Essays, Articles, Observations & Images – Through the Lens of the Salish Sea
I do not recall if Abbey studied zen. It appears to me that inherent in his craft is the idea that what he does not say is as important as what he does. Each sentence zigs and zags around, over and under so many norms of American society, and he does so with nary a …
"To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys …
Towards a more altruistic society At the end of last week, Plaidoyer pour l’altruisme (The Case for Altruism), a 920 page-book on which I have been intensely working for 5 years, came out in French (the English publication is scheduled for January 2015). Cooperation, wrote Martin Nowak, is “the architect of creativity throughout evolution, from cells …
Continue reading "Towards a More Altruistic Society – Matthieu Ricard"
This is a talk about special powers that people have without knowing it nor using them. This discussion is a transcript of a talk given by Shunryu Suzuki and the transcript lacks fluidity but reflects the actual presentation style of Suzuki. The sutra story shows that through paying attention to what is in front of …
Continue reading "Special Human Powers – The Lotus Sutra – Fragments"
Paul is a poet and a tireless advocate for Cascadia. He has written a description of what he calls "Organic" poetry and shows its refractions and its heritage in a poetic flow of references. Paul's focus is on the west coast and talks about how it is influenced more by the east than the west, …
Continue reading "Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies – Paul E Nelson"
Scattered an ability to go with the natural flow of life and interests of the moment. the feeling of moments flowing in time - it is the feeling of time - it is what time is. it is interactive, time engaging and the mind responding and showing and then the reverse takes hold. it is …
heavy wind in sun in the trees wind moving living trees each against the other in their reach upwards just at the end of their tolerance swaying with the form they had built, not yet crafted by the wind but the sun.
Huang Po and the Dimensions of Love Huang Po taught his students they were already enlightened. I know of one student of Zen who threw a translation of Huang Po out of his apartment window, and the book, like a block of wood, made it, on more than one occasion, into an open trash …
Continue reading "Huang Po (Huangbo Xiyun) ~ 黄檗希運 ~ zen buddhist ~ Chinese ~ Tang Dynasty ~ 850AD"
It is rare that a towering intellect will let an artist have the last words on the judgement of his own work and worth. But Rexroth has done just that here in this 1955 piece. This essay is a wide-ranging contemplation of Graves when he was in his prime. Rexroth was in his prime as …
Mr Palomar is an accomplished practitioner of zen buddhism. He is astute at seeing what is before him as it is. Where he gets into trouble is when seeing, or being, is not enough and he needs to develop his strategies and plans together with his angst at trying to do the right thing in …
“Ichigo-Ichie ” Once-in-a-Lifetime Ichi-go ichi-e (一期一会, literally “one time, one meeting”) is a Japanese term that describes a cultural concept often linked with famed tea master Sen no Rikyu. The term is often translated as “for this time only,” “never again,” or “one chance in a lifetime.”Ichi-go ichi-e is linked with Zen Buddhism and concepts …
Volcano Woman - Wayne Young - Northwest Coast (Nisga’a / Haida) acrylic on paper 30" x 23" 2005 ----------------------------------------- He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village The Dimensions of a Haida Myth Gary Synder The Curse From the Foreward: "A curse on monocultural industrial civilization and its almost deified economic and political systems that compete, exploit, an …
photo: Esto es Bolivia Bolivia enshrines natural world's rights with equal status for Mother Earth Law of Mother Earth expected to prompt radical new conservation and social measures in South American nation John Vidal in La Paz ,The Guardian, Sunday 10 April 2011 13.17 EDT Bolivia is set to pass the world's first laws granting all …
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Photograph by Vincent Mentzel 1988/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux. " Cage requires a fundamentally different mode of listening: you need to relinquish expectations that successive sounds will fall into familiar harmonic relationships, or indeed relationships of any kind, and instead treat each moment in isolation. You “regard” the sounds as you would objects in a gallery. More …
top photo - public domain. bottom photo: Lisa Larsen/TimeLife Pictures/Getty Images
Czeslaw Milosz - The Wilno Poet Under California Skies November 2012 It is not an anomaly to be transformed by the breadth and scope of the Northern California landscape. To stand on a mountain and look over the rocky shore and the expanse of the blue Pacific is a powerful sensation. While one's awe eventually …
Continue reading "Czeslaw Milosz – Biography – The Wilno Poet Under California Skies"
Now It Is motions today are real, and yet they house potentialities that are full. They are not present and yet the scent of them is. it is the mystery of their unfolding that draws me in.
The Heart Sutra Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, meditating deeply on Perfection of Wisdom, saw clearly that the five aspects of human existence are empty*, and so released himself from suffering. Answering the monk Sariputra, he said this: Body is nothing more than emptiness, emptiness is nothing more than body. The body is exactly empty, …
A Village Without War and Peace A snake seizes a frog in its mouth and slips away into the grass. A girl screams. A brave lad bares his feelings of loathing and flings a rock at the snake. The others laugh. I turn to the boy who threw the stone: “What do you think that’s …
Suzuki Roshi San Francisco Zen Center July 15 1965 Originally offered: July 15th, 1965 | Modified October 27th, 2009 by korin July 15, 1965 Rev. S. Suzuki’s talk on Great Prajna Paramita Sutra This morning I want to explain the attainment…the attainment here…it means to resume to our true nature is actually attainments. To attain …
I have reproduced the following blog post from the ECHOVAR blog site and have given the direct link below. It is an outstanding piece on Steve Jobs. It so happens that I am one third through the book Steve Jobs by Walter Issacson. I have followed Jobs for thirty years and believe that he was …
Continue reading "THEREFORE, YE SOFT PIPES, PLAY ON – ECHOVAR"
we are the same as those who came before. yet our distance from our kind is great. do we not see that we the living, all of the living, are a clan? each with natures unique but living and this simple fact: our being. existence is a bond so great in this vast universe of …
Continue reading "Poem – Living Beings – Near a Western Red Cedar"
Gabrialle Bakker is a Seattle artist who this year was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant ( http://www.pkf.org ). Her work often shows the confluence of the euro and the orient. This cultural struggle is at the heart of the west, from Vancouver, BC to San Diego. Many of the western artists, writers and thinkers have …
The following link is to an interview which allows for a short discussion of nondualism applied to art and painting. http://www.nondualitymagazine.org/nonduality_magazine.1.miyaando.interview.htm#
Expression follows two paths of existence — exterior and interior. Of course in reality they are one, they are the same. We are taught that they are different. Interior existence cannot be "seen" with our senses, nor can others see them. Abstraction and the unconscious make up much of this terrain. Photography captures the exterior …
Lincoln - Poetics, Character, Precipice of War and Human Design. Upon reading Edmund Wilson's profile of Lincoln in "Patriotic Gore - Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War," I am taken by the literary and poetic drama of the account. Lincoln is shown to be chiefly literary in character — it is what …
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I have been reading Thomas Merton in the last few weeks in his book, "Zen and the Birds of Appetite". It was written in the late 60s and his point of reference in learning is D.T. Suzuki, who was then the most popular translator of Zen to the western world. When I started the book …
West Pacific Review 