Zen and my dark-ass room

This is going to be old information for my dad, Daniela, and Starr but here's what I've been up:

I've been reading Murakami Haruki's book 'The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle'. I think I originally heard about him from Luke's friend Ben. The main character, in an effort to create an enviornment in which to think, climbs down an empty well and stays there for two days. He is able to transcend time and focus his energies on his own mind. So I went home yesterday and was thinking about it and decided I would try out something similar. As there are no windows in my room, at night if I turn off all the lights in the apartment and close my door, it is possible to make it pitch black. You can't see anything-even your own hands one inch in front of your face. So I sat like that for over an hour and just thought. I didn't make noise or speak or move around too much. I tried to just sit there and think. As all I have in my room is a little pillow it was pretty fucking uncomfortable after a little while but I think I liked it. The trick is to spend a lot more time like that and not bail after just an hour.

It was something that I had been thinking about ever since I had a conversation with a student of mine. He reads a lot and likes Zen Buddhism and was explaining to me some of the things that he's learned so far. So part of Buddhism, and if you're interested I would highly recommend reading Hermann Hesse's 'Siddhartha,' is to destroy the self and find the all-being through meditation among other things. Once you realize that all life is the same thing and its all moving in the same direction to the same destination and that there is no time, you can achieve enlightenment and inner peace. Don't quote me but that's kind of what I've taken from it so far. So this student told me how Zen Buddhism is the basis for Bushido, the Japanese warrior code. By having very austere homes with little decoration (among other deeper things) they were trying to kill the self and focus on just being. Without the self to distract them, they were able to just fight and not think about anything else. So I realize that my room is cluttered with a bunch of crap I don't need and I was about to throw a lot of it away before it occurred to me that I could accompish the same goal by removing all the light from it. So I'm gonna get some books on Buddhism and Zen and read a little bit more seriously and see if I feel any better as a result of it.

I went to my first Buddhist temple today. It was a really pretty one on my walk downtown and massive on the inside. I climbed the steps and removed my shoes before entering through a sliding paper door. The main room was massive and covered with tatami mats. I sat cross-legged in the back and waited for two people praying to leave before approaching the altar. There were little altars that you could kneel before with incense burning. A girl slightly younger than me came in and kneeled next to me so I watched her pray a little bit. She sprinkled some incense on the smoldering fire in front of her and then closed her hands, palm to palm like Christians pray, bowed her head very low, and closed her eyes. In front of the little altars was a massive one, very ornate, with a Buddha statue. At least I think it was a Buddha statue-it didn't look like the Buddha statue that I've seen elsewhere but looked maybe more like a Buddhist-Jesus. I only think it was a Buddhist temple because most Shinto temples have Torii gates outside and there weren't any at this place. I think I'll go back and actually pray for something- peace for myself, that kind of thing. It was nice a temple though and I liked the smell of incense burning. I didn't want to pray without knowing how because in my mind it would spoil the sanctity of the place. I think walking into a Catholic Church and not blessing yourself, not kneeling at the pew, and then on top of that praying wrong would spoil the whole experience. You would find out later that you probably looked like an idiot and just feel bad about the whole experience. Plus if someone else walked in and I was doing something wrong maybe they'd get pissed and I don't want to fuck with someone else's religion.