Lobby Bar

This was written some time ago but I found the notes in an old file and brushed them up for the blog. Hope you enjoy...

Hotel Lobby Bars in New York have a special lighting. It’s the combination of dark oak walls, luscious carpets and the ochre shades of lamps. They are usually noisy as well. Somehow just a few Americans are able to create a whole racket all on their own. It’s not unpleasant though; I would say it makes the otherwise dim environment lively. The lobby bar at the Roosevelt Hotel is no exception. Perhaps the outstanding element is the lousy service. I sometimes get the impression that all of New York is in too much of a hurry to be polite. There is always something more important happening elsewhere. There is no time!

I manage to find an empty spot in a corner. These are my favorite. It’s like having a little space all to myself without giving up the view; my own personal observation centre and base of operations. The bar is crowded and the minute tables are cluttered with empty glasses and fallen cashews. There is a skinny Asian who apparently tends this area but he passes me by and ignores me once, twice. He has been clearing some tables and taking orders but not mine. Is it a self service joint? A family of Spaniards sit at the table next to mine. They come with their own drinks. Perhaps it is a self service joint after all. Such elegance in furniture and decoration spoiled on this American vice of informality… Of course I am here on my own with my laptop. Should I stand up to help myself my own drink; leaving my baby alone and unattended?

It’s New York after all so I get to my feet and approach the bar. The barman is a big guy with a hostile look. What’s wrong with you people? I just want to wash away my misery with some scotch. Is that a sin? Am I bugging you? He finally looks at me square in the eye and makes the minimum gesture of acknowledgement. Now that I think of it, I am not even sure what part of his face has moved. If I had to guess, I’d say he has slightly arched his eyebrows… ‘What?!’ he seems to be asking.

I order a double Black Label with ice and inquire about the food menu. ‘Are you at a table?’ I nod upwards with a snarl, trying to be impolite on purpose. ‘You think you can push me around big guy?’ I tell myself. He looks away as he leaves the glass in front of me and I can barely hear him say: ‘You’ll be waited on at your table, Sir’. The funny thing about New York is that rudeness is almost a part of the mystique. You come to the city, you shop, you take pictures of fucking Times Square and you get ill treated. Just part of the show! The Asian guy finally shows up at my table while I am in the middle of my first, wonderful gulp of cold scotch. I order the ‘Sea Food Trio’ and wonder what the hell will come. It turns out to be a wonder of deep fried squid, genetically modified oversized jumbo shrimps and a glass full of fishy bits and pieces. A delight! Mmmhhh. That’s another thing about New York. It’s hard to go wrong with food. That is, of course, if you are ready for spicy bites and weird looking stuff. What a delight. I munch it all up while I type. Yes sir, I am the one and only ‘gobbler of dregs’! See if you can find out what that means! I dare you!

I notice a girl sitting alone at the bar. She is pretty and she is wearing a black dress with an insinuating cleavage. I wonder if she is expecting someone. I watch her for a moment and manage to see the hulky barman approaching her. Will he be as rude to her as he was to me? I should wear cleavage to bars to get my damn drinks! In any case, I am a bit surprised when I notice they seem to know each other. Big guy cracks a joke that I can’t really hear and the girl giggles. She looks sweet and for some reason I change my focus towards the empty whiskey glass. All this traveling really takes its toll and I sometimes feel a bit alienated: cars with drivers, lines at the airport, sitting around in linoleum floored and fluorescent light waiting rooms, airplanes and their NASA food, hotel lobbies and dim, impersonal rooms, eating alone in restaurants, etc, etc, etc.

I am distracted by a voice: ‘Will you want anything else, Sir?’ Now you guys are going to suffer rudeness! You know the saying: when the going gets tough, the tough get going! I look up with a slightly annoyed expression. ‘Huh?’ ‘Would you like another drink, Sir?’ It’s the Asian guy. So now you suddenly worry about the customer? I ask him if they pour Sam Adams Beer. If I order another whiskey they are going to have to drag me out. He nods and I just raise my finger to order one. I won’t give him the pleasure. It is kind of funny after all; just a little macho display of feathers and penis measuring. The guy is doing his fucking job after all and I am just miserable and feeling suicidal. Can’t we all just get along? I guess this is alcohol talking. Suddenly I want to be friends with the Asian dude?

The girl in the black dress moves away from the bar and sits on a tall stool in front of a mic. Who would have said? It turns out she is the singer and as soon as she takes her place the voices and general clatter start competing with some soft pre-recorded music. She sings ‘Killing me softly’ and I start feeling a bit like Bill Murray in that wonderful movie, ‘Lost in translation’. Nobody pays the least attention to her. In fact, I would even say that people have raised their voices to be heard over the music. I wonder how that feels for her. Does she have aspirations as a singer? Is this something she does while she’s waiting for her break?

By this time I feel pretty drunk. I suppose the glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and the Glenlivet I had earlier in the afternoon are still circulating through my bloodstream. I am such a waste of good life, health and intelligence... Why is it so hard to be happy? Is it all my traveling that has put me in this gloomy state of mind? After hours and hours of moving from one anonymous hotel room to another, of talking about the weather with countless anonymous drivers, of shaking hands with guys I don’t give a rat’s ass about, of sleeping on planes and wondering if the neck pain I have will ever go away… The Asian guy returns to my table and I look at him with lost eyes. Whose turn is it now to be weak? I stutter and falter. What do I want? He just looks at me and his face is a collection of impatient gestures; as if Giselle Bundchen were waiting for him with her thighs spread open somewhere else. So what do you want stupid?! Do you want to get it over with and blackout? Black… Yes! ‘A double Black Label with ice!’

The whiskey tastes sour. I look into its depths when I take the glass to my mouth, as if something within held a hypnotic effect on me. It seems to enclose a mystery, a cipher. It is the mother of all questions, the Holy Grail we all seem to chase our entire lives. As the ice melts a bit, the chunks move around and make that tingling sound that only ice in a whiskey glass con produce. A mystery, huh? Will I solve it sitting here feeling pity for myself? Not likely. In any case, I am pressed with a more urgent question. How the fuck will I get back to my room?

Madonna: bigger, louder, better…

Give it to me! Yeah! No one’s gonna stop me! Now!

Boy! What a concert! I went to see Madonna the other day at the River Plate Stadium in Buenos Aires. My feet still ache from dancing and jumping around like a kid (and I hadn’t done that in quite a while, lemme tellya!).

However, our story doesn’t begin altogether well. The concert started about one hour and a half later than we all expected. That is, over two hours later than it was announced. We had been standing there (dancing a bit to Paul Oakenfold) for a few hours and even if the Sun was already going down it was sticky, damp and hot. A few raindrops started falling and then more until the whole thing turned into a copious rain shower. F#@&*.

People started getting angry. Madonna had changed the dates of her performance and that meant a headache for more than one. People flying over from Chile, Perú and Brazil had to go into a lot of trouble to show up. Why wasn’t she showing up! A few girls behind me started calling Madonna names. Let’s just say that they were not nice names. I let out a scream myself (an innocent ‘Daleeee Madonnnaaaaa!). Eventually she came onstage and the display was quite something. She started singing some of the songs from her new album which were good but nobody really knew and therefore could not sing along with. We were all just standing there, still a bit pissed off and praying for more rain since it had already stopped and things started getting stuffy again.

As I stood there watching, arms crossed and quite cranky, I drifted off to think the following: Nothing surprises us any more. We seem to need more and more and more and MORE! Even when the display of technology was grotesquely over the top, when the sound was so loud it made your chest beat, when a 50 year old goddess was singing and dancing about and looking 21, we were all there wanting more… unsatisfied and unimpressed…

I remembered a time when I was a small kid. There was a large barren lot near the highway that crossed my neighborhood and we used to go down there with our bikes and pretend we were in a far away land full of adventure and mystery. One summer, the circus came to our neighborhood and settled for a few weeks in that same lot. We stood there in awe watching the tent go up and the trucks unload wonder after wonder. My mom took me and my brothers to the show and everything was dazzling. There was a kid –not that much older than I was- who performed a number in which he would stand on his hands on top of a pile of bricks. An assistant would add layer after layer of bricks while the kid just balanced his way up. I was so impressed! Later on in the show, that same kid was walking through the audience selling gimmicks and souvenirs…

And as I looked around the stadium watching thousands of girls wearing Madonna t-shirts, hats and what-have-you, I realized that this was also a circus. Bigger, louder and better but a circus none the less. And there I stood, together with another 60,000 unimpressed ticket holders…

But fortunately something happened. I can’t really explain what it was. Magic? Perhaps. I don’t really know. The bitch found some way to get to us all, even when we all knew she was being a phony and didn’t really give a damn. She found a way of piercing through this shield of sarcasm and rationality. How? When she sang ‘Don’t cry for me Argentina’ my eyes got literally wet. I was angry at myself! I made an effort to wipe a rogue tear from my cheek without anyone noticing (not that anyone was watching me either…). What was happening to me??? Jajajajajajaja. Moments later I was jumping and dancing and so was everyone around me. And as I laughed and sang I felt like a kid again and it felt SOOOO good. I felt nothing but gratitude towards this crazy woman who has dedicated her entire life to a create a circus she herself doesn’t seem to believe in.

Well… I don’t really know what my point is. Have we outsmarted our ability to feel like kids again? Are we paying $80 (US dollars) for a trip back to our childhood? Or am I just a sick, cranky man who thinks too much?

Ah… I promise to ponder that as I sooth my sore feet. Stay tuned…

Delacroix 'La tricolor'

Kung Fu Panda

Nah… this one’s not about Zen or any funny Kung Fu stuff. Relax.

It’s more about story telling. Yes, I could have picked anything from a number of subjects to talk about this movie: the growing importance of animated features in cinematography, the fact that the voices of the characters are played by these awesome stars, my nagging question about where the hell the tortoise went… But story telling is my pick because one thing that struck me about the movie is how classical the plot is. It is the utmost ‘by the book’ classical tale of the hero.

Often referred to as the ‘Hero’s Journey’ and not so often referred to as the ‘Monomyth’, the tale of the hero can be decomposed into several stages. We owe a lot on the study of myths to an American mythology professor named Joseph Campbell. He spent quite a while describing the archetypal patterns of myths and identifying examples of just how universal these were. Across the ages and across the globe, all cultures have created myths that fall into these archetypes. It makes you wonder… Anyway, although the stages Campbell identified are quite complex, they can be grouped into larger clusters which are essentially about departure, initiation and return.

I am not a professor –of any sort- and that grants me a certain ‘layman’s freedom’ which I will abuse as much as I can on this website.

This is what I thought of as I watched Kung Fu Panda (I sure know how to enjoy a movie…)

Stage one: the hero has a dream (Po works in his Dad’s noodle shop but secretly wants to be a Kung Fu hero)

Stage two: the call of destiny (Po, apparently by accident, becomes the Dragon Warrior. Note that destiny and accident come together. How can we know if he is really ‘the one’?)

Stage three: initial failure (Po sucks badly. Everybody doubts him. He even doubts himself)

Stage four: the foe / the threat (Tai Lung breaks free and he is really pissed off. He defeats the Furious Five.)

Stage five: the hidden talent / first success (Shifu discovers that Po can be a very good fighter when faced with the right incentive: FOOD)

Stage six: the insight / intuition / faith (Po discovers that the secret of the scroll is that there is no secret ingredient, you do not have to be special to be special)

Stage seven: with self knowledge and a clear sense of destiny, the hero triumphs (Po beats the crap out of Tai Lung)

Stage eight: the return (life returns to normal but now Po can face his Dad and reconcile his future with his past)

Of course some parts of the movie are blurry in my memory. The first time I saw it, I was with my wife and my four year old son. I can’t say I captured everything because I was stressed out by the fact that my little boy would run through the isles and make a hell of a racket. The second time I saw it I was on a plane and I am afraid there were a few interruptions with the meal and so on… plus, I might have dozed off a coupla times.

Stay tuned for more movie reviews.

Hot model with funny hat

Mushotoku (without objective; without gain)

(published in JigsawZen.com in 2005)

This year has been quite complicated for me for a number of reasons. There’s been a lot of pressure at the office and there are other obligations that I have undertaken that just pile up leaving little room for the family and the ‘rest’ of life. There are times when I can really feel the weight of it all and things get difficult to handle. And of course with all the pressure and effort come some nasty side-effects like sleeping and digestive disorders. Are you already feeling sorry for me? I hope so.

So I decided I would set short term objectives just to avoid being overwhelmed out of my wits by quite an intimidating pending list. Here’s what I did: I set no more than two mayor deadlines to pass every week and would focus on those without thinking too much about the trizillion other deadlines that lay ahead after those. It kinda worked. I mean, I had no symptoms of paranoid-schizophrenia so you could say I’ve been reasonably successful so far.

The other night I was driving back home from the University. I was really worn out. I had just sat for a big Economy exam that’s part of the MBA program I’m doing. That had been the last big deadline of the week and it had gone really well. Even with the utter exhaustion and the pain that I felt behind my eyes, I was kind of relieved. One more check in the list. One thing less...

And then a thought hit me so hard that it almost knocked me over: ‘One thing less for WHAT? One thing less and then WHAT?’

As I stared at the strip of road that appeared in front of my headlights while the question still lingered in my mind, I caught a glimpse of what Deshimaru used to call the ‘essence of Zen’: Mushotoku. Sadly, as it often occurs, that glimpse simply trickled through my fingers in spite of my desperate attempts to hold onto it. I should have learnt by now, that trying to hold onto these thoughts is useless. Stubborn old me…

Anyway, this Mushotoku business is pretty interesting, especially in our goal oriented –succeed or bust- culture. Here’s how I think the whole deal works: whatever we decide to do, we do it to obtain some sort of pleasure. This pleasure might be physical (like stuffing a truckload of garlic bread down your throat and washing it down with a good red wine) or intellectual / emotional (like having your highly pitched intellect gloat on a Saturday Seinfeld Marathon.) Of course this pleasure might simply be the omission of something painful. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain is the raw impulse behind whatever we do. Our libido, so to say.

As we grow up, somehow our raw impulses are balanced by the notion of the consequence of our actions. In fact, what really happens is that we create an idea about ourselves which we believe will exist in some future time. Hence, it is ‘us’ who will suffer the consequences or reap the benefits of whatever it is we do now. We eventually learn that sometimes we have to do things that are a real pain in the bum in order to avoid further misfortune or to obtain some better gain in the future. We start having obligations.

When the alarm clock goes off on a Monday morning, the needle on my ‘pleasure-o-meter’ is fixed in the ‘I’d rather die’ section. In fact, ‘alarm clock going off on a Monday morning’ rates right next to ‘hammering my toes with a brick’. But hey, I get up anyway. It’s what I have to do. How else could I pay for the cable television service which offers more channels than I could watch in a lifetime? In the end, whenever we do something that is not immediately pleasurable, what is subjacent is the notion that it will somehow payoff in the future. Whether we are aware of it or not, there always has to be a reason to do stuff and that reason is usually a promise of future compensation.

Some things are a bit tricky though. Take zazen for instance. Most people will probably find it very unappealing. I mean, anyone in their right mind would find sitting and staring at a blank wall for about a half hour to be both boring and painful. Perhaps it wouldn’t rate as bad as a session of ‘toe hammering’. I would rather place it near ‘sandpaper licking’. But the real problem with zazen is that the future compensation for this effort is not really that apparent.

That’s why so many people ask the question: Why do zazen? What for? Isn’t it a waste of time? What they mean is that using that time for some other activity will result in more ‘pleasure credits’ to spend later…

At the Dojo were I used to practice (before all this MBA mayhem) most people would step in just once. The vast majority came along after hearing the teacher give a talk at the ‘Japanese Gardens’ in Buenos Aires but then never showed their face again. I can’t blame them really. It’s the utter boredom… But the reason why most people don’t come back a second time is that they find no real reason to do zazen. They can’t figure out what its worth is in terms of some future goal.

Well, some of us do. I don’t really know why but I suppose there’s always a kind of tradeoff at some unconscious level that makes a few of us return to the Dojo. Why others return, I can’t tell. Perhaps they expect some blissful sensation to take over and make them feel they’re back in mommy’s uterus or something. Perhaps they want to get ‘enlightened’ and become super cool Buddhas with wacky super powers. God only knows what crazy motivations I had myself to return and return.

One time a new guy showed up. He managed to sit zazen for a whole 40 minutes with quite a bit of dignity. I was impressed. When zazen was over, the teacher opened the Q&A session. The new guy cleared his throat and asked: ‘the experience was interesting. However, I don’t really know what I came here for.’ ‘Well if you don’t know,’ answered the teacher, ‘how come you expect me to know?’ The new guy was taken aback and tried to explain himself. ‘What I mean is: what is the objective of zazen? What can one expect to obtain with this practice? The teacher’s face softened a bit but he didn’t budge. He said: ‘Nothing. No objective, nothing to obtain. Mushotoku’.

I thought to myself: ‘so I won’t be able to READ MINDS?’ Ok, I’m just kidding. But I must confess I was a bit taken aback myself because I had never heard this idea put so bluntly. The teacher’s answer was unequivocal. What do you obtain? Nothing. Nothing at all. How do you deal with something like that? Needless to say, the new guy never showed up again.

On another occasion, I was early for the zazen session. I think it was because I miscalculated traffic and arrived about half an hour early. The teacher was there sweeping the floor and arranging all the zafus and stuff for when everyone arrived. He’s usually in a rather humorous mood so we just did a bit of small talk to kill time. You know, the weather or how amazing new technologies allow for super fast ping-pong balls. I suppose I somehow brought up the topic of ‘why do zazen’. I can’t really remember how it was. Anyway, the teacher said something quite interesting. He actually laughed a bit and shook his head. ‘Everybody wants to know why they should practice zazen. Why, why, why… Why should there be a why? The reason doesn’t really matter. Reasons are only thoughts and they change all the time. What’s important is action, practice. Any reason is as valid as any other as long as you practice. In every moment there is only action and that’s all there is. All the other stuff is just our imagination.’

I had quite a lot of trouble making out what he really meant. I was cautious, however. I have come to learn that Zen dudes might sound a bit crazy but, more often than not, appearances are deceiving. Of course, to me, there always should be a reason for doing stuff. Setting objectives had always been kind of a compass for me. The objectives you set for yourself define the direction you take in life. Accomplishing your objectives gets you closer to your dreams. Doing things for no reason is not only a waste of time, its nonsense. I was one of those kids who grew up with the fable of the ants and the cricket. Hard work and responsible planning for the future have been part of my ‘self’ all my life (and then I say zazen is boring…) But hey! What am I supposed to do? Just go with the flow and let things be? God no! Hippies have been out of fashion for quite a while now!

But as I have often realized, there’s always a twist to these strange Zen admonitions. Taisen Deshimaru used to say that Mushotoku was like ‘getting in your coffin’. A bit creepy if you ask me. But the idea is that once you’re in your coffin there’s nothing to gain or loose. We spend our life running after objectives we set for ourselves with the secret hope that ‘some day’ we will finally arrive at some imaginary shore and everything will be settled. We tick the goals off our pending list as we accomplish things and have this feeling that we are progressing. We are moving forward. But where to? Once we’ve ticked off all the items in the shopping list; what then? When we finally arrive, where will we be arriving at?

Mushotoku is something quite subtle but quite simple at the same time. I would dare say it’s just a perspective, a way of seeing things. Mushotoku is simply doing whatever it is that you must do, regardless of the gain or loss you imagine will come from that action. The future doesn’t really exist. The self we believe to be and who will suffer the consequences of our actions or enjoy all the pleasure credits we stack in our safety box doesn’t really exist either. The objectives we set for ourselves as intermediate steps for the final big objective we call ‘happiness’ are, at the end of the day, just a bunch of nonsense thoughts. All that really exists is what’s going on right now. And right now there are things we must do. We have to go to work, change diapers, study for a ridiculously difficult Economy exam, drive carefully, sit zazen and watch TV eating salami and cheese. What for? For no reason. None at all. What will we obtain? Nothing. In the end we will just climb into our coffin. And yet it is extremely important that we do all these things even if they will take us nowhere in particular. After all, the succession of ‘things to do’ is no more and no less than what we call life.

But as I said before, this thought trickled through my fingers and vanished into thin air. All these words are just a feeble attempt to capture that thought. I’ll tell you this though. At any other time in my life, having read these words I wrote above would have made me feel a bit depressed and even scared. What do you mean we will never reach that shore called ‘happiness’? But funnily enough, as I kept on driving down the dark highway, a warm feeling came over me. A weight was lifted. And it wasn’t just the relief of having passed my exam…

Everything that happens now, is happening now...

(published in JigsawZen.com in 2005)

SANDURZ: Pardon me, sir. I have an idea. Corporal, get me the video cassette of ‘Spaceballs- The Movie’.
CORPORAL: Yes, sir.
(CORPORAL walks to a wall labeled, "Mr. Rental." The wall opens. He looks through the selections.)
HELMET: Colonel Sandurz, may I speak with you, please?
SANDURZ: Yes, sir.
HELMET: (lifts up mask). How could there be a cassette of ‘Spaceballs - The Movie’? We're still in the middle of making it.
SANDURZ: That's true, sir, but there's been a new breakthrough in home-video marketing.
HELMET: There has?
SANDURZ: Yes, instant cassettes. They're out in stores before the movie is finished.
HELMET: Naaaaa.
CORPORAL: Here it is, sir. Spaceballs.
SANDURZ: Good work, Corporal. Punch it up.
(CORPORAL starts the tape. It starts on the FBI Warning.)
SANDURZ: Started much too early. Prepare to fast-forward.
CORPORAL: Preparing to fast-forward.
SANDURZ: Fast-forward.
CORPORAL: Fast-forwarding, sir.
(Corporal starts fast-forwarding through the ludicrous speed scene. Helmet is thrown into the panel at a high-speed.)
HELMET: Nnnnno. Go past this, past this part. In fact, never play this again.
SANDURZ: Try here. Stop.
(The movie stops at the exact same thing that is actually happening now. HELMET looks at the camera, and then he turns back to the monitor. SANDURZ looks at the camera when HELMET looks back at the monitor, then he looks back at the monitor. HELMET looks at the camera when SANDURZ looks back at the monitor. When HELMET turns back, he waves his hand. He turns back to the camera.)
HELMET: What the hell am I looking at? When does this happen in the movie?
SANDURZ: Now. You're looking at now, sir. Everything that happens now is happening now.
HELMET: What happened to then?
SANDURZ: We passed then
HELMET: When?
SANDURZ: Just now. We're at now, now.
HELMET: Go back to then.
SANDURZ: When?
HELMET: Now.
SANDURZ: Now?
HELMET: Now.
SANDURZ: I can't.
HELMET: Why?
SANDURZ: We missed it.
HELMET: When?
SANDURZ: Just now.
HELMET: When will then be now?
SANDURZ: Soon.

From the movie ‘Spaceballs’

When I finished high school, a few more years ago than I would like, I had a lot of stuff on my mind. I had to make a lot of important decisions, like picking a career, finding a job and basically making up my mind as to what kind of adult I wanted to become. For a number of reasons I had to spend quite a few hours in town every day with a lot of time to kill between appointments. This meant that I spent hours on end basically sitting in cafes just looking out the window. And thinking about things…

I took all my thoughts very seriously then. I still catch myself putting a lot of stock into the general dumbness that goes on in my head, but not as often as then. Then I would get really worked up on my dreams of the future and put a lot of effort in my analysis of reality (which at the time I believed could be explained in some way). One day, as I sat idly in a café, I drew a diagram with my ideas on the issue of ‘free will versus determinism’. It’s a shame I didn’t keep that scrap of paper. Not because it contained any particular wisdom but because it’s always funny to look back at our own silliness. Nowadays I keep these articles so I can laugh at them in the future (when I’m wise, that is…)

Anyway, my idea of ‘fate’ was basically something about how past decisions condition the present and how the only freedom we ever have is ‘now’. Of course, in the future, ‘now’ will be the past which will, in turn, condition the ‘now’ in the future… Get it? Our ‘free will’ is what makes ‘determinism’. It’s a paradox. Of course this is just a small part of the whole business. And there was one thing in particular that was missing which I couldn’t quite explain. We usually refer to this idea when we say: ‘It was meant to be…’ I was careful not to appeal to ‘divine intervention’, a ‘cosmic plan’ or anything that was even remotely associated with the ‘G’ word. But what I did, in the end, was no better than that. While I was sitting in this café with a pen and paper, being unable to put my finger on this mysterious variable, I decided simply to call it ‘X factor’ and join it to the rest of the diagram with a dotted line. How convenient…

Of course, if you take a close look at that model, the amount of assumptions it contains is hilarious. We seem to accept those assumptions simply because almost everybody else accepts them and that’s just the way it’s always been. We start building ideas about ‘freedom’ and ‘fatalism’ without stopping at least a moment to consider if the worldview that gives raise to this dichotomy is at least remotely plausible.

For example we assume that there is something called time. This something appears to move forward into the future. The past contains things that existed yet exist no longer and the future is a potentiality. That means that things that don’t exist yet might exist as long as certain events occur between ‘now’ and ‘then’. This assumption is called ‘causality’. Our capacity of abstraction enables us to imagine alternative situations in the future based on this principle of causality. ‘If I do this or that, then the future will be like this. On the other hand, if I do such and such, the future will be like that over there’. As I get older -and more and more screws loosen in my attic- this idea of several ‘possible futures’ sounds increasingly stupid to me. But what’s definitely outrageous is when we use this capacity of abstraction to imagine alternatives to the present. ‘Instead of being here, typing away at my computer I could be enjoying a drink in a beach bungalow in Brazil.’

Says who?

But the real truth is that anything that we think or say about reality is only an abstraction in our minds. The idea of time; the idea of causality and the idea of potentiality are only constructions of our own brains. We elaborate those concepts by extrapolating the way we perceive our experiences and then taking them out of their original context, isolating some stuff so it can be thought of in some particular way. But separating some stuff out of its context to imagine what it would be like on its own is something that never occurs in ‘reality’. Therefore abstraction, as a process of trying to explain reality, just doesn’t do the trick.

But we go further. We create abstractions from abstractions. We isolate some of the explanations we give to experience and create new ideas from there. Of course, if time goes by leaving what exists now in the past and making future a potentiality that depends upon what happens between ‘now’ and ‘then’, that implies that what we decide to do now will determine any one of all the potential futures. We call that power of creating a particular future through our decisions ‘freedom’. And we go on and on. After the idea of freedom, follows the idea of responsibility. That, in turn, takes us to principles of morality.

Mind you, by no means am I trying to suggest that the opposite is true. Denying time, denying causality and denying freedom isn’t any better. In fact, the nature of both the affirmation and the negation is exactly the same. All I’m trying to say is that it might be convenient, in terms of how we function as human beings, to believe in time, causality and freedom. It’s like a working hypothesis. Whether time exists or not is really difficult to ascertain (I’m not kidding here). However, for all practical purposes, assuming it does exist and convening on how it is to be measured is tremendously useful. If we didn’t have this working hypothesis called time, it would be impossible for me to arrive in the office only five minutes before my boss.

We have to keep in mind, though, that these are just assumptions and will remain as such. Reality is whatever it IS. Then we construct all these elaborate ideas about it. That’s why I am so fond of redundancies. In the end, redundancies never fail the truth. You might argue that they don’t really say much about the truth either, but that’s precisely why they don’t screw things up. If I were to draw a new diagram about destiny and free will and things that were ‘meant to be’, I would do something very different. I would appeal to redundancies.

Years ago I saw a short spot from the Benny Hill Show in which two guys decide to split and share a cake. It appears to be that someone with a serious eye condition cut the cake in two and left one very big piece and one very small piece. The first character grabs the big piece and starts munching away. The second character is a bit upset about the rudeness he’s been through and makes some kind of a comment. The first character looks a bit impatient and finally asks: ‘if you had chosen first, which one would you have picked?’ The second guy answers, ‘the small one of course.’ ‘Well there you have it’, the first one snarls back, ‘why do you complain so much?’

A more sophisticated version of this idea comes across in the recent movie ‘Minority Report’. The Tom Cruise character has a discussion with the Colin Farrell character. Guess what they are discussing? That’s right, determinism. To make his point, Tom Cruise rolls a ball on a curved table towards Colin Farrell. As it leaves the table to an inexorable fall, Colin Farrell catches it in mid air.
‘Why did you do that?’ asks Tom Cruise.
‘Because it was going to fall,’ answers Farrell.
‘Are you absolutely certain it was going to fall?’
‘Absolutely’
‘And yet it didn’t’

Ah, what would we do without the wisdom pouring out of Hollywood? There’s no need to go through tedious philosophy books. Just pay a visit to your neighborhood ‘Blockbuster’ store and pick up a couple of DVDs.

But I’m rambling. Let me get back to what I was trying to say in the first place. We have created a series of assumptions about reality that are very useful for us to go around through life. Ideas like time, causality, justice, ‘me’ and ‘the rest of this wretched humanity’, etc. But most of the time we seem to loose sight from the fact that these are nothing but assumptions or working hypotheses. Whatever reality ‘is’, the abstraction process leading to our assumptions about it is precisely what leaves out the juice.

When we embark in endless speculations about how right or wrong our past decisions were. When we lie in bed with our eyes wide open worrying about the future. When we feel the weight of the world pressing down on our decision about what color our underwear should be. When all this happens, it might be convenient to remind ourselves that any conclusion we might extract from the process is simply worthless in terms of ‘reality’.

Reality is whatever it is and things that happen just happen. I like Wei Wu Wei’s take on the matter: ‘Every action we perform must accord with the future, with what is due to appear’. Or in the words of our contemporary Zen Master Mel Brooks: ‘Everything that happens now is happening now...’

Ms. Fleming's wig (2007)

Ms. Fleming’s wig had gone missing. The whole costume team ran from one place to another with panic stricken faces. Ms. Fleming herself was on the brink of a nervous collapse. Her assistant fanned her with a folded script as she sat pale faced on the dressing room couch. Through the thin walls, one could already hear a crowd of muffled voices and moving chairs as the audience took their places. The curtains would go up in no more than twenty minutes. Anne Fleming shook the thought away but it ate at her insides cramping her abdomen.

‘What a disaster!’ she moaned with her eyes fixed on the ceiling.

‘Everything will be alright Ms. Fleming. Your wig will be found in no time. You’ll see.’

Abigail knew this was no consolation but she felt inclined to try to comfort Ms. Fleming anyway. She had been Fleming’s assistant for more than a decade and this was probably the worst theatrical disaster she had witnessed. The missing wig was no common wig and was hardly replaceable. ‘Medusa’ had exactly 72 carefully crafted and hand painted stuffed snakes and Fleming was playing the leading role. There was no way they could pull the character off without it.

‘Let me just kill myself, Abigail. I want to die. Call the bloody Director. I’ll slit my wrists in front of him so he can witness the horror he has put me through. Stop fanning me! You are blowing dust and making my eyes cry! You’ll ruin my make up. Make yourself useful instead of torturing me. Get me my bloody wig! I want my bloody wiiiiiiig!’

The door burst open. Adam Johnson stood there with lost eyes. He looked like a ghost. He opened his mouth as if to talk and then just mumbled something unintelligible and pressed his palm to his forehead. Of all the possible nightmares, this had been the least expected. Today was not only opening night but his debut as a director as well. Every detail had been accounted for but this. Johnson considered calling off the night under some excuse and his blood froze at the thought. What would the critics say? What would his producers say? He was a dead man.

‘You are an idiot and an amateur, Johnson! I swear to God my reputation won’t be stained by your incompetence. Every single soul will know that it was you who ruined the show. You are a bloody incompetent!

Johnson’s face was suddenly taken over by tremors and his eyes twitched. He raised his finger and glared at Fleming but remained silent.

‘Well? You dumb imbecile?’

Johnson just pointed towards the couch and struggled as the words worked their way up his throat. Abigail looked in that direction and her face turned pale. Finally, Fleming herself looked down and was horror struck when she saw a snake’s head squeezing out from under her dress.

Botticelli's Venus (1992)

PLOP!

(published in JigsawZen.com in 2006)

When I was a kid we used to go on holidays to a place by the seashore near Buenos Aires. My parents had to stuff suitcases, sunshades and what have you into the car trunk plus four kids (me and my bros) for a five hour drive to the seashore. A good way to keep the over crowded car more or less in order during those long hours under the blazing Sun was to buy us a few comics before leaving. That way, we would each read our own magazine for most of the trip instead of fighting and being a pain in the ass.

Our favorite one was ‘Condorito’, a Chilean comic with a curious character based on a condor. He was kinda like Donald Duck now that I think of it. Anyway, this ‘Condorito’ fella was a rascal and always had some ingenious thing to say in the last frame. One thing that’s characteristic in this comic is that there’s always someone who sort of faints in reaction to his last remark. You can usually see a pair of legs flying in the air as the character falls back and big fat letters with the word ‘PLOP!’

Koans remind me of ‘Condorito’…

Koan is a Japanese word (Chinese: ‘Gong-an’) which means ‘public case’. It’s actually a case study -or an example- that is used to show Zen students some obscure aspect of Zen. Koans are usually short stories or dialogues between two monks in which one of them gets enlightened in the end. So it’s kinda like a comic: there’s a short dialogue between two characters with a clever ending punch. This ending punch is often what causes the student monk to finally ‘get it’ with a thundering flash. I can almost visualize a shaven dude in robes falling over backwards and the word ‘PLOP’ in fat red letters.

Ah… Those are the profound thoughts that go on in my mind as I ponder the unfathomable depths of Zen wisdom…

Anyway, now that I’ve convinced you that I take these koan things very seriously, let me tell you a bit about them. The idea, at least as far as I can see it, is that an example is much more educational than an explanatory discourse. This is even more evident when what you’re trying to explain is ‘beyond words’ (see an article I wrote about that here). Although there’s quite a bit of debate as to how these stories are supposed to be used (and tradition dictates fairly strict rules for their use and discussion) I will go ahead and just pour out my own personal take on them.

Personally, I think koans are great. I take them as poems. Or rather, like concise and poetic illustrations of Zen logic. Even if their rational interpretation is close to an absolute waste of time, when I reflect upon them there is usually some sort of wordless understanding that slowly-timidly starts to surface. Don’t get me wrong! Claiming I actually understand them is a bit more blasphemous than what I am willing to be on this webpage. I can be sent to the pyre for that! I’ll tell you this though: after some years of reading koans and letting them float in my mind, that which initially sounded like absurd gibberish starts making some sense; at least as a soft and elusive whisper.

And even if Nipponese tradition seems to get all worked up about how these things should be discussed under the strict rules of dokusan, I prefer to try to put those whispers into words (so help me God).

Check out this koan from the Mumon-kan:

NANSEN’S ORDINARY MIND

Joshu asked Nansen, “What is the Way?” Nansen answered, “Your ordinary mind.”
Joshu again asked, “Can it be studied?” Nansen replied, “The more you pursue, the more does it slip away.”
Joshu asked once again, “How can you know it is the Way?” Nansen responded, “The Way does not belong to ‘knowing’, nor does it belong to ‘not knowing’. Knowing is an illusion. Not knowing is outside the field of discrimination. When you get to this Way without doubt, you are free like the vastness of space, an unfathomable void. How can you explain it by affirmation or negation?”
Upon hearing this, Joshu suddenly understood (PLOP!).

Mumon's Comment:

The question Joshu asked Nansen was dissolved with one stroke. After being enlightened, Joshu should further pursue these words for thirty years to exhaust their meaning.
A hundred flowers in Spring, the moon in Autumn,
The cool wind in Summer and the white snow in Winter.
If your mind is not clouded with things,
You are happy at any time.

And now comes my blasphemy:

What Joshu asks is, in some way, something that we all have on our minds. Yeah, I realize you don’t go around looking like Little Grasshopper asking monks what the ‘Way’ is. In fact, even if this idea might abide in some dark crevice of your mind, it is quite probable that you’ve never uttered this idea in the form of a direct question. What Joshu is asking is simply this: What is happiness? What is freedom? How can I live a happy life? Yes, I realize Joshu has phrased his question quite a bit differently but the words that are used depend on the values and notions of the culture they come from. In Joshu’s days, ‘Way’ was the meaning of the word ‘Tao’. Joshu was asking: What is the Tao? Some translations have Joshu ask: What is the Buddha? But it’s all the same thing. Joshu is asking for some specifications on what is the meaning of harmonizing with the Tao; what are the coordinates of our true nature (referred to as the Buddha Nature), what is the spontaneous healthy state of mind that brings around happiness and freedom.

Many people believe that happiness and freedom are things that we’re supposed to set out for, things that we have to acquire by doing stuff or changing our surroundings. Say, like having a bunch of money or being really famous. Others believe that these may be acquired by changing something within ourselves, like attaining certain states of mind. When ancient translations offer words like Buddha Mind or some other cryptic word for this situation, we seem to have a tendency to imagine super wacky states of mind. I used to think of the Buddha Mind as some detached, serene and all-knowing coolness. Wouldn’t it be great? Ah, all is falling apart and yet I’m just chill… Your round-the-corner-bookstore is bound to be packed with books that show you how to get to these ‘higher states of consciousness’ and propose methods and spiritual practices that serve as tickets to some ‘Prozac meets Xanax’ paradise.

But Nansen answers: ‘Hey, come down from the clouds! Stop imagining wacky stuff! Your ordinary mind, your stupid little confused mind is ALREADY IT. Anything else is just your imagination. Your little mind that thinks of koans that end with a PLOP is already the Tao. That is the Buddha Mind. Buddha Mind is not something special; it’s in fact quite ordinary.

But Joshu is no fool. I have this feeling that he knew exactly what Nansen was going to answer. He already knew about the ordinary mind and yet there were some things that didn’t quite fit. So following these lines, he shoots Nansen again: ‘How can it be studied (or developed)?’ That’s another thing that we have a tendency to do. We need to enhance, maintain or induce that which we believe to be good or desirable. If my ordinary mind is the Buddha Mind or the Tao then, what can I do to always have this mind? How can I keep it or make it even better? How can I follow this path to the ordinary mind?

But Nansen replies with words that are difficult to digest and truly hard to understand: ‘The more you pursue, the more does it slip away’. Your stupid, crappy little mind is already the Tao. Whatever you do to try to seize it, enhance it or improve it will just mess things up. It’s like stirring murky water to make it clear.

Many Zen teachers seem to have a standard answer for these things: ‘You just do zazen and it will all be settled.’ I find that a bit annoying. It’s like when you were a kid and someone would tell you: ‘You’ll understand it when you grow up’. However, and I am not a Zen Teacher mind you, I have to grant that while doing zazen all the stuff that’s going on in our minds becomes a bit more evident; it shows just a bit more clearly. In order not to sound like some pretentious Zen Master know-it-all, I’ll just share a bit of what happens to me. When I sit in zazen, the ordinary mind is there, flowing along in front of my attention. There are no obstructions. It just flows effortlessly and the usual parade of nonsense just goes by. Homer whacking Bart on the head… You know? The usual stuff. But then I get this itch, this anxiety to try and explain it, to try to control it or to change it. But the paradox is that when I try to seize it -to explain it- it’s like if I had to step out of my ‘mind’ to be able to rationalize it. It’s like moving away from the picture to see it in full scale. Anyway, when I do this, the flow is interrupted and the spontaneity is lost.

But our hero Joshu had already seen all this coming and had his third question ready and waiting. I imagine his reasoning was something like this: if my ordinary mind is already the Tao and there’s nothing I’m supposed to do to study it, then I just have to sit on my bum and do nothing! How can this be the Way? Isn’t this something like the Emperor’s New Clothes? What’s the difference then between just hanging around doing nothing and practicing the True Dharma preached the Buddhas of all times? If I just go about my business with my everyday state of mind, how can I be sure this is the True Way?

And this is when I should shut my big fat mouth.

Nansen’s reply is wonderful, concise and enlightening. How could I put my words on top of his? There’s an expression used in Zen teachings that goes something like: it would be like throwing buckets of water into the ocean. By trying to explain Nansen’s words, in fact, I would be throwing mud into the water to make it clear…

So let’s begin then. Here goes the first handful of mud…

Nansen replies Joshu by first tackling the issue of ‘knowing’ and ‘not knowing’. In this case, ‘knowing’ is meant as rational knowledge. How can I know it is the Way? What Joshu wants is some evidence, some convincing argument that holds its own water. He wants to be able to discuss this with his friends over dinner and tell them: ‘Hey, check this out: the Way is the Ordinary Mind. Breakthrough scientific research has proven that the limbic system is the blah, blah, blah.’ But these are just illusions. They are just more dopey thoughts parading in the sea of nonsense that goes on in our minds all the time. This discrimination is just a process of deconstructing experience into thought units (which we call ‘things’) and relate them thru a set of rules (which we call ‘logic’). But in the end, they are not reality; they are nothing but abstractions (Buddhism refers to these as ‘imaginations’.)

‘Not knowing’ is just the other side of the same coin. It is the things that we believe exist even if we are not aware of them or cannot explain them. It’s just the stuff that we are not discriminating, deconstructing and relating. How could this be relevant? It’s ‘outside the field of discrimination.’

And yet Nansen talks about getting to the path with no doubt. Blind faith, you might say… But it’s not quite that. Nansen means something more like intuition. The problem is that we have an idea of intuition that might be a bit different than what Nansen is talking about. We tend to believe that intuition is kinda like a hunch, like a funny feeling in the stomach. But we don’t usually think of intuition as something very precise or reliable. Anyway, Nansen’s intuition is more of a pre-verbal knowledge; something that we know of even if we haven’t yet put it into words. Getting to the Way without doubt is like recognizing your childhood neighborhood. It’s like looking someone in the eye and knowing that the words being uttered are honest. It’s like ducking when the blow approaches. You need no confirmation, no argument and no explanation. You know it before you ‘know it’; before you give it a name and discriminate it (understand it as something separate) from other stuff. OK?

Ah! But if you were Joshu you would have a fourth question welling up, wouldn’t you? What does all this have to do with happiness?

Even if Mumon gives a hint of this in his comment, at the same time he warns us: Nansen’s words could be dwelt upon for thirty years (a lifetime) before exhausting their meaning. Only then you’ll go PLOP. Won’t you?

His Holiness (1994) - Oil on cardboard

This was copied from some Sci-Fi artist but I can't remember who it was... sorry...

L'OREAL Model (1994)