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zen

(7 articles)

money, media & mind

the new technologies are wonderful tools , paving the way, though they don’t present as immediate solutions to the central problem, this solution does not require tools for its focus on radical responsibility

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consciousness is not a hard problem, it’s impossible!

(in the eye of the beholder)

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a dream called reality

an introduction

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You Got it Backwards

Exploring Intention

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Zen and the Art of Frying Chicken

*a delicious meditation* Those of you who know me are aware that I worked in the fast-food industry before becoming a chiropractor. My first job was at a Hardee's restaurant when I was fifteen. I wanted to buy a car, which is why I started working. Once I bought the car, I realized I needed to continue working to maintain it, pay for gas, insurance, and the occasional "going out" money. In the restaurant business, if you work at a place long enough, someone hands you a set of keys and puts you in charge of something. So here I was, running a restaurant and in charge of a bunch of people, when I could barely take care of myself. Anyway, I was making what I thought was decent money for a 19-year-old. My bosses started a new restaurant venture, and little by little, they began poaching the old management staff from Hardee’s. Eventually, they asked me to come work for them. My new job was running a Church's Chicken. The stores were small, mostly takeout. The menu was small, and we didn't have many employees to manage. We didn't have a good reputation in the community due to poor management. The owners introduced new registers, and sales immediately jumped. I suppose all the food was now being rung up and accounted for! We cleaned up the restaurant and made sure we were putting out a good product, and guess what? **Sales doubled.** So here I am, thinking I know what I'm doing because I'm getting recognition from my bosses. I didn't have the interpersonal skills to manage people effectively. One time, I got into it with an employee but couldn't confront him to fire him, so I deleted him from the time clock. Let someone else deal with that. Dealing with customers was usually okay because if they had an issue, you could just fix the problem, and that was it. Handling employees was a bit more challenging for me. On busy days-Fridays, Saturdays, and Mother's Day (they called that the day after the welfare checks came out) The restaurant would get so busy that sometimes people would line up around the building, and I felt that everyone was staring at me, which made me feel uncomfortable. The store had windows all around; it was like a fishbowl-everyone saw everything. I could have gone to hide in the office, but I needed to help out. I liked to run a tight ship labor-wise, so I always counted myself as one of the staff needed. I would ask the cook to let me make the chicken and assign them some other tasks. Even though I was probably even more visible than before, I would get lost in the work. Everything was hand-breaded and battered. To me, it was like a Japanese tea ceremony. When it was busy, we cooked a full "stove," which was 4 chickens at a time: 8 legs, 8 thighs, 8 wings, and 8 breasts. The process was: * Flour, dip in batter, flour again. * Start with the legs because they take the longest to cook. * Continue until everything is in the fryer. Repeat, and repeat, and repeat. I would get lost in the work. You couldn't really rush things. I made sure everything was done by the book. Focusing on one task so intently that every concern, every worry just faded away. I knew people were watching me cook the chicken in this fishbowl, but I was so engrossed in my task that I didn’t care. All my stress and anxiety just faded. I still try to lose myself in my work, only now it’s not frying chicken-it’s adjusting spines. Now that I think about it, same situation. I’m “on stage” in my adjusting space with clients sitting in the waiting area. Sometimes, I get stressed when there are a lot of people waiting on me…but I’m gonna do my best work frying this chi… oops! I mean adjusting this spine. Zen teaching often emphasizes simplicity, mindfulness in daily activities, and the notion that enlightenment can be achieved in the ordinary moments of life. The phrase "chop wood, carry water" reflects this idea of finding the sacred in the mundane. I found my Zen. Find Yours. ❤️

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It's Not a Secret & It's Not Talk - Shobogenzo fascicle 51: Mitsugo

Dōgen's 51st Fascicle in the Shobogenzo is centered around a conversation between an unnamed Minister and Master Kokaku. Mitsugo means "secret talk." The Case: > Great Master Kokaku of Ungo-zan mountain, the story goes, is served offerings by a government official, who asks, "The World-Honoured One has secret talk; for Mahākāśyapa nothing is concealed. What is the World-Honoured One's secret talk?" > > The Great Master calls out, "Minister!" > > The man responds. > > The Great Master says, "Do you understand or not?" > > The official says, "I do not understand." > > The Great Master says, "If you do not understand, it is the World-Honoured One's secret talk. If you understand, it is Mahākāśyapa's state of nothing being concealed." > > Gudo Nishijima & Chodo Cross. *Master Dogen's Shobogenzo: Book 3*. Windbell Publications, 1997.p. 79. Kokaku was a posthumous title. His name in Chinese is Yunju Daoying (雲居道膺) and he died in the very early 900s. Kokaku was a student of Dongshan Liangjie and is the thirty-ninth ancestor. Kokaku is adding more confusion here on purpose. He wants the Minister to take a leap. The Minister won't and does not. It's also important to understand that often (if not each time) there is a government official (minister) in these stories that there is a sort of mocking sense to the interaction. In old China, officials memorized Confucian ideology and wrote tests on it. 100% an intellectual exercise. They are always stumped in these koan dialogues with Masters and even by tea and bun sellers shilling hack-Zen on the road. While it may be tempting to take a position (side) here and think that not understanding is better than understanding or that understanding is better than not understanding. Don't. The tension between these two is the point and that point is to give it all up and jump off the cliff (metaphorically). Kokaku is pointing to the same type of not knowing that Dizang meant when he said, "Not knowing is most intimate" and equally he is pointing to something else that is going on with Mahākāśyapa. Mahākāśyapa was the first to receive transmission (of absolutely nothing at all) from Shakyamuni Buddha who twirled a flower, saw Mahākāśyapa break into a smile and gave him transmission. But what was transmitted and how? The word transmission is misleading. Simply, you can not receive (transmission) of something that you already possess, particularly if it is inherent. So, what is transmitted and why use that word? Dōgen goes on in more detail and has some cautions. I'd like to pick up the fascicle on page 82 where he says: > In sum, the World-Honoured One has secret talk, secret action, and secret experience. Stupid people, however, think that "secret" means other people do not know but the subject knows, and that there are initiated people and uninitiated people. > > ... > > Secret talk, secret will, secret action, and so on in the Buddha-Dharma are beyond reasoning. When we meet a human being, that is just when we hear secret talk and talk secret talk. We know ourselves, we know secret action. Moreover, a Buddhist [Sage] is able thoroughly to penetrate and to discern the secret will and the secret talk described previously. Remember, in the momentary state of a Buddhist [Sage], secret words and secret acts vie to be realized. What has been described as "secret" is the truth of immediacy. > > Gudo Nishijima & Chodo Cross. *Master Dogen's Shobogenzo: Book 3*. Windbell Publications, 1997. p. 82-83 (I replace Patriarch with [Sage] simply to ungender the text.) Taking up Zen as a practice, we sit upright with a straight back and listen to the cries of the world. Listening to the cries of the world is identical to hearing our True self. This listening is not limited to the ears. It is our eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. Those are our senses and they are the only means we have to understand the world. All the world, you included. Especially you. I once said to a friend: "When you practice like this, in no particular order: you uncover your own bullshit, have a laugh or a cry over it, merge with it, and see right through it. When you see through your own self, you see through all the others because they are one and the same. Not two." I've said too much here already and the point of practice is not to be given all the answers but to discover it for yourself. Please use your common sense to find ordinary Mind. Common sense and ordinary mind are not two. The flower is still twirling the Dharma is still twirling you. SP // DF

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Fake Knowledge

Fake knowledge accumlates in our internal knowledge repository as the ratio increases between unprocessed reading material and processed zettel notes, which is a form of entropy. The quality of your zettelkasten is a good, quantitative measure of our "fake knowledge". We tend to believe that the more we consume knowledge (a.k.a reading) the more options, see **Optionality Fallacy**, we have to process information from. Rather, we want to focus on convexity as explained in **Convexity Bias**, by leveraging our upside from a small amount to notes while capping our downside on reading time waisted.

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