in school, when covering history of India and the Buddha, i read that the Buddha's teaching was right action right view right livelihood etc and was at once struck by how correct this was. of course, my version of 'right' at that age came from my parents, and in retrospect, i failed to realise the words i read were empty, that all context there was, was what i brought
in school, a friend told me that there was a book called 'zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance' that would change your life if you read it. we used to inhabitate a particular wavelength with respect to what was cool - and extremely on the nerdy side. he was a fan of jim reeves and resnick & halliday, read elements of style, and sl loney (2) for fun. i didn't ,and still don't, possess the horsepower to go through the elements of style book entirely.
in my mind, the zmm book was a large book with pictures of motorcycles on every page .
when in college, i got my hands on the book, read it, put it down, read the lord of the rings trilogy... what i gathered the book was about was a motorcycle trip..
in college, another friend told me that zen and advaita, especially that of ramana maharishi - were one and the same thing. he'd share websites on the headless way, frank-merell-wolf or somebody, etc
he would later visit me in mumbai, introduce LISP as awesome, and gift me 'the wisdom of insecurity', that i didn't read correctly.
apparently, 'the book on the taboo...' by alan watts was his advaita reveal. had the pdf didn't read it
my first job was in a terribly crowded city, with a horribly crowded apartment (5 bachelors sharing a 2 bhk). moments of peace was reading zmm, and neuromancer, while listening to an odd mix of rhcp, pearl jam, metallica etc on my headphones, in the afternoons, on my desktop pc, in the ac of the office,after lunch, when everyone left everyone alone for a while
read that one lance-daybreak-shards-of-the-diamond-matrix blog post about hua-yen . read experiences of folks during vipassana at the dhamma.org retreats (7 days silence, hours of meditation, explosions of bliss for simple things like the humble food they served)
phrases from zmm would re-emerge later in my mind as reality chunks started fitting into passages from the book that i'd read long back, and retained sub-consciously.
i moved to another city. this one wasn't that crowded at that time. i chanced upon shinzen young and found his articles informative, explaining methods clearly.. the idea of inversion was mind-blowing at that time.
i read the '10 rules of a zen programmer', headed over to the source and read kodo sawaki's exceprts at antaji.
during one of my 'sabbaticals', i would listen to alan watts' out-of-your-mind series, and found it simultaneously delightful and relaxing, and would nod off to it at night.
i also did a year of yoga asana practice at this time.
during this time, i also made a mobile app that would display pages of 'the religion of the samurai' from project gutenberg. this was on java ME (a lovely straightforward java kit before android and the megaliths ). i also read zen culture and zen experience by hoover, on gutenberg. i emailed hoover once and received a response, which i cherished greatly but lost amidst the changing laptops.
at some point, i ran into meng's buddhist humor page ,which i've linked to in this blog more than once ( yes, i've been circling ). i laughed so hard, and read about lin-chi and rinzai
i read zen-flesh and zen bones. noted that the last chapter of it contained kashmiri shaivism...
was confused for a long time that bodhidharma and buddha were the same person
i remember reading ten-zen questions of susan blackmore, and feeling that the first two questions, just, nailed it ! ( 1. am i conscious this moment ? 2. was i conscious the last moment ?)
in chicago, i chanced upon a sitting group and showed up to sit, cos they said 'everyone invited no charge'.
i had come across brad warner's content, and dismissed it at that time, as i needed some sort of authority to lean on . this was a satellite centre, with the hq in wisconsin. was quietly welcomed. someone commended me for sitting the full duration. i bought black tracks and full hand tee as it was their uniform of no uniform.
the roshi ,on a visit ,was surprised to see us, and casually suggested we take a weekend morning and drive up to the hq for initiation. being a creature of habit and comfort, i didn't even think twice about it .after ignoring it, but around 7 years later, i think i should've done that.
it would've added an element of identity, and hence an anchor for my straggler efforts
a brother-in-law of mine took to thai buddhism with fiendish focus (like he does in all things), and i was on a staple diet of ajahn brahm videos, for two-three years. still fall back to it, as the core message of 'relax, it's okay' is needed every once in a while, when 'being somebody doing something' comes up suddenly against a meaner-than-normal encounter with the universe.
another brother-in-law of mine does retreats with the goldstein/kornfield type centre )
so far, i had logged around nil hours meditated. what merit ?? none whatsoever !!
at one time, i had tabs opened on my browser , each opened to the goodreads.com quotes of tara brach, pema chodron, charlotte joko beck, sharon salzberg, cheri huber ... together they were a gentle embrace of warmth
i read a lot of brad warner content, printed out gudo nishijima's instructions. during the lockdown, i finally sat consistently, and clocked around 60hrs overall. it was during that time that i also drew the monk cartoon
the total remains close to that today
i bought a furiously glaring bodhidharma figurine from a large mall in santa clara, a plaster buddha from an exhibition at vr mall near to our house, and the wife got a laughing buddha tiny-figurine from her home, and a maroon scroll with many golden threads from the tibetan monastery in bylakuppe (incidentally ,this is probably the same place mentioned in one of the lance-daybreak pieces).
i bought a s̶n̶a̶f̶u̶. a zafu
i even tried to have an altar
during my back-problem days, i consulted a physio who was an initiate of a disciple of ramana maharishi.
later i found a senior colleague at my place of work was also a follower, and had made many trips to the ashram, and had spent time 'blissed out in meditation'
i don't know what's next
