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 »
On Friday, June 14, my granddaughter, Allegra Rose Howard, arrived in the world, weighing eight pounds and twelve ounces. As I reflect on that glad event, I am reminded of a phrase from Tibetan Buddhist teachings.
The phrase is this precious human birth. Its source is the Chiggala Sutra, where the Buddha speaks of the chances of being born a human being. Those chances, he observes, are infinitesimally small. They are analogous to those of a blind tortoise swimming in an ocean as large as the planet, where an ox’s yoke is afloat on the waves. Every one hundred years, the tortoise surfaces. The chances of being born human are no better than those of the tortoise surfacing with his head in the yoke. Human birth is extremely rare and therefore most precious.
In the lojong system of mind training practiced by Tibetan Buddhists, phrases such as this precious human birth are known as “slogans.” Contemplated and absorbed during sitting meditation, they are subsequently applied to everyday life. As the Zen teacher Norman Fischer explains, the best way to work with a lojong slogan is to develop it “as an almost physical object, a feeling in your belly or heart.” Once the slogan has embedded itself, you can work with it throughout the day, until it becomes “part of your mind—your own thought, a theme for daily living.”* Continue Reading »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ichigo ichie, lojong, loren eiseley, norman fischer, this precious human birth, Tibetan slogans | 8 Comments »
In a recent column Paul Krugman spoke of “fantasy posing as hardheaded realism.”* As might be expected, Krugman’s subject was economic, his theme political. But his well-wrought phrase has resonance beyond the spheres of politics and economics.
To begin with, it evokes the stereotype of the hardheaded realist—the seasoned, no-nonsense person who lives in the real world. At the same time, it suggests that realism may be little more than a pose. If, as Krugman implies, realism can be false, the opposite must also be the case. What is true realism, we might inquire, and what are its salient traits? Is it by nature hardheaded—and hardhearted as well? Continue Reading »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged ichigo ichie, Noble Truths, Paul Krugman, thich nhat hanh, Zen realism | 1 Comment »
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. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged " suchness, "The Bight, e.l. mayo, elizabeth bishop, Howard Nemerov, ichigo ichie, metaphor | 2 Comments »
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. Continue Reading »
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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. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged Bernie Glassman, ichigo ichie, jikishin kore dojo, Manjusri, pure mind, Vimalakirti | Leave a Comment »
Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh
If there is one indisputable fact of ordinary experience, it is that all things come and go. The bus arrives, picks up its passengers, and departs. Children grow up and leave home. Friends die. Yet throughout the literature of Zen we find the resonant phrase, “no coming, no going.” And over the centuries Zen teachers have often intoned that phrase, as if its meaning were self-evident.
For most people, I suspect, it is not, but it can sometimes be intuited through direct experience. With that aim in mind, I would like to offer a simple, twenty-minute exercise, drawn from the teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh.
This exercise consists of four gathas, or meditative verses. If you wish to explore the exercise, I would recommend that you record the gathas, leaving silent, four-minute intervals between them. Or, if possible, sit with a group, and appoint one member to recite the gathas. If you have a small bell to ring before each of the gathas, so much the better. Continue Reading »
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One 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. Continue Reading »
Posted in 1 | Tagged chickadees, Grasp nothing reject nothing, ichigo ichie, Layman P'ang, William Scott Wilson, zen | 6 Comments »
Pruitt Taylor Vince
If you have a good memory for movies, you may remember Nobody’s Fool (1994). Set in a declining town in upstate New York and based loosely on Richard Russo’s comedic novel, Nobody’s Fool stars Paul Newman as Donald “Sully” Sullivan, a feckless, sixty-year-old handyman who, in Russo’s words, has “led a life of studied unpreparedness.“ Although he is blessed with humane instincts and a generous heart, Sully’s devil-may-care attitude and his boyish penchant for mischief have too often sabotaged his better nature.
Sully’s sidekick and fellow bungler of odd jobs is a garbage collector named Rub Squeers, who plays a role in Sully’s adventures comparable to that of Sancho Panza in Don Quixote’s. Rub is just over five feet tall. His large head sits “like a medicine ball precariously balanced on his thick shoulders.” For most of his life Rub has seldom paid attention to much of anything. He finds attentiveness “hateful and exhausting,” and he considers inattention “normal human behavior.”
What Rub does do is wish, habitually and frequently. During a lull, when he and Sully are out of work, Rub wishes that “we’d just start up again like before.” Later, when they do find work, Rub wishes “we were all through with this job and sitting in The Horse eating a big ole cheeseburger.”* Wherever Rub might be, he wishes he were elsewhere. Continue Reading »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged elsewhere, ichigo ichie, killingsworth and gilbert, nobody's fool, richard russo, zen | Leave a Comment »
Being retired now, I cook most of the meals in our home. And of late I have become a connoisseur of my wife’s responses, spoken and unspoken, to what I put on our table.
Let us say that tonight’s menu is Rotini with Lemon-Asparagus Sauce, a side of cooked carrots, and a Martha’s Vineyard salad. After a few bites, Robin may comment on what she has just eaten, or she may not. If she is silent for very long, I begin to get curious. “How do you like it?” I venture to inquire. Continue Reading »
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged carrots, ichigo ichie, marriage, Midwest, rotini, thich nhat hanh, Yiddish | 3 Comments »
One Time, One Meeting 