i think i get it

In "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" author Robert Pirsig says that the way you live is important, because "the real motorcycle you're working on is yourself."

Ok, that sounds cool and New Age.... but what exactly does it mean? How am I like a motorcycle, and how the heck would I "work on" myself like a motorcycle?

I found an answer by going back to the book that first introduced me to Buddhist meditation several years ago. "The Wisdom of Yoga" is a kind of intellectual bridge between yogic (Hindu) philosophy and Buddhism. It explains the relationship and shared heritage of the two systems.

headlights

I stared down at the engine of my car. I did not plan to spend my whole Saturday morning replacing the stupid headlight bulbs. Why would they make the bulb covers so hard to come off? Who has hands small enough to wedge them into that tiny space?? I already spent more money than I expected, and now it was taking way more time. And my oil-stained, skinned knuckles hurt.

That's how it went for almost an hour. I got one lightbulb cover off, but the other wasn't budging. I wondered how much a repair shop would charge me to do this stupid little job.

But after a while I thought about the book "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". I remembered the author talking about how the Buddha can be found inside a motorcycle engine just as surely as in a lotus flower. I started breathing again. I slowly wiped the oil off my hands with an old t-shirt.

Mustang: The Reclusive Paradise

Caves of Mustang



Raja Jigme Palbar Bista



Flag of the Kingdom of Mustang


Mustang (from Tibetan Mun Tan (Wylie smon-thang) which means fertile plain) is the former Kingdom of Lo and now part of Nepal, in the north-east of that country, bordering Tibet on the Central Asian plateau between the Nepalese provinces of Dolpo and Manang.

Mustang is also known as a "Tibet outside the Tibetan Border" for it survived the Chinese invasion of 1951 and hence it fosters the original Tibetan culture, although it is now politically part of Nepal. Life in Mustang revolves around animal husbandry and trade.

teachers everywhere

Everyone and everything in my life is a teacher.

People I don't like teach me how to deal compassionately with people I don't like. People I *do* like with habits I don't like teach me to deal compassionately with behaviors that I don't like. My constant struggle to maintain my daily sitting practice teaches me the value of my practice. Everything has a price. The aggressive pit bull that I had to deal with for several days recently reminded me that sometimes compassion requires firm and patient toughness*, not "being nice."

I hope you guys and gals have equally effective teachers, and have a great weekend too!


(*Don't worry, no animals were harmed in the making of this blog post. By the end it was wagging tails and doggie treats for everyone.)

Buddhist Science Fiction: Brook Ziporyn's The Masochistic Playpen

Everything is other to itself. When you examine any experience, any person or object, including oneself--if you focus on it intensely and question it relentlessly--it proves to be ungraspable, unlocatable. This moment is immediately present, yet impossible. It can only appear as something else, some otherness: its parts, its past, its excluded possibilities. Every self must have an other, a necessary outside which simultaneously defines and threatens it. And this line between the outside and the inside, the world and the self, is also impossible. Under close scrutiny, the borders between things slip through our fingers, revealing the openness and ambiguity of what seemed so solid, so sure.

Hi, my name is...

In an attempt to fulfill my lifelong plot of taking over the entire universe one blog at a time, I have successfuly convinced Raymo to allow me to contribute to this here blog about teeny-bopper Buddhists. My plans are working out perfectly. Cue evil laugh...

No, really, thanks for having me. My name is Kourtney Mitchell and I'm just your average 23-year-old black kid sifting through this swampland of samsara trying to find my way out. So far, not so good.

I grew up in Illinois (Chicago and Springfield), went to school and worked in Missouri for six years (haven't yet graduated, unfortunately) and now I'm chilling with my family in Georgia.

susan piver

There is a Buddhist saying I love that goes, "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear."

Late last night I was driving and scanning the radio for something to listen to. I landed on an interview with Susan Piver, the author of the new book "The Wisdom of a Broken Heart". It was great stuff, and I found myself seriously considering pulling over to the side of the freeway and digging out a pen and paper so I could take notes.

I managed to make it to my destination, here are a few tips I jotted down:

~ When dealing with difficult emotions, feel the pain, but let go of the story.
~ In long-term relationships we try to cast others in our own mental movie of how things "should be". Instead, try experiencing your partner directly (as they are) and "turn off the projector".

The Rise of The Buddhist Novel: Brook Ziporyn's Omnipotence For The Millions

My previous post, "Contemplation of The Deluded Mind," was a brief sketch of the background and basis for the meditation techniques of Tiantai Buddhism. The gist is that for anything at all to exist, there must be contrast. Each contrast creates a field of relations between particular objects. One half of this contrast must be the overarching term which embraces and unifies the entire field of differences. At the practical level, Tiantai deploys the primary contrast of mind/matter (which proves to be equivalent to the splits between self/nonself, unity/multiplicity, and compassion/delusion). The practitioner is encouraged to contemplate this "moment of creation by mind," to isolate and intensify this experience as an instance of mind. This moment is a synthesis of diverse mental and physical objects, made possible by the workings of mind, of the "I" which excludes others. The student is instructed to search for mind or "me-ness" in every aspect of an experience, even and especially in its contrast to matter or "nonme." Once mind is seen to permeate all aspects of this moment, it negates itself: "one nature is no nature." Mind reveals itself to be and to have always been matter, and vice versa. The two opposites become reversible, capable of appearing as each other. Each moment can be described as neither mind nor matter, as both mind and matter, as entirely mind, or as entirely matter. The dualism is eliminated yet maintained--in fact, the contrast is heightened.

Brook Ziporyn is perhaps the first author to consciously apply the Tiantai maxim of "the more one dwells in it, the more one is liberated from it"

Contemplation of The Deluded Mind: A Brief Introduction to Tiantai Meditation

Everyone, Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike, knows impermanence. It is universal and directly perceivable. Whatever appears will vanish, whatever is present will someday be absent. Even the universe itself is fleeting; it will succumb to entropy and end in either cold stillness or the inverted bang of the Big Crunch. And for this reason, the recognition of impermanence was both the point of departure for Shakyamuni Buddha's own journey of spiritual discovery and the gateway into his teachings. It is the first of his three "marks" or characteristics of existence, and leads directly to the other two: suffering and nonself. In fact, the three marks are mutually reducible to each other--three different ways of indicating the same thing. To be impermanent is to suffer, to experience decay, death, and loss. To suffer is to be unfree, to be conditional, which is what "nonself" means in this sense. To be a self is to be autonomous and unconditional, to be the sole cause of one's identity and actions. But we are not our own causes; our existence arises from and is sustained by an indefinite list of overlapping conditions. These conditions, too, are impermanent. When they vanish, so will we.

Lisa Simpson, Freakin' Buddhist

my practice sucks

Ok, my practice doesn't really suck. But I was thinking about my last post and I think I may have given the impression that my practice was some kind of refuge* for me. That's not what it's supposed to be, and that's not what it is. Practice is just practice, it's not "supposed" to be anything.

It starts when the alarm goes off, earlier than I need, so that I have time to sit before work. I *never* want to get up -- to practice, or to anything. I'm tired, and the bed is warm. But part of my practice is exactly this, watching what arises in me. And what arises in me is annoyance, anger, fatigue, frustration... and the alarm *just* went off!

a common theme

I've always been fascinated by the way our lives come and go in sequences of patterns. At one time you lived in certain place, went to school or work every day along a certain route, sat at certain bus stops every day, and ate at the same few lunch places every day. Then things change, and you have a whole new set of components to your routine. A new home, a new route to work, a new office, seeing different people, etc, etc.

I almost consider these mini-lives. Sometimes when I'm driving I'll pass a certain restaurant or bus stop, and think about how that spot was a part of my life for years. And now it's not. You adapt to changing circumstances,

New Age

For awhile I was getting into some topics that people would throw under the heading new age. I read this book called the Ra Material and it was about this law called the law of one.

It basically says we're all one. OK I've heard that before and I thought it was a pretty basic principle. In this book a group of people host these meditation sessions where they receive transmissions from a group of aliens that call themselves Ra. They go on to talk about all these different dimensions (which they call densities) and a lot of it i can sense some buddhist/eastern roots in it. I suppose that's why I was attracted to it.

There's a local book store that hosts a Friday night forum where everyone discusses metaphysical topics. Psychics come in and "channel" angels and what not

drug store

I walked through the drug store near my mother's house looking for bird food. She is in the mental hospital again, and I'm taking care of her birds and cat while she's away. A sort-of-familiar store employee walks past me then stops.

"Aren't you ****'s son?", she asks.
"Yeah", I say.
"Your mother left a computer monitor here last week."
"A computer monitor? Did she buy it here?" I ask, somewhat hopefully, knowing drug stores don't normally sell computer monitors.
"No." she looks back at me, vaguely smiling.
Right, of course.

On the floor behind a nearby counter is a dirty computer monitor, the bulky old kind that probably weighs forty pounds.

The TWO characteristics of reality

When there is no self, there can not be any suffering.
Once complete equanimity has been reached, there is no suffering.
Therefore, suffering can not be a characteristic of reality itself.
So the characteristics are 2, not 3.