but the light is so nice in here

Yesterday I was supposed to meet my friends Djinn and Richard in the morning to ride to Golden Gate Park and I could feel myself veering toward staying home, thinking, The light is so nice in here right now.

Staying inside because a slice of sunlight is so inviting, when it is fully possible to go out into full sun, felt very familiar to the sensation I’ve been acutely aware of lately, my apparent preference for my projection of a person over the actual person. The most expensive form of this is when desire leaves no room to experience, say, an actual conversation as it’s happening in real time. Missing the person sitting right in front of me. Anticipatory longing.

Do I need to say I left the shaft of sun to warm my concrete floor and went downstairs to get my bike?

But the sensation made me want to find the following passage from Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (occasionally I do read other novels). I skimmed through the book looking for it even as I walked down the stairs to get what, for the sake of economy, the need to move swiftly from one proposition to the next, I earlier called “my” bike, but now, in appreciation for the serial generosity one is often subject to, I will say was actually Richard’s bike. My back tire was flat. And that even “my” bike is actually Zach’s bike, which he is so kindly lending me because “my” bike is in Truro, MA. And that bike is actually Marnie’s, which she so kindly gave me.

Also, I do not endorse reading while walking down the stairs, or while crossing the street, though I have done both within the last two days. Here is the quote. I sustained no injuries finding it:

When she had been married a little while, she concluded that love was half a longing of a kind that possession did nothing to mitigate. Once, while they were still childless, Edmund had found a pocket watch on the shore. the case and the crystal were undamaged, but the works were nearly consumed by rust. He opened the watch and emptied it, and where the face had been he fitted a circle of paper on which he had painted two seahorses. He gave it to her as a pendant, with a chain through it, but she hardly ever wore it because the chain was too short to allow her to look at the seahorses comfortably. She worried that it would be damaged on her belt or in her pocket. For perhaps a week she carried the watch wherever she went, even across the room, and it was not because Edmund had made it for her, or because the painting was less vivid and awkward than his paintings usually were, but because the seahorses themselves were so arch, so antic and heraldic, and armored in the husks of insects. It was the seahorses themselves that she wanted to see as soon as she took her eyes away and that she wanted to see even when she was looking at them.

Jinzu

“passes through fences, walls and mountains unhindered as if through air”

The Six Supernatural Powers

Shohaku Okumura is here at City Center, talking about the Dogen Fascicle called Jinzu, or, in Carl Bielefeldt’s translation, “Spiritual Powers”

Okumura gave this translation today, “activities which cannot be measured with our discriminating mind.”

Bielefeldt, in his introduction says that in the text, these powers become “the welling up of the world itself.”

Yes. Otherwise it’s a parlor trick.

Words like magic and supernatural are misleading. We need them because we tend to underestimate reality. For example, did this bowl of solid chocolate appear in the small kitchen today by means of supernatural power, or is it the welling up of the world itself?

We can keep being surprised, or we can, as the Vimalakirti Sutra says, be “disciplined by miracles.” I think one of the main reasons we like to think magic exists as some kind of exception is because it lets us off the hook. If we accept that the world includes huge bowls of (vegan!)chocolate then I think that leaves us with somewhat more responsibility to operate at a level closer to our actual powers.

To provide some context, Shohaku explained in early Pali texts, the six supernatural powers are clairvoyance, clairaudience, mind-reading, knowing past lives, flying, and the power to stop deluded thoughts.

All extremely useful.

Here is an elaboration from the Samaññaphala Sutta:

He then enjoys different powers: being one, he becomes many — being many, he becomes one; he appears and disappears; he passes through fences, walls and mountains unhindered as if through air; he sinks into the ground and emerges from it as if it were water; he walks on the water without breaking the surface as if on land; he flies cross-legged through the sky like a bird with wings; he even touches and strokes with his hand the sun and moon.

And it was good to be reminded of these capacities, because after the lecture, I offered to make 8 more copies of the handout, a 2-sided 14-page document.

Sounded simple enough, but it turned out that to complete the task, I had to draw on all six of these powers.

I find it very useful, when, for example, changing a toner cartridge, to bear in mind the flexibility of the physical world projected in such frameworks. At those moments–it actually said “Toner life end”– it’s easy to adopt an adversarial relationship with matter, but as the Dalai Lama says, all that meditating is good training for dying. So I just pressed down on the blue lever, and instead of being convinced it was designed for vexation, I let the cartridge release. I removed the yellow strip, as it said. Moved the wire cleaner from one side to the other. And clicked in the new cartridge.

Comet Presentation Materials

Today I stopped by the California Academy of Sciences to return two library books I’d barely read. The Eye of the Lynx, and In the Blink of an Eye. I checked them out because I wanted–and still do want–to research the evolution of the eye, as I’ve been thinking of it in relation to how it feels to have Obama as president.

The feeling of an axial shift preceded by a long era of increment. A long era requiring faith.

The difference between a light sensitive patch on a flatworm and the eye of an eagle.

I did manage to come away from my faint encounter with In the Blink of an Eye with this amazing description of a volvox:

“a hollow sphere, about a millimetre in diameter, where the wall is made up of cells, each with a rhythmically beating hair appearing like a tail. The movement of the hairs is coordinated to move the entire sphere in one direction.”

I find that somehow very encouraging.

On my way upstairs I passed a cart at which three docents were in the process of making three comets. They were on the second. It was bubbling in what I remember to be a brownie pan.

The best part though was this bin, labeled “comet presentation materials.” I like thinking that to make a comet, all you need is some Palmolive dishwashing liquid, tall kitchen bags, latex gloves, a rag, and a few cups.

Now of course, as anyone knows, you need a few more items to produce a comet.

You need Windex.

If you study the back wall of the bin carefully, you can read the Windex label through the milky plastic.

Also you need some peat moss, sand, spring water, dry ice, and something that was marked “organic compound.” I tend to avoid products where I recognize all the ingredients except for one, an ingredient which has a very broad range of interpretation, such as “spices.”

Entertaining questions, Shel, pictured here, explained that most comets end up being pulled into the gravity field of the sun. That the sun exerts a greater pull than the earth seemed to put the man next to me at ease. Good, he said. He was wearing a bright orange sweatshirt, and in this context, it lent him a kind of authority. I kept having to remind myself he was not also a docent. He asked, What about asteroids?

Shel started to break apart the second comet with a rubber mallet so he could use the rocks for comet #3. “An asteroid is a failed planet,” he said.

I wonder if he holds himself to this kind of standard. Is he on his way to something, which, to become, he may or may not aggregate all he needs?

Shel! Whatever you may or may not become, we love you as you are today, in your orange coat, the dear force field of your hands rolling out local comets.

Also, if what you say is so, what is a planet?

glergle

What?

Shundo was standing at the sink, rinsing a cup, as the person next to him pressed down on the coffee carafe, and left the kitchen. “Glergle,” he repeated. scooping coffee into his french press, “the sound of the empty coffee thermos.” The sinking feeling that you’re going to have to be the one to make the next one.

I had just been cycling through a round of thoughts on the same phenomenon in relation to the vase on the landing between the first and second floors. As I came downstairs, I noticed as I had for several days that the water was getting cloudy. (The person who usually makes the beautiful arrangements was away.) And I continued walking, thinking about the fine line between being responsive and overfunctioning.

Each time, I think, Yes, I could take it to the courtyard, empty it and make a new arrangement, but do I have 15 minutes to devote to that? Not now. (Apparently I have 15 minutes to devote to writing about not doing it)

This morning as I passed it again, I was thinking about Daniel Goleman’s book Social Intelligence which talks about experiments in social psychology which inquire into the array of conditions in which people respond to someone in need. One setup included a man lying on the street in distress outside a rectory door. The priests who walked out the door largely walked by the man, not registering his distress in their focus on being on time to deliver a sermon. Goleman’s point was that in order to help someone, we have to notice their suffering. And the larger point was the urban trance people get into about encountering more situations than they can respond to.

But what about when you do notice it and decide you can’t respond? When is that skillful? And within that is there another way to respond that is actually possible and that might help? As in, maybe I’ll take the vase to the flower area on my way to this meeting that is about to start in 3 minutes.

Click this Lotus

I’m sorry, you will have to wait to hear about McDonald’s.

Listening to this talk by Enkyo Roshi will be of far greater benefit: