The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans

Translated by Kazuaki Tanahashi and John Daido Loori with commentary and verse by John Daido Loori

Shambhala (2005)

This time of year is special for me, mostly because the extremes placed on the retailer lifestyle during the Christmas season slowly begin to evaporate. For retailers, January & February is the time to settle up, analyzing the previous work and discard baggage. Also, it’s time to formulate the processes to put into place before the next retail season. It may sound crazy, but for the retailer, when a Christmas is over, the work on the next Christmas starts as promptly as it can be perceived.

This time of year, I always look forward to finding new books to read on daily. Ones to live with, not read too much of the time. Reading just enough to relax with, to ponder on and develop a reading friendship.

Near the end of 2011, I finished The True Dharma Eye: Zen Master Dōgen’s Three Hundred Kōans with commentary by John Daido Loori. In past readings, I have touched on reading kōans, but until I lived with them daily, did I begin to absorb ever so slightly their value.

Kōan literally means “public notice.” In Zen, a kōan is a phrase from a teaching on Zen realization points to the nature of reality. Paradox is essential to a kōan. Kōans transcend the logical or conceptual, thus they cannot be solved by reason, requiring another level of comprehension. Here’s a kōan from The True Dharma Eye:

Kōans are a highly distinctive element of Zen Buddhism, and there is no obvious parallel to them in literature or other religions. They contain a message, but not a message expressed by way of direct instruction. Each of us must arrive at our own direct experience and understanding. Understanding the kōan is difficult or impossible to be transmitted to us by words or by others. Studying kōans is to actualize a medium from which understanding may be reached, however, this is not an intellectual puzzle. A kōan has no single answer. Here is another example of a kōan from The True Dharma Eye:

Over the past year and a half of reading The True Dharma Eye, I became fond of massaging kōans. We are constantly developing our understanding of we are and how we transmit our actions to others. Kōan study helps with the actuality of our lives. Ultimately, kōan study affects our consciousness, which is how it affects our lives and that’s how it makes a difference.

Not that I can put my finger specifically on my kōan study effects personally, but I have experienced new ways to explore the creative process. The effects, I think, have helped me with maturing my work life, my health and my mind. My relationships with people in a more present and realistic way. I hope to be the product of my kōan readings.

With all that being said, the new year brings me to two new daily books to live with in 2012.

Your True Home: The Everyday Wisdom of Thich Nhat Hanh (Shambhala, 2011)

Two Zen Classics: The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Records (Shambhala, 2005)

I know since I am starting another book of kōans that I must be hooked. However, if you haven’t tried picking up a book and living with it for a year, now is a good time to consider the journey. This process can lead to a sustain reading experience.

by Amy Cortese

(John Wiley, 2011)

Having just completed in October my 36th year as a small business owner, I was interested in reading Cortese’s book as soon as I learned of it. Having always been interested in the promotion of importance and betterment of local business for my community, Locavesting caught my eye.

Locavesting is fundamentally about fixing our broken economic system. It’s about restoring a more just and participatory form of capitalism, one that allocates capital for productive use in the community. It’s about forming alternative ideas and practices rather than a win or take all economy. It’s about rebuilding our savings, our communities and strengthening the core of our culture, and hopefully about influencing the culture of our country, which I feel is being challenged by too much government influence. As announced this week, the U.S. debt is now equal to our economy which means our entire debt is as big as everything we produce in our country.

Locavesting emphasizes investing in what you know, local companies that you can see, touch and understand their community value and contribution. It’s about spending your dollars for services where service is strengthened and the dollar investment is recirculated in the local market, planting the seed for further growth equals a more self-reliant community.

As it seems to me, our government is intent on growing our dependency on manipulated entitlements. Locavesting is offering new considerations and explanations on how the work we do is one with ownership. A work lifestyle like this might help us make more of a difference. Perhaps the contributions we make for our community can somehow combat the reckless spending of “Too Big to Fail” business and government. Local business can at least take the bull by the horns in our communities and contribute to the local well-being day by day. We all know about the battle “Main Street” is fighting. It’s up to each of us to be a part of the solution. We don’t need to accept the malaise, and we must remember that our small steps can lead to a broader awareness.

Cortese presents arguments and statistics reinforcing the financial benefits of dollars being recirculated in the local markets. She explores which small businesses make a difference to our community culture. However, Locavesting is not anti-big business. The emphasis is on considering the implications of how our choices benefit local enterprises.

Reading Locavesting has enhanced my feelings as we move into 2012 on the importance of broadening this type of awareness. Not only do I want to be more aware of community from a personal standpoint, but also as a part of the Lemuria team as we broaden our outreach interests. We need to be more aware and more effective with our local community efforts and work with greater determination to achieve our outreach goals.

I was disappointed when I finished that Cortese does not have a two or three page suggested reading list. I feel that by not suggesting more reading on this subject, she missed the boat on further stimulating her message to her readers.

Consciously, Lemuria plans to utilize the core of our work to expand our mission into a larger community footprint. We welcome your input and participation.

JX//RX

Barry and I maintained our friendship and in a few years he came South for his Wizard of Oz. Barry was all into One Writer’s Beginnings, so we went to visit Eudora for an afternoon beverage of old weller. The result was the illustrated edition of The Robber Bridegroom, which Lemuria opened nationally.

A few years later, after reading Willie Morris’s Baseball Prayer, Barry collaborated with Willie on a book. The result was the special A Prayer for the Opening of the Little League Season. My 11-year-old team was the subject of the illustrations as Barry hung out at the ball fields, taking photos to influence his paintings. Barry gave the original art to Lemuria and it still hangs in OZ-our children’s room.

Through the years Barry has given Lemuria much art that hangs in our store including a self-portrait in a Lemuria t-shirt. Barry also graciously dedicated his children’s book illustrations for Appalachia to Lemuria: A Voice in the Wilderness.

A celebrated Moser event was when his master work The Holy Bible came out. We chose the trade edition for our First Editions Club. The limited edition in two volumes is the most beautiful book we have in our inventory for sale.

So to say that Barry is our pal seems too slight, for he is truly a Lemurian. He loves our store and we all love Barry and his work. Lemuria is excited to have him hanging around and signing books this weekend.

And we must not forget, he absconded one of Lemuria’s pretty booksellers, Emily, to be his wife and became a Yankee bookseller at Odyssey Bookshop in Massachusetts. Emily will be hanging around too, once again selling books for Lemuria.

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Old friends and new ones come to meet and visit with this special couple who love to talk, share and live books as an integral part of their lives.

The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment’s Notice

(Portfolio/Penguin, July 2011)

It seems to me that now is the perfect time to read this book. As a result of the recession, those of us in small business have been slammed with challenges  in which we don’t have defined skill sets to meet. We question whether we can stay inspired since our old ways of being successful are not working so well. We wonder where our needed level of creativity will come from. Everyday we are faced with frenetic demands that effect our creativity and productivity. Producing insights for success is a constant need. New challenges are causing more demands on our creative ideas. Figuring out that these money-making creative sparks are harder to activate.

Todd Henry’s broad book can helps us actualize our creative juices. Accidental Creative is a guide for establishing a new framework to help move our business forward and set realistic goals.

We own our growth. It is up to each of us to build practices that help us to bring about and focus our creative energy. Creative accidents can bring the best of who we are to our work. At the same time, we need the stability and consistency to take a chance on the ideas brought about by creative insight.

Todd’s new book gives insight on how to hone skill sets and manage boundaries. Several key elements are vital for discovering a personal creative rhythm.

1. Maintain a defined goal, a road map–it will be easier to react to opportunities and take risks with a goal in mind.

2. Work together with a team-ego to yield unselfish results that head in the direction of that defined goal. We improve as we learn to share and receive insights and perspectives from others.

3. Manage energy in order to follow through, not wasting our resources on unproductive projects. Stay out of ruts. Creative work requires that we stay ahead of our work. Stop reacting to work load. Manage the work load with a goal and framework in mind. If we are wise with our energy management, we will find that ideas energy when we least expect them.

4. Choose input strategically. Develop a BS meter. Get real wisdom from books and practice the application daily. Look at opposing ideas at the same time and make decisions that fit into the framework.

As I’ve studied The Accidental Creative, I’ve not only found it helpful in reestablishing my own operative framework, but I’m adapting this pursuit in my own group of Lemuria booksellers. As we create a successful team ego, we hope to become a more consistent and predictable unit. And in the end, we will seek out creative tasks which yield more rewards and satisfaction.

Not only is Lemuria striving to be more creative within but also to generate more creative energy in our community, especially Jackson. Chuck’s Damned Book Night was the first JXRX event. JXRX is a grass roots community campaign is now launched. We encourage individuals and businesses in Jackson to carry the JXRX banner to make Jackson a better place to enjoy our creative talents.

On the surface, we are affected by the oddity or perhaps insanity of his character and plots. He pulls the reader into an array  of bizarre situations–for me at least. As Jung might say, Chuck’s images present archetypes we can use to examine our own subconscious life. He digs into myths, fables and images we all have in common.

In reading Chuck, I feel we are reading something bigger than appears on the surface. Is reading Chuck like putting on training wheels to understand our lives better? Is he perhaps trying to wake us up, or open our eyes wider, as we shape our future?

Right: Chuck Palahniuk has been involved with The Cacophony Society, “a randomly gathered network of individuals united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society through subversion, pranks, art, fringe explorations and meaningless madness.” Or not so meaningless?

Often in real life, we may be confronted by issues we don’t understand and perhaps fear. (I’m not sure Chuck has any fears left.) The fast world we live in may restrict our inner selves from addressing serious issues thoroughly, and we may just give up, not understanding what’s going on and move on down the road to our next situation or connection.

I believe Chuck is consciously directing his skill of observation and metaphorical expertise of writing, in attempting to cause us to free up ourselves, to free up the reader from his/her own limited ego. He wants us to expand into our wholeness. He wants us to dig into who we already are, into the depths of ourselves.

Left: Stranger Than Fiction, a collection of true stories, a showcase for Chuck’s keen sense of observation.

We Jacksonians (and Mississippians) come up with many reasons to live our lives as is, not consciously trying to activate our creativity. We can deny the possibility of successfully creating change and blame it on something or someone else. We can choose to complain about everything or everybody. Through pretensions are we keeping ourselves down? How authentic are we living our lives to create “our” sense of place, for ourselves and our community? We can stop living so much as a reaction to circumstances and start activating the force of control and awareness of what could be? Can we?

Special events in the life can go by too fast and our memories can be too short to have solid effects of change. However, I believe that if we shed our fears and pool our creative efforts, we can help create our vision of Jackson. We sold our first book on October 20, 1975. What are the possibilities in 2011?

Celebrate Chuck October 20, 2011.

JX///RX

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by Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung

Harper One (2010)

To savor is defined as “to taste with quality.” This book is not just about what to eat; it also teaches us how to eat. Anyone can become more mindful in nourishing our bodies. Savor is not just about learning to maintain a healthy weight and diet. It’s about appreciating what we eat and drink in a more fulfilling way through a more mindful lifestyle. This helps us to connect more deeply with ourselves. Mindful eating practiced along with a regular exercise program eases stress which can increase our awareness, the choices we have and our happiness. Helping ourselves in a mindful way also instills the awareness that helps us to contribute to our local community constructively.

Mind and body are not separate and mindfulness of this does not happen by itself. You need to have the desire to practice it. A holistic understanding of our feelings, mental formations and our body help us to understand our consciousness. All the observations come together when practiced positively which increases awareness. Over time we developed more skill at enjoying what is pleasant and understanding the unpleasant which help us mediate anxiety. By observing our anxiety levels and understanding the causes, we stop the internal knots from becoming  tight, choking the more present experience.

Savor lays out the guide posts for beauty, eating, moving, and living–simple methods for improving our relationships at work and home, while improving our physical and mental health. I’ve read many Thich Nhat Hanh books with pleasure and received benefit from them. Savor is a very practical and immediately adaptable if you are interested in self-improvement. If you want to see and be with your world more clearly, reading Savor might help you defrost your windshield.

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh will be at Magnolia Village in Batesville September 28 – October 2. Here is the link for more information: http://www.magnoliavillage.org/

Reading adds to our actual life experience by giving us a safe place to dig into our own psyches. Through Chuck’s characters we witness aspects of life without having to experience them, experiences we wouldn’t even want to have. I believe a Chuck Palahniuk reading experience can remind us how much control we do have over our own life plots and how much of our lives just happen to us.

In the Hell presented in Chuck’s Damned, we view from the outside what many of us fear the most: death and coming to terms with our wrongful actions and life mistakes. Maddy, a thirteen-year-old-girl in Hell, becomes his source of inspiration, a muse for the reader to view Hell with a sense of humor.

Damned gives a reason to laugh at what scares us the most, and perhaps the biggest fear for us all is to be damned to Hell. Could Chuck’s Hell be our motivator to wake up, to cut through our malaise and angst? Chuck challenges us to have less fear of the unknown and live life boldly, allowing us to have more impact on the world we do live in.

With characters who make unbelievably poor choices that border on the absurd, Chuck demands our attention. Is he perhaps creating moments of chaos for us to become emotionally challenged? As our closet lights begins to come on, and our past experiences flash by, a moment of realization occurs. I’m not sure how Chuck’s writing causes our doors of perception to open, but it does.

Some Jacksonians may wonder why Lemuria, with our gang of supporters, are throwing a Damned Book Night of Sin. Well, Wake Up! It’s all in fun with exaggeration, at least as much as we can figure out how to provide. We encourage all who want to join in our 36-year “alarm clock celebration” to participate. All over 21 are welcome to step out there. Step over your own line in the sand if you want to. It’s cool by us. By exploring Chuck we are challenging ourselves and our community to address uncomfortable issues and create change.

Damned goes on sale October 18th. “The Damned Book Night” starts at 5:30 on Thursday, October 20th at Hal & Mals. Click here for details.

JX///RX

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Chuck Palahniuk Tell-All Event at The Great Hall at Cooper Union, NY

Around 15 years ago, my old, often referenced book-selling pal, Tom, who was then selling books in Eugene, Oregon, contacted me about Chuck Palahniuk. With excitement he said, “This guy Palahniuk is the real deal, he gets it and it’s on edge. Furthermore, he’s a nice guy, even a great guy.” Tom and I have shared wisdoms about books and writers for so long and so honestly that I heard him ring the bell to pause and listen.

Around five years ago, my almost adopted, loved-one, Zita, of whom I am so very fond of, started selling books at Lemuria. Her youthful rebel self was an avid Chuck fan and has always cringed with glee as his new titles landed at Lemuria. There is something about youthful bookselling vigor for an author that’s real and tangible, that always catches an old bookseller’s notice. While Zita learned bookseller skills and developed our First Editions Club, she always got bubbly when Chuck’s books came up in conversation. And proudly to bring all this together, we have selected Damned as one of our First Editions Club picks.

So needless to say, last Spring when we learned that Chuck’s Damned book tour was coming to Jackson, causing Zita’s feet to leap six feet off the floor, things got damned exciting around here.

A short time later in New York City, I found myself at a Random House cocktail party where Chuck was an honoree. In the back shadows visiting with others was Chuck, so I approached to thank him for coming to Lemuria. But even more importantly, I wanted to share Zita’s young bookseller love and admiration for his books, and he agreed to graciously inscribe a Damned book for her.

While signing Zita’s book, Chuck hit me with a “Fight Club” punch question:

“When I come to Lemuria, what can’t I do?”

Never having been asked such a thing before, I paused and thought for a moment.

My answer: “I don’t care, whatever you want to do. I’m cool with it all. It sounds like fun.”

Chuck said, “Really?” with a direct gaze.

I said, “Yeah, I own the joint, anything goes.”

On the trip home and the next while, I concluded: Well, if he can do anything, why can’t I? My desires began kickin’, and along with my co-conspirators, we agreed to wake up Jackson in “Chuck” style all the way.

“Hell Cat” concoctions are being brewed. Art is being conceived. Food is stewing to fire you up. Musicians are honing their chops and “bingos” are already being shouted. Pre-Halloween costumes of Chuck’s fantasies (or yours) are being planned to welcome Chuck to Jackson. Hal & Mal’s get ready cause here we come!

We don’t know what’s all comin’ down, but you have three months to get ready. “Katie bar the door!” unless you wanna get loose. Join us because we are proud to bring Zita’s cool guy to Jackson to rock Hal & Mal’s on October 20th, a very special Lemuria day.

Our first blog all about Chuck’s Damned Book Night, October 20th

Zita’s t-shirt blog: Get the shirt for the event!

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Roger Stolle talking about his book and the state of Mississippi blues, May 2011. (Photo: Lou Bopp)

Roger’s concise to the point Hidden History of Mississippi Blues is condensed in a way that’s appealing to the blues fan and the novice. Interesting facts presented with Lou Bopp‘s fine photos are just enough for this little book. Most importantly Roger’s interviews with current Delta Blues musicians prove that this art form isn’t dying but thriving.

More living proof exists in Clarksdale this weekend when the crossroads celebrates the 24th Sunflower Blues Festival. It’s a favorite I try to make every year. Performers from Roger’s book will be playing as you can get authentic in the Delta heat. Porchin’ at Ground Zero, sweatin’ in Red’s (we will miss Big Jack) and attendin’ Cathead’s Mini Fest on Sunday are all treats. I always learn about some new music makers on Sunflower weekends.

Johnny Rawls, Sunflower Blues Fest

Get your folding chairs and head up to Clarksdale. It will be hot so plan on a cool beverage and street grilled meat, smoking over sidewalk blues.

Read Roger’s book, check out blues markers (MS Blues Trail) and hear the real stuff that’s alive today. Roger’s Cathead Music Store and Shelly’s Delta Blues Museum are Mississippi institutions.

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For those who don’t know yet, our Pal Roger is working on a new DVD about saving the Juke Joint experience called We Juke Up in Here! Surely a great effort to support. Check out his project here and see if you want to join in and help with his efforts.

M for Mississippi DVDs and CDs are excellent examples if you want to know about his work first hand.

My memory tells me he wore a navy blue suit, he walked around a bit, scoped the layout of my store, and then parked his assertive self in front of the Nobel Prize winners bookcase.

He looked at the desk where Tom, Val and myself were learning the book business and blared out to all ears: “I guess you guys like Hemingway.” We said, “Yeah!” and from there my enduring friendship with J.C. Simmons grew. Soon his buddy, another Papa crony, showed up to check out the joint, and that was when I met Ed.

Over my lifetime of bookselling, I’ve had the good fortune to meet many wonderful bibliophiles (Good Doc “T” Rest in Peace) but none have embarked on a journey like my ole pal Ed Grissom. After a lifetime of learning all about Ernest Hemingway, Ed launched into the ultimate “Papa” project of which this extraordinary book is the result.

I encourage all Hemingway fans, on any level, to stop over this Thursday at 5:00 to visit with and talk to Ed about his fascinating journey of bookselling and the oddities he encountered. I’m told some of the “rarest of the rare” Hemingway books will be shown and explained.

Remarkably, Ed’s passion came to fruition. It’s not everyday that in pursuit of your wildest dreams that there actually awaits that cup of gold. And for Ed his cup is filled with the publication of this ambitious project. I praise my pal for never giving up on his passion.

All who share the love of this author’s great work, please join us in celebration of Papa’s literature. Not only will Ed share some his “rarest of the rare” at Lemuria, but our old bookstore crony, J.C., will be hanging around again just like the old days.

Ernest Hemingway: A Descriptive Bibliography by C. Edgar Grissom (Oak Knoll Press, 2011)