shenyenradio

shenyen

2007-03-11T16:09:00.000-07:00

radioshenyen feb 2007 south korea

2007-03-11T16:05:00.000-07:00

(leaving the western island and heading down to the south coast.)

----- "scrambled telegram" -----

( ... its the middle of the twenty-first century and he's three and a half years old. he's a good kid - the kind parents pray for: quiet, self-contained, undemanding, always able to entertain himself... sometimes his seriousness has a dopey edge to it that makes you want to reach out and touch him. that kind of kid.

but at night lately he's been talking in his sleep, asking for someone - 'nigga junior' and 'mad mike' it sounds like... she thinks its maybe someone he's been listening to on the world receiver that's always plugged into the ear of his dragon hat, some rap artist or dj program, though when she searches on the net she cant find anything. he's so undemanding and she would love to find something by these two guys and give them to him, some mp3 file or something, as a little surprise. but when she tries - softly, indirectly - to get a little more information from him over breakfast he just looks at her like she's talking about something that doesnt exist.

and then a few weeks later it stops. his life continues and so does hers. of the gift that never was there will be endless traces but no trace. there will just be no nigga junior or mad mike accompanying him through this life... )

incheon bus station. a six hour bus journey down to yeosu, my first trip alone in korea.

i buy a ticket using sign language and something written on a scrap of paper by the abbot as he said goodbye, then wait at the bus-stand with a cup of coffee in my hand, visible-invisible like everyone else. and i say to myself: i dont need a history. its beautiful, just the way it is. i want to talk on the phone with my wife and kids, walk into a bookshop and find a book containing maps of the ocean floor and essays by derrida, eno, cage, hillman, cixous. impossible things like that.

in yeosu my friend has everything organised. she's gathered together a group of westerners who are interested in studying buddhism with me twice a week, found a place to teach them in, and a temple for me to stay in for the duration. she even offers to fly me down from seoul but i decline, explaining that the six hour bus journey is a treat not a hassle: i love the feeling of sitting comfortable and quiet (we are not talking india), gazing out of the window while feeling the dynamism of the body moving through beautiful straight lines. sunlight reflecting off buildings and the warmth inside the bus making it feel like spring at the end of winter. stretching one's legs occasionally like an astronaut on the lunar surface of motorway rest-stop car parks. headphones on for the first time in six weeks. i want to have the kind of wild intelligence that is deeply satisfied with little things like this (the same two cds in my machine for months on end - but what titles! - "heidegger's children" and "structures from silence"), while being deeply dissatisfied with all forms of limited perception.

at the motorway rest stop a dvd stall plays music. its wonderful the way some sweet, unrepeatable, nameless song can come from nowhere and make you realise something incredible, like 'your relationship's over' or 'your whole life has been one long act of cowardice'... the way it tells you this in some gentle non-judgmental way, in a three minute shower of beauty that leaves you smiling, repentant and ready to start again. and of course you never do, which is why new songs always appear ...

for ten days i'm alone on jiri-san, korea's holiest mountain, meditating and walking in the silent spaciousness of traditional architecture and pristine forest. but at night its party time: chocolate biscuits, coffee, and geshe michael teaching the diamond cutter sutra, how everything is impermanent and how even the buddhist teachings will one day disappear. and i realise that the only way to not lose touch with them is to disappear with them, the way buddhas do: disappearing into reality. but i'm not there yet, so naturally i worry about that little kid in the middle of the twenty-first century reciting his scrambled telegram from a past life, and my own wife and kids, cooking and skateboarding in the realms of pure possibility, waiting for someone to invent something called the telephone. i am full of love and i have no time.

in a couple of weeks my korea visit comes to an end and i catch the overnight ferry to japan to do the shikoku pilgrimage: a 1200 km journey around the island visiting 88 temples. for practically all modern japanese its a six day bus tour, but on foot, old style, it'll take about 60 days. and i'll be doing it very old style: not knowing where i'll be sleeping each night or even where my next meal is coming from. and if you ask me why i'll just say 'i dont know'. but all my life, whenever i close my eyes, there's been a buddhist monk walking through just such a landscape - walking endlessly, alone, in silence, a silence that i call faith. ever since i first saw him i've wanted to walk like that. and so for the first time in my life my imaginary world and my real world will coincide. a gap in the universe.

in a dream recently the mulamadhyamikakarika (a text by the second century visionary monk nagarjuna) wins a prestigious contemporary art award. i'm reading about it in an art magazine - a long article, with 'photographs', that i gaze at with such joy. the photographs are amazing - you know, dream photographs of something 'impossible' and therefore impossibly beautiful. and i realise that i want nagarjuna to appear in all my future lives. i realise that i will have to do something karmically potent to make this happen. i dont know what it is but i will work on it in shikoku, rap it out beneath the sky and the stars night after night, with a vending machine coffee in my hand. one of the nice things about japan is that you can come across a vending machine even in the middle of nowhere. nobody vandalises them. in japan everyone has this minimum level of knowledge which understands that being able to imagine some stranger having a can of coffee in the middle of nowhere is worth more than a pocket bulging with 500 yen coins and 1000 yen bills. this is the kind of knowledge that can save the world. its the kind of knowledge poetry was meant for. its what i'm looking for and what i'll find. and when i do i'm going to walk right through its invisible boundaries and come out the other side.

till next time,

shenyen

radio shenyen january 2007 south korea

2007-01-14T20:43:00.000-08:00

(two days in seoul, then back to the meditation centre on an island on the west coast)

"to watch him at work is to see him delve into almost invisible specifics..."

the world is full of gaps. meditation teaches you to find them between your thoughts, pure conduct teaches you to find them in your world. and its entirely up to you whether you step through them or not. you're on your own. this mysterious world, this unrepeatable, disappearing life. you're on your own and you're among companions.

on the seoul metro i jump over the exit turnstyle when my ticket doesnt work. i was on my own and i was among companions. the robes of a buddhist monk are a gap in the universe. we walk up a hill, past some enormous building project - i think its going to be a particle accelerator site masquerading as an apartment block - through a beautiful old village perched on the hillside and, up further, onto the rocky scarp. two shamans are there, performing a ritual, sitting on a large flat rock with their backs to ten million people. they are on their own and they are among companions. their chanting merges with the construction sounds - in fact they are constructions sounds of a different kind. they are playing with time and space. they are beautiful the way anyone living a strangely natural life is beautiful. and they seem to bless the rest of the day, as prisons, galleries, military checkpoints, museums and temples present images of concentrated spaciousness within a time-frame that becomes uncannilly slowed down.

in seodaemon prison memorial museum tiny (six inch) holographic ghosts re-enact an assassination on the stage of a wooden model of the prison, behind a glass window. their bodies of light, graceful movements, electronic voices and gentle appearances and disappearances are breathtakingly beautiful, despite the tragic story being told (of thirty five years of japanese colonial brutality).

in a contemporary gallery a show by last year's gwangju biennale prizewinner michael joo includes images of a hyena feasting quietly on the carcass of a deer, an inuit man having a seisure, diagrams of an ecosystem, and the artist walking along a long straight road, occasionally disappearing and re-appearing through a gap created in the editing. it is a wonderful room - a gap - and reminds me of who i am, where i'm going.

and back to the meditation centre... blue skies over the snowy hills, icicles in the branches of small bushes. my day begins at 3.40 with a knock at my door and a cup of green tea from the sweet vietnamese monk opposite who speaks neither english nor korean and just smiles all the time. its always difficult getting up for the morning chanting session but once i'm on my meditation cushion i'm wide awake and always resist the temptation to return to bed in the free hour before breakfast (which is at six) , preferring to stay in the now empty hall for another couple of sittings. everyone here is very relaxed - the abbot keeps taking us on sight-seeing trips or to the local spa - and the conditions are not at all spartan. there's a good library, underfloor heating (i can dry my clothes on the floor of my room - try doing that at tushita!), and good food cooked by a korean mamma who knows the importance of cooking with love. we are now in the middle of the month of children's camps - five days of tea ceremony, formal eating practice, meditation and walks. some of the kids are models of silent resignation towards the rigour of the shedule, others make hilarious faces whenever some 'outrage' is announced (such as having to drink the water and eat the kimchi that they've just used to wash their bowls with during the formal eating practice). yet its amazing to see how focussed they are during the tea cermony test on the last day - even (and especially) the wild ones.

in the meditation hall at night the soft light above the altar leaves some of the darkness intact. i sit facing the wall, and the one metre of floor between me and the wall is the most beautiful thing. when you realise that sitting in meditation - in the dark, alone in some room - is actually a means for making yourself available to the universe, beyond the limits of your rationale, it is no longer difficult to do. and this is how i sit: with the knowledge of my approaching death and with gratitude for being able to be here in the first place, with time enough to express this 'impossible' gratitude. i dream of becoming the kind of person who can make people aware of just how 'expensive' it is - how rare and difficult and mysterious it is - to be here in this world, spending even just a few moments looking at some beautiful landscape or person or text. the goodness we collected over many lifetimes just to be able to afford a few seconds of human life.

what happens next - in february - i dont really know. but i just keep surrendering any anxious thought as it arises. i tell myself its just my life, it's unrepeatable and it's disappearing, it is eternal and it will never come back, and i sit within this mystery - the mystery of this feeling of plenitude and wistfulness.

and in any case what happens to me isnt important. what's important is what happens to you as you read about what happens to me (or anything else you are reading). it is language that is important, not biography. "language, the axe that breaks te frozen sea inside you." (kafka)

till next time,

oct - nov 2006 wat pathailuampon, thailand

2006-11-25T03:00:00.000-08:00

"Sometimes I see something so moving I know i'm not supposed to linger. See it and leave. If you stay too long you wear out the wordless shock. Love it and trust it and leave."

Sometimes you do something just because a voice tells you you should do it. I decided it was time to go back into the jungle even though the jungle is my least favourite environment, to go back into the Thai monastic setting even though the total language barrier is exhausting and stressful. Something told me it may be a little different this time, but still, I was expecting it to be tough.

And then others start helping. In a small apartment in Osaka a friend covers a wooden go counter in a heap of incense. In the garden of el balcon another friend makes a beautiful confucian writing table, varnished and gold painted, to take with me into the kuti. Other friends write and say hello, good luck. Others think of writing, an accidental sweetness that floats in unexpectedly during a quiet moment at work or on the bus. I dont know where things come from, or what depends on what, so I just appreciate them. Walking barefoot through the village at sunrise begging for food, suddenly a beautiful wind blows and there is only the wind. The sweetest thai pop songs drift out of the farmhouses, unrepeatable and beyond naming. And at night, amazing dreams: the whole world 'almost nothing'.

A tiny village temple. Sometimes just me and the abbot. Sometimes one other monk. But they leave me entirely alone (a go counter covered in incense...) and so for the first time the language barrier, though still exhausting, doesnt demoralise me. The abbot is a gruff, down to earth but kind-hearted man. When he talks (and its more like shouting) I cant tell if he's talking to me, the cats, the chickens or the tv. He virtually lives on the buddha platform next to the statues, with his bed-roll and fan and spittoon and tv. He's old and infirm and it seems like he's just quietly, calmly waiting to die. When his mobile phone rings it plays 'happy birthday'. And its true: your next birthday may be only a few seconds away.

There were times when I thought "if, on my deathbed, I can remember this feeling of walking through the village begging for food, trusting and being supported, I will be ok. Death wont entangle me. I will make it safely through the bardo realm." Everyone is going to need 2 or 3 memories like this for when they die. Some action that combines ritual and abandon, that touches your deepest beliefs and also makes you smile. When you're dying you probably wont have the stability of mind to do focussed spiritual practices, but you will hopefully be able to remember and surrender. It may just be enough.

For three weeks I study only the Diamond Sutra, meditating on quotations from 53 zen commentaries, but after that its time to mix it up, soft logic style: chapter 18 of Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika mixed with essays on film editing and Murakami microworlds; a wonderful children's trilogy ("HIs Dark Materials" by Philip Pullman) packed with witches and scientists, dead souls and angels, parallel worlds and quantum physics and the I Ching, opened up to Dogen Zenji's Fukanzazengi and Tibetan cosmologies; reading essays on Dante and thinking about the Shikoku pilgrimage.

Dorothea Lange: "a camera is an instrument for teaching how to see without a camera." I think the same can be said of Buddhism. It is a religion that teaches how to live without religion, an exquisite piece of technology designed to disappear after setting you free, a therapeutic construct whose only aim is to free us from the entanglements of hallucinated suffering constructs. Neither an object nor a territory, Buddhism is simply a name given to the appeasement of obsessions. Your Buddhist universe begins the moment you see things as impermanent, as conditioned things totally dependent on other conditioned things, and as acts of kindness. And since everything can be seen in these (dissolving, disappearing, kindly) ways - the new testament, nanotechnology, beer in the fridge - anything can be in your Buddhist universe.

And so, every few days, I check up on myself, on the state of my Buddhist universe, using the six flavours of emptiness. I ask myself, as I'm drifting off to sleep in my kuti, "have I been fooled recently by impermanence, by thinking something in my life was permanent when of course it wasnt? ... have i been fooled by the myth of ownership and control? ... by mistaking my personal constructs for objective reality? ..." And so on. Its a great way to drift off to sleep.

I'm writing this in Laos on another visa run. A cheque has just gone into a friend's account in London. A door has just opened into Korea. Murakami: "when you have to choose between something which has form and something which is formless, choose the one without form." Do I winter in Thailand (bucket showers at the temple well in the late afternoon sun)? Or Korea (snowy days, wearing my woollen hat with the Dalai Lama's name inside)? Which one is the one without form?

I'll stop here. Lots of emails to catch up on. Forgive me if I just read them and smile, leaving some of them in that space beyond naming. I'll reply to as many as I can.

with best wishes to everyone,

shenyen

radioshenyen dharamkot, india july-august 2006

2006-09-09T23:17:00.000-07:00

healthy again after almost three months of minor but continuous illness. walking down the street feeling the animal gentleness of the body as rhythm and energy and quiet awareness... in the desire realm this is about as good as it gets: your body, briefly returned 'as new', before continuing its shuttle towards old age sickness death... but realising also that what i've been calling 'healthy' in india over the last few years is actually just a case of lowered expectations.

in an almost deserted restaurant a girl suddenly stands up from her table, from within her introspectiveness, and walks to the edge of the garden terrace to look out over the valley. but its not just the view that's pulling her: its that same animal gentleness, which i see flow out of her as she takes hold of a tibetan banner fluttering in the wind, holding it taut and still. her arm outstretched, her hand plugged into the universe of touch, her emotions pacified for a few moments.

i didnt really want to come back to india this year - other things pulled me back, teachings i couldnt miss. and as soon as i decided to leave (i'm returning to thailand in a few days) the illness started to disappear. a couple of weeks ago, watching a movie from the west with scenes of cityscapes - neon, subway crowds, bus stops, billboards, etc - i suddenly realise that that's where i want to be. sickness and art giving me the same message: 'go now'. properly handled, hunger can be an amazing compass, a moment by moment attunement to the hidden economy of one's unrepeatable life. i trust it more and more. of course it can also be a red herring. it depends entirely on ourselves: on how much goodness we've collected in the invisible golden hive of our consciousness, how disciplined and sincere we've become. how honest. that beautiful old-fahioned word i find myself using more and more these days: virtue. invisible light.

but you dont want to read about my illness do you? you want to read about the mind of a master film-maker, about the difference between CEOs and CDOs, about how to make the universe respond to your questions, about mobius strips and nagarjuna and what shenyen's actually been up to and where he's going next - yes? ok, let's go...

chris marker, talking about the japanese film-maker akira kurasawa: "... he has tremendous spiritual presence. he lives his life like a master swordsman: he has no time for abstractions. when asked on the film-set why he did something in a certain way he replied: 'i simply make a film the way i want it to be.' ..."
you have to hear that last remark very clearly. he's not saying 'i do what i like.' he's saying: my life is totally conscious, and so everything i do is unrepeatable, immeasurable, perfect. there is no formula involved, no aesthetic that can be 'understood' and repeated. you cant compare it to anything. its my world. its unrepeatable. and truly singular phenomena are, by nature, inexplicable.

we have to live like that if we are to transcend hope and fear and die without regret - my working definition of what it means to call oneself a buddhist. we have to stop listening to all the noise, all the gossip, all the opinion polls and just live totally true to where the heart is. nobody can tell you how to live, how to make that movie. you're on your own. but if you shine within the truth of that, if you relax and actually start living your unrepeatable disappearing life, people will love you, people will want to be around you, people will help you.

i've just finished teaching in a temporary space in dharamkot, the little village outside tushita. seven weeks of teachings and retreats, with a few spells of solitary time scattered through. with the help of a group of friends an empty farmhouse was transformed into a meditation space in half a day and dismantled within two hours of the last retreat ending.

i remember, last year, reading an article about some business guru's recent visit to mumbai, quoting some of the wonderful off-the-wall ideas he offered during his seminar there. one of which was that in the future the heads of companies will be known as CDOs rather than CEOs - Chief Destructive Officer, not Chief Executive Officer - because their job will be to 'destroy' the company before the competition does. and he quoted with approval the example of some company - maybe it was the company that created Netscape Navigator but i cant remember - which burst onto the scene and made 2.5 billion dollars in 18 months before going bust. he said he would rather have this on his CV than something like 'he met his sales targets every quarter for 17 years.' i remember smiling as i read this. i felt i knew exactly what he meant, and how it could translate smoothly into my high-speed/superslow buddhist universe...

for years i have been captivated by a remark of Thich Nhat Hanh's: "there are enough zen centres; what we need now are zen corners..." last year i started thinking in that space but was too busy helping tushita with its teaching schedule to try it out. this year, returning to dharamsala after that nine month wander around the world, i knew it was time to try. of course, the buddhist universe and Netscape Navigator only partially overlap, novice monks and CDOs only partially overlap, but that's ok. i'm a 'translator' in the most open sense of the word...

it started with a ten day retreat that some friends from various courses last year invited me to lead. it went really well - lots of silent sitting all day, and then the magic of the night laced with emptiness teachings, loving-kindness meditations and sweet dedication prayers. and all of this placed within the four powers (refuge, repentance, aspiration and practice) so that the whole day's activity was seen as a purification practice. but the cool thing was watching it all happen from nothing, watching it shine briefly but truly, and watching it disappear without a trace and without regret.

the group was amazingly disciplined and warm - focussed, generous, present. everyone serving in some way to make the place function, and everyone practicing to transform themselves. this was 'community' in the full sense of the word - naturally disciplined, naturally joyful - but within the high-speed/superslow now-you-see-us-now-you-dont ethos of the twentyfirst century (four of them are now on the road to tibet, others leaving soon or already left for korea, italy, israel). once i accepted the invitation to lead the retreat everyone freely, spontaneously adopted some kind of responsibility for making it happen, and everything happened: some wandered the hillside looking for venues, others set up the kitchen and got the food supplies in, arranged the meditation room, organised logistics. an empty farmhouse transformed into a temporary 'zen corner' that felt beautifully established and strong after just a few days. now i know just how possible it is, and just how sweet it can be, with the right people around.

and what we established together became the site for several weeks of open and closed teachings, and a platform for newcomers to encounter the buddhist path. after that opening retreat i continued renting two rooms, teaching in one of them: with old friends in the evenings, and stranger-friends who responded to the posters announcing the presence of 'radio shenyen' and the free teachings available there in the afternoons. all kinds of people came, but then came a group of four students in one day who all felt in harmony with each other and with the space and ended up staying for a month. on the morning of the last day of the last retreat we dismantled the place in two hours, traceless except in the minds of those who passed through it.

and in between the string of teachings and retreats i was able to just be there alone: standing under the stars at night after a day of interconnected teaching sessions; mornings memorising the heart sutra in sanskrit on the rooftop or watching the clouds of mist come rolling up the hillside, silencing everything. most of the time half-undressed by tushita standards but dressed like a king in exile by my own emerging ones, and it felt so natural being outside the institution, semi-invisible, just talking naturally to whoever came to listen, studying alone at night, praying in my own language (and the ones i borrow - pali, sanskrit), doing nightly formal confessions in the thai style with an 'imaginary monk' listening to me (just to get the pattern of call-and-response back into my memory), and listening to music before falling asleep as if it were snow or rain falling in some perfect space...

i didnt have to leave the hillside at all during those seven weeks (fortunately, since i was ill most of the time and too weak to walk up and down the hillside) - marta, the italian girl who watched the entire world cup with me, would bring up everything i needed from town (including students!). and both before and during the spell on the hillside there was so much kindness and support - my begging bowl filled each day by scott and anna, room rent taken care of by anonymous donors, food parcels from tushita, and other gifts large and small.

two years down the road as a monk i now have no choice but to just trust in the workings of karma, to study and meditate and share what i'm thinking with others, to make the decisions that seem right and are calling clear, even if they're a little vague sometimes, even if they stray beyond the limitations of my rationale... and so far its been fine. i feel myself unravelling in the sweetest way, shedding hesitations along the way. some lama said recently that fear itself isnt suffering, its the fear of fear that is suffering. its fascinating watching the boundary of hesitation shift. its directly related to awareness of impermanence, which is directly related to awareness of art, music, mathematics, architecture, sentence structures, the body, emptiness....

i feel myself moving towards a kind of shamata-zen-tantrica vision - a semi-invisible practice focussing on the silence and simplicity of meditation, a non-dual faith, and the wildest, most ruthless worldview in the buddhist universe: nagarjuna's endless destruction of logical limitations. a universe of unfindable objects, unfindable freedom, unfindable truths. unfindable but not unreal. and as everything becomes unfindable what emerges - completely unstated - is a universe of potential miracle and dream. when karma and emptiness merge what emerges is the miracle of your unrepeatable life.

and i can do what i want there - in that unfindable, wild universe - because what i want is buddha-universal. discipline doesn't negate desire - it polishes it, makes it almost invisible, superslow, high-speed. " to live outside the law you have to be honest." - recently i have started to see the truth inside that statement and its the sweetest thing to communicate to people. more and more i find myself teaching pure morality - beautiful conduct - within a universe of unlimited possibility. and by pure morality i dont mean being a nice person, i mean being another kurosawa, answerable to no-one (because you've already announced that you're not going to harm anyone, and what more can people ask of you? can they seriously ask you to make them another dead, formulaic movie? would you seriously respond?), and beautiful conduct in the sense of feeling your unrepeatable, disappearing life and rescuing it in the very moment. if people lived like this they'd see angels. 'unrepeatability' is the language of angels..

zen doesnt talk about the angels - it doesnt talk very much at all - whereas tibetan buddhism talks about them endlessly, but within the baroque intricacies of carefully defined lineages and initiation-connections and complex, unchanging sadhana architectures. but between geshe michael and nagarjuna i feel sure that we can meet them directly, talk to them directly. the 'soft logic' lineage of invisible communities, the lineages of winter branches and three-second conversations, the miracle spaces of saint francis's garden and dante-style childhood sweethearts meeting us there. white convertibles, abandoned cars, white limousines. something between the semi-mythical and the natural next step.

more and more i see buddhist philosophy as a series of mobius strips, creating infinite loops out of seeming dualities: karma and emptiness, pure morality and limitless beauty, precision actions and invisible worlds, the high-speed and the super-slow.

when i'm not talking about the (unfindable) buddhist universe i like to dream, study, meditate. i dont really know how to just chat anymore. i need the right questions to keep me going - or nothing at all. when i stay at el balcon, my friend john just leaves me lying in the hammock on the balcony all day, listening to music, reading art magazines, gazing at the edges of trees. i never feel lost, and so i dont need to be found.

i would like to spend more time with science and art and beautiful things. with neon, subway platforms, electronic voices, supersize posters. in that space which, out of habit, i still refer to as 'the West' but which may actually be anywhere from arizona to iceland to shikoku. a refugee from the tradition (including the tradition of the new), riding the infinite loop of anonymity and plenitude.

i know i'll find it. more and more the universe feels like the internet: 2,400,000 responses in 2.2 seconds. and as ibn arabi said back in the 12th century: "when a question is posed ceremoniously the universe has to respond.".

so i know i'll find it. i'll write again from there.

with love, shenyen
(p.s. you dont know what a mobius strip is? well, take a long strip of paper and glue the ends together to make a loop, with the inside and the outside as two separate, unconnecting loops. that's not a mobius strip. now take another strip of paper and glue the ends together, but before gluing them flip over one of the ends. now you will have one continuous loop that traverses 'both' sides. this is a mobius strip.)

diamond mountain, arizona, USA, may 2006

2006-05-27T16:44:00.000-07:00

i'm just thinking aloud. just standing on a mountain-top talking silently...

... buddhism teaches that this is a broken world and this is a magical world. we have to understand both to make the buddhist path work.

this is a broken world. it works just fine in that loopy way that it does, but all our perceptions about it are fundamentally mistaken at some level, and because of this we wander through a magical mysterious beautiful world crashing into things, seeing all our happiness projects unravel, all the good things in our life wear out and collapse again and again. and then old age, sickness, death.

we think that chocolate comes from the chocolate factory, beauty comes from using beauty products, wealth comes from savings accounts. when relationships start to go wrong - and they always do - we think we have two choices: either reason with the other person or use emotion and threaten/beg/charm them. but both choices are wrong. neither reason nor charm nor threats can create that happy relationship. that happy relationship was made a long, long time ago, and its quality and length were decided then too. some goodness that we did a long, long time ago, but more or less unconsciously, more or less confusedly - which is why it never lasts, why it always wears out - is the cause of this happiness today. trying to scheme to make that happiness last longer is like trying to travel back in time.

this is a broken world, but its also a magical world. and its important to see both sides clearly. and when we learn how reality works we can start to make our own reality with more and more accuracy. to the extent that we understand, we are free ...

in the middle of the arizona desert, one and a half hours from the nearest city, thirty minutes from the nearest place big enough to hold a grocery store. a fine place to build a buddhist university.

this is apache country - on the land next door are the remains of fort bowie, a fort built with the specific aim of catching the apache chief, geronimo. the road leading onto to the land is still called apache pass. stage-coach slaughters happened here. on the ridge where the lamas' next three year retreat hut will be we've been digging foundations once a week, and right beside us is a mountain where geronimo did a vision quest. we did a fire ceremony at the fouindation site a few nights ago, some of us came back down the hill in christine's white convertible, so crowded i ended up sitting up on the back of the car, enoying the night air and the spacious view and laughing each time she forgot i was there and started speeding along suddenly. (and boy, can she drive!) stage-coach memories.

i step out of classrooms into beautiful desert landscapes. we're in a little basin nestled in the mountains with a vast flat plain visible that stretches across to another mountain range. today i climbed up into the mountains and looked down into an amazing expanse of flatlands, with diamond mountain a tiny speck of a few buildings and huts nestled at the edge of the mountains.

as soon as i arrived here i saw its beauty. there are wonderful winds that refresh the mind but dry out the skin. at night in my yurt the canvas rattles quite dramatically during the stronger gusts and it feels like everything is going to come down, but it never happens. its also rattlesnake and tarantula and black widow country but i havent seen any of them, just the occasional skunk, the occasional songbird, and little rabbits skipping quietly through the desert brush.

i love it in my yurt, and feel so much closer now to the possibility of living in a tipi for an extended period of time, living inside soft citrcular walls which arent walls, just screens that can open up and allow you to see and feel where you really are, and the winds that brought you here

only five weeks but it feels so full. i've made a good connection with the sanskrit alphabet and can now read devanagari script, had a taste of sacred dance from a nepali lineage holder, studied emptiness meditations, enjoyed nights of debate with fellow students, done ACI course 16, and lots of yoga...

i've gazed at the stars in a sky completely open and free of electric light pollution, studied the diamond cutter sutra in my yurt each night and danced for vajrayogini, walked in the night breezes feeling pacified and amazed by the silent gentleness of being here, had some amazing dreams, watched geshe michael give wonderful teachings (one beautiful three minute 'death awareness' meditation that came out of nowhere and rolled along like a page of kerouac took my breath away) while translating a text 'live' to show aspiring translators how its done...

i've even had my first driving lesson, speeding along apache pass in that same white convertible.

and i've studied hard, continuing the task of correcting my totally upside-down mistaken view of the world, letting the logic of how reality works evolve into a magical roller coaster journey through what may start to look like miracle landscapes.

the people here are very committed, very open-hearted. its a good place to be. and geshe michael is trying to take them all the way.

and now this round-the-world trip comes to something like an end - by returning to where it started: thailand. and india. a brief stop at el balcon to see john and his family and then back to dharamsala for a feast of teachings and the world cup. after that i dont know where i go but i worry less and less about such things now. i know how reality works and its up to me to find the faith to live it (and faith is necessary, cos the way it works is so counter-intuitive to our normal perceptions and reactions). here's one presentation of how it works, from (i think) nagarjuna's 'string of precious jewels'

"giving brings us everything we need;
an ethical life brings happiness.
not getting angry or upset
brings us beauty, and joyful effort
grants us grace and authority.
developing concentration brings peace
while meditation brings wisdom and liberation.
compassion achieves all things."

although i dont worry about the future and dont have any clear sense of how its going to unfold my basic intuition still holds: i hope to be settled somewhere by the end of the year for an extended period. no idea where. but simply thinking about the perfect site without worrying about practicalities is sound buddhist logic however, so.... somewhere open like the desert is, but cooler, with some angel to help me. maybe by the sea, and in a tipi. and maybe a teacher will appear who will give me a six month plan for meditation. ok, i'll post it tonight inside a mandala. and let the clock tick away sweetly...

i look forward to seeing old friends again as i pass once more through the familiar landscapes. my greetings to all of you, with best wishes in whatever you are doing, whatever you're dreaming of. and remember: visions of the future dont have to be logical or practical or even particularly believable (lack of faith is, after all, endemic in our cultures and our minds) - they just have to be envisioned sincerely and then watered with some goodness, especially the goodness of trying to understand how reality works. a little karma, a little understanding of emptiness, then sit back and watch...

see you soon,

shenyen

broadcast: april 9, 2006--from canada to new mexico

2006-04-09T19:46:00.000-07:00

"later on
i went and captured
all the forest deer -
all the objects of the universe..."
- from 'verses for memorisation at the tantric college', by the first panchen lama.

he wakes up in an apartment that has begun to feel like home... his sleeping bag rolled out on the floor in the centre of a large rug, and around him a soft arc of books, art magazines, a simple buddhist altar, CDs, papers, little toys (marvin the martian peering over the 'postcard shoulder' of an angel greeting mary in a renaissance painting), a mini dvd player, photographs, bookwraps and bits of clothing. stripped of furniture, the room shines. for only the second time on this trip - and only the sixth time in the last seven months - he's been in the same place for more than two weeks. when there's time and space to unpack there's time and space for silence. otherwise he has to hop the freight-trains of language all day long. time and space, too, for memorisation. its in this room that he memorises dogen zenji's prayer, 'arousing the mind of enlightenment':

"I vow with all beings, from this life on throughout countless lives, to hear the True Dharma; and upon hearing it no doubt will arise nor will I lack in faith; that upon meeting it I will renounce worldy affairs and maintain the Buddha Dharma; that in doing so the great earth and all living beings together attain the Buddha Way.
Although my past evil karma has greatly accumulated, indeed being the cause and condition of obstacles in practising the Way, may all Buddhas and Ancestors who have attained the Buddha Way be compassionate and free me from karmic effects, allowing me to practice the Way without hindrance. May they share their compassion which fills the boundless universe with the virtue of their enlightenment and teachings.
Buddhas and Ancestors of old were as we; we, in the future, shall be Buddhas and Ancestors. Revering Buddhas And Ancestors we are one Buddha and one Ancestor; awakening Bodhi-mind we are one Bodhi-mind. Extending their compassion freely and unlimitedly, we are able to attain Buddhahood and let go of the attainment. Therefore the chan master Lung-ya said: 'Those who in past lives were not enlightened will now be enlightened. In this life save the body which is the fruit of many lives. Before Buddhas were enlightened they were the same as we. Enlightened people of today are exactly as those of old.'
Quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions, as this is the exact transmission of a verified Buddha. Repenting in this way one never fails to receive profound help from all Buddhas and Ancestors. Revealing and disclosing one's lack of faith and practice before the Buddha, the power of this revelation melts away the root of transgressions. This is the pure and simple colour of true practice, of the true mind of faith, of the true body of faith."

sometimes all he has is fiction which which to describe the emergence of a new reality. or rather something that doesnt recognise the dicotomy of fact and fiction, a new kind of writing that allows biographemes to float free, illimitable, discreet, almost nothing. the new language: i you he she.

his journeys are beautiful fractal curves, visible from outer space: to meet his teacher in new york city he leaves india and curves through thailand, japan, sweden, england and canada. to meet him again in the desert he will curve out of new york city back into canada, down into new mexico and then finally into arizona. but i'm sure plants turning to face the sun have the same sense of achievement.

once the buddha was walking across a field accompanied by some gods when he suddenly says: "this would be a good place to build a sanctuary." one of the gods plucks a piece of grass, places it back into the ground, and announces "the sanctuary is built." the buddha smiles.

i know how it is: your body, already broken, yet untouched by human hands. the years of indifference, the lakeside visions, the language that they sold you which didnt work in real life situations... there are parts of the body that still have no name after centuries of looking and touching. there are korean monks who climb up into caves behind huge waterfalls and scream for hours when the pressures of their training get too much. you ride city buses in silence and come home each evening to piles of white envelopes, like last year's snow. i see you everywhere: quiet athlete from an unknown country, standing on the podium of everyday life wearing your gold medal of unanswered questions. your national anthem: sadness. this is more than simply the end of biography, this is the spirituality of fact and fiction. i would like us to walk together in silence, side by side, for precisely one hundred steps. (a quantum angel would do the counting - we would just be the lovers of language walking in the nonlocality of love.) and at the end i would like you to realise that language hasnt even started yet on this planet. then i would like to return to the 14th century. there: now you know how the mind of a soft logic monk works...

a poem by saint john of the cross:

IT IS GOD WHO SHOULD ASK

With all humility
I say,

it is God who should ask for forgiveness,
not we, Him.

Someday you will know this.

A saint could explain.

he's reading a novel by richard powers, 'the time of our singing': an endlessly emerging description of the beauties of singing and music set against a wider history of twentieth century america. sex, riots, relativity theory, your mom trapped in a burning building - all seen in terms of music, seen as music, not as metaphor but as a newly translated natural language. he writes: "i could send you the chapter titles alone, or an occasional sentence or open-ended paragraph, on postcards sent once a month for three years, and you wouldnt feel distant from me:
"december 1961", "my brother's face", "easter 1939", "my brother as the student prince", "my brother as hansel", "in trutina", "a tempo", "december 1964", "my brother as aeneas", "bist du bei mir", "my brother as orpheus" ... "he feeds off his sister's instruction, the seed that will form his lifelong taste for the small and the light..." "misunderstandings seemed always to leave the harmed one strong enough to comfort the harmer..." "in his line, people keep studying until they die. and maybe even night school, after that..." "he spends his days in feverish activity. he listens to the radio. he took walks, or sat motionless at the music library at columbia. he was trying to race backwards by standing still. a decade later , he'd tell an interviewer that those were the months that turned him into an adult singer. 'i learnt more about how to sing by keeping silent for half a year than i ever learnt from any teacher.' except the teacher from whom he learned even silence..." "she floats into the next lesson beatific. she crosses the room and kisses him on the forehead, in neither forgiveness nor apology. just life in its inexplicable fullness..."
i've only made it through half the book and now its time to move on, but i know it will re-appear one day in another country, like everything else does..."

he's moving through people's lives so fast it feels like time travel. he has five days on average for a place to become home, for the distance between the door and the window to travel back through time, touch childhood and return, 'confirmed', before having to start again in a new place. he grows up overnight in his three day old neighbourhoods and he owns the streets outside his 'home' in the simplest way he knows: a dreamy appreciation. a quiet, unexpectant amazement wrapped in a certain interiority. but in the midst of all this he is nurturing his buddhist universe. he's reading nagarjuna, st teresa, "the fabric of the cosmos", "the time of our singing". buying songs off the internet to offer to the buddhas. a gardener tending his garden, imagining tantra, re-imagining tantra, always arriving.

two weeks ago i was invited to stay a few days at grail springs, a spa in northern ontario, to teach a little and in return enjoy the amazing hospitality of the place: snowshoeing through silent forests and listening to the sound of a stream permeating through a semi-acoustic blanket of snow, enjoying saunas and hot tubs under the stars, mud wraps and massage treatments from the sweetest angels, and amazing raw food dishes by a visiting californian chef. slept in a bed with so many mattresses i had to climb up into it. forget to draw the curtains and wake up looking out over a frozen lake that was just beginning to melt. the owner is a woman with a deep faith in the legend of the holy grail and its fundamental credo of 'i serve'. she wants her guests to have more than just a wonderful time, she wants them to have time itself, now and for evermore... it was wonderful to be there and now its already gone, disappearing at the speed of light. somebody talks about michael ondaatje's 'billy the kid' and then i fly diagonally across the continent to find a guidebook to new mexico on the coffee table of my next apartment, and on one of the pages a picture of billy the kid. "maybe i should re-read 'billy the kid'? maybe billy the kid will help me to understand geshe michael, st teresa, neils bohr?" ... i think i'm finally beginning to understand what the 'homeless' life means. right now i'm in the midst of a high speed spin through five or six different places in two weeks before arriving at diamond mountain. from there, another high speed spin back into and through india. dont imagine i'll have computer access in the desert... so... until next time...

much love.

shenyen

broadcast: march 2006--canada

2006-04-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

i'm back in kitchener-waterloo with a month to spend before heading back into the states and down to diamond mountain university for the spring semester. my first night back i'm sleeping beneath the fake tiger skin rug again and this time dreaming clearly of tigers and bears and black-red hearts. second night back i'm hanging out in a bar ("jane bond"!) with meaghan and her friends and one of her friends offers me an apartment for the duration of my stay here, with kitchen bathroom etc. not only that she provides me with artists materials to play with (she knows where i'm coming from - attended one of the talks last month) and a larder full of food, including biscuits from ikea. her partner is a philosophy professor and he has friends who love english football, so that may manifest along the way too. from the balcony i overlook a snowcovered cemetery and watch squirrels hop the intersections between the trees and the rooftops. a mini dvd-player with a three inch screen appears along with more kung fu episodes to watch. prayers and meditation each morning, prayers and mandala offerings each night and, in between, artforum, 'the time of our singing', nagarjuna, minimalism.

back in the slower pace of k-w i'm also finally able to check out the web site that has just surfaced on the net, expressing concerns about the way geshe michael is teaching. it was quite a powerful experience to read, having just returned from the high energy tenderness of being immersed in his community during his new york teachings. its not a tacky site - its polite but very critical - but they dont say who they are unfortunately (just vague sketches meant to underscore the credibility of the various critics), which detracts a little from the gravity of their stance. the site is www.diamond-cutter.org

however, given that quite a few people who receive shenyenradio have studied with me and/or know how deeply i admire geshe michael, i feel its my duty to point out the website and also to try and express how i have incorporated the experience into my own trajectory.

i read it through from beginning to end - it took a while and it was almost all critical, and as i said, coming after the immense sweetness of being within his community in new york it was quite a shock, but after digesting it i actually feel clearer about why i am going to diamond mountain and what i'm expecting from there, and clearer about how to go there. i realised, in the aftershock of reading the site from beginning to end, that i had slipped into thinking about geshe michael very one-dimensionally, very selfishly - purely in terms of whether or not he was going to become 'my' teacher (my my my my my wonderful teacher for wonderful wonderful wonderful me). now i realise that i need to think about him in a total way - as a prospective lifelong teacher, as the wonderful heart-teacher of the last five years that he already is and, last but not least, as a potential casualty of our high-pressured world's hunger for celebrity-gurus, a sweet shining but crashing soul... if you love someone in this world its your duty to imagine the possibility of them crashing, even as you love them with faith.

... actually i had been thinking in this space often over the last two years, ever since i returned to dharamsala in 2004 and encountered several times among people there a dismissal of who he was and where he was going, but the new york experience had been so sweet that i had recently let go of that side of the picture. but as i said, for most of the last two years my mind has stayed open to the possibility, even as i lapped up recording after recording with joy and faith, that he may indeed be spiralling out of control the way people around me kept telling me he was. just because i had no feeling in my own mind that he might be crashing doesnt mean it was impossible. my love for him doesnt have to preclude the challenge - the beautiful wild challenge - of imagining him totally crashing while at the same time feeling the joy in what he is trying to do continually deepen inside me. i dont have to close my eyes to that or any other possibility.

i know he is controversial. the whole of buddhist history is littered with controversial teachers - we love it when its in the distant past, in the accepted hagiographies of characters safely mummified within the centuries and the pages, but when it happens with real people from our own time - and a westerner too! - we find it hard to accept. we lap up the 'marpa milarepa' soap opera from the 16th century with a lazy isolated pseudo-faith, smiling lazily at milarepa's tortures knowing how the story ends, but we cant accept even the tiniest challenge to the pre-conceived version of our own world and identity from a liviing breathing teacher in the 21st century.

and i know teachers can crash - especially here in the hyper-electric late-twentieth century western lands. its happened many times before, both to westerners and tibetans. its part of the energy of the situation, of trying to wrestle with the whole energy pattern of a powerful and crazy culture and transform it into something pure, something visionary. it is not easy.

so within these two parameters my job is to remain open, disciplined, attentive, unfearful. to walk in the dark in my best clothes.

in spring 2004 i had the chance to go to toronto and attend the kalachakra given by the dalai lama, and from there maybe meet up with geshe michael for the first time, and - who knows? - maybe even ordain with him.. or go to india and do the six month buddhist logic and debate course. two wonderful choices and i was totally stuck about which to choose. my friend matt did a divination for me and the result was india, so off i went. at the time i didnt know that three months later i would be ordaining with the dalai lama, and when i first arrived in india i remember feeling a bit sad about missing the toronto option. but when the chance to ordain with the dalai lama came up and i took it, and the new path that opened up immediately felt so clear and true, i felt so glad. and then, from my new position as a monk ordained by the dalai lama, i had a realisation: i thought "even if geshe michael crashes, i can be a witness of all the good he did beforehand, i can say to the world that this guy was the one who woke me up and made me want to go all the way, and i can say it as a monk within the dalai lama's lineage not as someone already immersed in geshe michael's community." this, i think, is the kind of open, clear-eyed love for a teacher i want to develop: to be deeply thankful for the teachings they give me while at the same time able to keep my balance and thankfulness even should they fall. "i love you when you arrive, i love you when you leave." and of course i can only have the teachers that my karma can 'afford', (and how many in this world have the karma to have perfect lifelong teachers in the room next to them day after day, year after year?)... so love has to be generous, even when the loved one is crashing - actually, especially when the loved one is crashing...

so, expecting nothing, blaming nothing and no-one in my world, i am able to learn from whatever teachers come my way. if they shine like a star i can try and learn from them how to do that, and if they crash, consumed by hubris, i can learn what that is like too - a thunderous close-up lesson in darkness! and i know one thing: in my millions of future lives i am bound to crash myself many times, so that will be a valuable lesson to learn, a valuable lesson to receive, should it manifest.

the fact is though, i really dont know what the 'true situation' is - all i know is my own deep love and joy in what he is trying to do. and i take responsibility for this joy and faith. i personally feel safe in ways i cannot describe - partially because i have deep faith in the buddhist teachings on karma, that nothing and no-one is to blame for anything in my world, and partially because of the trust i feel in my own motivation. but i feel its my duty to inform everyone who has encountered geshe michael through me that he is being strongly doubted, and to remind them that we have to reach our own decisions and take responsibility for our own decisions as we move through this fantastic mysterious world, this unrepeatable, endless world. for my part, i will continue to present my own encounters with geshe michael and his community as openly and accurately as i can.

but one thing i am radiantly clear about - the geshe michael i will connect with will be different from the geshe michael perceived by the critics on that website. the buddhist teachings tell me clearly that i will always and everywhere perceive my own world - the marriage of karma and emptiness. or as we chant in the thai temples: "i am the product of my karma, born of my karma, the heir of my karma, abide supported by my karma, whatever karma i create, for good or for ill, of that i will be the heir..." all i've ever wanted is for geshe michael to succeed in his wild, sweet vision of what is possible for a human being on this planet, at this time, out of thankfulness for the teachings i have received from him. even though i dont have the knowledge to judge his vision from some objective (?) or higher perspective and so cannot comment on the controversies that surround him. all i can say is that, controversies aside, this vision of his touches all the essential points of my understanding of the buddhist path, and the deeper patterns of my emerging faith in the buddha-dharma. it doesnt even matter if he succeeds but i miss out on being a part of it; and if he fails that's ok too. i will perceive and experience whatever i have the karma to perceive and experience. there is no fixed 'geshe michael' or 'shenyen' or 'world'. but whether he is shining from within an oceanic plenitude and a wild sweet holy transformation, or shining because he is on fire and spiraling for just a few more seconds through an empty sky, my job (one of them, anyway) remains the same: to never forget who helped me and when, who spoke to me and when, who invited me and when - invited me to try in my own way to shine.

the last six weeks over here in north america have been so amazing. so much more than i ever anticipated has already happened. and i'm really looking forward to going to diamond mountain with this wide-open non-judgmental gaze, this loving gaze that sees beauty but doesnt demand that it lasts or stays the same (i, too, dont last or stay the same...) whoever geshe michael is and is not, i will always appreciate him, and smile when i think of him. if you want a spiritual teacher in your life you must be totally open and totally unsentimental at the same time. and a hundred other qualities too. the radiance of discipline and an endless openness to the mystery.

so, till next time,

shenyen

broadcast: last days march 2006--NYC

2006-04-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

he says "if you have any sense at all of being a caterpillar about to turn into a butterfly you should protect this feeling and nurture it..."

the teachings go later and later, i'm exhausted but very happy. two a.m. train back to brooklyn, amazing soft-edged 'unstressed' rap music coming from high up in a tower-block, a heavy but gentle locomotive rhythm, everyone in the party chanting or maybe its just the record, i'll never know. in the street a young black woman pirrouettes awkwardly across the road in a wheelchair. spanish rap coming out of dusty beat-up old cars with broken suspension, young black guys asking if i'm a monk, smiling with admiration, and then telling me about life in brooklyn. and right now, in the apple shop again, a charming looking 'bad' guy puts rap on the computer next to mine and starts doing a kind of hands-on healing kind of dance in front of the screen. and its always 'right now' here...

some nights i get back to my room and there are new paintings on the wall - rufus has been in and doing some work. its so sweet to live in such a space, and it feels like a kind of echo from the future telling me that the sleep project will naturally come to realisation one day...

he talks about love. there are three kinds of love we need to develop, each one higher than the last. he starts talking about the lady who runs the little ice-cream counter at the gasoline station in bowie, arizona, the nearest place to diamond mountain university, a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. the first level of love is to think, like, 'i hope she doesnt hurt herself while she's serving me...' and the second is to realise that she is giving three minutes of her valuable, irreplaceable time, three minutes that are taking her closer to her death and can never be replaced, to serve me ice cream. like, she gets maybe four dollars an hour but really you cant put a price on it, you cant put a price on a few minutes of life, its immeasurable... and then the third level, which is to think that my whole world is a projection of my karma, and if i had been kinder in a previous lifetime i wouldnt see her standing here now in this sun-baked metal box in the middle of nowhere, she's here and not in paradise because i havent done the work yet of seeing my whole world and everyone in it as a paradise inhabited by angels.

buddhism is about doing that work. on the one hand its very delicate and mysterious (understanding reality and the emptyness-openness-unfinished nature of all phenomena) and on the other its very simple and clear (karma: be kind to everyone, be generous and open towards every situation)...

i'm in the islamic wing of the metropolitan museum in front of a turkish miniature painting entitled: "after accidentally killing a youth, a king tries to make amends to the bereaved mother by offering her either his own head cut off or a bowl filled with gold" its a fantastic logic. everything is immeasurable and yet we have to act, we have to make amends, we have to offer something... so the way to keep the immeasurability open is to make a double offer and let the other choose. a fantastic logic, with space for generosity and imagination, the extreme and the simple.

also in the met, i suddenly encounter a huge hall with a reconstructed fragment of an egyptian temple installed in it - amazing in itself, but pushed into even more amazing spaces by the presence of an entire wall of windows overlooking a snow covered central park that sings 'quotation' over the whole scene. and finally in the medieval room, walking past suits of armor and suddenly laughing as i realise how secure and protected i feel in my robes.

a psychologist talking about happiness, about how after spending nearly forty years studying happiness he doesnt have a definition of it. the nearest he has is to say that it is a state of mind where one is not wanting to be doing something different from what one is actually doing at that time. this is a beautiful definition - it places mindfulness as the key to happiness, within a world entirely chosen by oneself. within this high-speed disappearing life, this moment by moment disappearing life, what do you want to do? what do you really want to do?

and then turning it around through all 360 degrees of your world, so that it includes what everyone else wants to do too. or as they say everytime i enter a shop here: "how can i help you sir?"

got to dash now, leave this sweet high tech store for the last time. back to canada in a few days time. geshe michael's community just keeps pushing me further down the road towards what i want but wont approach: i've been offered a yurt to live in at diamond mountain for the next semester (it took them a mere three minutes to overcome my vagueness!) so i'm going to go back in on a three month visa waver in a month's time, and from there return to india for some teachings that geshe michael is going to translate for (in kullu, june 24th - july 7th). i keep wondering "when will it end?", but also i'm starting to train myself to stop thinking such thoughts. for the sake of the ice cream woman in bowie, arizona, and all the people around me in my own world, i have to stop thinking any kind of negativity that will delay the transformation. could talk for hours more on this, and i will, one day.

till next time,

with much love

shenyen

broadcast FEB 27th 2006--NYC

2006-04-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

she shows a rose to a young girl and asks: "is it beautiful?"
"Yes."
she places the rose behind her back and asks: "is it still beautiful?"
"yes, it is."
"beauty is in the mind, not in the rose. and that's what i paint."

in this city you tend to bounce as you walk, and you tend to walk through walls - one minute you're sitting in a supersize starbucks in downtown manhattan (to my left, a young black guy is watching a kung fu movie on his mini-laptop, making beautiful 'still' gestures with his hands - like blessings - and i can tell he's smiling; to my right three girls wearing different shades of pink hats... i keep getting caught by the rhythm of the editing of the kung fu movie, reading it as patterns of information with open references - the pattern emergence that combines the rhythm of brushstokes, attention spans, and market share in the career path of an emerging artist... a history of manhattan land price shifts over the last thirty years... or models of lost words incurred when translating from japanese into english. i'm trying to read nagarjuna - and succeeding - but suddenly listening to marvin gaye's "what's going on?" for the first time in years) and then you're on the midnight train to brooklyn and walking through windswept streets of rubbish, past the huge tower blocks of the bushwick projects before slipping into the artists' lofts building where i'm staying. on the subway a gentle oldish black guy sings great soft-edge soul songs accompanying himself on a keyboard, in the train a seriously hyped up guy talks to himself before answering his phone and mouthing off at the caller, back in the loft a neighbour explains how his state of the art figure-modeling program works. crazy guys in cafes rant to themselves about how 'you shouldna shot him man, you shouldna shot him...' and in galleries artists talk about the beauty of the mind. i'm everywhere.

on a train an old black woman puts away her bible into a carrier bag carrying the words "forever 21." she is vajrayogini. and just as she passes through my world, so i pass through others' worlds. i walk through other people's worlds, partially dissolving with each stroll along the sidewalk. i dont have to speak to speak anymore - i just walk: one more hallucinatory sight-line, one more absolutely perfect three-second edit manifesting in other people's lives, in this city made up entirely of such things.

on the seat behind me a young girl sings a beautiful funny excited song over and over - "new york, new york, new york CITY!" her mom gets a little embarassed and asks her to stop but a guy sitting nearby starts to talk about the song with her. she made it up herself, dreamt it in fact, and so she has to sing it. high up on a building a poster shows a suitcase covered in flowers and beneath it a tagline which cant be read properly cos its first portion is cut off by the edge of the roof. they are advertising forgetfulness, the impossibility of getting complete messages in this city. this is an important message to receive and not everyone receives it. and then later that night, returning from geshe michael and christie-la's teachings the daughter of another student tells me sleepily i read a book about you... there's no need to try and 'understand reality', you just have to enjoy being real, the whole crazy dreaminess of the thing.

i'm writing this message on a computer in apple's superstore in manhattan. there are no internet cafes here - everyone has their own computer and the cafes provide ports to plug into the internet - so i have to imagine buying a computer in order to write to you. to write, you have to pretend to be imagining buying something. and i like it like that - for now, in this precise moment of this journey's trajectory, its a way to be a soft logic monk. a way to be.

Shenyen

broadcast canada - usa feb 2006: semi-mythical

2006-04-09T19:35:00.000-07:00

"it was semi-mythical. it was the

natural next step. it would never

happen. it was happening now..."

canada

i'm here in north america - small cities circling toronto in ontario, canada - the first definite step towards geshe michael...

and its happening so fast, so beautiful - "first of all let's change the landscape..." and whoosh, its snow everywhere...

the magic of 'empty' cities... my image of north america is so strange: everyone i meet is either a yoga teacher or dharma practitioner or kung fu student or monk or composer... people walk to work along disused railway tracks, some restaurants have meditation halls attached to them, and there are things i can name but not explain: my first ever quantum-mala for example, given to me by a student at the university...

the days usually begin with a visit to some delicious but inexpensive resataurant, and after that anything can happen - a visit to a university to receive a massage in a high tech chair that emits subsonic sound (the first in canada and open to the public for one day only) followed by a visit to an institute for theoretical physics to just hang out there and maybe get into conversation with one of the 'long term guests' as they are sweetly labelled on the residential board... as it happened it was friday and they were already gone, but the building was lovely to look at, exquisitely simple and complex, and touched by playfulness - an arts program that included some cutting edge contemporary musicians (including a superstring quartet!) and brief synopses of future lectures of beautiful complexity and modesty. i think i'll just write a soft logic letter to them when i get the time. there have been lots of yoga sessions with wonderful teachers. i've also given a talk at a high school and a dharma centre, enjoyed a three hour childhood memory marathon watching episodes of david carradine's 'kung fu' on dvd, had long conversations about 'organised sound' with jascha, watched soccer matches in matt's place or sat in on long car journeys with him to pick up world-wandering nuns with the car full of playful magical conversation about dakinis...

and i'm happy to say that the first opportunity to teach buddhist philosophy and worldview with a soft logic feel has been given me at meaghan's yoga centre, where i was able to teach accompanied by silent cds and teddy bears. (people asked "why the cuddly toy?" and i told them of an idea i came across recently that struck me deeply, about not trusting altars which are disturbed by the presence of a cuddly toy...) it went very well, and jascha - the sound man who set up his laptop to play ambient songs at random intervals to open up the teaching spaces and give people time to reflect and dream - managed to make me a cd of silence and songs for use in mandala offerings - which i used for the first time at the national ballet school while waiting for a friend to finish her ballet class; little nine year old ballerinas looking on curiously before going into their classes.

seriously, everyday feels like this. everyone is smiling or laughing or just being totally cool, passing me on to the next person, the next floor, the next opportunity for something sweet to happen, driving me ten hour round trips to get a cheaper flight to new york.

i feel like i've stepped into a wonderful mandala where everyone is quietly pushing me through my usual 'drunken astronaut' vagueness into the heart of geshe michael's community. they even packed me off to new york city (with a yoga mat strapped over my shoulder: i feel just like david carradine!) for seventeen days of teachings instead of the three i was intending to do....

new york city

my goodness! it just gets deeper and deeper... i cant believe this is the new york city i've heard so much about - its much more relaxed than i ever expected. but again, that's the magic of 'empty' cities... i'm surrounded by geshe michael students each morning and each evening, and every time i go into a 'subway' sandwich shop tibetan monks and refugees appear behind the counter and we talk about dharamsala.

every morning its off to the three jewels centre for tibetan heart yoga classes, then my sandwich, then a run around galleries. gazing in awe at the skyscrapers, cruising on the gentle buzz of the streets... it feels like home here, like i've lived here before. and then comes the evening - what i've been dreaming of for years: wonderful teachings by geshe michael and christie-la. the atmosphere is electric, sweet. and new york orchestrates things so fast and close and accurate: you step off the manhattan sidewalk into a little india of chanting at the jivamukti yoga centre where the teachings are being held. everyone is happy and open within the buld up to the teachings. and then finally in they come, geshe-la leading his consort christie-la by the hand (it is a part of their practice to never be more than ten metres apart from each other) and onto the stage for three hours of such heartfelt teachings. there are amazing images etched in my mind, pure blessings of seeing beyond limited conventional reality - its hard to explain. i'm talking about seeing with love and seeing love.

and i finally got the chance to say hello to him and ask for his blessing. he placed his head against mine for a few minutes and held my hands. that was all i needed. my faith is such that i now know i can continue on my way, beyond the limitations of my own rationale, trusting in the radiance of my own path, this soft logic path into a natural, semi-invisible, 21st century buddhism. he's so busy, so in demand, and i dont know when i will get the chance to talk to him again. but i trust more in the emergence of things than in the planning of things now.

everyone who has made this trip possible - and the list of credits flows out into infinity of course - i want to thank right now. i can start at some sweet arbitrary place - lets choose that sweet magical place of tushita in dharamsala, cos it was there, while teaching the various courses there last year, that i ended every course that i helped to teach with my appreciation of geshe michael's teachings and announced my plan to go to america one day and meet him, and so many people made prayers for me to make it happen. and then there are all the people who have helped me on this long crazy journey out of the himalayan foothills to new york city - via japan, thailand, sweden, england and canada! - people who have given me places to stay, paid for tickets, given me teaching opportunities (it felt so much more energised being here in america and teaching at the same time) - i cant name you all and its wrong to try in a way: silence is the only reality. but i just want you all to know what you've done for me, so that hopefully you can smile beyond the limitations of your own rationale and begin to sense that the world is an open, playable place.

i'm running out of time and internet access is hard here, believe it or not (everyone has their own computer i guess, so no cafes like in india) but i will write when i can.

now for some more new york....

shenyen

Broadcast: 4 Feb 2006

2006-04-09T19:33:00.000-07:00

"You have to remember that he is a writer: that is, someone who loses their words precisely..."
- from an obituary for Jacques Derrida, by Judith Butler

In dharamsala a young tibetan boy walks in front of me with a backpack bearing the words "down & out". At a bus stand in north-east thailand another boy's t-shirt bears the incredibly powerful yet limitlessly open phrase "we are". and now the sweet language chaos of japan - `tough military`, `bard jail` and the wonderful `never stop exploding` which resolved itself a few minutes later into `never stop exploring` ...

"If you take your deepest questions into the core of your being, into your very blood and marrow, one day, quite naturally, you will understand the connection between thought and action. I am not speaking of discursive thought, but of taking your deepest questions into your very soul, of engaging your emotions, your dreams, and all of your experiences, the things most difficult to express in words and concepts..." (Thich Nhat Hanh - 'Fragrant Palm Leaves')

for many years, whenever i close my eyes, there has been a fourteenth century zen monk walking in my imagination. I say 'fourteenth century' but that's just my way of naming him: what i really mean is something immeasurable and precise. I dont know whether he is past, present or future. I dont even know whether he is 'me' or not, which in itself is the most beautiful thing. He's always walking, he never speaks, and i love him so much. For me this is what 'koan' means.

got to keep this short - in japan and moving fast - tomorrow off to zen temple - but here:s an essay (attached below) i wrote for cornerhouse, the art gallery i worked at 20 years ago and celebrating its 20th anniversary.

hope you enjoy.

Shenyen

broadcast dec 2005 jan 2006--UK Impossible

2006-04-09T19:31:00.000-07:00

'impossible'

"Meditative, and predominantly a writer, everything for him begins by being 'impossible'... "

on the underground i pass through a station called 'temple' and suddenly there is a wonderful moment of cognitive dissonance. i see some tibetan monks in a poster for a mobile phone company and it just looks like a picture of tibetan monks (i dont 'read' it in any way), not some brief, sparkling manifestation of the West's endlessly churning image-repertoire. a truck drives past with 'diamond cutter' on the side and its like the emptiness teachings are as ubiquitous as, say, plumbing.

my eyes are so tired from being able to read all the signs. and all the signs are so mundane, so exhaustedly clever or charming or sincere or brash. i'm missing the walk from tushita to the stupas...

why is it possible to sit on the beach for hours listening to the unending sound of the waves, engrossed and energised, yet two minutes on the london underground is enough to make you want to vomit? because the rhythm of the assault on the underground is relentlessly monotonous - every poster is precisely 32cms by 19cms (or whatever) and each one the exact same distance apart. as brian eno once put it in relation to the same problem with computers: "there's no 'africa' in computers".

"what the modern movie lacks is beauty: the beauty of the wind moving through the trees." (do you want to try and put an approximate date on that quote? i'll tell you at the end..)

attended a weekend of teachings by sogyal rimpoche a few weeks ago. as he passed by me on the way to the teaching seat he asked me where i was from and i immediately replied 'liverpool and dharamsala', which got smiles from the audience.

he's preparing his entire worldwide community for a three year retreat beginning this july - most will do it more 'in spirit' than in the traditional isolated way, remaining at home and simplifying their life as well as they can. but its interesting to see it happening. another confirmation from the world around me that what we do over the next few years is very important: that a window of opportunity, an energy pattern for the entire planet, is going to be in place for a while and we must use it. you have to do what your conscience is telling you to do, not what your hopes and fears are telling you to do. you have to be ruthless - ie totally clear and gentle - beyond all hope and fear.

you dont need to stress, you just need to very gently decide not to waste any more time. you dont necessarilly have to 'get things done' - a lot of the work actually consists of dreaming. you may look lost, confused, vague, lazy - that's ok. so long as you are honest and gentle and totally ruthless.

have been back in england for a month now and i'm glad to say that wearing robes here hasnt been difficult (though my mum wouldnt let me go out the house in kirkby (liverpool), fearing for what the hooligans would do to me). london especially feels totally natural, probably because of it being such a cosmopolitan city.

strangers talk to me. there are six billion of them. they come and go, beyond biography, so clean. so fast, so gentle. i walk on the heath, or around the tate, sometimes with no sense of where i am. "like the bird in Kafka (she says) searching for its cage, not in order to imprison itself but to feel its caginess along with its freedom..."

gertrude stein: "i write for myself and strangers."

i practice for myself and strangers.

i've seen most of my friends and family, although i feel like i hardly spoke to anyone (even writing this has been unusually difficult). but its enough just to see them and to let the micro-perceptions flood through. i knew i had to come back 'home' at some point, and having done it i can feel inside that it's done, even if i cant say what it is that's been done. so much happens at a subterraenian level nowadays. sometimes i feel like i'm sleepwalking while all the time feeling totally attuned to something hidden and approaching. and i've learnt to be ruthless enough to stay in that space of not-knowing without worrying. i could almost say that i'm resigned to not having my friends around me for long periods of time - that i'm prepared (and preparing) to meet them again in 200 years time, not next month. i imagine a future where friends dont exist, just the plenitude of love and awareness, sufficiency and creativity. like in the sufi dance: "i love you when you arrive, i love you when you leave".

off to canada tomorrow (feb 3) and then new york and maybe further afield - to meet geshe michael at long last and to just enjoy the feeling of the ground moving beneath my feet. after that i really dont know - i cant see where i'm going to be three months down the line anymore - all i know is my intuition is saying to try and be 'in place' by the end of the year, somewhere i can settle and study and slow down deeply and begin to find my own voice and rhythm in that deep, slowed down space. i'll be happy to teach a la tushita 2005 within that scenario, but right now i dont know how its going to evolve. an obvious solution would be to go back to asia - thailand or india or maybe nepal - find a dharma centre where i can teach a little and go deeper into the meditation spaces, or (like in thailand) just disappear into my kuti and leave the teaching side alone for a while. but i'm sure there are other options too, waiting to announce themselves as my distracted head tumbles an extra 4 or 5 degrees left or right. i just have to stay loose and focussed and keep taking the interesting options, keep imagining the sweeter scenarios - optimism and imagination as a discipline.

talking of which (ie the interesting options, the sweeter scenarios), its great to have 'artforum' back on the floor of my room, read and re-read and semi-destroyed. every issue is a fantastic journey into the sweeter options of enlightened subjectivity: rirkrit tiravanija, a thai artist making wooden simulacra of gallery spaces in which he has temporarilly set up home (in one of them a voice-recording of sci-fi writer bruce sterling says "imagine living in an art gallery. no don't even imagine it. its unimaginable.")... a new art school in LA teaching free classes in a 'disappearing' classroom on top of a mountain... paul chan, a korean artist projecting onto the floor of a darkened room black sillouettes of objects tumbling through space (people, bicycles, even a train)... someone designing a town for ghosts to live in, and an imaginary island off bermuda with its own imagined bird (she's even created sound recordings of the bird's song)... maybe i should find a studio, not a kuti - become the first yogi to live on nettle soup and artforum. a cave in india "sponsored by sony, artforum and liverpool fc"... of course, i wouldnt last five minutes!

but maybe five minutes would be long enough.

till next time,

shenyen

ps the quote is from around 1920

broadcast dec 2005--stockholm

2006-04-09T19:30:00.000-07:00

"Your stories leave the grooves of storytelling and become sheer discovery of speech at its end, in its last inscribed, audible moments..." (Edmond Jabes)

wandering the streets of stockholm feeling lost and at peace. this sweet feeling of realising that i have absolutely no reason to be here, or anywhere. which means my mind is free just to look and see. "i have nothing to say and i am saying it." besides, i dont really need reasons anymore. i'm just here. the mid-day sun just covers the rooftops. its dark at 3.30 pm.

if honesty is important to you, just stop explaining yourself. dont burn any bridges, just assume that they dont exist. be there for other people, but not for other people's fears. and whatever happens in your life, blame no-one and nothing, not even yourself. "to live outside the law you have to be honest."

this feeling called 'europe', this corner of a room where i sleep and meditate.

little green orange red lights dotted around me: telephones, cable tv, electric toothbrush, laptop. and snow on the rooftops opposite, like a quotation from some twelfth century christian mystic. writing at the computer (how old-fashioned that word is now) and listening to bjork's voice, layered, bleeping, shimmeringly and silently emotional. on the laptop screen a japanese girl lies on a bare wooden floor, covered by a song playlist window and this textbox, like two quilts. just being back in these kind of electronic quotational emotional disappearing spaces is incredibly powerful. tanya's house is beautifully saturated with these kind of spaces.

voices without bodies: the only furniture that some people understand now. computer playlists, podcasts, dropped songs, skype recordings. the 'chocolate hand-grenade' of the mobile phone. "mind-made objects." where we are there is only 'this' and 'this' and 'this'. a world falling apart electronically, gracefully.

lying on his deathbed writing to a friend, heidegger wondered "whether and how, in the age of a uniform technological world civilisation, there can still be such a thing as home." i love questions like this - love all the questions i hear heidegger asking - and i hope to wander through england asking questions like this, in the company of old friends and alone, out of sheer joy.

tonight, london.

braodcast nov/dec 2005--nice family

2006-04-09T19:28:00.000-07:00

"...'What's this look like to you, Martial?' Fontaine asked his lawyer, Martial Matitse, of Matitse Rapelego Njembo, whose premises consisted of three notebooks and an antique Chinese bicycle..."

(from 'All Tomorrow's Parties' by William Gibson)

"You look like a rap singer from a nice family."

('Kafka On The Shore', Haruki Murakami)

two weeks hanging out with john and his family at el balcon: playing monsters with may and the puppies, losing crucial rallies in marathon badminton sessions due to my tendency to get carried away doing the accompanying 'televised commentary', morning meditations and studying nagarjuna at night, and eating big ... trying to think through the next step of my outward spiral from tushita but then realising it cant be 'thought through', it can only be 'stepped'...

bus to bangkok. endless gunfire on the tv screen. a hundred years ago the same journey would've taken ten days but accompanied by birdsong. which is best? both are best.

sitting in the foyer of my guest house watching a guy gently hand-slap his goodbyes to his friends. and then, while putting on an impossibly bulky back-pack, slapping the palms of one more friend. the things we carry, and the goodbyes...

the opposite of india, the guest houses and shops in thailand are nearly all run by women, their children sometimes sit in their laps or walk over to the refrigerator and take out a can of coke which they drink with a delightful seriousness, the way men who are uncomplicated and happy drink from cans of beer.

listening to songs i dont know and will probably never hear again, feeling light and clean. after so long in monasteries its great to be moving through these kind of spaces again. "all the lonely people." and the origins of language.

the city is like television: an amazing invention but used in such a trivial manner. its possible to enjoy the radiance of the details - a man selling helium-filled balloons walks slowly through the neon-alcohol-streetmarket frenzy of kaosan and then stops for a moment to carefully untangle the strings of the floating balloons; a girl comes out of a 7/11 store with such a beautiful look in her eyes - but i know something more is required of us...

Nagarjuna, talking about the benefits of giving ( www.purifymind.com/giving ), compares giving to rescuing valuables from a house on fire. the 'house on fire' is one's body, one's life, and the 'valuables' represent not one's possessions but the opportunity to cultivate blessings through giving whatever one is able to give - a giving which, if done purely, will outlive the inevitable destruction of one's present body and wealth. this is a fantastic image for a dance piece, i think. combining generosity and the emptiness teachings (give it all away and protect it forever; create your future worlds - future, i.e worlds you cannot yet see touch hear etc - simply by letting go within this one), awareness of death and the openness of the gift.

(and while searching for a specific nagarjuna text on the internet i came across a site by a woman who was into S&M and who's reading list included several deep-end buddhist philosophers, including a long passage about nagarjuna. its a strange world...)

the body, burning like a candle, shining, disappearing. perhaps transcending death, perhaps not. if you have the right teachings... by 'teachings' i dont mean somebody else's possessions, somebody else's words, i mean the vibration that unlocks your own mind. i mean nobody's anything.

a book entitled 'How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found'...

a phrase in 'Mother of the Buddhas': "...disappearing into reality..."

thinking of arranging the music and books in my room (next time i have one) into two categories: written/composed before 1961 and written/composed 1961 onwards. it's best to understand yourself through simple intuitive gestures, without closure. your biography, for instance, could be anything that makes you smile, anything that makes you think. like those quotes at the top of the page do for me. you dont have to own your biography, it's enough just to think it, imagine it, smilingly...

flying to stockholm tonight.

shenyen

broadcast 11.05--Bangkok

2006-04-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

back in bangkok, a six week spin through the dream of japan is now disappearing into the dimensionlessness of memory. in the sky today, reading a new murakami novel (200 pages in and i still dont know what its about - typical murakami - but its speaking to me of autism and faith, patience and drunkenness) and suddenly realising that i'm actually leaving the country i was dreaming about so much during the last month at tushita, and yet feeling very comfortable and natural about it. like japan is now just another part of the world for me, a neighbourhood rather than a dream.

osaka felt like my first interactive experience with a complex twenty-first century soft logic cityscape: kyoto temples, homeless communities beneath the kyoto river bridges, art exhibitions... the beautiful patience of jerry and his family as this tibetan hooligan monk crashes through the soft precisions of a japanese home, turning jerry's study into the 'pigeon room' with string hanging from door to window holding drying robes and the floor covered in opened bags, exhibition fliers, books, cds... the aching sweet familiarity of trainstation announcements, and the trains themselves, and conversations with people sitting next to me... heidegger, keith jarret, brian eno, john cage all awaiting collection... making mandala offerings down by the river, accompanied by jerry playing the shakuhachi, pachinko (japanese pinball) parlour searchlights arcing the sky, and trainloads of commuters rattling over the bridge every few minutes... take-out sushi, talking bus stops, takoyaki stands, stand-up noodle shops in train stations... 'electroplankton' (a sweet little computer game where you make music by arranging labyrinths through which musical notes wander) and 'chirirobo' (where a mini-robot's goal in life is to make everyone happy: the family that owns him consists of a dysfunctional mother father daughter trio who cant communicate anymore - the girl especially doesnt talk to anyone, just wears a frog's hat and sits in the corner speaking gobblygook, and the father is frowned upon for spending so much money on electro-gadgets that he later abandons - for example, there are some abandoned frog-robots in the garden that chirirobo helps somehow (he takes them back to a pond maybe) and they reward him with a frog costume to wear which allows him to immediately understand what the little alienated girl wants to say... er, i better stop here or you'll think i've become addicted)... yes, osaka was a place where i could communicate with people at some basic level, and walk around in my robes in a semi-invisible way that didnt stop me from moving through spaces naturally.

it turns out that a month at bukkokuji was all i needed, all i wanted. i just needed that place in my memory, as one more star in the sky to gaze at when the moment of my death arrives. the landscape at that time, its not geological: its made up of all our collected loves and amazements and commitments. we have to start gathering them now. i loved being there (even though i wasnt 'happy' there) and i knew i had to leave and i'm thankful and clean and happy to be moving again, to realise so quickly and cleanly that it isnt me, its not the soft logic landscape that i need.

i realised early that i couldnt settle there long term, despite the power of the place. the cold was a real shock (and the snow hasnt come yet, although i was given advance instructions on how to avoid frostbite) soaking into my bones and stomach during the hours on the cushion in the unheated zendo and starting to make me feel sick, but the deeper, whispered truth lay in the sense of claustophobic limitation. i need to move through something more chaotic and technicolour, to be able to read and walk and dream in ways that you cannot do in such a place. but even one month has left a deep impression on me and blessed me. and i got some simple essential meditation instruction from a living zen master, along with a transmission of the enlightenment vow of dogen zenji to take away with me and make my own.

despite long hours of fighting the cold and the sadness of feeling bottled up (i was sleeping in the dining room and didnt feel like i had a place to just disappear into between the 4 a.m. wake-up bell and the 9 p.m. unfolding of the futon - just a tiny cemetery to walk up and down in outside) there were many times when the inner rhythm of the place would just blow me away with its focus and purity and i would find myself thinking "you're crazy, wanting to leave this place..."

its a very special place and i deeply recommend it (but not in november, to anyone coming from a couple of years in india and thailand). everyone there is so kind, and that kindness is partially the result of the discipline of the life there. seeing discipline and kindness linked so clearly has been a valuable teaching. and both the kindness and the discipline have their roots in the realisations of roshi-sama (the affectionate name for harada roshi, the abbot).

roshi-sama is 81 years old but he looks timeless, like an old taoist sage seen only in movies. occasionally scary but mainly shining with a soft compassionate wonder. lots of laughter in his face. but what a biography...

81 years old, which means he was 20 in 1944. his homeland crumbling into chaos and disaster after taking a lunatic violent swing at the whole of the pacific region. imagine being 20 years old in the midst of japan at that time. "i just wanted to be of service, to protect the people of my homeland..."

so he signs up to train as a kamikazi pilot. you have to remember that he's just 20 years old. he just wants to be of service.

the training is apparently fierce, almost unbearable. training to be a kamikazi pilot isnt like training to jump off a cliff. you can jump off a cliff with a brief, combined focussing and shutting down of consciousness, then let gravity do the rest, but a kamikazi pilot has to stay totally conscious to the very last moment in order to steer the plane into the moving target of the enemy ship and hit it at the most vulnerable spot. you cant pass out five seconds before impact. fierce training.

get this: the war ends one hour before he is due to fly. there's a photo of him drinking a last cup of sake with his group of fellow pilots before heading off. his pilot's clothes look desperately poor. his face totally lost into the acceptance of the chaos of fate. and then just after the photo the end of the war is announced. this is not "big brother" or the academy awards.

but before he can return to japan (the training camp was in china) he's captured by the russians and kept as a prisoner for several months. one of the russian captains torments him every night by making him drink lots of vodka, till he's sick. he ends up being hospitalised, but while he's away the others get sent to siberia and most dont make it back. now he sees alcohol as sacred (in the sense that he never drinks it) - as the thing which saved his life.

he makes it back to japan then. he's totally devasted by the end of the war, by the apparent uselessness of the sacrificed lives of all his fellow soldiers and pilots. he has no reason to live. and then he meets a zen master who tells him that if he is willing to die for zen training in a few years his world will be irreversibly changed. he's already given up his life once so its not difficult for him to accept. he enters zen training and in three years experiences satori. spends the next fifty years polishing the experience and running the monastery that is given over to him.

he talks again and again about eternal life, about deathlessness and birthlessness. his instructions to me repeat the same message over and over, and i slowly begin to realise the enormity of his simple words. again and again: "trust yourself". so simple, and often heard from all the people around us but i have never heard them spoken like this, pushing me to wonder in the face of "what exactly is 'trust'? what exactly is 'myself'?"

"trust yourself, and make space for everything. cling to nothing, oppose nothing. and then just... (cut through)..." (this last part semi-gestural and difficult to translate into the sparse, textureless wordiness of email.)

his mother died giving birth to him. she knew she would die and could have saved her own life by not having the child. but she chose to carry the pregnancy through. i guess she just wanted to be of service.

i'm 44 years old. death (or deathlessness) doesnt seem so far away now - just a few blocks away, in a part of town i dont normally go. i realise that time is running out and there's no portion left among the little time left for hesitation. not hesitating is probably the kindest thing you can do for people (so long as you have developed the discpline of love). most people are being destroyed by patterns of hesitation, not by wars. lost in rationalisations, most people never see.

in an email yesterday a friend tells me that kirti tsenshab rimpoche has been talking about this world-system ending in three hundred years, and that only those who have the kalachakra initiation will be reborn in shambala. hearing such talk, its not about truth or falseness, its about whether your mind can hold such language without breaking, like the biblical parable of the new wine in old bottles. 'not hesitating' is about becoming a new bottle, of not being destroyed (or left behind) by the immensity of the new language. i'm not interested in petty rationalisations of what i consider true and what i consider false anymore, i just want to shine in the little time i have in this amazing immeasurable world, to make something real, beyond language.

as i spiralled out of bukkokuji, waiting for me at jerry's house in osaka was a letter from india - a little piece of white cloth with "HHDL" (His Holiness the Dalai Lama) sewn into it, my parting request to ani desal when she offered me a present to take with me from tushita. ani desal is a nun who has been living at tushita all the time i stayed there and who runs the tailor's office there. she's a really sweet, shining older american lady, down to earth and shining with confidence in her teacher and her path. her teacher has given her enough diamond sutra recitation commitments to last six lifetimes - a fact that so amazed me when i first heard it six months ago that i immediately asked her to sew the cloth that holds my mandala-offering set. i wanted my mandala set to travel in a cloth made by a woman with enough diamond sutra recitation commitments to last six lifetimes. (i guess its her teacher's way of keeping her out of trouble for 300 years...)

why did i ask for a label with the dalai lama's name on? a few years ago i came across this story: In the 1970s the chinese imprisoned the panchen lama for many years, sometimes torturing and trying to humiliate him. at one point a chinese guard held a gun to his head and told him to spit on the name of the dalai lama. but the panchen lama refused. "i will never spit on the name of the dalai lama," he replied. "instead i will write his name on my hat and carry it around the universe..."

when i first heard this story i finally knew that buddhism was totally wild, and that i too could become totally wild and talk in the same way. and the desire to fulfill the panchen lama's beautiful defiant vision, to act out his spontaneous (spoken) performance art piece and carry the dalai lama's name on my hat and through the universe, came to me. two nights ago, while talking with jerry, we sewed the label into my new hat, and during my last day and a half in japan i walked about for the first time realising my wish. it felt wonderful. and on the first day i bumped into an old friend on the street in osaka - a city of 12 million people...

of course, everyone on the planet is an old friend, and the planet itself is just an aeroplane crashing. we're all going to die so why dont we just be nice to each other while the plane is going down? why make such a big fuss about some spilt drink or cold food, or fight over the arm rest? "let's break break all the rules and help each other."

------------------------------

i havent had chance to catch up on all the emails of recent weeks (only allowed out of temple every five days and a very awkward japanese keyboard, in a community centre in the town, was all i had) - but thanks to all of you that have written, and especially the offers of floors etc back in england. i hope to write direct soon.

love,

shenyen

broadcast 10.2004--winterzweige

2006-04-09T19:20:00.000-07:00

winterzweige

“And then too there are the winterzweige (winter branches)… You know how branches look pretty dead in the winter, but in the sky of spring the branches burst forth in blossoms and subtle shades? Sometimes a lineage looks dead or dormant through several generations, yet it may still be transmitting the entire sap of the teaching. And then in auspicious circumstances the lineage may visibly blossom in some disciple. Well, each of us needs to be the spring for some teacher. If you nourish a lineage, if you nourish the teachings with your life, everything blossoms. Its much better to be in for this long learning curve, because so much of Buddhism is only absorbed through incubation. You learn it over a period of time with somebody, maturing the conditions for enlightening states of mind and being. Suzuki Roshi is still the main companion I have today…”

(Richard Baker Roshi, ibid)

What you probably don’t know – and what makes that last line so beautiful – is that his teacher Suzuki Roshi died more than twenty years before this interview took place…

Fresh snow up on the high mountains. I’ll be out of here before it falls beneath my feet.

Now, as I walk down to class in the afternoon, each time the mountain path curves into shadow the temperature drop is noticeable. But my regular morning walk up to trijang rimpoche’s stupa is still baked in sunshine, and sometimes on the way back I sit and read for an hour on a little rock which I now call the moon-viewing seat.

Up on the roof of lama’s house, walking in circles in the late afternoon sun. My shadow skips off the edge of the roof and onto the trees about twenty metres away. Each leaf a pixel of memory, flickering on and off with the passing shadow. Suddenly I have the feeling that language is with me, and I have the feeling that I could say anything – make the simplest sentences – and you would understand completely and even be here with me. “when your body is only just beginning…” I wonder how long this language will last. Maybe I should make prayers to the goddess of sentences.

A friend tells me that Jacques Derrida died recently. For years this man’s language has been my own emerging language. I can say that this is the first death of a friend. I think of him not so much as a philosopher but as the greatest love poet of the twentieth century. When I return to England I will read his essay ‘telepathy’ and write in its margins - to him, to everyone - one last time. Please, everyone – if you come across any beautiful pieces about him over the next few months can you save them for me?

I leave tushita in five days, but this time not just for a couple of weeks but for a four month spin that should take me to Thailand, south India, north India and Nepal, through airports and train platforms, roadside restaurants and simple hotel rooms with satellite tv – teachings, retreats, ceremonies, re-unions… some long, long journeys (at least one of the train journeys is 36 hours long) before I end up back here for the next six months of study, march to august next year.

During the picnic lunch at the end of the last course a student took some photos and gave me a cd copy, so I finally have some photos to send you. They should be attached to this email.

But a request to my English friends: if anyone has access to a photo printer could you print out a sheet and send them to my mum? She doesn’t have access to a computer. The first person to reply saying they can do it I will send my mum’s address to you. Thanks.

shenyen

broadcast 08.12.04--it's my job

2006-03-09T23:04:00.000-08:00

4 (first weeks in tushita, after ordaining – july august)

hi everyone,

This morning there’s a special ceremony at namgyal monastery to mark the start of the annual rains retreat. The start of the rains retreat is one of the three ceremonies recognised by all buddhist traditions – along with the conclusion of the retreat and the bi-monthly confession ceremony – and is very special. Basically it is a commitment to stay within the boundaries set by the monastery for the three months of the retreat – which doesnt mean i have to stay in the monastery itself as the boundary includes all of mcleod, tushita, and the mountain above tushita. (in italy – they do things with style over there – the retreat boundaries of a certain monastery extend 35 miles to include two supermarkets and a beach!) The ceremony is at 4 am, and during the night i listened to the monsoon downpour, thinking we’re going to get soaked on the walk down from tushita, but when i step outside my room at 3.20 am its a fantastic clear night sky that greets me. The walk down is really beautiful – hanging in the sky in front of us as we walk, high over the valley, the full moon is shining, like a letter from a friend. The silence of the mountain blends into the stillness of a sleeping mcleod, though even at this hour there are people at the bus stand, huddled over rucksacks half asleep, waiting for the first bus to wherever. But then we enter the monastery, aglow with soft yellow lights and the sweet wakefulness of hundreds of monks and nuns chanting softly.

In the dalai lama’s inner palace there is a corridor with simple wooden benches lining the wall on one side. Half way along, built into the wall, is an enormous door, which seems to be leaning backwards as if holding back some amazing force. If the door opened and someone stepped out, they would have to step onto the wooden back of the bench and then onto the bench itself before stepping onto the floor. Its the strangest door i have ever seen. I stood in front of it for a few seconds and took my own personal vow, with it as a witness.

at several points in the ordination ceremony we went up to his holiness in groups of three – to have our robes blessed, etc – and on one of these occasions he gave me this huge friendly pat on the shoulder that exploded in my body and mind, an unbelievable force that i really cant describe adequately, but which i interpreted as a "there! now run with it and make it your own!"

The ceremony itself was very smooth and well organised though not without its stressful side (you don’t want anything to go wrong!)– and it was a long, long day, full of prayers and ceremonies and pujas of various kinds, from 4 in the morning to 11 at night. The best part for me was right at the end of the evening: a light-offering ceremony around lama yeshe’s stupa in tushita in the cool of the evening, staying on alone until after 11pm making oceans of prayers of thankfulness for the help i’ve received in this life from everyone connected with me. If I had to say what has been the biggest change in my life over the last few years, its realizing that the language of prayer – aspirational more than petitional – exists and has its effect. We are always gaining or losing languages: in the west we are mastering the language of telecommunications (that achingly sweet blend of precision, cleanliness and isolation) but losing the language of prayer. The alphabet crumbles beneath the weight of computer languages, dictionaries of acronyms and the proliferation of pharmaceutical products. But the old languages can still be heard: it is still possible to hear dante’s ‘commedia’ in the original italian broadcast on short-wave radio while living in an almost empty block of flats that is on fire most evenings, or read descriptions of hastily disassembled houses floating down-river in medieval japan (lower level officials desperately chasing after the imperial court after its relocation from kyoto to tokyo) while waiting in an airport departure lounge. And its still possible to have conversations with infinitely extended perceptions of what we call the ‘world’.

I can stay at tushita for now, for free. So – barring accidents or illness - i wont be coming home this year, though i may have to if i decide to apply for a long term study visa. Its very quiet up at tushita but i still see the bustle of mcleod each day when i come down for class. On rainy days it’s a bit of a challenge walking down, plastic sandals slipping off my feet and my skirt getting soaked (but then today i rescue a beautiful tibetan dance student from monkeys and then we share my tiny umbrella as the rain starts, so its not always grim.) But on dry days it can be very beautiful.

Its only two hundred metres higher than mcleod but the temperature drop is noticeable – emphasized probably by the increased intensity of the monsoon in recent weeks. Walking up beyond tushita, onto the mountain where there are some stupas to visit and some serious long-term Tibetans living the meditator’s life, is sometimes to be walking in clouds. But I love the coolness and the breeze and am enjoying the various ways I can wrap my long upper robe around me, creating different degrees of insulation or ventilation. wearing the robes feels very natural on many different levels - when meditating, you realise this is precisely what they have been designed for: you feel like a mountain wrapped in these loose folds of spacious cloth; they are also relatively easy to wear in normal situations too, unlike the thai robes which i had a lot of difficulty with; and here in mcleod it feels totally natural because there are always monks on the street wherever you go (well, wherever i tend to go nowadays; i dont remember seeing any in the soul food cafe...).

I will probably be here until end of November – I will be returning to the village in Thailand where I was a temporary monk for a special funeral ceremony on dec 5^th (the father of my friend john’s partner, and the head of the sweet thai family that made my ordination out there possible). I’m also going out there on a visa run in mid-september, so I’m quite excited… especially since the study materials out there include a cdv of a film about a shaolin soccer team, and the real thing on satellite tv each weekend.

Today visited my old monastery – ZKL – and saw chuden for the first time since I ordained. He was very happy and tells me they still have the satellite connection going…

In a questionaire from an organisation which supports western monks and nuns i was asked why i ordained and what ordination means to me. here’s my reply:

"I wanted to ordain from the very beginning. My first teacher mentioned a belief from the Thai tradition: when you ordain, all your relatives from seven generations back, if they are presently in the lower realms, are immediately reborn in the higher realms. I knew I wanted to act with that kind of immediacy and scope and I knew it wouldn’t be possible within the career structure of Marks & Spencers. I also knew I was going to be a 21^st century monk, though I didnt know what I meant by this. Then two years ago I realised I had done the hard part – I had made it into the 21^st century – so I did a temporary ordination in Thailand.

When Bez (one of the members of the band ‘Happy Mondays’) was asked by a journalist why he took so many drugs he replied simply: ‘its my job.’ That’s how I feel about ordination: its my job. Its my job not to criticize the hunger, addiction and recklessness of our culture but rather to show that there are other, deeper, sweeter ways of being. Its my job to remind people that they are capable of becoming the kindest, most intelligent, creative, beautiful, exquisite creature that ever lived. Its my job to show that studying reality is a holy thing and that everyone can find for themselves a way of studying that feels uncontrived and oceanic. On the back of an envelope, next to a picture of a wandering Zen monk carrying a bowl of incense on his back and accompanied by a tiger, one of my teachers wrote: ‘bring more, carry less.’ Its my job to find out what he meant."

But on a darker note, I’m told that over 50% of western monks and nuns give back their vows at some point – young or old, newly ordained or twenty years down the line, decent souls and wild ones, it makes no difference. There simply isn’t the cultural support to keep people going in this way of life back in the west, and feeling that one has to stay out here in asia for the rest of one’s life has its own stresses. Right now I’m not worried about it (which is not to say that I think I am different in some way, just that I cant think about this right now)– all I can do is do my best and try and keep my inspiration and sense of humour. We’ve been told not to go crazy trying to be the perfect monk or nun – they are the ones who disrobe first! I have interpreted this advice as an open invitation to go back to ZKL once a week and watch the football (saturday: 'pool v spurs!) and walk around the mountain listening to ragga, soul and brazilain chill (get it ready for september, john!)... I hope this is not a misunderstanding on my part, but in any case the italians would understand...

Till next time,

Shenyen

broadcast 07.24.04--brief note

2006-03-09T22:57:00.000-08:00

hi everyone

today is the third day of the dalai lama's summer teachings and my third full day as a monk. the walk down from tushita meditation centre (where i'm staying at the moment) in the early morning sunshine is quiet and beautiful. a slow mountain walk gradually runs into the edges of mcleod and then joins the building stream of people heading to the main temple for the teachings. today i forgot my radio so i couldnt listen to the simultaneous translation - instead i just sat and listened to the sweet patterns and rhythms of his voice. when the dalai lama speaks its like you are sitting in a beautiful palace - there is so much space and beauty in his voice, and what he is saying is a beautiful architecture structured to guide you out of delusion and into the natural radiance of your own mind. this is no exaggeration - iu know nothing like it in this world.

since my application was so late (a day later and it would have been 'no'!) the five days before ordination were absolutely hectic and exhausting - all kinds of sweet chaos: frantic telephoning to my mum's house to get formal permission, one hour before the office closed here at his holiness's temple ("she's at the shops! she'll be back in half an hour!"); fruitless conversations with non-english speaking tibetan tailors; oceans of aspirational prayers. i started to fall ill - mainly exhaustion lowering the body defences - the night before, but it is lifting now and underneath the dispersing exhaustion i can feel a sweet peacefulness and lightness.

my new name is shenyen, which translates roughly as 'the friend who leads you to virtue'. its so sweet that the first person to speak my new name was the dalai lama himself. the way i've written it should make it easy to say. the syllabic strucure is actually she-nyen, but writing it like this may lead people to pronounce the first part with a strong 'e' (as in the english word 'she'). of course i will still be martin to lots of people but that's not a problem.

the robes are so comfortable and i cant imagine going back to lay clothes now - though i am pragmatic about how it might be when i visit england. but i will at least try and wear them in england when i come back.

people have asked me various questions which i will try and cover now. its been suggested that the first five years of your ordained life should be spent in a monastery, and i will be looking at options over the coming months, but i will still be able to travel occasionally, no problem. in any case, if i decide to stay here for five years i will need to come back one time to apply for a study visa from inside england.

as a novice monk the vows arent too difficult to stay within, and the tibetan tradition is very relaxed (within a soft deep dedication to the spirit of the vows, the intention to simplify one's life to a pristine and concentrated degree). i can stay with people no problem should i visit home, and even eat in the evening if it becomes necessary.

i'll try and write more at a later date.

till soon,

best wishes,

shenyen.

broadcast 05.18.04--first weeks

2006-03-09T22:55:00.000-08:00

"i smile when i'm angry, i cheat and i lie.

i do what i have to do to get by.

but i know what is wrong and i know what is right,

and i die for the truth...

...in my secret life"

- leanoard cohen

settled in nicely now. i'm in a little monastery about ten minutes walk out of macleod ganj, along the bagsu road. walking into macleod each morning for breakfast i have a beautiful view down the side of the mountain as it spills out into the vast plains of india. it even looks hotter down there... but the nightlights of mccleod spilling down the mountainside in the evening adds to the coolness. temperatures are very high though, even up here in the mountains, but not enough to stop me hiking up the moutainside at midday every wednesday and thursday to watched delayed 'live' broadcasts of premiership games in a little cafe where the owner lets me use the tv.

my schedule is quite busy - or rather, 'intense' rather than busy, since there's no feeling of being rushed. i'm doing both of the courses in buddhist philosophy on offer: a course in logic and debate on tuesday thursday and saturday afternoon, and the abhisamayalankara course on the other three days (sunday is free). mornings i slip inside my cd player and listen to geshe michael roach's teachings - compacting five years of weekly two hour classes into 8 months of daily classes, with homework and meditations and memorisation requirements. evenings i usually teach english to one of the monks here (who tells me tales of his roughneck eastern tibetan family and fights over women, and comes up with example sentences like 'yesterday i caught a rat in the manager's office so i took it to a restaurnat in bagsu'), and sometimes watch movies or chat with people on the street in the cool of the evening.

i love the 6pm movie showing - you walk in off the sunlit street, dive into the movie, then come out again and the street is dark, and the contemplative darkness of the cinema and the emotional impact of the movie accompany you into the street. the streets here are lit up the way i remember childhood streets - maybe its because of the lower wattage used here, the bare bulbs and lack of neon, and of course the indian way of making all of space quietly dramatic, which creates the accompanying sense of dream. the last two movies i've seen (and even the book i'm reading at the moment - about a woman who wanders through the realms beyond death for five days and recounts what she saw) have both had people in comas - 'kill bill' and 'talk to her'. i'm tempted to use the 'old' language and talk about possible meanings, about cinema's attunement to the 'emergency' of our culture, its 'speechlessness', but more and more i find it better to just observe such things, leave them floating in the text of a quiet message, almost missable, like the sound of a police siren twenty blocks away on those summer nights when you sleep with the window open. ultimately 'coma' can mean anything.

sometimes i take geshe michael out of the cd player and listen to a music cd: leonard cohen or fernando alvarez - talking about the same things as geshe michael but in different languages. two nights ago i sat on the mountainsideside in the evening listening to brian eno while reading the abhisamaylankara for the first time. the abhisamayalankara is a text dictated by maitreya (the future buddha) to the 2nd century monk asanga (or as western scholars put it: written by asanga). it is 50 pages of highly condensed, incomprehensible text that requires years of study with a lama to unpack the 'code' and appreciate its meaning. essentially it describes all the stages along the path to buddhahood. before studying it the monks memorise the entire text, and before they begin their study of the text (in about their 3rd or 4th year of study i think), the monks spend six months just praying to have enough virtue to understand it. isnt that beautiful? - i mean is there anything in our culture that we would spend six months praying to understand or appreciate? i've seen some amazing football matches on tv over the years but i cant imagine sitting in front of the tv for 6 months before turning it on - at least, not with the european championships only 5 weeks away. no wonder someone once called tibetan monks 'athletes of devotion'.

not sure if i will go to nepal to watch the european championships and renew my visa early, during course recess - there are reports of the border being closed. so i will just have to go in september in mid-course. i can watch the football here of course.

email is really bad i'm afraid - sometimes it crashes unexpectedly, erasing everything. sometimes when it comes to sending something it just disappears at the moment of sending. i've lost this message twice like this! so forgive me if my mailings are rare.

shenyen

broadcast 06.06.04--the object that isnt there

2006-03-09T22:52:00.000-08:00

afterwords

We say 'tree'

for the object that isn't there.

We say 'I love you',

acknowledging the failure

of whatever there was

to speak for itself.

We say 'God did it';

we mistrust everything.

You read these lines,

you think of something profound,

you pay too much for the ticket

and miss the plane.

- Dan Gerber

a bewildered-looking, cross eyed young boy, led by the hand by his mother, smiles with a mix of confusion and joy as an old man greets him on the street.

passing two girls talking on the street i hear a fragment of their conversation - "yes, my ex-boyfriend is thinking of doing that too..." suddenly it hits me how sad and inadequate the term 'ex-boyfriend', 'ex-girlfriend' is, with its dismissive, blank prefix. i wonder if our language might evolve a beautiful word for someone who has been in our lives in some way that has affected us forever and who still resonates deeply and sweetly in our minds.

one of the beggar women i see every day puts her palms together in greeting - just the stumps, with no fingers. big smile on her face.

i love the names of israeli women. a few nights ago, after the late film, sharing a taxi home with a woman called 'yel'.

the soft logic lineage begins to unfold... i told the manager of the monastery where i am staying that i planned to move out for three weeks to watch the european championships in a hotel room with a tv. his reply? - "no, this isnt necessary. we put cable in your room. we have tv in monastery nobody is using, satellite connection ok. just pay monthly rental fee. no problem." the electricity man is coming in a couple of days...

you could walk the length of mcleod ganj - about 1500 metres - and take a photo every five metres, and every one would be complete in itself, would be 'lookable at'. the same thing in london would inevitably have stretches of blankness - 100 metres of desolate subway passage or office block facade etc. and actually walking through these streets makes the contrast stronger: each little space is the centre of a story, a 'drama' in the traditional sense of the word, somebody's life being lived out. the streets here are just as 'busy' as london, but in a totally organic way - unlike the stretches of 'busyness' in the big cities back home, where people are sometimes just passing through 'dead space' between, say, 'home' and 'work', every metre is lived and filled and settled and dramatised. i never tire of walking these streets.

the debating class is so beautiful. yesterday, walking into class, it actually felt like a holy thing. when i think about what we are doing in this class - learning to think clearly about reality, and the objects and people and phenomena within it (which, being the focus of the torrent of all our likes and dislikes, are the source of all the suffering we create for ourselves) - i feel so thankful to be doing this. what amazes me is how much we believe we already understand reality. as my faith in the teachings increases, and my appreciation of the logic and architecture of its worldview becomes wider and sweeter, i can feel it actually pulling away from me, emphasizing the gulf between what i think i know and reality itself. as if it trusts that i am strong enough in my faith to have a glimpse of just how deluded i am in reality, without thereby becoming dismayed or discouraged. i struggle to find an image for this, of the feeling of everything beautiful and true presenting itself to me by moving away from me. in the logic class we are studying the second (second lowest) of the four schools of buddhist philosophy, each one deeper and more accurate (more comprehensive) than the previous one. in the highest school, objects become incredibly gentle and tenuous - more like évents than objects - still real, but incredibly tenuous. i've been studying the biography of je tsongkapa, the 16th century tibetan saint, who spent fourteen years studying to understand completely the highest school's view of how objects, people and phenomena exist - he studied extensively, conducted purification practices including three million prostrations, had face to face teachings from an emanation of the buddha of manjushri (you dont get that at a british university!), did extensive retreats... did all these things for fourteen years, before he finally understood. and i sometimes delude myself into thinking i've got it just through a couple of years of vaguely focussed buddhist practice within the ambience of a casually structured life! i must be crazy. but as i watch my understanding of even these simple, initial rudimentaries of debate practice and buddhist logic float in and out of focus, with days of confusion mingling with days of clarity, i appreciate more and more where it is going. and if i can feel this happy just standing outside the outer courrtyard walls mumbling my limited comprehensions, i cant help wondering how blissful it will be to be sitting in the central palace, understanding reality completely.

"a little music, played every now and then, sounds so full, so alive" (- from a friend's email). i remember the silent cassettes i made during the hulme years in the 1980s: C90 cassettes with just three or four songs on, separated by 20 minutes of silence. i'd put one on and forget it was on as i wandered around the flat, then suddenly be 'visited' by some beautiful song... i havent listened to music much over the last five years: mainly because when i came back from japan i came back with nothing, and havent settled in england long enough to have bought into a 'music collection' mindset, but also for other reasons too, 'difficult joys' that i would probably struggle to express properly right now. but last year, after i ended my two month stint as a monk and left the silence of the jungle, my friend john lent me a cd player to listen to on the way to bangkok, and some cds from south america, and it was the most beautiful thing to be listening to music again, and i realised it was coming back into my life. a few days ago i was thinking about my mp3cd player: there's just over 300 hours of recorded material on the discs i have, and 98% of it is buddhist teaching - just a half dozen hours of music. but once a week the teachings come out of the player and leonard cohen or fernando alvarez go in, amazing me with their warmth and sadness. the vietnamese monk, thich nhat hanh, now living and teaching in france, says how important it is for westerners to bring as much of their western culture as they can into the ambit of their emerging love for the buddhist teachings.

i guess the manager of my monastery thinks this way too... five days to go. fantastic.

till next time...

shenyen

broadcast 02.04.05--bodhgaya

2006-03-09T22:49:00.000-08:00

bodhgaya...

after dharamsala, chiang mai and 'el balcon' this place feels like the wild west - dusty roads lined with temporary restaurants for the thousands of pilgrims; crowds of beggars - some of them obviously performance artists, creative, brisk and efficient - working the spaces around the main temples; and occasional murders. being a burglar - never an easy job at the best of times - is even riskier here. on the one hand you dont want the police to arrive too soon and catch you, but on the other hand, if it all goes wrong, you want them to arrive before the angry village mob lynches you. in a recent article in the 'Times of india' on the yearly crime statistics for the area, police arrests just outnumbered lynchings as the main means of crime prevention.

my friend matthew has arrived from canada, along with his friend meagan, and the three of us are having a beautiful time preparing for the forthcoming retreat, meandering between oceans of prayers and meditations and relaxed hours of daft and serious chat. we're staying at Root Institute, an idyllic retreat centre just on the edge of town. breakfast is always outdoors: under a tree or on the kitchen rooftop. after breakfast we head off across the flatlands surrounding Root, zigzagging around rice fields to visit an 80 ft statue of a seated buddha. then some study or reading, either side of lunch. late afternoon we go to the mahabodhi temple / stupa - the number one pilgrimage site for buddhists the world over - to do a cycle of of sweet oceanic prayers. it kind of reminds me of waterloo station - of any old, big city train station - except that no-one is hurrying to or from work. the hum of activity here is the glow coming off hundreds of people doing all kinds of devotional practices: prayers, prostrations, mandala offerings, flower offerings, circumambulations, light offerings... the fact that everyone in this place is feeling totally natural having conversations with beings that a western scientific-materialist worldview doesnt even recognise is what makes the place so amazing.

we have a little hindu shrine room all to ourselves each night. its beyond my ability to descibe, with an air of sacredness and squalor combined, obviously dirty but quietly clean, like somehing out of tarkovsky's "stalker". with no windows and a small ornate door only one metre high it allows us to recite together without the various recitations from outside drowning us out. just outside the door are a few tibetan monks doing mandala offerings, and the soft repetitive 'shush' of handfuls of little stones or grains of rice landing on the mandala bases has a calming and even cleansing effect. every night we come out of our little room electrified by the energy of the place, the craziness and deep naturalness of this site of multiple practice.

afterwards we go to mohammed's restaurant for an hour or so before the ride back to Root by cycle rickshaw - a journey which begins with a hair-raising roll downhill culminating in a ninety degree turn into a busy area, but then settles down into a slow steady ride beneath the stars and the various phases of the moon, past temples with tables of flickering butter lamps and the ramshackle chaos of indian pavement stalls.

a long walk across a wide dry river basin and through pristine villages still outside the electricity web, to visit some caves in a rocky outcrop about three hours walk from bodhgaya, sweet songs from those final weeks in england suddenly re-appearing ("her name is yoshimi - she's got a black belt in karate..."), and this time even football is appearing: we saw arsenal versus wolves - on a tv bought for his holiness the dalai lama.

tomorrow i go into retreat for one month - my first proper retreat as a monk. i know i'll be fine at a basic level (and right now i'm in a very happy blissful space after six weeks here), but say a prayer for me that there will be no obstacles during the retreat and that i will come out of it stronger (lighter) and wiser (kinder).

i'll write again in march, from varanasi.

best wishes to you all,

martin

broadcast 03.19.05--Notes from the field (india/nepal)

2006-03-09T22:44:00.000-08:00

hi everyone

the retreat is over and i'm back in the chaos of india - varanasi. and after the silence and minute-by-minute accuracy of the retreat routine its kind of soothing to be in the midst of such breathtaking chaotic detail: labyrinths of lanes, wood piles, burning bodies, wandering cows, the steps leading down into the river ganges, and fantastic architecture where even the collapsing buildings are amazing to look at.

the retreat was essentially about establishing a mindfulness practice, and of understanding its value. but mindfulness as dependent arising was the overall theme that emerged for me - the realisation that nothing needs to (or can) be forced, its just about putting the causes and conditions into place and then letting the transformations naturally occur. and of course the causes and conditions for anything are oceanic and extend beyond even our perceptual time frames, so the importance of faith and trust in the teachings, of long term goals that transcend this present life, combined with 'goal-lessness': a willingness to sit and study and practice without any sense of waiting for something to happen - a willingness to 'walk in the dark in our best clothes' as the zen teachers say. with a sense of silent creativity that transcends anticipation. or as the taoist assassin in "all tomorrow's parties" puts it: 'anticipation of outcome invites, if not failure, an absence of grace.' living life is not the same as assembling a bookshelf: it's not something that can be viewed as a 'problem' with a 'solution'. there is only one way to assemble that bookshelf but a million ways to understand your life. it is beyond technique, and even beyond memory and biography.

a woman asked a rabbi: "how can i make sure that i find the right person to marry?"

and the rabbi replied: "its more important to be the right person than to find the right person..."

off to nepal now to renew my visa...

(.......)

on the overnight bus to sonauli (the border town that will let me into nepal), with a sick friend at my side and a visa in my passport that will expire five hours before we make it to the border crossing. anxious thoughts about how the immigration officials will treat me - a perfect situation for backsheesh demands and me in no position to bargain. but with the retreat still fresh in my mind i'm able to just watch the thoughts come and go and drop them for something neutral and sweet like watching the breath flowing in and out of the body.

5 a.m. - we wake up the immigration office in the middle of the night, in the midst of an electricity blackout. sleepy guard checks our documents by candlelight and either doesnt notice or doesnt care that i'm a day late - i go through without a hitch.

now in katmandu awaiting new indian visa. suddenly there's music everywhere, good food, western comforts of all kinds (the kind of things that you in the west probably dont recognise as comforts anymore)...

the longer i spend out here the more i have to settle for a kind of silence in the face of the sensory overlaod, a willingness to just look and see, to pass through landscapes and cityscapes without trying to translate them into memory, into biography. on the computer next to me an achingly sweet indian pop song is playing and i know i will probably never hear it again, and more and more of my life feels like this. the common name for this is "beauty".

I’m reading a piece of writing by an American living deep in the wild-lands of Montana. Its wonderful reading someone write about phenomena that they love clearly and dearly, and are a part of a wider web of love and attunement. His descriptions of snow are so personal, so complex and true. they are a model of how to see, how to love and apperciate. here are some passages:

“The girls and I wander out onto the marsh to go for a ski while the moon is still full. The clouds are gone and the night is cold. Due to some random sequence of the frost-thaw cycle – warm snow followed by repeated nights of intense cold and, who knows, perhaps even influenced by the solstice, the eclipse, and other rare phenomena – the snow out on the marsh has rearranged itself into a flat skiff of broad plates, each snowflake now recrystallised into a perfectly planar structure. The entire snowscape before us appears to have been converted into a land of fish scales, three feet deep, each one silver-blue in the light of the moon. The re-formed flakes are arrayed in all directions, bristle in the cold, leached of all moisture, dry as fossil fish scales. And though most of them are one micron thick, and lying parallel to the ground and the pull of gravity, enough of them tilt upward, as if in strange geological yearning, so that they sparkle and glint like huge sequins in the blue light. The entire world ablaze with shimmering coronas and prisms cast by the fish scale flakes..."

"Through snow as loose as sand, the blades of our skis cut across these fish scales, making music as if we’re crossing sheets of glass wind chimes…”

“… it seems like something from a fairy tale – such a soft, heavy, calming snow. What if the world doesn’t end in fire or chaos, but in snow? All the despair through the years not merely hidden but transformed, covered with beauty, converted to beauty…”

“… the snow comes down. Not as some meteorological phenomenon, but as if some dense and infinite reservoir has opened up…”

“… on some mornings, with new snow across the cabin roof like the warmest quilt in the world, I’ll work for two or three hours before the ice-skin between tin-roof and snow becomes slick, viscous. Suddenly the whole shittaree releases, and the curve and arc of rooftop snow cascades past my window, followed immediately by a sparkling shower of smaller ice crystals in the big slab’s wake, crystals as shimmering as fairy dust…”

and then this paragraph, with its beautiful opening sentence:

“You stare at things longer in January. Seen from the window of my writing cabin, the frozen gray limbs of the alder are a maze…”

that opening sentence struck me so clear, got me remembering japan and its literature: sei shonagon’s eclectic lists (“things that make the heart beat faster”) and the endless sadness of ‘genji monogatari’.

also, i got this from my friend andrew. thought you may like it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/04/science/04edgehed.html

http://www.edge.org asks leading scientists and philosophers to consider, at the end of every year,
"What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"

A few notable responses...

Alison Gopnik
Psychologist, University of California, Berkeley; co-author, "The Scientist in the Crib"

I believe, but cannot prove, that babies and young children are actually more conscious, more vividly aware of their external world and internal life, than adults are. I believe this because there is strong evidence for a functional trade-off with development. Young children are much better than adults at learning new things and flexibly changing what they think about the world. On the other hand, they are much worse at using their knowledge to act in a swift, efficient and automatic way. They can learn three languages at once but they can't tie their shoelaces.
--------------------------

David Buss
Psychologist, University of Texas; author, "The Evolution of Desire"

True love.

I've spent two decades of my professional life studying human mating. In that time, I've documented phenomena ranging from what men and women desire in a mate to the most diabolical forms of sexual treachery. I've discovered the astonishingly creative ways in which men and women deceive and manipulate each other. I've studied mate poachers, obsessed stalkers, sexual predators and spouse murderers. But throughout this exploration of the dark dimensions of human mating, I've remained unwavering in my belief in true love.

While love is common, true love is rare, and I believe that few people are fortunate enough to experience it. The roads of regular love are well traveled and their markers are well understood by many - the mesmerizing attraction, the ideational obsession, the sexual afterglow, profound self-sacrifice and the desire to combine DNA. But true love takes its own course through uncharted territory. It knows no fences, has no barriers or boundaries. It's difficult to define, eludes modern measurement and seems scientifically woolly. But I know true love exists. I just can't prove it.
--------------------------

Donald Hoffman
Cognitive scientist, University of California, Irvine; author, "Visual Intelligence"

I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Space-time, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being.

The world of our daily experience - the world of tables, chairs, stars and people, with their attendant shapes, smells, feels and sounds - is a species-specific user interface to a realm far more complex, a realm whose essential character is conscious. It is unlikely that the contents of our interface in any way resemble that realm.

Indeed the usefulness of an interface requires, in general, that they do not. For the point of an interface, such as the Windows interface on a computer, is simplification and ease of use. We click icons because this is quicker and less prone to error than editing megabytes of software or toggling voltages in circuits.

Evolutionary pressures dictate that our species-specific interface, this world of our daily experience, should itself be a radical simplification, selected not for the exhaustive depiction of truth but for the mutable pragmatics of survival.

If this is right, if consciousness is fundamental, then we should not be surprised that, despite centuries of effort by the most brilliant of minds, there is as yet no physicalist theory of consciousness, no theory that explains how mindless matter or energy or fields could be, or cause, conscious experience.
--------------------------

and yourselves? answers on a postcard to tushita - or by email if you're really living that fast...

my address is: tushita meditation centre, mcleod ganj, dharamsala, kangra district, HP 176 219. put my name in top left corner (shenyen or martin).

i hope to be back at tushita by april 1st. plan to stay there six months, and then i have to make some decisions - decisions neither big nor small in the grand scheme of things but nevertheless exciting and unnerving and open and blind ... where to go, how to live....

till next time,

shenyen.

broadcast 03.20.05: (another's) self portrait

2006-03-09T22:37:00.000-08:00

a poem sent to me by andrew, whose life involves listening to english football on the

radio, downloading the digital edition of the guardian to read later in his tipi, and

riding his horse to peyote ceremonies somewhere in america

Self Portrait

It doesn't interest me if there is one god

or many gods.

I want to know if you belong or feel

abandoned.

If you know despair or can see it in others.

I want to know

If you are prepared to live in the world

with its harsh need

to change you. If you can look back

with firm eyes

saying this is where I stand. I want to know

if you know

how to melt into that fierce heat of living

falling toward

the centre of your longing. I want to know

if you are willing

to live, day by day, with the consequence of love

and the bitter

unwanted passion of your sure defeat.

I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even

the gods speak of god.

-David Whyte

"humans may live forever, and the gods can become mortal, but not both at the same time..."

- best wishes from shenyen

shenyenradio nyc, last days march 2006

2006-03-09T16:32:00.000-08:00