Mark Foote

A friend suggested this, last night. I do love Boz Scaggs:

human nature. Hats off to Nungali and Jung for already complifying "human nature", but I thought I'd give everyone else a chance.

My thanks to all the Dao Bums, for the inspiration. New post: “The Place Where You Stop and Rest”

The water is clear right through to the bottom; A fish goes lazily along. The sky is vast without horizon; A bird flies far far away. ("Lancet of Seated Meditation", Hongzhi Zhengjue [by imperial designation the Chan Master Spacious Wisdom], tr. Carl Bielefeldt, "Dōgen’s Manuals of Zen Meditation", p 200)

have a cup of tea I'm sick of tea, can't we have all the forms filled out

emptiness is form from one moment to the next have a cup of tea

My abbreviation of Gautama's four "arisings of mindfulness"--he was even harping on about the four arising just before he checked out: 1) Relax the activity of the body, in inhalation and exhalation; 2) Find a feeling of ease and calm the senses connected with balance, in inhalation and exhalation; 3) Appreciate and detach from thought, in inhalation and exhalation; 4) Look to the free location of consciousness for the automatic activity of the body, in inhalation and exhalation. What has that got to do with the "profound knowledge", or "intuitive wisdom", that Gautama cited as the essential ingredient of enlightenment--bearing in mind that enlightenment to Gautama implied the complete destruction of the craving for sense-pleasures, the craving “to continue, to survive, to be” (tr. “bhava”, Bhikkyu Sujato), and the craving not “to be” (the craving for the ignorance of being)? Not a lot, since Gautama said the mindfulness that was his way of living was his way of living before he was enlightened as well as afterward. Everything to do with "stopping", though, in my opinion. A unique aspect of Gautama's teaching was that he separated "stopping" with regard to habit and volition in inhalation and exhalation from "stopping" with regard to habit and volition in feeling and perceiving, and taught that the former preceded the latter. Nevertheless, as I am writing now: In one of his letters, twelfth-century Ch’an teacher Yuanwu wrote: Actually practice at this level for twenty or thirty years and cut off all the verbal demonstrations and creeping vines and useless devices and states, until you are free from conditioned mind. Then this will be the place of peace and bliss where you stop and rest. Thus it is said: “If you are stopping now, then stop. If you seek a time when you finish, there will never be a time when you finish.” (“Zen Letters: Teachings of Yuanwu”, tr. Cleary & Cleary, Shambala p 99) ... When the body rests from volition, so does the mind, even in the midst of activity. In my experience, that is how the “creeping vines” of the mind come to be cut off.

Tell 'em to stop, stirling--make 'em stop! The Master said to me: All the Buddhas and all sentient beings are nothing but the One Mind, beside which nothing exists. This Mind, which is without beginning, is unborn and indestructible. It is not green nor yellow, and has neither form nor appearance. It does not belong to the categories of things which exist or do not exist, nor can it be thought of in terms of new or old. It is neither long nor short, big nor small, for it transcends all limits, measures, names, traces and comparisons. It is that which you see before you–begin to reason about it and you at once fall into error. It is like the boundless void which cannot be fathomed or measured. The One Mind alone is the Buddha, and there is no distinction between the Buddha and sentient things, but that sentient beings are attached to forms and so seek externally for Buddhahood. By their very seeking they lose it, for that is using the Buddha to seek for the Buddha and using mind to grasp Mind. Even though they do their utmost for a full aeon, they will not be able to attain to it. They do not know that, if they put a stop to conceptual thought and forget their anxiety, the Buddha will appear before them, for this Mind is the Buddha and the Buddha is all living beings. It is not the less for being manifested in ordinary beings, nor is it greater for being manifested in the Buddhas. ("The Zen Teaching of Huang Po On the Transmission of Mind", tr. John Blofeld, Part One)

a true life-saver but what's a mother to do when the smile runs out?

In "Awareness Through Movement", Moshe Feldenkrais wrote: In most cases where an action is linked to a strong desire, the efficiency of the action may be improved by separating the aim from the means of achieving it. A motorist in a desperate hurry to reach his destination, for instance, will fare better if he entrusts the wheel to a man who is a good driver but not desperate to reach the destination in time. Serious obstacles to performance may occur when both the action and the achievement of the aim depend on the old section of the nervous system--old in the evolutionary sense--over which our control is involuntary. These actions might include sex, falling asleep, or evacuation of the bowels. The action may be performed as if the aim were the means, and sometimes as though the means were the aim. (HarperSanFrancisco paperback, 1990, pp 82-83) Feldenkrais used getting up out of a chair to illustrate his method of separating action from achievement of the aim. A recap, from a post I'm composing now for my own site: Moshe Feldenkrais wrote of how people can be unaware that they actually hold their breath in getting up from a chair. He explained why that is so: The tendency to hold one’s breath is instinctive, part of an attempt to prevent the establishment of shearing stresses or forces likely to shift the vertebrae horizontally, out of the vertical alignment of the spinal column that they constitute. (ibid, p 83) Feldenkrais described how the tendency to hold one’s breath in standing can be overcome: …When the center of gravity has really moved forward over the feet a reflex movement will originate in the old nervous system and straighten the legs; this automatic movement will not be felt as an effort at all. (ibid, p 78) Feldenkrais stipulated, there must be “no muscular effort deriving from voluntary control”: … there must be no muscular effort deriving from voluntary control, regardless of whether this effort is known and deliberate or concealed from the consciousness by habit. (ibid, p 76) My friends, how do you contact "reflex movement in the old nervous system", so as to keep your action separate from the achievement of the aim?

The card-carrying Theravadin monks are not allowed to kill them (so they get the novices to clean the water tanks). Learned that from Tim Ward's book, "The Great Dragon's Fleas". Good book, full of odd bits and pieces he gathered in traveling Southeast Asia in search of wisdom (and not really finding it).