Friday Night Lights is Back!!!

This is my guesses for what's going to happen for the rest of the season (based on last night's 4th season premiere) and I hope I am wrong and am surprised on the way.

• Coach Taylor needs help and all the old Dillon characters are going to make their way over to East Dillon to help out. That's including his wife who will be forced out of Dillon, his daughter who has already decided to transfer there, and Riggins who will probably help coach and fire up the team. I'm just not sure where Saracen's role will be.
• Every season, the big goal is the state title game. But this year, the climax and the big finale will be the rivalry game against Talyor's former team Dillon Panthers, who will be having a great season and being jerks about it. Until they meet East Dillon.
  

By the way, this is the only TV show, wife and I watch together.

Intersecting Interests

Currently reading Alan Watts' autobiography. I found him by way of Frank Herbert, when I was reading all of his Dune books. Herbert mentions in his notes he was influenced by Zen and had read Alan Watts.

Speaking of influence, the House of Atreides is from the Greek classics. And I'm currently reading Homer, by way of training my mind classically.

So the Zen and the classical Homer criss-cross with Alan Watts and Herbert.

The only thing missing is chess.

Essential Zen notes

Essential Zen, Kazuaki Tanahashi & David Schneider.

• Zen students through the centuries have been after all been only human beings with a meditation habit. - D. Schneider.
  
• If Zen emphasizes anything at all in terms of a "philosophy," it would be nowness -- the present moment, the present mind. - D.S.
  
• One important Zen aesthetic bias would be space. Sometimes you need a mark to point out space. - D.S.
• On the fourth day of painful sesshin, Suzuki Roshi began his talk by slowly saying, "The problems you are now experiencing [will go away, right? we were thinking] will ... continue ... for... the... rest... of... your... life." The way he said it, everyone laughed. -- Ed Brown.
• There's nothing that we lack. Each of us is perfect and complete, lacking nothing. But this truth must be realized by each one of us. Great faith, great doubt, and great determination are three essentials for that realization. - John Daido Loori.
• Seven times knocked down, eight times up. (great determination)
• Your continuous practice creates the circle of the way. - Dogen.

Books mentioned for further reading.

1. Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh.
2. Thank You and OK: An American Zen Failure in Japan, David Chadwick.

Shoes Outside the Door notes

Shoes Outside the Door, by Michael Downing.

A history of the San Francisco Zen Center, founded by Shunryo Suzuki and its rise and near fall at the hands of his successor Richard Baker.

The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism:
1. The truth of Suffering, which the truth of existence.
2. The truth of Desire, which is the cause of suffering.
3. The truth of the End of Suffering, which requires the elimination of desire, which is caused by the illusion of permanence.
4. The truth of the Eightfold Path, which is the means by which the elimination of suffering can be accomplished.

• "Suzuki-roshi once said, 'Three things cause problems. One thing - you're always trying to do something. Another thing - you're afraid to do anything because you know it won't work. Third thing - you rely on something.' "
• Grahame was twelve when the minister told the students in his religion class that they couldn't just accept spiritual teachings as they were presented but should find God themselves.
• "It was during that period that I recognized that I had not exactly answered my nagging question, but the questions had quietly gone away."
• "Trying to help often creates more problems than it solves. Sitting in zazen is the easiest, safest way to help yourself and others." - Suzuki-roshi.
• The trick of Buddhism is to get you to sit still long enough to become aware of the causes and effects.
• Long body and the Buddhist assumption of the connectedness, a non-local consciousness.
• "There are a thousand handy phone calls and television stations in this room right now; we just don't have the sensory apparatus to tap into them. Zen assumes that there is a lot going on here that we don't have the apparatus for." - R. Baker.
• "Most of the energy is going into issues of how to live together and not issues of how to transcend the dualistic framework in which we find ourselves in ordinary society. And that is what I understand practice is about -- nondualistic experience and liberation from the normal limitations of social programming." - Steve Allen.
• "Bill had a drinking problem. So we finally go Bill to agree to go to detox, and a woman agreed to drive him there. On the way, they fell in love; they became lovers. The love affair didn't last too long, but it cured Bill of his drinking problem." - Mel Weitzman.
• If you pick up a speck of dust, you pick up all the suffering in the world.
• "I knew then, as I found out later, that truth does not have to do with propositions. It has to do with authenticity of actions." - Willem.
• "people sometimes go mad from doing zazen." - 15th century zen master Muso Soseki.
• "Therefore to make the acquisition and retention of goods or status one's sole aim in life is productive of grief." - Soseki.
  

Books mentioned that I wish to read:

Zen and the Art of Archery
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
Crooked Cucumber, David Chadwick
Three Pillars of Zen, Kapleau
Street Zen, David Scneider's portrait of Issan.
Small is Beautiful, E.F. Schumacher.
Meditation in Action, Trungpa
"Dream Monologues," Chistopher Cleary's translation of Muso Soseki.

My Zen Koan

A fly flew into my kitchen. I used my Zen breathing to remain still to kill it.

Is that bad? Will I go to Zen hell?

My Path to Zen

Started with online Project Guttenberg and The Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. Read it. Next was Twenty Years After, followed by The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, Louise de la Valliere and finally the Man in the Iron Mask. Then for good measure, read the Count of Monte Cristo.

I also watched the dvds of the Three Musketeers, Man in the Iron Mask and the Count of Monte Cristo. Thank god for Pippin's Netflix account.

Then came Frank Herbert's Dune series of books. I read Dune, Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor Dune, Heretics of Dune and Chapterhouse Dune. Also the biography of Frank Hebert (Dreamer of Dune).

I watched Dune (movie and the Sci-Fi Channel mini-series and the Children of Dune mini-series.).

In the biography of Herbert, it talks about zen guy Alan Watts. So I read his book, The Spirit of Zen. Which led me to Shunryu Suzuki's Beginner's Mind, Zen Mind, then to Shoes Outside the Door - a history of Suzuki's Zen Center, its rise and fall.

Which led me to sitting zazen recently. I'm sitting five minutes at a time and I'm pretty sure I'm doing it wrong, but ...

Some thoughts and questions about zen.

1. Is zen anti-mult-tasking?

2. Is zen anti-family / relationships? Family just another form of attachment? Is your own practice the most important thing of all?

Currently: on my life

The current currents of my life.

1. Chess. Addicted to it. Must limit my online blitz games to three per day.

2. Classical Education: via the well-trained mind. Started with Don Quixote, then jumped to Homer's Iliad (the Lattimore tranlastion), and just began Homer's Odyssey (got both the Lattimore and Nagles translations from the library. Kinda of flirting with the idea of learning Greek so I can read the original. How crazy am I?

3. Cleaning. Starting with the front bathroom. Obsessed with it. Caulking. Cleaning grout. Vinegar. Baking soda. I just stand and stare at how white and clean the bath is. Then I see something else that needs to be done.

4. Zen. The soto, sitting kind. Started getting up at 6am to sit zazen recently. How I can to it, the path to zen, that's a whole another post.