Andrew Furst's Blog, page 141
March 11, 2015
Verse Us – Follow The Leader – Next – A Two Dimensional Poem
Verse Us - Poems I write: haiku, senryu, mesostics, free verse, random word constructions, I might even use rhyme or meter once and a while.
I recommend viewing this in full screen.
Follow The LeaderCrazy thoughts cough around in my brain. There is a new elixir I’m trying.
Turns out its as wicked as the next – the thoughts and the elixir.
And me, doubly so, for following one or the other.
The past is probably a better map to follow. Why would I think that unusual?
So why would I follow the thoughts around in my brain.
There is elixir, an elixir to the past. And, turns out that its doubly crazy,
and probably for the cough.
I’m trying a new, unusual, better map. The thoughts follow me.
The leader is wicked. The following think as one, or as the other
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One Minute Meditations
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Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
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Tiny Drops – One Hundred, One Hundred
Tiny Drops is an ongoing iPhoneographic series. The images represent moments of noticing on my part. For you, they are an offer to pause, observe, and take that noticing into your life. All photos are mine unless noted otherwise.
These works by Andrew Furst are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Click on images to view the full size slide show.
looking up the tree filter
mini wheel filter
pebble circle filter
chimney filter
walled wheel filtered
web tree under lamp filterGet Each Week's Tiny Drops in your email boxFirst Name:
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
FIVE LIMITLESS THOUGHTS
May all living beings have happiness and its causes
May all be free from unhappiness and its causes
May all dwell in equanimity, free of attraction and aversion
May all quickly find the great happiness that lies beyond all misery
May all enjoy inner and outer peace now and forever
NAMO AMITOFOThe post Tiny Drops – One Hundred, One Hundred appeared on Andrew Furst.
March 10, 2015
Say What? – A Few Words On Thoughts
Say What? is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.
This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty. - Mitch Hedberg
A few words on Thoughts
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One Minute Meditations
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Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post Say What? – A Few Words On Thoughts appeared on Andrew Furst.
Compass Songs – The Worship of Nature
Compass Songs is an ongoing series of works by poets that I enjoy. Poetry, as the Zen Masters have said, is like a finger pointing to the moon. It speaks the unspeakable.
by John Greenleaf Whittier
The harp at Nature’s advent strungHas never ceased to play;
The song the stars of morning sung
Has never died away.And prayer is made, and praise is given,
By all things near and far;
The ocean looketh up to heaven,
And mirrors every star.Its waves are kneeling on the strand,
As kneels the human knee,
Their white locks bowing to the sand,
The priesthood of the sea!They pour their glittering treasures forth,
Their gifts of pearl they bring,
And all the listening hills of earth
Take up the song they sing.
The green earth sends its incense up
From many a mountain shrine;
From folded leaf and dewy cup
She pours her sacred wine.
The mists above the morning rills
Rise white as wings of prayer;
The altar-curtains of the hills
Are sunset’s purple air.
The winds with hymns of praise are loud,
Or low with sobs of pain,—
The thunder-organ of the cloud,
The dropping tears of rain.
With drooping head and branches crossed
The twilight forest grieves,
Or speaks with tongues of Pentecost
From all its sunlit leaves.
The blue sky is the temple’s arch,
Its transept earth and air,
The music of its starry march
The chorus of a prayer.
So Nature keeps the reverent frame
With which her years began,
And all her signs and voices shame
The prayerless heart of man.
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
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Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
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March 9, 2015
Dialectic Two-Step – The One Step Wake Up Program
Dialectic Two-Step is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.
Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio Paz
The One Step Program“Everyone buckled?” The boys and my wife chimed in with the usual “’yup”. I backed out of the driveway and we were off on the journey of the day.
She was on the phone, obviously distracted and headed into my lane. I punched the horn and … phew. My hand went to my wife’s thigh and my eyes to the rear view mirror.
The Mahayana teaches us four things
The Preciousness of This Human LifeImpermanenceThe Laws of Cause and Effect (Karma)The Error of SufferingThese are not novel ideas, or some passing 4 step fad. They are the facts. This becomes absolutely, in your face, clear when you stare at a car coming, head on, into your lane.
Is there any doubt when looking into the eyes of a child that life is precious? When death is a car length away is tends wake you up. It makes you think, is what I’m doing right now really important? And when it’s not, you wonder why you are doing it.
That’s the whole teaching. Everyone gets it, but very rarely does anyone get it.
Step One: Wake Up
A while back I watched the movie In Time. The plot offers some insight on the urgency of life. The movie takes place in the future, where genetic engineering has reached the point where the gene that controls aging can be manipulated. Essentially everyone is potentially immortal.
To avoid overpopulation, each person, on their 25th birthday, is given a year to live. Time can be earned, but once the clock reaches zero you die. The new currency is time. The price of distraction is death.
Even in such a world, its not hard to imagine people tuning out to the urgency of life. But spending some time with the idea does turn the mind towards the truth. In one tradition, these four teachings are called just that, the Thoughts That Turn the Mind From Samsara. They are the motivation for practice.
What if we spent some time, each day, contemplating the good fortune of having been born in this human form? What if we remembered that death is real? What would happen if we made choices as though our lives depended on it? What if we remembered that what is precious in life is right here in front of us?
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
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March 8, 2015
One Minute Meditation – Winter Pinwheel
One Minute Meditations is an ongoing series of short videos, poems, and commentary intended as a meditation. Offered as an opportunity to step back from your cyber routine and settle into a more natural rhythm, if only for a minute.
Little one’s planting
haphazard pinwheel glistens
in winter sunshine
The song Pompeii (No Vocals) by Josh Woodward is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Based on a work at http://www.joshwoodward.com/ Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.joshwoodward.com/sharing/ or contact artist via email.
First Name:
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post One Minute Meditation – Winter Pinwheel appeared on Andrew Furst.
Sunday Morning Coming Down – Blue Train
Sunday Morning Coming Down is an ongoing music video series. The songs fit my definition of music for a lazy couch bound Sunday morning.
My love of Jazz started in late high school. Living outside of Hartford Connecticut, it was hard to find records and there was really one Jazz club which valiantly kept up a decent jazz scene for as long as I lived in the area. When I started college I was drawn to NYC to fill my starved brain with culture and music. I’d spend hours going through the rows and rows of used LPs in any record shop I could find. John Coltrane quickly surfaced as a favorite. The Blue Train record would always find some time on the turntable for years to come.
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In addition to a monthly email you can also subscribe to the following weekly series:
One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
The post Sunday Morning Coming Down – Blue Train appeared on Andrew Furst.
March 7, 2015
Say What? – I Want To Make A Change For The Better
Say What? is an ongoing series of laconic exchanges on Buddhism in the format of a comic strip.
This shirt is dry clean only. Which means... it's dirty. - Mitch Hedberg
I Want To Make A Change For The Better.
Get Each Week's Say What? in your email box
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One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
Verse Us (Poems I Write)
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Relics – How Did I Become an Author?
The Relics series are throwback articles from previous years. They seem timeless enough to be relevant today.
Try as you will, you cannot annihilate that eternal relic of the human heart, love. - Victor Hugo
How Did I Become an Author?I’m nearly at the end of my adventure becoming a published author. My book Western Lights is set to be released on Amazon this month. I’d call it an unqualified success. I thought it might be useful writing down my experience. As Austin Kleon says Show Your Work.
Deciding to Become An AuthorWriting and publishing a book is a lot different from the way it was 10-20 years ago. Being a technologist in the age of the internet has made everything look easier. Publishing a book seems a lot less scary. I knew that regardless of whether I was picked up by a publisher, I’d get my book out there and be happy.
That last point can’t be stressed enough. My goals have been simple and achievable. I’ve gone into this with realistic expectations, but with a sense that I should do it right in case there is some measure of success.
For me getting to this point has been a gradual process. I didn’t start out with an explicit goal of being an author. It was one of a series of much simpler decisions I’ve made over the past ten years. My advice to you is to break it down and keep your focus on the immediate tasks. You can make better decisions on what’s next when you have more information. Let things come together on their own, the experience will be more enjoyable and successful.
Your path will be different, and you may end up somewhere you didn’t expect. But you’ll get there in a way that lets you to enjoy the time spent.
1, Finding the passion - The first decision was to walk into the door of a Buddhist Meditation group about 10 years ago. This uncovered a passion that has provided an endless source of material for me to write about.
2. Become an expert - The next step was to commit to the training required to become a Buddhist Meditation Teacher. This gave me the knowledge, practice, and commitment needed to be a subject matter expert.
The last two big decisions were to write and then to become an author.
3. Become a writer\blogger – I made the commitment to write as a way to serve the meditation group. When I took over leading the group I lead today, I took advantage of my technology skills to set up a WordPress site.
I posted a few simple things like our schedule, directions, and some basics about the qigong, meditation, and Pure Land teachings that I offered. Not long afterwards I started getting questions from people outside the group.
A wonderful young man from Manchester by the Sea who was doing his high school thesis on religion asked if he could start-up a conversation about Buddhism. I asked if I could post my answers to a blog. He agreed, and low and behold, I was a blogger.
4. Become an Author - Over the course of the next four years I continued to write in response to questions from the Sangha and in response to events and ideas. Last year, probably early summer, I looked back at my hundred or so blog posts and said – there’s a book in there somewhere! I decided to become an author. A year later, here I am.
Getting It RightStep one was the most important. Without the passion, getting to the end will be a chore.
I wish you luck.
AboutLatest Posts [image error] Follow meAndrew FurstAuthor of the book Western Lights, Meditation Teacher, Buddhist blogger, Poet, yogi, backup guitarist for his teenage boys, lucky husband and technologist [image error] Follow meLatest posts by Andrew Furst (see all) Relics – How Did I Become an Author? - March 7, 2015 Modern Koans – What Are The Prospects For Secular Buddhism or Buddhism 2.0? - March 6, 2015 Xeni Jardin on Identity - March 5, 2015
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March 6, 2015
Modern Koans – What Are The Prospects For Secular Buddhism or Buddhism 2.0?
Modern Koans is an ongoing series that recognizes that good questions are often more important then their answers.
The riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man. ― G.K. Chesterton
What Are The Prospects For Secular Buddhism or Buddhism 2.0?
Secular Buddhism has been associated with Stephen Batchelor, author of Buddhism without Beliefs and Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. He is seeing and forwarded the idea of a less dogmatic and institutional form of Buddhism to arise out of the ashes of its current form.
It’s my sense that all religions can and must go through a regular purging of institutional nonsense. I think we are in the waning part of a golden age for Buddhism in the US. As Asian teachers made efforts to translate their birth religion to westerners, it seems clear that there has been a necessary streamlining of the teachings. Because much of the cultural and institutional elements of Buddhism have no meaning to Americans (and I’d argue, no relevance to the Buddha’s teachings) they’ve been expunged, laying bare the heart essence.
This has been a pattern for Buddhism and other migrating religions for millennia. It can have good and bad results. Fundamentalism is an example of how this has occurred in American Christianity.
As Buddhism has moved from culture to culture, it has been renewed and then absorbed into the society. Of course this absorption results in new baggage, requiring a new cleansing or course correction. We’ve even seen it happen within the mother culture where Buddhism was born. The tantric traditions find their root in the Mahasiddhas, a group of Indian Buddhist and Hindu rebels who saw the large institutions born out of the Vedic teachings become dry, dogmatic, and corrupt. These traditions have taken on their own baggage in the form of the highly complex, ornate, and institutionalized Tibetan Vajryana.
I applaud and encourage revolution, but with a sober eye. No institution will provide liberation to anyone. It’s my belief that Secular Buddhism 2.0, 3.0, or 10.0 will all falter.
What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below.
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One Minute Meditations
Tiny Drops (Photography series)
Compass Songs (My Favorite Poems)
Dialectic Two-Step
Modern Koans (interesting questions)
Sunday Morning Coming Down (Music Videos)
Relics (Timeless Republished Articles)
Say What?
Quotes
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