Blogger and HTML

It's so ungracious to complain about a service one uses for free. But every time I turn around, the automatically generated HTML for paragraphs and other formatting seems to deteriorate. Not just the last post, either -- older posts seem almost unreadable.

Framing is almost as important as content. But no time now to go back and reformat. Hope you can find some value in the words and pictures as they are.

Update: With a change of template, and one changed pref, the formatting seems to have gone back to normal.

We spend trillions to preserve the American Way of Life® for Wall St. CEOs, but we still don't have decent, open-source HTML editors!

Hotei's Belly

The archaic branch of the Internet called "usenet" is still active. Unregulated in many parts, its culture has in quite a few newsgroups acquired a harsh, two-gun etiquette which many anarchistic individuals find amenable. Other groups are noted as being creatively outré. My favorite usenet hangout is alt.buddha.short.fat.guy, a congenial gathering of unusual Buddhists and Buddhsymps that combines both those qualities with a light-hearted benevolence and deeply twisted humor. One of the culturally defining shticks throughout the colorful lifetime of the group has been its response to the still occasionally occurring post protesting its name. Typically, the earnest writer objects that the Buddha (meaning Siddhartha Gautama, the probably historical person who became known as Shakyamuni Buddha) was neither short nor fat. Pouncing on such a post with the gusto of feral cats on a joint of meat dropped from a sloppy butcher's truck, an regular of a.b.s.f.g will loudly announce, "Your Buddha may not be short and fat, but ours certainly is!" The reference is to the Ghost of the Western Plain, the Sage of Sonora . . . El Dupree! — otherwise known as "Him-Whom-One-Must-Not-Stand-Downwind-Of."

It will do a student of philosophy well to search out on the Tubes the enlightening wisdom of the #14 Vinyl Headsack. Yet such an explanation of absfg's name, true as it may be, is but the half of it. As the Ancient Mulroy said in an absfg FAQ, quoted from 1994:

Look, every other day some cherry asks:

"Why is this newsgroup called alt.buddha.short.fat.guy?
The Buddha wasn't short or fat!"

So how come we don't put in the FAQ the following disclaimer:

You're right! He wasn't short or fat. In fact we've NEVER
seen a shakya who was short OR fat! Unless they were
_gravely_ ill.

The point is, that most of the unwashed have the impression
that the rotund, jowly fellow who sits in the lotus-position
in most Chinese restaurants is the Buddha. The group's
name makes as much sport of that impression as it does
anything else.

In fact, if you have an idea of the Buddha, WE'RE MAKING
FUN OF YOU!!! NAA NAA NAAAA NAAAA NAAAAA!!!

Mulroy was speaking of that amply enfleshed Asian figure named Budai, or Pu-tai, in Chinese, more commonly known by his Japanese name of Hotei. Some say he's really Taoist, and not properly Buddhist at all. Some disparage Hotei as merely a folk deity. It doesn't really matter — the gods know what they are. Folk tales come from the deepest parts of a human and bear wisdoms well worth listening to. Whatever his origins, Hotei teaches the same Dharma. Since his image still appears, all over the world, it may be it has something to tell us. Of course, the real teaching is always bigger than words can hold, and words shouldn't be taken too seriously, but if you loosen up their robes a bit, something wonderful may fall out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hotei's most obvious traits are: he is fat, and he is happy. Not just fat, but grossly obese. Not just kind of happy, but laughing to the point of delirium. He deliberately parts his robe to expose his belly where others would cover their flesh for shame. He is happy as he is, unlike those of us with a frustrated desire for imagined improvement. He is happy being exactly as he is. Not despite his corpulence, nor because of it. Since he is not ashamed of himself as he is, he is an emblem of thusness. He opens his robe and exposes what he is, having nothing to hide. Thus he is a symbol of emptiness. In surrendering to complete exposure, he has accepted total vulnerability, and thus become invincible.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is a sidestream to the symbolism of the Cross. Jesus is a man nailed to an instrument of torture and death. He can't move his arms or legs, he can't do a thing about it. He can't escape, and soldiers guard against any possible help. Nothing to do but yield to the inevitable, give up his self, and die. And so he gives his self and his pain and his life to God the Father, and stops his suffering. On the other hand, Hotei exposes his belly and throws away any shame for his body. He embraces in naked honesty this very moment, and he is happy. Although both of these visual stories involve the spiritual value of vulnerability, Hotei's path is joyful. The Crucifix, before the story includes resurrection and redemption, is horrible and tragic. But both mythic nuggets embody a teaching worth contemplating, and the teaching is similar. Lots has already been said about Jesus on the Cross; I haven't seen so much about Hotei.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's no accident that Hotei's Belly is as round as a globe. His good nature is universal. With his arms upraised, he is supporting the universe. Sometimes he points straight up. Is it at the moon? Not a moon you can see by eyes! Hotei often clutches a rosary, even with his face full of mirth. Even in joy, he does not abandon his practice. He doesn't need to practice to realize sukha, but nonetheless he finds sukha in his practice. No anxiety, no dread of pain, no shame, no fear of bad memories, just a joy of living, a joy of pointing
upwards.

And I'm the laughing man
with the load of goodies for all

---"Big High Song for Somebody,"Philip Whalen

At first it was said Hotei lived so simply that he could carry everything he owned in a gunny sack. The story got bigger and so did the sack. It became a magic bag that contains anything one might wish for, but it only gives out that which is truly helpful. Hotei's joy is the perfection of giving -- giving gives him joy, and joy lets him give freely. He has plenty to give because his life is ample. But his life is ample because his bag is Empty, containing No Thing.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The culture that produced the first images of Budai was modest with respect to nudity. Hotei's belly has to suggest all that symbolism of nakedness alone:

My body is naked now and it was born naked. 
No matter how I dress up or undress, I'm naked. 
The hours of the early morning find me naked 
and I find the hours and the morning just as naked as they find me... 
The best and juiciest of humanly truths are our naked truths. 
Our fittest honesty is our naked honesty... 
This is what I call being truthfully democratic.

---Woody Guthrie

Among the many ideas and attitudes we studied and challenged with our own behavior in the Sixties, was the shame of nakedness. When together with friends, we often shed our clothes just like water brothers in Stranger. The psychological result was refreshing -- sexual innuendo and flirting were gone, and so was a layer of armor. Although we still had romances, we had fewer and simpler games between us. We learned that, obviously, shame of one's own nudity and automatic prurient arousal at another's nakedness were learned social conditionings, and not innate in humans at all. In all that time when we were usually naked rather than clothed, we never had orgies . . . well, except that one time . . . . Much later, in 2004, I traveled to California. While attending a Zen service in Santa Rosa with my teacher's teacher, I ran into a friend who had been part of Hank's Sangha in Newton. He was then working at Harbin Hot Springs, and he gave me a free day pass. A former girl friend of mine had lived in a loose community at Harbin in the Seventies, just before the current proprietors evicted them all to create a spa-like spiritual center. As I was on my way from the parking lot to the pools of seismically heated mineral water, I wondered if the anxious, tight-ass social tendencies of recent years had suspended the culture of casual nudity that had always been a tradition there. I saw a sign on the way that reminded people to clothe modestly in sight of the county road, and I smiled. Forty years after our first encounters with naked innocence, and my body was dumpy with age. Practically everyone else there was young, trim, tan, and beautiful. Nothing to do for it but to become Hotei, and laugh at the thought that what others thought of my physical appearance was ever a concern! Thus I played in the buoyant, healing waters, a Silenus amongst the fauns and dryads of young California.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


What do these icons of a laughing fat man say about the Buddhist Way?

Hotei teaches us how to practice: surrender without reservation and stand beyond body! Let go of anxiety and sit in the sky. Go to sleep like a baby with powerful and loving parents. Beg smiling from strangers and give away all you get to other strangers, with a happy snort for their good fortune. Read the flowers and count the stars! Walk home past the last horizon without taking a step!

One can hardly put on arrogance and deception wearing rags, which even the finest robes are already becoming. And when we think on it, deep and steady, again we see the universe, time, this life, all existence, is a really funny joke! It requires more than a giggle, much more than a chortle -- it takes a laugh from somewhere deeper than the gut, that comes rumbling and rolling to trumpet out from the entire body!

For Heaven's sake, relax! We can't see much further than the range of our fears. Though the universe is a scary place, an earthquake or a firing squad isn't likely in our future for the next hour or so, for most of us. So take some ease and reflect on what this is. We might also consider what is is, also what's what.

What is this!? We might have thought it was all so familiar, but when we really begin to look at it, it gets pretty damned strange. The succession of moments might seem like a river of kaleidoscopically related little dancing bits of whirling nothing. Or wide-open spaces defined by what we call matter, but said matter, on closer examination, is pretty much just more empty space bound by other spaces. Or a dream dreamt by a dream that dreams it's a dreamer that dreams it awakens from one dream into another. Whatever the truth of the matter, it's likely to be weirder than anyone's dreams. We anoint some of these dreams as beliefs and then pretend they're facts, yet we still act as if we know what's going on.

A nameless dread has been increasingly gnawing at the human psyche for the past five hundred years or so, as changes through discovery and technology have forced changes in worldview faster than human evolution has enabled us to integrate them. We can deal with the resultant fear in at least three ways.

We can refuse to face it by denying the nature of the changes and avoiding thinking about our fear. Anxiety has always been part of life, but, until recently, we've succeeded in sleeping at night because of various comforters and crutches. But now, given any thoughtfulness, none of them seem convincing enough anymore, not religious doctrine nor other philosophical engines, like science or psychology. Even a little examination of our life and mind will show us that we comforted ourselves with merely the idea of control -- we hung onto our little pretense of knowledge and it felt something like being empowered. We could vigorously deny anything that threatened this illusion of control, even though, every night, we surrendered to our bodies' demand that we enter the chaos of dreams. We could fill every moment with distractions and entertainments so we would not have to think about the reality that we cannot guarantee ourselves against random misfortune, nor can we hold off sickness, old age, and death forever. But sooner or later, reality will stick itself in our faces, and we will have to acknowledge our basic helplessness in the shadow of our enormous ignorance.

Another way, of which these days we have many examples, particularly in politics, is to let anger rule over our judgment. Anger is closely related to fear, like electricity is to magnetism, where you can transform the one into the other just by shifting energy. Turning fear into rage certainly can get rid of it -- get pissed off enough, and we don't care what happens to ourselves so long as we can hurt someone else. Obviously, this is less than optimal with regard to our own personal welfare, let alone everybody else's, and it doesn't really deal with our precarious situation, except by likely making it worse.

It's fortunate we have an alternative: we can also deal with our fear of the unknown by laughing at how seriously we take our own stupidity. When you really look at something, it changes. Look honestly and deeply at your desires – how many begin to seem frivolous? Just by watching yourself be angry, anger begins to look pointless and even silly. As for the nameless dread, the lack of cultural security that may be our worst social problem these days, well, why worry about something we never really had, anyway?

Why not savor the joke?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In our culture, from childhood, we're taught to Suck It In! Handsome men and beautiful women have lean flat bellies, and we should try to be like them or no one will like us.

But Hotei says, Who cares? It's OK to let it all hang out!

And this is how you meditate in Zen. You don't grab your attention and squeeze it into a tunnel of overheated searchlight awareness -- you let it cool and settle into clear pools of benevolent interest.

The purpose of the traditional meditation posture is to provide maximum stability with minimum effort. Thus, the knees and tailbone make a triangular base, and the spine is balanced like a stack of coins, not leaning to either side, front, or back. This obviously is the most efficient use of muscle, since leaning in any direction requires a compensatory effort. However, to balance the column of spinal disks this way, the pelvis has to be rotated forward somewhat. It's quite incompatible with the military posture of sucking in one's gut. Hotei's hanging belly is a literal visual depiction of how to hold your abdomen in zazen. Kind of a relief not to have to make the effort, actually, and better for breathing.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To close, the statues of the laughing fat man are to remind us that Life & Death & Walking the Way are way too important to take seriously. No matter how much we may insist on keeping our misery through fooling ourselves, we can't bring Hotei down. And Hotei lives right along with us. There he is, laughing with us, from inside, right now!

Making Mirrors, Doing Nothing

There's a certain type of precious character that infests usenet and other venues in the online Zen landscape. He - and it's always males - arrogates superiority over practitioners who meditate and receive precepts, claiming such students misunderstand the Chan ancestors. He mocks the efforts of those who spend hours on the zafu seeking to realize their Buddha-nature. Quoting the Sixth Patriarch and Vimalakirti, he declares that we are already enlightened, and so meditation is worse than useless, keeping one in the delusion of being deluded by trying to quit delusion. Does he demean sincere practitioners as a means to proclaim his own lofty realization? Does he just want to excuse his own laziness? Most annoyingly, could he be right?

Those who vaunt this view like to cite this Public Case:

Ma-tsu Tries to Become a Buddha

Huai-jang asked [Ma-tsu], "Why are you sitting in meditation?"
[Ma-tsu] replied, "Because I want to become a Buddha."
Thereupon Huai-jang took a brick and started to polish it in front of [Ma-tsu's] hermitage.
[Ma-tsu] asked him, "Why are you polishing that brick?"
Huai-jang replied, "Because I want to make a mirror."
[Ma-tsu] asked, "How can you make a mirror by polishing a brick?"
Huai-jang said, "If I cannot make a mirror by polishing a brick, how can you become a Buddha by sitting in meditation?" [1]

Huai-jang implies, pretty clearly, that you cannot become a Buddha by meditating. So how do you become a Buddha?

In Mahayana Buddhism, the teaching is that in your nature you already are Buddha, along with all other beings. How can you become what you are? How can you find something that not only is closer than your breath, more intimate than your life, but the very whatever you are searching with? It's like a fish asking the fish-sage to tell it how to find the ocean, or a bird flying up, thinking it never reaches the sky.

Furthermore, methodology itself is a hindrance. If Buddha is at the core of being, if Buddha is the core of being, any activity at all may divert the attention of awareness away from the actuality that awareness is precisely the functioning of Buddha. Any intention to change anything at all instantly alienates you from full participation in this instant, wherein alone may Buddha be sought.

And further yet, to speak of what by nature is beyond words is obviously a problem. To convey information, words must be defined, their meaning walled off from what they do not mean, so that they may function in a matrix of logic and order. How can you define what all things come from and which has no boundaries, not excluding anything at all? Words cannot contain that which contains them.

At least, not ordinary words. Language has means to transcend itself. Poetry can mean much more than it says, and questions can open to vast spaces. Though no verbal instruction in how to proceed into that realm beyond words can be other than hint and suggestion, just a finger pointing to the Moon, the Zen ancestors got rather good at verbal devices that point beyond the limits of language. Since words mislead, they appreciated contradictions, even in the scriptures. Especially in the scriptures! The Zen School revels in self-refuting formulations, helping people to take no literal teachings too seriously. Such formulae as "Zen can be summed up in two words: Not Always So!" and "Things are not as they appear, nor are they otherwise" are very dear to the heart of the lineage. Turning the meanings of words and phrases around into deeper teachings is a revered tradition.

The Sixth Patriarch said,
"Learned Audience, what is sitting for meditation? In our School, to sit means to gain absolute freedom and to be mentally unperturbed in all outward circumstances, be they good or otherwise. To meditate means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind." [2]

So "sitting" and "meditation" are here given meanings that sound other than calming the mind with a still body in a cross-legged posture. Is that right? Let's make sure!

The Sixth Patriarch also said,
"The one-act samadhi (meditative state of concentration) is to keep the mind straightforward at all times, whether walking, standing, sitting or lying down. The Vimalakirti Sutra says, 'The straightforward mind is the site of enlightenment, and the straightforward mind is the Pure Land.' . . . Just practice the straightforward mind and refrain from clinging to any dharma (i.e., thing, object): It is this that is called the one-act samadhi. The deluded cling to the characteristics of dharmas and the name of the one-act samadhi, simply saying that sitting in a motionless posture and eliminating deluded thoughts without invoking a false mind is exactly the practice of the one-act samadhi. If it is so, it would be no different from being an inanimate object, [thus hindering] the Way, however. The Way (tao) must circulate freely; why has it become blocked and stagnant? When the mind does not dwell in any dharma, then the Way flows freely. To dwell anywhere is to be shackled. If the point were just to sit motionlessly, Vimalakirti should not have scolded Shariputra for sitting quietly in the woods."[3]

What happened between Shariputra and Vimalakirti? A juicy encounter worth repeating:
When Shariputra was sitting at the foot of a tree in the forest, absorbed in contemplation,Vimalakirti said to him,
"Shariputra, this is not the way to absorb yourself in contemplation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that neither body nor mind appear anywhere in the triple world. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest all ordinary behavior without forsaking cessation. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you can manifest the nature of an ordinary person without abandoning your cultivated spiritual nature. You should absorb yourself in contemplation so that the mind neither settles within nor moves without toward external forms. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that the thirty-seven aids to enlightenment are manifest without deviation toward any convictions. You should absorb yourself in contemplation in such a way that you are released in liberation without abandoning the passions that are the province of the world."[4]

There you have it! In no uncertain terms, the Sixth Patriarch, Bodhisattva Vimalakirti, and Master Huai-jang all say one should not practice seated meditation! Our obnoxious fellow is correct, much as admitting it may hurt our stomachs. But why have generations of monks, nuns, and laypeople in Asia ignored this teaching, to sit many hours each day for year after year?

What form of meditation is best for cultivating a straightforward mind that does not depend on sitting or any other form? Experience shows it easiest to develop in a crosslegged sitting posture in one of the lotus poses, still and quiet. Because it is so much easier to develop in a crosslegged posture, and because there is a danger of addiction to blissful states, a little warning to beware of dependence was and still is called for.

Let's hear from the Sixth Patriarch again:
"I will now teach you how to explain the Dharma without deviating from the tradition of our school. . . . Should someone . . . ask you about a dharma (i.e., teaching or principle), answer him with its opposite. If you always answer with the opposite, both will be eliminated and nothing will be left, since each depends on the other for existence."[5]

The Patriarch seems to have tailored his answers depending on the listener, and suggested his successors do the same. In this he was not different from the Buddha, who spoke to individuals in the context of their history and understanding, thus providing all those delicious contradictions in the surviving records of his speech. This habit of teaching according to the needs and abilities of the student even has it's own term - upaya, usually translated as "skillful means."

From the Buddha on, a teacher's tactic was to look into the questioner's views, which are what keep them (and us) in delusion. Whatever view we cherish, the teacher's job is to deny it and affirm its opposite, until all our views crumble.[6]

In the time of the Sixth Patriarch and Ma-tzu - and also our own - monks and lay practitioners often had the tendency to believe awakening would come from meditation. Such a view, with meditation and awakening as cause and effect, sets up a duality that perpetuates the problem. The solution is to realize there is no problem, best done by sitting for many hours to learn purposeless meditation, where awakening is no different from meditation or any other activity.

Our gadfly friend, who mocks our sitting practice as brick-polishing does us a great favor, and we owe him immense gratitude. But anyone derisively using quotes from ancient worthies in some literal and authoritative way had better be ready for derisive counter-quoting.[7]

Is there a way Ma-tzu could have answered Huai-jang's question that Huai-jang would not have disapproved of? Within a long walking distance of the monastery where Ma-tsu became teacher of multitudinous disciples, another master, the illustrious Shitou, also lived and taught. Sometimes Ma even sent students to him, and Shitou returned the favor. Among Shitou's best disciples was an interesting man named Yaoshan, who was asked the same question when meditating.

Yaoshan Does Nothing

One day, as Yaoshan was sitting, Shitou asked him, "What are you doing here?"
Yaoshan said, "I'm not doing a thing."
Shitou said, "Then you're just sitting leisurely."
Yaoshan said, "If I were sitting leisurely, I'd be doing something."
Shitou said, "You say you're not doing anything. What is it that you're not doing?"
Yaoshan said, "A thousand sages don't know."[8]



[1]From Sun Face Buddha
by Cheng Chien Bhikshu
Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1992

[2]From Sutra of Hui Neng, Chapter Five,
translated by C. Humphreys and Wong Mou-Lam
http://www.sinc.stonybrook.edu/Clubs/buddhism/huineng/huineng5.html

[3]From The Mandala Sutra and its English Translation, Section 14
Revised by Prof. Yang Zengwen
Taipei: Mantra Publishers 2004

[4]From The Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra, Chapter Three,
translated by Robert A. F. Thurman
http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Reln260/Vimalakirti.htm

[5]From The Sixth Patriarch's Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, Chapter Ten
English translation by the Buddhist Text Translation Society,
Commentary of Tripitaka Master Hsuan Hua
http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Buddhism/Platform%20Sutra.pdf

[6]For another example, old Lin-ji (Rinzai) gives his game away:
Master Lin-ji said,
"Students flock to me from all parts. I sort them out according to three kinds of root-ability. If a middling to low one comes, I snatch away the circumstance but leave him the Dharma. If one with a middling to high ability comes, I snatch away both the circumstance and the Dharma. If one with an exceptionally high ability comes, I snatch neither the circumstance nor the Dharma nor the man. And if there should come one whose understanding is outside the norm, I act from the wholeness without bothering about the root-ability."
From The Zen Teaching of Rinzai, Section 28
by Irmgard Schloegl
http://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/zenrinzai.pdf

[7]Such people have been around a long time. Master Bassui Tokusho (1327-1387) decribed some in the Fourteenth Century, saying that, after they thought they had attained enlightenment, they "behave haughtily through lack of wisdom; engage eagerly in debates on religion, taking delight in cornering their opponents but becoming angry when cornered themselves; appear perpetually discontented while no longer believing in the law of causation; go about telling jokes in a loud, jabbering voice; deliberately disturb and ridicule those who study and strive earnestly, calling them clods whose practice is not Zen."
From "Bassui's Sermon on One-Mind and Letters to His Disciples"
Chapter IV of The Three Pillars of Zen
compiled and edited by Philip Kapleau
Boston: Beacon Press 1967

[8]From Zen's Chinese Heritage_
by Andrew E. Ferguson
Somerville: Wisdom Publications, 2000

Imbolc

I don't know why Imbolc should be my favorite of the eight pagan holy days of the quarters and cross-quarters. I like Beltane and Samhain just fine, but there is something special about February Second. Perhaps it's when the contrast is starkest, of the grim white desert where nothing is alive, save for the one who perceives that nothing is alive! Lost in the wind of a snowy field, where great elementals shuffle the weather for a new game of generations, the small flame of life in a huddled breast feels the profoundest of gratitude. We all love Yule because it's the rebirth of the Light and a promise of the return of summer, but it is only now that we know this on a biological level, in our cells. Some deep dark magic stirs, like a seed getting ready to prepare for initiating the preliminaries of germination. From now on, signs of spring are real and not hallucinatory -- soon the weeping willows will take on a golden glow over their leafless limbs, and soon thereafter the mapled hills tinge themselves subtly ruddy.

My friend and teacher, James I. Ford, Zen Man and the very icon of a New England Unitarian Minister, has a wonderful tribute to Brigid, the saint and the goddess, whose feast time is now, which is well worth experiencing. It's over at Monkey Mind Online, .

In times past, twice, pagan groups had approached me in email to ask to use a poem from my sometimes manifest personal Website, with the title Imbolc. Such flattery tends to win my assent. I though it good to publish the poem again here. Anyone can use it, providing they credit me and let me know.

Stay warm by your hearth, cherish your beloved ones, and finally dare to dream of spring.



Imbolc

It's not yet spring but you awake
the yearning in me that
will not wait for warm breezes

A candle in a cave--
in snowy fields, a lone prayer
for the town asleep below the hill

One stands at the ocean,
calling forth the tide
to rise once more in bay and blood

Two meet on a road in the dark
and walk into windless groves where
dryads keep to dream, and wait

The candle ignites the sky to pink--
the spirits stir within
the chambers of the twigs