Since May when I started taking up Zen practice more actively, I’ve been meditating more or less pretty regularly since then. Not quite daily, but several times a week usually. This has highlighted something I didn’t expect: back pain.
Back pain is nothing new to me. I have worked a desk job for many years, so my back often hurts, and I don’t get enough exercise. My back problems are not severe, and don’t require surgery or anything, and I have tried a few things to solve them: new office chairs, Tiger Balm, Chinese medicine pads, yoga, acupuncture, ibuprofen, etc. Each of these helps a little bit, but the problem recurs over and over again. Simply bending down to take out something from the refrigerator can trigger it, but so did Zen meditation.
Meditation sometimes triggers lower back pain for me if I sat incorrectly. But also posture. I tried doing a half-lotus posture, but that quickly caused too much discomfort (full lotus posture is right out), so I usually sit in the “Burmese posture“. This is usually good enough, but even so, if I posture isn’t good, my back hurts more and more. If I already had back pain, it aggravates it. In such cases, I usually have to stop meditation for a few days while my back recovers.
I started to despair that I would never find relief.
Finally, I decided to try some physical-therapy exercises to strengthen my core muscles. I found this helpful website that provides a routine that a person should do once or twice a day (twice if possible). I started this about four weeks ago, sometimes once a day, sometimes twice a day. I also added 15 squats as part of this routine to make my knees stronger.1 After the first week, the pain in my back had noticeably diminished. By the end of the second week, my posture and back pain greatly improved. I felt much more sturdy when going up and down stairs.
Meditation too hurts a lot less. Sometimes I still get back pain, but both the severity and duration are much shorter now.
Again, to emphasize, my back problems are pretty minor and don’t require surgery or anything, but simply doing about 10 minutes daily of physical therapy type exercises to strengthen my core has had many little benefits, both for meditation and for general quality of life.
But don’t ask this old man to do half-lotus position… 😋
P.S. Taking a break next week on blogging. I need to catch up on some drafts, do some reading, etc. Plus it’s my birthday. 🥳 See you next time!
1 I have also been dieting more actively to help reduce physical weight of my body on my bones and back.
A few months ago, I made this post about how the Obaku Zen sect interprets Amida Buddha and the Pure Land. To my surprise, I keep reflecting on this phrase from time to time, almost like a Zen koan:
This mind is the Pure Land, this body is Amida Buddha
This idea of merging Zen and Pure Land ideas is somewhat rare in Japanese Buddhism, but it’s surprisingly common in Chinese-Buddhist thought. Originally, I thought it was limited to later Ming-Dynasty Buddhism (which Obaku descends from), but similar strands of thought exist much further back.
A famous Chinese monk named Yongming Yanshou (永明延壽. 904 – 976) once wrote a poem titled the “Four Alternatives” (sì liào jiǎn 四料揀):1
Lacking both Chan and the Pure Land, it will be the iron beds and bronze pillars [of hell] for ten thousand kalpas [eons] and a thousand lives with no one to turn to.
Having Chan but lacking the Pure Land, nine out of ten will stray from the path; when the realm of the aggregates appears before them, they will instantly follow it.
Lacking Chan but having the Pure Land, ten thousand out of ten thousand who practice it will go [to rebirth]. Having seen Amitābha, why worry that one might not attain enlightenment?
Having both Chan and Pure Land, one is like a tiger with horns [i.e., doubly capable]. Such a person will be a teacher in the present life, and a buddha or patriarch in future lives.
translation by Charles B. Jones, “Chinese Pure Land Buddhism, Understanding a Tradition of Practice”, pg 210
Yongming is advocating a supportive model where both Zen practice and Pure Land practice work in concert. The Pure Land path is the “safer” path to follow, due to the vows of Amida Buddha, but if supported by Zen practice here and now, one is really making progress on the Buddhist path.
Further, a later writer named Yunqi Zhuhong2 (雲棲袾宏, 1535 – 1615) explained that these things were not mutually exclusive (Chinese added by me):3
To contemplate the Buddha (nianfo 念佛) is to contemplate the mind (nian-xin 念心). Birth there (in the Pure Land) does not entail birth away from here. Mind, Buddha, and sentient beings are all of one substance; the middle stream (non-duality) does not abide on the two banks (this world and the Pure Land).
Similarly, Ouyi Zhixu (蕅益智旭, 1599 – 1655) in his excellent work “Mind Seal of Buddhas” makes a similar argument: Zen and Pure Land practice are the same thing, just operating at different levels. You’re not forced to chose one or the other in your practice.
But such ideas aren’t limited to medieval Chinese-Buddhist monks. You can find such sentiments in Pure Land sutras themselves! In the Immeasurable Life Sutra is this passage (emphasis added):
“In this world, you should extensively plant roots of virtue, be benevolent, give generously, abstain from breaking the precepts, be patient and diligent, teach people with sincerity and wisdom, do virtuous deeds, and practice good. If you strictly observe the precepts of abstinence with upright thought and mindfulness even for a day and a night, the merit acquired will surpass that of practicing good in the land of Amitāyus [a.k.a. the Pure Land] for a hundred years. The reason is that in that buddha land of effortless spontaneity all the inhabitants do good without committing even a hair’s breadth of evil. If in this world you do good for ten days and nights, the merit acquired will surpass that of practicing good in the buddha lands of other directions for a thousand years.
Translation by Rev. Hisao Inagaki
In this passage, the Buddha is clearly advocating both bending your efforts toward rebirth in the Pure Land, but also making the most of the time you have here to undergo traditional Buddhist practices too because even a modest effort here is a great benefit in the future (both for yourself and others).
As I often tell my kids: “go nuts”!4
What I mean is: recite the nembutsu, meditate, uphold the precepts, or some combination thereof. You have nowhere to go but up.
But what if you can’t decide or don’t have the time?
In my opinion, start with the nembutsu. Begin just as you are, and recite it just 10 times daily. From there, add the Five Precepts when you are ready, and once you have that foundation, and are ready to branch out, then look into Zen practices. This make take months or even years. Take your time, go slow, and don’t be afraid to explore.
When I talk about the flexibility of Tendai Buddhism in Japan as well, this is what I am alluding to: start with something simple and small at first (such as a devotional practice), and gradually building upon it as you gain confidence and see the positive transformation in your life. Buddhism is kind of a SLOW, gradual religion, but like a glacier, once it starts moving, it has a wonderful momentum all its own even if you can’t see it.
Namu Shakumuni Butsu Namu Amida Butsu
P.S. Featured blog image is another famous “Dynamic Duo”: Batman and Robin from the 1960’s series.
P.P.S. Posting kind of off-schedule just because it is fun. 😊
1 I found this on Wikipedia actually and I thought to myself “wow, this person quoted exactly the same way that I would do!”, then I realized that I had put this on Wikipedia a few years ago. 🤦🏼♂️
2 Pronounced like “yoon-chee joo-hong”.
3 Again, I managed to pull a quote from Wikipedia that I had unwittingly added years ago and then promptly forgot.
4 My kids ask me if they can watch TV, play Switch or whatever, and my frequent answer is “go nuts” [go crazy, have fun].
My son and I visited our neighborhood bookstore recently (shop at local, independent bookstores!) and I found this neat book worth mentioning called The Blue Cliff Record, translated by David Hinton.
The Blue Cliff Record, known in Chinese as the Bìyán Lù (碧巖錄) is actually a pretty old text in the Chinese Chan (Zen) tradition, and is a collection of Koans compiled in the year 1125 by Yuanwu Keqin (圓悟克勤, 1063–1135).1 Obviously, the koans themselves were older and handed down over time, and appear in other collections, but the Blue Cliff Record is a kind of “selected wine list” of koans. The Blue Cliff Record was compiled during the Song Dynasty in China, which while politically unstable due to the Mongols, was a cultural high-water mark of Chinese Buddhism and especially the Chan tradition. Not surprisingly, Japan’s Zen traditionimported much from this time period as well.
This is not the first time I’ve studied koans, though.
In my youth, when I first explored Zen, I had a copy of the Gateless Gate by Mumonkan, and my religion studies teacher in high school assigned us each a koan to solve in class. Of course, none of us actually solved them, but it was a fun exercise. But as with my studies in Zen, I gradually forgot about it until recently, so it’s like coming back full circle after more than 30 years (!).
But what the heck are koans?
“Koans” are more properly called Gōng-àn (公案) in Chinese. The word “kōan” is how those Chinese characters are pronounced in Japanese, and this term is more widely known to Westerners.2 Koans are cryptic dialogues, often between a master and student, and widely used in the Lin-ji school of Chan Buddhism. As we saw in my recent post, Lin-ji is predominant in China, but also spread to neighboring countries, and in Japan’s case it became both the Rinzai and Obaku sects (albeit different centuries). Temples such as Kenninji and Ryoanji are examples of famous Rinzai temples in Japan. The Soto Zen tradition doesn’t rely on them as much, but inherits the same collections, as it is desecnded from the Cao-dong (not Lin-ji) school in China.
David Hinton in his foreword on the Blue Cliff Record explains that the key to understanding a Koan is to see it like a kind of public law case. When law students review famous court cases, they have to review the nature of the complaint, evidence presented, the judge’s decision, past precedence, etc. If you’re not a law student, this is hard. But if you’ve been practicing law for a long time, immersed yourself in it, then you see it with a different eye.
In the same way, Mr Hinton writes, a Koan is like a “public sangha case”. The “sangha” is one of the Three Treasures of Buddhism, and means the Buddhist community at large. So, these are public sangha cases for students to review, contemplate, and so on.
The truth is, when you read a Koan for the first time, it basically makes no sense whatsoever. You might think you get it, then you gradually realize that you really don’t. Then it gets under your skin, and bothers you enough that you might stick with it, until maybe one day, you look at it and you think “duh, of course!”
But also, some “public sangha cases” will resonate with you more than others, or at different times in your life.
Since I don’t participate in any Zen communities at present, I decided to do a little experiment. The Blue Cliff Record has exactly 100 cases in it, and being a giant nerd, I decided to pick one at random as my koan to contemplate. I took 2d10 dice from my Dungeons and Dragons set. Then, I briefly prayed to Kannon Bodhisattva and Shakyamuni Buddha and rolled the dice. I got koan #20 which David Hinton translates as “Dragon-Fang Meditation Clapper”:
When he was a monk traveling, Dragon-Fang Mountain asked Kingfisher Shadowed-Emergence: “What is the ch’i-weave mind [意] Bodhidharma brought from the West?”
“Pass me the clapper to announce meditation,” said Shadowed-Emergence.
Dragon-Fang passed the wooden clapper to Shadowed-Emergence, who swung it and struck Fang a blow.
“You can strike me all you want,” hissed Dragon-Fang, “But there’s still no ch’i-weave mind for Bodhidharma to bring from the West.”
Traveling years later, after his awakening under Fathom Mountain, Dragon-Fang asked Purport Dark-Enigma: “What is the ch’i-weave mind Bodhidharma brought from the West?”
“Pass me the meditation cushion,” replied Dark-Enigma, who swung it and struck Fang a blow.
“You can strike me all you want,” hissed Dragon-Fang, “But there’s still no ch’i-weave mind for Bodhidharma to bring from the West.”
Translation by David Hinton
Confusing? Yes. Mr Hinton takes the unusual approach of translating the monks’ names into English, hence “Dragon-Fang” and “Shadowed-Emergence”, etc. so it takes a bit of getting used to. The term “ch’i-weave mind” (意)3 takes 2 pages to explain at the end of the book, and I can’t do it justice, but for simplicity here I will crudely summarize it as the Big Mind, as opposed to one’s normal everyday mind.
Even so, this koan doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I think I get it, but do I really get it?
I suppose time will tell…
Namu Shakamuni Buddha Namu Amida Buddha Namu Kanzeon Bosatsu
1 Pronounced like “yuen-wu kuh-cheen”
2 Many Buddhist terms in Japanese are just local pronunciations of Chinese-Buddhist words (often from Hokkien dialect, not Mandarin, due to its proximity to the Japan islands). This same trend happens with Korean-Buddhist words, Vietnamese-Buddhist words, and so on. If this sounds strange, consider religious words in English. They are often derived from Latin, for obvious reasons, but the pronunciation gets muddled over many generations, especially since they were often filtered through Middle-French (via conquering Normans). This is how religious ideas and words spread.
3 This Chinese-character is used in such Japanese words as:
意味 – imi or “meaning”
意識 – ishiki or “consciousness”
注意 – chūi or “caution”
用意 – yōi or “to prepare or provision something”
…. you get the idea. It’s used a lot, but kind of abstract too.
Garibaldi: This isn’t gonna be easy. G’kar: Nothing worthwhile ever is.
Babylon 5, “And the Rock Cried Out, No Hiding Place”, s3:ep20
Recently, I talked about the key to practicing Zen (or Buddhism in general) is training while incorporating other things in your life toward that same goal. Like Rocky Balboa training in Rocky, or Li Fong in the excellent movie Karate Kid: Legends, or someone working hard to learn a language by making other aspects of life conducive toward language learning.
In most cases, we go through a some stages when we take up a project like this.
New thing – “this is fun, I can see the benefits already!”
Steady practice – “gotta keep this up”
Boredom – “ugh, I gotta do this again”
Skipped days – “I’ll make up for it tomorrow”
More skipped days – “No, really, I’ll make up it up tomorrow.”
Guilt – “I suck”
Despair – “I’ll never succeed.”
Quitting.
My usual pattern with new projects, or dieting and exercise, is to eventually feel guilty, despair, and quit. It happens to me a lot over the years, admittedly.
But also, there are a few things that surprisingly I have managed to stick with for years, decades even. I’ve been actively studying Japanese since 2008, for example. I realized though that the way I’ve studied Japanese has changed and shifted many times. Some experiments succeeded, others failed immediately. But the goal was important enough to me, that even when I failed I just shifted tactics and tried again. I failed the N1 JLPT twice in the last five years, and to my surprise, I am still at it, but now trying a new tactic.
Put another way: when I hit a roadblock, instead of hitting my head on the wall harder and harder, I tried another route. I knew where I wanted to go (language fluency) and just kept trying methods until I found something that stuck.
I realized too that my pursuit of the Buddhist path has been much the same way. I started out in 2005 with very little understanding, but I really liked reciting the nembutsu, and I loved the simple, down-to-earth, and highly approachable Jodo Shu sect as taught by Honen (still do!). But while I’ve had the same basic goal, my understanding of Buddhism has grown over time, and like language learning, has gone through many false-starts, projects that soon ended, or things that just didn’t work. So, I just shifted, tried another route, backtracked, and so on. This what I think happened to me, and why I took up Zen practice since May.
My current Zen practice is, I suppose, just another track toward my goal.
So, I think the point of all this is that the goal is more important than the particular approach. If the goal is something you really care about you’ll find a way. In fact, you’ll probably bend other aspects of your life toward it. If not, then the goal maybe wasn’t that important to begin with. That’s OK. Better to acknowledge it, cut your losses, and move on.
But if the goal is worthwhile to you, then like G’Kar says, you’ll find a way.
Season three of the science series Babylon 5 marks a big change in the story and especially for G’kar (played by the late Andreas Katsulas, RIP) and his people. G’kar recognizes what is happening and realizes that there is no going back.
In a sense, every moment is a transition. Most are really small, subtle, trivial, with some big ones thrown in. Some of these big transitions are positive (getting married, having kids, etc), some are overtlynegative.
Some start negative and become positive: I was laid off, but the new job I got ended up being better. Some start positive and become negative: friends who started out great, but became problems later or responsibilities that get worse and worse.
In short, life is just a series of constant transitions, great and small, and they’re usually hard to spot in until they have already happened. For example, on my way to work, I pass by my old university. I graduated almost 25 years ago, and still visit for cherry blossoms, but year after year it has changed in small ways like the Ship of Theseus. The university I knew no longer exists.
A scene from Fire Emblem: Three Houses
That’s all well and good for gradual, transitions, but what if you are living through a very dramatic, negative transition? It is very hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo.
“So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
But I like to think that given enough time, even dark and difficult times eventually fade…
“It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going, because they were holding on to something. That there is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”
So, when times are difficult, I try to hold on to the idea that time marches on, and today’s kings will be tomorrow’s dust.
The Buddha taught the importance of equanimity, like a grass that bends in the wind, no matter how strong it blows, and this is a lot easier than it sounds when you’re dealing with the hassles of life. But knowing that time marches on does make it somewhat easier.
If you know what life and existence is, think of it this way: it’s just there.
One thing that really annoys me as a long-time Buddhist is the tendency for self-help and spritual seminars to cost so much money. I saw this advertised locally in my area for weeks, and the starting price for a seat is $250 for a backrow seat, which to me is totally bonkers.
The Dharma, as taught by Shakyamuni Buddha was freely given, and required nothing.
Having said that, as a counter to pricey spiritual seminars, I wanted to promote a concept: the Art of Dying.
DYING?!
It is a simple concept: you are going to die. You cannot necessarily choose the hour or manner of your death. But it will occur inevitably occur.
You do not have to take my word for it. Here’s a Buddhist sutra (freely given I might add) from the words of the Buddha:
There is no bargaining with Mortality & his mighty horde.
Whoever lives thus ardently, relentlessly both day & night, has truly had an auspicious day:
But, to summarize the Parable, the Buddha Shakyamuni asks us, the reader, to imagine a great, big mansion that’s old, rickey, and so on. Then, imagine the house is burning. Deep inside, some kids are playing in a room, unaware the house is on fire. The father, having just returned from a trip, sees his kids in danger and calls out to them to leave the house at once. The kids, engrossed in their games, fail to see their situation. Finally, the father offers them great rewards if they leave (specifically carts of goods), and the kids finally come out.
The father, Shakyamuni Buddha, has left the burning house and stands outside. He calls to those in danger, namely the “kids”, to see their peril and to come out too.
What about the burning house itself? That is the world we live in, with strife, conflict, disease, chaos, aging, and death.
The late Thich Nhat Hanh wrote about this too:
“Imagine two hens about to be slaughtered, but they do not know it. One hen says to the other, “The rice is much tastier than the corn. The corn is slightly off.” She is talking about relative joy. She does not realize that the real joy of this moment is the joy of not being slaughtered, the joy of being alive.”
This gets to the heart of the Buddha’s teachings: do not squander the time you have on this Earth. It doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy life and your loved ones, but remember: Death will not wait for it to be convenient for you.
When you hear this, your instinct might be the “live, laugh, and love”, indulge in all the fun things in life before it’s too late. But that’s not what the Buddha intended. When you look back at the Parable of the Burning House, the father wasn’t asking the kids to play more, he was telling them to get out before it’s too late.
Further, in the Mahayana tradition, one can get themselves out of the burning house, but helping and guide others to get out of the burning house is even better. One can call such people bodhisattvas.
But you can’t help others (let alone yourself) until you :
Recognize the situation
Put down your own toys and find the way out before you can help others.
This is part of the progression of the Buddhist path: get your foundations in order, increasing confidence in the Dharma (which you can see in your own life), and turning outward to help other beings.
But starting at the beginning, how does one establish a foundation?
Everyone is different, but generally it starts with some simple things:
Taking the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha as one’s chosen refuge (you can do this by yourself or in a community). You can setup a small shrine too.
Taking up an ethical life, such as undertaking the Five Precepts
If all five are too hard, start with one, and work your way up over the months and years.
Say to yourself (yes, you): May I be well, may I be free from harm.
Now think of loved ones: may they be well, may they be free from harm.
Now think of all living beings (even the awful ones): may they be well, may they be free from harm.
Setup a reasonable daily practice. Think of it like exercise or stretching: if you start too aggressively, you’ll injure yourself and set yourself back. So start small, and build up.
What does a daily practice look like? Some examples here.
A small meditation practice can be beneficial too, but intention matters.
Study the sutras. Not self-help books, but the sutras. Commentaries on the sutras, such as those provided by Thich Nhat Hanh are quite good and easy to find in used and independent bookstores such as Powell’s City of Books.
Find worthy teachers and communities, not slick, overpriced seminars or cults. Caveat emptor.
Repeat. Buddhism is a long-term practice. “Play the long game“, but also remember you are on the clock. Time is short.
So, that’s your free teaching for today. Thanks for attending this seminar. Want to support the blog? Pay it forward or something. This is “Buddhism on a Budget”, and I strongly feel this is how Buddhism should be.
From Star Trek episode “Spectre of the Gun” (s3:ep6)
One Zen anecdote that I remember from my youth, was a story where a student declared to his master “all is illusion”. The master, listening to this whacked the student on the head (or pinched his nose, I forget) and said “was that an illusion?”.
I always liked this anecdote, but didn’t really appreciate until I got older and had more field-experience with Buddhism.
There’s a tendency to view Buddhism as a way to transcend one’s problems. People like to meditate in Buddhism, or do chanting, because they think it will “chill them out” or go into “Zen mode” as a way of facing life’s problems. Once you’re blissed out and calm, you’ll not be bothered by problems anymore, and all will be well. Right?
Sooner or later, you have to come down and still deal with problems in life: work, food, jerks, illness, boredom, bills, political crises, economic hardships, debt, injustice, broken cars, crying kids, angry spouses, dogs with “intestinal issues”, getting older, loneliness, house chores, the inevitable death of everyone you know, back problems, and so on. The list goes on and on. It does not go away, no matter how much you want it to.
Once you come to grips with this, which also happens to be the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, then the rest starts to fall into place. Until then, no chanting, meditation, prayer, seminars, self-help exercises, fancy gurus, or books will do any good. Not because you’re stupid, or unworthy, or not disciplined enough; it’s because you can’t put the cart before the horse. 🛒🐴
VIR: I believe there are currents in the universe. Eddies and tides that pull us one way or the other. Some we have to fight, some we have to embrace.
Babylon 5, “The Geometry of Shadows”, s2:ep3
I really liked this quote from the science-fiction classic Babylon 5 (which I’ve been re-watching lately)1 because it speaks to the sense that many things happen outside our control. Instead, we’re constantly pulled along by other forces, and some of these can be beneficial, others can be harmful, and simply just pull us in unexpected directions. Some of these currents are very strong and difficult to resist, some are barely noticeable until we look back.
Further, we don’t always know where these currents will take us. So, there’s always danger in choosing one course or another.
DRAAL: What’s the third principle of sentient life? It is the capacity for self-sacrifice. The ability to override evolution and self-preservation…
Babylon 5, “A Voice in the Wilderness (part 1)”, s1:ep18
I think intuition is not enough to navigate this mess. One also needs a set of independent principles to help guide one, and that’s where things like the five precepts of Buddhism really come in handy. It’s not a list of “don’t do” things, it is a list of training rules to help strengthen the mind, and benefit others.
Also, clarity of mind.
Rather than giving in to self-doubt, stay cool, and take things one step at a time, navigate eddies and currents, but also don’t lose your goodwill towards others.
Recently, I talked at length about the role-playing game called The One Ring, and I wanted to explore one aspect of it, and its origins in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, namely “Shadow”.
Fan art of the Nazgûl, the dreaded Ringwraiths of Sauron
Because the Enemy, Sauron, is growing in strength in the Lord of the Rings setting, his dark influence can be felt (even if only a little) everywhere, even in happier, safer places like the Shire, the Grey Havens, Rivendell, etc. Sauron’s forces attack some places in Middle-Earth, in other places his spies infiltrate, and even in friendly places, the mere mention of his name fills others with dread. His “shadow” grew longer and longer across Middle Earth. There was no place in Middle Earth that doesn’t feel the influence of Shadow. Sound familiar?
In the role-playing game, when player characters experience negative events, despair, or trauma can accumulate “shadow points”. These points are long-term, hard to remove, and if too many accumulate, a character can become miserable (affecting many other aspects of the game), or worse can eventually have fits of madness, like when Boromir tried to take the One Ring from Frodo. Such player characters may be forced to leave the game, or a player may choose to retire the character before it is too late. The longer one uses a certain character in the game, the greater and greater risk for accumulating too many shadow points and thus meeting a bad end.
Further, when confronted with Shadow different player characters react differently. A treasure hunter may fall into “dragon sickness”, like Thorin in The Hobbit, a warden may fall into despair (“is anything I am doing making a difference?”), or a captain may crave power, etc.
Similarly, in the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, the different peoples of Middle-Earth reacted to the growing Shadow differently. Elves withdrew, longed for the past, or fled across the sea. Dwarves became insular and greedy. Men became desperate and power-hungry.
Boromir thought he was helping his home of Gondor by trying to take the One Ring from Frodo. That’s how Shadow made him go mad: playing into his anxieties, making him feel hopeless and thus taking desperate measures. The Rohirrim nearly gave up too, as Gríma Wormtongue kept feeding lies and despair to their king, Théoden. Gollum’s mind was shattered by the ring and he could barely remember who he had been, and believed he was too wretched to be redeemable.
This is what Shadow does to people: it breaks people down.
But the reason that Sauron was defeated in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was that some people didn’t give up.
Rather than fighting alone, those who resisted Sauron worked together. Individually they were too weak to resist (even Elrond), but when they worked together, they could draw on each other’s strength, and help each other when discouraged. In the books we see Samwise Gamgee doing this countless times for Frodo, or Legolas, Gimli and Aragorn racing through Rohan to save Pippin and Merry. Not everyone in the Lord of the Rings trilogy was a hero, but everyone did something, however small, to contribute to the effort.
Further, even in the darkest hour, people kept going. They didn’t quit, they took another step forward, and another, and another. The goal seemed miles away, literally, but each step brought them closer, even if only a little.
In The One Ring game, during a “fellowship phase” (downtime), you can spend part of your time healing the scars of shadow. According to the core rulebook, dwarves will spend time forging to “burn away frustration”, hobbits will engage in gardening or painting, humans and elves will play or recite songs and poetry. In the books, characters such as Sam and Frodo occasionally stop to enjoy lembas bread, or Pippin and Merry enjoy a good puff of pipeweed after a major battle. It may not seem like much, but taking those moments of downtime do much to lift the soul, especially when it is weighed down by Shadow.
There is much we can learn from this.
P.S. There’s a whole Reddit channel just for LoTR memes. It’s a treasure-trove of silliness.
In the old Chinese lunar calendar, on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month (i.e. full moon on the 8th month), many cultures across East Asia celebrate something called the Mid-Autumn Festival. This has various names depending on the country and language:
In Japan, this festival is called formally the Jūgoya (十五夜, “15th night”) festival, but in popular culture is known as Otsukimi (お月見, “moon viewing”). This year, due to the lunar calendar, Otsukimi falls somewhat late on October 6th. This festival is about viewing the moon with friends and family, while enjoying some dango (rice dumplings) using displays like so:
According to this excellent book on Japanese culture, people also decorate such displays with pampas grass (susuki, ススキ), edamamé beans and taro potatoes. Unlike cherry-blossom viewing, people do not usually get drunk.
Chinese moon cakes, called geppei (月餅) in Japanese, are sometimes eaten as well, though it’s more of an exotic treat. Here, moon cakes are easy to obtain, and quite delicious. Highly recommend. We also get the Korean version of dango (tteok, 떡) too.
In any case, Otsukimi is about relaxing, enjoying the autumn vibes with the ones you love. As my family and I live in the Pacific Northwest, weather here isn’t reliable, and so we often get stuck with cloudy weather. But the image of Otsukimi is still popular. You can even find an emoji for it: 🎑.
Also, fun fact: there are traditionally two days of moon-viewing in Japan. The main one is Jūgoya (十五夜, “15th night”), but traditionally there is also a Jūsanya (十三夜, “13th night”) viewing on the 13th night of the ninth (not eighth) lunar month. This year, 13th night falls on November 2nd. On the 13th night of the lunar month, people enjoy chestnuts instead. Traditionally, people felt you should view the moon on both nights, otherwise, according to my book, you only did katamitsuki (片見月, “one-sided viewing”), which wasn’t ideal.
By the way, there is one other tradition around this time that’s specifically Buddhist: Juya-é (十夜会, “ten nights ceremony”), which is ten nights of observance of Pure Land Buddhist practice, starting from October 5th to 14th in the Western calendar. I usually try to recite the nembutsu a full 1080 times using my old Jodo Shu rosary for ten nights. Easier said than done as a parent, but it’s nice to have a challenge from time to time. Traditionally, people try to attend temple services if possible, or just focus on good behavior.
Anyhow, wishing you all a fun Otsukimi, Mid-Autumn Festival, or Juya-e, etc., or all of the above!
Gleanings in Buddha-Fields 
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