let's be honest: much in the Buddhist press does as well. And we all first come to Zen to get stuff, though the delusion softens if we practice properly.

And that's what disturbs me about this piece. Because the fact is, if you're truly practicing Zen, it's going to get progressively harder to be a soldier. Right wing politics, nationalism, certainty, fear of authority – to say nothing of killing strangers in their own homes – are things it's difficult to convince Zenners to embrace.

Which leads me to wonder what exactly the DoD is selling.

The argument cœnobites perennially throw at eremitics such as myself is that Zen needs patrolling – that without ordained, presumably accountable leadership, anybody can sell anything as Zen. And that, we're told, leads to charlatans who mislead others, individuals who mislead themselves, and the general obfuscation of the Zen path through the Red Dust World.

None of which I dispute. Rather, I question the contention that ordination eliminates these pitfalls, that the Buddha ordained any authority but his own, or that anyone has a patent on enlightenment practice. (A conviction well-buttressed by my experience of those who claim one.)

But I gotta say it, this DoD article gives off a definite whiff of caveat emptor.

It's not that anything it says is wrong. It's just that I misdoubt its motives.

Which is also how I feel about Zen teachers.

I'm certainly not opposed to Zen practice in the military. To begin with, that profession destroys just about everyone it touches – at least when fully exercised – and that creates a howling need for clear-seeing and moral autonomy. And carried forward, a Zen-practicing army would soon cease to be one, which is the next step in our evolution.

But that's what bothers me. Because this writer never openly suggests just what the war industry's aims might be in promoting mindfulness. Probably not reasoned insubordination, I'll wager. Where secular authorities advocate meditation, it's virtually always about making individuals docile, so they'll continue to commit or tolerate acts Bodhidharma (a war veteran) would condemn.

One would like to believe that any attempt to harness Zen to such ends would backfire – that the practice itself would free practitioners from quack intent. Sadly, religion has never worked that way. Zen has been weaponised before, with karmic results that outstripped its epically-appalling historical ones, and it's currently being turned to similar ends in business, education, and corrections as well.

As a one-time convicted Christian, the fear that my current path will become as debased as the former is very real. This practice is vital; too vital to allow careerists to usurp its brand. That road leads to the utter annihilation of Zen, as it has other religions.

And the last thing we need around here is yet another cargo cult.

I hope military personnel, active and discharged, around the world learn about Zen; that those who are suffering know that it might keep them breathing; and that those who are in pain will give it an honest shot and see if it helps. Some of our best teachers came from that world, channelling the laser insight they scored waging war – and the iron discipline their instructors gave them – into kick-ass monasticism. (The two callings are remarkably similar.)

Because it's not that there's nothing soldierly about the mindfulness path. It's just that it leads to a diametrically opposite destination.


(Photo of the Ryozen Kannon, Japan's WWII memorial, courtesy of Bryan Ledgard and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Outback radio

(The transceiver is those two tiny stacked boxes beside the headphones. [The key is unseen behind it.]

Technology has changed somewhat since I was young, when a radio of this type was the size of a hatbox.

And we had hatboxes.)