Outflows

Student E: Roshi? In the Lankavatara Sutra they described a buddha as one who controls his outflows. Would you say a few words about that? Or they also used the phrase “non-leakage,” which was hard to get.

Back in Bali

Malaysia was good and we loved our hosts - Wai and Vidya, staying in their school, walking to Dim Sum for breakfast, loved the milk tea. Lai Mun and her comfy spcacious home, five hour drive to Penang for three days and seven hours back with holiday traffic - very pleasant company so the time slid by. Came back with some stuff haven't found here - though we haven't gone way out of our way to find. Stuff like zip-lock bags, real Japanese green tea - sencha and genmaicha. We find the former here sometimes but not dependably. Big cue tips like got in Japan that ran out. Puer tea. Got a couple of prayer rugs from an Indian store. We loved the Chinese section in Georgetown. More on that later maybe.

Texas Gov Defends our Freedom

Greg Abbot orders Texas State Guard to make sure US Army doesn't invade my home state. NPR story. Quiz. What do the honorable governor and yours truly DC have in common? More later.

Peter Coyote's New Book

The Rainman's Third Cure: an Irregular Education

click on bookcover to see it larger

Links at Read more. 

Put the links there because they screw up the image here on Blogger I've noticed. Took a while to figure it out. Will research what to do. If I put a link next to the image it erases the image for that line. - dc

Be Aware of Imperfections

If we are quite sincere with ourself and if we are aware of our idle practice and ashamed of it, that's the way. Even though we are not perfect, if we are aware of our imperfection, that is good, very good. That is very good.

Excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki lecture 65-08-28-A as found on shunryusuzuki.com - Edited by DC   

DC comment: I'm sure some will balk at that use of ashamed. It's really a sort of technical or special term not to be confused with getting all bummed out about oneself. There are positive as well as negative uses of the word. Too much to get into now. 

Wesak

It's Wesak time in much of Asia. Big holiday here in Malaysia where Katrinka and I are briefly. We call it Buddha's birthday in American Buddhist circles I'm around and celebrate it on April 8th like Japan - or the nearest Sunday depending on the group. Here it's May 3rd and 4th - so people can have that Monday off I guess. Also it seems to include celebrating Buddha's enlightenment and Buddha in general. Funny, in Buddhist Japan it's not a holiday but in dominantly Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia it is. Lots of Chinese Buddhists and we're mainly around Chinese here. We're in Penang this weekend which is a tourist spot for Malay and at the cable car up Penang Hill this morning it seemed they were mostly here. That's a stock photo of Wesak in KL.

A recollection of Buddha, Dharma, Sangha

Posted the calligraphy by Trungpa for Shunryu Suzuki yesterday and mentioned David Schneider's Skullcup and the Teapot book. This is the piece at the end of that book by Trungpa on Suzuki.

By Chögyam Trungpa

excellent Photo from Terebess site

The venerable Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, founder and abbot of Zen Center, San Francisco and Tassajara, Carmel Valley, California, died on December 4, 1971. He taught on the West Coast of the United States for eleven years. Personal contact with him, and exposure to his written works, inspired thousands of people to a living experience of Buddhism. The style of his teaching was direct, thorough, and without ambition.

Father Steve Frost again

Paints Seascapes and writes of Non Existence

Penang Malaysia

That's where we are now - for three nights. Great street food for breakfast. Katrinka and Lai bought a kilo of shrimp from a fisherman whom we'd seen come in and were watching his catch be weighed and sold on a sidewalk by the shore. Walked down the street to a Chinese restaurant almost full - open to the street. They steamed it up with ginger.

Eleven Years ago Today

Eleven years ago today, I walked into the Pelican Inn with Clay and some friends. It was a busy Sunday. A familiar face inside the door greeting customers - Katrinka. Knew her from the Sand Dollar in Stinson Beach. Now she was manager of this most English pub and Inn. At the beach told Clay and his buds to find their way back to Green Gulch, walked back to the Pelican Inn, and now we're looking out across a bay toward the Malay mainland.