Graceland

I'd really get angry if that happened to me.

(L to R: Gary Libman (brother-in-law), Rev. Kyle, Gail Libman (my sister))

I heard that a lot today. Not major events, but minor things. We buy a car and we are happy when it works and swear bloody murder when it breaks. So, basically, we break when the car does. How often did I want to say, it is just an opportunity to practice? But that feels quite dispassionate, doesn't it?

I was wiped out today by the National Civil Rights Museum where MLK was shot. To make the experience really amazing we ran into Rev. Kyles who was with MLK when it happened and was able to be a witness and speak of the event. Man's inhumanity to other men is more than I can take. One of the holocausts that takes place on our soil.

I asked Rev. Kyles if we've made things better. "Yes," he said. "There is no question about it. And we have much farther to go." An opportunity for me to "practice!"

Memphis - National Civil Rights Museum

Trolley

Music from trolley in Memphis

The Biggest Problem Artists Face

The biggest problem for the artist is showing up at his/her studio. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) said, "Chance favors only the prepared mind." William Blake (1757–1827) said, "Without unceasing practice nothing can be done. Practice is art. If you leave off you are lost." Each of these giants was talking about a path to success. Though Blake seem to be alluding to "practice as the end" as Suzuki Roshi (and many others) spoke of it.

It is quite a feat to knock your head against the wall of your studio day after day, wondering what will emerge (besides a flat head). But the focus has to be on the knocking, not on what emerges.

Artists use lots of excuses to stay away from their studio. Sometimes I remind myself that Sartre, the existential philosopher, wrote his best stuff after working 70+ hours a week as a journalist. There are stories and stories about artists with little time who had a steady art practice.

The secret is to go tomorrow to the studio, and not to worry about the results. Chance says that good things will come from time to time. Faith can help one believe that, if you must have good things. But imagine if you just made less bad things. Or maybe dispense entirely of good and bad and just think about Blake's "practice is art." Isn't that enough? Harry Callahan, the legendary photographer, had a dry spell for ten years late in life. Every morning he'd go out and take pictures. Then he'd come back and develop his film, eat lunch, and then print. Nothing worked. But after ten years of this, good stuff started to happen.

In the end we'll all have plenty of time to sleep. Until then, wake up and see what comes out as you beat your head against the wall.

It's hard. (more on creativity)

We are dogsitting now. 

We just walked the little Maya 

so I needed to take a little break. 

I really was the one with 

the leash.

Creativity

Someone asked to talk to me about creativity. It is a word that isn't used much around art schools. Probably in the same way fish don't discuss water. We all pretty much recognize it when we see it. "Now that's creative," we say.

Terms like "thinking outside of the box" and "paradigm shift" indicate creativity. We break from convention and find unique ways to do things.

Often, it seems like the creative solution is the most obvious one. Sometimes the creative solution is right in front of us, waiting for us to notice her. Buddha was asked how did he know what he had "discovered." He simply touched his hand to the ground, saying that the earth had told him. He listened to what was in front of him. Creative? I think so.

I'm not really interested in someone looking at my art and commenting, "that's so creative!" In the same way, when I made photographic prints, someone commented, "what beautiful prints." What I want people to see is my heart/mind sharing/magnifying/organizing some part of the world. It is necessary to sometimes do this in a creative way, though we try to do this without pre-meditation. It should at least seem as if this was the most natural way to perform. As with ee cummings, we feel that he's writing heartfelt thoughts in the most direct way he can. We like him because he is so direct. Maybe creativity is sometimes not being (or at least appearing) creative.

Or maybe you'll disagree.

Egg Donors

I read this interesting article in the NYTimes today about women getting up to $50,000 for good eggs, while men are getting $100 for good sperm (is this a little bit of a disparity?).

If I wanted some great kids on a limited budget, I'd opt for the sperm. Of course, the combination ($50,100) would be really amazing (a.k.a. Superwoman?).

I've often asked people what would they like, a kid with fantastic genes or a kid with run-of-the-mill (my words) genes like their own. They answer, almost in unison, that they want to stick with run-of-the-mill genes "because it would be their's." What is wrong with them? Don't they want to provide every opportunity for "their" kid. Or are there egos so large that they (secretly) think they have the best genes in the world?

Mulling it over, I'm certainly glad that Linda and I used our own ingredients. But that is hindsight, seeing that the kids turned out so well. I suppose that if they didn't, I might regret our choice to "use our own." But Linda wouldn't.

Mother's Day

When I hear "mother" complaints,
or "you're lucky you
have a mother
you can stand" comments,
I wish for just another
moment with my mother,
who left me
more than
ten years ago,
after promising to
live forever.

When she was with us,
we would often take
her for granted,
engrossed in our
own thoughts and lives,
until now,
when we remember
how our mom
was always here
(or there) for us,
on the other end
of the phone line,
waiting
for our call.

She couldn't hear
so well, so we'd say
a few things until
she could latch onto
a certain word
or phrase that
she'd understand.
Then she'd
issue a soliloquy
with
passion and vigor,
and,
when through, would ask,
calmly,
if we wanted to talk to
dad.

If only I could find her number
now.

Sucker and Dokusan: the tablecloth is still there!

I am a spot. No, I'm really just a t-ir-ed part
of a never ending (confused) tablecloth.

In the last week, as so many of you pointed out, I've been suckered twice... first for wanting a free ipad and second for wanting to see who is looking at my profile. I need to put up a sign above my computer, "There is no such thing as a free lunch!"

Dokusan, which I've written about before, is an "interview" with a zen teacher. I hadn't done it for awhile because I was still trying to answer his question to me about what I thought about the precepts (the subject of many of these posts). But it had been almost a month since my last "interview," so I started to feel "overdue."

I wanted to talk to him about my ideas in yesterday's blog... that I was starting to accept my "MO" about what I do. Maybe my "MO" is folly, but it is what I am right now.

In any case, when I went to sit this am at 7:30 (today was a half-day sesshin) he read a quote from Suzuki Roshi about how we shouldn't try to be perfect, and I thought of a painter in St. Louis (deceased) who would make a white bread bologna and cheese sandwich, and then go into his studio in the morning and not come out until dinner time. Wow... that's perfect. I wanted to be like that!

Then the Zen turned Burmese monk gave a talk and mentioned renunciation, and I started thinking that I was focusing on me me me and needed to renunciate that a little.

So by the time I finally got to dokusan I had these thoughts added to thoughts added to thoughts. My teacher suggested thinking less of me and more of it ("big mind," though he didn't use that term). Later, I imagined a spot on a table cloth. You clean the spot, and it is gone. What is gone? The tablecloth is still there.

If this doesn't make sense and makes your head whirl, you aren't alone.

Dog Gifts Turned Around

Today I started to figure out my routine. I've never quite understood it, though I think I've been suspicious about my "MO" (modus operandi) for a long time.

When I was around 14, I was walking to school with my neighbor, and I told him that I thought I wasted a lot of time. In his infinite wisdom (he's gone on to become a star in his field) he said, "no, in some way you are using what you do." (Don't expect an accurate quote after 50 years... I'm far from being Ananda.)

I've wanted to be like those who focus on a job like a pitbull, and don't let go until it is done. My wife is like that. She's making a kimono for an event tomorrow and has been working on it all week, and she couldn't care less about anything else. Anything, that is, but her plants getting water... but they are her babies... so I watered them.

So what is this "MO" that apparently is going to follow me to my deathbed?

I get up in the morning, either by virtue of a clock radio that is frying my brain according to an energy consultant that inspected our house recently, or because I've had enough sleep for one night. Then I get ready to go out into the world and either take a walk and stop at a little mexican hideout to have a couple of tacos, or eat breakfast at home. After that is over, I would go to work if I hadn't of retired... but now face a quandary of what to do. I find something that is useful (so far)... probably not earth shaking... but needed within our lives at least.

In the back of my mind I think... I should be painting on a canvas (or some other kind of exalted activity). But no, I might decide to cancel a few credit cards, or replace a door threshold, or do something on one of websites I work on, or or or...

What came to me today was that all these activities are kind of like what the homeless people do who stand by the highway with a "feed me" sign. Like me, they are waiting for something good to come their way. I try to have an adventure each day (it hasn't failed yet). Then I usually sit at the zen temple at 5:40... and let the day pass through me once more... eat dinner, and then try to make something of it all. I remind myself frequently of Wordsworth's words, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility."

Today I drove to the other side of town to buy some silicone. My GPS kept insisting that I take the wrong highway, but I disobeyed and all went well. I listened to a moving dharma talk on my iphone as I drove, and then went to two different stores where incredibly nice merchants gave me lots of kind vibes and good information.

In the process of all this mundane activity, I kept waiting for something to hit me... something that I could make a drawing about and a poem about, or maybe write about. Throughout the day I received emails, with a number from our neighborhood elist complaining about dogs leaving gifts in other people's yards. Which all started me imagining all the non-humanoid emails to the non-humanoid elists complaining about us (humanoids) polluting their oceans and their lands and their skies. And we complain about dog gifts?

When I heard his poetry...

When I heard his poetry,
I wondered what became of those
poems I hid, tucked away
in different parts of my body.

There was the poem about
scraping my finger as a kid,
hidden on a knuckle,
and a poem about the pencil
lead stuck below my eye
from the third grade.

Everyday I'd pull one out
from my heart, and innocently
wonder where it had
come from... a whisper,
so to speak, that I could
hear so clearly

until, wanting them to come
out just a little better,
I took a "workshop" from
a pro, and didn't write
a poem again.

P.S. If you are wondering what the drawing has to do with the poem... well, don't waste your time. Other than one being done right after the other one, they are very distant relatives... by marriage, perhaps.

What shall we do tomorrow, what shall we ever do?

Title from the Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. As I drove to the zen center tonight, I wondered what I'd write about today. In fact, when I woke this am, I wondered what I would write about.

The ad is back on my website, since my friend never said that she was offended. I finally found a source to sell a civil war flintlock that I've had since a kid, so now I can buy an ipad... and now wondering if I should wait for the next version. Nothing very interesting to write about.

After sitting tonight, the director of the zen center gave a "way-seeking" (spiritual growth) talk. I've known him for over a year, yet didn't know what to expect. In fact, I had such a premonition that I needed to go that I cancelled another engagement to be there.

He told his story and it was very beautiful. He knocked my socks off.

If he had more secrets than those he told us I'd be surprised. Imagine letting it all out. All your secrets. Out!!! How freeing that must be. Yesterday I talked about nakedness and clothes. When you tell your secrets you are naked, but soon people see that you are real, and you can then wear who you really are. And he told my secrets, and your secrets too. We do all have the same secrets, with just minute variations.

My favorite aunt Reggie (a psychotherapist) talked to me once about stories. She said that we all have our stories, but sometimes we need to look at the self behind the story. Maybe we think of the story as our secret, where really it is our self that is our secret. What does it really mean to be honest? Totally completely honest? Would it be about the candy you stole when you were a kid (funny, I remember thinking about stealing... but I don't remember if I did or not). Or would it be about something far more profound?

Stories, and then more stories, and then strip those away, and what's left? That's really naked. Who we are when our clothes are off, our confessions have be exhumed, and nothing but the truth is left. Nothing but who we really, really are. Naked.

Why not Sit Alone?

She wrote, "I sat for an hour yesterday in a chair. I don't understand why a person should sit in a group when they can sit at home, longer? Then there is no driving. Drive to the center, take shoes off, go in, sit, put shoes back on, leave. To me going to the center is just for people who lack the discipline to meditate at home."

Yesterday I wrote about Marina's exhibit at MOMA. The figures, in meditative postures (maybe trances would be a better word), were nude. No, naked. No, nude. Oh, I don't know. Models are nude, strippers are naked.

As I sat today, I was doan. It is the person who faces everyone who is facing the walls and rings the bells for the sitting and the service (I'm really a beginner at this role). I though about the question above as I sat and looked at the "sitters."

Earlier I was talking about the issue with a priest and the director of the zen center. I said that I thought sitting was much more intimate than talking. Sometimes it seems we talk in order to hide what we are feeling. Like clothes. When we sit, we are naked. Intimacy in zen is enlightenment. And I suspect part of enlightenment is seeing one's connection with all. Therefore... therefore... therefore...

It appeared to me that some, though literally sitting with others, might be just sitting by and for themselves. But part of sitting is that we are sitting for others as well as for ourselves. The pain in my leg is the pain of suffering throughout Earth. The joy of a deep breath that makes a pleasant journey in and out of me is the joy of someone seeing a newborn emerge from their mother's womb. Sitting is not a solitary activity, no matter where it is done.

In one day, according to a fellow sangha member's blog, 40000 thoughts pass through our head. We are naked when we are sitting because those thoughts are now revealed to us. Nothing is between who we are and who we pretend to be.

We feel the presence of others in the room. Sometimes we hear them wiggle a little, or cough, or hear their stomach's growling.

But still, why would we want to be in a room naked with others? Or are we really with others (who are actually other parts of ourselves), linked together by a web? I read a description once of a number of monks going into a three month practice period (wrote about this recently as well) and they were told to think of themselves as oarsmen on a ship. If they didn't all keep rowing, the ship wouldn't make it to their destination.

Is sitting a social activity? It certainly isn't a cocktail party, where we have the tendency to wear a lot of clothes, hoping to hide our secrets.

Some of us feel like we need our daily sit. It is our chance to share very private moments with our selves, and with each other.

I don't think I really answered the question. But maybe that's ok. This article, Why We Chant, seems to say well some of the joy in sitting together.

Waiting

How many times do we sit out the weekend, waiting for the moment of truth on Monday? Well, Monday in England is Bank Day, a national holiday, which I assume is why I didn't hear from the marketing woman about my Miracle Ear ad.

I saw an amazing Marina Abramovich retrospective exhibit exhibit at MOMA in NYC last week. I was very curious to know about the role of meditation in Marina's pieces... and so I was so glad to be sent a link to this article. We've come a long way in a short time that such work can be exhibited. When I lived in Dallas for three years in the 70s I had five issues with censorship. A few were with my work, the others with exhibits I curated. At the Univ. of Illinois in the 60s the male models wore "jock straps." A graduate student, Myra Cantor, sent the school into a tizzy displaying male nudes in her thesis exhibit.

Tonight I heard Norman Fischer for the third time in three days. It was a meeting for the business community of Austin. He spoke about meditation practice (calling it mindfulness) in business. He's the meditation guru for Google. He handled questions from the audience so skillfully and honestly too. You can hear 100s of his lectures on the web. Super wonderful person.

This afternoon I heard on the web a talk he gave about God parting the seas to save the Jews. I thought that God was pretty mean to the Egyptians (killing them all).

Before the talk Norman came over to where I was standing, looking at this incredible transparent building being built. I told him that God wasn't nice to the Romans (killing them all after splitting the waters). He corrected me and said Egyptians. Next time I'm at a Passover dinner celebrating the event, I'm going to ask everyone to say a prayer for them, even if they did enslave the Jews.

Called my Sister

Here. Zen is about hereing (sic) now. Get a hereing (sic) aid. 

I want to be here,  he said.

So I called my sister and she said that I should keep the ad for the hearing aids because so many people need them. Judging from the sound of her voice, she felt there was a moral imperative here to take the blood money (we don't refund money, she said) and support the cause of hearing aids for the hard of hearing.

I do have another sister, though, in case I need another opinion. In the meantime, I'm waiting for the ad firm in England to open up shop in a few hours.

Next planet I live on is going to be easier. There will be one answer to all questions and that answer will be obvious, right from the start. I had an aunt who'd give me answers like that until she became wiser. Now she has moved on.

And everyone on this other planet will be compassionate, even the men.

Knife and Spoon

I would tell my photo students that Henri Cartier-Bresson was great at composing photos. Once, when I was teaching at SMU in the 70s, Dan Barsotti raised his hand and contradicted me, saying that he saw Bresson photographing in Paris and he just held the camera above his head and shot ("quick quick quick" (as Bresson would say with his French accent)). Anyway, I was talking to Stephanie at a brunch this am and talking about the magic of life. Then I brought my phone up to the table and turned it on... and this picture was on the screen. I just had to press the button.

Blood Money and Hearing Aids

My hearing aids are pretty small but some-times they feel very large.
[Buy "No Wax"]

A week or so ago I received an email from a English marketing firm that they wanted to give me either $150 or $100 if I would put an ad on my website. A gaming ad would be $150 and an ad in a number of other categories would be $100.

I'm trying to earn enough money for an ipad. Which doesn't justify blood money, does it?

So in the midst of taking these Buddhist precepts, I entered questionable territory here. Not advertising in itself... but ... read on.

They asked me to rewrite a paragraph on my website about my friend Joan Lipkin, who works with the disabled in theatre. They came up with this paragraph:

As the Artistic Director of That Uppity Theatre in St. Louis, Missouri, she specializes in creating work with marginalized populations including people with disabilities, from those with digital hearing aids to those who are wheelchair bound, LGBT youth and women with breast cancer that are accompanied by civic dialogue with the wider community.

They added "digital hearing aids" and made it a link to a vendor of such things.

Then they sent me $100.

So I sent them a letter (just now...):

Janet,

I'm wondering if we could try a different ad. This one is misleading since Joan Lipkin might not work with people with digital hearing aids. I took off this ad, feeling like it would not do justice to her or to Miracle Ear.

Thanks,

Kim

I used to pose this question to the advertising design students. "Suppose you were asked to do a campaign for something that hurt people (cigarettes, for example)... would you do so?" Most answered, "yes." And then I'd tried to persuade them that they shouldn't. Some would switch to fine arts... and others would go on and have successful (design) careers.

So I'll let you know what Janet sends me next. It should be interesting... and probably costly to me.

Who needs an ipad anyway?

I remember one of the early computer graphic pioneers the we invited to the college. He held up a pencil and said, "really, nothing will every be more sensitive than this."

More later, when Monday comes around in England.

Impermanence

(Pāli: अनिच्चा anicca; Sanskrit: अनित्य anitya; Tibetan: མི་​རྟག་​པ་ mi rtag pa; Chinese: 無常 wúcháng; Japanese: 無常 mujō; Thai: อนิจจัง anitchang, from Pali "aniccaŋ")

Except those who believe in a "soul" (most of the world), nobody denies impermanence as a rational concept. But even those who rationally see trees being chopped down and made into firewood know in their hearts that something didn't change. And impermanence says they are wrong.

My longtime friend said to "me" that other day... I know you're still stuck on "me." When you've known someone for 40+ years, you don't go denying their observations. You just know, like in this case, that more work needs to be done.

In NYC, years ago, a doctor weighed people before and after death. He could not account for 3/4 of an ounce. Was this the soul that had exited the body? Why did dogs (who have, according to some, "buddha-nature") have no weight loss at the moment of death?

Buddhists try to recognize that everything is changing. I suspect even the most seasoned veterans have to remind them "selves" continually that they too are changing. Always, continually, completely.

Race (not?)

After engaging in an online discussion on race and ethnicity, and entertaining the possibility of evil on my blog, my friend tried to explain why she won't even talk about race. I begged her to write about it, but she declined and said "do it yourself." She does write continually, but only on topics of her choosing. And actually writing about how we construct distinctions between people is one of her topics.

First off, some say that the only race is the human race, given that chimpanzees living in a remote area of Africa are more varied genetically than all humans... and penguins come in 15-20 species.

My friend is completely uninterested in this argument, saying that anyone who has any brains knows that race is just around to substantiate (or not) superiorities of one race over another, and that in truth there are no races anyway.

But then she talked of how we construct various groupings (my word) of peoples with the intent of stereotyping groups as having specific characteristics. What was most interesting to me is that, like evil and suffering and many other concepts, groupings have very real consequences once they are constructed. They may be artificial, but as long as we act on our preconceptions the result will be real. For example, I believe men less than 5'10" cannot be trusted (a construction with probably no basis of truth). Then I act on this construction, being careful not to associate with any "shorties" (including myself). What had no validity now becomes very important, especially to the "shorties" and actually to all. Society is cheated from dealing with a fine and honorable group.

Therefore denying race, in my friend's opinion, gives people a false sense that they've solved a problem, where really the problem, though constructed, is still here and there and everywhere.

P.S. I sent this to my friend, hoping that I represented her correctly (it was a very very noisy restaurant for someone who doesn't hear well). She said that I did, and added, "I don't think that "race" is only around to substantiate superiorities, though. There's this great show on now called Treme, a show about New Orleans post-Katrina. It's about race...for example, cultural movements of Jazz and neighborhood solidarity, structural racism (bad levees, looting, prison mishaps), within-"race" conflicts between middle class and working class/poor black people, etc. But it complicates it all-layers these different racial issues, and shows the interpersonal, structural, and societal impacts of race and racism on New Orleans. I think that race is one of the fundamental ways our society is organized, historically, and most societal issues are intertwined with race in some way."

Mythology and Truth

My walking neighbor (we walk together in the mornings) clarified for me the role of mythology in religion. He talked about mythology as a means to convey the truth. And, he said, those who take the mythology literally are stuck in a "logical quandry."

Like Aesop's fables, the events may not have actually happened (not many of us have heard animals "talk"), but they describe a truth about life through their stories. What is it then that we "believe"? It is the wisdom of the stories, because that wisdom aligns with our experience. Job, for example, lost everything except for his faith. By retaining his faith, his luck turned around. Was there really a man Job who was a pawn in a contest between God and the Devil (as portrayed in J.B. by Archibald Macleish)? No, probably not. And yet have them been men and woman who have been down on their luck and who still retained their faith? Absolutely. And did their lives turn around in time? Of course. Was it the faith that caused his life to turn around? We'll have to wait and see the metadata from a number of double-blind studies... or else...

Car[l] Jerome, in his comment yesterday, gave the following references:

 Kalama Sutta

 Simile of the Snake Sutta

"It is proper for you, Kalamas, to doubt, to be uncertain; uncertainty has arisen in you about what is doubtful. Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing; nor upon tradition; nor upon rumor; nor upon what is in a scripture; nor upon surmise; nor upon an axiom; nor upon specious reasoning; nor upon a bias towards a notion that has been pondered over; nor upon another's seeming ability; nor upon the consideration, 'The monk is our teacher.' Kalamas, when you yourselves know: 'These things are bad; these things are blamable; these things are censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them." (Buddha, from the Kalama Sutta).

Lotus

More on creating evil

She wrote: Since you don't buy into the Christian mythology about good and evil, and you DO buy into the Buddhist mythology, that there isn't a good and evil, does it all boil down to just whose mythology that YOU DO buy into? Is everyone not entitled to believe in the mythology that suits them the best? Is saying the Buddhist way of thinking is the best and only truth, NO different than the Christian saying that his way is the ONLY WAY? By believing that your way is the best, are you not guilty of doing the same thing? Might each and every WAY be right in it's own way, for different people? Because YOU don't buy into it for yourself, does it make it so? And, are you qualified to say what is and what is not? If not, can you tell me beyond a doubt who is? Is everything not just speculation in the end, because until you actually die, you can't really be sure? Can you tell a Mother whose child was slaughtered, that such an act was not evil? If that act is not evil, can you tell me what it is?"

I don't think most people consider their beliefs to be mythology, but I think she is right about there exists a belief system to support any belief... from Nazism to Christianity.

Buddha asked that people trust his "way" because they experience what he describes, rather than just because he says it. He might have not liked the idea that his "way" to end suffering became a religion. He probably had enough of his childhood religion by then, and he wanted to pay more (actually all) of his attention to the here and now.

In the quote above, she talks about the mother calling (or not calling) the slaughter of her child "evil." This is an interesting assertion that I was not thinking about—that an "act" can be evil. What if the slaughtering was done by gust of wind hurling knives through the air? Would that be evil as well? Or do we need a doer with an "evil" intent. So who is evil, the act or the person?

Thinking about this riding on a plane from Philadelphia to Austin (stopping in Orlando) gave me more clarity about the precept "creating evil." I'm not sure this will satisfy the commenter above, but here it is. The precept is saying don't create evil, which we do when we label certain events (or people) evil. It is not the Buddhist way. The precept is asking us to be without judgment, acting equanimously.  So, yes, evil exists, as does suffering, but it is in our heads. Is it productive to create evil? Probably not.

Pompeii

So I guess the lava that destroyed Pompeii was not evil, lacking any
intention to do harm. But what about the serial killer who can't find
any victims?

Central Park

Madison Ave.

Baldessari, 1966-68

Lichtenstein, 1961

Megabus to NYC to see friends