18 December 2013 by Ben Howard
Scott Chapel
Drake University
Four weeks ago, in anticipation of the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, we of a certain age were asked to recall where we were when the president was shot. As it happened, I was then a sophomore at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, and I listened to the announcement of the president’s death in the lobby of Goodwin-Kirk Residence Hall, where a few of us had gathered around a portable radio. In retrospect, however, the question of where I was seems less important than where I went, having just received that sad and shocking news.
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Posted in 1 | Tagged contemplation, Drake University, Eero Saarinen, ichigo ichie, JFK assassination, meditation, Oreon E Scott Memorial Chapel, Scott ChapelDrake University, Thomas Merton, zen | 4 Comments »
4 December 2013 by Ben Howard
Hotei
Kano Takanobu, 1616
Last month my infant granddaughter Allegra uttered her first belly laugh. At the time she was sitting upright in her father’s lap, firmly supported by his two strong hands. Meanwhile my wife, Robin, was exuberantly entertaining Allegra, smiling broadly, blowing raspberries on her belly, and singing “I’m going to get you” as she tickled her toes. Without warning, up when Allegra’s arms, as though she were conducting an orchestra, and from her whole little being came gleeful, protracted laughter.
Luckily I had my camera handy, and I was able to capture the moment. When I later sent the photo to a few friends, one described Allegra as a laughing Buddha. Another expressed the wish that Allegra might keep laughing all her life. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged Eihei Dogen, Hotei, ichigo ichie, Jon Stewart, moment of Zen, Philip Woollcott, the backward step, zen meditation | 2 Comments »
20 November 2013 by Ben Howard
One day last summer I decided to go for a swim. It was a hot afternoon, and I needed both the exercise and relief from the heat.
Upon arriving at the university’s spacious pool, I observed that most of the lanes were still open. I chose lane one. As I prepared to enter the water, I noticed a pair of tiny pink flip-flops at the poolside. Someone’s little girl had apparently left them behind.
The water was chilly but refreshing. Pushing off, I swam a leisurely lap, breast stroke up, crawl stroke back. I hadn’t been swimming in quite a while, and I’d forgotten how pleasant the experience could be.
Upon surfacing, however, I was greeted by a little girl in a pink bathing suit. She was sitting on the edge of the pool, dangling her legs in the water. She wore a frown and looked perturbed. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged gratitude, Hotei, ichigo ichie, John Daido Loori, Thank You, Thanksgiving gatha, thich nhat hanh | 10 Comments »
6 November 2013 by Ben Howard
Dai Bosatsu Zendo
Meditation Hall
If your waking hours are anything like mine, many if not most are spent in attending to ordinary things. Although you might wish to be contemplating the meaning of life or encountering something out of the ordinary, groceries need to be bought and e-mails answered. Bills need to be paid. Whatever your spiritual aspirations, ordinary life assumes the foreground.
At first glance, Zen practice might seem a welcome escape from the daily round. At its deeper levels, Zen is indeed concerned with the alleviation of suffering, the cultivation of compassionate wisdom, and the “Great Matter” of life and death. Cloistered in their mountain monasteries or secluded in their urban centers, Zen masters and their disciples may appear to have risen above the quotidian fray and to have transcended the concerns of everyday life. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged Dai Bosatsu Zendo, ichigo ichie, jane hirshfield, Layman P'ang, Rinzai Zen, Zen teachings | 4 Comments »
23 October 2013 by Ben Howard
Thomas Brackett Reed
January 2, 1894
“I would rather be right than president,” declared William McKendree Springer, Democrat from Illinois, on the floor of the House.
“The gentleman needn’t worry,” replied Thomas Brackett Reed (1839-1902), Republican from Maine and Speaker of the House. “He will never be either.”
That famous exchange took place in the late nineteenth century, but the sentiment expressed by Congressman Springer may well be timeless in human affairs. Whether the venue be public or domestic, the context political or personal, many of us attach inordinate value to being right. We would rather be right than president–or fair, or peaceful, or humane. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged ichigo ichie, jane hirshfield, Right View, Sean O'Faolain, The Human Thing, thich nhat hanh, Thomas Brackett Reed, zen meditation | 3 Comments »
9 October 2013 by Ben Howard
Exert yourself. Whether conscious or unrecognized, that imperative underlies our everyday experience. Our livelihoods and indeed our survival depend upon our exertions. If we are to compete, achieve, and contribute to the common good, we must exert ourselves. Even the pursuit of happiness, as it is called, requires exertion. No rest for the weary, and no mercy for the slacker.
Yet even the highest achievers need their rest. The great pianist Vladimir Horowitz was once asked how he managed to play so many notes so quickly. “I relax between notes,” he cheerfully replied. As Horowitz well understood, rest and relaxation are essential, both before and during performance. They make strenuous exertion possible.
Quite often, people in need of rest and relaxation find their way to Zen practice. Viewed from a distance, the practice offers the prospect of unruffled calm. Yet, as newcomers soon find out, it is not always easy to rest or relax, even in a meditative setting. For those accustomed to multi-tasking, hyperconnectivity, and busyness generally, the simple act of stopping and resting can be as challenging as the most demanding activity. Admonished to sit still, the body rebels. A shoulder aches; a knee hurts; a foot wants to fidget. Efforts to correct one’s posture or relieve one’s unease often result only in new forms of discomfort. Wedded to incessant movement, the body wants to do, not merely to be. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged Dogen Zenji, Eihei Dogen, Francis Dojun Cook, gujin, ichigo ichie, Vladimir Horowitz, Zen practice | 4 Comments »
25 September 2013 by Ben Howard
Seamus Heaney, 1984
Alfred, New York
As the world knows, the Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney died last month at the age of seventy-four. On the day of his funeral, former Irish Senator Maurice Hayes, father of the actress Margaret (“Maggie”) Hayes, recalled that Heaney brought a handwritten poem to Margaret’s christening. “I must put that away,” Hayes said to himself, “because by the time she is getting married he will have the Nobel prize.” Regettably, the manuscript eventually went missing, Hayes’s best efforts notwithstanding. “I put it away so carefully,” he ruefully reflected, “that I couldn’t find it.”*
Something similar happened here in the village of Alfred, New York, though the circumstances were rather different. Seamus Heaney visited Alfred University in January, 1984 to give a reading. He stayed in the home of Carol (“CB”) Burdick, an adjunct professor of English who frequently hosted visiting writers. At the time, Seamus was suffering from a toothache, and for most of his reading he kept his palm pressed to his cheek. Early the next morning, he assuaged his pain by writing a piece of light verse, a self-ironic poem modeled after William Dunbar’s “Lament for the Makers” (1508). As he was leaving, Seamus thanked CB for her hospitality and presented her with the handwritten manuscript. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged digital obsolescence, ichigo ichie, Lament for the Makers, literature, Maggie Hayes, Maurice Hayes, Noli timere, seamus heaney, Timor Mortis conturbat me, W.D. Snodgrass, Walter Kennedy, William Dunbar | 2 Comments »
11 September 2013 by Ben Howard
Here in the village of Alfred, New York, many of us subscribe to our community newspaper, the Alfred Sun. And some us have discovered that the Alfred Sun, accompanied by a few well-placed squirts of Windex, can make short work of washing windows. The Sun is compact, maneuverable, and eco-friendly. Two full pages will suffice to wash a standard casement window. You can wash as many as three with a single issue.
A few weeks ago, I was engaged in that very task, but the work was not going well. Although I’d liberally applied the Windex and energetically rubbed it off, thick streaks remained. Repeated efforts produced the same result. Newsprint is effective for cleaning glass, I recalled, because the oil in printer’s ink repels the dirty water. Could someone have quietly switched inks? Should I try the Times Literary Supplement instead? Continue Reading »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Alfred Sun, clear seeing, Five Hindrances, meditation, pema chodron, Simple Green, still water, washing windows, zen | Leave a Comment »
28 August 2013 by Ben Howard
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.*
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Posted in 1 | Tagged aging, edwin arlington robinson, ichigo ichie, Okumura, thich nhat hanh, waterfalls, zen | 7 Comments »
14 August 2013 by Ben Howard
There 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. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged anthony weiner, elizabeth mattis-namgyel, frank bruni, ichigo ichie, michelle bachman, power of an open question, rhetoric | 3 Comments »
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