Beginner's mind and #55strong

A while back, the karate club I’ve been with forever changed its name to Shoshin-Kai. Kai is Japanese for school, while Shoshin means something like “beginner’s mind.”

It’s a Zen Buddhist term defined by the nameless sages of Wikipedia as “having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.”

The term was popularized by teacher Shunryu Suzuki, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, who noted that "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few."

The problem with thinking like an expert is the limited vision that comes from getting stuck in familiar patters and habits. Thoreau described it thus in Walden:

“The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men; and so with the paths which the mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts of tradition and conformity!”

One of the great things about having a beginner’s mind is not knowing that some things are impossible. That can lead people to try things others wouldn’t dream of—and sometimes achieve them.

A case in point is the recent victory won by West Virginia teachers. If someone would have told me two months ago that WV would be the site of a statewide nonviolent uprising of education workers who would win huge victories in a political climate hostile to working people, I would have thought they were crazy.

But somehow it happened. People stuck together, stayed united, learned fast and improvised as they went along. And won.

Many if not most of the teachers, support workers and community members (including students) had never been involved in anything like this before, mostly because things like this don’t happen anymore. They had beginner’s mind.

Not knowing the impossible, they achieved it.

Talk about a teachable moment. That’s a lesson to remember

The doors of the temple stand open

The theme here these day is the life and thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the focus at the moment is on his 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address, which stirred up so much controversy that he wasn't invited back for 30 years.

It would be one thing to tick off a bunch of foaming fundamentalists with a little free ranging thought, but Ralph even managed to alienate relatively laid back Unitarians, who were more closely aligned with traditional Christianity then than now.

One thing that got him in trouble was his characteristic assertion that truth is not something once received and thereafter believed but rather something each soul must directly intuit. He believed that the same sources that inspired Jesus and other prophets and seers can inspire us today if we only let it.

If it sounds like he'd been hanging around with and reading about Quakers, he was. He was also learning or intuiting as much as he could about the religious traditions of Asia--so much so that the sounds Buddhist and even Zenlike in his insistence that every person must directly experience insight rather than merely accept some religious tradition:

...the doors of the temple stand open, night and day, before every man, and the oracles of this truth cease never, it is guarded by one stern condition; this, namely; it is an intuition. It cannot be received at second hand. Truly speaking, it is not instruction, but provocation, that I can receive from another soul. What he announces, I must find true in me, or wholly reject; and on his word, or as his second, be he who he may, I can accept nothing.

That's kind of how a 19th century American might express the Buddha's advice to "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." It also is reminiscent of the teachings often attributed to the Zen patriarch Bodhidharma, who was believed to have spoken of

A special transmission outside the scriptures;
No dependence on words and letters;
Direct pointing to the mind of man;
Seeing into one's nature and attaining Buddhahood.

Such ideas are pretty commonplace now. You can find some reference to them in almost any bookstore and in popular culture. But they were a bit over the top back then. They'd still upset quite a few people today.

SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO WOULDN'T LIKE EMERSON, here's an article about the fortunes of fundamentalism in the US and around the world.

WHAT WOULD FREUD SAY? WV legislators have gone gun crazy lately. Would Sigmund say it was castration anxiety or are they just trying to compensate for something?

CAN I HAVE ONE? This NRP story about an Indonesian zoo breeding Komodo dragons has me all excited.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Has the worm turned?

Image by way of wikipedia.


I have lived most of my life in a time of widening economic inequality and have been making noise about it for a long time now. For years, it seemed like people were just getting used to it. As one of Dostoevsky's characters put it (I think it was in Crime and Punishment), "Man gets used to anything--the scoundrel."

But lately it seems like that may not be the case. More and more people are talking about it. It's front and center in political debates these days. Something weird must be up when predatory capitalism becomes an issue in the Republican presidential primary.

I think for all its quirks, the Occupy Wall Street movement deserves a lot of credit for surfacing the issue and getting it out there. The whole 99 percent/1 percent thing has become a bit of a meme, a term invented by Richard Dawkins to describe an idea or phrase that catches on.

It's still too soon to tell whether this is a sea change or a flash in the pan. But a turning worm would be nice.

THE MONEY/HAPPINESS THING discussed here.

NEED A DOSE OF ZEN? Click here.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN on politics.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Stand

I think there is a Zenlike profundity to the old REM song "Stand." I have long noticed that people concerned with things like peace and social justice are often deeply concerned about things that are far away.

There's nothing wrong with that. It's admirable. But I keep going back to the ancient observation of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, who noted that we have control over some things but not others. And it's always seemed to me that we have more power where we are than where we aren't. That's where the REM lyrics come in.

Stand in the place where you live. Stand in the place where you work. Stand in the place where you are.

It's like Vegas. The odds are against you, but you must be present to win.


INEQUALITY. It matters.

YOU MAY THINK PEOPLE ARE GOOD AT USING THEIR MIDDLE FINGERS, but they have nothing on a species of Madagascar lemurs.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The mountains go dark

The wind has settled, the blossoms have fallen;
Birds sing, the mountains grow dark --
This is the wondrous power of Buddhism.--Ryokan 1758-1831

Biblical Zen

The Bible has got way more than its share of zingers. Jesus himself was the master of the one liner. But one of my favorites is from Luke's version of the Easter event.

When two women approach the tomb, they encounter two men in shining garments,who ask them "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"

I love that line. It wouldn't make a bad Zen koan.

Now El Cabrero has no idea what happened in those first days after the crucifixion or whether you could have filmed it with a video camera. But I love the idea that the sacred is living, fluid, mobile, elusive, not defined or contained.

People want to turn it into something defined, legalistic, cut and dry. Dead in other words.

The question remains.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: SUSPENDED

Alive or dead?

Photo credit: La Cabra.

El Cabrero tries not to have too many pet peeves. But some just keep peeving away.

One of my biggest has to do with the subject of planning, especially in the context of working on social justice issues. I'm not opposed to the idea of planning or even the practice of it. It's just that life is full of random and unexpected events that we can't predict in advance.

As I've ranted here before, we are not all that great at knowing the future (ditto the present and the past) and we don't control other people and institutions (and have some self-control issues as well).

In the martial arts, a good practitioner often has no idea what he or she will do 30 seconds into a fight. You may have some general ideas or preliminary plans but in practice what you do should be a function of what your opponent does.

The best chance we have of winning at many things is to pay attention and act in accordance with the situation in the moment. This means we being flexible. As Lao Tzu wrote in the Tao Te Ching:

A man is born gentle and weak.
At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap.
At their death they are withered and dry.

Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death.
The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

Thus an army without flexibility never wins a battle.
A tree that is unbending is easily broken.

The hard and strong will fall.
The soft and weak will overcome.

In yesterday's post I mentioned Laurence Gonzales' book Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why. In the context of making it through extreme situations, he writes that:

...Rigid people are dangerous people. Survival is adaptation, and adaptation is change, but it is change based on a true reading of the environment...

Those who avoid accidents are those who see the world clearly, see it changing, and change their behavior accordingly. This will not save everyone from everything. Nothing will. But it will hep a great deal in most situations.

WILL IT WORK? The Energy Department is trying to bury carbon. It's not the whole answer but it would be kind of nice if it worked.

GOOD GREEN JOBS? At some point, maybe.

THE WHEEL TURNS. The EPA may be considering reversing some of Bush's coal policies, which essentially involved letting coal companies do whatever they wanted to.

LIVING DANGEROUSLY. The young and uninsured do just that.

BABOONS MAYBE, BUT PIGEONS? Some research suggest they may be smarter than we thought.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Fudoshin

This pyramid at Teotihuacan has some fudoshin going on. It would be kind of hard to turn it over.

Today is the final day of Cool Japanese Words Week at Goat Rope. Each day has looked at a word or concept from the martial arts and/or Zen tradition that may be of interest to people who want to make the world less nasty. You'll also find news and links about current events.

Today's word is...fudoshin (rhymes with judo shin), which means "immovable mind."

As you might expect by now, the idea needs some unpacking. It does not mean dogmatism, rigid thinking or fixed ideas. Instead it implies a rooted mental state or level of determination as well as equanimity. Fudoshin in that sense is a necessity for anyone committed to working to improve things over the long haul.

In karate there is a posture called fudo dachi or immovable stance. It looks like a cross between a horse stance and a forward stance and has a low center of gravity. Things and/or people with high centers of gravity are easy to trip, throw or turn over.

Think of the song "We Shall Not be Moved."

I had a fudoshin moment a few years ago when I got summoned to the office of a high state official who was upset about things I'd written in newspaper columns about the shabby way poor people had been treated at the time. I'm not sure what the intent was, other than to "get my mind right" a la Cool Hand Luke. When I got the call, I agreed to go and was very polite, but all the while I was thinking, "Fudoshin, dudes. Deal with it."

In looking around to see what others have written about fudoshin, I found a pretty good summary in wikipedia. I'm not sure whether it's a quotation from another source or one written for the entry, but it works for me:

A spirit of unshakable calm and determination,
courage without recklessness,
rooted stability in both mental and physical realms.
Like a willow tree,
powerful roots deep in the ground
and a soft, yielding resistance against
the winds that blow through it.

WHAT PASSED. Here are some key ingredients of the economic recovery package agreed to by the conference committee. A vote in the House is likely today, with the Senate to follow possibly this weekend. While the bill isn't perfect, as Paul Krugman points out here, there are lots of good things in there and some bad things are taken out.

Some wheeling and dealing continued after the agreement had been reached. Final votes in both houses may occur today.

THE SHOCKING TRUTH. Here's an account of a revisitation of Milgram's famous experiment on obedience to authority.

TO SLEEP, PERCHANCE TO REMEMBER. Science finds a strong link between sleep and memory.

URGENT NEANDERTHAL UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Zanshin

Master Wu demonstrates zanshin after doing his laundry.

Welcome to Cool Japanese Words Week at Goat Rope. This series looks at interesting (to me anyhow) concepts from the martial arts and related Zen traditions that might be useful to people interesting in making the world less nasty.

Yesterday's word, kamae, was about a state or readiness before going into action. Today's word, zanshin, is about the state that follows the completion of action. Literally, it means something like remaining mind, but it is really hard to unpack.

Imagine the silence that follows immediately from a powerful live performance of Beethoven's 9th Symphony that just stands there and is as strong in its way as the music itself.

In karate, zanshin is the state that should follow the completion of a kata or a real application of techniques. Katas are solo exercises of pre-arranged series of fighting movements that have been passed down from generation to generation. They can be beautiful to watch when properly performed and contain a multitude of practical applications.

Each one is different but they follow a similar pattern. They begin and end with a bow, illustrating the maxim that "karate begins and ends with courtesy." They commence with a state of kamae or readiness. The first move is generally defensive, reflecting the moral maxim that "in karate there is no first attack."

After a series of explosive movements that also contains the contrasting elements of speed and slowness, hardness and softness, and expansion and contraction, the sequence ends in perfect stillness. But somehow the awareness and intensity continues silently after all motion has ceased.

I told you it was hard to translate. But here's an example.

C.W. Nicol relates how a senior sensei explained zanshin in his book Moving Zen: Karate as a Way to Gentleness:

...Zanshin is comprised of two characters. The first one, 'zan,' means to remain, to continue. The second one, 'shin,' means heart or mind. When the movements of a kata are finished, do not think that the kata is finished, do not relax your attention and spirit. You must come to the closing position, keep your eyes ahead, your body and spirit ready for anything. You must be aware of all that is around you. Kata is not just a practice of movements, and neither is it a way of retreating into your own self. When you practice kata you must be acutely aware. You must have a mind like still water, reflecting all things. Finish your kata with zanshin, otherwise, no matter how brilliantly you perform it, it will be considered a failure.

It's easier to see than describe. Nicol reports that

From then on, I watched the teachers and high ranking black belts much more closely when they finished their kata. Their performance of kata flowed, and the flow of the kata did not end with the cessation of bodily movement. How difficult to catch this feeling, to explain it!...

With lower-ranking belts, even with most brown belts, the flow was cut off when the kata movements were completed, like a clockwork doll that had suddenly been switched off. Without good "kamae" or readiness at the beginning of the kata, and without zanshin at the end, the kata was only a physical exercise, and not a moving practice of Zen.

Some lines from the Tao Te Ching may help to explain the practical importance of zanshin:

People usually fail when they are on the verge of success.
So give as much care to the end as to the beginning.
Then there will be no failure.

RECOVERY. The Senate passed its version of economic recovery legislation yesterday, which will now go to conference with the House. This would be the time to push for getting it right. Here's a simple action you can take today.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, we lost nearly 600,000 jobs in January and there's no end in sight. The Economic Policy Institute reports that there are now 4.1 job seekers for each available job.

OBJECTS OR EXPERIENCES. Which of the two are more likely to make people happy?

URGENT ANTARCTIC WORM UPDATE here. It makes its own antifreeze and goes into suspended animation when it dries up. How cool is that?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Medicine for the mind

Daruma dolls for everyone! Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately Goat Rope has been about Buddhist lore, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. For the last week or so, the focus has been on legends about the figure of Bodhidharma or Daruma, who is said to have brought Zen from India to China and is also associated with the martial arts.

While the legends show Daruma as a pretty fierce figure, he has become a beloved figure in Japanese popular culture and his stylized image is featured in dolls, toys, kites, tops and many other forms.

As mentioned yesterday, one particularly popular form is the Daruma okiagari doll, which bounces back up when it has been pushed over, in accord with the popular saying, "seven falls, eight rises."

H. Neill McFarland in his book Daruma: The Founder of Zen in Japanese Art and Popular Culture explains the deeper meaning of both the toy and the saying this way:

The tactics thought to be implicit in this combination of image and adage, though also enigmatic, are of the essence of Asian philosophy and strategy, either for coping with life's vicissitudes or for practicing the martial arts. Maintain a low center of gravity. This enables one to rise up repeatedly, utilizing the momentum generated by the act of falling. Yield without breaking. Like the supple bamboo bending before the wind, one may practice the resistance of nonresistance (muteiko no teiko).

Thus, one who knows and ponders the cryptic little motto "Seven falls, eight rises" may view the bobbing motion of an okiagari Daruma as a symbolic enactment of life's experiences and contrasts--the ups and downs, the highs and lows, the successes and failures--and prepare to face them with perseverance and resilience. For this purpose, Daruma is said to be a kind of medicine for the mind (shinyaku).

STIMULATING. The economic recovery package unveiled by the US House yesterday actually does a lot of the things this blog has been screaming for over the past few years.

LESS WORK FOR MORE WORKERS. The number of involuntary part-time workers has doubled in the last year, according to the latest snapshot by the Economic Policy Institute.

SMILE AWAY. It might help.

FRIENDLY SKIES? It's hard to believe that all 155 passengers survived a flight that crash landed in the Hudson River.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Bounce back

Japanese Daruma doll. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately, the theme at Goat Rope has been Buddhist lore, although you will also find links and comments about current events.

For the last week or so, the focus has been on the legendary figure of Bodhidharma or Daruma, the monk who is credited with bringing the Zen tradition from India to China. He is also associated with the founding of the martial arts of Shaolin kung fu and karate.

If you're familiar with the legends about this person (see previous posts), it's clear that he's a pretty formidable character and perhaps not someone you would ordinarily invite to a party or to Thanksgiving dinner.

It is a somewhat surprising fact of cultural history that the figure (literally) of Daruma would occupy a central place in Japanese popular culture, but there you have it. This wild monk has become a beloved figure not just in works of high arts, such as calligraphy, painting and sculpture, but as a toy, spinning top, fortune telling device, good luck charm, as a figure on kites, etc.

It is a common custom for someone who wants something to happen to buy a little Daruma doll like the one pictured above and color in one eye when trying to accomplish something. Once it happens, the other eye is colored it.

One common figure is the okiagari Daruma, a little egg-shaped figure with a weight in the bottom. When you push him over, he bounces right back, a good symbol of the Buddhist virtue of equanimity. There's a popular Japanese saying that expresses the idea behind it: "seven falls, eight rises." (That's pretty much how judo is learned, by the way.)

In other words, one good way of responding to adversity is to keep on getting up.

That's kinda Zen.

RECESSION ON THE MIND. Here's an item on the psychological effects of hard times.

A GREEN STIMULUS might look like this.

ARACOMA MINE FIRE CASE. The widows of two miners who died at the Aracoma mine fire in Logan County WV in 2006 have opposed a plea deal which would keep prosecutors from taking the case higher up the Massey Energy corporate ladder.

ET, PHONE HOME. Here are the best bets for extraterrestrial life in our solar system.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Vast emptiness

The Zen patriarch Bodhidharma, in a calligraphy by the Japanese Zen master Hakuin (1685-1768). Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately this blog has been on a dharma jag, as in a series of posts on various aspects of Buddhist lore, although you will also find links and comments about current events. At the moment, the focus is on the legendary figure of Bodhidharma or Daruma, as he is called by the Japanese. Some traditions indicate that he was of Persian ancestry.

He was said to have brought Zen to China and is also associated in legend with founding the martial arts traditions that survive today as kung fu and karate. The first part may have actually happened; the second...not so much. In Zen lore, he is the focus of some colorful legends and here is one of the best:

After making the perilous journey from India to China (exactly how is not known, although it's cooler to imagine him trekking over the Himalayas), he is said to have paid a visit to Emperor Wu Ti around 527 AD. What followed may have been the first of many bizarre dialogues in Zen history.

The emperor told of the many Buddhist temples he had founded and sutras or scriptures that were translated at his orders and asked Bodhidharma how much merit he had accumulated. Our monk replied, "None whatsoever."

That probably wasn't what Wu was looking for. He asked what was the ultimate principle of Buddhism. Bodhidharma said "Vast emptiness."

Exasperated, Wu demanded to know just who this barbarian thought he was. To this, Bodhidharma cheerfully answered that he had no idea.

Needless to say, he didn't hang around the court a whole lot longer.

SIGN OF THE TIMES. The WV State Journal reports that schools are seeing more students sign up for free and reduced lunches.

GETTING WARMER. A new study further undercuts the claims of climate change skeptics.

STIMULATE WHAT? Here's an op-ed by yours truly about the elements of a strong stimulus package for the economy. And here's Krugman's latest on the same.

HONORING A PIONEER. J.R. Clifford (1848-1933), a native of Williamsport WV (then Virginia), was an African-American Civil War veteran and attorney who won a major battle against discrimination in education. He will be honored this year with a postage stamp in his memory. Many West Virginians in recent years have worked to raise awareness about this civil rights pioneer.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The flower sermon

The theme at Goat Rope lately is Buddhism, Zen and otherwise, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. The series started Monday and El Cabrero is not sure how long it will last, although I can safely say that it will be impermanent.

The form of Buddhism popularly known as Zen is often traced to a wandering Indian monk named Bodhidharma (from bodhi as in awakening and dharma as in teachings or simply the nature of things) who by tradition arrived at the famous Shaolin Temple in Henan China around the year 520. Zen, whatever else you can say about it (which is both a lot and nothing at all), is kind of based on direct experience and insight.

But legends (and that's all we've got) take the story back nearly 1000 years to the time of the historic Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha. He was said to have once wordlessly held up a flower. Among the multitude who witnessed the event, only one person, Mahakasyapa, smiled and got the point. A direct line of "the transmission of the lamp" was established of which Bodhidharma was the 28th Patriarch, although he is also regarded as the First Patriarch of Chinese Zen or Chan.

The emphasis on direct insight remained a major characteristic of Zen. While its traditional practices included rituals, meditation and scriptures (called sutras), there was always a strong iconoclastic and irreverent streak with in aimed at jolting people out of conventional ruts.

According to tradition, if one asked a Zen master an earnest question, one might be thrown out of a window, smacked on the head, or given a bizarre, non-linear answer. Or he might just put his sandals on his head...

Bodhidharma set the gold standard for strange behaviour. About which more next week.

HOMELESSNESS is on the rise again. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recommends that housing vouchers and other measures should be included in economic recovery legislation.

PULLING OUT THE STOPS. Big business groups are going to spend big bucks to kill the Employee Free Choice Act. Here's hoping they waste their money.

MORE ON THE WV SUPREME JOKE here.

IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING HOW PTEROSAURS TOOK OFF, click here.

URGENT SHRUNKEN HEAD UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Don't mess with monks

Painting from wall of Shaolin Temple. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Lately, Goat Rope has been musing on topics related to Buddhism. While El Cabrero is not a card-carrying Buddhist, that tradition has been a big influence on my life from early childhood.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I grew up around some Buddhist artifacts thanks to some wandering grandparents and later became interested in fighting arts that trace themselves back to Bodhidharma, a legendary Indian monk said to have brought Chan or Zen Buddhism to China.

While there is probably no historical basis to claims that Bodhidharma himself taught anything like kung fu to the monks at Shaolin, there has long been an affinity between Buddhism and the fighting arts, which may seem strange to people familiar with the Buddhism's teachings about nonviolence an unfamiliar with the non-aggressive nature of traditional martial arts. What's up?

First, the Buddha himself came from the Kshatriya or warrior caste and probably excelled in the appropriate arts. His teachings about nonviolence sound more like one who has gone beyond it than one who was never capable of it to start with. It is also possible that Bodhidharma himself came from the same social group.

Second, both were probably steeped in yogic traditions, which combined physical exercises with breathing methods and mental discipline. Such practices are common in the martial arts as well.

Third, travel in those days was no picnic, especially going from India to China, whether the route was via the ocean or over the mountains. Even pacific travelers either had to be capable of protecting themselves or relied on those who could. And travel means influence between cultures and mutual learning.

Fourth, the monks at Shaolin in the years after Bodhidharma's alleged arrival did acquire a reputation as fierce fighters when the need arose, thus inspiring any number of Chinese movies.

Finally, Zen's emphasis on mental discipline has proven to be an asset to those who practice martial arts for either personal cultivation or more serious situations.

So here's to Bodhidharma, who is at least the patron saint, if not the founder, of those traditions.

UNEMPLOYMENT JUMPS AGAIN. If you thought the November numbers were bad, check out December's.

ON THAT NOTE, this snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute looks at how long a labor market recovery might take. Short version: too long unless something gets done.

ONE THING THAT WOULD HELP would be reforming unemployment benefits to cover part time workers, as this report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED