Monkey See, Monkey Do

i read last night a really interesting critique of the american approach to zen buddhism, written by trungpa rinpoche in the myth of freedom. he wrote:

If we are to become the dharma without credentials [ego patting ourselves on the back], the introduction of boredom and repetitiousness is extremely important. Without it we have no hope. It is true - no hope.

There are definite styles of boredom. The Zen tradition in Japan creates a definite style of boredom in its monasteries. Sit, cook, eat. Sit zazen and do your walking meditation and so on. But to an American novice who goes to Japan or takes part in traditional Japanese practice in this country, the message of boredom is not communicated properly. Instead, if I may say so, it turns into a militant appreciation of rigidity, or an aesthetic appreciation of simplicity, rather than actually being bored, with is strange. Actually it was not designed to be that way. To the Japanese, Zen practice is an ordinary Japanese life&en;situation in which you just do your daily work and sit a lot of zazen. But Americans appreciate the little details &em; how you use your bowl and how you eat consciously in zazen posture. This is only supposed to create a feeling of boredom, but to American students it is a work of art. Cleaning your bowl, washing it out, folding your white napkin and so forth, becomes living theater. The black cushion is supposed to suggest no color, complete boredom. But for Americans it inspires a mentality of militant blackness, straightforwardness.”

i think trungpa here runs the risk of turning boredom into just as interesting as zen buddhists turn detail awareness into another self identification. i remember the first time i read this instruction, i sat down on the pillow and i sought out boredom. not hot boredom, where i was restless and thinking about all the things i had to do, but cold boredom like a stream washing over me. but i was identifying with that boredom, my ego had the attitude of ‘look what i’ve done! i’m doing it right, it’s like i have a stream washing over me. good job!’ but in truth the instruction is to make friends with just what is and how it is without struggling with it. to see anxiousness and agitation is it arises, and understand our nature better. this requires being ok to be bored, because that energy is harder to witness when we’re excited or engaged.

i was dreaming last night often about how i feel when talking to strangers. i had sort of a running commentary about how i feel in those situations and how i criticize myself about it, in a few different dreams. the big hurdle for me in that is avoiding saying the wrong thing. it’s not like i constantly trip up or have tourettes, but the fear of a mistake is debilitating.

one approach to this fear is to build up a repertoire of small talk, and chat to people on the train or wherever as a form of practice. but i think that’s an aggressive approach, which thinks of the fear as a problem that i need to deal with and dispose of. like i should perform surgery on my heart, and cut out the offending parts.

what i’d like to do instead is touch on the fear when it comes up and just use the raw energy of it to wake up more, but not identify with the issue and use it as another self criticism.

friends will now say, “what are you talking about? you’re really social and friendly! i’ve seen you talk to tons of strangers.” true, but talking to strangers is really juicy for me and brings up a lot of fear.

ok, a very strange thing happened to me on the train this morning. i received a flirtatious infrared message on my phone that read “Better than the bus! ;-)” then another “Do you take the train often?”

now the advantage of infrared i guess is that you can send a note to anyone with the hardware to receive it, but the disadvantage is i had NO IDEA who was sending these. i was pretty sure it wasn’t the old lady across from me. i appreciated the anonymous flirtation but it was frustrating now knowing who was flirting with me.

i tried to beam back some acknowledgment, but my phone could not find anyone to connect to no matter what direction i pointed it. the last message, with just “Bye!”, came in as some folks were getting off the train. my admirer disappeared into the ether.

danah posted about her squirmishness receiving complements and that resonated for me too. i have a hard time receiving them, receiving presents, receiving pretty much anything.

i’m trying to improve my awareness of giving feedback to people and how they appreciate it too. especially at work. often i think “that was clever” or “good approach” around the office but i generally don’t think to verbalize it. there does seem to me the potential for an up-down tone to any feedback like that. like you could add an approving inflection, as if to say “that was better than i expected of you, you poor thing”. which of course would take some honest and unbiased viewpoint and turn it into a form of scorn or aggression.

so insofar as i’m trying to be more complementary, or share more of my thoughts with friends, i’m also trying to make sure it comes without any of the additional ego-centric up-down, good-bad view; just open hearted, open minded feedback. at least that’s the ideal.

but my shyness receiving complements or attention (like ‘happy birthday’ apparently) is probably something entirely different. most likely a defense against a vulnerability to my heart. i think i used to take each complement as just a checkpoint against my self image. i would thank the person but the complement wouldn’t really reach my emotional world. keeping it analytical like that was like armor, keeping friends or coworkers at a safe distance. but the last few years of conscious effort to strip away that armor is leaving me even more sensitive. the slightest comment touches me now, and it’s sometimes very overwhelming. and i’m not used to unexpected intimacy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3430481.stm - about a parrot with a 950 word vocabulary, who could perhaps best me at scrabble.

http://duvel.lowtem.hokudai.ac.jp/~jim/avalanche/miyanomori/miyanomori.html - the ping pong ball avalanche project (not exactly sure what they were studying.)

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/vfshtml/vfshome.html - recorded in the early 1900’s, library of congress MP3-ed voice recordings from former slaves, about their lives.

ok, i’m tired of getting email worms today, my running count is now 50 copies of the latest worm in my inbox since it started at about lunch on Monday.

i was cursing microsoft for this today, but that’s a big place and there are many good folks there. i’ll focus ire at the email clients specifically. worms like this should have been prevented a long time ago. sure, people have to double click on attachments, but why are attachments still given so much trust by default? virus writers have already made any and all attachments suspicious. email clients, and Windows as well, should effectively firewall non-trusted content. The non-action of those developers to combat this is a travesty.

i finally upgraded my blog to a more modern back end and layout. i’m using wordpress now, which the latest version of the free php blog b2. everyone and their mom uses movable type these days, but i’m more comfortable hacking php than perl. the conversion from greymatter was super simple. the stylesheet still needs work. and i won’t have all the features figured out for awhile.

thanks to john and danah for periodically poking me to get RSS feeds. that was great motivation. i also wanted to go tableless for the layout.

let me know what y’all think!

the photographer of the Russian Tsar, pre 1911, took these pictures using color lenses in red, green, and blue - then composited now into full color images. they’re beautiful; magic to me because i never expected to see such detail from over 100 years ago.

i’m still fighting a cold, coughing mostly now, which is affording more time than usual to sit on my rear.

as a result i found this gem of a short film. you should really give it a whirl.

had good advice today to avoid sitting in bed all day, and get some small things done so i feel like it wasn’t a complete wash. i sorted my pile of DVD’s to sell and VHS tapes to convert to digital. watching the cheesy but personal favorite films The Fifth Element and Last of the Mohicans really helped me take it easy today. but finishing one small portion of my ongoing reduce-stuff-i-don’t-need project did really help my mood.

i just watched live by webcam the nasa control room for the opportunity rover landing. i didn’t realize that the craft would send signals back the whole time. every few seconds it reported how fast it was going and key events like deploying it’s parachute or firing retro-rockets.

as i type this, opportunity is still rolling on its airbags across the martian surface. just amazing.