Chasing Away Thieves

The moon sweeps the floor.
Chasing my shadow away.
From the one beer left.

--or--

Maybe i don't know.
Or else i may be don't know.
Last try, don't know i.

Fractions of Infinity

One step and no more.
The henro trail is endless.
Yet one step is all.

Grow Into Nothing

Tears come, for nothing.
And in that nothing, so much.
Look inside to see.

Incredibly Bad Korean Law

I am in shock how bad Korean law apparently is? Are they human beings over there?

Back in 2004, Choi Jinsil, a Korean actress, was the model/spokesperson for Shinhan Engineering and Construction. Unfortunately for her, she was also married to an abusive husband and the victim of domestic violence.

That year, after another severe beating by her husband, she released pictures of herself with a black and blue face and pictures of the trashed apartment. She apparently did this to convince people that the husband was the attacker and she was the victim. It seems that domestic violence is common in Korea but rarely reported because "they" say it is the woman's fault. (How stupid can people be??)

Shinhan Engineering and Construction, decided that by releasing the pictures she had failed to keep her "social and moral honor," thus breaking the terms of her contract with them. But, because they are nice people (they think) they decided to only sue her for $2.3 million. And they won in court.

Sadly, Choi went on to commit suicide a few years later. Did that stop Shinhan Engineering and Construction? Of course not. They went back to court, and Korea's top court has just ruled that her two children are responsible for the $2.3 million due to Shinhan Engineering and Construction. One child is in pre-school and the other in elementary school.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

If i lived in Korea, i would call for a complete boycott of anything related to Shinhan Engineering and Construction. And i would hope that there is a way to remove those judges from the bench.

Are Koreans human?

Have i pointed out how stupid this is? Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

Stupid!

Which Vanity Is Real?

Two more poems from the anthology A Book Of Luminous Things and then i promise i'll put it back on the bookshelf.

The first makes me think of those henro walking the trail on Shikoku and looking for free lodging each night as they work their way around the island. In this case the poet talks about a fisherman's hut, but on Shikoku it could just as easily be an old Shinto shrine located on some out of the way part of the trail.

Coming At Night To A Fisherman's Hut

Fisherman's hut, by the mouth of the river,
Water of the lake to his brushwood gate.
The traveler would beg night's lodging.
But the master's not yet home.
The bamboo thick, the village far.
Moon rises, fishing boats are few.
There! far off, along the sandy shore
The spring breeze moving his cloak of straw.

Chang Chi
9^th century

Those few minutes of indecision and wonderment. No one is here. What should i do? Do i wait? Do i move on? But the next village is pretty far away and leaving would mean walking into the dark. Then, maybe for the first time today, your mind stops as you're unable to make a decision. And in that moment of silence, you start to see. The bamboo. The moon. The boats. Everything around you. Your connection to it all. You begin, for a few moments at least, to become part of the experience, part of the landscape, instead of the henro just walking and counting kilometers.

Then the master of the shop next to the shrine appears and everything reverts back to what it once was as the spring breeze brings movement back into the picture.

The second poem, another definitely about the henro trail, especially for those who have already walked it and still dream about it nightly, is by Po Chu-I, another 9^th century Chinese poet.

A Dream Of Mountaineering

At night, in my dream, I stoutly climbed a mountain,
Going out alone with my staff of holly-wood.
A thousand crags, a hundred hundred valleys—
In my dream-journey none were unexplored
And all the while my feet never grew tired
And my step was as strong as in my young days.
Can it be that when the mind travels backward
The body also returns to its old state?
And can it be, as between body and soul.
That the body may languish, while the soul is still strong?
Soul and body—both are vanities;
Dreaming and waking—both alike unreal.
In the day my feet are palsied and tottering;
In the night my steps go striding over the hills.
As day and night are divided in equal parts—
Between the two, I get as much as I lose.

"Soul and body—both are vanities;
Dreaming and waking—both alike unreal."

What is real? Who are you? The man or woman? The butterfly? This question has been asked, pondered, and meditated on countless times since Chuang Tsu first posed it back in the 4^th century B.C.

When the mind travels backwards, what happens to the body? When the mind travels into the future? The dream you and the wakeful you, both nothing but vanities that hold you back, that keep the real you hidden, unable to be, unable to express itself.

If you walk the henro trail, daily moving forward, yet all the while getting as much as you lose, and therefore going nowhere, what ground are you standing on? And, are you really going nowhere even if your body isn't moving?

Butterflys, Bells, and Henro

Not home yet not here.
Dreams again of the henro.
Butterfly or man?

For unknown reasons, i woke up in a really foul mood this morning. Really, really, foul. Once in that fog, the only way i know out is to go for a run, and while on the side of the road turn on the autopilot, turn off the brain, and become nothing other than a pair of moving feet. To help stop the mind, i usually load my mp3 player with Korean pop music because the melodies keep me moving without my brain trying to listen to lyrics that i can't understand anyhow.

Today's music did it's job and i wasn't a half mile away from home when my mind silently slipped off to wander the henro trail. In hindsight, this wasn't all that surprising since last night my dreams found me visiting Bangai Temple 7, Shussekiji.

Shussekiji has always been one of my favorite temples to visit — not because of the temple itself, but because of the experience of walking there during my first visit back in '99. It's a long hard climb to over 800m, uphill all the way, with the last bit of the way through the forest. On that day, the mountain top was completely encased in fog, and, with that and all the trees, you could see nothing other than a little bit of the trail in front of you.

I have always been in love with the sound of temple bells, ever since hearing one for the first time back in the mid-'80s when i stumbled into Japan knowing nothing. The sound of the bell when it is struck transports me to places i have never known or understood. There's that first CRACK as the wooden striker hits it, then this ever slowly decreasing series of overlapping high and low tones that just seem to sit there in the air daring you to crawl inside. My brain, for whatever reason, has always accepted that challenge and gets lost in those peaks and valleys every time.

On that climb up to Shussekiji, there must have been a group tour at the temple as i was walking because the bell would ring every few minutes. Because the fog had so completely restricted my visual sense, my hearing was even more open than usual. And then ........ all of the sudden ....... the bell rang out ........... and the sound seemed to roll slowly down the mountain towards me, over me, and then continued downhill ....... and it grabbed my mind as it enveloped me while sliding past ....... and i was completely, totally, at peace ....... and i forgot for those few moments that there was an 'I' and a forest, that there was a henro and a henro trail, that there was a sound and a listener, that there was anything.

Then, just as i started to come back to life, the bell was struck again. Then again. Then again. Have you ever been so amazed that you just wanted to sit on the ground and cry? Have you ever been so at peace that you could say to the universe, 'kill me now because i can't imagine anything in this life being any more perfect.'

There's a poem about this in the spectacularly, astonishingly, incredibly, wonderful anthology of poems edited by Czeslaw Milosz called A Book Of Luminous Things. The poem is by the ancient Chinese poet Ch'ang Yu and is called A Ringing Bell.

I lie in my bed,
Listening to the monastery bell.
In the still night
The sound re-echoes amongst the hills.
Frost gathers under the cold moon.
Under the overcast sky,
The first tones are still reverberating
While the last tones are ringing clear and sharp.
I listen and I can still hear them both,
But I cannot tell when they fade away.
I know the bondage and vanity of the world.
But who can tell when we escape
From life and death?

Ahhhhhh......

I might as well share one more of the poems i like from this collection, especially since my mind is on the mountains. This one is by the one person that would be the focus of my studies if i ever went to graduate school and got a PhD, which i will never do, unfortunately, but that's life, or mine anyhow. The poet is the 13^th – 14^th century poet, gardener, zen monk, political advisor, and all-around jack of all trades, Muso Soseki. The poem is called Magnificent Peak.

By its own nature
   it towers above
      the tangle of rivers

Don't say
   it's a lot of dirt
      piled high

Without end the mist of dawn
   the evening cloud
      draw their shadows across it

From the four directions
   you can look up and see it
      green and steep and wild.

Can you see that mountain he is talking about? Are you able to let go of the images and thoughts you had a minute ago and see it? Can you relax into just being it?

I could say the same things about the henro trail.

The Henro Trail
By it's own nature
   it wanders through
      myriads of villages, large and small

Don't say
   it's just asphalt and cement
      stretching kilometer after kilometer

Without end numerous henro
   countless experiences
      paint your mind with impressions

From the four directions
   you can see it
      long and inviting and waiting.

Unforgivable Sins

I always thought i was strong — mentally, that is. I always thought i held myself to high standards and wouldn't lower myself and do certain things, like killing or stealing. I always thought i was a good person.

I now know better, and have to admit to doing even worse that those things; to having done the unforgivable.....

I just called Dish Network and turned off TV Japan, and it hurts terribly even writing this. To lessen the pain a smidgen, i told them to turn on TV5Monde, a French language station that costs less than half as much as TV Japan, but still.....

What is my world coming to? If you hear on the news about a guy that got fried by lightning while running on the side of the road out here in Lockport, you'll know the gods didn't take this sitting down. ;-)

(And since my Cherry Blossom tree didn't bloom this year, we already know they are pretty upset with me.)

------------
Edited about 3 hours later:
After posting this note, i went out for my morning run, ate lunch, and then checked to see if the change had been made in my programming. It had. TV Japan was now gone ..... but TV5Monde was nowhere to be found.

To make a long story short, i can't get it — TV5Monde is on the 118.7° satellite and the dish i use for TV Japan points to 61.5°. However, the broadcast of Radio France International is on both satellites so i could get that. It is only an audio relay of the shortwave RFI broadcasts, but i said OK.

I guess the way to look at this is i now have more time to run and read since i no longer get any video. Interesting how life goes on...

Van Cliburn

The 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition is now complete and, as always, the music it produced was spectacular. There is a first this year, however. For the first time, pianists from east Asia took the top prizes.

A Japanese and a Chinese spit top honors, and just to round off the East Asian sweep, 2nd place was awarded to a South Korean. Oh, and to top it off, the Japanese is totally blind!

YouTube videos
1^st place:
Nobuyuki Tsujii
Haochen Zhang

2^nd place:
Yeol Eum Son

And for those that think classical piano is just for and by stodgy boring people, here's a video clip of Di Wu, another contender for this year's prize. She didn't win the competition, but this won my heart.

Long live classical piano!

Running

I'm posting this not because i need anyone to see it, but because i'm hoping that by sending the words out to the unknown, i'll find some inspiration.

My running and training for the Chicago Marathon is going about as expected. I never have been very fast, and the best time i ever posted in the marathon is 3:58. I didn't bother to run the race the past few years, so this year's goals are modest. Anything under the 6:30 limit will be a success. Anything less than 5:30 will be good. My dream is to get something closer to 4:30 and that would leave me wildly ecstatic.

I've already shed 10 pounds in the past 5 months, and will go ahead and lose another 3 or 4 before i put a stop to it. I'm planning to run the race this year at around 171-172 pounds. For now, i don't particularly want to go under 170 pounds, but that could change once i get there and being that light makes my running that much easier.

My average times these past few months have been 10:09/mile (April), 9:51/mile (May), and 9:52/mile so far for June, although that will come down because i start hill work tomorrow and that lasts for six weeks. My current schedule is 8 mi on Monday, 2 mi warmup and then hill repeats on Tuesday, 7 mi on Wednesday, 5 mi (with occasional short sprints) on Thursday, and a longer run on Saturday. This week is 12 mi, next week is 13.

If you see me out on Division St. in the mornings, say hello. :-)

The Two Gates Into Ryōzenji

Entering Ryōzenji on day 1 and entering Ryōzenji on day 50 both require passing through the main gate. The challenge of the henro trail is to make sure that the person entering on those two occasions are different. Not different, but not the same.

A December wind in Chicago and a December wind in Sydney. Both come from the north, and pass to the south. Yet, one brings a shiver and the other brings a smile. Two winds — not different, but not the same.

The purpose of the "henro" trail is to provide an arena where we learn to transcend the mediocrity that has become our lives; where we learn to let go of our stories and ideas so that who we have become can expand into who we are.

Passing through the gate on day 1 is a person in henro garb. Passing through the gate on day 50 could be a henro in a person's garb. That's the task you give yourself when you accept the challenge of the henro trail.

A certain person came to the Friend’s door and knocked.

"Who’s there?"

"It’s me."

The Friend answered, "Go away. There’s no place for raw meat at this table."

The individual went wandering for a year.

Nothing but the fire of separation can change hypocrisy and ego. The person returned completely cooked, walked up and down in front of the Friend’s house, gently knocked.

"Who is it?"

"You."

"Please come in, my Self, there’s no place in this house for two."

Rumi

Neither north nor south, the wind just blows.