potpouri
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
With palms together.
Good Morning Everyone,
The mornings are dark longer and we don't turn our clocks back until later this month, our area code has changed causing a disturbance in the force that regulates Qwest's voicemail box, and our rental property is still vacant. My goodness.
On the other hand, we had dinner at Marc's European Grill on Avenida De Mesilla Saturday night (http://www.marcseuropeangrill.com/). My son Jacob is the consulting chef there now and the food was wonderful. We were delighted to by chance meet some good friends there Dr. Dan Tapper (a brilliant sculptor, see http://www.galleryinthesun.com/danTapperSculpture/Default.aspx,) and his partner, Dr. Judy Long ( a brilliant sociologist http://books.google.com/books?id=GbknDkAwBCcC&dq=judy+long&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=o73J7ECv-O&sig=rMhy-mz_QGzl687PztJeG7KNqIk). So the four top became the doc top as all heads there were piled higher and deeper. Still, I highly recommend this restaurant.
I am having brilliant dreams once again...last night I dreamed a dream within a dream about my dreaming of a whole set of new recipes and as I 'woke' from my dream, these began changing a dull cowboy hotel into an environmental get-away. Odd. Food has never been a whole lot more to me than fuel for my body. And I rather enjoy dusty cowboy stuff. I guess my son is civilizing me some.
My hair is growing, meaning I have not shaved my head close for a few weeks. My Little Honey loves it, I am less thrilled. But we are approaching winter and I will let it grow in some for the season then cut it back again in the spring.
Services at Zen Center were rather sparsely attended Sunday. There were six brave souls who braved our desert chill spell. This is always the case after a retreat. I enjoy the small groups as they seem more intimate. Then again its probably just my neural cocktail of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Prematurely Aging Brain Disorder whispering in my ear. No worries, as my son says. Life is just this moment and this moment is wonderful regardless of what it is.
Yesterday's Dharma talk was a spin off of the morning lecture on the Twelve Links of Dependent Co-Origination, that typology of karma Buddha erected to help us understand things. Of course he was teaching to a bunch of barely educated tagalongs and these were Asian tagalongs at that. Indians love typologies. They treat them as mnemonics of a sort.
Anyhow, what is most important to understand about these twelve links is that they don't really exist. They are illusions of our mind's eye. Convenient fictions. A function of that old brain categorical processing trick which has us naming everything thus separating ourselves from everything and in some cases allowing this separation to turn against us as in Nature.
We are born and process in that disabled neurological sense. "I" develops as opposed to "you" or "it", yet this is just a function of a brain processing and organizing sensory data. No brain to process in this way leaves what? Reality as it truly is.
Can we overcome this obstacle and see clearly?
Yes. By practicing pure Zazen, shikantaza, that practice of just sitting. In this practice we deliberately let go, don't grasp, and allow everything to just be. There is no this or that; no sound; no smell; no taste; or touch. Most of all, there is no thinking. Even thought as singular thought, falls away on the Teflon surface of our practice.
We become what we are always already: the universe manifest.
Be well.
Good Morning Everyone,
The mornings are dark longer and we don't turn our clocks back until later this month, our area code has changed causing a disturbance in the force that regulates Qwest's voicemail box, and our rental property is still vacant. My goodness.
On the other hand, we had dinner at Marc's European Grill on Avenida De Mesilla Saturday night (http://www.marcseuropeangrill.com/). My son Jacob is the consulting chef there now and the food was wonderful. We were delighted to by chance meet some good friends there Dr. Dan Tapper (a brilliant sculptor, see http://www.galleryinthesun.com/danTapperSculpture/Default.aspx,) and his partner, Dr. Judy Long ( a brilliant sociologist http://books.google.com/books?id=GbknDkAwBCcC&dq=judy+long&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=o73J7ECv-O&sig=rMhy-mz_QGzl687PztJeG7KNqIk). So the four top became the doc top as all heads there were piled higher and deeper. Still, I highly recommend this restaurant.
I am having brilliant dreams once again...last night I dreamed a dream within a dream about my dreaming of a whole set of new recipes and as I 'woke' from my dream, these began changing a dull cowboy hotel into an environmental get-away. Odd. Food has never been a whole lot more to me than fuel for my body. And I rather enjoy dusty cowboy stuff. I guess my son is civilizing me some.
My hair is growing, meaning I have not shaved my head close for a few weeks. My Little Honey loves it, I am less thrilled. But we are approaching winter and I will let it grow in some for the season then cut it back again in the spring.
Services at Zen Center were rather sparsely attended Sunday. There were six brave souls who braved our desert chill spell. This is always the case after a retreat. I enjoy the small groups as they seem more intimate. Then again its probably just my neural cocktail of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Prematurely Aging Brain Disorder whispering in my ear. No worries, as my son says. Life is just this moment and this moment is wonderful regardless of what it is.
Yesterday's Dharma talk was a spin off of the morning lecture on the Twelve Links of Dependent Co-Origination, that typology of karma Buddha erected to help us understand things. Of course he was teaching to a bunch of barely educated tagalongs and these were Asian tagalongs at that. Indians love typologies. They treat them as mnemonics of a sort.
Anyhow, what is most important to understand about these twelve links is that they don't really exist. They are illusions of our mind's eye. Convenient fictions. A function of that old brain categorical processing trick which has us naming everything thus separating ourselves from everything and in some cases allowing this separation to turn against us as in Nature.
We are born and process in that disabled neurological sense. "I" develops as opposed to "you" or "it", yet this is just a function of a brain processing and organizing sensory data. No brain to process in this way leaves what? Reality as it truly is.
Can we overcome this obstacle and see clearly?
Yes. By practicing pure Zazen, shikantaza, that practice of just sitting. In this practice we deliberately let go, don't grasp, and allow everything to just be. There is no this or that; no sound; no smell; no taste; or touch. Most of all, there is no thinking. Even thought as singular thought, falls away on the Teflon surface of our practice.
We become what we are always already: the universe manifest.
Be well.
