in quiet moments of Buddha time i watch the world like a man who's blind i sing my songs like a drunken sage and offer curses as though free of rage
Quiet Moments of Buddha Time [Poem]
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Category Archives: mind
River Trance [Common Meter]
I sit on a green grass riverside, watching brown waters flow. Some karst monoliths stand behind in which scrubby shrubs grow. I feel my mind could be swept on down to the sprawling sea, while my body would stay behind asleep with back to tree. And panic and freedom both rise - untethered from earth's hold. As I see the future and the past blended at the threshold. And space, like time, has no meaning -- just an amorphous blob. I awaken gasping spastically, my pulse in a wild throb.
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Cold Shore [Free Verse]
Was it a lifetime ago, or was it a dream? I remember it being a long drive to a cold shore. And I sat alone on that shore, and I sought a shark -- not out in the waters, but within myself. Finding nothing, I felt the thing to do was to rattle in rhythm with the twisted hustle of pounding waves, and I awoke, shivering under piercing points of light that somehow felt cold, & made me feel cold - deep inside.
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BOOK REVIEW: Transforming Trauma with Jiu-Jitsu by Jamie Marich & Anna Pirkl
Transforming Trauma with Jiu-Jitsu: A Guide for Survivors, Therapists, and Jiu-Jitsu Practitioners to Facilitate Embodied Recovery by Jamie MarichMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Out: March 15, 2022
This book proposes that jiu-jitsu can be beneficial and therapeutic for those with trauma-related conditions (e.g. PTSD,) and it offers advice and insight to martial arts teachers, therapists, as well as trauma survivors considering jiu-jitsu. I’m curious to see how much merit these ideas prove to offer. By that, I mean neither to insult the bona fides of the authors, nor even to foreshadow skepticism. What I am saying is that this proposition isn’t one that’s been studied thoroughly and systematically. [The authors acknowledge as much. They’re at the vanguard of an idea here.] Therefore, the good news is that the book is bleeding edge, but the bad news is that it’s based largely on anecdotal evidence and the application of tried concepts to an untried (and quite unique) domain.
On one hand, few activities can teach one: breath control, now-centric living, command of emotions, and increased comfort with being in close proximity to people (who may seem physically intimidating) like the martial arts. Those all feel like positive features for a trauma survivor, and some of them (e.g. breath control) are addressed extensively in the book. On the other hand, the way martial arts teach one to keep one’s focus in the moment is via the pressure of an attacker – defender dynamic. If one is triggered by intense, seemingly aggressive activity, that’s hard to reconcile with the nature of the martial arts — which should always be safe but do necessitate a certain degree of intensity to mentally prepare students for a combative experience.
As I read through the panoply of challenges that might arise – from inability to train with someone who looks vaguely like one’s attacker to not being able to be experience a mount (one of the most fundamental jiu-jitsu positions) – I often had the feeling I’d have in response to a book entitled, “CrossFit for the Severely Arthritic” [i.e. not all fine objectives work together.] The authors do discuss alternatives like private lessons and specialized workshops / classes, but those are more realistic solutions in some cases others. (i.e. I feel that few of the dojos I’ve been in could afford to offer the range of classes for special demographics that are mentioned [workshops, probably.] But there’re only a few hours a day one can hold classes that people who can afford to attend aren’t working, and paying rent on a larger space on the amount that can be earned from those few hours a day is daunting enough.) If you can attend special trainings for trauma survivors, the book’s guidance all seems quite workable. But, otherwise, I had to wonder to what degree one could accommodate those with these needs without losing those who feel they benefit from the existing approach. [e.g. Many dojos I’ve been in used a rotation scheme so that everybody trained with everybody else, and in virtually all there was an expectation of a certain level of decorum and discipline of behavior on the mat — e.g. not wandering off in the middle of practice, not holding side conversations, and not picking / choosing what techniques one will / won’t practice. (All of which, were activities mentioned that could happen in the trauma-sensitive school, and all of which I feel I benefited from having trained out of me.)]
There was a tremendous amount of useful information in the book. How to recognize an individual has been triggered. How to best respond. It’s certainly worth reading for those reasons alone, and – maybe – they’re onto something.
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Avalanche [Free Verse]
One false footing erases the screeched blackboard writing that'd formed in my mind & everything becomes a blank, white emptiness -- Not a good empty. Not a good quiet. The emptiness of blinding pain. That's the slow, cold death of falling into a drift and then cascading, tumbling, tumbling, in an avalanche. Wrenched asunder - or so it feels - and left to go numb in a silence so total that i know it's my first experience with true silence. We all fall down? That's what the plague rhyme says, isn't it? -- Madmen & Holymen, and those who take this fall and are twisted into a grotesque blend of both. Which way is up? Tiny seedlings can tell, but I cannot. I'm lost -- 50/50, I dig myself deeper into my own doom. My life trickles in a file of hours, dripping into that dim distance of non-time. I'll stay lost until the spring thaw when I'll ride the glacial runoff to complete my tumble as a gray and bloated thing.
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BOOK REVIEW: Breathe! You are Alive [i.e. Anapanasati Sutta] Trans. & Commentary by Thich Nhat Hanh
Breathe! You Are Alive: Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing by Thich Nhat HanhMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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One evening at the end of a rainy season in Shravasti (present-day Uttar Pradesh near the Nepali border,) the Buddha taught a practice using awareness of breath to quiet the mind. This is a translation with commentary by the Vietnamese Zen monk, Thich Nhat Hanh [RIP, FYI – he passed away on January 22nd.] (To clarify: Annabel Laity translated the book from Vietnamese to English, Thich Nhat Hanh translated versions of the sutra from Pali and Chinese.) The teaching is called the Anapanasati Sutta (i.e. “Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing.”) It consists of sixteen variations on the theme of “Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in. Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.”
The sutra itself is only a few pages long, leaving commentaries and appendices to stretch the book to its barely one-hundred-pages. This isn’t a criticism; the commentary is beneficial because the sutra is bare bones. Even being somewhat aware of basic Buddhist concepts (e.g. impermanence, emptiness, liberation, etc.) I still found that the commentary offered some valuable insight about how to understand these ideas as well as how they relate to the practice. The Appendices consist of a variation on the practice and a translation of Chinese version of the sutra. The latter is a bit redundant, but one can also see little differences in translation that may be informative for some.
Besides presenting the practice, the book explains how it relates to (and is built around the principles from) the “Sutra on the Four Establishments of Mindfulness.” This book outlines the Four Establishments clearly enough to see how the Anapanasati practice is shaped by them. However, it’s worth noting that Thich Nhat Hanh also produced a translation and commentary on the Four Establishments that is entitled “Transformation & Healing.”
As someone who has found breath practices to be among the most effective tools for improving the mind, I benefited from this book tremendously. Besides its discussion of the practice and variations, I learned a lot from the philosophical elaborations that were made. I’d highly recommend this book.
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On Intrusive Thoughts & Shoving Someone in Front of a Train
The other day I read that a man had pushed a person onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train. The week before that, I'd read in a book by Robin Ince that a person who -- having had a baby thrust into his hands -- has intrusive thoughts of throwing said baby out of the nearest window is [believe it, or not] the best person to ask to hold one's baby. The argument goes like this, the person having these intrusive thoughts is being intensely reminded by his or her unconscious mind that under no circumstances -- no matter what unexpected or unusual events should transpire -- is he to throw the baby out the window (or otherwise do anything injurious.) I've heard that, at some point, virtually everyone has some type of awkward intrusive thought such as the thought of pushing a stranger in front of a train. Most never do it, nor truly want to do it. Then this one time... someone did.
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BOOK REVIEW: Bankei Zen by Peter Haskel [trans.] & Yoshito Hakeda [ed.]
Bankei Zen: Translations from the Record of Bankei by Yoshito HakedaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
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This collection of sermons, notes, poems, and letters from the Zen monk Bankei present his iconoclastic views on Buddhism. Bankei’s central teaching revolves around a state of mind that calls Unborn Buddha Mind. The Unborn Buddha Mind isn’t defined neatly (perhaps it can’t be,) though Bankei does refer to the capacity to perceive without consciously directing one’s attention – that is, to achieve spontaneous perception of a sensory input without the error that one might experience in thought, when one’s mind is analyzing and judging.
Bankei presented a distinctive countercultural view, both religiously and culturally. In terms of the teachings and philosophy of Zen, this is most clearly seen in his rejection of many of Zen’s primary methods – e.g. koan (Zen “riddles”) and mondo (a conversational Q&A technique.) Even those techniques Bankei doesn’t reject (e.g. Zazen, seated meditation,) he does deemphasize in contrast to a more workaday focus. Culturally, one can see the difference of Bankei’s approach in his rejection of consensus views of the time, such as that women can’t achieve enlightenment.
The book uses stories, straightforward statements, and poetry to convey a unique approach to practice. The book can be a bit dry and repetitive. (Different media – e.g. sermons and letters – discussing the same teachings will lead to repetition.) That said, if you’re interested in Zen and mindfulness, there is much to be learned via this book. There are even a few teachings directed towards martial artists, and how they can apply the lessons of Zen.
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Mind-Breaking Poetry [Free Verse]
I need some mind-breaking poetry - some Blake, some Dickinson, some Yeats, some Whitman, some Langston Hughes. I need a poem that's a kōan, that makes the mind a mackerel fish, and doesn't mind doing it. I need a poem that sizzles inside my bones.
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Dreams All the Way Down [Free Verse]
I awaken from a dream within a dream, and I'm still dreaming -- dreaming that I'm walking with the others, the others that I'm told are all me, walking in some vaguely familiar exotic destination Of course, I don't know I'm dreaming. I did wake up after all, but it turns out that it's dreams all the way down.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 