Going to be: Heart Sutras, Enlightenment and Bizaan'imin

Been slowly returning to parts of myself that I let go of and thinking about this beatboxing monk and his stuff lately among other things. Enjoy.

 

Related (and partly copied/pasted from the comment section) too:

To me, wisdom is about reliable truths. What makes a lot of zen/buddhism [in general] challenging is they speak more to arriving at a sort of ideal state of "being" and leave it to folks to "be" there in whatever way they find themselves. Peace happens whenever we realize our ability to take genuine action in and from a place of love. This includes taking genuine action to surface, embrace, and transform conflict. It also includes the ability to simply be in and from a place of love.

For that last one, which I often found challenging, there's an Ojibwemowen word 'bizaan' that roughly translates to sitting in quiet/tranquility/calm/peace which really helps make a way for arriving at that ideal outcome of "just being" seem a bit more feasible than just suddenly "activating" or "achieving enlightenment" as it's often portrayed.

Some folks who study buddhist logic will say are 5 sorts of logical states--a thing can be:

1. true,

2. false,

3. true and false,

4. neither true nor false,

5. or undefinable because language+thought limits our ability and skews our paradigms for perceiving things as soon we try engaging with them

Being at peace and presence with those, especially that last notion, basically sums up the chunk of text below and what it's like to experience it even as a moment for me:

"...whatever son or daughter of the lineage wishes to engage in the practice of the profound perfection of wisdom should look perfectly like this: subsequently looking perfectly and correctly at the emptiness of inherent existence of the five aggregates also. Form is emptiness; emptiness is form. Emptiness is not other than form; form also is not other than emptiness. Likewise, feeling, discrimination, compositional factors and consciousness are empty. Shariputra, like this, all phenomena are merely empty, having no characteristics. They are not produced and do not cease. They have no defilement and no separation from defilement. They have no decrease and no increase. Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness there is no form, no feeling, no discrimination, no compostional factors, no consciousness. There is no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no form, no sound, no smell, no taste, no tactile object, no phenomenon. There is no eye element and so forth, upto no mind element, and also upto no element of mental consciousness. There is no ignorance and no exhaustion of ignorance, and so forth, upto no ageing and death and no exhaustion of ageing and death. Likewise, there is no suffering, origin, cessation or path; no exalted wisdom, no attainment and also no non-attainment. Therefore, Shariputra, because there is no attainment, all Bodhisattvas rely on and abide in the perfection of wisdom; their minds have no obstructions and no fear. Passing utterly beyond perversity, they attain the final state beyond sorrow...." -Youtube comment by Dak pinned to the page

Existential Markets

Updates on transforming conservation-oriented investments into experiential investments; i.e. carpool for 20% mobility transit energy reduction into karaoke carpool experience; sharing native plant seeds to plant at property boundaries for habitat corridor creation; inviting rotation of friends for special vegetarian meals 3x per week (equals 1 day of meals) or more. ; \\ to how modeling and acting celebrities are sort of the ultimate existential/experiential industry expression [and professional dancers sometimes get to a point where the work is about their body and life culminate in expression], or how apple's store and brand was about the experience rather than the tech, or starbucks being about a gathering place rather than just its coffee, or McDonald's about its convenience, "non-judgment" and "happiness"/loving it happy meals and play place for kids. Very similar to how CK Raju would state corruption and religion being the two primary vehicles for colonialism; good experiences are the essence of what often fuels religion. Instead of corruption, systemically positive alchemic/allegoric transformation can be the appropriate and compelling alternative to outmode.
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Sun rises soon, rest.

Last Autumn, I wrote a haiku late at night:

Shattered, we lose sight.
Chasing the restless answer.
Sun rises soon, rest.

Coming round from a sort of episode between current events with U.S. immigration policy, I've been thinking about the effects of complex PTSD and the patterns that appear during an episode after the major traumatic incidents -- by the way, to anyone reading who might be sensitive to heavy topics like this, what I'm writing might not be for you to read.

How many people, including many friends and colleagues, appear to function in society, show up to work, and either get ostracized, shunned, or simply choose to cope in isolation so that they don't appear in public because they could be a danger to other people?

It feels like there's a part of life that's getting cheated in trade for some semblance of safety. Yet courage often happens at the threshold of comfort and necessity, and living life fully to overcome that existential shearing point normally means eventually choosing to move forward consistently enough that you don't let your perceptions of life collapse on itself. So we decide to push, we show up for other people and execute as high performers when we can see it really counts as long as we can focus on looking forward outside of ourselves. But when it comes to connecting with who we are and directing care inward, it's often a failing point. Someone who works with impeccable precision and attention to detail when intervening with crisis shuts down for days or, if they're isolated, weeks and months under normal circumstances.

There's a haunting word sitting firmly in my memory from part of the *internet version* Hopi Prophecy about people who are born with "sampacu -- no light in their eyes" -- I think about how the children of substance abuse, kids who grew up or the effects of young children separated from their parents as a result of the way our nation's current immigration policy is interpreted and enforced. People who self-medicate with cannabis, alcohol, or other substances also come to mind--where the goal is to slow oneself down enough that they numb the anxiety or edges of life's pains.

You probably have a stereotype or image in your head from seeing movies or reading articles that portray the condition in its extremes--flashbacks, someone reacting violently without reading the situation well, etc.--but what happens when someone is functionally working through an episode while working in the midst of other people that I think is underrepresented.

It shows up in subtle ways, maybe illogical spurts and fits in disproportionate response to another person's current or past actions which one thought they left buried long ago only to realize they've incubated the same alertness to similar kinds of pain.

For the individual experiencing those symptoms, it can feel like stepping into an intense stance is compelling and necessary. In some ways, it very well may be--at least if they're able to examine and understand how the dynamics of their present episode echoes unhealed moments in their past. The truth, with proper context, is always good. Yet when it burns brightest, it's often challenging for most people to engage it in its rawest state--there's too much to fit in a brief conversation, meeting, or decision. So the proper context will ultimately become one of your own making, and I like to believe that it sometimes comes after the fact that you may or may not have burned people during your efforts to illuminate the roots of your reality while simultaneously igniting the debris that hampered your capacity to genuinely engage others who may be near with clarity and truth from your being.

The best answer I've seen to this is to recognize the moment, learn what you can before you choose to dive in all the way, rest in reason remembering that another opportunity to move in rooted passion will arise soon with each new day.

Sun rises soon, rest.

* * *
"Rest in reason, move in passion." --a line from the poet Khalil Jibran

"Many of people in this will be empty in Spirit they will have Sampacu. No life force in their eyes."

Side note: Sampacu shares a very similar context and definition to sanpacu in Japanese -- I'm wondering if it's a typo or a common term.

Healthy examples for anger

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.” ― Edgar D. Mitchell


What's the healthiest expression of anger you've ever seen?
Bonus points if it didn't devolve into petty tit-for-tat/bickering.

Also for anyone interested in diving further:
How did it allow you/the people involved to take care of their needs?
Did it allow both parties to do so or only one? Why?
Was forgiveness involved in resolving, reconciling, or embracing the anger?

Context:
I think a lot of us lack good examples. People are often afraid to talk about it, and by the time we're close to it, it's definitely challenging to navigate. Most of the time people are even afraid to walk the line between acknowledging and declaring their own boundaries and proceeding to do something with the experience(s).


And if we're honest about human beings and evolution, we know that even destructive or violent behaviors are part of life--within specific circumstances they once provided a benefit.

Not too long ago,
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/328787-group-knocks-trump-by-holding-first-protest-in-space

The more I think about it, some of my favorite examples of righteous mischief or frustration might be an example of that. The quote I opened with from astronaut Edgar D. Mitchell came to mind because part of it was used by a group that created the first protest (protesting the current president) from outer space (see article from the Hill).

Thinking of a similar statement that always stood out to me:

"You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn't black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing...You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that.

Well, fuck it, I don't care what you think. I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue-collar background. I'm trying to do the right thing, and that's where I'm going with this."
- The Honorable State Senator Roy McDonald  (speaking on his decision to vote for legalizing gay marriage. It takes a certain degree of gravitas for a statement of plain and profane words like that to work.)

A woman chooses to show up to work dressed up in Cosplay every day since her boss thinks her headscarf and any cultural cloths covering her hair are "unprofessional" even though the company had zero dress code. I know a few cosplayers and I think this is quality trolling. Though of course, trolling easily loops into cynical taunts and can differ from productive outcomes.

http://mymodernmet.com/june-rivas-cosplay-discrimination/

The Vermont (I think) man who drove in the high occupancy vehicle lane with a filing cabinet of papers is another example. He was protesting the Citizens United supreme court ruling by carrying a filing cabinet of business papers in his car, and using the "corporations are people" argument to demonstrate how he legally is permitted to drive in the carpool lane (requires more than one "person").

Huh, wow--so there we have it. A few examples, maybe not direct but they're a places to start for me at least.

Rice and the fist

A revelation: The "take rice from the hand of a kung fu master" thing we see in movies is a really practical exercise for proper* fist formation in a punch. You must keep swift and relaxed, tighten your hand to a fist as you propel forward and immediately withdraw for a proper snap-punch.

Taking the rice isn't the outcome where mastery lies, it's the practice of swiftly delivering and restoring oneself with elegant force, repose, and clarity of intention. Honing how to get what you need even in messy situations.

*note: it's not the same a striking--there's a nuanced difference in distance and the exact moment for clenching the hand--but the essential motions and general timing approximate well to one another.


A tangent on rice and the fist:
Is anyone familiar with and able to explain the conflict between First Nation's rights to wild rice harvest and the DNRE's permitting for mining companies in Northern Michigan? Is this a regulatory outcome of environmental conservation which overlooks other aspects of our existence? It seems there's a double standard between the regulation for harvesting and how the State's departments permit mining and other activities that may/already harm the area.
I overheard someone explain as I was signing out of the Michigan Environmental Justice Summit but wasn't able to catch the whole conversation.

EDIT (!): In retrospect (and after a lot of googling to find where the idea/media inspiration for this post really came from), I guess I've never seen a kung fu movie where the student takes rice from the hand of their teacher. I'm guessing it's actually a pebble. Now that I found the clip below, I'm glad I didn't. Otherwise, I probably never would have made the connection between striking form and reaching for rice. I like my example better, but the advice in the clip on humility's nice to hear too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1wjvP-raOI

Greatness in your voice

There is greatness in your voice.

I can hear it.  You can feel it.  We know it.

If it quavers and shakes in fear:
let it be for the reasons we share with you.
Speak your truth with courage, and all your heart.

Inspire, then move us--with each word you expel, and each breath you spend.  We'll catch our breaths, and then we'll respire.

We'll breathe as we move closer toward something worth every spirited breath of speech, story, and song before our lives expire.

But it ends not at your life, nor ours.  Greatness flows over and through endeavors of legacy everlasting.

Free it with your voice and contribution to the world.
Let it ebb and flow from heart to heart: yours to mine, theirs to yours.

Call again!

Through sacred passage of wisdom in your call and listening--let your curiosity open the greatness of others, share your reliable truths, and always ask for the greatest of truth even when the only answer may be silence from your fellows.

The echoes of utterance will be great, and the world may quaver and shake in new movement as it awakens with the warmth of your voice for the reasons we share with you.

Share our Truth with courage and all hearts.

Hollow tree in Interlochen State Park, MI

#09:34 16 X 2013

Mermaids with cancer

This morning (Jan. 31st) I dreamed I was traveling with a companion (I don't remember whom, it might have been my mum, for the sake of description in this, I'll say it was), walking through a relatively old Western European town that had large stone alleys and walls.  We were supposed to meet with somebody and found the door to his house.  As the man was just entering his home and his door was still open, my mum knocked on the door frame of the house.  At the same time, I noticed another door, white, and almost completely hidden as part of an intricately patterned wall adjacent to the door, standing with waning magic to its right.  I knocked on that.

The man greeted my mum and opened the other door for me.  I saw he had a flaring salt-and-pepper streaked beard shaped a bit like Arvo Part's (the person looked a bit like Arvo Part too).  I stepped into a room laden with large smooth stones for the floor and wall--it almost looked like part of a castle.  In it, I noticed what I knew were a few Arthurian relics--part of a crown, a scabbard--and I stepped in.  There was definitely magic to the place, but it was mostly bare with stone.  I was also greeted with an enthusiastic cry from the ground and saw an attractive pallid mermaid with long, dark black, curly hair, dark blue/green scales, and tattoos across the top of her chest, on her forearms, and part of her obliques laying on a cot.  She cast a large down comforter off of her body as she leaned to look up and greet me.

She recognized me (or at least claimed to recognize me with genuine conviction) as an old friend whom she hadn't seen in a very long time--at least 8 years.  She had a fine English/British accent too.  I quickly accepted her assumption and wondered (I'm pretty sure I also asked her in good spirits) what she was doing so far from a body of water, and then (quietly to myself) why/how she got tattooed.   I learned, perhaps from her caretaker (the same person who let me into the room), who was also the curator and guardian of the relics and room, that she was ill with cancer.  I knew right away I could only give my heart's attention to her challenge even though I had not immediate or substantive ways to help her out or prevent it from happening to others.  I also started to imagine other potentially complicated challenges for water dwellers like noise pollution...
. . .

First off, I have no idea how I came to dream about a mermaid.  Nothing in my recent memory (or prior) makes me consider mermaids.  Giant squid? Maybe.  I might have eaten part of a trout not long ago.

Second, I normally don't share dreams like this with other people--some stories can only be told once or twice before losing their magic.  In some cultures, you're encouraged not to tell anyone about powerful visions/dreams you've had at all. In most cases, it seems like acceptable fantastic myths no longer have appropriate reasons to exist without a franchise or burgeoning industry or institution to support them.

Finally, I can be slow to trust some people, especially those whom seem to qualify me as a friend unusually quickly.  At this point in time, I'm skeptical and would even be surprised that anyone actually would warmly regard me as an old friend in that light.  But I think I might have figured out a thread that would affirm her confidence by looking back at one of my actions from today:
.  .  .


Later this morning, after a treacherous drive to campus, I noticed a post from Friends of the Rouge remarking about the rising water level in the Rouge River. When I checked the USGS data, I saw the discharge was around 1090* (*I think, out of a previous record which I think* I recall reading was at 1270--the data changes by day and often by the hour), which compelled me to post this to the Student Environmental Association page:

Hey, check out that Rouge River data! It's edging up to the 1971 record maximum daily discharge.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/mi/nwis/uv/?site_no=04166500&PARAmeter_cd=00065%2C00060"In honor of what's been happening with the river over the past few days, here is a song by Johnny Cash." - Friends of the Rouge
A little bit of permeable landscape/green roofs upstream in the broader Wayne/Oakland County area can make a big difference downstream.

And later try my hand at broadcasting a reduced announcement on twitter, which led to an updated "cover" photo:

https://twitter.com/GreatLakesIan

I was rather satisfied with the balanced counterpoint of urban & natural features in all the photos I used (all my own)--a silver maple leaf with water droplets resting on concrete pavement, a pigeon peaking out of a rain gutter, and a photo of me looking at a snake in a natural area as I wore a nylon windbreaker and backpack.

Recently, I've returned to thinking a lot about the nexus between genetics, medical health, environment, and cancer too. There was a time when I wanted to bring light to this phenomenon in Relay for Life events, among cancer researchers, and also in the neighborhood I grew up in (which has an unusually high prevalence for people who had breast cancer and is located near a landfill and industrial corridor which had emissions ranked 4/5 for poor air quality by the EPA).

These may not be the exact things that led to my dream or a privileged visit from a mermaid who'd consider me an old friend, but they certainly make me wonder...

Returning to another thought about the photos on my twitter profile: All of the photos have something to do with rivers and watersheds. Both the silver maple (Acer saccharinum) leaf background photo and the profile picture were taken in fairly close proximity to the Lower Rouge River, in Michigan. The photo of the pigeon (Dover Pigeon--Columba livia) was taken in San Antonio, Texas. San Antonio, for those who haven't been there, has a famous river walk paved into its downtown tourist area. Their river is terribly stagnant, it's stiff and can no longer move about due to their intensive channelization and lock system and you can smell the effluent (sewage) discharge. Call me biased, but the Lower Rouge River has a sweeter smell (this time from treated effluent), can freely flow and meander about its banks, and has far less channelization until it unites with its sisters to become the Rouge River in Dearborn. Granted, given fair river literacy, you'll note its banks are stressed by upstream development as well, but unlike the San Antonio River, it can change, and gradually, with far less revision to the man-made infrastructure which currently influences its behavior. At the least, both are richly storied water bodies stressed by heavy development.

An educated land planner will acknowledge that dense development can be important and have a lower environmental impact than sprawled development--it's never to be interpreted as a case of people-vs.-environment. However, most developers/construction firms tend to use pavement and roofing materials which cover up parts of the land that once slowed the flow of water (and all of the things that get carried by stormwater) from land quickly into streams, tributaries, and eventually lakes, etc. Viable alternative landscaping techniques (use native plants to capture rainwater and reduce chemical application/mowing, create "riparian buffers"/"no-mow zones" near open waters, etc.), pervious pavement (sponge-like pavement that allows water to seep through and into the ground), and different paradigms for roofing technology ("living" rooftops/greenroofs) can help mitigate this. Of course, there's no substitute for a quality wetland/swamp when it comes to filtering water. In the bigger picture, stormwater from flashy rivers--typically, rivers located in areas with 10-20% of the land covered with non-permeable paved/roofed surfaces--contributes to algal blooms which can be toxic, or at least will deplete the lakes of oxygen as they die off (bacteria digesting the decaying algae wind up using much of the oxygen in the water), which leads to large-scale fish-kills. For anyone wondering, this process is called eutrophication. It happens in small inland lakes, in the Great Lakes, and even in the Gulf of Mexico.


Note the green in agricultural areas like Saginaw Bay
and the Northern shores of Ohio--that's an explosion of algae.
Too much fertilizer from land washing into tributaries and rivers eventually
goes into the Great Lakes. The Mississippi/Gulf of Mexico "dead zones"
have similar challenges (see http://bit.ly/14w6eJg
for well-illustrated explanations ) Image from NASA Earth Observatory.

These are fairly technical details, but it's something I've comfortably worked to educate the public about for several years as it's a reasonable issue to convey (in bite-sized pieces) without making people feel threatened or overwhelmed, and I can easily point out social and economic bearings. Note that in Metro Detroit, waste water is dumped upstream of our drinking water collection facilities. The cleaner we keep the water from upstream by preventing raw pollutants and sediments from rushing into the river due to flash flooding (like the recent events witnessed in late January by those who looked at the Rouge River directly, or at its data in the link posted way above), the less intensively we have to invest (AKA, pay taxes) in our municipal infrastructure, and the less we need to worry about indirect health concerns like salt and pharmaceutical drugs that the water treatment plant is unable to effectively strain out of our drinking water.

I'll edit this post to provide direct pointers to better watershed practice soon.

.  .  .

Back to dreams about a mermaid with cancer:  Hopefully, putting all this information into writing and action meets the merit of doing things worthy of being a friend to mermaids even if it's in a distant and roundabout way.

Interesting coincidence: tomorrow is World Wetlands Day. Start 00:20 ; #23:21 1 II 2013

Kindness for emergency prevention

I recently wrote a note to colleagues encouraging them to familiarize themselves with the emergency procedures, and to begin developing a department-specific emergency plan.  However, as I said in my e-mail to them, I still think the best thing we can do comes from being kind and sincere in our encounters with people.  I'm glad to have a great team at work.