slow vs. sudden

hui-neng tearing up the sutras 

one of the more intriguing schisms in religion, specifically buddhism, and more specifically ch'an buddhism is its split into the so-called northern and southern schools that happened in 7th century china. incidentally, the first syllable of ch'an is sounded like a 'j' i.e. jaan which traces its root to sanskrit dhyana and becomes the japanese zen.. interestingly chi in tai'chi is also pronounced the same way (like jee as opposed to chi as in cheese which is written in pinyin representation as qi as in qi-gong).

the teachings of the sixth patriarch hui-neng came to be associated with the so called southern school. hui-neng's story is itself an amazing one. born into a poor family, he is supposed to have attained an awakening while listening to someone recite the diamond sutra. he then sought a zenmaster to clarify his experience who happened to be the fifth patriarch hongren who promptly asked him to do chores like pounding rice. months later, when the fifth patriarch was ready to pass on his robe, he wanted a stanza written that would demonstrate the clear mind and understanding of the writer and the inheritor of the dharma seal and patriarchate. shen-xiu, the head monk was the obvious choice and wrote his stanza on the wall-

    The body is a Bodhi tree,
    the mind a standing mirror bright.
    At all times polish it diligently,
    and let no dust alight. 

huineng, who was illiterate, heard it and finding it lacking in understanding, asked someone to write for him on the wall

    Bodhi is no tree,
    nor is the mind a standing mirror bright.
    Since all is originally empty,
    where does the dust alight? 

the rest is history and the split is usually traced to hui-neng's successor accusing shen-xiu and his disciples of lacking in understanding, calling them the northern school. a lot of scholars dismiss the story as apocryphal but it cannot be denied that the branching happened somewhere down the line.

what got me thinking about it this morning was the idea of spontaneity in haiku. haiku can be defined, albeit a bit self-referentially, as a verse describing a zen moment, the paradox arising from the impossibility of defining the zen moment. of course, one could say zen moment is itself tautological. writing haiku (or even "lowku" as i sometimes call bad haiku), however, requires considerable skill especially in the original japanese with its tight syllabic constraints, cutting words and seasonal allusions. so how could it be spontaneous? it seems very analogous to the "sudden" enlightenment described throughout zen literature- of men and women getting enlightened while performing quotidian tasks- the tock of a stone while raking, or water falling from the bottom of a bamboo pail or watching foam in a waterfall. it seems that they have all had some preparation and the event was just a catalyst. otherwise it would mean chemical reactions taking place with just a catalyst and without the relevant combining molecules. a more mundane example is solving cryptic crosswords, where after a lot of experience, one can simply write down the answer for some clues, seemingly without any processing even though it has obviously been processed. zen is often portrayed as anti-intellectual and reading is forbidden in retreats but it seems that there is a place for words and reading and sutras and tearing up of the sutras by a lot of zen masters is contradictory and confusing, only at first but is actually not so.

precipitation

one of the definitions of precipitation is falling headlong which is the original sense of the word ultimately tracing its roots to precipice and finally to latin caput (head). i guess the falling aspect of it gave rise to the meterological sense of the word. the first time i encountered this word form was in the chemistry lab where precipitates of various hues were created in test-tubes. in (south) india, we talk about rain and forms of precipitation are limited to rain and the occasional hailstone which i had only heard about but never seen. the joys of experiencing a midwest winter is exposure to the myriad forms of precipitation and its subsequent alchemical transmutation into beautiful crystalline forms. hiking in the woods, we across this form we had never seen before- curly wisps of snow-ice pastry sheets, a frozen white muslin, clinging to bottoms of plants. wonder if there is a name for it. and by the way, here is what wiki has to say about the thousand words for snow among the "eskimos".



and then this lovely, albeit ephemeral, sculpture that can give svarowski a complex.

red

during my random peregrinations on the web, i came across this interesting site- spiritual cowgirl- the blog of sera beak- spiritual voyageur, mystic and writer. she is obsessed with the colour red and had some amazing quotes. i gleefully quote her quoting lalitha Devi, a tantric teacher from India.

“In Tantrism, there is fundamentally only one color: red. The color of the living heart, the color of blood, the color of fire, the color of roses and the tongue, the color of the open vulva, the color of the erect penis, the color of the sun that warms the hermits, the color of the circle of fire that must be crossed to attain consciousness.” (Tantric Quest, p. 45)

Here is sera's definition-

“To me, red is the intuitive pulse that beats between reason and blind faith. It’s the color of blood when given some air. It activates a passionate, feminized mysticism. It reminds me of a compassionate heart, transformative fire, mystical embodiment, boundless love, self-empowerment, Mary Magdalene’s hair, Kali’s tongue, my favorite purse, and belly laughs” (The Red Book, p. 90)

interesting right?. i started from doug mcgill's the journalist and the buddha blog and landed up in tantric conception of red. this is sort of like a visual version of something i used to love doing with a dictionary. start by looking up a word and follow random chains of words. of course my trail today was not as random as the trail is as follows-

i get an email from doug about tonight's sit. doug's signature leads me to his blog. in his blogroll is the link to ajahn punnadhammo's blog. this bhikku has written an interesting rejoinder to mark moford's provocative piece 'does your religion dance'. mark's outburst is on the ossification of religion and about how even a progressive religion like buddhism (this is his take not mine) is conservative about a lot of issues. in his article is a link to sera beak (whose blog i perused instead of filling out my yearly accomplishments which is due end of the year). you get the idea.

endnote: i have been fascinated by the colour red itself and the various english words for shades of red- carmine, blood, ruby, garnet, scarlet, crimson, vermilion, cardinal, maroon, coral and finally from the bard incarnadine.

today was a foggy, misty day except this is minnesota not seattle which means two things- the temperature is in the twenties and water changes into its beautiful crystalline form. all the trees had a lovely dusting of crystals on it and looked beautiful despite the wan sky and the accumulated snow piles that have started looking ugly and brown and eagerly anticipating the next storm.

i have been walking past these crabapple? trees every morning wondering when i would photograph them and today seemed opportune. i had enough time to take about ten pictures before my hands and feet started complaining.

souper

winter is a good time for earthy soups with root vegetable stock. the bag of parsnips in the fridge gathering moisture inside was begging to be used and so was the solitary sweet potato sitting in the basket outside. we had some fresh baguettes and a bottle of red wine to go with it.

peel the potato(es), sweet potato(es) and parsnip(s) and cut into inch cubes. i used just one medium sized sample of each. boil them till they become nice and soft and then let it cool. retain the water for use later.

in a little olive oil, fry finely chopped garlic, ginger and sliced chillies. just an inch of the orange coloured hungarian wax pepper was enough to provoke lachrymation. red pepper flakes could be substituted or left out altogether. then add sliced onions and fry till translucent. add some dried oregano and basil leaves and saute till it starts smelling divine. then add the water saved from the boiling and simmer for a little bit and let it cool.

in a blender, puree the boiled tubers and then add the fried onion-garlic-ginger and blend them. return it to the stove and simmer on low flame after adding water and diluting it to required consistency. salt and sugar as necessary and garnish with cilantro.

the wax peppers turned out to be extremely potent but lent a wonderful fruity warmth reminiscent of habaneros even though they are advertised as mild. it also seemed to complement the wine's fruity notes rather well. this was a sauvignon-shiraz blend from australia that turned out pretty decent, considering it was a cheap 6$ bottle.

white sun of the desert

russian literature and cinema can be depressing. a few wintry minesottan days will tell you why. and of course pg wodehouse and woody allen have joked about it often.

white sun of the desert is a genre bending 1969 movie from the USSR at the height of the cold war that combines humour, adventure, and gunfights with a few drops of good old soviet ideology and apparently made following an order that came from the top bosses and the "movie committee" to make a western that will outdo the americans. it is most appropriately an "eastern", USSR's reply to sergio leone, as one of the script writer yezhov says in an interview. shot in the desert region of turkmenstan, it chronicles the adventures of comrade sukhov, a character right out of the mir-publisher folk tales we read growing up in indira's india. comrade sukhov, dressed in his dirty army jacket, is returning back to his village through a desert landscape after fighting for the red army in far flung corners of the soviet empire, his thoughts dwelling on his rather matronly sweetheart katerina matveyevna when his attention is drawn to a head looming in the sand. it turns out to be a peasant who has been punished by a local bandit. he frees him and is on his way when greatness is thrust upon him in the form of protecting the harem of a local warrior adbudllah to safety. abullah himself is fleeing the red army and has abandoned the harem as they hinder his movement. as yezhov recounts, this is the crux of the movie around which other threads are woven and is apparently based on a real incident recounted to him by one of the red army commanders in a bar. the movie is about sukhov's often hilarious attempts to protect the harem who now considers him to be their husband and master (despite his day dreaming about katerina, who is depicted in a red skirt and pastoral backdrop) and ends in an inevitable climactic gun battle with comrade sukhov firing a few seconds earlier than his adversary. he is helped by the peasant he rescues earlier and a hilarious, inebriated former customs inspector vereschagin who also sings the theme song your excellency lady luck. there are wonderful red oneliners like 'the east is a delicate matter', 'customs has given approval' but not much of ideology per se which is one of the reasons why it had trouble getting the thumbs-up from the party bosses, according to yezhov again who says they approved it as it had cost quite a packet of rubles to make.

this cult film is traditionally watched by cosmonauts prior to space launches. it is easy to see why and was a different experience than watching tarkovsky or sokurov.

changes

yesterday, i managed to add an image to the blog header after some tips from this helpful blog. long overdue, feels more complete now.

we have had lots of snow and since the driveways near my house are not shoveled properly, it requires care walking, especially as parts of it have iced after melting slightly during a couple of sunny, warm 25F days !!. my walk to and from work is resembling kinhin (walking meditation) more and more- step after careful step. it doesn't look like it is going to melt in awhile. meanwhile, the nest on the gingko tree is still hanging on and a had a beautiful snowcap yesterday. of course, it melted today because i wanted to photograph it. oh and the icicles outside the kitchen window are gone too.



because of the all the snow on the ground, it feels strange looking out of the window and finding things pretty luminous at 2 am (when i typically get up for a drink of water). i wonder what it will look like on a full moon day assuming it is clear. looking forward to this 24th for that.

oryoki

oryoki refers to the nested bowls used for serving food in zen temples. loosely translated as "just enough", it is of sino-japanese origin much like soto zen itself. in the rest of this post, it will also refer to the act of eating [using oryoki bowls]. for a layperson, oryoki is the "food" equivalent of the tea ceremony or chado. in most formal zen retreats, food is served oryoki style, comprising of 4-5 bowls and the form varies slightly with the lineage. the largest bowl is called the buddha bowl and care is taken not to touch it with one's lips. all the bowls are nested and along with the utensils (chopsticks, a spoon and a spatula), a napkin and a drying cloth and enclosed inside a longer piece of cloth that is knotted and opened just prior to meals.

the whole purpose of this beautiful but seemingly complex and anxiety inducing form (at least to novices) is to extend the state of mind during zazen to eating. dogen in fact makes no distinction between sitting in zazen, eating food or other quotidian acts. it was deeply touching to be participating in a tradition which is traceable to 13th c japan in eiheiji, dogen's temple if not to the much more ancient chinese zen temples from where dogen imbibed the tradition. i had eaten oryoki style once before during a retreat with the kwanum school (korean) but had forgotten most of the forms but there was an orientation on friday night.

the actual form is quite complex and more info including all the verses that are chanted can be found here. in brief, the principal actors are the tenzo (cook), the soku (server coordinator) and 2 servers. the servers do all the serving with cues given by the soku using gestures or the occasional clapper. whilst the rest of the people are still in zazen on the cushion, low tables are first laid out, one for each pair and a washcloth is passed around, with which the tables are wiped, each person covering the space in front of her. then gomasio (salted, spiced sesame seasoning) is served, again one for each pair. after reading some verses, the knot is untied and the bowls are opened and spread out on the tablecloth which itself is folded into a rhombus with a triangular piece sticking out of each side like a beak fold in origami. there are forms for how to open the napkin, what direction the chopsticks and spoons point before and after the meals etc. food consists of three items, one for each bowl (the fourth bowl which looks almost like a small plate serves as a stand for the third). the servers bring each dish to everyone and serve kneeling; hand signals are used to communicate amounts, raising means stop. once all three bowls are filled in three separate rounds, the utensils are laid on the bowls and everyone starts eating after a set of beautiful verses-

First, we consider in detail the merit of this food and remember how it came to us;
Second, we evaluate our own virtue and practice, lacking or complete, as we receive this offering;
Third, we are careful about greed, hatred and ignorance, to guard our minds and to free ourselves from error;
Fourth, we take this good medicine to save our bodies from emaciation;
Fifth, we accept this food to achieve the Way of the Buddha.

during lunch everyone is required to leave a small bit (a grain of rice typically) for the hungry ghosts which is collected by the servers. midway, the servers again walk around with each item and people can get second servings by expressing their indication using a bow. once everyone has finished eating, the spoon and chopsticks are licked clean and the bowls using the spatula. hot water is poured into the buddha bowl. the bowls are then cleaned and the utensils and the water with some residual food can be drunk or poured into a waste container circulated although in practice it can all be drunk as it tastes like ambrosia, according to one of the verses. the bowls are then dried using the drying cloth, nested, placed inside the kerchief, knotted and stored away. of course, there is a whole lot of bowing which i am skipping both by the servers and those eating. the buddha at the altar is also served a symbolic meal replete with the three bowls and mini chopsticks !!

one of the more beautiful lines of all the verses extols and stresses the unity of giver, receiver and gift, something i was able to experience by serving one of the meals as well as during meals where there are no servers and everyone serves their neighbour on one side and is served in turn by the other. it is certainly an beautiful thing to experience and reevaluate how we do things in our samsaric lives.

rohatsu sesshin

buddhist and especially zen practitioners world over commemorate the traditional enlightenment of the buddha on dec 8th (eighth day of the twelfth month to be precise in a lunar calendar) by sitting in intensive retreats (sesshins). went to the minneapolis zen center across from lake calhoun and sat from 30th through 2nd and then returned on the last day. this was a tough retreat both on the body and the mind but there were number of things to make it luminous and numinous- the formal oryoki meals (more on this later), watching lake calhoun across the road in various stages of freezing, watching it snow all day, the wonderful macrobiotic food and just being there and steeping in the silence generated by the retreatants, a paradoxical notion perhaps. also had a wonderful opportunity to practise qi gong during the evenings, exactly what the body needed after long sessions of forty minute sits. leaving it in the middle after 3.5 days was a simultaneous feeling of a sadness and joy. did try and minimize talk and emails (yes, to twice a day) during the three "regular work" days and tried to sit a couple of hours of zazen. it was good practice and an interesting opportunity to glimpse into the nirvana-samsara duality. tough.




lake calhoun recalled that mysterious ocean solaris- its various moods and its influence on the consciousness of the retreatants who were watching it as they sipped tea during breaks. on friday, it was frozen about 15 feet from the shore. it snowed all day saturday but the water melted all falling snow as it accumulated on the ice. late sunday, the entire lake froze.



one of the retreat leaders had encouraged me to attend the sesshin by remarking that there was something special about the rohatsu sesshin and likened the zendo to a warm container, surrounded by cold and snowy silence. it was indeed a unique experience. of course, each sesshin is different and despite sitting and staring for long hours at the same stucco wall or wood paneling, it changes the mind subtly. the practice is indeed subtle and works slowly- like water on rocks, chipping away one atom at a time, one thought at a time, one moment at a time.

early winter

it finally snowed yesterday (flurries don't count). it was the first snow of the season and somehow missed it in action because it seemed a precisely timed and choreographed event. was on the phone; rose up to peer through the curtains and was pleasantly surprised to find an inch of snow. it had already stopped snowing but there was a quiet beauty and stillness which only snow can engender, even in a fairly ugly urban setting. it was nice to walk on the pavement this morning to work, seeing visible signs that other people had walked or bicycled earlier.

capping the mailbox
outside the door this morning-
1.5 inches of snow !!

courting trouble

today was the court appearance date for the speeding ticket. after much dilly-dallying and shilly-shallying and shall-i-shall-i-notting, decided to plead guilty but request a reduction in speed/fees. walked to the courthouse which was a sinister red brick building with hidden camerae all over the place. the main lobby and corridors was eerily reminescent of the department of magic (okay, might be the sideeffect of too much pottering). criminal/traffic 5th floor said a sign. checked in at the administrative window and requested to see a prosecutor. the clerks were really nice and courteous, a very pleasant thing considering my previous experiences at the dmv and other purveyors of govt. bureaucracy. it was a 30 min. wait before the courts opened. so tried to distractedly read inheritance of loss whilst making mental notes for the blog. the waiting area seemed like a doctor's office except there was much more cheer in the room and no magazines. most of the people were acapella with the exception of a couple of women who brought lawyers, who stood out in their suits, briefcases, thick books and plastic smiles, and two blondes (stereotypically in for a dui). there was a general camaraderie- some were chatting exchanging notes on their misdemeanours, some listening to their ipods or fiddling with their phones. a kid was tearing up and down. a sheriff, presumably in charge of court room order was idly gazing at the parking lot and frozen river through the window, bored. racially, it was largely white, a couple of young black men, a native american woman, a couple of chinese guys besides the lone indian. the courtroom opened at 1.15 and everyone trooped in leaving their coats outside. it looked just as in the movies except the benches felt like a church bench sans the bibles. a video was played spelling out the rights and privileges that was repeated in spanish and at least 4 far eastern languages (vietnamese, hmong, cambodian?) besides arabic (somalian flavour). then began the wait for the prosecutor's call and as luck would have it, my paper was with the slow one. the fast one was settling most of the cases with an occasional person opting to see the judge. finally she tried pronouncing mano... i explained that i was speeding but not at the speed stated (51mph) and that i had realized i was speeding and was slowing down when the cops caught up. she asked me if i would pay if she made it 45 mph (which was what i said i was going at and in retrospect, my greedy mind thinks i should have said 40) to which i assented. end of story. made out the check for 142$ which was 80$ less than the original 222$. walked back to work and it was much colder and the sun had vanished. the frozen river across the bridge looked colder than it was coming in a couple of hours earlier. all in all, it was an interesting first hand experience with the law and order system here.

cross-cultural note- while paying the fine at the clerk's window, there was a laotian/cambodian? man who was requesting for a public defender with the help of a court interpreter. the clerk made him repeat the 'i swear i am saying nothing but the truth' via the interpreter and across the glass partition, which he religiously did. he then brought his palms together in a characteristic asian gesture and left. wonder what the clerk thought but here is an occasion where a hand shake would not have worked. somehow the handshake seems patriarchal and dominating compared to a more humble gassho, which conveys equality better.

leaves and adjectives

cruising the wonderful, word-filled phrontistery website and especially savouring the adjectives of relation section. spotted a few omissions, some obvious and some not-

annelid: pertaining to annelida (earthworms)
arenaceous: sandlike or growing on sand
cetacean: pertaining to whales (cetacea)
chondral: of or pertaining to cartilage
cristate: having a crest (e.g. mitochondria)
lanate: wooly or pertaining to wool
ligneous: woody
scolopendrine: pertaining to centipedes (order scolopendra)

leaf shapes and margins are described by beautiful adjectives such as hastate, obovate and acicular, and rugose and crenate. [digression: it is hard to punctuate complex constructs like the preceding sentence where i am describing two different ideas- shapes and margins- with multiple examples for each. how does one use conjunctions correctly and appropriately use the dreaded combination of commas with 'and's? ]. found this gem of a drawing in wiki. a friend and i had shot the breeze about tree identification using computer vision awhile back and leaf shape would be a good starting point.

early winter !

it dipped to 8F last night. i guess winter is officially in. the nest on the gingko tree outside continues to sway in the cold gusts. a sole leaf still clinging in solidarity..

swan lake

went to rieck's lake park in alma, wi to check out tundra swans. most of them had left and we saw a small flock of them dozing in the sun on the ice along with slumbering geese. it was windy and that made it cold despite the deceptively warm 41f sunny weather. alma is a nice town and could have been scotland or new zealand as v pointed out with its bluffy landscapes, cattle and a waterfront. the main street was picturesque and quaint. saw a couple of eagles cruising the bluffs that overlooked main st. left after having americanos at a local cafe/gift shop. checked out the beach en route. it was blustery and bitterly cold; we saw a big rafter of swans on the other shore but too far away even for binoculars. drove back via potsdam and plainview and took pictures of haybales, something which has been long overdue. somehow the landscape looked like a pink floyd album cover, perhaps a subliminal entry of a momentary lapse of reason. made mental notes of a lot of trees in the vicinity which might be good candidates for a winter snow session.

late autumn

oxbow park was lovely. took the maple trail which was paradoxically strewn with oak leaves. while the trees were bare, the ground was a beautiful brown carpet of oak leaves. it seemed to be waiting for snow. some streams had frozen, some were thinking about it and some had changed their minds, creating mosaics of light and sound, white ice and black water, clear flow and tinkling water gliding through miniature ice caves. the undulating margins of the oak leaves created some lovely icescapes on the streams.

stereotype

was curious about the etymology of stereotype. it is from Gk stereos meaning solid and in printing parlance refers to a method of printing from a solid, raised metal type. sometime in the early 20th century, as words and phrases are often wont to do, it jumped from its printing press origins to the present meaning of an oversimplified generalization. people often talk of stereotypes as if it is a bad thing per se. the inherent act of stereotyping is itself fine and mostly correct in whatever sense of the term. obviously people have seen enough of something to generalize it. what is missed is that it is not the only image or view a person is evoking when using a stereotype. recently, i saw an ad on an airline magazine which had an obviously geeky looking young chinese (american) kid [ok, geeky and chinese american are already stereotypes, the kid is shown having big ears, bad teeth , oversized spectacles and, um, sino features. he could have been vietnamese or hmong or taiwanese, first generation or fourth] holding an orrery in his hand and the caption says "we are like the geek you loved in primary school" or somesuch. my immediate thought was ohmygodthisissostereotypical and it sure was. but then many chinese americans i know are geeky. the problem is not with what the ad shows or says. it is with what it does not say. what about the margaret chos and the yo-yo-mas?

why do we create stereotypes? to generalize, to pigeonhole, to classify. why pigeonhole? to form grand theories in which all phenomena (perceived) fit or can be slotted. there are so many stereotypes we come across in america- the christian right, the bleeding heart liberal, the gun-toting libertarian, the gun-toting, bling wearing gangstuh, the motel owning gujarati, the jewish doctor, the dumb blonde, the alabaman redneck, the desi shoftwear shyshtem person and so on. they can be complex like the bespectacled, bearded soft spoken foreign film watching 40s white man (thanks to my friend ps who loves this image) or the long haired, earth mother goddess, vegan raw food, shopping at coops, antiwar and doing reiki 40s white woman. we also straddle and move across stereotypes. i landed fresh off the boat in 92 and fit into the stereotype of yet another iitian, fighting with roommates over grocery bills, calculated to the 4th decimal place, going to desi parties where anthakshari is apotheosis of the indian arts, having mostly desi friends with an occasional phirang to go to lunch with and explain intricacies of indian culture which i myself never cared for growing up (you see, in india everything is sacred including the cow and rajanikanth. that's why jains don't eat anything grown underground). by 4 years, i had lots of amru friends, shopped organic at the local coop in cloth bags, listened to carnatic music, rode a bicycle, went on backpacking trips [its an eclectic mix and not a stereotype- ego] and so on. then the semisuburban lifestyle of working at an MNC, driving a car but still shopping organic and having eco-footprint concerns. okay, i take it back. some stereotyping can be dangerous and downright disgusting- the stereotyping of any young black male as a dangerous criminal or a pusher or the obvious stereotyping of people with beards in a post-9/11 world or the stereotyping of islam itself as has happened in some circles. it seems like some form of a hopeless defense mechanism, a vain attempt of protection against an unknown danger, an armour that is bound to break. the biggest danger in stereotyping and broad classification is the dualistic framework it creates and forces- us vs them, he vs she, republican vs democrat, pro-life vs pro-choice- a dialectic that is doomed to fail.

i wonder if the problem of slotting into stereotypes can be cured not by asking people not to slot (which has been tried in vain) but by increasing the number of slots. so its like having 64000 shades of grey instead of 2. then classification becomes impossible. imagine someone who is slotted as a stereotypical "republican" today who is also eco-conscious, who goes to church but also believes in darwin, who is anti-war but pro-life. what will you call her? but then maybe i am just dreaming.

the river

it started flurrying yesterday but it was warm and the flurries melted before any accumulation. i can now see the house across from the yard from my kitchen window, now that the ash and walnuts have dropped their leaves. there are still a few trees with golden yellow leaves remaining in the lower branches, mostly maples, but it is a matter of time (wind, actually).

vinu and i watched jean renoir's le fleuve (the river) today. a lot of directors ascribe formative influences to this documentary like adaptation of rumer godden's novel. today, it seems ordinary and the dialogues especially by the indian characters a bit stilted and school-dramaish. i can see it making an extraordinary impression on a westerner in 1951. for one, it was the first colour film to be shot in india and renoir's first colour film as well and it does a lot of justice to it. the story is about the coming of age of harriet (the narrator) in india, where she lives with her 4 sisters and brother, parents and an indian nanny (nan) in a village by the ganges, her father being the owner of a jute mill. she is immediately infatuated (in an awkward way that only a teenager can) with capt. john, an american war veteran who is visiting his cousin an englishman who lives next door to harriet. equally smitten but in a more composed, obvious manner is valerie, the more beautiful, older redhead although there doesn't seem to be any tension between harriet and her because of this. adding to the confusion is melanie her neighbour's daughter from his marriage to a local woman. her feelings for jack are characteristically indian- unexpressed and confused. there is one lovely scene where they are all chasing him in a banana grove like gopis chasing krishna (and valerie is the lucky one to be kissed). as the movie progresses, love cools, harriet's brother gets bitten by a cobra and dies, capt. john returns back to the us, another baby sister is born, life continues, the river flows.

the narrative structure is like a documentary and the portrayal of india is a bit romantic but there is no trace of condescension or colonialism in the treatment of india. sometimes, there is overt emphasis of the mysterious, peaceful life of the hindoo on the riverbank but it is no different from the feelings i have when i visit a quiet village today in india. it seems like an idyll. and there are no elephants, tigers or bengal lancers as renoir says in an interview. the music is a mix of hindustani sitar and carnatic veena and vocal with a bharatanatyam tillana sequence thrown in but it does not seem jarring or artificial at any point. in fact, if anything flows smoothly besides the river, it is the music.

views of love

today, i watched two movies on love- truffaut's love on the run and edward yang's yi-yi. the first is a slightly soppy final episode of the antoine doinel series starting with the unforgettable the 400 blows. the latter is less a conventional love story than a peep (ok a prolonged stare lasting 3 hours) into the life of a taiwanese family comprising of the grumpy looking nj who is in a floundering computer firm, his wife who is on the edge, his adorable 8-year old son yang-yang who is forever harassed by older girls, his cute adolescent doll of a daughter ting-ting who is just discovering love and loss and most importantly his wife's mother who is in a coma after falling in her apartment on the day when her son a-di (nj's chubby brother-in-law) gets married to a girl who is very pregnant much to his mother's disapproval. all the family members (except yang-tang) take turns speaking to her and that is the only way their emotions are expressed, an interesting artifice. the contrast between truffaut's flamboyant, at times adolescent antoine doinel whose impulsive quirks and neurotic pace and nj's repressed emotions and outwardly calm demeanour are striking. there is something about not expressing things explicitly that is at once the bane and beauty of asian culture. nj runs into his childhood sweetheart after 30 years and there is a possibility of romance (and adultery, as both of them are married albeit not in intimate terms with their spouses) when she visits him in tokyo where he is on business. they embrace warmly, recollect their first dates and even hold hands but nothing more is said. the inevitable kiss and the bedroom sequence never happens. never shown, a western critic might argue, missing the point. the deft handling is very reminiscent of in the mood for love although lacking the texture and tone of wong kar-wai. antoine on the other hand is living a carefree life, only occasionally living in the past recollecting his loves and upsetting his current lover sabine, whom he first meets in a situation that can only happen in a french movie- unknown angry man (lover?) rips a photo of his wife(lover?) into bits in a phone booth, our hero finds it, puts it together, roams all over paris and finds her and of course he has already fallen in love with her. voila !. antoine is believably passionate and lives in the moment as much as nj is sadly passive and resigned. love on the run makes use of wonderful flashbacks from 400 blows, colette, and stolen kisses- previous doinel movies. yi-yi is firmly grounded in the present and is an unsparing portrait of every one in the flat and their violent neighbours and their quotidian problems.

there is also a nice buddhism connection in yi-yi. nj's wife is advised by her friend nancy to take refuge in a mountain (chin?) temple and told that the master would find a solution to all her problems (sounds familiar eh?). both nj (and his wife who only says so later) are skeptical of talking to the gods and asking for solutions. i will ask the gods to help only for my major troubles, quips nj when the master visits his and ask him to come to the temple. they all spoke to me like we spoke to my mother, says nj's wife after the funeral. here is an example where buddhists are shown praying rather than meditating. this is probably the norm in asia for laypeople. meditating laypeople is a very american thing albeit not necessarily a bad thing. in fact it might be the unique thing about the american flavour of buddhism.

yesterday, i lit an incense stick and decided to sit in zazen for the entire period it burns. i waited till the last ember glowed bright, gasped for its last breath and fell down softly onto the incense holder. it was about 45 minutes. for the last 5 minutes, i was mainly looking at the stick, almost waiting for it to be over. sort of like sneaking a peek at a watch during meditation, which i surprisingly used to do when i started with the kwan-um school.

reading the faces of buddhism in america (ed. charles prebish). it is a scholarly (occasionally pedantic and theoretical but for the most part written by scholar-practitioners) treatment of the various flavours of buddhism available to the spiritual seeker (or shopper) today in america and how american culture and ways of thinking and social norms have influenced the evolution and praxis of american buddhism (zen, theravada, tibetan); orthopraxis as one essay puts it versus orthodoxy. this is an interesting topic and leigh and i have had many discussions on this. her usual response is that i am not a big fan of americanized buddhism with its group therapy like group talk sessions and i am not. this book would like me to believe that even the korean or soto zen schools i have been associated with is an americanized version of the more rigid, strict patriarchal parent schools in korea and japan. now there are two (possibly more) ways of looking at this and i can hear two voices reading this book although one is a feeble cry. one is to lament the americanization of buddhism in the sense that america is essentially imparting/imposing an ethic of individuality and democracy and equality (easier in a clique of middle-class white caucasian males with a grudging tolerance of women due to sheer numbers of white women in these groups). another way is to see how buddhism has evolved from its metaphysical roots in india to the freewheeling ch'an school of southern china, across korea and to the institutionalized but form-filled soto-rinzai lineages of japan and accept this as a natural fate of everything- afterall buddha dharma is subject to its own laws of impermenance too. the truth as in most cases is in between. it seems like the biggest hurdle to accepting buddhism in its spicy east asian form is not the cultural aspects of it (endless cups of barley tea and kimchi in lunches during kwan-um retreats and the corresponding japanese counterparts of sencha and miso in soto-rinzai sesshin suffice as evidence) but the concept of a monastic sangha, a sangha of bhikkus and bhikkunis as opposed to lay-people. ironically, it is in america that a bhikkuni sangha has the greatest chance of survival and acceptance due to the strong patriarchal asian traditions. i see the beauty and elegance of a system of philosophy and praxis which does not impart excessive importance to a monastic, renunciatory lifestyle but at the same time we cannot forget that the leaders of current american buddhist institutions are either monks from asia or westerners who have trained with asian monks, usually in the respective original countries. that could pose a problem to the continuity of the tradition taking a leaf from how quickly "indianness" dies out in children of abcds as they melt into the pot. but is that bad or lamentable? i think this is something only time can tell but then it is worth being careful before experimenting lest the buddha gets thrown with the bathwater. an essay also talks about americans reinventing the dharma wheel which is a very apt comment and it is probably a matter of time before some local guru patents zazen. the second half of the book deals with issues facing buddhism in america- feminism, homosexuality, racism whilst the first half deals with the flavours of buddhism- chin, japanese zen, pureland, tibetan, theravadin, vipassana, vietnamese....


my own personal experience on this has been interesting. i stumbled into kwan-um school at the local unitarian church on knapp st. in milwaukee and slowly started attending their mon/thu sits and then ymjj's as they call their sesshins. at a formal naming ceremony, i got a cool grey robe with a kasa and a korean name replete with a certificate and a branding on my left forearm with incense (a reminder of the shamanistic influence on s'on buddhism in korea). daegak, the guiding teacher of the kwanum school in maryland, broke away from the kwan-um school but continued a lot of the traditions. he dispensed with the 108 bows and the formal meals but the spirit continued- the dokusans, the long hours of zazen, the general form. i have sat occasionally with a japanese group usually on new year's eve for the kanzeon chanting or at a sesshin with one-drop zendo at whidbey. what was interesting was that there really was no major difference except for minor forms- clapper instead of moktak, a bell instead of moktak and facing the wall as opposed to facing the floor. i did not realize that that is in some sense the american influence and emphasis on meditation over rituals. i do miss the traditional retreat. in contemporary retreats there is no oryoki or meal gathas, no chanting and they are less form al. recently, i have been sitting with a local group which is led by doug mcgill, a theravadin/vipassana aficionado. there is no form, no instructions and sometimes it can get very annoying especially when there is a post-praxis discussion on enlightenment or metta. sometimes we listen to guided meditations from the insight meditation center or a talk by eckhart tolle. the sessions end by doug asking everyone-

so it's time to go
breathe in, breathe out, a few breaths
and let the words go.

verse or worse

what shall i write now,
now that autumn is over-
haiku or senryu?

apple gotsu

i take simple pleasure in discovering new recipes- just the germ of the idea not the actual details, which i do not bother following anyway. and i have been stumbling across gems recently- cardamom lemonade at the hokyoji retreat, karela thogaiyal (chutney for northies and non-indians) which subbu made, and recently apple gotsu (or gojju as supriya calls it). and i made it (up) last night.

use sourish apples. i used honey crisps which are sort of a local gala. cut the apples into crescent wedges or cubes. fry mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, urad dal and dried red chillies in a tsp of oil and when they turn golden and start to splutter, add the sliced onions and then the apples. add a little bit of water and let it stew. add salt to help the process. sugar is optional as the apples are sweet anyway. when the apples start getting soft, add more water, dissolve a tsp of tamarind paste, add some sAmbAr powder, bring to a boil, then simmer and let it thicken. the apples should get soft but not crumble. garnish with curry leaves (preferred) or cilantro. serve with rice and/or chapatis.

okay i cheated a bit by using sAmbAr powder. you can also dry roast the spices including hIng and grind them and make a paste with coconut like for sambar ab initio. but yesterday i didn't have the time, inclination, patience, coconuts or hIng !!

baby

returning back from chicago to mplis, i saw the same lady (who spoke german to her two year old) with her two year old again !! this time the baby was crying loudly- the poor thing- as her mom was trying to stuff her strollers and bags into the already full luggage bins, just like last time and just as flustered. and she left her on the seat by herself just like last time. so i guess it is her baby-nature :)

reading kiran desai's inheritance of loss. it sparkles.i think she has inherited the same gift for writing, the same evocative description and a way with words that her mother (one of my, if not the favourite indian-english writers) has. "pigeons shuttlecocking along the hallways", "cauli-flowering in the brain", "lascivious subway breath peering up skirts" and it goes on. it is set in lush kalimpong where she must have spent her childhood and i am sure a lot of it is her own experience especially the interactions with the cook and the anglicized bongs and the gurkhas and the tibetans. all of it has a ring of familiarity if you have visited one of the NE hill stations but yet it is still so refreshingly described.

and she even uses one of my favourite words- borborygmus (besides gems like circination and eructation and a host of lovely, esoteric nouns and adjectives). the sometimes ostentatious display of vocabulary is reminiscent of cry, the peacock, which is still my favourite anita desai novel.

the darjeeling limited

the premise might seem cliched- three brothers, who are from NY and whose father has just died in a traffic accident, travelling in north india in a train and having zany adventures with the natives. of course, as expected, they argue, fight, brawl over silly things like a pair of outrageous sun glasses owned by their father, a painted leather belt, an old school shaving razor. except for a little stretch towards the end where the story seems to be lost and slows down to almost a stop like their train does, there is never a dull moment- just like india itself which ram guha aptly called the most interesting place on earth. other things can be disputed but not this. something chaotic, wild, unpredictable always happens in india and in this movie too- whether it is a cobra escaping or a quickie in the western style toilet with the sweet-lime bearing stewardess or attendance at a funeral of a boy who drowns, his brothers having been saved or for that matter the cunning artifice of using a short film screened prior to the main feature, introducing the past life of one of the brothers. of course there are quintessentially indian elements- cows on the road, swigging of cough syrups and sleeping pills easily procured at the local pharmacy, tilaks and marigold garlands, gawking natives, rajasthanis in their colourful turbans and beautifully painted and clean houses, quaint signs like 'ticket window' and 'station tempel [sic]'. it does lose steam in the end and it is not exactly clear why they are in india- supposedly to take their mother, who has become a nun in the NE, back to NY. what is clear is that all three of them are trying to escape their past and looking for salvation but are hopelessly attached to their baggage including the funky hand painted brick red suitcases they lug around or rather have porters lugging around everywhere which they finally symbolically get rid off in trying to get on the train.

the music interestingly enough is a pastiche notably using music from satyajit ray's films- jalshagar, apu trilogy.. overall it was enjoyable and probably more so if you have travelled in india and on indian trains.

TNS

saw TN Seshagopalan (with mullaivasal chandramouli) in concert at the pittsburgh temple. before that there were fireworks for deepavali and a styrofoam dinner (desi fare for oldies, pizza and brownies for the ABCDs who had obviously been forced by their parents to don their indian clothes and attend diwAAAlee.

TNS started off with an aTa tALa mOhana varnam (mana mOhana). his voice sounded a tad raspy and with a tinge of coryza. he followed it with the majestic shankha chakra in pUrNa chandrikA. his voice was terrible and the beautiful lilty swaras were a bit offkey and strained esp. at the high octaves. somehow his singing reminded me of someone with ALS. mind is active but muscles do not obey, in his case vocal cords. he then launched into a passionate pUrvI kaLyANI AlApana and maybe it was due to the tumblers of coffee he was swigging in the chaste no_lips_to_the_glass iyengar way, his voice improved greatly by the time he was finished with the a and he followed it with the sedate parama pAvana rAmA (by pUchI?) complete with neraval and kalpanaswarams. i had already made up my mind to stay after the AlApana instead of going to watch persepolis as was planned earlier. the next piece was a pleasant surprise- he did an exquisite rendering of sAmA (the violonist had a hard time matching this) followed by a lovely composition, i think of his own, called thAyE thanaIyan sEyE with the wonderful rhyming on the second syllable. i don't think any other poetry save tamizh has this rather idiosyncratic rhyming scheme. the composition itself was beautiful and had a lilting gait with a sesha mudra. he mercifully spared us of KS or neravals which would have been like adding feet to a serpent. this was quickly followed by a reasonably elaborate rendering of gANgEya bhushanI (sari evvare ramiah) of thiagaraja which i actually figured out ab initio :) head of nATa (unmistakeable R3 G3, tail of kIravANI. the only other thing would have been sarasangi but the R3 G3 was so obvious. by this time, the man was in his usual form with the occasional apaswaram. by the time he was deep into kharaharapriya, he was the TNS of the passionate high octaves and elaborate kanakku fame. he sang the gem of a thiagaraja composition (well they are all gems aren't they) soumitri bhAgyamE again replete with detailed neraval and KS. felt bad leaving during the thani that followed but had no choice.

overall it was an enjoyable concert despite the raspy start. it was probably the only detailed sAmA rendition i have heard and of course my ego was thrilled at detecting gANgEyabHushanI. i actually didn't miss an RTP although it would have been good to listen to a rAgamAlikA with his wonderful ability to switch between rAgAs.

babies and blackboards, on board

on my flight to chicago, i sat next to a midwest mother who had a 2 year old on her lap. now, it is illegal to keep your handbag on your lap but i guess it is ok to keep a baby. this one was the sweetest 2 year old girl and we played the usual peekaboo but she, like a cat, had her ways and deigned to occasionally curl her lips in a half smile but that was it. throughout, the mom was cooing to her in german and pointing out things excitedly to her in german and she was drinking it all in not to excitedly but with a calm repose. then suddenly out of the blue (ha ha it was in the blue) the plane lurched and entered a turbulence. all the adults were clearly uncomfortable and their facial muscles tense. the 2 year old suddenly started giggling and smiling. it was amazing. only a 2 year old can probably do that. and then calm returned to the plane and the baby. weird.

my second flight to pittsburgh was rent by howls of a 2 year old sitting behind my seat and fighting with her sister and bawling almost through the flight. what a contrast. i guess babies develop personalities early on. so is that original nature? again i find myself thinking about buddhism and observing the mind and true nature. we are told and to some extent it seems plausible that we all start tabula rasa. when and where does it get chalked in? who does the writing and is there a duster? or a wet cloth like we used in school sometimes? there certainly are parts which say 'do not rub' on this big blackboard of the brain, at least pour moi.

lame

excuse. it was ismrm deadline and i spent 14 hrs typing away. it was really a weight lifted as i walked back home. its the same story every year and i have stopped trying to pretend to try and submit early. after all adrenaline works.

gusty autumn nights-
clinging to bare branches of
a gingko - a nest !

the burmese harp

this was my second viewing of kon ichikawa's timeless antiwar statement and it was interesting to contrast it with resnais' hiroshima, mon amour which i also watched again after this. the burmese harp is about a soldier, mizushima, in the imperial japanese army during the final days of the war in burma. he and his regiment, led my a sensitive, musician-captain who is forever making his company practise choral music, have surrendered to the anglo-aussie forces and are sent to a camp in mudon. meanwhile mizushima, who we are told has become adept at playing the burmese harp and is never seen without it and even uses it to signal to his regiment on scouting missions, volunteers to go on another mission to convince a small band of renegade, never-say-die japanese soldiers holed in a nearby mountain hideout to give up their arms and turn in. they inevitably refuse to and get killed in the ensuing battle. mizushima himself is wounded and nursed to health to by a buddhist monk whose robe, we are shown in a flashback, he steals and proceeds to go to mudon dressed as a monk in hopes of reuniting with his regiment. en route, he sees hundreds of japanese soldiers dead, their bodies decomposing and being eaten by vultures and decides to stay back to give them a decent burial. in the meantime, the regiment in mudon get their release orders and are preparing to go back to japan, still concerned about mizushima's whereabouts. they hear his harp, they even see him carrying the funeral ashes in a box (a Japanese custom, says the sergeant) but are still not sure if it is a burmese monk who happens to look like mizushima. if mizushima can look like a burmese, then there could be burmese who can look like him, reasons one of the soldiers. in a moving final scene on the ship back to japan, the emotional captain reads out mizushima's letter to his brothers-in-arms where he states his reasons for not returning with them and that he has been accepted into priesthood. the narrator, who we have, until then, only heard, is revealed to be a nondescript solider in the regiment.

the horror and uselessness of war is almost in-your-face throughout the movie- the decaying corpses, the morale of the soldiers themselves and their insecurities of going back to a post-war japan whose horrors they cannot or do not want to comprehend, contrasting with the massive, reclining buddha statues, the elegant pagodas, the impassive burmese who just seem to watch everything around them with a calm detachment, the serene monks, in short burma itself. the black and white photography is stunning especially when exploiting these contrasts (of attitudes and light). the sometimes stark sometimes lush landscape of burma is always creeping in.

if at all there are any flaws, it is the clumsy portrayal of supposedly sikh soldiers who are basically english guys with blackened faces, white turbans and fake accents. one could easily accuse ichikawa of not portraying the brutality of the japanese army. in this case, they are shown to be sensitive and feeling human beings but i think that is the point. in bringing out the humanity and buddha nature even during war and in the victors and the losers, the essential universality of buddha nature is brought out. i also feel that for ichikawa, war is inherently a destructive and pointless act, whether it is a righteous one or not and the horrors of war need to be discussed and kept alive so that collective amnesia does not permit the repetition of mistakes, each one exceeding the previous in enormity.

resnais also uses horrifying images from the hiroshima aftermath but only in the overture. the tragedy is viewed at a closer, personal level- nevers and hiroshima merge and he brilliantly uses imagery to bring about this transference- the survivors in bed with riva in bed, the survivors whose hair falls out with riva who is shorn, and finally the german lover with the japanese lover. but there is a certain mysterious almost ominous note when she says it will all happen again. it is far more subtle than his wry comment that they might perhaps meet if there is another war. there is also a tension between memory and forgetting, a tightrope walked by all the characters including the cities of hiroshima and nevers.

the monk who tends to mizushima says burma is buddha's country. i can see why monks are the frontline in opposing the burmese junta and also bear/bore the brunt of the recent brutal crackdowns. i cannot help go back to the opening and closing lines of the film- "the soil of burma is red, so are its rocks". red-with the blood of the soldiers who died and now red with the blood of the monks who were shot. there is still hope- hope like the red rubies that red soils produce, hope that the junta will pass and peace will return.

a cloud sails past my
window and merges-
with the burning midday sun

speeding

Today, i got my first ever speeding ticket near Viola or I should say, in Viola, along that 300 yard speedtrap where it changes from 50 mph to 30 mph. I saw a car pulled over on the opposite direction and neither did slow down nor notice two other sheriff cars in my own direction, a fact the cop gently pointed out when he handed me the ticket and wished me a good day. That silenced me, for awhile. I do not know if it is the act itself, or the 200$ fine or the lack of mindfulness which upset me. hopefully the latter but probably a combination of all three. i will now be careful when driving those country roads.

later that evening and the next morning, when i watched The Burmese Harp, it seemed to bother me even less.

tolle

yesterday at doug's, we listened to eckhart tolle, who talked about the little "me"s we keep creating and imbuing stories and power with. we make up a entire novel populated with "me" protagonists, he said. he also extolled on the virtues of the here and now. his accent made "now" sound like "null", maybe my feverish subliminal imagination, but divorced of its nihilistic tones, null could quite well replace now. he sounded a lot like jiddu, i must say- clear, lucid, simple and not a word out of place, not a filler "um" or "well" or the pernicious "like". too simple, actually.

i was, as usual, getting annoyed with talk (reality) and anticipation of talk (my own projection) about enlightenment that inevitably followed the sit. the problem with jiddu (and eckhart) is they make it (enlightenment) sound so simple and yet in some curious way, their words have the power to delude. eckhart mentioned that the fact that we are here (this was a recording from a retreat) already meant that the process [of enlightenment] has begun. there is always a good reason to motivate people in a retreat. i have experienced it many times, especially after the first day when the monkey mind is looking for loopholes and exit strategies. but it can be misleading after a 20 minute fidgety sit. enlightenment is letting go of things, someone said but in the process, we can easily not let go of that idea. in fact, that makes all the difference. and even that idea itself is attachment. i wished linchi were there to whack me with his stick. or seung sahn sunim who would have probably said, "if you open your mouth i will hit you three times. if you close your mouth, i will hit you three times."

sitting with doug's sangha has been difficult but interesting. i am grappling with the koan of how to express real concern about attitudes of people who come to sit without crossing over into the territory of my ego claiming superiority of zen experience and my own opinions. for instance, i wanted to tell the new guy not to sit on the sofa like someone watching a baseball game but rather keep his back erect and unsupported. is that my ego or is that my genuine desire to help him? same for people moving their limbs, heads, rustling their jackets, scratching an itch, whatever. its a slippery slope. seung sahn sunim's koan of dropping ashes on the buddha cannot be more apt.

what should you do? what can you do? what will you do? I love the subtle change in meaning and tone the different modals impart to this sentence.

#FFFF00 -> OR

early morning tea,
and sun- transmute walnut leaves
from yellow to gold !

L

i nearly fall
crossing frosty railroad tracks-
must be end of fall !

ardha matsyEndrAsanA

out of the corner of my eye,
ardha nArISvarA, rectangles of light-
outside the wind howls

falllllll...ing.

yesterday was a beautiful fall day and i markedly felt a sadness at the passing away of fall, of crimson leaves falling from the vine maple tree which i could see from my bed, through the gap in the crimson drapes of my bedroom window (okay it is crimson from my bed but the outer surface is bleached due to constant exposure to sunlight and is probably an ugly rose colour from outside). the tree is almost bare now, like the lady whose hair comes off in clumps, in hiroshima mon amour. there are still some leaves in the lower branches but the grass below is littered with lovely leaves, arranged in that wonderful random order which only nature can pull off, a heady combination of beauty and imperfection, order and disorder. soon it will be bare twigs and the leaves below will be raked up and bagged in ugly black polythene sacks to be taken to some faraway dump.

here is an aloo dum recipe i tried today. its partly something i read online and partly experimental.

peel and cut potatoes into 1.5 in crescent shaped wedges, boil till they are al dente, drain, add turmeric and chilli powder, mix and set aside.

grind onions, tomatoes, green chillies, ginger and garlic in a blender.

in a thick pan, add oil and fry mustard seeds, star anise, raisins and cumin and then add the remaining onions and when it turns translucent, add the potatoes and fry for a while. then add the ground paste and simmer till the raw smell goes away. add garam masala and let it simmer. finally add salt, sugar and garnish with coriander leaves.

serve with hot chapatis and/or rice.

okay, i did not give precise measurements. just experiment with quantities.

and btw precise is an anagram of recipes or an antigram in my case.

hiroshima, mon amour

yesterday, i watched alain resnais' masterpiece of a movie, his first feature film- a love story set in the most unlikely of places- hi-ro-shi-ma. as the movie progresses, we understand that it is a perfect place to fall in love, especially of the hopeless, doomed kind and any personal tragedy is outshadowed by the tragedy that befell the city in 1945, one that continues to exist despite the city having been resurrected. the opening shot of the arms of entwined lovers covered with a layer of ash that continues to fall slowly and softly like snow finally gives way to a documentary like walk through the events of hiroshima narrated by the film's unnamed heroine. we are shown impassive faces in spotlessly clean hospitals, legs of zombie like hordes of japanese people walking the aisles of a museum and viewing almost surreal objects (a bicycle melted into a pretzel, a bouquet of caps), images of horror- of peeled skin and vaporized bodies and mutilated faces and also signs of life- ants and earthworms crawling out of the earth on day 2. alain was asked to originally make a documentary but after having watched the ones the japanese had made commented that there was nothing left for him to make and asked marguerite duras to write a script with a love story set in hiroshima, a script he would strictly adhere to. in many ways, hiroshima mon amour is a story about remembrance and forgetting, of the unraveling of time, of transference and of catharsis. along with rashomon and citizen kane, it brilliantly uses flashbacks (something which is so obvious and banal today but was relatively uncommon then) to reconstruct the heroine's past which we learn was another tragic love story, l'amour premiere, that most powerful of loves, to a german officer who is killed by a sniper minutes before they meet and dies in her arms.

lights far way,
through leaves
of dense autumnal tints

-Shiki Masaoka

hunter's moon

i walked back home around 6 yesterday. the sun had just set but there was still a lot of light and the sky was a rosy pink and there she was in the midst of urban ugliness- power lines, smoke stacks and concrete- but untouched by the grime, noise, and man-made civilization. she kept me company as i walked home, playing peekaboo with me around trees and chimneys.

this fall, i have been observing and admiring the moon a lot. she's a welcome visitor in my house- earlier in my living room and then my kitchen and lately my bedroom. i drew aside my curtains at about 4 am two morns ago and there she was- resplendent and present. sometimes, especially in winter due to the dry air, i get up in the middle of the night or in the wee hours of the morning to drink some water. there is a certain quiet beauty and stillness seeing the moonbeam entering through the kitchen window and lighting the floor.

snow country

i completed snow country by yasunari kawabata last night. it was amazing. much of the feelings expressed in the novel are revealed by their absence than explicit actions or words. it is essentially a love story, a tragic one-sided love a young, feisty geisha named komako has for the protagonist shimamura. he is a married man, lives in tokyo, dabbles in theory of western dance (even though he has never been to a single performance) and spends a lot of time in the mountains and the hot spring village, where he meets komako and where the novel is set, save a short excursion to nearby villages. the hot spring village, which is never named, is in the snow country of remore western japan, a land of forbidding but desolate beauty where 10-12 ft winter snowfalls are not uncommon.

with sparse language bordering on haiku, kawabata masterfully evokes the emotions, the change of seasons, passage of time and the evanescence of life itself. besides these two characters, there is yoko whose ambiguous, shadowy spectral presence permeates the novel culminating in the highly ambiguous denouement. her reflection is the one shimamura obsessively focuses on, during his first train journey into the hot spring village; the fusion of her reflection on the glass and the mountain scenery outside and the fleeting images are described beautifully. she and komako seem to share a love-hate relationship, possibly as a result of vying for the same man (or men), the son of the music-teacher in whose house komako lives and for whom she becomes a geisha to pay his medical bills. nothing is explicitly stated. the events in the book are at the same time deliberate and spontaneous, like a tea-ceremony. shimamura's feelings for komako are never revealed while he admits at some point to himself that she likes him and her actions seem to agree with that. yet, it is hard to believe that he felt nothing for her. the doomed, unrequited love of komako is a poignant portrayal of wasted beauty of the hot spring geishas, who apparently move from one to another, each change drawing them more into misery and waste. running through the book is this thread of acts which are seemingly pointless- komako's love, shimamura's hobby, the traditional (and possibly dying, at the time of writing) art of weaving linen threads in the winter snow into a fabric that is part of summer kimonos, yoko's time spent in the cemetery mourning the dead man. and yet to each of them, their actions are important and fulfilling and seemingly purposeful. or maybe they simply do not realize that. or maybe be they do and still do it.

i will probably reread the novel. it is a complex work that can possibly evoke varied moods depending on that of the reader. perhaps a winter reading will reveal facets of the novel i missed during my autumnal read.

who am i?

One of the suggestions for focusing during zazen is to ask "Who am I?" with an obvious or not so obvious "Don't know" answer, typically questioning during inhalation and answering during exhalation. This is similar and yet different from the upanishadic/vedantic advice of meditating on this question, the answer being the Answer to all questions.

watching an old man and an old woman walking on the lawn, Alzheimer's came randomly to my mind. don't people with Alzheimer's also perhaps ask the same question sometime? wouldn't it be frightening not to know who you are? yet, in reality, we do not clearly know who we are. we are clearly more than a label, an appellation attached to pounds of flesh and tissue. so who is m? is there a big difference between questioning "who am I?" and not remembering who one is?

another such apparent conflict between "psychology" and buddhism is the concept of self. Oliver Sacks moving describes a patient who has completely lost his short term memory and is "stuck somewhere in the late 60s" in his An Anthropologist on Mars and wonders if he had a sense of self. he was truly living moment to moment, a state zen exhorts its practitioners to get into. curiously disturbing.

one final thought, again a conflict. autistic people are not supposed to feel any emotions. yet in buddhism, the practitioner's compassion is awakened and one feels a great empathy for all sentient beings. i wonder how an autist would respond to imeditation (as opposed to medication). are there people fundamentally incapable of feeling? how much of our (as in supposedly non autistic people) feelings are "real"? to use a mundane example, take love. after 'surreal', it is the most abused word. we love x,y,z. we love tv serials, going on long drives, our pets. and yet, we can do cruel acts to people we love.

mapping the senses

this weekend's episode of this american life focused on maps and mapping but the meaning of mapping was extended beyond the usual geographical confines to cover all the five senses. Each act, five in all, covered sight, smell, sound, taste and touch respectively. for the first sense (in some sense, the only one which made sense and was not overly contrived), they had a guy in NC making neighbourhood maps of anything you can imagine- houses with Halloween pumpkin, pattern of light falling through the leaves, houses with people featured on local papers, criss-crossing patterns of cable and utility line maps- basically stretching the definition and purpose of cartography to an artistic sensibility driven creative process. it was no longer mundane, in the true sense of the Latin root meaning world. the other acts were interesting but to call them mapping was a stretch. an electronic nose, a hypochondriacal woman who obsessively palpates her breasts, a chap who

i can see a sequel to this episode covering just the brain. after all these senses do not make, um sense, without the brain. starting from the homunculus which maps the body parts onto the somatosensory and motor cortical regions of the brain to the recent obsession with fMRI based brain mapping.

the desert smells like rain

petrichor is a coinage for the most wondrous of smells- the smell of rain on earth, the smell of red earth and pouring rain. often claimed by many as their most favourite smell, it is supposedly a complex odour created by more than 50 chemicals with redolent names like geosmin.

gary paul nabhan's book captures the world of Papago indians (or more poetically O'Odham in their native tongue) and their Sonoran desert environs with a rare sensitivity and beauty that vanilla natural history books lack. i found the book at Strand Books after several years of hunting in used and new book stores (of course i could've found it online but didn't want to). and incidentally i kept it on my makeshift kitchen altar for saraswathi puja and read it this morning for vijayadasami. it also tackles issues threatening their lifestyle- political problems caused by an artificial border, water hungry and resource devouring anglo-american farming practices and the challenges of keeping their culture and practices alive but without the unbalanced, rhetorical and often polemical approach that characterizes such conflicts.

The title, gary explains in the first chapter, is the answer a young papago boy gives him when he (gary) asked him what came to his mind first with the mention of desert. the papago indians cultivate solely on run-off water after the first late summer rains, a capricious beast that often is propitiated with the drinking (and vomiting afterwards as he wonderfully describes the ceremony in another chapter poetically titled "Throwing up the clouds") of cactus wine. over hundreds of years, they have developed a simple and efficient network of arroyos for channelizing the runoffs and feeding their fields. Gary's descriptions of the stirrings of life following the first rain are enough to make the book worth it. Turtles wake up from their slumber and blindly rush into the water ( it is as if their bodies know it), toads rise and hurriedly make love in a frenzy, winged ants flying around, amaranth seeds bursting into life.

and quietly in the middle of all this, almost inexplicably, rises the smell of the desert, the smell of rain.