3.28.2006

Daido Moriyama

One of my very favorite photographers is Daido Moriyama, who hails from Osaka, Japan (but now lives in Tokyo). There's a great documentary film on his friend photographer Araki, called "Arakimentari" (2003), that includes interviews with Daido Moriyama (as well as Bjork and "Beat" Takeshi Kitano) that I highly recommend. The following recent article is also a good overview of him:

http://www.bigempire.com/sake/daido_moriyama.html

"The images he captures often show everyday people and everyday things in a manner not to be found in the average Tokyo tourist guidebook. Whether by using blur or cropping, Moriyama’s bleak and lonely black-and-white pictures have garnered him the reputation as one of Japan’s great modern photographers."

Daido Moriyama said, in the interview: "My work is endless. As long as the world exists, I want to take snapshots."

Link

3.24.2006

World Gone Crazy--and This Is NOT The Onion

Is it just me, or is the world growing more and more absurd every day, especially lately? Here are a few recent real headlines (some more serious than others and several from the NY Times):

Life May Exist on up to Eight Planets

Critics Split on 'Lord of the Rings' Musical

Paul Bunyan, Modern-Day Sex Symbol

Preachers in Kabul Urge Execution of Convert to Christianity

New York City Meets Stranger From the West: The Brush Fire

Alligator Knocks on Fla. Woman's Door

Link

3.13.2006

Grasping Fire (About Desire)

I get these daily dharma quotes by email, and I thought this was a pretty good one by Ajahn Sumedho. He is a monk living in England who was born and raised in Seattle. The Spirit Rock teachers look to him as one of the greatest living western teachers in their tradition. Here goes:

Grasping Fire
By Ajahn Sumedho, Teachings of a Buddhist Monk

The Buddha's teaching is all about understanding suffering--its origin, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. When we contemplate suffering, we find we are contemplating desire, because suffering and desire are the same thing. Desire can be compared to fire. If we grasp fire, what happens? Does it lead to happiness? If we say: "Oh, look at that beautiful fire! Look at the beautiful colors! I love red and orange; they’re my favorite colors," and then grasp it, we would find a certain amount of suffering entering the body. And then if we were to contemplate the cause of that suffering we would discover it was the result of having grasped that fire. On that information, we would hopefully, then let the fire go. Once we let fire go then we know that it is not something to be attached to. This does not mean we have to hate it, or put it out. We can enjoy fire, can't we? It is nice having a fire, it keeps the room warm, but we do not have to burn ourselves in it.
--Ajahn Sumedho, "Teachings of a Buddhist Monk"

Link

3.02.2006

"The Dhammapada" as translated by Gil Fronsdal

As part of my new job, I recently wrote a rather glowing book review for the latest Spirit Rock newsletter that I thought I should put up on my blog since it is otherwise only available in print form. As an added bonus, if you click on the title above, it will take you to a web page of MP3 talks by Gil Fronsdal, including two talks he gave about "The Dhammapada" that I listened to as research for my book review. Gil is a wonderful teacher with a very mellow, slightly dry manner that seems to come directly out of his Finnish roots.

Here's the article I wrote:

"The Dhammapada: A New Translation of the Buddhist Classic with Annotations"
Translated by Gil Fronsdal, with a Foreword by Jack Kornfield

Published by Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Boston, Massachusetts, 2005

By Walt Opie 1/2/2006

Towards the end of a five-day retreat I attended this fall at Spirit Rock, the walking meditation room beneath the upper Retreat Hall was temporarily converted into a Buddhist bookstore. Being a bibliophile, I got excited and hurried down the steps to do some “shopping meditation” (as Jack Kornfield likes to call it). I wanted to be mindful about this though, so I made a conscious decision to only buy one book, forcing myself to choose wisely.

Not long after my browsing began, I reached up and pulled down a copy of Gil Fronsdal’s new translation of “The Dhammapada,” with an encouraging Foreword by Jack himself. It seemed perfect—a book of direct teachings from the Buddha, something I could refer back to again and again for years to come as I learned more about the practice of meditation and the teachings of the dharma. It hooked me in just the first few lines:

“All experience is preceded by mind,
Led by mind,
Made by mind.
Speak or act with a corrupted mind,
And suffering follows
As the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox.”

Furthermore, as Fronsdal explains in the Preface, although there are officially over 50 translations in English available of “The Dhammapada,” many of these are really adaptations of previous English translations, not direct renderings from the original Pali language. This practice cannot help but dilute the text in any number of ways. Being a Buddhist scholar with knowledge of Sanskrit (which is closely related to Pali), Fronsdal took it upon himself to start fresh from the primary source. In this way he has given us a very literal yet modern version of these teachings of the Buddha that is easy to comprehend while still managing to convey a flavor of the way it might have been received well over 2,000 years ago.

I found Fronsdal’s translation of this ancient classic to be very clean, simple and concise—as if a trusted friend had taken it upon himself to render the most faithful work of translation he could possibly muster. As I read it, I felt the Buddha’s words were in good hands. I also liked how he explained his choices both in the Preface and in his Notes at the end of the book. An example of this was his confession up front that one of his more debatable decisions was the translation of dhamma as “experience” in the first verse (quoted above). As he stated, dhamma can also mean “religious teachings, religious truth, justice, and virtue.”

To me, perhaps his most controversial decision was to translate a much-beloved verse of “The Dhammapada” differently than we are accustomed to hearing it. Instead of saying, as is often quoted, “Hatred never ceases by hatred; by love alone is it healed,” Fronsdal chose to say, “Hatred never ends through hatred. By non-hate alone does it end.” Somehow “non-hate” is not quite as memorable or moving as the use of the word “love” (although I like its close relation to “nonviolence”). Fronsdal explains in his endnotes, “To translate avera as ‘love’ probably does not do justice to the original,” but he also reveals that avera typically does refer “to the absence of hate, as well as the presence of patience and loving-kindness.” I am reminded of how The Dalai Lama sometimes refers to the Chinese government as “our friends the enemy.”

Overall, I think this new rendering of “The Dhammapada” is an instant classic, something to be cherished as a gift from a virtuous teacher and scholar, offering all who read it an opportunity to be “freed by right understanding.”

Link