My friend Cody Clark, the first blogger I ever met because of this medium posts an intriguing thought from Kurt Vonnegut: For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the beatitudes, be posted anywhere. This is a really good point. Theological merits aside, the difference between the two is stark and represents an interesting insight into the …
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Last quote from Suzuki: When you have something in your consciousness you do not have perfect composure. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. Then your mind is calm and it is wide and clear enough to see and feel things as they are without any effort. The best way to find perfect composure is not to retain any idea of things, whatever they may be – to forget all about them and not to leave any trace or shadow of thinking. Reminds me of a line I heard attributed to Thelonious Monk years ago. When asked …
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More from Shunryu Suzuki on listening: When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong, good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may …
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I’ve been reading Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (famous for the quote “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”) There are some fabulous teachings in the book, which I will blog here over the next few days. This is about the three types of creation: There are perhaps three kinds of creation. The first is to be aware of ourselves after we finish zazen [Zen sitting meditation]. When we sit we are nothing, we do not even realize what we are; we just sit. But when we stand up, we …
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The Big Bang was actually a Big Hiss, according to this article in the New Scientist. I have heard a Midewiwin teaching that said that the first sound heard in the universe was the sound of the Creator’s rattle. Here’s the sound (0.5 Mb.wav).