#2663 - Wednesday, December 6, 2006 - Editor:
Gloria Lee
The Nondual Highlights
Most of us spend our lives as
if we have another one in the bank.
-Ben Irwin
Famous Last Words
for Dana Gioia
"It has all been very interesting!"
declared
Lady Mary Wortley Montague.
Examining his sickroom, Oscar Wilde railed,
"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do."
Told the angels were waiting for him,
Ethan
Allen quipped, "Let 'em wait."
"I am so very happy," Gerard Manley Hopkins cooed.
Goethe
pleaded for "More light, more light."
Madame de Pompadour cried out to God,
"Wait
a minute!" rouged her cheeks red.
"I suppose I am turning into a god?"
The dying
Emperor Vespasian said.
Henry James, succumbing to a massive stroke,
"So
it has come ... The Distinguished Thing."
Pancho Villa pleaded, "Don't let it end
like this.
Tell 'em I said something."
Gertrude to Alice B.: "What is the
answer?"
[Silence]
"In that case, what is the question?"
"If this is dying, I don't think much of it,"
Muttered
Lytton Strachey. When undone,
Julius Caesar managed, "Et tu, Brute?"
Edmund
Kean: "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard."
Chekhov: "It's been so long since I've had champagne."
Goethe:
"More light, more light," then departed.
Robert Phillips, from Circumstances Beyond
Our Control: Poems
"In Western societies, the
distinction between pride and firmness of
mind is often confused.
A lack of pride is construed to be a weakness. Pride is a
built-up
and concentrated form of ego grasping.
So in this respect, it is a weakness.
A person can have great strength of character, and a strong
resolve
to achieve a goal, such as enlightenment, for example, without
pride
ever manifesting.
We need to dissociate pride -- the affirmation of our own
supremacy
over others which suggests a certain blindness -- from firmness
of
mind that is a quality free of all the negative aspects of pride.
In the same way we often have a distorted view which equates
humility
with a weakness of character.
What we really need is courage and strength of character, without
developing pride."
Ordinarily, we spend all our time
comparing and
discriminating between this and that, always looking
around for something good to happen to us. And
because of that we become restless and anxious about
everything. As long as we are able to imagine something
better than what we have or who we are, it follows
naturally that there could also be something worse. We
are constantly pursued by misgivings that something
bad will happen. In other words, as long as we live by
distinguishing between the better way and the worse
way, we can never find absolute peace such that
whatever happens is all right. When we let go of our
thoughts that distinguish better from worse and instead
see everything in terms of the Universal Self, we are
able to settle upon a different attitude toward life--the
attitude of magnanimous mind that whatever happens,
we are living out Self which is only Self. Here a truly
peaceful life unfolds.
-Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of
Thought
John Daido Loori, Roshi
John Daido Loori, Roshi, author, artist, Zen Master is
the founder and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper,
New York. Trained in koan Zen as well as in the subtle school of
Master Dogen's Zen, he is a dharma heir of Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi
Roshi. He has received transmission in both the Rinzai as well as
Soto lines of Zen Buddhism. Abbot Loori lives at the Monastery
year round and is very active in its day-to-day activities,
making him highly accessible to students. Devoted to maintaining
authentic Zen training, he has developed a distinctive style,
called the Eight Gates of Zen, based on the Eightfold Path,
involving both monastic and lay practitioners in a program of
study that embraces every aspect of daily life. Zazen and a
strong teacher-student relationship form the core of the
training, supported by art practice and other areas of study, as
was traditional during the Golden Ages of Chinese and Japanese
Zen.
Daido Loori is also an award winning
photographer and videographer, with dozens of exhibitions to his
credit and a successful career in both commercial and art
photography. He has had over 30 one-person shows, and his work
has been exhibited in over 50 group shows both in the United
States and abroad. His photographs have been published in leading
photography magazines, including Aperture and Time Life.
Jinzu is a term from the
teachings of Zen Buddhism that is translated here as
"mystical power." This is a loose translation for a
standard term in East Asian Buddhism that means higher knowledge.
It refers to a variety of mystical powers held to be accessible
to advanced spiritual adepts. It implies a knowledge of and
mastery over matters of the spirit or the ability to pass
through, reach, and communicate with the mystical.
This exhibition is entitled Jinzu
because its intention is to explore the hidden universe of the
natural world and the insentient in an attempt to go beyond
appearances and see things for what else they are. This is a
characteristic of the Zen aesthetic, which is more concerned with
communicating the spirit of a subject rather than its form.
Indeed, in Zen art, the artist tries to convey the inherent
nature of the subject itself.
John Daido Loori, Roshi, author, artist, Zen Master is
the founder and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper,
New York. Trained in koan Zen as well as in the subtle school of
Master Dogen's Zen, he is a dharma heir of Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi
Roshi. He has received transmission in both the Rinzai as well as
Soto lines of Zen Buddhism. Abbot Loori lives at the Monastery
year round and is very active in its day-to-day activities,
making him highly accessible to students. Devoted to maintaining
authentic Zen training, he has developed a distinctive style,
called the Eight Gates of Zen, based on the Eightfold Path,
involving both monastic and lay practitioners in a program of
study that embraces every aspect of daily life. Zazen and a
strong teacher-student relationship form the core of the
training, supported by art practice and other areas of study, as
was traditional during the Golden Ages of Chinese and Japanese
Zen.