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134. The weirs of age

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 28 August 2013| 7 Comments »

The weir on the river Chew in Pensford

The weir on the river Chew in Pensford

It has often been observed that time seems to go faster as we grow older. Our birthdays arrive with increasing rapidity. Shortly after my fortieth birthday, I began to feel as if I were taking the garbage cans out to the curb every other morning. And with each ensuing decade this subjective sense of accelerating time, which a number of my older friends have also noted, has grown ever more prominent. It is as if we were afloat on a swiftly moving river, and each of those “important” birthdays, the ones that mark the decades of our lives, were another waterfall, whose drop and velocity have yet to be experienced.

Yet, from the vantage point of Zen teachings, neither birthdays nor waterfalls are quite what they appear to be. They are at once real and illusory. In his book Living by Vow the Soto Zen priest Shohaku Okumura has this to say about waterfalls:

A river flows past a place where there is a change of height, and a waterfall is formed. Yet there is no such thing as a waterfall, only a continuous flow of water. A waterfall is not a thing but rather a name for a process of happening. . . . We cannot distinguish where the waterfall starts and ends because it is a continuous process.*

(more…)

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133. Open and shut

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 14 August 2013| 3 Comments »

Shuts and passages ShrewsburyThere is nothing new under the sun, a revered text tells us. And while the latest inventions from Silicon Valley may seem to refute that proposition, it may well be true of rhetorical devices, those verbal and mental forms with which we construct our arguments and formulate our opinions. First identified by the ancient Greeks and Romans, those devices are still in use today, both in the public arena and in our private, everyday lives. And they can have a profound effect on the ways we experience the world, whether we realize it or not. (more…)

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130. Awful but cheerful

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 29 May 2013| 2 Comments »

Purple Finch

Purple Finch

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but one morning not long ago I called my wife to offer that very thing. I could pick her up at her office at noon, I proposed, and we could go to the Jet for a bite to eat. After checking her schedule, Robin readily agreed.

As it happened, however, Robin was called out of her office at 11:45. Not wanting to leave her husband in limbo, she asked Kevin, her work-study student, to inform me that she would be back shortly.

“What does he look like?” Kevin asked.

“He’s gray and slightly built.”

An hour later, over my egg-salad sandwich, I noted that there were other adjectives Robin might have chosen. “In aspect marvelous, in form divine” came to mind, but it lacked specificity. Perhaps “lean of limb and stern in mien”? Or, in the interests of concision, “compact and professorial”?

“But you are gray and slightly built,” Robin insisted.  At which point I rested my case. (more…)

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129. Wild surmise

Posted in 1 on 15 May 2013| 2 Comments »

800px-No_Known_Restrictions_Horse_Racing,_Currier_&_Ives_Lithograph,_1890_(LOC)_(489398731)For better or worse, the word surmise seems to be growing rare. I can’t recall when I last saw it in print, much less heard it in conversation. Like the landline phone and the handwritten letter, this old-fashioned word may soon be leaving our daily lives.

Far less endangered is the mental activity surmise describes. In ordinary human affairs, the act of surmising is not only habitual but also necessary for survival. Precisely defined, surmise means “to infer or conclude from inconclusive or uncertain evidence.” And if you have been up for several hours, it’s likely that you’ve already surmised a hundred times or more. (more…)

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128. The straightforward mind

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , on 1 May 2013| Leave a Comment »

 

Manjusri

Manjusri

One afternoon many years ago, when my son and I were playing chess at our dining-room table, our conversation turned to a woman I’d recently met.

“She seems honest,” I cautiously observed.

“I would have said ‘straightforward,’ Dad,” Alexander replied, taking my rook with his knight. Although he was only thirteen at the time, he was even then a stickler for definitions.

As it happened, however, father and son were both close to the mark. The word straightforward is a relative newcomer to the English language. The first usage cited by the Oxford English Dictionary dates from 1806. Originally, the meaning of straightforward was primarily descriptive. The word meant “directly in front of or onwards; in direct order.” But by the end of the nineteenth century, straightforward had acquired a moral aura, as in the Rev. Griffith John’s characterization of one Mr. Wei as a “plain, honest, straightforward-looking man” (1875). If not quite synonyms, honest and straightforward had come to occupy the same moral universe. (more…)

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126. The Greene Street Feeder

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , on 3 April 2013| 6 Comments »

Chickadee feeder 2012-06-25 005One spring morning five years ago, as I was watching chickadees flit around our backyard feeder, it occurred to me that those nimble little birds might appreciate having a trapeze on which to perch. When my son was a child I built him a trapeze, and he enjoyed it. Perhaps the chickadees would as well.

Construction was simple. Rummaging in the garage, I found a remnant of 3/4” flat screen molding. From this I cut two six-inch pieces for the top and bottom bars. These I connected with a central, four-inch dowel. Using wire-cloth staples, I fastened two three-inch lengths of cuckoo-clock chain to the ends of the top bar, joining them at the middle with a handsome brass S-hook. My trapeze thus completed, I hung it from a branch of our pin oak tree. Ready for occupancy, it swung invitingly in the wind. (more…)

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121. Snow

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , on 26 December 2012| Leave a Comment »

2012-03-11 002 2012-03-11 012Dr. Friederike Boissevain is a German oncologist and seasoned Zen practitioner. By her own admission, her meditative practice is imperfect—or “crooked,” as she describes it. Rather than remain focused and fully aware of the present moment, she finds herself wandering off into the “land of dreams and worries.” But, crooked though it be, her practice has supported her daily work with the sick and the dying. “The most important thing I ever did,” she reflects, “was to sit down once.” That act set “something in motion that cannot be stopped. This is not because of trust in something but because of experience. . . The snow of dharma covers everything, whether we see it or not.” (more…)

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119. The handwritten word

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 28 November 2012| Leave a Comment »

During the last few days of October, when Hurricane Sandy was threatening Western New York, state and local officials advised us as to the important documents we should take with us in the event of an evacuation: deeds, home-insurance policies, birth certificates, passports, and the like. In preparation, we should assemble those documents and place them in a waterproof envelope.

Sound advice, to be sure. But as I read that official list, I thought of a less than official item I would add to it: the file of documents I have kept for years under my father’s well-worn Bible. Contained in that file are notes, letters, and cards from friends and family, including letters from my deceased mother; birthday cards from my wife; holiday cards from my daughter-in-law; and a variety of notes from my son, some of them dating from his early childhood. Unlike the policies and passports, those documents are irreplaceable. And all were written by hand, which makes them all the more valuable.

That value, I might point out, is more than sentimental. It is historical and spiritual. The novelist Philip Hensher, author of The Missing Ink (Macmillan, 2012), has argued, with ample corroboration, that “we are at a moment when handwriting seems to be about to vanish from our lives,”* having been supplanted by the printed—and now the digital—word. If Hensher is right, we would do well to cherish whatever handwritten documents remain extant, irrespective of their author or content.  But even if we believe that handwriting, having survived for 5000 years, will always be with us, the act of writing by hand is worthy of renewed attention, if not of veneration. For in the handwritten word, it might be said, the authentic human self is concretely embodied. And the handwritten note or letter, however rough or polished, affords a depth of intimacy between writer and reader that print can only approximate. Little wonder that the world’s great spiritual traditions, Zen included, have accorded the handwritten word—or character—a place of honor, whether the handwritten text be the Torah, the Quran, the Heart Sutra, or the Book of Kells. (more…)

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118. Realizing

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , on 14 November 2012| Leave a Comment »

Chalmette National Cemetery, USCT Tree

One evening last week, as I was reading Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner, I paused at the end of a paragraph. That paragraph, I realized, had just given me exceptional pleasure. An aesthetic pleasure, to be sure, but no less keen for that.

Here is the paragraph, which depicts a winter morning in Kabul:

Here is what I do on the first day of snowfall every year: I step out of the house early in the morning, still in my pajamas, hugging my arms against the chill. I find the driveway, my father’s car, the walls, the trees, the rooftops, and the hills buried under a foot of snow. I smile. The sky is seamless and blue, the snow so white my eyes burn. I shovel a handful of the fresh snow into my mouth, listen to the muffled stillness broken only by the cawing of crows. I walk down the front steps, barefoot, and call for Hassan to come out and see.*

There are many reasons why a reader might relish this paragraph. My own enjoyment stemmed, in a general way, from the clarity, directness, and freshness of Hosseini’s prose. More specifically, it derived from Hosseini’s sensuous, evocative imagery, his deft handling of cadence, and his construction of an intimate narrative voice: that of a grown man tenderly recalling his childhood. Experiencing all those qualities and more, I experienced the complex pleasure they provided.

Yet, had I not paused, I might never have realized what I was experiencing. Almost certainly, I was thinking as I read, but thinking is not the same as realizing the experience one is having, an experience that includes but is not limited to thought. Understandably, much of our educational effort focuses on teaching students how to think, critically and conceptually. Far more rare, however, is systematic training in how to realize what one is experiencing. And toward that end, meditative practice can play an important, complementary role, not only in education but also in our everyday lives. (more…)

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115. This is, because that is

Posted in 1, tagged , , , , , , on 3 October 2012| Leave a Comment »

“Where did this bread come from?” asked a guest at our dinner table. “It’s delicious.” To that question, there is a very short answer. But there is also a longer answer that goes to the heart of Buddhist meditative practice.

The short answer is that the Deli-Style Rye we were enjoying came from Sisters Kneading Dough, a home bakery in Almond, New York. Every Friday afternoon, the sisters Beth and Jayne arrive at Quest Farm with their trays of bread and muffins, still warm from the oven. On that particular Friday, my wife, Robin, and I also arrived, and we came home with the Deli-Style Rye, along with a loaf of Robin’s favorite, Cinnamon Swirl. That, in short, is where the bread on our table came from.

The longer answer is that the bread came from sources too numerous to mention. Deli-Style Rye is made from organic bread flour (wheat and barley), whole wheat flour, water, whole rye flour, caraway seeds, honey, yeast, and canola oil. And each of these ingredients has a history of its own. Without the work of the bees and their keepers, there would have been no honey. Without sunlight, water, earth, and the labors of the farmers, distributors, truckers, and the rest, there would have been no flour, yeast, or canola oil. Without our driving to Quest Farm on a Friday afternoon, the Deli-style Rye would never have reached our home. Like anything else that we might conventionally regard as a single thing, the bread on our table was an aggregate of countless, interconnected things, without which it could not have come into being. And as its quick disappearance demonstrated, it was not really a solid object but a transitory node in the web of life, an event in a never-ending process. (more…)

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