DAILY PHOTO: Kura River Scenes, Tbilisi
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BOOKS: “Zen and the Ways” by Trevor Leggett
Zen and the Ways by Trevor LeggettMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Open Library Page
This book is the most densely populated with interesting insights that I’ve read in some time. It’s not new, being first published in 1978, but it takes a variety of approaches to give the reader a better understanding of Zen and the application of Zen mind to martial arts and other activities that found benefit in stillness and clarity. By “the Ways,” Leggett is referring to those arts and activities benefiting from Zen, which include: tea ceremony, flower arranging, painting, poetry writing, and all manner of martial arts. [Often represented by ending “do” in Japanese.] (The latter are dealt with most extensively, but not exclusively.)
The book is arranged in six parts, the first half of which focus mostly upon Zen Buddhism and, particularly, the Kamakura school that found a huge following among warriors and other artists. Those first three chapters take a big to small approach, examining Zen from ever finer levels of detail, starting with an introduction to Zen Buddhism broadly, moving on to the Kamakura developments, and then finally focusing on one particular practice — that of Koans (stories that present riddles which the student can only “solve” in a non-intellectual fashion.)
The second half of the book investigates the ways Zen has been applied to various arts. This is where one sees the varied approaches used to explore the confluence of Zen and artistry. Part Four consists of a series of essays explaining concepts such as ri (universal truth) and ji (formal technique,) ki (vital energy,) and isshin (single-heartedness) / zanshin (lingering awareness.) Part Five consists of historic martial arts scrolls and excerpts, including Yagyu Munenori’s Art of War and Chozan Shisai’s “Tengu’s Guide to the Martial Arts.” The final part consists of stories that illustrate crucial ideas in a readable and memorable fashion.
I was extremely pleased to stumble across a copy of this book in a second-hand bookshop. I’d long ago heard a fascinating story about murders in Edo era Japan of high-level martial artists, all killed in the same manner. They never found the killer, but they figured out how the murders were done easily enough. The killer exploited his knowledge of that school’s techniques to lay a fake that exploited their own technique to create an opening. It’s a cautionary tale that drilling muscle memory is not the end-all be-all of martial arts, and that it can create its own problems. At any rate, I’d never been able to find the source… until now. There is a detailed discussion of it in this book.
For readers interested in how state of mind influences artistic performance, I’d highly recommend this book.
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PROMPT: Hardest
To be an ever-better version of myself. It is relentless, requires engaging fears and weaknesses, and it is worth it.
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“Broadminded” [Poetry Style #23 (旷达)] by Sikong Tu [w/ Audio]
One may live a century --
Short span though it may be:
Joys are bitterly brief
And sorrows are many.
You may take a wine jug
On your wisteria rounds:
See flowers grow to the eves
As sparse rains wet the grounds.
And when the wine is gone,
One strolls with cane and croons.
We become wizened with age;
South Mount, fair through countless moons.
NOTE: The late Tang Dynasty poet, Sikong Tu (a.k.a. Ssŭ-k‘ung T‘u,) wrote an ars poetica entitled Twenty-Four Styles of Poetry (二十四诗品.) It presents twenty-four poems that are each in a different tone, reflecting varied concepts from Taoist philosophy and aesthetics. Above is a crude translation of the twenty-third of the twenty-four poems. This poem’s Chinese title is 旷达, which has been translated as: “Illumed” [Giles,] “Big-hearted and Expansive [Barnstone and Ping,] “Expansive,” and “Open-minded.”
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Rainy Autumn [Haiku]
the leaves are gone,
but the green of moss remains:
rainy autumn days.
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DAILY PHOTO: Autumn Glade
Young & Old [Kyōka]
roadside saplings
take Fall colors for a time,
before going bare;
the envy of humans:
at once young & old.
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PROMPT: Grown Up
Daily writing prompt
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
In retrospect, I’d say it was when I was on an airplane headed to Basic Military Training. I left a few days after completing high school classes, and a week or so before our graduation ceremony. That would definitely have been the point at which I had to realize whatever transpired, I was on my own. My problems were no longer distributed between myself and parents or myself and teachers, but it was all on me.
That said, I suspect that as a teenager I would have reported moments long before then, like my first solo out-of-state road-trip. I think a general feature of the adolescent condition is feeling grown up before one actually is in any real sense.
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“Stanzas for Music” by Lord Byron [w/ Audio]
There be none of Beauty's daughters
With a magic like thee;
And like music on the waters
Is thy sweet voice to me:
When, as if its sound were causing
The charmed ocean's pausing,
The waves lie still and gleaming,
And the lull'd winds seem dreaming:
And the midnight moon is weaving
Her bright chain o'er the deep;
Whose breast is gently heaving,
As an infant's asleep;
So the spirit bows before thee,
To listen and adore thee;
With a full but soft emotion,
Like the swell of Summer's ocean.
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Cannonball Tree [Haiku]
the cannonball tree:
blooms bright & intricate,
but never delicate.
Tiger Riding for Beginners 