We choose our religious convictions. This fact may be a bit occult; we tend to imagine we've been convicted or converted to our faith in some way, by some revelation that came from outside of us.
But we weren't. Whether we settled for the path of our forebears, or struck out on a new one in response to lived experience, we elected to follow those teachings.
For reasons.
So the most revealing question you can ask a religious person is, "Why did you choose that religion?" The answer, if you can get a candid one, tells you important things about that person.
And if it's the least bit reflective, it also teaches them important things about themselves.
I find "Why did I decide to practice Zen?" a great housekeeping koan. Regular delving into it is an effective hedge against the egocentrism that eremitical practice engenders.
(Photo courtesy of Sérgio Valle Duarte and Wikimedia Commons.)
(Unidentified; growing on a maple log surrounded by water one to two feet deep.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
The wildlife of the North Pacific rainforest is famously reserved; where the East has its flashy cardinals, red efts, and indigo buntings, our own rubber boas, rough-skinned newts, and varied thrushes are modestly beautiful. The odd Steller's jay or goldfinch may be a pleasant change of pace, but we're satisfied to return to the brown and russet uniform of our understated nation when they've passed.
While sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain, I sometimes daydreamed about founding a North Coast-native order of forest monks. And should that fancy ever gel, we will sit in the forest of my forebears, wearing the habit of our Douglas squirrel hosts: a hooded robe of honest Cascade umber, over an ochre jersey.
(Text edited from the notes for my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of Tamiasciurus douglasii courtesy of Ivie Metzen, the US National Park Service, and Wikimedia Commons.)
(Pieris japonica, known here as popcorn bush, is a popular landscaping shrub on the North Pacific Coast. Native to the same latitudes on the far side of the ocean, where climate and soil types are about identical, I'm told it fills whole ravines in Japanese forests. This must be brilliant to see, given its dense sprays of sparkler-bright blossoms and heady fragrance.
The early-spring show, and the fact that we had one at every house I can remember – always right by the front door – made this a favourite flower from early childhood. It's also a good carving and turning wood, fairly soft and light but fine-grained, taking an oil finish well; properties apparently unknown outside of Asia, given the absence of mention online, at least in any of my languages.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
"What makes you different makes you valuable."
Terry O'Reilly
(Painting of Japanese long-tailed rooster courtesy of Shibata Zeshin and Rawpixel.com.)
(Here are a few of the largest rings I've collected for making fudos. [Among those not yet deployed, of course.] Most of the malleable washers came off the beach, wrenched from the wreckage of docks and shoreworks cast up by storms over the years. Their condition betrays particular power. Note as well a rare wooden ring.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
Here's a brief rumination from an anonymous blogger about a topic I've raised here before:
https://przxqgl.hybridelephant.com/2017/04/21/depression-4/
Reading this, I'm reminded that my own depression never "just happens". It's a response to targeted violence from others around me, and common among those who take refuge in a spiritual path. Because when we pill depression away, we green-light further abuse, typically on grounds that our society profits in some way from the consequences.
I'm on record as endorsing the treatment of depression with meds. I also endorse plaster casts for broken arms, but I don't pretend broken arms are the result of an innate cerebral dysfunction; even less that the occasional need for a cast indicates disability.
Yet the medicalisation of depression implies both. When I question this, I often hear that depression patients are a kind of evolutionary beta release; we're just not bundled with the latest DNA upgrade that allows us to function productively in a society whose survival relies on toughness and insensitivity.
This in spite of the fact that it's the animalistic members of the human family who are by definition the atavists.
Thus my various intellectual reactions to objections that the nation will fall unless citizens are permitted to abuse one another, none of which are, "Oh, I see – carry on, then."
So check out the post linked above. My brother's two paragraphs are short and to the point. At minimum, they prove I'm not the only one who's noted a touch of self-service in our culture's take on this matter.
(Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
(Last Christmas I got a tiny cellophane envelope containing half a teaspoon of hard, opaque, plastic-looking multicoloured beads, about the size of pinheads. Amidst a certain amount of Chinese text, the only English was two brief directions.
Make that "English", because the best I could decipher was:
1. Pour water on these.
2. Don't eat what happens.
Not a word about what these things were, or what the water was going to make them do.
So I poured water over them, and next morning found this.
Apparently all they do is sit there being miraculous.
Which is sufficient.)
Appearing also on My Corner of the World.
