What's New this year

8-28-10 - MLK's emphasis toward the end of his life was to work for peace. This article from WagingPeace states it well and simply.

And speaking of peace, here's a month old piece by Ralph Nader on the War in Afghanistan.

I don't know if I can make their Wed. 8-25 concert August 25 at a very cool performance hall in SF called Viracocha cause I'm gonna be with Edward Browns Fairfax CA Zen group from 7 to 9:30 and the show starts at 8 but maybe it goes late. Liz Tuomi's son Ethan Okamura is part of this trio. - dc.

8-20-10 - There are a few articles in the new issue of Tricycle that are SFZC related. This includes a portfolio of Kaz Tanahashi’s brushwork (see his cuke interview), Wendy Johnson’s regular and always fine gardening column, Katy Butler’s interview with actor Jeff Bridges, and an article by Andrew Cooper about organizing Thich Nhat Hanh’s first U.S. teaching tour, in 1983. The TNH article is called “The Debacle” and a good part of it takes place at SFZC.

8-08-10 - All our well-being prayers go out to Richard Jaffe who I've received word is seriously ill. - dc

RICHARD JAFFE is the Chair of the Department of Religion at Duke University. He received his Ph.D. in religious studies with a concentration in Buddhist studies from Yale University in 1995. Dr. Jaffe is a specialist in modern Japanese Buddhism. He is the author of Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism (2002) and Seeking Shakyamuni: World Travel and the Creation of Modern Japanese Buddhism (forthcoming in Japanese). Currently he is working on a book about Japanese Buddhist travel and the transformation of Buddhism in late-nineteenth century Japan. (from this page)

Paintings and Drawings by Dan Welch (discovered this looking for a picture of Richard Jaffe for whom two of these art works are dedicated. One is also for yours truly and hangs in my bedroom. - dc)

July - 7-31-10 - Sorry about absence. Expect more. Busy at Tarrantland with various projects and enjoying working with J Thorn, Dennis the Samson, Andrew the concrete wall meister, Howie the servent of all beings, Clay the drum gardener, Todd the Montana monster, Joyce the wrench-wise, Hans the hammerman, and various legal and illegal bros, with constant support from Trinkita my sweeta. - dc

7-25-10 - The Dream of the Turquoise Bee - Cultural Diplomacy in Eastern Tibet Slideshow/Presentation

July 26, 2010 (Monday) 7:00 PM

Northbrae Community Church, 941 The Alameda, Berkeley

Requested Donation: $10

Benefiting Tibetan Political Prisoners and Their Families and

Sacred Sites International, a Berkeley-Based Preservation Advocacy Organization

Evening Hosted by Sacred Sites International www.sacred-sites.org

We have just posted our Dream of the Turquoise Bee Tour video on youtube and we would love to have you take a look and pass the link on to your friends and colleagues. The more people see it, the more clicks we get, the higher it will rise in the Google Search—and you know what that means!—people looking for a fabulous adventure in Tibet will see us first.

Go to www.dianneaigaki.com/tibet, scroll down and click on the monk in the red robes to get to the youtube video. That allows you to see the site as well as access the video. Or go directly to the video at You Tube

7-24-10 - Don't Blame BP - a pinched image short

7-23-10 - The History of Everything in Stop Motion Street Animation

7-21-10 - Day Off

7-20-10 - Photos of Bob Walter doing yoga at Green Gulch Farm - on John Stroud's Picasa site. See Interview with Bob Walter from two days ago.

7-19-10 - Symphony of Science - 'We Are All Connected' - Sagan, Feynman, deGrasse Tyson & Bill Nye on YouTube.

Feynman: Inconceivable nature of nature

Sagan, Hawing (and a bit from Arthur C. Clarke) on the Universe and God - Sagan talks about how the way most people thinks works for the world we perceive but not the very small and the very big that science deals with these days. But when they talk about "god" or anything beyond the laws of their science it seems to me they're stuck in their own limits. Still I have great respect for them and love to hear them talk about the cosmos. - dc

7-18-10 - Interview with Bob Walter who practiced with Suzuki, Katagiri, Soen, Dudjum, Kerouac, Watts, Rollo May, and yours truly. - dc

The Richard Baker interview (7-10) was from the Winter 1994 issue of Tricycle. Thanks to Andrew Main who also sent this link for Richard Baker in Wikipedia

7-17-10 - Only with the Heart - that's a PDF of a 12 step workbook by Frank Costanza who wrote The Rustling of Leaves: An Adventure of Recovery. Thanks to Milas

7-16-10 - Forecast of an EMP destroying solar storm and what to do about it.

7-15-10 - The founder of the Fugs is gone. Read about it and listen to Kill for Peace.

7-14-10 - Zen Yoshifuku's Contrast Magazine

7-13-10 - Interesting Western scientific take on the (to me) silly god question. Is There a God or Is There Nothingness? New Scientific Paradigm. I don't like the either-or ness of the name which are to me false choices, but the article is interesting. - from Huffington Post.

And also from the Huff Post, this on Amma, the hugging guru. Clay and I were hugged by her when Clay was about two in Santa Fe. [more in dchad misc]

7-12-10 - Relative size of planets and stars - love stuff like this. - thanks Gregory

7-11-10 - The Secret Powers of Time - thanks Kelly

7-10-10 - Ran into this old interview with Richard Baker - thanks David Silva. From Winter 94 Tricycle.

7-09-10 - Embrace Life PSA - A touching ad for seatbelts that made the big time, done I understand by an amateur in England. I have known a few people who say they feel safer without seatbelts, one in particular who says not wearing one has saved his life twice. I have also met a few who say they feel safer on a motorcycle than in a car. I favor the policy advocated by this ad. Thanks Rene. - dc

7-08-10 - Save Sakineh from Stoning in Iran

Happy to see progressive commentator Cenk Uygur on MSNBC - here bemoaning Obama's economic strategy.

7-07-10 - IOS - Information Overload Syndrome - is this really from Xerox?

7-06-10 - John Steiner suggests the Spiritual Media Network

7-05-10 - Thanks to Richard Speel for sending:

Don't be afraid of a flag...Sometimes it blows and other times it waves...

Have a peaceful day of interdependence!

Joseph Campbell was pro flag and I looked for a quote from him on it but couldn't find one. Cuke is neutral. - dc

7-04-10 - Put Away the Flags

7-02-10 - On this page, a poem from Mark Lewis, Bus Stop, The Rubin Museum of Art posted the poem he submitted in conjunction with their show on the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

6-28-10 - Thanks to old pal John DeSmidt for sending along this Russian Tire Buddha.

6-27-10 - Look at these wonderful photos of Sarnath taken by Clare Whitfield, my ex-mom-in-law (Elin). She also sent me a wonderful little earthen Buddha from there which is on the table by my bed. I publicly apologize to Clare for taking so long to thank her for that. What prodded my memory is that I happened on her email with the link to these photos which I don't remember getting. It must have gotten buried by accident.

6-26-10 - Night before last, Bob Walter and I went to sit with Dave Haselwoood and his Empty Bowl Sangha. I've got a long interview with Bob I'm aiming at getting transcribed soon. He's visiting from Tasmania where he's been for thirty years. - dc

6-25-10 - Found it, that is, found what we were looking for yesterday. It's at Crestone Mt. ZC in the Hotoan, the abbot's study.

6-24-10 - Looking for the original calligraphy for the cover of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. See it to the left. Shambhala Publications wants a new scan for the 40th anniversary issue. Need it now. Please contact me, DC, at dchad3(at)sonic(dot)net

6-23-10 - The Dream of the Turquoise Bee
Cultural Diplomacy in Eastern Tibet

6-16-08 - Mark Foote whose site is Zen Mudra came to the reading last night. Check out this animation he did with Adobe Flash:

The Bridge That Flows (Zazen)

Mark writes: If anybody is interested, this is a stripped-down version of the third of three animations at my site. While I was in the process, a friend in England sent me some graphics from the pyramids of Egypt that he was puzzling over, and lo and behold: the same principles of anatomy that I was trying to illustrate were right there on the walls of ancient Egypt. I decided to include the graphics from the pyramids in the animations, and you can see that at my site:

6-15-2010 - Kelly the elder son arrives today. So does poet Charlotte Innes, coming from LA. She sent an email last night to Kelly and me adding the five poems she's going to read to the five he's going to read and asking is that okay and is that going to conflict with what I'm going to read from Decomposition tonight at Copperfields and I wrote her back:

Poems? What poems? I'm just working on sending out emails and making phone calls and putting up a notice on Facebook etc.

Hope to see you tonight in Sebsatopol, Thursday in Berkeley, Friday in Sonoma or in the pages of Decomposition (details here). - dc

6-14-2010 - Susan Moon writes that This Is Getting Old - a new book from the maker of Tofu Roshi. Here's her blog - check the Bay Area events which continue into July. One is tomorrow night at Readers Books in Sonoma CA while Kelly and I are at Copperfields in nearby Sebastopol. Then we're going to be at Readers Books in Sonoma on Friday at five

6-13-2010 - Nothing is Written. This phrase comes to me now and then and I was wondering where I got it from. [more on this at dchad misc]

6-11-2010 - Yard Dogs Road Show - What a group. Why is this here? There's a reading for the book, Decomposition (see cuke page on this book and Bay Area events), on Friday 6-18 5pm at Reader's Books in Sonoma, CA (and Lilla and Andy's (the owners) son is in the Yard Dogs Road Show and is also into mushrooms and is I think involved with providing the mushroom snacks for the event.

6-09-2010 - Noam Chomsky and Ralph Nader - I don't think either should run for president, but to me each in his own way sure cuts through the established propaganda and assumptions. - dc

6-08-2010 - Thanks to Howie Klein for taking these photos of the get-together to celebrate the completion of the gazebo here at Tarantland that he and Clay Chadwick built. Howie was there from the first and kept the momentum going with him and Clay and he did a great job on the steps. Ellery Samson and Clay did the branch over the doorway and Clay did the bench. Todd Springfield got the whole job cleaned up and ready for the party.

Thanks to Dennis Samson for pointing out the meanings of the word gazebo which are

Our gazebo is a freestanding, un-roofed, open-sided structure from which a vista can be enjoyed, a combination of the two.

Dennis also mentioned the origin of the word gazebo to be from Swedish or something near there and being related to the verb "gaze," and some sources agree but most say "unknown origin."

Present were Andrew Atkeison, wife Rosie, and their friend Michelle, Mary Cunov, Andy Ferguson, Howie Klein, Katrinka McKay, Deb Saint, Joyce Pointe and her friend Mike, Dennis Samson, Todd Springfield, John Tarrant, and yours truly DC. Clay was with friends at Raindance.

6-03-2010 - Roy Iwake, has died unexpectedly in a bicycle accident. See his cuke interview. Roy sat with Shunryu Suzuki back when we were starting Tassajara. I met again him decades later through John Tarrant who is going to write something on Roy. Johnny Thorn called this morning to let me know. Roy did wonderful, complicated origami he called cavex round folding. Johnny said Roy was going to New York to some origami event that was recognizing his work. There will be a memorial service in mid July. More here later. - dc

6-02-2010 - Wrote a fungi-specific bio of son Kelly that's now on the cuke page for his new book, Decomposition. Reminder that Kelly, poet Charlotte Innes, and I will be doing readings from the book June 15th in Sebastopol, 16th in Berkeley, and 18th in Sonoma. Details here. - dc

6-01-2010 - Interview that's really more of a conversation with early Suzuki student Mike Dixon - from 1994. Still catching up. Check out Mike's art on his website (find the portrait of Dan Welch). Mike did the cloud paintings at Greens restaurant and the fly for Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. He's also an excellent musician.

5-29-2010 - There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.

5-27-2010 - A conversation with archery master
Kanjuro Shibata Sensei is now at the top of the Chronicles Project Let Loose Radio series.

Got the search thing down. Jrank rules and does PDFs, just had to make some adjustments - see Site Search near top of Home Page to the right.

5-26-2010 - Did some more research on site search and put a homemade Google Site Search (thanks to askdavetaylor.com) and now the search function on shunryusuzuki.com gets PDFs as well which is good because the complete collection there is all PDFs, which, as indicated yesterday, will change at some point but not now. So the Google and the Jrank site searches are both here for comparison for now. - dc

Now I've got to get to work promoting Kelly's book signings for Decomposition in mid June in the Bay Area. Here's the event schedule.

5-25-2010 - Exciting new Site Search feature on cuke.com home page and inside the gate of shunryusuzuki.com (the whole archive comes to you). Trying out this highly praised JRANK system. Just am installing it today (and it should be functional in a few hours) thanks to a request from Mark Lancaster. He's going to be giving a talk about lay practice in Arcata Ca in June and wanted to know about Suzuki Roshi lectures where he mentioned beginner's mind and lay practice. I did a quick Google site search using the Google formula for that: <search term[space]site:URL> which in this case was <beginner's mind site:www.shunryusuzuki.com>. There was no difference putting "beginner's mind" in quotes or not. That brought up a handful of files with a couple being non Suzuki comments and some duplication because there several collections of Suzuki lectures on this site. And for some reason it didn't include the original Beginner's Mind lecture that was edited for book (Here it is on this site). I had a whole list of things to do today but put them aside to do some research on how to better search the site, something I've been wanting to do for cuke.com and to improve and expand for shunryusuzuki.com. What I came up with was JRANK. Let's see how it works. It's quite simple. Send feedback to dchad3(at)sonic(dot)net. Thanks - DC

Already see one problem - it isn't getting the PDFs on shunryusuzuki.com but it works there.

Now a really weird thing - on cuke it's just taking me to PayPal. Hmm. OK. Fixed that. There was a PayPal code still in there. I had taken it off because I hardly ever get anything that way anyway but there was a remnant. Probably should return PayPal anyway cause there's the occasional donation and who knows what the future holds.

So after writing that I got a donation through PayPal - thank you so very much - and I don't think it was because I put that last message up but because the kind donating person was the victim of the crossup where they tried to search and was sent to the PayPal donation page for cuke.com. Glory be.

Anyway, the search thing is working great for cuke already. I think it doesn't do PDFs though and I think what I should do is put all the lectures up in regular old words like this page. That will take a bit of work but it would be better. Problem is I'd like to work with them a bit while I do that to make them more uniform. Hmm. Maybe I should put up a Google site search that does PDFs while I'm doing that. But now it's time for omphaloskepsis. Goodnight. - dc

5-24-2010 - Karen Armstrong makes her TED wish and makes some excellent points about religion quite relevant in terms what went on here yesterday and the day before.

5-22-2010 - From Science to God, another Culture Unplugged film, this one from Peter Russell who doesn't use the word "god" in this presentation. That's what Culture Unplugged calls it. The word "god" can mean so much. A lot of people prefer not to use it cause it's so tainted by literalism and a lot of bad associations. But to many it's just another word for the absolute, buddha, tao, the cosmos, the unknown, etc. And I think it's important to rehabilitate the word because so many think it's that or nothing. And maybe it might help to open a crack in the little boxes where we find simplistic atheists (as opposed to cosmic atheists) who think they're being scientific like Hitchens, Dawkins, and Maher. Here's Peter Russell's website. He's another Noetics guy like Dean Radin who was featured here on 5-03. -dc

5-21-2010 - Zowie Howie K sent a link to a wonderful documentary on Chinese Poet Han Shan, Cold Mountain, the name of the film. I loved seeing and listening to Bill Porter (Red Pine), Gary Snyder, Burton Watson, and poet Jim Lenfestey whom I was unfamiliar with. I was filled with admiration for them and Han Shan, and humbled which is a good thing. Culture Unplugged is the name of the site. It's got many tempting documentaries. I saw a few others and was reminded of the statement (origin unknown) that the only thing worse than bad TV is good TV. - dc

5-20-2010 - A couple of brief excerpts from the Tricycle interview with Lew Richmond (featured here 5-06) where Lew says some things about Suzuki Roshi's teaching and intention that ring quite true to me, DC. - thanks Mad

Also added Bashar's Four Laws of Creation to my screed of 5-18 so one wouldn't have to watch the video to see what they are.

5-19-2010 - Roller Doll Skates! - Where Katrinka and I hang out when we're in Bend and we're in Bend. This store is run by Dee Moralizer with assistance from her mate, ref Foul Bundy. Catch them at a Lava City Roller Doll bout.

5-17-10 - Father Steve Frost's Nepsis Foundation - very cool, check it out. - dc

The link below allows downloading a paper I've written that offers a new theory about Bodhidharma's life, previously unpublished in China or the West. It is based on modern Chinese scholarship and my own analysis of old texts, plus field observations at sites reputed to be where Bodhidharma lived and taught in China. The conclusions of the paper are entirely my own. - Andy Ferguson

5-10-10 - Shogoji - where practiced for a little over a month in Japan not long after arriving there in April of 1988 with Dainin Katagiri Roshi and Nonin Chowaney and Ekai Korematsu. In Thank You and OK, called it Hogoji. - dc

5-09-10 - Happy Mother's Day to my mother Ahdel, sister Susan, mate Katrinka, former mates Elin (mother of Clay), Liz, Daya (mother of Kelly), to Renée (co-author of Decomposition), Clare (Elin's mom), to all other mothers in all realms, to the virgin (pure of heart) Mary (purity of heart), mother of Jesus (utterly divine mind) and to Prajna Paramita, the mother of the Buddhas (according to some like Red Pine).

5-07-10 - A sprained ankle in Thailand - in dchad misc, Unusual Experience Department - same as two days ago except now there's an audio version thanks to Howie Klein coming by with a little digital recorder. The sound isn't so good. Next time I'll use one of my good mikes. I need to figure out now how to have the sound play while reading it or looking at an image or whatever. One way to do that of course would be to just open another browser page. Hmm. Have to experiment.

Incidentally, Howie said something yesterday I thought I'd pass on. I told him someone was worried about their full name being mentioned here plus some other data about their family, worried that this could lead to identity theft. I didn't really sympathize but it's their bizness so I made the appropriate changes. Howie said that this person was obviously not a Buddhist because Buddhists don't believe in identity theft. - dc

5-06-10 - The coming Tricycle magazine will have two articles of particular cuke interest:

The Fog of World War II: Setting the Record Straight on D.T. Suzuki by Nelson Foster and Gary Snyder [ file in the Brian Victoria department] This article summarizes the recent Eastern Buddhist article that calls into question some of Brian Victoria’s claims about D.T. Suzuki’s support of Japanese imperialism.

5-04-10 - Bob Walter remembers an exchange between Suzuki Roshi and a student.

5-01-10 - Congratulations to Ed Brown and Meg Gawler on the birth of their granddaughter.

5-01-10 - Oil Rigs, Banks, Bizness motto: "Whatever we can get away with, we will do. Don't blame us. Blame you."

Righteous legislators and citizens rail against businesspeople and corporations for being greedy and irresponsible. That's ridiculous. In our system their responsibility is to be greedy, to maximize short term profit. There's no law or regulation against being greedy. It's obvious, reviewing the record, that whatever can be done to make money will be, that if we don't want something done, there should be a law or regulation against it, and people watching out to make sure it's not done. If not, some people or some businesses will do it, as sure as water flowing down to the lowest level. If it was not illegal to go into people's homes, take their children, grind them into mush, and sell them as pet food - some people would do it. The idea that regulation per se is bad is a recipe for disaster. The idea that business will regulate itself is not sound. The rules might have to be continually adjusted and balanced, but to eliminate them? Not a good idea. What would happen if there were no rules, no penalties in football or on the highways? In chess? To this observer, it is the fault of legislators and ultimately citizens that the recent horrible oil spill happened. It was known that BP had not been willing to spend the money to make sure it wouldn't happen. I'm not talking about eliminating it but about bringing it up to the accepted standard which in this case was having something like an expensive backup safety cap. The same goes for our recent mega financial problems - the dangers were known and allowed. I don't think the president and lawmakers should lecture business people about business ethics - I think they should see that there are the proper laws and regulations in place - an ongoing task. And the people should demand this of the lawmakers. We haven't. We let bizness own the lawmakers and make the rules to a vast extent. This is all our fault.

4-30-10 - Grace Schireson on KPFA today Friday at 12:30pm for Living Room. She will also teach at Berkeley Zen Center on Saturday May 1 from 1-4:00pm on Seijo and her Soul are Separated. - see (cuke What's New 4-28-10). In her KPFA interview of that day she mentioned that the SFZC is about to have a change of abbotship to three abbots, all three male. I just got a notice on that titled Trial Abbatial Restructuring at SF Zen Center from their Sangha e! newsletter.

4-29-10 - FAIR article NPR Touts Pro-Nuke 'Environmentalists' including a look at Stewart Brand - see 4-24-10.

Bill Gates TED talk on how we've got to innovate to zero carbon emissions before long and how.

What's the official cuke position on all this? A I wrote to a friend recently: standing with hands in pockets and mouth agape going duhhhhh.

4-28-10 - Grace Schireson on KPFA talking about Zen Women: Beyond Tea Ladies, Iron Maidens, and Macho Masters and Suzuki Roshi and more - thanks Howie

Phillip Wilson's name was misspelled as "Philip" in Crooked Cucumber and I had fixed that in some places but got more today. See PW's main page.

4-25-10 - INTERNATIONAL PETITION TO PROTECT LUMBINI'S ENVIRONMENT - thanks to Ron Browning

4-24-10 - Stewart Brand - rethinking green on FORA-tv. I love to have all my cherished assumptions about something undermined. - dc

4-23-10 - Bob Walter is visiting. Here he is with Suzuki Roshi at Tassajara in about 1970.

Get it from Kelly and Renée (best way) - for now email dchad3(at)sonic(dot)net. Will have direct info later today.

4-20-10 - Today's the big day for pot. Why?--that's right - kids from around here (Marin County, CA) started it. May people be persecuted for using pot no more. See NORML and Legalization of Marijuana dot com and MPP. I don't use it or anything but caffienated tea - but I don't use persecution either--that most harmful and addictive drug. That's why cuke dot com enthusiastically supports harm reduction - reducing the harm from drugs and the war on drugs (read war on people).

4-19-10 - Happy 19th birthday Clay! (on top left with Turkish ensemble at Lark in the Morning music camp in Mendocino summer 2009.

Los Alamos Lab's CMRR-NF project would send wrong message to world By Willem Malten in the Santa Fe New Mexican - another posting in the Nuclear (pronounced like "new clear") Threat section

Significant movement on nuclear weapons reduction - but not really getting below species threat level, still within psychotic planet definition - featuring Jonathan Schell's April 2010 article Reaching Zero in the Nation with other links and reports.

4-16-10 - Charley Pokorney who's doing the Suzuki Roshi blog for the SFZC, came over and we fixed a screwed up audio file he'd noticed. So now if you go to shunryusuzuki.com and get in and then to the Suzuki Lecture Index and go to 66-03-13b, you'll get the corrected lecture. Also added on the side are Ananda Claude Dalenberg's intro to the tape and a good clean version of the Heart Sutra. I edit out everything from the Suzuki lectures that isn't him talking and put it in separate files in an Other Folder. Here it all is on cuke so you don't have to go to shunryusuzuki.com to get it. The first two are 32k mp3 and the lecture is 16k which may be too low quality for you. Let me know if so and I'll change it.

Incidentally, just fixing this and changing it in various archive drives and on the web took several hours. If doing a bunch of like stuff at once of course it gets faster and one stops making the same mistakes. - dc

4-14-10 - I've got this new site for my music, defusermusic.com which is just getting going, and found an old experimental sort of industrial sampled album of mine on the Internet here at this site for weird stuff where my entry is flattered by being called the weirdest of them all. I blush. Anyway, if you like obscurata check this site out. It's called A Viable Commercial: Obscure and unknown 80s post punk, minimal wave, electropop, new wave, and other stuff. I link to the page my old album is on. - dc

4-12-10 - Sciencemptiness - I love science articles like this about stuff beyond my comprehension. I believe everything and nothing, get into and then posit myself in the future looking back and laughing at all the weird stuff we used to think while thinking the new stuff makes sense. Thanks to Mk for sending that link (which was followed to further links at the bottom etc) and referring to Hua Yen Buddhism where after finding myself dizzy on the floor went I here, yes to Wikipedia, and read that page and then started following those links in another incomprehensible series of mind blowings. Physics and emptiness embrace like vinegar and oil - not quite but they taste good - unlike the silly media either/or of faith vs science which is like eating at McDonalds - keep it up and you'll get sick. The dream continues unconcerned as clouds looking like this like that. - dc

Yesterday went to Buddha's birthday ceremony at Genjoji which is the next ridge over and just before Shinko Laura Kwong doused us all with petals, Brendan Buss made a sax offering. As I type I'm listening to his music on MySpace/ve55el. Cool. Check it out. - dc

4-11-10 - Reading through a report called Skits and Skates posted here back in 2004 - about Clay and my vacation including our usual ten days at Tassajara. Clay was 13 then. At one point I tell about a few silly skits Clay and I did and I remembered another one which I added to the Skits part.

Oh I just thought of another skit we did on another year, maybe the following one cause I'm adding this years later. Same setting - we're saying goodbye at morning work meeting after ten days there and I say goodbye in a strange distant monotone. Then Clay says he doesn't want to leave with me - he's visibly shaken and says he wants to stay and I call to him again monotonally, "Come Clay, time to go." And he says no, that I'm not David, I've changed, something's different. "That's not my dad," he implores. At that point a half dozen students start walking slowly toward him from the circle of eighty or so students, walking toward him and saying in strange, distant, monotones, "Don't worry Clay. Everything's alright. You should rest. You look tired. You're getting sleepy" and stuff like that and then they surround him saying, "Go to sleep Clay." After a moment they walk back to the circle leaving him lying on the ground sleeping. Then he wakes up, looks around and says in a strange, distant monotone, "Everything's fine. I'm sorry for causing trouble. I was tired. Now I'm okay. Here I come Daddy." And we leave Tassajara.

Between the Covers of “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” - a report on Genine Lentine's Page Project at the SFZC.

4-09-10 - Check out Jhanas Advice dot com and the book Practicing the Jhanas by Tina Rasmussen and Stephen Snyder who has helped DC in the past with Shunryu Suzuki archiving.

Oh yes, a belated happy birthday to Buddha whose Japanese birthday was yesterday - not that he was Japanese. Here's some nifty info on how Buddh'as birthday is calculated traditionally and in various countries.

4-08-10 - Thanks to Judith Yamamoto for this brief memory of Suzuki Roshi just after their dog had been hit by a car.

MK gave some more detail to the story below about Bill Lane and he working at the SFZC bookstore.

4-07-10 - A two hour program, "Life of the Buddha", is on PBS tonight from 8 to 10 East Coast and West too I think. It's hosted by Richard Gere, and includes the Dali Lama and some others like our own Jane Hirshfield.

4-04-10 - "No man is so foolish as to desire war more than peace: for in peace sons bury their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons.". --Herodotus - And daughters. Thanks for this Rene. - dc

4-05-10 - Mariah Carey's Hero. After seeing the movie Precious I was impressed with her (and the movie and the special features) and listened to a bunch of Carey's songs on YouTube. Not the sort of music I normally listen to but it's all good and her voice is great - with a five octave range - and this one is pretty inspiring. In her videos she mainly comes across as sexy but to me her persona in the movie was the most appealing. She funds a camp to give inner city kids a fresh air experience. I appreciate her efforts, like Opra, to empower others. A lot of people put that sort of thing down but what are they doing to help others? What are any of us? Reminds me tangentially of the time when some of Trungpa Rinpoche's students were ridiculing Guru Maharaj Ji and he told them to shutup, that at least he was giving others hope (something like that).

4-04-10 - Let's see now, where were we? Ever since I got back from Germany in mid December, I've been working on boring details with the Shunryu Suzuki archive and music and also wrote an afterword which is not a word? I guess not - for the 40th anniversary issue of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind which has an epilogue so it can't be called that. I get these nice concerned emails from friends and strangers asking if I'm okay because cuke.com's been dormant. So I'll try to put some stuff up as regularly as possible but there are other things I'm trying to get done and I get so involved and they take so much time that I haven't been able to tear myself from what I was doing. Also haven't been going on Facebook. I considered getting off it but how do you do that? And then I went on today and it wasn't so bad. And if they with Google are going to take over the world then I guess I should be on their good side. So here's what I have to do and want to do in the coming months

1-20-10 - Pardon the absence. Been focused on projects Shunryu and music related. The results will trickle in in time. But here are four items. -dc

Thanks to Gary Snyder for sending the following added to the Brian Victoria Page.

Hoitsu Suzuki is godo, head teacher, at Eiheiji since last November. Amazing. Congrats.

Lost Generation - a brief, brilliant statement with a palindrome touch, - thanks Gregory Johnson

Hi. I've been busy working on several projects and visiting Crestone Mt. ZC and mother and friends in Fort Worth. Not much time for cuke these days but there will be more to come. For now - Happy New Year. - dc

The Bridge That Flows (Zazen)

4-25-10 - INTERNATIONAL PETITION TO PROTECT LUMBINI'S ENVIRONMENT - thanks to Ron Browning

Los Alamos Lab's CMRR-NF project would send wrong message to world By Willem Malten in the Santa Fe New Mexican - another posting in the Nuclear (pronounced like "new clear") Threat section

Between the Covers of “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” - a report on Genine Lentine's Page Project at the SFZC.

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