Collected Thoughts and Quotes: May 12- June 1

(What follows is a collection of journal entries written during my three week stay at Great Vow Zen Monastery. Not suprisingly, a large number of them relate to Buddhism and religion generally.)


"One way that we can view the Buddha's teaching is as a form of training intended to free our attention from being determined by the object(s) of our attention." - Evan, GVZM

The most apt description of the Buddha's teaching I have heard. In other words, most of the time we allow objects to direct our attention: car crash and lights, I look that way; I'm reading, but I can't help letting my attention drift to the conversation being carried on beside me; pretty girl, can't help but look. While it is not inherently detrimental to let object(s) determine our attention, this eventually does result in a loss of our ability to direct our attention - to remain present in the moment, to focus on what's important and sideline the inane anxieties, memories, and general nonsense noise that rumbles through our brain. Buddha is trying to show us that we can free our minds from compulsive mental habits. That is to say, we retain the ability to control the quality and direction of the attention.


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If I were to meet God face to face, or directly experience the interconnectedness of all beings, why should I take THIS experience as the experience of an ultimate reality that is somehow vailed in my ordinary experience of the world? That is to say, why shouldn't I treat this as simply another experience (no different from the others)? What gives it the mark of authority in my life?

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Why is my experience of God absolutely authoritative in the moment and subject to doubt upon reflection? Is it a matter of absorbtive participation in the former case and detached examination in the latter? How do I determine which standpoint to take (participation v. examination)?

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We might say that certain experiences (or beliefs) are given authority in my life because the inform the way I live. They serve as a basis for action. We might want to say that authoritative experiences and beliefs differ from my certainty about various propositions. I may be certain that I have never been far from the surface of the earth, but this proposition has very little to do with my ordinary life (unless I work for NASA). My experience of the divine or belief in a supreme being, on the other hand, has the potential to effect nearly every action I undertake. Furthermore, confusions may arise when we confuse authority with a type of certainty. In the case of many facts about which I am certain, evidence can be mounted. I know I have never been far from the surface of the earth because I have never flown into outer space, nor been abducted by extraterrestrials. We would be mistaken, however, if we called upon evidence to reassure us of the authority of a belief. Authoritative beliefs can only inform my life when I let them. Thus if I step back to examine an authoritative belief, looking for evidence in favor of it's validity, I suspend it's influence upon my way of life and deprive it of any authority it originally possessed for me.


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"God is that all things are possible" - Anti-Climacus, From SK's Sickeness Unto Death

We have faith that all things are possible if we retain the ability to see beyond our paradigm.


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Sitting like a rock


Bluebird sails through on the wind


And stillness returns

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"In this passing moment...all things come to be. I vow to affirm what is:


If there's cost, I choose to pay.
If there's need, I choose to give.
If there's pain, I choose to feel.
If there's sorrow, I choose to grieve.
When burning, I choose heat.
When calm, I choose peace.
When starving, I choose hunger.
When happy, I choose joy.
Whom I encounter, I choose to meet.
What I shoulder, I choose to bear.
When it's my birth, I choose to live.
When it's my death, I choose to die.
Where this takes me, I choose to go.

Being with what is, I respond to what is."

- Selections from Liberation from All Obstructions, Chant By Hogen Bays, written in honor of Shodo Horada, Roshi


I think this chant gives quite pure expression to one of the most fundamental religious attitudes.


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Two ways to use the word 'empirical': 1) That which can be ascertained through direct experience. 2) That which can be ascertained through various scientific methodologies.

What should we do when two facts, each one discovered via a different empirical process, appear to contradict one another?


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The most conspicious inconsistency in science: the scientist must see herself as exempt from the causally-determined system she is investigating in order for her results to constitute knowledge [rather than as the mere effect of a chain of causally-determined events].


Note: This is the corollary to the problem voiced in the question, "What is the difference between a reason and a cause?"


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"Put aside the intellectual habit of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward." - Zen Chant.


Ouch.