why not?

In San Francisco Ginsberg saw another psychiatrist, Philip Hicks, who asked him what he would like to do. "Doctor," as Ginsberg recalls his answer, "I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear,"

but I really would like to stop working forever--never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now--and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I'd like to keep living with someone -- maybe even a man -- and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence. Then he said "Well, why don't you?" I asked him what the American Psychoanalytic Association would say about that, and he said . . . if that is what you really feel would please you, what in the world is stopping you from doing it?

two beautiful moments

i received an email tonight from an old friend that said "can I tell you something? You remind me of people I haven't met yet. Does that make any sense?"

I thought about it,
and decided it didn't
make any sense
at all.

and that's exactly
how i knew
that thea understands me
perfectly.

08/08/08

on the most pleasant-sounding date of the year, we went to play the building.





and the building,
the building sounded good.

nyc, day before athrosocopy '07

in the morning

green
tea drinking

don't mean a thing

if you ain't got that swing.

doo wop. doo wop.

Baudelaire

1. L'Étranger

-- Qui aimes-tu le mieux, homme énigmatique, dis? ton père, ta mère, ta sur ou ton frère?

-- Je n'ai ni père, ni mère, ni sur, ni frère.

-- Tes amis?

-- Vous vous servez là d'une parole dont le sens m'est resté jusqu'à ce jour inconnu.

-- Ta patrie?

-- J'ignore sous quelle latitude elle est située.

-- La beauté?

-- Je l'aimerais volontiers, déesse et immortelle.

-- L'or?

-- Je le hais comme vous haïssez Dieu.

-- Eh! qu'aimes-tu donc, extraordinaire étranger?

-- J'aime les nuages ... les nuages qui passent ... là-bas ... là-bas ... les merveilleux nuages!

1. The Stranger

-- Tell me, enigmatic man, whom do you love the best? Your father, or your mother, or your sister, or your brother?

-- I have neither father, nor mother, nor sister, nor brother.

-- Your friends?

-- You are using a word whose meaning remains unknown to me to this very day.

-- Your country?

-- I do not know under what latitude it lies.

-- Beauty?

-- I would love her gladly, goddess and immortal.

-- Gold?

-- I hate it as much as you hate God.

-- Well then! What do you love, extraordinary stranger?

-- I love the clouds ... the passing clouds ... over there ... over there ... the marvelous clouds!

Spring Break Reading

On the eight o'clock news, Bruno Masure announced that an American study had detected signs of fossil life on Mars. The fossils were of bacterial organisms, probably-methane based archea. It seemed that biological macromolecules had succeeded in forming on earth's closest neighbor, giving rise to nebulous self-replicating life-forms consisting of a nucleus and an ill-defined membrane. It had all ended there, however, presumably the result of climatic changes that made reproduction increasingly difficult to sustain, until eventually it ceased entirely. The story of life on Mars was a modest one. However (and Bruno Masure did not seem to understand this), this brief, feeble misfire brutally refuted all the mythological and religious constructs in which the human race delights. There had been no unique, wondrous act of creation; no chosen people; no chosen species or planet; simply a series of tentative attempts, flawed for the most part, scattered across the universe. It was all so distressingly banal. 

-Page 102, The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq

gassho p.2

Fourteen days and there you are.

02/18/08

dearest friends,

Today marks the halfway point of my time here at the ZMM.

Although schedule-wise every week is the same as the one before it (except for next week's sesshin, but more on that in a bit), I think the consistency of the external daily experience serves to emphasize and highlight the mental, spiritual transformations and changes that happens within.

I feel like meditation practice is awakening a subtle and yet unmistakable layer of mental calmness. It's been fascinating to see how the mindfulness I've been cultivating during meditation somehow transfers over to my everyday living without any sort of deliberate, conscious effort on my part. It's hard to explain, I feel acutely more focused, more aware, more in tune in what's happening around me.

an interesting side note. maybe it was obvious, maybe it wasn't, but there are women here. It's probably a 60/40 split, and just like the guys, ages range from mid 20's to late 80's. Another twist, which was quite a surprise to me, is that this place is far from celibate. Many of the monks here are married (to other resident monks, of course), but even the lay practitioners are allowed to maintain relationships. I think the reason behind it is the abbot here realized (correctly, in my opinion) that denying the very natural relationships that develop between human beings living together ends up being more of a distraction than simply allowing them to exist, although with the absolutely mandatory condition of stability. There are certain rules that must be followed concerning the nature of relationships, where and how they develop and so on, but just the fact that the powers that be here take the enlightened approach of redirecting and channeling that relationship energy into something beautiful and spiritual rather than trying to flat out suppress it (the simpleminded, life-denying approach many organized religions are all to ready to embrace) is just one more reason this place makes sense to me on so many levels. It's so refreshing to be in a spiritual community where for once the focus isn't on shoving some rigid dogma or backwards morality down your throat, but rather providing you with the tools and and the environment to look within and realize your own truths.

a bit of philosophical musings. Buddhist ethics suggest that any act is not inherently good or bad in and of itself. What matters far more than what you do is the intent behind it. To make a direct relation to life, the act of using drugs or alcohol is not inherently good or bad. What matters is the intention behind it. Why am I taking this substance? Out of curiosity? To have fun? To escape my day-to-day reality? To offer some sort of variation into my otherwise dull day? Just to chill out for a bit with my friends? Going through process of asking myself these questions and seeking a true, undistorted answer has been quite eye-opening. It's like I'm suddenly gleaning a great deal of insight into why I do what I do, why I act how I act. My "self", that so-called ego, has been so very crafty at producing myths for me to believe, doing what it can to divert my attention from any sort of serious introspection. It seems to me that we humans often go through our reasoning process backwards. We start off with the conclusion we'd like to come to, such as "Judaism is the right religion" or "Christianity is the right religion" or "Marijuana is harmful" or "Marijuana is harmless", and then let our minds come up with arguments and rationalizations supporting the conclusion we were already predisposed to believe in the first place. How silly is that? It's so hard to cut through the bullshit because our egos have got such a tight grip on our minds, but through practicing meditation that grip becomes looser and looser, our egos dissolve more and more, until we get to the point where we can see things just as they are, without the distorted lenses and filters our preconceived notions and opinions add on.

So yeah, my hosan break will be just about over in an twenty minutes and I'll soon be starting another monastic week, which should interesting. The week after this one though, my last week here, when the previously alluded to sesshin begins, is when things are going to start to get really interesting. Sesshin is essentially what happens when you take the daily meditation practice here and crank it up a hundredfold in intensity. For one, the entire seven-day period is done in complete silence. From wake-up till lights out, there is no social interaction whatsoever. This is to allow you to maintain a degree of focus on your practice and on your mind that could never be reached in normal everyday life. No breaks, no reading, no writing. and so on. As you would imagine, the time we spend in sitting meditation is also greatly increased. Instead of the 1 1/2 hours we normally do in the morning and in the evening, during sesshin there is about 10 hours of zazen everyday. Wowee. If meditation has proved to be intense thus far, I can only imagine...

What else? Study here is based on sort a training matrix called The Eight Gates of Zen. The basic idea is that zen practice, although centered primarily on zazen, needs to be approached and penetrated from several different aspects of human life. So along with meditation practice and work practice, there's also academic study, body practice, and art practice. The new monthlong residents (that being Joel, Arkadiy, Lynn, and myself) were assigned the task of producing a piece of art that expresses the "suchness" of an object. So a couple days ago, when we were given an hour off from work practice, I threw on my hiking boots and ventured off into the streams and rivers that surround this place. I tried to use some ideas that have been floating around in my head concerning shutter speed to reflect the "suchness" of the photograph's subject as well as the newfound sense of calm that I feel has been gradually cultivating in my mind. I've attached a few. i'd love to hear your thoughts.

And on that note, I'm off and about for another week of mental exploration. be well friends. always in my heart.

~ofer

I'm going back tomorrow for the first time since I left. There's so many old friends I can't wait to see, but something tells me more then half of them won't be there anymore.

gassho: retrospective

I was scrolling through some old emails when I found a letter I sent to my home friends about a year ago while I was in residency at Zen Mountain Monastery over in Mt. Tremper, New York. I had just finished my first week there, and wrote the email while still glowing, basking in awe of the whole situation. Living the monastic life was always this romanticized dream of mine, and suddenly there I stood, robes and all, smiling with the thought of embarking on some sort of dramatic spiritual adventure. I was several weeks away from the silent intensive weeklong sesshin retreat, which was when both my meditation practice and sanity were truly pushed to their limit. No, this is just a written capture of a first week filled with new people, new places, new ideas, new rituals, new practices, new mindset, fully of excitement with not a clue about what was to come.

02/15/08

dearest friends,

It's only been six days since I've arrived at the zen mountain monastery but it's already quite clear to me this next month will easily be one of the most meaningful and transformative four weeks in the nineteen yearlong saga I call my life. This email is my first attempt at quantifying what exactly has happened since I've gotten here, and trying to put my experience into words is already proving harder than I had imagined. It's almost as if words could never do justice to the feeling of being here, existing here. It might sound like an unnecessary exaggeration but I truly feel I've learned more about myself, about the world, about reality in the past week than I have in last year. This is one of the most difficult, intense, and rewarding things i've ever done, but just the thought of having three more weeks to live here brings a smile to my face.

I'm surrounded every day with an unbelievably intelligent, fascinating group of people. Doctors, chemists, psychotherapists, astrophysicists (!), professors, world-class dancers, and philosophy graduate students, all who put their careers and lives on hold to live in this place and dedicate their life to seeking out the answers to the most basic and fundamental questions about human life. Who am I? What is the nature of self? What is the ultimate nature of reality? Every person here has his or her own incredible, unique life story, but in the end everyone in this community is linked by their intense devotion to pursuing these questions.

As inadequate and lacking as my description with inevitably be, I'm going to do my best to give you an idea of what life's like here. I live in a cabin up in the woods with three other guys who, like me, are doing a one month residency here: Joel, a 34 year old Montrealian, Arkadiy, a 22 year college grad on his way to med school, and Roy, a 47 former Bank of America executive who quit his job a year ago after realizing the $160,000 salary-big house-fancy car aristocratic life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Anyway, wake up call is 4:45. we wake up in silence, which we maintain until after morning meditation is over. Wake up, dress up, short hike over to the monastery, little bit of time to grab some tea or coffee downstairs, after which we're robed up and ready at the zendo for an hour and a half of zen meditation between 5:30 and 7:00.

a sidenote on zazen:
I don't think there's much out there more difficult to master than zen meditation. To sit completely still and silently for an 1 1/2 hours is demanding enough as it is, but the real challenge happens inside. I wish I could do a better job at explain this practice to you, but essentially in zazen the practitioner directs all his awareness and attention on the breath. breath coming in, breath coming out. breath coming in, breathing coming out. not judging the breath, not thinking about the breath, just complete and total awareness of it. this is easier said than done. if you try and quiet your mind down, even for a minute, you'll notice seemingly random thoughts will come up. perhaps they concern the past, perhaps they concern the future, perhaps they even consider the very present itch on your right ear but regardless of their content they will come up, tantalizing you, offering all sorts of sensational thoughts luring you to pursue them. its almost as if the mind is rebelling against you and will find ways to entertain itself at all costs. instead of latching on and letting the thoughts carry us off to all sorts of fantasies and daydreams as they usually do, the idea is to recognize the thought, let it go, and return the breath. this happens time and time again, but as time goes on one develops samadhi, single-pointedness of the mind. the benefit of this is being able to direct the mind's complete attention and awareness on whatever we want, whenever we need to. we transfer over this type of awareness to other aspects of our day during work-practice, but more on that in a bit. watching the mind's behavior during such intense stillness is quite eye opening, and i finally understand what all my tibet instructor brian meant when they said the types of insights gained about the workings of the mind through meditation really defy description, and really need to be experienced first-hand to be understood.

in addition, in succeeding to replace that seemingly constant stream of thoughts, that internal monologue with pure, focused awareness, something quite interesting happens. When thoughts cease, thinking ceases. When thinking ceases, the thinker himself ceases to exist. When the thinker, what we often readily identify as 'self' ceases to exist, what is left? something amazing, something fascinating, something beyond my ability to describe and qualify in words, all i know is that for the flashes of moments i've felt it, it was a state of consciousness beyond anything i've ever experienced before. one thing's for sure: there is far more to our minds than our everyday lives, so consumed in constant movement and thought, allow us to see.

After dawn zazen, we all eat breakfast together, and at 8:15 work practice begins. during work practice every resident is assigned a job related to the maintenance of the monastery. Work practice is done in silence, as the idea is to transfer the complete focus cultivated during meditation over to the tasks we do in every day life. As in, if i'm putting stamps on envelopes, i focus my complete and total awareness on the process of putting stamps of envelopes without letting myself get caught up in that internal monologue. Same idea: thought comes up, see it, recognize it, let it go, return to the task at hand. Fortunately my work practice has been far more interesting and useful than stamping. I've spent the majority of my time working either in the shed, where I'm developing my newly-discovered carpentry skills planing, cutting, sanding, staining wood to be used for beds, tables, and a variety of other purposes, or in the kitchen helping Seiken, this year's elected cook to make lunch and dinner. I can't wait to come back and blow everyone away with some mindblowing tempeh or crunchy, crispy perfection of the seitan i now know how to prepare. A carpenter and a cook! hah! We eat dinner at noon and recommence with work practice until 5. Between 5 and 6 we have the only completely unscheduled hour in the day to do whatever, which is usually when i try to fit my reading in. Dinner is at 6, and at 7:30 we begin evening zazen until 9. by 9:30 i'm back in the cabin and it's lights out. i usually fall asleep asap, since i know i'll be up at 4:45 the following day.
There is a weekly break. Sunday afternoon until Tuesday afternoon is called hosan. We break off the monastery schedule and everyone is free to go and do whatever they'd like to do. Last night was the first night we've had off since i got here, and so me, doug, will, lynn, and arikady drove up to nearby woodstock, ny, of woodstock fame. It was a wonderful wonderful night. We went to an anti-superbowl party at a local bar, kicked it with a couple beers, and enjoyed an unexpectedly talented series of local musicians. although that beside arikady i'm easily the youngest person here by at least a decade, it's been a complete non-issue and i really just feel exceptionally fortunate to be spending time with these incredible people. there's no doubt in my mind i'm going to be returning back here in the summer. for someone whose been seeking a way to get in touch with the bigger picture, to deepen his/her understanding of reality, to throw away illusions and really investigate the nature of the self, this is it. this is mostly definitely it.

I love you all dearly.

~ofer