Zen & the Lapwing

Greetings world. A good friend of mine who lives far away has been kind enough to visit my blog and ask me two questions. Before I respond I'd like whoever's reading to know that while I'm writing this I'm thoroughly exhausted (physically & intellectually). About two hours ago I completed my second-to-last exam of my first year of law school. It was three hours long and tremendously draining. I'm responding to my friend now because my neurons seem to have short circuited and I still haven't been able to motivate myself to study for the very last final exam this Thursday. Right after posting this, however, I'll have to hit the books. Can't believe I'll be done with first year in 48 hours.

Question #1: The name of my favorite bird i.e. Vanellus Melanocephalus, in English, is the Spot-Breasted Lapwing.

Question #2: "What do you mean that zen gives insight 'in more than an intellectual
sense'? Does this mean that you have to be spiritually involved and
become a monk? and does it mean that Zen Buddhism accepts the existence of
a supreme spiritual being"

Answer:
- There is no God in Buddhism. There are no spirits. There are no deities. There are no ghosts. There are no supernatural forces. There is only nature.

What I meant by the statement Zen gives insight "in more than an intellectual sense" I was referring to the fundamentally anti-intellectual nature of Zen. The Zen masters teach that wisdom is not, ultimately, to be found in books or in wise people such as Zen masters. One cannot become enlightened until one comes to the realization that the path to enlightenment is one you must discover for yourself and that you cannot reach it through scholarly study or by admiring & imitating this or that person. In the end, the Zen masters teach us, one must leave behind all books and all teachers. Books and teachers might be helpful at first but if we depend on them, if we cling to them, they become obstacles. Lin Chi, a famous Chinese Zen master, once said: "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him." What did he mean by this? He meant, in the end, learning about the Buddha or reading about the Buddha or studying Buddhism is an obstacle. In the end you must free yourself of all this. I know this is hard to understand. That's because ultimately, Zen resists intellectual explanations. It tells us simply: when you walk, walk; when you eat, eat; when you sleep, sleep; when you work, work. There's more to it than that but the key message I'm trying to get across is that the intellect can become an obstacle to enlightenment.

Becoming "spiritually involved" according to Zen means strivint to lieave each moment fully conscious of what is happening inside of you and in your surroundings, being fully aware of the 4 noble truths and traveling the 8-fold path. No more. No less.

And, finally, no it is not necessary or even advisable to become a monk. Monks are no closer to enlightment just because they are monks. It is important in the Zen tradition, however, to learn from masters. Bodhidharma, the founder of the Zen school said the following:

"All know the Way, but few actually walk it. If you don't find a teacher soon, you'll live this life in vain. It's true, you have the buddha-nature. But without the help of a teacher you'll never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher's help. If, though, by the conjunction of conditions, someone understands what the Buddha meant, that person doesn't need a teacher. Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught. But unless you're so blessed, study hard, and by means of instruction you'll understand."

Until next time, may you all go in peace.
Sincerely,
Augustus Blossom
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Yours Truly Reading "Call It Sleep"

Zen Part I

During the past two months Zen Buddhism has begun to pervade my consciousness in startling ways. For many years I have thought that the first two of the four noble truths of Buddhism i.e. 1)suffering exists and 2)desire/attachment is the cause of suffering, to be accurate characterizations of human reality. More recently I have begun to realize these characterizations to be true in more than an intellectual sense. If you'd like to hear more about this post me a message because this blog seems to be no more than a monologue.

Law School And I

Given my current status as a law student, it's natural that some may wonder about my take on the "One L" (i.e. first year) experience. That, I believe, would make rather dull reading compared to what's already been written on that topic. Furthermore one needs distance from an experience in order to comment meaningfully upon it. Ok, enough rationalizing reticence. What I will share with you, dear readers (hypocrite readers, my siblings, my twins) is the draft of a poem (I seem only capable of writing drafts!) tangentially or superficially about the similarities between verse and the law. This poem [see below] represents the first and so far only encroachment of the law into my "poetic consciousness," if you will.
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A Law Student’s Ode to Wallace Stevens

The law consists of words that are acts.
Poetry consists of words that are acts;
one is refined war, the other refined dance.
I picture you Wallace
a magician disguised
as a grey-haired, Anglo-Saxon in suit and tie.
I picture myself
a musician disguised
as a grey-haired negro in suit and tie.
We of the nomadic tribe
wander the wide deserts of English
searching for sustenance
not in the fruit of the cactus
but in the interstices
between wind and silence.
We walk the streets of America
on our way to the well
two strangers side-by-side
briefcases in hand
a purling in our skulls
revising the lyrics, the steps, the stomps
of another rain dance
for our thirsting people.
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My Favorite Short Stories & Novellas

Here are my top 11 in no particular order:

"The Metamorphosis" (Kafka)
"The Red Pony" (Steinbeck)
"The Old Man and The Sea" (Hemingway)
"The Pigeon" (Suskind)
"The Overcoat" (Gogol)
"Heart of Darkness" (Conrad)
"The Death of Ivan Illyich" (Tolstoy)
"Mr. Palomar" (Calvino)
"A Rose For Emily" (Faulkner)
"The Beast in the Jungle" (James)

My Favorite Flicks

Here are my top 11 favorite flicks in no particular order:

"8 1/2" (Fellini)
"Andrei Rublev" (Tarkovsky)
"Singin' in the Rain" (Donen & Kelly)
"Star Wars" [the original trilogy] (Lucas)
"The Godfather" [parts I & II] (Coppola)
"The Seven Samurai" (Kurosawa)
"The Man With The Movie Camera" (Vertov)
"The Rules of the Game" (Renoir)
"Rashomon" (Kurosawa)
"Casablanca" (Curtiz)
"The Wizard of Oz" (Fleming)

My Bird

The name of this blog is the latin name of my favorite bird as a child.

Book Review #1 "RULE OF THE BONE"

[On a scale of 1 through 10 with 10 being reserved for eternal classics and 1 for books the world would be better off without "Rule of the Bone" earns a 6.5. Note that this is a ranking by an extremely picky and relatively conservative reader meaning that 80% of the time I'd rather read a confirmed classic than what may turn out to be a passing fad.]

"Rule of the Bone" is the first novel I've read by Russel Banks. No one recommended it to me and I had neither heard of it nor read any reviews before picking it up. My previous direct exposure to Banks' work consisted of a handful of short stories all of which were good and none of which were unusually good; furthermore I had seen the film versions of his novels "Affliction" and "The Sweet Hereafter." I read this novel for two simple reasons: one, I had the good luck of acquiring a nearly-new copy of the book for a quarter from a public library and, second, I had a certain kindly inclination towards Banks' work due to the avowedly superficial reason that I had met and briefly conversed with him following a reading he gave at the Philadelphia Public Library. During our brief exchange I informed Banks that I had started writing a novel. He wished me luck and informed me that it's common for writers to go through a long period of rejection, that he had submitted his work for 10 years before anyone agreed to publish it and that he knew of other writers who went through a similar decade-long trial by rejection. Ok, enough autobiographical throat-clearing, on to the review.

Banks' novel is the story of one year (roughly) in the turbulent life of "Bone" a white-American teenager (he's 14 when the book opens) from a lower-middle-class family who leaves home and supports himself by dealing marijuana because his weak-willed mother refuses to separate from his stepfather who had sexually abused him. The novel, which takes place partly in upstate New York and partly in Jamaica, is told in the protagonist's voice in an admirable rendition (by the white-haired, 60-something-year-old author) of a sociologically-accurate 1990s-Northeast-Coast teen vernacular. "Rule of the Bone" is an engaging, fast-paced and relatively quick read (even for a tortoisely-slow reader such as myself). It is not, however, what I call a "fast food novel" due, primarily, to its moral complexity. Here's a summary of the plot: Chappie (who later adopts the nickname "Bone") leaves home and starts living with a motorcycle gang as their marijuana supplier, later, he leaves the gang and leads a homeless life during which three major events occur: first, he meets a Rastafarian from Jamaica named I-Man a marijuana-dealing illegal alien who becomes Bone's spiritual mentor of sorts; second, Bone rescues a young girl from a pedophile and sends her back to her drug-addicted mother; third, Bone moves with I-Man to Jamaica where a series of marijuana-smoke-enveloped adventures unfold.

The main strenghts of the novel are the believability of the protagonist's voice and the way in which he grapples with moral dilemmas; its main weaknesses are a series of pivotal, hard-to-believe coincidences (that are, unfortunately, an integral part of the novel's narrative structure) and a contrived, overly-neat ending.

Before I wrap up I'd like to note that this book is self-consciously within the American literary tradition of first-person vernacular narratives by male youth which Twain begun with "Huckleberry Finn" and Salinger successfully continued in the 20th century with "Catcher In The Rye." [Note the rather obvious way in which Banks' first sentence echoes the opening sentence of Twain's classic.] A comparison of this novel with its predecessors would not, however, help you decide whether or not to read Banks' novel. All I'll say in this regard is that although such comparisons are inevitable and called-for, I'll refrain from making them and instead predict that those of you who like or love "Catcher In The Rye" and/or Huck Finn will likely enjoy this book, as I did, but probably won't end up loving it.
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Greetings World

This, undiscovered friends, is my first blog. There is nothing magical about a "blog" except that it can bring us together. So here I am addressing those of you throughout the world who are "kindred spirits" those of you who, upon reading my postings here, will recognize something in me as a sign that we are "of the same tribe" in a manner of speaking. Indeed all human beings and all living things are part of one earthly family-if we consider the almost indentical architecture of DNA whether in a human being or a blade of grass-but some people, mysteriously, understand one another and others do not. With most people, it seems, one can only communicate while with others one can commune. Language is only one part of this phenomenon so when I say that we speak the same language I mean this not only literally but also figuratively. Until my next posting, I wish you peace and health during this holiday season.