Originally, the third day events were going focused on the Buddhist Geeks podcast and doing a panel, followed by getting lunch. Unfortunately, at the last minute, Vince had to go to California so the original event had to be cancelled. Jun Po Roshi did a morning meditation session and some last minute teaching and summing up instead. Since we had spent most of the day before and Friday evening with him, that worked out just fine though it made the event, outside of Stuart’s concert, really a Jun Po weekend workshop. That isn’t a complaint but I had hoped for a little more diversity and had been looking forward to the panel.

There isn’t much to say about the morning session. We had had a snowstorm on Saturday afternoon and evening, which continued overnight, so transportation was slightly more problematic. Once everyone had shown up in the morning (and we had a bit of attrition), we did a meditation session followed by more Qigong. Jun Po Roshi then discussed the work that we had done the bit before, working with people to make sure they understood what we had been doing and clarifying questions that people had about the practice, how it worked, etc.

Following this, we collected our Stuart Davis Dharmapalooza 2009 swag, which was extensive (lots of CDs and some art) while giving him shit for whoring himself. A large group of us left Boulder Integral and went to lunch together at a little Czech-run greasy spoon. It was a good chance to continue to talk to people. Out of the group of people attending this weekend, I would say that most were not specifically Buddhists of any sort. We seemed to draw the crowd largely from Boulder Integral, which is the organization drawing on Ken Wilber’s work. Fortunately, I’ve read Wilber’s work, for the most part, and can follow the jargon, which was useful for discussions. Boulder Integral’s space is a converted church and very nice though I’m not sure how my “First Church of Ken Wilber” comment went over. All in all, a nice group of people with a decent sense of humor and good intentions.

I’m planning on attending on of the “Mondo Zen” seven day retreats run by Jun Po during this next year. They are doing one in Santa Rosa, a bit over an hour from me, in January but I cannot attend that since I’ll be in Hawaii with my wife on a long awaited vacation (our first since my protracted illness). Jun Po thought that they would do another later in the year.

A few people have asked me about what I thought of things or asked me questions based on my comments here. I’d really have to have more time and exposure to Jun Po’s different way of teaching things to form a really solid impression of his program or curriculum. I liked what I saw but, more than that, I felt a real connection to Jun Po and his presence. Despite some comments I’ve seen about Jun Po’s earlier drug experiments (which he seems unabashed in acknowledging), he felt really solid to me, a real and vibrant presence committed to practicing the Dharma and teaching it. None of the Dharma that he taught felt wrong when it was presented nor on my later reflection. It was perfectly in line with Zen as I’ve discovered and learned it, just open and willing to try new methods of teaching. I plan to delve deeper into it.

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As we all know, people will generally use online tools for the banal and titillating. This should surprised no one and really doesn’t bear much comment. That’s the nature of a lot of human activity, online or not. The fact that the person is effectively criticizing SL for being a virtual environment (in other words, not being the physical world) completely misses the fact that this is both amazing obvious if you use it and that it is simply a tool for people to interact. It seems quite silly to criticize the environment for being like any other artificial construct and to ignore the fact that there are people repurposing it to spread the Dharma. Kannonji is making a real effort to track down Zen teachers, work with them to create a avatar and get oriented in SL, and to give them a venue to do Dharma talks and teach to a largely hungry and receptive audience. To criticize this with, effectively, “Go get a real life” just misses the point of things.

I’m quite excited by the chance to hear and interact verbally with interesting Buddhist teachers that I might not otherwise meet. I can’t see how this is in any way negative, despite the other uses that people make of Second Life.

It is even more ironic when the person doing so does it on a blog dedicated to pirating Buddhist materials anonymously and bans everyone who posts a criticism from their blog.

Update: It seems “Leaf Dharma” wasn’t happy with banning commenters that disagreed but decided to delete all of the comments. Probably for the best considering the rather nasty tone in them towards other people that disagreed with his/her take on Second Life and the name calling from him/her. I’m reposting the original post below before LD deletes the whole thing, just so I have permanent context here:

The following is a true story of my trip to a false world.

Many of us spend far to much time on computers, a prime example of this is the world I am going to expose in this article.

Let me tell you of the sad reality of Second Life. In case your not familiar with Second Life its a virtual world where über good looking people in tank tops and fishnet stockings run around having virtual sex, virtual lives and virtual Buddhism. In this virtual world there exists a few Buddhist Sanghas.

This false reality must be experienced to truly understand what the hell I’m talking about. Yesterday I read the post on Wild Fox Zen about Dosho Mike Ports up coming trip to teach at this Sangha, so in order to wrap my head around this concept I decided to visit this world myself.
I found my way to this Kannonji Temple in Second Life and was very helpfully told how to clothe my Avatar (That’s the word for my false self in this game) and how to navigate this world. I voice chatted with with the resident monk (aka: Admin) about various Dharma subjects, mostly chit chat. Later I explored some of the non-Buddhist areas, which amounts to 99.9% of the reality and came away with the wisdom of never returning. On exiting I decided to return to Buddha Land and explore their private little space.

I noticed several buildings that looked like houses and in fact they were. Private little dwellings decked out with ikea like furniture and every new age cliche accessory. In two of these dwellings were actual people. Meaning real people sitting in front of there computers. I knocked on one door for several minutes, noticing that someone was inside. Finally an androgynous hippie answered and let me explore his/her home. They did not feel like chatting, perhaps because they wanted their Avatar to have some peace and quiet. (I roll my eyes at the irony of that).

I then noticed the other house had two people in it as well. I let myself into the house, some thing the real world does not allow, to find two Aryan like people embracing in what I could only imagine to be the beginning of some real world self loving. I was then informed that this was a private residence and I should leave. Their pet Albino tiger also seemed annoyed that I was there.

I had my Avatar sit on their expensive ikea-like sofa to relax from a hard day of flying around Virtual Buddha Statues. I was then informed by the Matthew McConaughey Avatar to please leave “this is a private gathering and that his father had just died.” Now when someone tells you in the “Real world” that their Father just died and they would like some privacy I usually leave. However in a world dominated by ones and zeros and cyber zen monks who manage the private orgies, I have a hard time being serious.

So, flying up stairs (lol) to the beautiful King size virtual bed with a great view of the digital Buddha I decided to take a virtual nap. Unfortunately the cyber tiger was growling at me making it impossible and to make matters worse the head Zen dude showed up at the house and demanded I leave. I was then told I was banned from receiving anymore Dharma lessons in their uh, Sangha. No doubt because my Avatar looked to much like Ken Wilbur.

Exiting Second Life I came back to my first life with this bit of wisdom:

If your using Second Life as an excuse to avoid your first life, no amount of Virtual Buddhism is going to get you out. People in that world that come to that Cyber Sangha looking for a community to chat with or sit with have really got a screw loose and need Psychotherapy. I understand that various teachers have been using the “environment” of Second Life to give talks and that the medium allows several people to interact that would not be able to be there in person. It was even rationalized as a venue for people with disability’s to join and be part of a Sangha. All valid points.

My take on it is this. How many veils of Illusion do I need to pile up on reality in order to see it properly? Out your front door is a vast blue sky. Across the street are humans raking leaves. Talk to them, they are your Sangha. Engage yourself in real activities that don’t involve computers. Smell real flowers. Walk in the cold air. Eat a real apple not in front of some distraction. Be present in this world.

To the Internet Monks that selflessly moderate the Second Life Cyber Temple. Sitting for vast stretches in front of there computers waiting for lost souls to show up or trouble makers to ban, I leave these final words:

As I left the Virtual world I stopped at another Buddhist Community in Second Life and came across some ironic wisdom written on a wall:

Let me respectfully remind you

Life and death are of supreme importance

Time swiftly passes by, and opportunity is lost.

Each of us should strive to awaken…

Awaken…

Take heed, do not squander your life.

Original (now deleted) comments on Leaf Dharma’s post:

Tao said…

Wow they have rules and conduct. How Mu Zen.
November 16, 2009 4:30 AM

Leaf Dharma said…

I wish I had a record of the trash talk you spouted during our conversation. All I heard from you was the scandals of “this Teacher” and how “that teacher” did such and such. It was like visiting Melrose Place. As for my “conduct” I make no excuses. I think someone needs to come into your twisted little world and shake the shit from your head.

Metta.
November 16, 2009 4:30 AM

Caspian Inglewood said…

Well you are obviously free to paint the events however it is you would like. Why did you carry yourself “differently” because you were in a “false environment” and act insensitive toward a man who had just lost his father? Is there a button one pushes whereupon they turn their personal ethics on and off, according to how they perceive the reality they are experiencing.

“I think someone needs to come into your twisted little world and shake the shit from your head.”

While I am grateful for your aspiration, and do not doubt your motives, it never hurts to have some tact in one’s approach. As for the gossip we engaged in earlier in the night, you certainly seemed a participating party. There were also a few teachers you mentioned. We were just discussing some common stuff that crops up frequently when looking at Buddhism in the West. Teacher/student relationships and the ethics involved in such matters. In fact, I recall you mentioning a few names, as well. At any rate, the things we discussed are all common knowledge really. But this is neither here nor there.

I do have a question for you, however. Where is this separation you speak of between your conduct in “everyday life” with the blue sky outside of your door you speak of and the “everyday life” of sitting before your computer? Why would this specific act necessitate a shift in personal conduct and why would you admittedly act insensitive toward an individual you admit you would not have were it a so-called “real” encounter?
November 16, 2009 4:48 AM

Leaf Dharma said…

I’m sorry I missed your point. Perhaps we need to enter the fake world so you can explain to me what “real” compassion is. Then our Avatars can hug and make it all better.

As for me “Painting the events” if I had anything to hide your comments would not appear. I may make light of the events in my description but they all happened that way, or did they happen at all? Hmmmm, did that cyber turd I left in your Garden really manifest into compost? Did you perceive in your false reality the Karma I created?

I think more than anything you like to talk. That’s why spent 24/7 in front of your computer in that world, which is my point.
Grab some reality dude. You can have the last word, because I know your type.
November 16, 2009 5:12 AM

Leaf Dharma said…

Thats funny that that you respect people you dont even know Al. Another classic case of a lack of real world interaction. I’m afraid you wont find what your looking for here so you should just move along.

The only confused person is you Adam (Real Name as he likes to pretend). I dont spend 18 hrs glued to computer. You can continue to justify your half existence as long as you want.
November 16, 2009 11:40 AM

Leaf Dharma said…

PS: Your Banned from my world too.

Update 2: John Julian wrote to me with the following and gave permission to share it here to add another perspective on Leaf Dharma’s post and actions in Second Life:

Thank you for this blog. I am the person who ‘owns’ the cabin, and yes, my father did die last night. I was due in Second Life to catch up with friends so had just gone ‘on line’ and was sitting with a friend talking about my father.

The person who wrote the blog in question came in. I explained to him my situation and asked him to leave. I have a full copy of the conversation and the very rude remarks he made about my friend. I am not sure what needs he was meeting, but I did not feel any compassion. He refused to leave and after three requests my friend called in the manager who rewound the script of the conversation and acted.

SL, in parts, does have its seamier side. However, most of the top universities have islands in there and I also have a classroom in there to teach. The world’s largest businesses also have sites there. It is simply a new way of meeting. I also support the good works at Kannonji.

I was introduced to SL after my real life partner was able to gain 24 our support from the cancer support group in Second Life when she had cancer.

I am also quite happy to identify my real life identity – John Julian, Melbourne Australia – in order to ensure that any further harm by people like this is reduced. The notices about my fathers death will shortly appear in the newspapers.

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Dharmapalooza 2009 Day 2 started at a pretty sedate time of 9:30 AM. This gave me time to walk the mile to the space, getting a rare coffee along the way (zen sit + air travel + morning = double americano).

Today was an all day sit and instruction with Jun Po Roshi of Mondo Zen. Jun Po does things a little differently than other Zen teachers I’ve seen (though I don’t know that I’ve ever sat with a Rinzai teacher before). We did relatively short sitting periods of 20 minutes separated by 10 minutes of Qigong practice instead of Kinhin. He said that they have found that it loosens people up, gets their energy moving and helps with the meditation more than just doing walking meditation.

After a few initial sitting periods, we continued the discussion from the previous night in the “Mondo Zen” methods of working with “Emotional Koans” that Jun Po and others have developed. Effectively, this is a kind of dialogue work combined with meditation. During this process, Jun Po had three poor victims (I mean “volunteers”) come up front to demonstrate the process. We then broke up into pairs to work on the same methods with each other. This process continued throughout the day.

I found it interesting though I would really need much more time with it to evaluate it. The training manual that we were using can be found here and I plan to read it in the next week as time permits. I may attend the seven day sesshin that Jun Po is running in Sonoma some time next year if the times work out. For their sesshins, they spend much of the day doing the standard meditation work but also several hours of this emotional work and a couple of hours of body work (yoga, tai chi or other arts).

After spending the day with Jun Po, a number of us went out to dinner at a nearby pub (The Hungry Toad) that Stuart Davis recommended to us. We then travelled through the snow to his concert and spent a couple of hours listening to him play, rant, and tell amusing stories. All in all, it was a pretty interesting day and a fairly fun evening. I’m not typically one for folk music and I hadn’t heard Stu play before but I enjoyed his music and had a good time at the event.

I took a few videos during the Stuart Davis show. My microphone on my little camera got a little overloaded but, hey, if you want to know what he sounds like when playing, this is still ok. You can see it below or here in High Definition.

Day 3 will be a morning and early afternoon event. Originally, it was going to be a Buddhist Geeks panel but Vince had to go to Los Angeles on short notice so I believe that we will be doing more work with Jun Po instead. In the evening, I’m flying back to Oakland to return to my normal life with this Rocky Mountain adventure behind me.

Updated: Fixed bad html for a link that messed up post and added video of Stuart Davis.

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The event is a combination of a Zen site with Jun Po Roshi of Mondo Zen and the Hollow Bones Order with a concert by Stuart Davis. Given Davis’ connection with Zen, it makes a bit of sense and this is the fifth Dharmapalooza that he has organized.

Today, we did a short sit with Jun Po with some discussion on his approach to Zen and the meditation method that he wanted to use during the all day session tomorrow. He seems to be following an approach that embraces the somatic, body centered methods, as well as some of the “voices” therapeutic techniques. We’ll see how that works in practice. While his methods are outside the common ones that we find in Zen, I did get a sense that he is fairly serious and solid (he didn’t come off as terribly fringe) and I liked what I experienced of him. I did not previously realize that he was the “Mondo Zen” guy, who I had heard interviewed a while back on Buddhist Geeks (see part 1 and part 2).

After the sit, we all went out to dinner together at a nearby Himalayan restaurant. I got to finally meet Ryan and Vince of Buddhist Geeks (though Vince is doing it out on his own now) after all of these years of talking to them online. I also got a chance to talk to Stuart Davis for a bit. I told him about how before our last Zen retreat, those of us attending the retreat had sat down to watch his “Zen and the Zen of Zen” video, which led to many inappropriate jokes and thoughts during the retreat, itself. Stuart had the high point of hilarity of the evening when we all sat down as a group to sit. With a loud and fairly distinctive sound, he managed to rip his tight rocker jeans from thigh to crotch when he sat down on the cushion, which he freely announced to those who had missed it. He muttered some comments about calling it the “wormhole” when we were at dinner.

So far, a fun event. I’m looking forward to tomorrow though my back and neck are already aching at the thought of it. Jun Po is definitely of the school of Zen thought that says to suck up the pain of sitting and not move at all. We’ll see how that goes.

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The essential difference, it seemed to me, was that science fiction occurs in a knowable universe. Human beings may or may not be smart enough to figure out the rules, but a strong enough intelligence could. But the fantasy universe is ultimately unknowable. At its heart lies mystery. And this mystery is essentially religious in nature. That’s one of the charms of fantasy, the ability to play with spiritual ideas without the moral pitfalls of doing so in the real world. It is also, incidentally, why fantasy worlds that start from a set of rules for magic will so often feel a lot like science fiction. What makes magic fantastic is that it punches a hole in our perception of what is and is not possible, that it takes us beyond the realm of mere rules.

I found this to be an incredibly interesting and insightful comment as a lifelong reader of science fiction and fantasy. It also shows some of the mind that has made him one of my favorite authors.

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You can take a look at it below or on Youtube (in much higher resolution). All of the individuals sitting on cushions as (possibly) goofy avatars are real people who logged into SL and came to the event, so we had a pretty good turnout for an online event.

You can see the second part of it on Youtube as well.

I want to thank Eti for capturing the video, editing it and putting it up. Thanks!

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A friend forwarded me an article today from the Journal of Neuroscience that discusses experiments that show that meditation can alter brain function and the ability to train attention. This is something that meditators know subjectively but which has not been validated extensively by the scientific community.

I really enjoy that these kinds of studies are being done. I hope to eventually see a feedback loop develop between this kind of scientific work and the work of practitioners where each reinforces the other. I believe it is possible that scientists may discover the physiological basis for the meditation techniques that have been worked out, through trial, error, and experience, by meditators over the last few thousand years. This may even lead to improved meditation techniques eventually because with a more concrete understanding of what is happening in the brain, we may be able to develop more refined practices that use this knowledge.

Meditation training can enhance the stability of our attention through reducing cortical “noise”

Several groups collaborate to show that meditation training can can significantly affect attention and brain function.

Abstract:

The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to-trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether the ability to sustain attention and its underlying brain circuitry are transformable through training. Here, we show, with dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography, that training attention, as cultivated by meditation, can improve the ability to sustain attention. Three months of intensive meditation training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, as indicated by both enhanced theta-band phase consistency of oscillatory neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Furthermore, those individuals who showed the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behavioral response variability. Notably, we also observed reduced variability in neural processing, in particular in low-frequency bands, regardless of whether the deviant tone was attended or unattended. Focused attention meditation may thus affect both distracter and target processing, perhaps by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms, a mechanism important for controlling the content of attention. These novel findings highlight the mechanisms underlying focused attention meditation and support the notion that mental training can significantly affect attention and brain function.

The Journal of Neuroscience, October 21, 2009, 29(42):13418-13427; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1614-09.2009
Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence

You can read the paper here.

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I received the following e-mail from the H-Buddhism list today (a list for academic study of Buddhism), concerning a previously unknown controversy in the Zen community that revolves around a current living teacher:

I would like to announce a new paper “The Aitken-Shimano Letters” jointly written by Vladimir K., owner of the Zensite and myself, Stuart Lachs. The paper can be accessed at:

http://www.thezensite.com/ZenEssays/CriticalZen/Aitken_Shimano_Letters.html

This paper looks at a controversial aspect of Zen in America beginning in 1960 and continuing up to the present. The paper is based on what was until recently, the sealed section of the voluminous Robert Aitken Roshi collection of papers and letters at the University of Hawaii at Manoa library. It refers to letters between Robert Aitken Roshi and
Eido Shimano Roshi as well as between Aitken and his teachers Soen Nakagawa, Yasutani, and Yamada Roshis as well as letters to and from the wider American Zen community. The letters give an insight into the development of American Zen not usually available to the public.

Stuart Lachs
Oslo and New York

These letters, which are authenticated as being from the actual parties, accuse Eido Tai Shimano Roshi of sexual improprieties, of which a number of Zen teachers became aware at least by the mid-1990’s. This alleged misbehavior had apparently been going on since the 1960’s. Aitken Roshi and a number of other prominent Zen teachers asked for him asked Eido Tai Shimano Roshi to resign in the face of a pattern of misbehavior. To this day, he has still not done so and is considered a prominent and well-known Zen teacher.

You can read the entire essay on the matter at the above site and I encourage people to do so. I don’t do so out of some interest in tawdry gossip but because this has been a reoccurring pattern within the Buddhist community (not to mention Christian, Muslim, Jewish, and others at various points). My own school requires members in seminary to read “Shoes Outside the Door,” which documents the controversy at the San Francisco Zen Center with Richard Baker in order to make sure that those of us who becomes priests are well aware of the kinds of thing that have happened and to help prevent such misbehavior in the future. As the Catholic church has realized, sexual abuse or misbehavior needs to be confronted, not simply ignored and allowed to fester in the background, damaging the lives of people and the ability of us to transmit the Dharma.

We can do better than to allow this sort of thing to pass.

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In the last week, I have spent a bit of time in Second Life. For those who have been blissfully unaware, Second Life is a virtual world simulator. Think World of Warcraft but not as shiny and polished and, for the most part, not based around the idea of a game. People do have game areas in it but it is largely a creative chat medium.

I looked around Second Life a few years ago, found the software to be a bit buggy and the servers to be unreliable, and quit bothering. It seemed like a big time sink (and it still can be) without a lot of “there” there to bring me back. Just recently, that has changed a bit. I’ve heard during the last few months of a few Buddhist teachers running meetings in second life, doing instruction, and generally talking to people there about the Dharma.

Earlier this week, I heard about Kannonji, a virtual temple there. They have a blog up and run meetings and meditation sessions at their temple in second life every day. A day or so later, I found out that my own teacher, Jiun Foster, was going to conduct a teaching there this Saturday. In the course of setting that up and meeting Rev. Jiun, the kind folks at Kannonji donated space on their virtual land (which only exists because someone is paying a monthly rent to keep it around) to the Five Mountain Order, our Zen organization. This allows us to have a virtual zendo there for group meetings and teachings as well as interviews with teachers. As a result, I made a new SL account and have spent a bit of time meeting the folks there.

I’m actually quite hopeful for it as tool for spreading the Dharma, especially amongst folks who aren’t near practitioners or are, perhaps, too shy to just show up to a Dharma center and ask questions. If tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people can play things like World of Warcraft, these same people have computers beefy enough to log into Second Life. I’ve heard at least one person ask me about the utility of Second Life when compared to a flesh and blood sangha but, in many ways, that’s apples and oranges. A flesh and blood meeting with people, embodied in the world, is not going to be the same as virtual meeting. That said, quite a few groups of people are meeting over group voice chat, skype, and other tools, in order to support each other in the Dharma. Second Life is an additional tool in that sort of direction.

One nice thing about SL is that it supports voice, gestures, and a certain level of embodiment. I’m doing koan work with two members of our organization now and we’ve been experimenting with ways to work on koans when two of us (a student and teacher) are not local to each other, which is the case for most people in our order. The phone works fairly well. Skype with video, I am told, also works quite well. Email can work though it isn’t as spontaneous. Rev. Jiun and I tried some koan work yesterday and found that SL worked reasonbly well, though I expect video might nudge it out. Since you can have private voice conversations in SL, gesture, and also type text, it feels very practical. Does it replace meeting in person? No, that is the gold standard, in a way, but we also live in an era of a very distributed Dharma and the Five Mountain Order supports this with our embrace of working with members who may not have a local sangha. The Five Mountain Buddhist Seminary, as a distance-based Mahayana seminary, is another attempt at this.

It will be interesting to see where this all goes. The dork factor is a bit high at times (and I did buy a flaming demon avatar shape and a lightsaber to go along with my official "looks vaguely like me" Zen priest avatar and clothes) but it is an interesting environment.

I encourage people to come visit Kannonji if they can install a Second Life player. (You can find the official one here and, Emerald, the one I use, here.)

I also encourage people to come to Kannonji at 4:00 PM PDT on October 17 (tomorrow) to listen to Rev. Jiun’s talk. I plan to attend and it ought to be interesting. He will be conducting interviews and talking to people afterwards as well.

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I wrote the following on my blog on Tuesday and then took it down as I was unsure if I wanted it to be up. (Of course, it went out on all of my RSS feeds so it didn’t really matter…)

I’ve had misgivings about my PhD work since before I started. More than a few people have questioned why I am doing it. Not that it isn’t interesting to do and such but more along the lines of “This is six or so years of very hard work. What are you really going to get out of it?” I’ve given various answers to this question but I am seriously reconsidering it today.

It isn’t that I had a particularly difficult day or week in my program. Things have gone fairly well during my first month of the program. Japanese is hard but just takes a bunch of work. The two doctoral seminars are not horrible. That said, I think the cumulative effect of the work and realizing that the next half decade will be more of the same is making me reconsider whether this is something that I really need to do. The additional fact that academic jobs are insecure and hard to come by (combined with the fact that I have an excellent tech career still) does not help.

What is it that this degree will give me, besides the diploma and three letters after my name, that I want? Do I want to teach classes as my daily job? It might be interesting but it has never been a driving interest. I am much more interested in writing, whether it be full books or otherwise. I’d like to see a book with my name on it from a mainstream publisher of some sort. That is something that keeps coming back to me. I realize that I don’t need a degree to do that though. A degree certainly wouldn’t hurt in that regard but I’m friends with enough writers, both fiction and non-fiction, to know that what you need to do in order to get published is luck and to write, write, write.

I’m having a hard time visualizing my life after getting a degree and what I will do with it that is both interesting and realistic. If I wind up teaching undergraduates all day at a small college instead of working in engineering, in either instance, I still only get to work on my own writing or research in the evenings so what is the difference?

Frankly, the main thing that seems to keep me from seriously shelving this at this point is the idiotic feeling of how it will look to others and my own potential regrets. I’ve been waiting for the last two years to start working on a PhD. Now that I’m doing it, I’m actively wondering why I am. I don’t want to seem like a “quitter” to people but I also don’t want to put years and years of work into something that I’m not 100% committed to doing and have a clear goals that it will meet.

R points out that I’ve been wanting to do this work for a while and that I clearly haven’t been working towards other goals, such as writing, during the last two years (we’ll leave aside my ordination since that’s another matter). Being in the program forces me to focus but is that enough of a reason to do that level of work instead of just finding my own discipline and doing things on my own? I dunno.

So, I guess you’ll see a post within the next few days that let’s you know what I decided.

After writing this, I spent the rest of the week really thinking about it and whether I was just being overly nervous, disliking the changes in my life, etc. On reflection this weekend (after reading quite a few academic pieces for a project), I realized that I simply didn’t want to spend the next five plus years of my life doing this after all. I want to keep learning, taking classes and doing things, but I really didn’t want to narrow the focus of my life to doing the PhD and working to support that (financially and otherwise) for half a decade or more. I also realized that I was not enamored with the career that I was potentially building for myself to follow the PhD.

As I mention in my original post, there are things that I want to do but most of them really don’t require a doctorate. They simply require the diligence and commitment of doing things instead of wandering through life. I already have a successful career and I really do enjoy much of what goes on in the tech world and I don’t want to lose that either. So I’ve made the decision, and told the GTU officials, my advisor, and my professors, that I’m leaving the program effective immediately.

We’ll see what I do from here on out but I thought I would mention it here. I do plan to continue to take various classes in a variety of programs (such as hands-on classes at the Crucible, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction training, maybe some more programming classes, and my seminary work) but nothing towards a specific degree at this point. I also want to spend more focused time studying the Dharma as a practitioner, not simply focusing on the scholastic side. I’ll be satisfied with my existing Master’s degree.

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Bernie Glassman wrote a tribute on his Dharma brother’s passing today that is worth reading.

I know that he has had a remarkable effect and been an influence on many many Buddhists in America, Zen or otherwise. I know that his writings have affected me greatly and I feel a bit of sadness at his passing, as natural as it is for all of us.

I ask people to pause and reflect on him and then their own lives, this very moment with the passing of this great American teacher and leader.

Update: I enjoyed this entry at Sweep the dust, push the dirt. The part below especially stuck with me as a practitioner:

1. I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
3. I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.

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Combine this with the fact that there really only seems to be one academic e-mail list for Buddhist Studies (H-Buddhism) and one gets the idea that people in Buddhist Studies are not a part of the net generation or not in favor its use in academia. H-Buddhism, additionally, is a moderated list with all posts vetted by its maintainer. Compare this to the lists focused on the academic study of Nature Spirituality or New Religious Movements, which are wide open to their members.

What gives?

When I got involved with Buddhist Studies, I expected that there would be this wide open community of people talking online as I had seen elsewhere in Religious Studies. For some reason, that just isn’t the case though.

(As an aside, if anyone can recommend some excellent books dealing with Religious Studies as a discipline that are foundational or on the use of ethnography in Religious Studies, I’d appreciate it…)

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After the conference last week and becoming disheartened, I did some work on coming up with a new dissertation topic in Buddhist Studies. I was encouraged in this by my advisor, who also gave me excellent feedback at multiple points.

I really want to focus on contemporary Buddhism in America (if not the West as a whole). As a Zen priest, who is both a practitioner and a scholar, I’m very interested in where we (here in America) are going with our development of Buddhism. This isn’t about the call of a “Western” Buddhism or the like but just about the inevitable changes and adaptations that take place over time. America is both a new place for Buddhism during the last 100 or so years but the current time and culture is, in many ways, dramatically different than previous environments for Buddhism. Change is inevitable. This is a much more immediate and important area of interest than digging into old Japanese esoteric Buddhist rituals (as much as I find that sort of thing personally interesting and engaging).

Here is an excerpt from my current academic plan, which I will be further developing this term with a bibliography of various texts.

My focus for a dissertation topic is within contemporary Buddhism in North America. This contemporary Buddhism reflects both Asian American communities and Buddhism within them as well as well as the “convert Buddhism” of non-Asians who have adopted Buddhism but who are not grounded in it as part of their own cultural and ethnic experiences. Buddhism in America is present in a variety of schools or traditions that come from many different countries of origin. For example, there are Japanese schools such as Jodo Shin and Soto Zen, the Tibetan Gelug and Nyingma traditions, Thai Theravada, Vietnamese Zen, and Chinese Chan and Pure Land schools. These schools arrived with Asian immigrants but have been taken up by non-Asian converts during the last century, especially during the post-World War II era. With the variety of different Buddhist traditions currently presented, Buddhist practitioners are easily able to gain exposure to and instruction from multiple traditions of Buddhism if they choose to do so. These practitioners have joined institutions based in the traditional schools taught in Asia but there has also been the development of hybrid institutions combining multiple Buddhist traditions or the creation of new traditions that draw from the existing Asian traditions to create something new in American Buddhism.

My dissertation question is:

“How are some Buddhist institutions and traditions changing in America by combining elements of previously separate Buddhist traditions into new institutions utilizing hybrid bodies of doctrine and practice?”

This question examines the practices of Buddhist institutions, whether ongoing or ephemeral (such as retreats or workshops) to see how Buddhist doctrine and practice is being purposefully changed by the availability of access to multiple traditions of Buddhism. The question of why this change is occurring in places, from the point of view of both teachers and practitioners, will be then be examined.

Initial examples of these hybridized traditions are:

• Zen Peacemaker Order
• The Dharma Punx founded by Noah Levine
• The Interdependence Project
• The “Zen Heart, Vajra Heart” teachings of Lama Palden Drolma and Sensei Lew Richmond
• The Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO), founded in the United Kingdom but active in the United States

I will examine the organization, presentation, teachings, practices, and demographics of three to six Buddhist organizations, both traditional and new, in order to compare and contrast these institutions. I will also interview Buddhist teachers teaching at, and practitioners participating in, these organizations to ascertain why they have chosen to make these changes (when applicable) and choose to participate in their chosen institutions.

Comments are appreciated (usually!).

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This conference has once again brought the the forefront some of my ongoing issues with my Buddhist Studies work. I’ve been planning on focusing on Japanese esoteric Buddhism, specifically Tendai, for a while. I’d like my dissertation to focus on a particular tantric ritual or set of rituals. At this time, we (my advisor and I) have made the preliminary plan for me to focus on the Susiddhikara Sutra and its influence on the core Tendai rituals (or maybe just one, like the goma). The problem here is that every professor that I talk to about this, other than my advisor, starts talking about all of the language work that I’ll need to do and then all the time I’ll need to spend in Japan in order to get access to libraries of books, etc. etc. Dr. Covell mentioned today (and in a helpful way, I should add) that I should go to Taisho University to do research and that I’d really have to have my Japanese mastered in order to do that.

You know what? I have zero (none at all) interest in being an expert on, say, 12th century Japan, Japanese history, or of spending a year or two in Japan with a bookcase full of contemporary scholastic works on Taimitsu just to finish my dissertation. We’re not talking about my academic career here, we’re talking about what I need to do to get my degree.

Along with this, while I have been fortunate enough to be exposed to Tendai, anything beyond that seems to have strong karmic barriers or somesuch. To really understand these rituals, I would like to follow the same path that Dr. Payne (my advisor) and Dr. Covell (not to mention others) have done and be trained in the practices, instructed in the traditional meanings, etc. This requires Tendai ordination, which is a sisyphistic task as far as I can tell. I actually am friends with one Tendai priest (who reads this blog) and have spoken to others but the way things seem to be going, unless I want to abandon my home to go to Japan (and going there has been recommended against by more than one person), the process to do that here in the U.S. would take longer than actually getting my entire doctorate. Meanwhile, I can’t shake a tree or a bush without someone not involved with Tendai falling out of it and making introductions to me.

I’m wondering if I’m suffering from a both “the grass is greener” issue and ignoring what is in front of my face. I have a background in Tibetan tantric practice. I’ve been fascinated by tantra for 20 years now and I’ve practiced a bit of it. That said, I’m a Zen priest, working and living in America, and participating in a non-denominational Mahayana seminary (outside of my doctoral work). Maybe I need to step back and away from the “Oooh, shiny!” smells and bells of esoteric Buddhism and its rituals and unify my current spiritual practice, where I live, and what I want to do for my academic work.

While I’m not interested in becoming an expert in 12th century Japan or learning Classical Chinese (just to read a few texts), I am very interested in the practice of Buddhism in the West, especially in the community of those that converted to it. Where is Buddhism going here in the next century? Are we creating new sects, trying to transcend sects (as seems to be happening in Zen), or doing something else? It seems like I should be considering finding a dissertation that focuses on the here and now or that is related to what I am involved with (meditation and koans, mostly) rather than focusing on stuff that propels me to places where I don’t want to be. Frankly, Buddhism now is much more interesting and almost none of it is esoteric in the sense of tantra if you leave out Tibetan Vajrayana. At the end of the day, as a practitioner who is also a scholar, I’m thinking that I should unify my interests, which are contemporary, not ancient.

I haven’t come up with a dissertation idea that goes along these lines, having just spent a chunk of the afternoon thinking about this, but I should. One of my classes this term is dedicated to refining your dissertation and all the groundwork for it so as to not spend 11 years (a true story, it seems) doing a doctorate instead of five or six. If I want to change focus, I should do it now, rather than later. All dissertations are centered around a specific question that needs to be answered and also about what the answer to that question tells people (what is learned) that is new. Those two things are both necessary.

I guess I’d better quick cracking or I’m going to wind up banging my head against work that I don’t have an interest in really doing just to create a dissertation.

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I see that within a Tibetan context, someone has recently done this. You can go to http://www.buddhistapps.com and see the homepage for a Tibetan Buddhist application. It is a pretty basic application, focusing on taking refuge, generating Bodhicitta, mantra recitation, and then dedication of merit.

The nice thing about it is that it gives the Tibetan prayers in transliterated Tibetan and they recorded a monk chanting the prayers in Tibetan.

For anyone who has practiced within a Tibetan context in the past, as I have, the way that non-native speakers chant Tibetan is all over the map and is often not very melodious. This makes it a helpful touch.

I wish that this was available as a general framework. I could see using the same structure (with some additional steps) with an app for the Five Mountain Sangha for daily practice as well.

I’d also like to see an application put together to allow for sutra reading for all of the sutras that are available as unencumbered English text. That might be a taller order given the variability in quality of translation.

For those interested in the application, you can get it here though they would like $1.99 for it (which is pretty minimal).

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As an alternative, we decided to attend the mighty Balsa Man event for 2009. It, of course, is in no way, shape, or form related to Burning Man in any way nor does it derive any of its symbolism and forms from Burning Man, such as this:

This was Balsa Man’s second year (and I hear last year was better…). I am told by the organizer that last year saw about 50 people showing up by word of mouth. This year, it was 200 or 300 people. Still, that’s actually pretty small if you consider the would-be hipster numbers of the Bay Area.

Balsa Man, being a 1/16th scale event with its 35 inch tall man, encourages people to make art with this year’s theme being “Big Dreams, Writ Small.” R and I decided, late the evening before the event, to make our own art to contribute. I settled on the Monolith and ape-men of 2001 constructed out of legos. We did a late evening trip to target and R went and acquired the Burning Man stape of faux fur the next morning. With some glue, pain, and a bit of building, we created our piece:

This piece seemed to be accepted fairly well with its simple but iconic origins. I noticed a lot of people giggling and taking photos of it (and no one stepped on it).

R and I braved the mutli-bridge transit (with the Bay Bridge being closed this weekend) and made it to the unnamed beach just as things were getting going. We managed to run into a couple of friends and took a look at all of the tiny art. I put a picture set on Flickr and there is a Balsa Man 2009 pool of photos as well.

After a couple of hours, there was a fairly quick burn (man, balsa burns fast with accelerants!) and it was over for the year. I expect that there will be more Balsa Man events (and perhaps regional spin-offs) in the years to come as well.

Update: Here is video of the burn:

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I managed to get into a seminar focusing on Tibetan texts (officially) that is meeting in conjunction with one focusing on Sanskrit texts. Of course, I read neither language but the class is focusing on the Sarva-tathagata-tattva-samgraha (STTS). The STTS is a foundational text in the tantric tradition. One of the professors quotes another scholar (Davidson?) who called it the “Declaration of Independence” for tantric Buddhism. It is one of the earliest clearly tantric texts and, along with the Mahavairocana tantra, it is one of the few core tantras in the tradition of practice that went from China to Japan. It is a core text in both Shingon and Tendai Buddhism in Japan to this day. Most of the class is focusing on reading portions of it in Tibetan and Sanskrit but we will be reading a lot of secondary material around it, which will be useful to me. Additionally, a Newar priest from Nepal will be coming to town in November to create a Vajradhatu mandala and do a day event with us from the text. This is the mandala that the text describes in great detail. So, this class is quite an opportunity for me. It started on Cal’s schedule, which is two weeks in advance of my other classwork so I had to go to my first doctoral class ever with a professor who wasn’t even from my own program or school, which was a little uncomfortable (though he has been very friendly and helpful). It is a good break for me to get a chance to work with an expert in this text and in Tantra as there are not that many professors with expertise in the subject.

This last Friday was the first day of the official orientation at GTU. There are thirty eight incoming doctoral students (we’ll see how many of us are there in a year or two). Out of the group, there was a small group from the local Islamic college in formation, including its head, two people in the Jewish program run jointing with Cal, two of us doing Buddhist studies, and the rest were from various Christian denominations doing different sorts of work. I spoke to the other Buddhist Studies person briefly and she’s doing work focusing on Kwan Yin. We were briefed all day in sessions on the doctoral program, the plan for the next couple of years, the various affiliated bodies, and then given advice by a panel of professors. We have another full day of it tomorrow and then most of a day on Tuesday. We all received our official student ID and I managed to get my current semester sticker, my library card, and to check out books from the library on the first day. This also allowed me to go to Cal today and check out a bunch of Shingon and Tendai ritual manuals from the East Asia library (along with a few books relevant to my Cal class).

After orientation, we wait until the next week for our classes, which is when I will begin my Japanese language coursework. Honestly, the language work is more intimidating to me than any of the other academic work. We’ll see how it goes with that.

My new daily schedule has me splitting time between classes on certain days (as graduate classes tend to meet once or twice a week only) and my work at Mozilla. As I’ve mentioned to some people, I’m going down to 60% time at my job but Mozilla has been overwhelmingly supportive and helpful by keeping me on in a part-time capacity. I’m not sure that it would be possible for me to do this program at all without that being the case.

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Video: Bruce Sterling’s Keynote – At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry

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much larger sizes available if you click on it

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When I did my Master’s degree a few years ago, it was a distance-based program through a California State University school and I worked full-time as well. I never set foot in a classroom but interacted with instructors and peers through e-mail, web sites, and postal mail.

Returning to school in a few weeks, I am trying to determine what will be the best workflow for me. I gather that, unlike previous decades, no one is going to flip out if I have a laptop with me in class in order to take notes but I’m actually not 100% sure. I’ve also thought of using one of my portable audio recorders, used for podcasts in the past, to record class lectures, especially for my Japanese coursework. Is this commonly done though?

I’ve been looking at things like Livescribe as well, which is an expensive electronic pen that both records your writing in a notebook but also the audio that it hears while you write. This allows you to play back the audio with the notes written at the same time later. Of course, my handwriting is so poor that this may very well be a horrible option. I’ve been most of the last 20 years with typing as my day-to-day tool of choice. I’m not sure if it is realistic to go into school and try to be paperless though.

On a separate note, I’m wondering if I’m going to be ten or fifteen years older than most of the people in my doctoral program. I expect that I will be at least five to ten years older than most of my peers, which will make for interesting dynamics.

All of this will be settled soon. I have three days of orientation at the end of the month and beginning of next month so they can do the doctoral student infodump on us. I expect I’ll meet most of the incoming doctoral group during these sessions.

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Orientation for my first semester of my doctoral program is in two weeks and the week after that classes will begin. For the Fall 2009 semester, as an incoming doctoral student, I am required to take a graduate seminar in interdisciplinarity (try saying that fast). Much of that class will focus on the ideas that we students have for our dissertations. We will attempt to clarify them, bringing focus, and to also look at the overall academic career that we want to create. This is quite daunting as the first thing to do coming into the program.

Personally, I still need to clarify my overall post-school goals. I would be happy teaching undergraduates as a small university or the like and getting a chance to do research and write. It was made clear to me that if I wanted to work at a major research university, I would need to master something on the order of four languages and do a number of other things that I’m just not sure that I am interested in doing. I’ll be in my early to mid-40s when I graduate and I’m not terribly interested in fighting the horde of hungry academics for too few positions. It seems that we are coming into an academic world of change and that many of us would be better served by trying to carve our own roles in new environments.

In any case, the fact that my primary dissertation idea was not something that my adviser felt was unique enough or which added substantially to the existing body of knowledge has been of some concern. This is all the more the case with a seminar focusing on dissertation ideas (where we are expected to arrive with one). In discussion, my adviser has mentioned that there is almost nothing written in English on Taimitsu, the esoteric Buddhist doctrine and thought within Tendai. In fact, there is one book and it isn’t very good. Additionally, Tomitsu, the Shingon equivalent, has only a three or four texts and most of these are out of print. My interests are generally on esoteric Buddhism (Tantric Buddhism if you prefer) but I have a fond place for Tendai. Most people writing on esoteric Buddhism focus on Tibetan Vajrayana and little else.

In our discussion, my adviser mentioned something that had come up a year and a half ago when I took his graduate level course on esoteric Buddhism. This is that he had been told by Dr. Michel Strickmann that the Tendai Goma was influenced by the Susiddhikara Sutra. My adviser had never followed up on this information and, as far as he knows, no one else has ever done so either. I have read the Susiddhikara Sutra in its one English translation but wound up not using it for my work in the previous class. The suggestion is to translate one of the Tendai goma rituals into English and then to actually do a detailed look at it and the tantric text to see if the influence is apparent. This would actually add to the body of knowledge (which is almost non-existent for Taimitsu) and also provide the basis for other work later. At this point, I plan to use this was my working dissertation idea, though I would not be surprised if things undergo some change or refinement during the next couple of years as I work towards it. It definitely gives me specific goals in my reading of Japanese and other studies.

One of the problems that I need to solve is that of Japanese source materials. While you can go into the appropriate store (there is only one) in Kyoto and buy a copy of the goma (and other ritual manuals), they are not present in libraries, especially in the United States. I need to track down one (or more, if possible) Tendai goma texts in Japanese before I can really work with it as an area of study.

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I suppose that means that I write about what I want here since there is no particular thing that motivates people to read this blog. A vote for the status quo!

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Right now, with the increase in things like Twitter and Facebook, there are a lot more distractions in the area of online communication. I post shorter links and interesting bits on my @openbuddha twitter account more often than mentioning things here (and that is mirrored to my Facebook account). I have also still been fighting the horrible insomnia that I have had since my protracted illness last winter. While I have recovered from the illness, the insomnia has been a real issue, leaving me with, on average, a night or two a week where I really don’t sleep and no nights where I sleep all night. (I haven’t slept all night since November of last year.) This has left me with a lot less energy and motivation to work on the blog a lot of the time when I have other things to get done. It is also not a very interesting topic to others so I don’t talk about it much anymore.

I’ve checked my statistics and I have a couple of hundred people that read my blog. What I don’t know at this point is what it is that people who read my blog want to read. I have been thinking of refocusing the blog in a new direction, since it has often been all over the map with my various interests, but I don’t even know what people come here to read or why they subscribe to my feed.

What I am interested in hearing is why you, as a reader, read my blog, and what sort of thing you’d like to read here. If I can get responses to those questions, I can decide how I want to change direction without completely alienating my existing readers.

I don’t want to stop blogging but I want to be more focused in what I do blog about in the future. I am starting my doctoral program at the end of the month and going part-time at my job at Mozilla, so it is likely that my mindset is going to be more focused on academia and Buddhist Studies much of the time.

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I’ve included a Manushri mandala below. You should check out the whole set if you’re interested in things like this.

Mandala of Manjushri

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Ecumenical News International
Daily News Service
31 July 2009

US Episcopalians reject bishop who embraced Zen Buddhism
ENI-09-0606

By Daniel Burke
UNDATED, 31 July (ENI/RNS)–A U.S. Episcopal (Anglican) priest who has practised Zen meditation and espoused unconventional ideas about Christianity has lost his bid to become a bishop in Michigan, the church has announced.

The Rev. Kevin Thew Forrester, who was elected in February to lead the sparsely populated diocese of Northern Michigan, failed to gain “consent”, from a majority of elected standing committees in the Episcopal Church’s 110 dioceses, Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori announced on 27 July.

A majority of Episcopal bishops also rejected the election, said Neva Rae Fox, a church spokesperson, who declined to release exact tallies, Religion News Service reported. Under church rules, a bishop’s election is not valid unless ratified by a majority of standing committees and bishops.

The controversy surrounding Thew Forrester’s election, stoked in large part by bloggers opposing his view, blended age-old concerns about fidelity to key Christian tenets with 21st-century online activism. At times, it seemed to mirror a secular political campaign, with the candidate’s public talks and personal history parsed by supporters and detractors alike.

Ultimately, Episcopalians from various sides judged Thew Forrester’s singular spirituality insufficiently orthodox – even in a church known for tolerating progressive theology and open-mindedness.

A number expressed concern about the Michigan priest’s decade-long practice of Zen meditation, changes he made to baptism rites, and ideas he espoused about salvation, including the existence of multiple paths to God. Others objected to the election process in Northern Michigan because Thew Forrester was the only candidate on the ballot.

Bishops are rarely rejected once they are elected by their diocese.

In 2007, Bishop Mark Lawrence of South Carolina lost his first bid after concerns were raised that he would lead the diocese to secede from the denomination, but a year later he was re-elected and gained consent from the wider church.

Episcopal Church archivists say the last candidate rejected on strictly doctrinal grounds was James DeKoven, in 1875; he put candles on the altar and practised other “high church” rituals, which were controversial at the time.

The rejection of Thew Forrester came just a day after Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Anglican Communion, criticised the Episcopal Church for departing from church tradition by lifting a de facto ban on gay bishops and allowing blessings for same-sex unions. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. branch of the Anglican
Communion.

“This could be taken as a strong shout from two different places about the importance of doing theological work on our foundations,” said the Rev. Kendall Harmon, canon theologian for the Diocese of South Carolina, which voted against Thew Forrester.

Thew Forrester, rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marquette, Michigan, said in a statement that, “I have been extraordinarily blessed and honoured to walk with my friends from the Diocese of Northern Michigan over these past months as their bishop-elect.

“As we live and move and have our being in Christ, there is truly a Holy Wisdom in all that is unfolding, and as St. John of the Cross affirms, a face in ‘all that happens’,” Thew Forrester said.

The seven-member standing committee of the diocese of Northern Michigan said in a statement that it is “disappointed and saddened by the outcome of the consent process”. The committee members also said they hope the church will reflect on “how new communication technologies affect the consent process”.

All articles (c) Ecumenical News International
Reproduction permitted only by media subscribers and
provided ENI is acknowledged as the source.

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