Post by Magnet Man on Jan 30, 2008 18:50:43 GMT -5
GOOD MORNING TOMATO
In their Ages-long journey out of Africa
gradually gaining collective knowledge
as they evolved through different Ages of social cooperation
to arrive at nationhood
the people of Japan
gained their own exclusive grasp
of the metaphysical forces that focus the human spirit
They learned how to apply pain
as a goad towards spiritual advancement
and called it Zen
Some two hundred thousand years later
after pilgrimages into
Animism
Shamanism
Hinduism
And Christianity
I took a jet plane
and followed that same ancient ancestral migratory route
out of Africa
I crossed the Red Sea
stopped briefly in Israel
and sampled Judaism
then across to Asia Minor
for a taste of Islam
A pause in Greece
To solute
Socrates
Plato
and Aristotle
Then a sojourn in Hong Kong
to pay respects
to Loa Tse and Confucius
in Taoist temples
before I arrived in Japan
to experience a painful initiation
in Zen Buddhism
Rising at 4am each morning and sitting in lotus
amidst a group of gowned and shaven monks
in a draughty seven hundred year old Buddhist zendo
doing sesshin from morn to night
is another kind of journey altogether.
The pain in the legs
sitting in lotus for long periods
can get intense.
It begins some twenty minutes into each forty five minute sitting
and grows from there.
There is no sterner disciplinarian than a Zen roshi
Any movement to ease the pain
brings the lacquered wood of the kiashak paddle
slapping down across the shoulders.
In that dead silence
in that temple setting
no sound can explode with more shame.
A slight formal bow of acknowledgement
relieves the embarrassment slightly.
Sitting in lotus cuts off the circulation
This results in oxygen starvation
to the all the muscles and sinews below the hips.
That is when the burn begins.
Time slows down to a crawl when you are drowning in pain.
After thirty minutes
the torture is like a slowly turning vise.
Even in mid-winter the heat
generated by collective pain
can be tangible
At forty minutes
a trance-like coma overtakes the psyche.
One is literally sitting in a sea of pain.
It comes at you in endless waves.
There is no escape
It grips the mind
Driving off thought
The last five minutes gain complete attention
the mind is still
only pain exists
Bliss lies beyond
so it is said
Sesshin goes on for seven days.
Each day the pain gets worse
The torture is self-inflicted
Anyone can get up from his seat and walk away from it
The goal of zazen
Idealistically
is Satori
Full Enlightenment
A knowing of one’s ultimate place and purpose in the Cosmos
An escape from the endless wheel of karma
Becoming one with Nirvana
Finding blissful union with universal consciousness
This is the Holy Grail of the East
Precious few ever attain it
The goal of zazen
Realistically
Is an unshakable knowing and command of the self
An acceptance of the individual circumstances of life
And a determination to make the best of it
Any and all can attain such a state of self-realization
Via steadfast submission to pain
Pain forces the self out of its comfort zone
When prolonged
It makes one question the self
Examine one’s past behavior
And suffer burning shame over past abuses
That harmed another
It brings perspective to the present
And demands to know
What meaningful action one is accomplishing in life
The depth of questioning depends
On the degree and duration of pain
For most
we suffer pain by accident or illness
Even in its extremes the answer tends to escapes us
Because we deal with the torture with the attitude of an innocent victim
We assume that for no reason
Some unknown perpetrator has attacked us
And we suffer through it as though martyred
Thus we end up no wiser when it is over
The Grail is never in vision
And we are doomed to struggle on in ignorance
The secret of Zen
Is that the pain is self-inflicted
You are the perpetrator
And the reason for victimizing one’s self
Is to remove the confusions of life
Thus when the pain comes
you do not look outward
The answer
if any
has to lie within
On the mid-morning of the third day of my second sesshin
I took a walk in the vegetable garden
to ease the cramps in the legs
The tomato vines in the garden were loaded with fruit
As a walked
I became hyper-conscious
of being in the midst of a larger consciousness
For one brief instant
I was conscious of the fact
that all the tomatoes in the garden
where conscious of me
a light switch went on inside
I attained a brief glimpse of the Grail
And then it was gone
The hard-earned pain generated in zazen
Releases endomorphines inside the brain
Blocked channels between neurons are opened
communication flows freely
Between both hemispheres of the cortex
Dry Analysis is infused with creative intuitive insight
And one rides the pure high
Of alternate realities
Not plagued by mundane doubts
Tens of thousands of hippies around the world
Tripping on LSD
Have become conscious of Nature’s consciousness
And said good morning
to flowers
to trees
to stones
and come down from the high
feeling not certain that the meeting was real
because they had leaned on the drug
I was on a pure high that morning in the Japanese garden
There was no inner confusion
I was not locked into a purely analytical view of life
Both sides of my psyche were activated
I was not a separate observing entity
Analyzing data input
The observer and the observed
Had merged for a moment into One
My glimpse was real
One no different in essence
from an LSD trip
So take heart my hippie friends
As you take pause today
In your yuppie lives
Wondering how real your high was
In years gone by
You touched the Grail
And the vision was real
In their Ages-long journey out of Africa
gradually gaining collective knowledge
as they evolved through different Ages of social cooperation
to arrive at nationhood
the people of Japan
gained their own exclusive grasp
of the metaphysical forces that focus the human spirit
They learned how to apply pain
as a goad towards spiritual advancement
and called it Zen
Some two hundred thousand years later
after pilgrimages into
Animism
Shamanism
Hinduism
And Christianity
I took a jet plane
and followed that same ancient ancestral migratory route
out of Africa
I crossed the Red Sea
stopped briefly in Israel
and sampled Judaism
then across to Asia Minor
for a taste of Islam
A pause in Greece
To solute
Socrates
Plato
and Aristotle
Then a sojourn in Hong Kong
to pay respects
to Loa Tse and Confucius
in Taoist temples
before I arrived in Japan
to experience a painful initiation
in Zen Buddhism
Rising at 4am each morning and sitting in lotus
amidst a group of gowned and shaven monks
in a draughty seven hundred year old Buddhist zendo
doing sesshin from morn to night
is another kind of journey altogether.
The pain in the legs
sitting in lotus for long periods
can get intense.
It begins some twenty minutes into each forty five minute sitting
and grows from there.
There is no sterner disciplinarian than a Zen roshi
Any movement to ease the pain
brings the lacquered wood of the kiashak paddle
slapping down across the shoulders.
In that dead silence
in that temple setting
no sound can explode with more shame.
A slight formal bow of acknowledgement
relieves the embarrassment slightly.
Sitting in lotus cuts off the circulation
This results in oxygen starvation
to the all the muscles and sinews below the hips.
That is when the burn begins.
Time slows down to a crawl when you are drowning in pain.
After thirty minutes
the torture is like a slowly turning vise.
Even in mid-winter the heat
generated by collective pain
can be tangible
At forty minutes
a trance-like coma overtakes the psyche.
One is literally sitting in a sea of pain.
It comes at you in endless waves.
There is no escape
It grips the mind
Driving off thought
The last five minutes gain complete attention
the mind is still
only pain exists
Bliss lies beyond
so it is said
Sesshin goes on for seven days.
Each day the pain gets worse
The torture is self-inflicted
Anyone can get up from his seat and walk away from it
The goal of zazen
Idealistically
is Satori
Full Enlightenment
A knowing of one’s ultimate place and purpose in the Cosmos
An escape from the endless wheel of karma
Becoming one with Nirvana
Finding blissful union with universal consciousness
This is the Holy Grail of the East
Precious few ever attain it
The goal of zazen
Realistically
Is an unshakable knowing and command of the self
An acceptance of the individual circumstances of life
And a determination to make the best of it
Any and all can attain such a state of self-realization
Via steadfast submission to pain
Pain forces the self out of its comfort zone
When prolonged
It makes one question the self
Examine one’s past behavior
And suffer burning shame over past abuses
That harmed another
It brings perspective to the present
And demands to know
What meaningful action one is accomplishing in life
The depth of questioning depends
On the degree and duration of pain
For most
we suffer pain by accident or illness
Even in its extremes the answer tends to escapes us
Because we deal with the torture with the attitude of an innocent victim
We assume that for no reason
Some unknown perpetrator has attacked us
And we suffer through it as though martyred
Thus we end up no wiser when it is over
The Grail is never in vision
And we are doomed to struggle on in ignorance
The secret of Zen
Is that the pain is self-inflicted
You are the perpetrator
And the reason for victimizing one’s self
Is to remove the confusions of life
Thus when the pain comes
you do not look outward
The answer
if any
has to lie within
On the mid-morning of the third day of my second sesshin
I took a walk in the vegetable garden
to ease the cramps in the legs
The tomato vines in the garden were loaded with fruit
As a walked
I became hyper-conscious
of being in the midst of a larger consciousness
For one brief instant
I was conscious of the fact
that all the tomatoes in the garden
where conscious of me
a light switch went on inside
I attained a brief glimpse of the Grail
And then it was gone
The hard-earned pain generated in zazen
Releases endomorphines inside the brain
Blocked channels between neurons are opened
communication flows freely
Between both hemispheres of the cortex
Dry Analysis is infused with creative intuitive insight
And one rides the pure high
Of alternate realities
Not plagued by mundane doubts
Tens of thousands of hippies around the world
Tripping on LSD
Have become conscious of Nature’s consciousness
And said good morning
to flowers
to trees
to stones
and come down from the high
feeling not certain that the meeting was real
because they had leaned on the drug
I was on a pure high that morning in the Japanese garden
There was no inner confusion
I was not locked into a purely analytical view of life
Both sides of my psyche were activated
I was not a separate observing entity
Analyzing data input
The observer and the observed
Had merged for a moment into One
My glimpse was real
One no different in essence
from an LSD trip
So take heart my hippie friends
As you take pause today
In your yuppie lives
Wondering how real your high was
In years gone by
You touched the Grail
And the vision was real
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