Zen Practice/Ordinary Life

This practice thing. It just goes on and on. A great thanks to my root teacher Katherine Thanas and to Gene Bush.

I feel that practice is about being in the world…

Top Photo: Linda G

Middle Photo: Edie Brown

Bottom Photo: Edie Brown

March 2024: Buddhist philosophy and practice is everyone… not just on the cushion, not just when in robes. These days, its movies, tv, etc. EVERYWHERE

Here’s Murphy with a pool noodle attached to his waist. He’s not a great swimmer but he loves it. He’s squealing five miles from the place we go in Hollister. He’s so excited he cannot hear me… Noodle boy.

Murphy is from litter born November 1, 2020—from Phoenix X Rocky. The breeders are Morgan’s breeder…. who I was introduced to by a colleague with a doodle (and a companion species sage). Phoenix, the dam, has Morgan’s father’s DNA… Neptune. Neptune comes from Tegan Park, one of two original doodle breeders from Australia. This is lineage. Morgan was a 7th generation multi-generational labradoodle, or as I used to describe her, “a mutt with papers.” All white dog pic is Neptune (Morgan’s father and also father of Murphy’s mom).

Aug 2022: Murphy is 21 months. His training structures my life, obedience classes at least once a week for the last 16 months. Daily training, multiple times a day. Its been an enormous amount of work for a wonderful relationship.

Study this one life, study the world that cradles this one life, sit still. Read and write. Repeat. Cushion, podium, wherever. With or without robes.

Wisdom means seeing the world as it is. In an academic sense it means being accurate about factoids, being accurate about representation, and understanding how our pasts shape this current moment. In the world of practice, seeing the world as it is means also seeing beyond our limited/partial way of seeing. To be human is be in constant change and flux about the world.

Photo by Robin D’Oench

Ordinary life is everyday life.

Everyday life refers to the mundane things that we do—work, family, friends, food, clean the kitchen, and walk the dog (you can add to this list). The profane life. In the social sciences, the term was part of the brilliance of the L’ecoles des Annales (late 19thc), the work of Henri LeFebvre, Marc Bloch, later Fernand Braudel, Erving Goffman and others. H/t to my academic friends in the know about the long duree, and, the critique of everyday life (LeFebvre). In the critique, everyday life is considered the residue… the residual of structural truths, long historical eras. There is a corollary of sorts in Dogen specifically and Buddhism generally. In Dogen, the differentiation between this conventional life (sic) and ultimate reality, is also a type of critique of the limited nature of everyday life. The everday life world is a dusty realm. The dust that hides or disguises a truth (that things as they are) of suchness.

Sure, we can talk about ultimate reality, but, the most important things I have to say are about everyday life. How to live in the dust?

What do you learn on traveling around…?

Japan. 2019. Its been too long. Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, Nakahechi trail of Kumano Kodo. Shinto Trek. Sojiji is one of two main monasteries of Soto Zen in Japan.

Morgan the Labradoodle (August 14, 2006-November 15, 2018)

I consider myself lucky in love with Morgan. She arrived when she was 14 weeks old, turned my life upside down and inside out, and took her leave after 12 years.

“A dog can never tell you what she knows from the smells of the world, but you know, watching her, that you know almost nothing.” ― Mary Oliver, Dog Songs

She was always trying to please me. But, as her breeders said, “remember to let her be a dog.” She rolled on dead and decaying seals on the beach as often as she could. She loved the smell of dead, funky, things.