Monday, May 21, 2012

The Sun is Eclipsed by the Moon

 

full eclipse

 

The first album I ever bought was a cassette tape of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon”. That was back in the days before CDs and MP3. My brother had borrowed the album from one of his mates, and he played it constantly on our old record player for a week or two. We had no headphones in our house, so we all ended up listening to whatever was been played. It took me a while to get into it, but after listening to it for a couple of weeks like that I was a fan. But then he had to give his buddy back the album. So we had no Pink Floyd anymore. I was only around 13 or so at the time, and never had much money, but I decided to save up the little bits of cash I got from my parents for a few weeks and invest in the Pink Floyd. So after saving up for a wee bit, I went into our local music shop and bought my first ever album. I kept it for a long time and played it over and over. Later on, I didn’t play it so much and got into other sounds, but every once in a while I’d take out the Dark Side album and it always sounded as good as ever.

On one of the tracks, they sing about “the sun is eclipsed by the moon”. I never really gave much thought to what they were referring to until the last few days. What got me thinking about it today was that we had a solar eclipse here on our own doorstep in Japan. It started at about 6 am and continued for a few hours. We bought some special glasses to use to look at the eclipse with. The ones we bought cost about 800 yen (7 or 8 euros), which I thought was going to be a waste of money, but they worked out well. They’re made with special material to filter out lots of different rays so you can see the eclipse clearly.

new sunglasses I figured we probably wouldn’t see much even with the glasses, but I was wrong. They made a big difference, and we could see the kind of silver circle around the moon just like you see in the photos. It was really, really cool, and way better than I imagined. Me and my son were awestruck for a couple of minutes when we looking at the perfect circle part.

You should be able to see the eclipse in some places on the west coast of the US today and later on this year in Australia and New Zealand. If you’re in one of those spots, I’d recommend getting a pair of those glasses if you can. They make a big difference. The Japanese government were warning people not to look at the eclipse with the naked eye, because it might cause eye damage or make you feel sick for a while. I’m not sure how true that is, but apart from that, you may not see very much without them. It might look something like this photo:

solar eclipse and cloud

The next solar eclipse we’ll be able to see in this part of the world won’t be for another 390 years or so. I’m not sure if my blog will still be around then, but in case it is, I’d just like to say for anyone reading this in 2402 that it was pretty cool way back here in 2012 too.

I wasn’t going to mention anything about Buddhism in this post, but when I was looking at the silver ring around the moon it reminded me of something we were reading in our zazen class the other day. We were going through a text Dogen wrote about the Lotus Sutra. One of the things that comes up in that is about how the Buddha was supposed to have a circle of white hair on his forehead that light shone out from. Supposedly white light from the circle of hair could reach up to a kind of Buddhist heaven or something like that. To me, those kinds of descriptions are mainly legends and are a kind of a romantic and poetic way of describing the Buddha. So when I read that sort of stuff, I usually don’t take it literally. But that was one thing I was reminded of this morning when I was looking at the silver ring in the sky. And in other texts in Buddhism they say that the whole universe is the Buddha’s body. It’s based on the Buddhist idea that everything in the universe is connected and is all part of one big whole thing, and you and me and everyone else are part of it too. So in that sense, I can see how the cool silver ring of light this morning might not be too unlike the idea of light radiating from the Buddha’s head.

By the way, one of my favorite tracks on the Dark Side album is “the Great Gig in the Sky”, which is something I feel like I got to experience today.

And one last thing, I realized afterwards that I had just seen the dark side of the moon for the first time with my very own eyes (with the help of those glasses). Wish you were here to see it too!

 

getting there

Thursday, December 15, 2011

Not a Long Way to Tipperary for the January Buddhist Retreat

 maidin

  My friend Harry Bradley is organizing a Zen Buddhist retreat next month in the lovely Glen of Aherlow in County Tipperary. The retreat will start at 7 pm on Friday 20th January and end at 5.30 pm on Sunday January 22nd.

  The focus will be on zazen (seated meditation), kinhin (slow walking) and samu (work periods). There will be no chanting or formal ceremonies, although zendo etiquette will be observed (bowing on entering and leaving the zendo, bowing before and after sitting).

  The retreat is suitable for anyone who’s already practicing meditation or who’s been to a Buddhist retreat before. There will be no official teacher there, but some of the people attending have a good bit of experience with meditation. There will be some themed discussions during the retreat as well.

 

backdoor

 

  The venue for the retreat is “Tigh Roy” in the picturesque Glen of Aherlow in Tipperary. The Glen of Aherlow sits between the Galtee mountains on one side and the Slievenamuck Ridge on the other, and has five spectacular lakes and some really breathtaking scenery. It should make a fine setting for the retreat. There’s more information about venue at http://www.tigroy.com/

  The cost of the weekend, including all meals and accommodation, is €145 (per person sharing rooms with two single beds). Booking is essential as places are limited. A deposit of €45 will ensure a place on the retreat.

  For more information or to book a place, email Harry at harrybradley@eircom.net.

  You can follow some updates about the retreat at http://longriverzen.blogspot.com/

 

cottage

Monday, November 21, 2011

A Question of Existence and Time

elefantas

 

  Time and existence are as important for Buddhists as for anyone else. But the Buddhist idea about time and existence is different to most other ways of thinking about them. In general, we tend to think of time and existence as two separate things. I know I do anyway. Time is one thing, and existence or reality or whatever you like to call it is something else. The Buddhist idea isn’t like that though. Buddhism says that time and existence are two ways of talking about the same thing, they’re not separate from each other.

A while back, before he entered hospital, Gudo Nishijima sent me a copy of an email he wrote to someone who asked him about this.

The question was:

I read the chapter Uji (Existence and Time) in Master Dogen’s book Shobogenzo. In the chapter Master Dogen said:

''It is a complete realization that the whole of time is what the whole of existence is, and that there is nothing more than this''.

When he writes that, is he talking about the existence of a human being or about the existence of the Universe? If he’s referring to the whole existence of the Universe in that statement, it means that even the Universe is not limitless and consequently is dependent on time?

Gudo Nishijima’s answer was:

Master Dogen doesn’t say anything about the existence of a human being or the existence of the Universe in that statement. He says that existence and time are absolutely related with each other.

Master Dogen insists that without existence, time can not exist, and without time, existence can not exist at all. In other words, he insists that without existence, time never exists, and without time, existence never exists.

Therefore we should think that existence and time are very much related with each other. So it’s impossible to think about existence without thinking about time, and it’s impossible to think about time without thinking about existence.

Existence and time should be considered together, and it might not make sense to consider the question of existence and time without thinking about them like that.

Master Dogen clearly insists such opinion.

Gudo Wafu Nishijima

It’s only a small point in some ways, but that’s the Buddhist idea about existence and time. That’s why you sometimes hear people talking about “being here and now”. “Here” is the existence side, and “now” is the time side. And even though people use that phrase to describe feeling really present in the moment and focused on what’s happening right now and nothing else, actually the phrase “being here and now” applies to everyone. To you and me and all the folks in the neighborhood. And it’s like that right throughout our lives. There’s no other way. The only place we can ever be is where we are at each moment. So in a way it’s not a big deal. It’s the same for everyone.

What happens to most of us, though, is that our thoughts distract us from where we are and what we’re doing. So instead of focusing on slicing the veggies, we’re thinking about what happened a couple of weeks back when we saw those dancing elephants in Iceland. Or maybe we think about how great things would be if we could manage to get a nice job in London… We all know how it goes. We’re doing something that we’re not too excited about and our mind is drifting off somewhere else.

This is something you’ll notice if you do meditation. You’ll be sitting there on the cushion, and your mind will be going all over the place. That’s what happens to me anyway. When I do meditation, very little is happening outwardly, I’m literally just sitting there. But my mind can get really active imagining all sorts of different scenarios about different things or dreaming about all kinds of experiences that are never going to happen. But if you sit there for a while, gradually your mind starts to settle down all by itself, and during the meditation you can notice that, hey, you’re just sitting on the cushion doing your meditation. That’s basically “being here and now”. It’s not a big deal, and in a way it’s very simple, but it’s kind of a nice thing to notice too.

And when you get up off the cushion, that “being here and now” might stay with you for a while, and you might notice that being here and now isn’t so bad after all. The only thing about it is that even though people can write and talk about it, “being here and now” isn’t really something we can leave to our imagination. It’s something we have to experience for ourselves. That might sound difficult, because sometimes when we hear words like “being here and now”, it sounds like it must be something really intense that’s very faraway from where we are at the particular time. But actually it’s not like that. You’re already experiencing it. It’s just a matter of noticing, or maybe not noticing, it.

When I used to talk to Gudo Nishijima about this kind of thing, he used to say something like “we are enjoying the present moment”. It sounds really simple, and in many ways it is, but a lot of times we get dragged away by our thoughts of somewhere else or some other time and miss out on the things that are happening right in front of us. Doing meditation helps us to notice that.

So if you’re looking for a way to enjoy the present moment a bit more, you know what to do. And figuring out where and when to do it is easy too, right?

 

Monday, November 14, 2011

I Know a Way to Eliminate Suffering from Life

 

TokyoOct2011

 

My friends Ingrid and Jiku-san came to Tokyo recently from Chile for a short visit. Ingrid is a student of Gudo Nishijima Roshi and Jiku-san is a student of a Japanese monk named Daisetsu Tangen Roshi. They both became interested in Zen Buddhism after they had been practicing yoga for a while.

Ingrid’s first experience with meditation was at a yoga class in Chile. After doing meditation there, she decided to try it at home, and continued to practice at home for 10 years. Later she began to practice with a small Buddhist group in Santiago. She came to Japan a few years later and met Nishijima Roshi in Tokyo. Afterwards, she started a Buddhist meditation group in Chile, and helped to organize Nishijima roshi’s visit for talks and retreats in Chile in 2004.

Jiku-san’s first name is Patricio, but people usually call him by his Buddhist name “Jiku-san”. He first encountered zazen when he was doing a yoga instructor’s course in Nepal. A few years later his job as a photographer brought him to Japan to do a feature on a Zen retreat at a temple named Bukkokuji. Bukkokuji is in a town called “Obama-shi” in Fukui prefecture. Daisetsu Tangen Roshi is the abbot there. When Jiku-san came to the temple, he liked the life there so much that he decided to stay. He eventually spent 10 years at Bukkokuji, before deciding to return to Chile to teach people about zazen and Buddhism. When he returned to Chile, he and Ingrid opened a Zazen dojo together and began to hold retreats and classes. Jiku-san also taught zazen at a prison there for 7 years. Recently, Ingrid and Jiku-san opened a new dojo called “El Zendo” in Chile. El Zendo is in a small town named Tunquen on the Pacific coast, about two hours from Santiago.

I asked Jiku-san and Ingrid to give a talk to our Saturday Zazen class while they were in Tokyo. They kindly agreed. Jiku-san told us about how he first became interested in Buddhism, and about life at Bukkokuji temple, including the daily schedule and going on begging rounds (called “takuhatsu”), and how the 10 years there changed his own life. He also told us about his experiences teaching Buddhism in Chile and at the Chilean prison, and about El Zendo. Ingrid told us about her experiences practicing at home on a daily basis for 10 years while raising her family, and how she ended up meeting Nishijima Roshi when she came to Tokyo, and later on began to practice together with Jiku-san in Chile.

I recorded the talk on my MP3 recorder. It lasts about 50 minutes. There’s also plenty of questions and answers during the talk. (The title of this post is something that comes up during the talk.) You can click here to download the MP3 file (47 MB).

By the way, one of the things that Jiku-san mentions during the talk is that people at the temple used to scrub themselves everyday with a “tawashi”. A tawashi is a small scrubbing brush that the Japanese usually use to scrub vegetables or pots and pans, but at the temple they found it was a good way to keep themselves clean too.

You can check out the El Zendo website at www.elzendo.cl. Jiku-san and Ingrid hold retreats there on a regular basis that everyone is welcome to attend. They told me sometimes people visit them from other countries in South America and from North America too.

Incidentally, the photo at the top of this post was taken the day we held the talk. Ingrid is in the center, and Jiku-san is on her right. The person on Jiku-san’s right is Harumi Saito. Harumi Saito began to practice zazen in the 1970’s with Nishijima Roshi at his Saturday classes in Tokyo, and has helped to organize the Tokyo classes for many years. He also taught zazen in a city near Tokyo for several years. He still comes to the Saturday zazen practice on a regular basis. On Ingrid’s left in the photo is Kimika, also one of Nishijima Roshi’s students. Kimika was one of the people who accompanied Nishijima Roshi on his visit to Chile in 2004. I’m the bald guy on Kimika’s left. (Thanks to Shinji for the photo.)

Friday, September 9, 2011

Zazen Practice in Tokyo

 

 

buddha1

 

Just a note to say that our zazen class in Tokyo will be starting up again tomorrow after the summer break. The class is suitable for beginners, and anyone interested is welcome along.

The times are:
11.00 - 11.25  Zazen
11.25 - 11.35  Kinhin (slow walking meditation)
11.35 - 12.00  Zazen
12.00 - 12.30  Break (for lunch or a rest)
12.30 - 1.00    Zazen
1.00 -  2.00    Talk (optional)

Click here for more information and directions.