Menu

Perfect Composure

June 20, 2004 By Uncategorized

Last quote from Suzuki:

When you have something in your consciousness you do not have perfect composure. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. Then your mind is calm and it is wide and clear enough to see and feel things as they are without any effort. The best way to find perfect composure is not to retain any idea of things, whatever they may be – to forget all about them and not to leave any trace or shadow of thinking.

Reminds me of a line I heard attributed to Thelonious Monk years ago. When asked about his piano technique, Monk said “it’s easy. First you learn your technique, then you forget it.”

On Listening

June 18, 2004 By Uncategorized

More from Shunryu Suzuki on listening:

When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We put very little emphasis on right and wrong, good and bad. We just see things as they are with him, and accept them. This is how we communicate with each other. Usually when you listen to some statement, you hear it as a kind of echo of yourself. You are actually listening to your own opinion. If it agrees with your opinion you may accept it, but if it does not, you may not even really hear it. That is one danger when you listen to someone.

It is a very difficult practice, but especially important for a facilitator, to listen without leaving traces of your own voice ringing in your own ears.

Three kinds of creation

June 17, 2004 By Uncategorized

I’ve been reading Shunryu Suzuki’s classic Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind (famous for the quote “in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.”) There are some fabulous teachings in the book, which I will blog here over the next few days.

This is about the three types of creation:

There are perhaps three kinds of creation. The first is to be aware of ourselves after we finish zazen [Zen sitting meditation]. When we sit we are nothing, we do not even realize what we are; we just sit. But when we stand up, we are there! That is the first step in creation. When you are there, everything else is there; everything is created all at once. When we emerge from nothing, when everything emerges from nothing, we see it all as a fresh new creation. This is non-attachment. The second kind of creation is when you act, or produce or prepare something like food or tea. The third kind is to create something within yourself, such as an education, or culture, or art, or some system for our society. So there are three kinds of creation. But if you forget the first, the most important one, the other two will be like children who have lost their parents; their creation will mean nothing. (p. 67)

Universe began with a hiss

June 17, 2004 By Uncategorized

The Big Bang was actually a Big Hiss, according to this article in the New Scientist.

I have heard a Midewiwin teaching that said that the first sound heard in the universe was the sound of the Creator’s rattle. Here’s the sound (0.5 Mb.wav).

Open Space and decision making

June 16, 2004 By Uncategorized

My friend John Engle has posted a story about using Open Space at a small liberal arts college near Chicago. What is remarkable about the story is that it opens up a new way to use Open Space Technology for decision making.

You can read the story in .pdf format at John’s site