LIVE ON THE WEB SATURDAY

This Saturday, November 6th at 4pm Pacific Standard Time (PST) I'll be giving a talk at San Francisco Zen Center's Zen Translation Forum as part of a program titled Dogen: Lost and Found in Translation. The program will be streamed live on the web starting at 2 pm PST with an introduction by Steve Stuckey, Abbot of San Francisco Zen Center.

The URL for the live stream is http://www.livestream.com/sfzc. The live stream will also include presentations by Mel Weitsman, Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, a panel discussion led by Steven Heine and including William Bodiford, Taigen Dan Leighton and Susan Moon. There will be further presentations by Frederike Bossevain, Gaelyn Godwin of Houston Zen Center, Chozen and Hogen Bays and a live calligraphy auction by Kazuaki Tanahashi.

It should be fun. My presentation is titled "Dogen for Punks." It should stick out like a sore thumb among all the serious, scholarly stuff.

They're going to try and open it up to questions from the on-line audience. So try your luck and see if you can get through. My talk is going to be pretty short. So I suggest you get your comments in early.

After San Francisco I'm heading south to Los Angeles where I'm doing a busload of gigs.

•November 9, 2010 (Tues) 7 pm - Hill Street Center 237 Hill St., Santa Monica, CA 90405

•November 10, 2010 (Wed) 7 am (yes that's 7 in the morning!) Dharma Zen Center 1025 S Cloverdale Ave Los Angeles, CA 90019-6733

•November 10, 2010 (Wed) 7:30 pm - Against The Stream 4300 Melrose Ave. Los Angeles, CA

•November 12 (Fri) - 7pm An Lac Buddhist Temple 901, S.Saticoy Avenue Ventura, CA 93004. $2 Donation.

•November 14, 2010 (Sun) 7pm - Bodhi Tree Bookstore 8585 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles, CA

Now that you've been told you have no excuse to miss any of them!

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A lot of times when I talk about Zen to audiences made up mainly of people who don't know anything at all about Zen, I have to deal with deeply held misconceptions of what Zen is. Just last week I gave a talk in which I didn't even once mention the concept of non-attachment. When I started taking questions a guy said, "You're talking about detachment and I don't agree that people should try to be aloof and detached with no personal relationships. I think personal relationships even of a sexual nature can be very nurturing things that all human beings need, etc., etc."

If you want to know my opinion about this matter, I devote a chapter to it in my new book, Sex, Sin, and Zen: A Buddhist Exploration of Sex from Celibacy to Polyamory and Everything in Between. But any of you who have read anything I've written probably know that I am not sitting here trying to get people to give up all their personal relationships. And if you've even read just the Amazon description of my new book you know for sure I'm not telling people to give up sex!

The point I'm trying to make here is that even though I said nothing at all about having an aloof, detached attitude, this guy had heard a few things about Zen, assumed it was all about being detached, and went after me for what he perceived I was talking about. Although the subject had not come up at all, everything he heard from me was filtered through that lens.

It's interesting how this happens and it will probably be my life's work to untangle all the misconceptions of Zen practice I run into. I came across a book just the other day that said, "Surely the Buddha was right that love is the fountainhead of hurt and misery, suffering and despair. He also taught that life and love were not worth while." Oh boy!

Not that I'm the ace genius who knows the be all and end all of Zen. But some of the misconceptions out there are so vast and deep! Sometimes these misconceptions even lead people to think they can become Enlightened® in an hour...

Here's a song about that:

All Is One

See! I used to know how to program a drum machine!

Just some observations for now. See you this weekend on the Interwebs!