Author Archives: Genju

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brain freeze

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Leftover ink enso. 

My brain is frozen from spending the weekend and all day Monday in an office whose temperature hovered between 58°F and Hell Freezing over.  It seems the computer that controls the air conditioner of the building has gone into an infernal feedback loop and the a/c thermostat is trying to regulate itself to what it thinks is Hades outside.  It’s hard trying to sustain attention and muster up compassionate, appreciative inquiry when you’re hypothermic.  But I managed and the drive home in a hot car revived me somewhat.

I think my brain is also frozen in other ways.  Topics for the daily posts are eluding me.  There are flashes of insight and inspiration.  But they quickly evaporate and I find myself at a loss.  I wondered if it was because of my brief and rather sordid affair with G+.  Or perhaps because I’ve been immersed in left-brain activities like correlations, and sums of squares, and two-tailed tests of significance of paired samples.  Or – and most likely – I’m enthralled by the Food Network’s Top Chef – Just Desserts melodrama.  Will Seth be kicked off before someone frappé’s him in the quest for a dessert that is based on a water park theme!?

However, I didn’t know I was in trouble until I explained to someone that the difference between shamatha and vipassana meditation is one is up your nose and the other is under your belly button. 

To be kind to my poor over-fried and mis-firing neurons, I am probably trying too hard to perform two very different modes of writing.  On the one hand, I’m reading and assimilating stacks of papers and books to build and buttress a Buddhist theory of spiritual incongruence for my chaplaincy project.  On the other, I’m trying to find relevant material to put out on the blog that is, at once, useful and playful.  And tie it all together with an enso.

I fear I have to officially declare my brain is frozen and when the obvious is obvious, skillful means noticing.  So I will apologize in advance for languid posts and lapses in posting.  Nevertheless, I shall fly past you the mal-formed and likely warped thoughts on aspects of Dharma as they arise from this vast matrix array of work, family, ripening tomatoes, and one more round at Upaya coming up in three weeks.

At the very least there will be an enso each day.  Zen Rorschach!  Sometimes just going around in circles mindfully is all that is necessary!

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1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 + 2 turkeys

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Fibonacci ensos.

Interesting how quickly they get out of control.  Or maybe that’s just my perception because I am limited by the space of the paper and my own ability to sustain attention on the sequenced growth of the radius of each circle. 

Turkeys are easier.

Though I suspect they are pretty much out of my control too as they proliferate through the woods behind the house.  Frank thinks they are living in the ravine though I tend to see them up in the north field munching on the soya beans.  Perhaps they are vegetarian.  These two were cropped from a series of pictures of the flock of 7 or 8 which wandered across the front lawn (a “lawn” is perhaps presumptuous as there is no discernible grass and the green is courtesy of a variety of seeds dropped by birds flying over).

I’m just emerging from a long week of intense, focused work which flowed directly into the weekend retreat to train a gaggle of new MBSR teachers.  There too I felt the effects of this Fibonacci Sequence – the exponential growth from a few single digit numbers to interlocking lines and clusters that’s become a community quietly spread out through the region.  Of course, I’ve been oblivious to this, limited by the space I give myself to feel value in anything I do.

At the end of the training retreat, someone said, “Wow, this is hard-core Buddhism!”  Well, really it isn’t.  It’s just skillful means in translating the Dharma into understandable and user-friendly terms.  It’s also sneaky.  We teach in health care situations in a way that makes it accessible.  The Dharma needs no evidence-based studies to prove its efficacy; it’s a model of how the cause and effect sequence unfolds.  The evidence is in the tomes of psychology and medicine couched in other language – the language of cause and effect, reinforcement and sensitization, addiction, aggression, and willful blindness.  Two streams.  Proliferating a Fibonacci of the Dharma, each in its own way.

I’m really proud of this group of graduates from our program.  In two and half days, we drove home the fundamentals of suffering, its causes, and the practices of liberation.  Nothing fancy.  It reminds me that practice needs nothing fancy either.  Start one.  Add one more.  Add them together and then again, and again…  Before you know it, you’re off the page and off the grid of clinging, rejection, and delusion.

… and talking turkey…