Category: Literature

Cherishing One Another

“Between you and me,
the words,
like mortar,
separating, holding together
those pieces of the structure ourselves.

To say them,
to cast their shadows on the page,
is the act of binding mutual passions,
is cognizance, yourself/myself,
of our sameness under skin;
it rears possible cathedrals
indicating infinity with steeply-high styli.

For when tomorrow comes it is today,
and if it is not the drop
that is eternity
glistening at the pen’s point,
then the ink of our voices
surrounds like an always night,
and mortar marks the limit of our cells.”

Roger Zelazny, Creatures of Light and Darkness (1969)

Posted without further comment.

Self-Reflection

The moral, therefore, of my sermon on this small mount is this— even a mirror will not show you yourself, if you do not wish to see.

Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light

Self-reflection is one of the most important aspects of the Buddhist religion, and a critical component of emotional intelligence. And yet, self-reflection is surprisingly difficult to do. Peering into oneself, seeing the ugly sides of our personality, and not running away from it is a difficult thing to do.

But it can also be an illuminating experience if you are willing to face your darker self, and wind it backwards and figure out why it is there, why you feel or think the way you do.

As much as we like to think we are responsible, good people, the reality is is that our “shadow self” (to paraphrase Jung) is there, and it makes a mockery of many things we do. It doesn’t mean we are bad people or fake, just that we have to acknowledge that we are still motivated by basic needs, and that these are irrational and selfish. Hairless apes, in other words. 😉

Namu Shakamuni Butsu

One Damn Thing After Another

Life’s incessant ceremonies leap everlasting,
humans spring eternal on hope’s breast,
and frying pans without fires are often far between…

Roger Zelazny, Sign of the Unicorn

This quote from the Chronicles of Amber series, a hugely underrated fantasy series these days, sums up many aspects of life nicely. Life is, in many ways, one damn thing after another, with only brief respites in between.

Of course, this is what the Buddha warned in the first of the Noble Truths. He described life is being marked with dukkha. It doesn’t mean we are always writhing in agony, it’s just that life is marked with dukkha, and it rears its head from time to time.

But what is dukkha?

The analogy frequently used back then was the example of a potter’s wheel:

Photo by Mochammad Algi on Pexels.com

A potter’s wheel that runs smoothly and easily was described using the term sukkha. But dukkha is more like a potter’s wheel that wobbles, grinds when it turns, and requires effort to keep it spinning. Similarly, life feels like a grind sometimes.

Of course, someone may point out that’s the point of life:

MCCOY: Well, that’s the second time man’s been thrown out of paradise.

KIRK: No, no, Bones. This time we walked out on our own. Maybe we weren’t meant for paradise. Maybe we were meant to fight our way through. Struggle, claw our way up, scratch for every inch of the way. Maybe we can’t stroll to the music of the lute. We must march to the sound of drums.

Star Trek, “This Side of Paradise” (s1ep25), Stardate 3417.3

The Buddha didn’t necessarily say life is “evil” or “awful”, but pointing out the obvious: there is no rest, no lasting refuge. Also, even though sometimes life really does feel awful, life still goes on.

It is this need for a lasting refuge, a way beyond the great Cosmic Rat Race, that leads people to the Dharma.

Namu Shakumuni Butsu

P.S. apparently I’ve written another post with the same title two years ago. 😏

Lord of the Rings in a Nutshell

I found this on Tumblr a little while back, and wanted to share. It is a composite animation of the timeline of the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy, using gifs from various scenes of the movie. Enjoy!

https://www.tumblr.com/anyataylorjoy/674038235982446592/the-third-age-of-the-world-is-ended-and-the-new

P.S. Double-post today.

Hubris

“…tin-plated, overbearing, swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood.”

Scotty, “Trouble with Troubles” (s2ep15), Stardate: 4523.3

Thinking of the story of Taira no Kiyomori, among other things today.

Peace of Mind

During the past few weeks, I took up reading a 12th-century Japaense text, the Hojoki (discussed here) using Dr. Meredith McKinney’s excellent translation. It’s not a big text; you can probably read it in an hour or less. There’s a lot of stuff to unpack in this paragraph near the end.

I do not make claims for these [simple] pleasures to disparage the rich. I am simply comparing my past life with my present one. The Triple World is solely Mind. Without a peaceful mind, elephants, horses and the seven treasures are worthless things, palaces and fine towers mean nothing.

Kamo no Chomei, the author, used to be part of the aristocracy in the Capital, but was on the losing end of a family struggle for a prestigious position. Eventually he was pushed out and sidelined by his cousin, and later retreated as a hermit. So, Kamo no Chomei had a taste of the good life, but was obviously unhappy with the outcome. Compare this with the melancholy tone of Lady Murasaki’s diary a century earlier, or the Gossamer Years a generation earlier than that, and you can see that in spite of all the glamour, romance and beauty, there were plenty of people living among aristocracy who were all miserable in some way or another.

Kamo no Chomei gets to the heart of this: wealth and luxury might make day-to-day aspects of life easier, but that doesn’t equate to happiness or peace of mind.1

The phrase “The Triple World is solely Mind” requires some explanation. The term “Triple World” is an old Buddhist phrase to describe existence as a whole. The details are not important here.2 In modern American English, I suppose we could just call it the “Whole Enchilada”, existence as a whole. So, Kamo no Chomei is saying that the Whole Enchilada is just Mind with a capitol “M”. I explored this in an earlier post, but basically we perceive the world around us through the filter of our own mind. I am working on a lengthier post to explain this, but it’s a very Tendai-Buddhist concept (and Zen too) and too long to go into here, and I am still researching.

In any case, Kamo no Chomei even starts to question his attachments to his own humble lifestyle, seeing that he is getting complacent in that too:

The Buddha’s essential teaching is to relinquish all attachment. This fondness for my hut I now see must be error, and my attachment to a life of seclusion and peace is an impediment to rebirth. How could I waste my days like this, describing useless pleasures?

In the quiet dawn I ponder this, and question my own heart: you fled the world to live among forest and mountain in order to discipline the mind and practise the Buddhist Way. But though you have all the trappings of a holy man, your heart is corrupt. Your dwelling may aspire to be the hut of the holy Vimilakirti himself, but the practice you maintain in it cannot match even that of the fool Suddhipanthaka. Have you after all let the poverty ordained by past sins distract you? Or have your delusions tipped you over into madness?

Finally, exasperated, he writes at the end:

When I confront my heart thus, it cannot reply. At most, this mortal tongue can only end in three faltering invocations of the holy, unapproachable name of Amida.

It’s interesting to me that he starts with some pretty difficult, intellectual statement (the Triple World is Mind), moves into a lengthy discussion of self-doubt, and then finally ends with reciting the nembutsu.

I often feel this way too. As a nerd, I like going down “rabbit holes” sometimes, but in the end I get flustered and realize that I understand a lot less than I prefer. Maybe this is just self-doubt, but it makes one disheartened. So, sometimes, instead of re-hashing intellectual debates that are a thousand-years old (or more), better to just recite the dang nembutsu.

Namu Amida Butsu

1 Even if money can’t buy happiness, a healthy society needs robust social welfare to ensure basic human dignity and well-being. Sorry dudebros.

2 If you really want to know, the three worlds are the world of desire (the mundane world we live in), the world of form (similar to Plato’s world of form in the Allegory of the Cave), and the world of formlessness (i.e. pure though). But usually, this isn’t relevant and people just say “Triple World” as a stock phrase to mean “all of existence”.

Change

Think of this as “part two” of yesterday’s post. Some other quotes I found that I felt expressed the same sentiment, both from Star Trek, and from Dune.


Spock: Change is the essential process of all existence.

Star Trek, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield”, Stardate 5730.2

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense. But the real universe is always one step beyond logic.”

Frank Herbert, Dune

“When things change, your absolute universe vanishes, no longer accessible to your self-limiting perceptions. The universe has moved beyond you.”

Frank Herbert, Heretics of Dune

Just posting as-is. Enjoy!

It’s Just There

I used to be an avid Dune reader in my younger years, and posted quotes from it all the time in earlier iterations of the blog. Anyhow, I found this quote from the third book:

The universe is just there; that’s the only way a Fedaykin can view it and remain the master of his senses. The universe neither threatens nor promises. It holds things beyond our sway: the fall of a meteor, the eruption of a spiceblow, growing old and dying. These are the realities of this universe and they must be faced regardless of how you feel about them. You cannot fend off such realities with words. They will come at you in their own wordless way and then, then you will understand what is meant by “life and death.” Understanding this, you will be filled with joy.

Muad’Dib to his Fedaykin, from Frank Herbert’s “Children of Dune”

I have probably said this a few times recently, but like it or not we are not the center of the Universe, no matter how much we like to think we are. The universe will carry on without or without us, and sometimes it’s capable of really wondrous moments, and sometimes it will unleash some really shitty realities on us. And there’s only so much we can do to control that. Like a raft navigating treacherous waters, we have to carefully row and pay attention to the currents.

In spite of all this, though, it doesn’t mean we have to sit and be passive either.

Speaking of old science-fiction quotes…I am an avid Roger Zelazny reader, and Isle of the Dead is among my favorite books ever. I always like this quote because of its cosmic feel, but also its unintentional Buddhist message which resembles Saicho’s famous quote about “lighting one corner of the world”:

“Earth-son, I greet you by the twenty-seven Names that still remain, praying the while that you have cast more jewels into the darkness and given them to glow with the colors of life.”

Roger Zelazny, “Isle of the Dead”

Also, consider the 16th chapter of the Lotus Sutra:

My pure land is not destroyed, yet the multitude see it as consumed in fire, with anxiety, fear and other sufferings filling it everywhere….But those who practice meritorious ways, who are gentle, peaceful, honest and upright, all of them will see me here in person, preaching the Law [a.k.a. The Dharma]

Translation by Burton Waton

Thus, even in the midst of crisis, or madness, or despair the light of the Dharma still shines even when it seems obfuscated. It is always there for those willing to look, and for those willing to cast a few jewels into the darkness.

The Quiet Life

When news of the capital happens to come my way, I learn of many people in high places who have met their end since I retired to this mountain, and other lesser folk besides, too many to be told. And how many houses too, have been lost in all those fires? In all this, my mere passing shelter has remained tranquil and safe from fears.

Small it may be, but there is a bed to on a night, and a place to sit in the daytime. As a simple place to house myself, it lacks nothing. The hermit crab prefers a little shell for his home. He knows what the world holds. The osprey chooses the wild shoreline, and this is because he fears mankind. And I too am the same….

The Hojoki “Record of a Ten Foot Square Hut”, Dr Meredith McKinney translation

More on the fleeting nature of power here, here and here. Injustice is a pervasive aspect of our world and yet life goes on. Just ask Epicurus.

The Value of Friendship

Finishing the last chapters of Roger Zelazny’s A Night in the Lonesome October, I wanted to post this quote:

Greymalk: “Damned if I know, Snuff. Does anybody really care about a hungry cat, except for a few friends?”

Snuff: “Maybe that’s all anybody ever has, no matter how the big show is run.”

Recently, someone at work told me a story. They took some time off and returned to their native home of Bosnia, and visited family and friends that they hadn’t seen in years. Every morning, they sat and enjoyed Turkish-style coffee with friends and family and just talked. When they came back to work, they told the rest of us that sometimes the best therapy is to just sit and talk with loved ones over coffee. Of course, this doesn’t cure everything, but even just getting into a routine of talking with loved ones face to face on a regular basis can do much to help one’s wellbeing.

My wife, kids and I try to sit for dinner every night when possible. My oldest is just about ready to leave for college, so this time will not last much longer, and we rarely ever talk about anything serious, but it’s nice to just share whatever interesting thing happened that day. Once our oldest leaves the nest, things will certainly change around the house.1

In any case, even in the most turbulent times, amidst all the chaos, sometimes all you can do is just foster relationships with the people around you. Just simply being around trusted people is a good start.

1 In the office too, those times when I could sit and chat with trusted co-workers were kind of nice even if corporate office life kind of sucked. Being laid off during the early Pandemic, and then working at a new place has cut me off from that experience because I still work from home (too many people hired during Pandemic, not enough office space). Working from home has its benefits too, but the isolation comes at a cost.