Purpose of the articles posted in the blog is to share knowledge and occurring events for ecology and biodiversity conservation and protection whereas biology will be human’s security. Remember, these are meant to be conversation starters, not mere broadcasts :) so I kindly request and would vastly prefer that you share your comments and thoughts on the blog-version of this Focus on Arts and Ecology (all its past + present + future).

Premium Blogger Themes - Starting From $10
#Post Title #Post Title #Post Title

Golden-green Woodpecker (Piculus chrysochloros)

September 30, 2018
Welcome to © Wildfocus
Discover and share outstanding wildlife images.
Join the discussions and upload your own photos.
Sign in to post a comment or upload your own photos.
Upload an Image
Golden-green Woodpecker (Piculus chrysochloros)
Title:
Golden-green Woodpecker (Piculus chrysochloros)
Equipment:
Canon EOS 7D Mark II @ 400mm
Location:
Pantalal region of Brazil
Habitat:
Wetlands
Date Taken:
2018-07-10
[ Read More ]

Peru! Traveling to Fight Climate Change

September 29, 2018
Every year, two million people from around the world head to Peru specifically to visit Machu Picchu.
Some of them want to see South American wildlife and enjoy a wonderful experience at one of the genuine wonders of the world, but their visits don’t require protection of anything outside of this area.
Indeed, the sheer magnitude of them has required a lot of development of the area.
White-chinned Sapphire
White-chinned Sapphire
Andean Cock-of-the-rock
Meanwhile, every year barely three thousand people from around the world head to Peru specifically to see its amazing wildlife. This surprises me, because Peru, a little smaller than Alaska and almost twice the size of Texas, is home to such astonishingly magnificent biodiversity. At current count, 1,824 bird species are found in Peru, almost double the number seen in all of North America north of the Mexican border!
And some of those birds of Peru are shockingly amazing, including the national bird—the Andean Cock-of-the-rock—and the mind-boggling array of 123 different species of hummingbirds, including the Fiery Topaz and the Marvelous Spatuletail. I was shocked to learn that three orders of magnitude more people visit Peru to see one archeological site than to see some of this amazing biological wealth.
Golden-tailed Sapphire
Many people concerned about climate change of course see that as a good thing: airplane travel accounts for about 4–9 percent of the total climate change impact of human activity. For them, the fewer people flying to Peru, or any other place, the better.
It’s absolutely true that climate change is the hugest issue facing humans right now, and the birds that we treasure as well. The trick is that as serious as airplane travel is in the overall picture, tropical deforestation is at least equally critical, contributing at least 10 percent of the total climate change impact. And agricultural byproducts, especially from beef production, contribute over 12 percent.
My favorite cow
We talk about how horrible deforestation and large-scale cattle production are in the abstract without coming up with specific alternatives. People struggling to get by and just feed their families in impoverished counties often have no alternative but to lease or sell their land for logging and then for large-scale cattle or sun-grown coffee production until the soil is depleted. And the soils of tropical rainforests and cloud forests are singularly devoid of nutrients, which are locked up into the vegetation. When the forest is cut, the loss of vegetative-driven humidity in combination with the low-nutrient soils make regeneration slow—it can take centuries to replace a cut cloud forest, and many scores of years for even sparse ground cover to take over.
Meanwhile, local climate change effects due to the loss of the carbon-sucking, humidity-enhancing forest are exacerbated by patches of bare ground. Loss of relatively small amounts of rain or cloud forest leads to bigger losses in rainfall and cloud cover over a more widespread area, leading to more plant and wildlife deaths. Many people don’t realize that the overall rainfall and cloud cover patterns in tropical forests are not mostly due to typical weather systems but are a self-generating set of local conditions because of the forest vegetation itself. When a tropical forest is cut down, climate change is exacerbated by more than the loss of carbon-sucking vegetation.
The Monteverde Cloud Forest of Costa Rica, which I visited with my daughter Katie in 2001, grows increasingly less cloudy as more and more landowners cut down their own forests. It’s the trees themselves that create this cloud cover.
Right now, poor people in the countryside make what little money they can by logging and agriculture. Some wise, forward-thinking Peruvians have worked tirelessly to try to persuade them to feed their families with money earned from hummingbird feeding stations and other ecotourism ventures that protect rather than cut down the forests.
Some environmentalists think it’s mere selfishness for birders to want to conserve species for their own sakes in the face of the massive destruction climate change promises, but protecting cloud and rain forests is an essential component in the fight against climate change. And the only way to do that is to give the landowners alternative ways of making a living without logging. Some kinds of ecotourism really do that.
Marvelous Spatuletail
Several landowners in northern Peru have started promoting conservation just in the past couple of years, since they discovered that they can get more money, now and into the future, by letting birders see rare hummingbirds on their property than they can earn by logging their land. Now they take pride in getting more and more hummingbirds at their feeding stations, which is directly related to the quality of diversity in all the nearby forests. So they are not only protecting their own land but also encouraging their neighbors to preserve their land, too, increasing the numbers and diversity of hummingbirds. A win for birds, a win for the planet, and a win in the fight against climate change.
Long-tailed Sylph
The government-sponsored fam tour I was on this month was led by the co-founder of a fantastic small Peruvian company called GreenTours – their mission includes a true commitment to social and environmental responsibilities. They compensate for their own CO2 footprint via a conservation project of the Tambopata National Reserve, and are certified by the Green Initiative to be a carbon neutral company. The lodges and hotels where we stayed on our trip had softer impacts on the environment that the huge 5-star resorts near Machu Picchu. Genuine eco-tourism is an entirely different thing than tourism in general.
Rufous-crested Coquette
Ecotourism specifically by birders supports the people who are directly preserving quality cloud and rainforest habitat, which has an even greater impact in the climate change equation than air travel does. So visiting Peru to see its birds, even for purely selfish reasons, may be much more important for fighting climate change than sitting home.
Of course, those of us who understand some of the complexities know that even with respect to deforestation, travel is still a huge driver of climate change. To compensate for my own trip to Peru, I made a contribution to the World Land Trust, to ensure that the fuel burned by the airplanes and other vehicles transporting me around would be offset by reforestation to absorb that much carbon. But I feel good that the individuals who are protecting their land so that I and other birders can see those Marvelous Spatuletails and Emerald-bellied Pufflegs, Sparkling Violetears and Sword-billed Hummingbirds, have prospects of earning an income long into the future not by cutting down their forests, but by protecting them.
Emerald-bellied Puffleg

Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter


Laura Erickson

Laura Erickson

Laura Erickson, 2014 recipient of the American Birding Association’s prestigious Roger Tory Peterson Award, has been a scientist, teacher, writer, wildlife rehabilitator, professional blogger, public speaker, photographer, American Robin and Whooping Crane Expert for the popular Journey North educational website, and Science Editor at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. She’s written eight books about birds, including the best-selling Into the Nest: Intimate Views of the Courting, Parenting, and Family Lives of Familiar Birds (co-authored by photographer Marie Read); the National Outdoor Book Award winning Sharing the Wonder of Birds with Kids; 101 Ways to Help Birds; The Bird Watching Answer Book for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; and the National Geographic Pocket Guide to Birds of North America. She’s currently a columnist and contributing editor for BirdWatching magazine, and is writing a field guide to the birds of Minnesota for the American Birding Association. Since 1986 she has been producing the long-running “For the Birds” radio program for many public radio stations; the program is podcast on iTunes. She lives in Duluth, Minnesota, with her husband, mother-in-law, licensed education Eastern Screech-Owl Archimedes, two indoor cats, and her little birding dog Pip.
[ Read More ]

‘Mate, what just happened?’ Seal slaps kayaker in face with octopus

September 30, 2018
A kayaker paddling in the waters around New Zealand has been given an unusually close look at its marine life when a seal appeared to throw an octopus at him.
Kyle Mulinder was enjoying a clear day on waters off the coast of Kaikōura in the South Island when he was slapped in the face by the tentacles of the flying creature.
Mulinder told Australia’s Seven News he and his friends had been watching a seal tussle with a large octopus near their kayaks, before the seal burst out of the water with the animal lodged between its jaws.
“We were just sitting out in the middle of the ocean and then this huge male seal appeared with an octopus and he was thrashing him about for ages,” Mulinder told the news channel. “I was like ‘mate, what just happened?’ It was weird because it happened so fast but I could feel all the hard parts of the octopus on my face.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BoD3bluhKmS/?utm_source=ig_embed
Mulinder, who works for Go Pro, had a camera attached to his boat which captured the bizarre encounter.
Seals mainly eat fish, but they will consume any type of protein they can find, including octopus, squid, crustaceans and shellfish.
The seas off the coast of Kaikōura are renowned for their marine life, drawn to the region by the 50km-long Kaikōura canyon, which creates an unusual series of sea currents that sustains a rich food chain.
In 2016, an earthquake in the area caused a massive undersea landslip that killed much marine life including seals, abalone and shellfish. In the months after the quake whales and dolphins, which were usually common in the area, disappeared and scientists feared they would not return.

Subscribe to our FREE Newsletter
[ Read More ]

Ordinary Buddha

BY 

Master Linji, better known in the West as Rinzai, shook up the Buddhist world by telling his students to drop their enlightenment agenda and simply be their true, ordinary selves. Thich Nhat Hanh examines Master Linji’s teachings on the “businessless person,” who has nothing to do and nowhere to go.

Many students of Buddhism are the children of Master Linji, even if they don’t know his name. In the Zen tradition, the spirit of Master Linji is in everything we’re taught and everything we do.
Master Linji lived during the Tang Dynasty in China. He was born in western Shandong province, just south of the Huang Ho (Yellow) River, sometime between 810 and 815.When he was still young, he left his family and traveled north to study with Zen patriarch Huangbo in his monastery near Hongzhou in Jiangxi province, just south of the Yangzi River. It was a time of political instability in China. There was government repression of Buddhism, which culminated in a decree, issued in 845 by the emperor Tang Wu Zong, ordering all monks and nuns to disrobe and return to lay life. Many temples and statues were destroyed, particularly in the cities. Monasteries in outlying areas were less affected.
After several years, the young Linji was sent by his teacher to study briefly with the reclusive monk Dayu, after which time he returned to live with the monks at Patriarch Huangbo’s temple. Later he had his own temple in Zhengzhou, Hebei province, where he taught in his signature direct and dramatic style. As was the custom in China at the time, he took his name, Linji, from the name of the mountain on which he lived and taught. He resided there until he passed away in 867. He never wrote down his teachings, but his students recorded and compiled them in The Record of Master Linji (known in the Japanese Zen tradition as The Book of Rinzai).
As a young monk, Linji studied diligently and gained a deep and extensive knowledge of the Tripitaka, the three baskets of the Buddhist teachings: the sutras, commentaries, and vinaya (monastic precepts). He noticed that although many monks studied very diligently, their studies didn’t influence their understanding and transformation. They appeared to be seeking knowledge only to increase their fame or position in the temple. So Master Linji let go of his studies in order to follow true Zen practice.
Many of us have spent our whole lives learning, questioning, and searching. But even on the path of enlightenment, if all we do is study, we’re wasting our time and that of our teacher. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t study; study and practice help each other. But what’s important is not the goal we’re seeking—even if that goal is enlightenment—but living each moment of our daily life truly and fully.
Master Linji had a solid knowledge of the Buddhist canon, but his teaching method was based on his confidence that human beings need only to wake up to their true nature and live as ordinary people. Master Linji didn’t call himself a Zen master. He called himself a “good spiritual friend,” someone who could help others on the path. Master Linji called those who had insight to teach “the host,” and the student, the one who comes to learn, “the guest.”
In Master Linji’s time, some Buddhist terms were used so often they became meaningless. People chewed on words like “liberation” and “enlightenment” until they lost their power. It’s no different today. People use words that tire our ears. We hear the words “freedom” and “security” on talk radio, television, and in the newspaper so often that they’ve lost their effectiveness. Even the most beautiful words can lose their true meaning when they’re overused. For example, the word “love” is a wonderful word. When we like to eat hamburger, we say, “I love hamburger.” So what’s left of the deeper meaning of the word “love”?
It’s the same with Buddhist words. Someone may be able to speak beautifully about compassion, wisdom, or nonself, but this doesn’t necessarily help others. And the speaker may still have a big self or treat others badly; his eloquent speech may be only empty words. We can get tired of all these words, even the word “Buddha.” So to wake people up, Master Linji invented new terms and new ways of saying things that would respond to the needs of his time.
For example, Master Linji invented the term the “businessless person,”1 the person who has nothing to do and nowhere to go. This was his ideal example of what a person could be. In Theravada Buddhism, the ideal person was the arhat, someone who practiced to attain enlightenment. In Mahayana Buddhism, the ideal person was the bodhisattva, a compassionate being who, on the path of enlightenment, helped others.
According to Master Linji, the businessless person is someone who doesn’t run after enlightenment or grasp at anything, even if that thing is the Buddha. This person has simply stopped. She is no longer caught by anything, even theories or teachings. The businessless person is the true person inside each one of us. This is the essential teaching of Master Linji.
When we learn to stop and be truly alive in the present moment, we are in touch with what’s going on within and around us. We aren’t carried away by the past, the future, our thinking, ideas, emotions, and projects. Often we think that our ideas about things are the reality of that thing. But even our notion of the Buddha may be just an idea and far from reality. The Buddha outside ourselves was a human being who was born, lived, and died. For us to seek such a Buddha would be to seek a shadow, a ghost Buddha, and at some point our idea of Buddha would become an obstacle for us.
Master Linji said that when we meet the ghost Buddha, we should cut off his head. Whether we’re looking inside or outside ourselves, we need to cut off the head of whatever we meet, and abandon the views and ideas we have about things, including our ideas about Buddhism and Buddhist teachings. Buddhist teachings are not exalted words and scriptures existing outside us, sitting on a high shelf in the temple, but rather they are medicine for our ills. Buddhist teachings are skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, anger, as well as our habit of seeking things outside and not having confidence in ourselves.
Insight can’t be found in sutras, commentaries, or dharma talks. Liberation and awakened understanding can’t be found by devoting ourselves to the study of the Buddhist scriptures. This is like hoping to find fresh water in dry bones. Returning to the present moment, using our clear mind which exists right here and now, we can be in touch with liberation and enlightenment, as well as with the Buddha and all his disciples as living realities right in this moment.
The person who has nothing to do is sovereign over herself. She doesn’t need to put on airs or leave any trace behind. The true person is an active participant, engaged in her environment while remaining unoppressed by it. Although all phenomena are going through the various appearances of birth, abiding, changing, and dying, the true person doesn’t become a victim of sadness, happiness, love, or hate. She lives in awareness as an ordinary person, whether standing, walking, lying down, or sitting. She doesn’t act a part, even the part of a great Zen master. This is what Master Linji means by “Be sovereign wherever you are and use that place as your seat of awakening.”
We may wonder, “If a person has no direction, isn’t yearning to realize an ideal, and doesn’t have an aim in life, then who will help living beings be liberated? Who will rescue those who are drowning in the ocean of suffering?” A buddha is a person who has no more business to do and isn’t looking for anything. In doing nothing, in simply stopping, we can live freely and true to ourselves and our liberation will contribute to the liberation of all beings.

Master Linji’s Medicine

Master Linji taught in order to shake things up. He wanted to smash obstacles, heal sickness, and undo fetters. Reading his words is like taking a very strong medicine. Most of us tend to think that if we take vitamins or tonics, we’ll feel healthier. But sometimes, rather than taking anything more into our bodies, we need to clean them out. That’s when we need a good dose of the teachings of Master Linji. They aren’t vitamins, they’re laxatives.
When we’ve accumulated so much knowledge inside, we don’t have the capacity to digest it. It’s like when we eat too much food, we can’t digest it and we become constipated. When we don’t understand what we’ve learned and can’t apply it in our practice, in our daily life, then our knowledge can block our bodies and minds. But you don’t have to wait until you’re constipated to benefit from Master Linji’s teachings; prevention is better than cure.
Master Linji didn’t want to present deep and wonderful ideas for us to study and debate. We don’t come to the teachings of Master Linji looking for some absolute truth or hoping to discover difficult concepts and mystical ideas. All teaching devices are first and foremost words, mere designations. Master Linji calls them “empty terms” or “-isms.” They aren’t objective realities. Master Linji doesn’t want us to see his words as a golden framework or jade ruler to study and worship. He tells us his words are only drawings made in empty space.
The purpose of Master Linji’s work is to help us cease all our seeking and come back to ourselves in the present moment. That’s where we can find everything we’re looking for, whether it’s Buddha, perfect understanding, peace, or liberation.
The Record of Master Linji is divided into two parts: Zen battles and evening talks. The teachings that Master Linji gave in the morning, the Zen battles, were given in the form of questions and answers, which often read like riddles. In the afternoon or evening, he would give explanation teachings, sharing the dharma and telling stories. These talks give principal ideas that can guide your practice and also help you better understand the Zen battles.
The Zen battles are skits. One role is the teacher, the “host.” The other role is the student, the “guest.” The host is the one who knows what’s going on and the guest is the one who comes to learn. Sometimes they switch roles: the guest plays the role of the host, and the host plays the role of the guest. Sometimes both play the guest or the host.
In the time of Master Linji, a Zen student would step up and face the Zen master in order to ask a question and to find out from the master if his understanding was ripe yet. This required a certain bravery on the part of the student. Sometimes there would be victory, sometimes defeat. Sometimes the battles would lead to destruction. Sometimes both guest and host would be victorious.
Master Linji wasn’t trying to defeat his students in these battles; he was trying to defeat their tendency to engage in excessive thinking and rationalizing. For Master Linji, thinking was not awakened understanding. So these weren’t long battles. The Zen master didn’t need to sit and talk for a long time. The student had to say only one thing and the Zen master would know his mind. The student needed to give rise to only one thought to go in the wrong direction. Whether or not he understood would be determined in that very instant. If he went in the wrong direction and then made an effort, he would lose.
In school, when we want to ask a question, we remain seated and put up our hand. We use our head, our intellect, to ask a question in order to get a bit of knowledge in return. But Zen isn’t like that. Here our aim isn’t to find out and store up knowledge about Buddhism; it’s to ask the right question, the question that has the capacity to destroy our obstacles. If we don’t have that question, it’s better not to come forward. Our question should be something that can tear apart the veil of ignorance and liberate us. Maybe it can teach our teacher and the whole community, too. This is what Master Linji is looking for when he asks, “Is there any warrior who is willing to step out onto the battlefield?”

Dharma Battle: Where does the weakness lie?

The master (Linji) had just come into the dharma hall and a monk came out and prostrated. The master yelled. The monk said, “Please, Upadhyaya,2 do not test me.” The master asked, “Tell me, monk, where did the sound of that shout fall?” The monk shouted forthwith.
Another monk came up and asked, “What is the essential teaching of the buddhadharma?” The master yelled. The monk prostrated. The master asked, “Where does the weakness lie?” The monk said, “If one offends again, it will not be forgiven.” The master immediately shouted.
That day, as soon as the masters of the two meditation halls saw each other, they shouted at the same time. A monk asked the master, “In this case, is there a proper guest and host?” The master said, “The guest and the host are clear.” And then he added, “Noble Sangha, if you want to know the principle of the four relations of guest and host, then go and ask the two masters of the meditation halls.” Having spoken, he stepped down.
The Zen master came into the dharma hall and a monk asked, “What is the main idea of the buddhadharma?” The master raised his duster. The monk shouted and was beaten once by the master.

Commentary

Master Linji ascended the dharma seat and a monk came up and prostrated and didn’t ask anything. Maybe he had a question, maybe not. But something motivated him to step out. In response, the Zen master shouted, confronting the monk to see what was in his mind. Perhaps the monk went up there just to be seen but had no special question. Perhaps Master Linji’s shout made the monk consider his motivation. Perhaps it confused him; he hadn’t said anything and yet he had been shouted at. So he said, “Please, Upadhyaya, don’t test me.” Maybe he didn’t feel he had enough strength to deal with the spiritual power of the master.
The Zen master asked, “Tell me, monk, where did the sound of that shout fall?” That is, what effect did it have? And the monk shouted back. He was in the position of a guest, a learner, and he roared back to play the role of a host.
Another monk came up and asked, “What is the essential teaching of the buddhadharma?” When we have an opportunity to ask the Zen master a question and we don’t know what question to ask, then we can ask that question. It may not be the question that’s important, but the chance to be in contact with our teacher so that our teacher can look into our mind and shine light into our mind to help us to see the path more clearly.
A similar question commonly asked of a Zen master is: What was Bodhidharma’s intention in coming to China from India? Recently, I proposed an answer: “Mind your own business!” What does the purpose of the Master coming to China from India have to do with you? Why don’t you do walking meditation; why don’t you breathe? “Mind your own business” would be an economical answer. It saves us a lot of time.
The Zen master’s shout was also an economical answer. Perhaps his shout meant, “Why do you ask that question; what good does it do you?” Perhaps that shout helped the student see the moment of being in contact with the teacher as a valuable opportunity not to be wasted by asking about external knowledge. Why not go on the path of direct experience?
The monk prostrated. That prostration may have meant he understood, but it may not have. So the Zen master asked, “Where does the weakness lie?” meaning,“ Why did I shout at you? Can you tell me?” And the monk replied, “If one offends again, it will not be forgiven,” meaning he wouldn’t ask such a useless question the next time. The Zen master shouts again. The monk is focused already on “the next time” and is not in the present moment.
Then a monk came to the Zen master and told him that when the two head monks of the meditation halls in the east and west met, they shouted simultaneously. He asked the master, “In this case, is there a proper guest and host?” The Zen master said, “The guest and host are clear. Great Community, if you want to know about the principle of the four relations of guest and host, then go and ask the two masters of the meditation halls.” Having spoken, he stepped down.
Traditionally, the west hall was for the monks and the east hall was for guests. The master said to go ask the monks involved because they would know firsthand. The four situations of guest and host, the four ways of interaction, are methods of helping others in the tradition of Master Linji. The host knows what’s going on and the guest comes to learn. And there are times when the guest plays the role of a host and the host plays the role of the guest. In this example, where both monks yelled at the same time, who was the host and who was the guest? Perhaps, in that moment, both were either host or guest, or host and guest. According to the method of Master Linji, we have to distinguish who’s the host and who’s the guest. In all these Zen dialogues, we need to know who is who.
In the final part of the teaching, the Zen master went to the dharma hall where a monk asked, “What is the main idea of the buddhadharma?” The Zen master waved his duster. The monk shouted and the Zen master hit him. Raising the duster was the Zen master’s first answer, which the questioner responded to by shouting. The blow was the master’s second and final answer.

Evening Talk: Distinguishing Buddha from Mara

The master (Linji) gave an opening talk:
“My friends, in the practice of the buddhadharma there is no need for hard work. The principle is not to try to be anyone special, and to have nothing to do. If you put on your robe, eat your meal, urinate, defecate, and rest when you are tired, the foolish ones will laugh, but the wise ones will understand. The teachers of old say, ‘If you direct your practice to the outer form, you are just a group of foolish people.’ You should be sovereign according to where you find yourself; be the true person wherever you are, not allowing the conditions around you to pull you away. Thus, even if your habit energies have been built up over one thousand years, or you have committed the five inexpiable crimes, they all will become the ocean of liberation.
“Most of those who study the path of Buddhism in our own time do not understand the dharma. They are like goats who will eat whatever is given them; they cannot distinguish master from servant, guest from host. People like that enter on the path of practice with the wrong motivation; they are always ready to enter places of noise and disturbance. You cannot call them true monks. In fact they are worldly people. True monks must have right view in their daily life, which is able to distinguish Buddha from Mara, true from false, sacred from profane. Only when people have this ability can they be called true renouncers of the household life. If they cannot distinguish Mara from Buddha, they just renounce one household in order to enter another. They can be called living beings who are making karma but not those who have renounced the household. In our own time there is a phenomenon called Buddha-Mara, an entity in which Mara and Buddha cannot be distinguished, like when milk and water are mixed together. It is said that from such a mixture the King of Geese can drink just the milk. My dharma friends with good eyes, according to me, should topple both Buddha and Mara. If they still have the tendency to love the sacred and hate the profane, they will continue to drown in the ocean of birth and death for a long time.”

Commentary

Buddhism should not be hard work. If we do sitting or walking meditation and we exert too much effort, that isn’t the buddhadharma. If, while we’re eating, we try not to speak and we try to pick up food in a very correct way with the spoon, then we’re working too hard. We should still practice mindful manners. Master Linji isn’t saying we should be unmindful, just that we should live our lives with as much relaxation as possible.
If we want to put on the robe, then we put on the robe. If we want to eat our meals, then we eat our meals. If we want to defecate, then we defecate. If we want to urinate, then we can urinate. If we’re tired, then we can rest. We don’t need to listen to the dharma talk. We don’t need to go to a dharma discussion. Master Linji referred to a poem written by Puji, a student of the seventh patriarch of the Northern school of Zen Buddhism, that reads: “If we direct ourselves outward for our daily practice, then we’re all ignorant. The ignorant can laugh at me. But the one with insight, with understanding, will understand me.”
Wherever we go, we can be the master of our situation. Suppose an older sister or brother is bothering us. We may be tempted to think it’s their fault that we suffer. But we can instead take the initiative and decide that we can help our sibling and ourselves. “You should be sovereign according to where you find yourself; be the true person wherever you are, not allowing the conditions to pull you away.” Wherever we are, our true self is present. We don’t stand before a crowd pretending to be dignified and then when we’re alone we become forgetful. Rather, whether we’re alone or with others, we’re still our true selves. Whether we’re defecating or giving a dharma talk, we’re the same person.
I knew a Thai practitioner who had lost respect for her teacher. When asked why, she told a story about how one day her teacher, after looking around and thinking no one was looking, kicked a dog. Often he was very compassionate, but that day, for whatever reason, he kicked the dog and his student saw this. Perhaps he had something irritating on his mind and therefore he kicked the dog. But the thing that upset the student the most was how, before he kicked the dog, he looked around to see if anybody was watching.
If we can be our true selves, then even if in this or a past life we committed one of the five offenses that cause eternal hell—killing father, killing mother, killing an arhat, causing a Buddha to bleed, and causing the sangha to be divided—we will still be liberated.
The master taught, “Most of those who study the path of Buddhism in our own time do not understand the dharma. They are like goats who will eat whatever is given them; they cannot distinguish master from servant, guest from host. People like that enter on the path of practice with the wrong motivation; they are always ready to enter places of noise and disturbance. True monks must have right view in their daily life, which is able to distinguish Buddha from Mara, true from false, sacred from profane. Only when people have this ability can they be called true renouncers of the household life. If they cannot distinguish Mara from Buddha, they just renounce one household in order to enter another. They can be called living beings who are making karma but not those who have renounced the household. In our own time there is a phenomenon called Buddha-Mara, an entity in which Mara and Buddha cannot be distinguished, like when milk and water are mixed together. It is said that from such a mixture the King of Geese can drink just the milk. My dharma friends with good eyes, according to me, should topple both Buddha and Mara. If they still have the tendency to love the sacred and hate the profane, they will continue to drown in the ocean of birth and death for a long time.”
Some Buddhist seekers are like the goat who will eat whatever it comes across. The goat will eat whatever its mouth touches. We study Japanese Zen, we study Tibetan Buddhism, we study the southern transmission, the northern transmission, we study mindfulness, we study Vipassana. We will chew whatever we come across; we have no discernment.
Master Linji is referring to a Mahayana story in which even when milk and water had been mixed together, the King of Geese could drink milk and leave the water, even though the two seemed to have become indistinguishable from each other, just like Buddha and Mara. Garbage and flowers depend on each other to grow. Night and day depend on each other to establish themselves. This is the wisdom of nondiscrimination.

Back to Bright Shining Mind

Master Linji taught that each one of us has a bright and shining mind. If we can find our way back to that bright mind, then we can be as the Buddha and the bodhisattvas are. When our shining mind is dulled, that means it’s covered by afflictions. With the practice of mindfulness, we can restore our bright mind. Our mind is a garden, and our garden has been ignored for a long time. The soil is hard, and brambles and wild grasses are growing everywhere. To practice is to come back and care for our garden. We are the gardener, our mind is the earth, and in the soil there are good seeds.
Please write these eight words and hang them somewhere you will see them: “Wherever you are, you are your true person.” You can write them on a small piece of paper, the size of a credit card, that you put in your wallet to take out as a reminder. If you can practice these eight words, you are worthy of being Master Linji’s student and his continuation. Master Linji taught us that we have to use our bright shining mind to come back to the present moment and enter the world of the ultimate, the realm of the Buddha, the Pure Land. With mindful breathing, mindful walking, and gathas (Zen poems that we can memorize and recite silently) to help us come back to our true self, we can be the businessless person with nothing to do but hold the hand of the Buddha and roam.


1 Eido Shimano Roshi translates this as the “true man without rank.” ↩
2 Upadhyaya means “teacher” in Sanskrit. The upadhyaya is traditionally responsible for training students in the rites, rules, and discipline of a monastic community. ↩
[ Read More ]

A Museum of Pizza Is Opening Next Month

Yes, the price of admission also includes a slice

Pizza Museum in NYC
Photo: Kate Owen/Nameless Network
These days, museums aren't so much places to learn as they are sites to snap a selfie and dive into a pool of sprinkles, with the latest being the Museum of Pizza, an "experiential pizza adventure" popping up in NYC this fall.
RELATED   NYC's Egg Museum Is Open (and There's a Ball Pit) »
According to Nameless Network—the company behind the experience—highlights will include a pizza art gallery, a cheese cave, a pizza beach (what that exactly means has yet to be revealed), plus various film screenings. And based off the "kind of sexual" trailer and images that have been released so far, the promise of "unique immersive installations" have us all intrigued.
"Pizza is more than a food—it’s a cultural phenomenon that transcends geography and language," Kareem Rahma, the museum's CEO, says. The pop-up will be open from October 13 to 28, and before you ask, yes, each $35 ticket will thankfully come with a cheesy slice. 
This article was originally published on May 1, 2018, and was updated with further information on September 25, 2018.
[ Read More ]

What Lies Beneath Florence’s Floodwaters

What Lies Beneath Florence’s Floodwaters

Wastewater, coal ash, and other health risks of natural disasters
COAL ASH BREACHES AT DUKE ENERGY'S SUTTON PLANT IN WILMINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA, ON SEPTEMBER 16. | PHOTO COURTESY OF WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE
Along the Carolina coastal plain, water is still surging toward the sea long after the rain has stopped.

The slow-moving, heavy downpours that accompanied Hurricane Florence have sent a dozen rivers in North and South Carolina surging out of their banks. Some of those rivers will keep rising for days—and what’s left behind when they recede will be a potentially hazardous mess.

Florence’s flooding has turned freeways into canals, inundated industrial-scale hog and chicken farms, swamped coal ash ponds at power plants, and caused sewers to overflow, across eastern North Carolina in particular.

“Lots of roads are overwashed. Fields are flooded,” says Kemp Burdette, Riverkeeper of the Cape Fear, which flows southeast from Fayetteville, through Wilmington, and into the Atlantic Ocean. “There are a lot of trees down, a lot of power lines down where the trees hit them.”

Burdette’s hometown of Wilmington, on the North Carolina coast, was cut off from the rest of the state after the storm made landfall Friday, dumping more than 30 inches of rain on the southeastern corner of the state. Burdette’s home was among those that flooded.

The rain also overwhelmed a wastewater treatment plant, causing about 5 million gallons to spill when backup generators failed. But because the plant was located downstream of the city’s water source and had been partially treated, Burdette says, “It wasn’t as bad as it could have been.”
Don’t Let Trump Axe Giant Sequoia National Monument!
Take Action
100% of your donation will support local organizations aiding in the relief effort of Hurricane Florence.


Contaminated floodwater can spread bacteria like salmonella and E. coli, which can cause life-threatening intestinal illnesses, or leptospirosis, a bacterial infection carried by animal waste that can cause kidney damage, meningitis, and liver failure. This is according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, which is currently warning people in flood zones to avoid contact with the water as much as possible. The CDC urges all hurricane victims to wash their hands regularly, and to thoroughly disinfect their homes after experiencing flooding.
Contaminated floodwater can spread bacteria like salmonella and E. coli, which can cause life-threatening intestinal illnesses, or leptospirosis, a bacterial infection carried by animal waste that can cause kidney damage, meningitis, and liver failure.
Further inland, Burdette says, fellow Waterkeepers have spotted piles of poultry waste and flooded barns likely to be full of hundreds or even thousands of dead animals. What’s more, North Carolina’s coal-fired power plants have left behind piles of ash laced with heavy metals and toxins including arsenic. Environmental groups and North Carolina citizens have spent years battling to get those ash dumps cleaned up, especially since a 2014 spill dumped nearly 40,000 tons of the stuff into the Dan River north of Winston-Salem. After that spill, state lawmakers voted to shut down coal ash ponds. Republican state representative Chuck McGrady, a former Sierra Club president, played a key role. But the process is still under way, and progress has been slow.

Still, about 2,000 cubic yards of coal ash spilled at a power plant outside Wilmington on Sunday when the wall around it gave way, plant owner Duke Energy reported. Most of the ash ended up in a ditch or scattered across a road at the site, but an unknown amount of water ended up in the plant’s cooling pond, the company said.

Coal ash ponds at another plant along the Neuse River in Goldsboro, about 100 miles north of Wilmington, have flooded but haven’t leaked into the river, according to Bridget Munger, spokesperson for the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality.

The agency is trying to take in reports of sewer overflows, farm waste, and other spills, logging them into public websites as quickly as possible, Munger says. She adds that the DEQ has teams ready to fan out to take samples and test water quality as soon as it’s safe.

But she adds, “We are dealing with some big stumbling blocks in getting our arms around this information.” Not only does the record-breaking flooding make the getting-around harder, but some of the agency’s own staff members have had to evacuate their homes, or have been left stranded by rising waters.
Don’t Let Trump Axe Giant Sequoia National Monument!
Take Action
The federal EPA says an unknown amount of diesel fuel spilled from the engines of a train that derailed near the town of Lilesville, about 40 miles east of Charlotte, but that the fuel didn’t reach the nearby Pee Dee River. The agency is also keeping tabs on sites like coal ash ponds and hog waste lagoons across the state, and EPA spokesman John Konkus said the agency is scheduled to deploy people Wednesday to check on any hazardous waste sites that may have been flooded.
“The exact timing for assessments in North Carolina is yet to be determined,” Konkus said via email. “The sites in North Carolina will begin when floodwaters recede and the conditions are safe for our teams.”
The aftermath of a disaster like Hurricane Florence is “clearly overwhelming” for people trying to salvage flooded homes or rebuild livelihoods, says Dr. Kim Lyerly, the director of the Environmental Health Scholars Program at Duke University in Durham. But increasingly, he says, “We’re going to have to think about these long-term effects.

“We’re engineered to look at the short-term consequences and manage those,” continues Lyerly, who teaches immunology, pathology, and cancer research at Duke’s medical school. But if there’s a “new normal” of more intense storms, people may need to start incorporating the possible health effects of the resulting spills—“Not just basements being flooded and replacing drywall, but exposure to contaminants in our community.”
If there’s a “new normal” of more intense storms, people may need to start incorporating the possible health effects of the resulting spills—“Not just basements being flooded and replacing drywall, but exposure to contaminants in our community.”
Lyerly is coauthor of two new studies that were published this week, looking at the health of people who live near coal plants and hog farms. The effects of some post-disaster contamination, Lyerly says, may take years to show up. But he notes that there’s an “increased appreciation” of those potential issues, adding, “and my hope is people will begin to address them.”

This isn’t the first time North Carolina has had to grapple with the one-two punch of a big storm and tainted floodwater. In 1999, Hurricane Floyd washed out lagoons of hog waste. Smaller spills happened after Hurricane Matthew in 2016. But the disasters have done little to convince the state’s regulation-averse, Republican-dominated legislature to do much to prevent the consequences from the next one, says Molly Diggins, the Sierra Club’s state director.

“Every time we have a hurricane or something similar, environmental groups put forward recommendations about how to keep people and property out of harm’s way,” Diggins says. “We always make some progress, but then the political will seems to run out.”

Here’s hoping that Carolinians will stay out of the floodwaters for now—and for the future, demand from their representatives more climate-action-oriented legislation.
This story has been updated since publication. 
[ Read More ]

    Powered By Blogger