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oking nytimes com recipes 1021776 lemony white bean soup with turkey and greens my most recent book is the absolute moment essays on western zen posted in 1 tagged cooking dinner food japanese martial arts meditation recipe recipes zen leave a comment perfect the way you are 20 may 2026 by ben howard each of you is perfect the way you are shunryu suzuki roshi founder of the san francisco zen center said to his students one morning and you could use a little improvement over the years in conversations with acquaintances friends and family members i have sometimes repeated suzuki s remark and it has almost always evoked strong responses ranging from laughter to curiosity to puzzlement i m reminded of a self ironic comment the onetime u s poet laureate howard nemerov made apropos of modernist poetry i don t know what the fellows mean to grasp the meaning of suzuki s remark in the context of zen teachings it may be helpful first to clarify what he doesn t mean in common western parlance perfect is synonymous with flawless if a used book is in perfect condition its spine is intact and it is free of dogeared pages coffee stains and other visible defects if a zen practitioner sits in perfect stillness he or she doesn t move not even a little bit and if a vacant space is described in a real estate listing as perfect for a studio we may assume that the room could not be better suited to that purpose little wonder that perfect is so widely used in advertising where it is often paired with ideal clearly that was not what suzuki had in mind most likely he was employing the word perfect in the special sense in which it is used in zen teachings as tetsugen bernie glassman roshi an american zen teacher explains in his book infinite circle in zen lingo perfect means neither good nor bad just what is as it is irrespective of any judgments or other concepts we might add rain is what is if we are farmers we tend to say that rain is wonderful if we were planning a picnic we think rain is terrible but rain is rain people say rain is wet but a fish wouldn t water is very essence of life to a fish neither wet nor dry the fish attaches no notions or dichotomies to it when we say something is perfect we re pointing to this absence of dichotomies or dualism viewing a thing dualistically whether that thing be rain or a self we separate subject from object and we view the object through the lens of our notions which in glassman s phrase are the colors we add to the thing itself in the world according to buddhism things do not manifest sui generis they come into being through dependent origination a twelvefold chain of causes and conditions within that worldview as glassman notes any one thing event is the best that could happen at this very moment but best in the special sense that it s happening and there is no choice it is in this sense that we say everything is perfect just as it is in the sense of being complete even a broken incense bowl is perfect as it is because that s what it is we may have the notion that all those pieces should be returned to their original condition as parts of a whole incense bowl so they can be perfect again but that s just a notion it s reasonable to conclude that something akin to glassman s definition is what suzuki meant when he told his students they were perfect as they were but how does that square with his subsequent assertion that they could use a little improvement to address that apparent contradiction i would note to begin with that the first clause of his pronouncement deals with being and the second with doing we may each be perfect not only in the sense of being complete as we are but also in having what zen calls buddha nature an innate capacity for wisdom and compassion dormant and unrealized it may be but it can be awakened and cultivated through committed daily practice that paradox is at heart of zen teachings and practice it is embodied concretely in hakuin ekaku zenji s the song of zazen which speaks of a man who in the midst of water cries in thirst so imploringly but beyond this underlying intellectual coherence of suzuki s remark i would also note its deeply compassionate nature all too often we may feel more like that broken incense bowl than that object in its original state but even if our efforts to improve our present condition fall far short of their mark we will still be perfect in the sense of being just as we are in this very moment whole complete and rich in potential and that way of seeing oneself can go a long way toward overcoming the habit of negative self judgment even as it fosters self acceptance a condition hard to come by and much to be desired posted in 1 tagged buddhism meditation philosophy spirituality zen leave a comment believing in words 22 april 2026 by ben howard in his poem fly the american poet w s merwin 1927 2019 describes himself as one who has always believed too much in words that statement would be remarkable coming from almost anyone but it is particularly striking coming from an acclaimed poet and translator then in his forties whose distinguished career had been largely based on words profound and far reaching merwin s declaration can be understood in multiple contexts most notably the personal the environmental and the metaphysical fly appeared in the lice 1972 merwin s sixth collection of poems three years after the moon landing and concurrent with the dawn of the environmental movement a lyric poem with a prominent narrative component it recounts the narrator s effort to compel an old unhealthy and filthy pigeon whom the narrator has been keeping in a dovecote to rally its energies and take flight fly i said throwing him into the air but he would drop and run back expecting to be fed i said it again and again throwing him up as he got worse as foolish as they were futile the narrator s actions eventually result in the pigeon s death finding him in the dovecote dead of the needless efforts he contemplates the dead bird s eye that could not conceive that i was a creature to run from in the general scheme of human misdeeds merwin s might seem minor but to him it occasions introspection and harsh self judgment so that is what i am he concludes isolating that line for maximum impact having been presumptuous and obtuse in expecting the pigeon to obey his spoken command he views himself as an agent of human cruelty who has abused his dominion over beasts and fowls and caused the unnecessary death of a fellow creature beyond its personal context the narrator s actions and his subsequent remorse reflect a broader cultural sense of culpability when the astronauts viewed the planet earth from the vantage point of the moon they were awed by its beauty humbled by its magnificence and made newly aware of its vulnerability michael collins apollo 11 likened the planet to a precious jewel james irwin apollo 15 described it as so delicate that if you touched it with a finger it would fall apart those feelings were shared by many who viewed william anders celebrated earthrise photo which the nature photographer galen rowell called the most influential environmental photograph ever taken within that cultural milieu the episode depicted in fly epitomizes the greed arrogance and ignorance that by the 1960s had accelerated the extinction of floral and fauna and grievously plundered the earth s natural resources and merwin s personal epiphany represents in small the cultural awakening that would engender the whole earth movement c 1970 the establishment of the epa 1970 and in the next decades stringent environmental regulation yet if merwin s poem is in part a personal confession and in part a cultural avatar it is also the mature work of a seasoned poet who as a steward of the english language has come to recognize his medium s limitations the word the narrator has believed in is fly cast in the imperative mode not only does its inefficacy reveal the incapacity of human speech to control wild nature it also points toward the limited ability of language in general to represent reality to be sure an abiding belief in words is necessary to navigate and survive everyday life stop means stop and we d better believe it but excessive belief in language whether as a measure of personal importance a defining agent of social identity or a mirror of things as they are can foster delusion and inflict incalculable suffering witness theories of a master race or false historical ideologies justifying territorial invasion no spiritual tradition is more aware of the frailties of language than zen buddhism which from its beginnings has declared itself not dependent on words and letters and regarded words as fingers pointing toward the moon not to be mistaken for the moon itself like many poets and writers of his generation merwin was interested in zen and in 1976 he moved to hawaii to study with the zen master robert aitken roshi just as fly anticipates merwin s later environmental conservationism and his founding of the merwin conservancy so does his poem adumbrate his wholehearted embrace of zen teachings which by and large view concepts and their linguistic vehicles namely words as filters and impediments between our minds and concrete reality even honest well intentioned words are not to be naively trusted insofar as they reify interdependent dynamic nexuses into separate static things from that perspective a skeptical attitude toward words however beautiful or inspiring potent or inciteful they may be is of itself a necessary wise and salutary practice read fly in its entirety at https merwinconservancy org poems fly by w s merwin posted in 1 tagged books literature meditation poems poetry writing ws merwin ze leave a comment good neighbors 19 january 2026 by ben howard as the world knows zen buddhism is a practice of stillness and silence its iconic image is a figure sitting cross legged in meditation but zen is also a practice of active questioning and no question is more central to the practice than one a child might ask what is this zen teachings enjoin practitioners to ask this question over and again not only in formal meditation but throughout the day whether the immediate focus of attention be an orange an iphone a transitory feeling a state of mind or what is commonly called the self to practice zen is to inquire deeply into whatever we encounter to penetrate beneath its illusory surface to its true nature yet one need not be a zen practitioner to benefit from asking zen s central question radical inquiry is basic to pursuits as diverse as science medicine law philosophy and the visual arts and it is also fundamental to western meditative poetry as in wordsworth s prelude or t s eliot s four quartets where the aim as in zen is both to understand the essential nature of the object under scrutiny and to reignite an edenic sense of awe and wonder few western poems better illustrate this process than robert frost s mending wall 1913 one of the most celebrated widely anthologized and enduring poems of the 20 th century at first glance this readily accessible poem is a folksy anecdotal account of a conversation between two neighboring farmers in rural new hampshire but on closer inspection it reveals itself to be a profound inquiry into the nature origins and purpose of man made walls more broadly it is an examination of the sources of division enclosure and territorial conflict in western culture and the role that fixed traditional ideas play in such conflicts in mending wall two owners of adjoining farms are engaging in the annual springtime ritual of repairing a drystone wall that separates their properties even as they work together the narrator who has initiated this chore by getting in touch with his neighbor is inwardly questioning its worth and meaning something there is that doesn t love a wall he confides to the reader whatever that unspecified something may be it has both human and natural agents the hunters who break through the wall in pursuit of prey and the winter groundswell which topples the carefully balanced stones and just as these physical forces undermine the established wall so the narrator subverts its very existence by questioning its reason for being as he notes there is no practical need to separate his apple orchard from his neighbor s pine forest neither is harming the other nor are there cows to enclose why erect a wall at all in response to this mischievous but searching question the neighbor offers a platitude most likely derived from a 19 th century farmer s almanac good fences make good neighbors recognizing this argument as proverbial rather than original expedient rather than persuasive the narrator characterizes it as his neighbor s father s saying which the man has neither the inclination nor the imagination to call into question and toward the end of the poem the two neighbors merely restate their opposing positions something there is that doesn t love a wall and good fences make good neighbors whether the author is siding with one or the other remains unknown and the question itself remains unresolved mending wall has sometimes been read or misread as a didactic poem with a simple message tear down all walls but given the even balance of opposing perspectives supported by the author s own impartiality the poem might better be understood as a concrete demonstration of an ongoing inquiry that the issue remains far from resolved after more than a hundred years may be seen in an episode of the tv drama yellowstone season 1 episode 7 where the cattle baron john dutton kevin costner directs the asian tourists who are trespassing on his property and photographing a nearby grizzly bear to take note of his fences and get off his land when one of the tourists objects asserting that the earth belongs to everyone dutton dismisses his argument with a memorable line this is america we don t share land here in zen practice what is this is both a question and a koan whose purpose is not so much to produce definitive answers as to lift the veils of prejudicial concepts freshen our perceptions and reveal the impermanent selfless and interdependent nature of things we usually take for granted likewise robert frost at once a social conservative and a radical explorer offers a koan of his own inviting us to look more deeply into the nature of walls and boundaries literal and figurative and to ask what place and meaning such fabrications have in our daily lives photo robert frost to read mending wall go to https www poetryfoundation org poems 44266 mending wall posted in 1 tagged buddhism meditation philosophy writing zen leave a comment i should have thought 3 december 2025 by ben howard many years ago when i was still an undergraduate i traveled from eastern iowa to the north of england to study english literature at the university of leeds a so called redbrick university in west yorkshire there i lived for a year in a village on the outskirts of that soo...
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