I took a long weekend to recover from a slight cold. Having a three-day-weekend really should be the norm. I feel incredibly rested. Yesterday I got some writing done and slept. This morning my wife and I walked across the Walnut Street Bridge here in Chattanooga, visited Verre Noir (where she left with a mounted cicada to add to her collection of oddities) and I Go Tokyo for some Japanese stationary, which I have grown especially fond of. My wife really turned me onto these Campus notebooks, which she started using while growing up in Japan. They’ve become essential to my workflow and I carry one nearly everywhere.

After the shops we had a lovely lunch at Bento Ya. It was absolutely wonderful. If you’re ever in the area I highly recommend stopping in for lunch. In fact, make a circuit of all three of the shops, plus perhaps the crystal shop and the bookstore (though the best bookshop in Chat is by far McKay’s).

Here are a few images of our new cat Marceau on his cloud blanket, coupled with selections from my Sunday Sky series.

Recently a visitor to my site asked me what got me into Zen. I figured I’d share the abridged response here. I grew up in a strange household that was split between Catholicism, Atheism, and (some) Buddhism. My parents seemed to not spend much time considering the bigger questions. My mother did identify as a Buddhist, however I never saw her put any of that into practice. She just gave me a pocket book of Buddhist sayings (edit: I’ve actually found my copy of that small book and linked it here), and told me to read JD Salinger’s Nine Stories.

My introduction to any sort of religion or practice was through my grandparents on my step father’s side. My grandparents were extremely religious and I went to the Catholic summer camps that they hosted until I was nine years old. Once I was nine they determined that I was old enough to start working, so instead of just visiting their camps I began working for them at the circus (an experience I will later expand on as it was a truly formative experience that taught me so much about love, work, art, literature, music, and life). I mention this because I saw no difference between their relationship to the circus and the church. They approached both with a superficial pride. Even at my young age I realized how truly indifferent they were. They seemed to just be going through the motions and learning nothing. They were simply collectors. They collected stories from the Bible, but never dug deeper. Similarly, they seemed to only work for the circus to collect stories, never searching for the deeper lessons hidden within. I vowed to not continue on like that.

Years passed and I continued to strive for more knowledge and lessons. In that time I studied Nietzsche, fell madly in love with poetry (from the Beats, the symbolists, to the Black Mountain Poets and beyond), and, most importantly, fell into Surrealism and punk rock, another gift from my mother. My mother loved Salvador Dali and we would visit the Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida often, blasting Black Flag, Scratch Acid, Nirvana, The Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen (an honorary punk), and the Pixies on the way.

The discovery of Surrealism was the real catalyst for my entry to Zen, without it I would likely just have flirted with it through the references from Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, John Cage, and Leonard Cohen. Instead, thanks to the influence of Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and even the beautiful nonsense of the Dadaists, the absurdism of Samuel Beckett (I highly recommend Paul Foster’s incredible Beckett and Zen), and the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky I fell in love with koans. Without Surrealism I doubt I would have felt as close to the koan as I was. My love began as an obsession with the nonsense of koans, but grew into a respect and care for the deeper implications of zen. Here is an example of a koan:

A monk saw a turtle in the garden of Daizui’s monastery and asked the teacher, “All beings cover their bones with flesh and skin. Why does this being cover its flesh and skin with bones?” Master Daizui took off one of his sandals and covered the turtle with it.

This could easily be a short dadaist or ‘pataphysical text. From these koans I fell into the study of Buddhism as a whole, with a focus on Rinzai style zen. Though the entry point was a fascination with the koan, the beauty of the teachings and purposefulness of the practice is what kept me. Unlike my grandparents just going through the motions at church, Zazen serves a purpose for me. The studies of zen history and Buddhism as a whole lead to deeper teachings and wider experience.

Essentially, the short version, I discovered zen through my mother, surrealism, and the koan.

I will likely write more deeply about my zen practices in the future. But! It is getting late and I am deep in my readings of Ikkyu for a project I am planning, and want to provide myself enough time to relax this evening before bed. I will include a list of recommended books mentioned or alluded to in this blog post below. But first, here is Marceau embracing Crazy Cloud. Please comment your favorite books on zen below!

List of books mentioned in the post:

1. Teachings of the Buddha, edited by Jack Kornfield.
2. Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.
3. The Bible (King James Version). Note: I cannot find the exact version I own, however this is close.
4. The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann.
5. Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation, edited by Carole Tomkinson.
6. The Penguin Book of French Poetry: 1820-1950, edited by William Rees.
7. Black Mountain Poems, edited by Jonathan C. Creasy.
8. Surrealist Poetry, edited by Willard Bohn.
9. Book of Longing by Leonard Cohen.
10. Collected Poems 1947-1997 by Allen Ginsberg.
11. Collected Poems by Gary Snyder.
12. Silence by John Cage.
13. Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson.
14. Manifestoes of Surrealism by Andre Breton.
15. Selected Poems by Paul Eluard.
16. The Dada Market, edited by Willard Bohn.
17. Beckett and Zen by Paul Foster.
18. The Spiritual Journey of Alejandro Jodorowsky by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
19. The Gateless Gate
20. The Sound of One Hand, edited by Yoel Hoffman.
21. Ikkyu: Crow With No Mouth Versions by Stephen Berg.
22. Ikkyū and the Crazy Cloud Anthology: A Zen Poet of Medieval Japan by Sonja Arntzen.
23. Having Once Paused: Poems of Zen Master Ikkyu
24. Crazy Cloud Ikkyu: Versions and Inventions by Stephen Berg.
25. Three Zen Masters: Ikkyu, Hakuin and RyoKan by John Stevens.