9/9/2020

Please use a discerning gaze when reading these claims, which deserve critical examination. This documentation represents a snapshot of my internal landscape at a certain point in time in my life during my collegiate career.

Original Entry:

Sub-functions for Energy – Re-imagining Thoughts:

Thoughts of all types are abstract, ethereal, and intangible, at least in a certain sense. Feeling of Rhythm, time, gravity, density, and spaciousness are tangible anchors.

Perception seems to mesh together through 5 physical senses and a 6th mental sense of mind, of thought and imagination.

All too often I wander through my thoughts and loose my center, or so it seems. I am always centered, even when I’m not.

I change the basic way I relate to my thoughts.

Thoughts are like time; fleeting and perpetually changing. Thoughts are a reference points in reality, symbols to relate with, impermanent packets of ordered chaos transformed to manageable quanta with which we construct our schema of reality.

All perception acts as a reference point to harmonize with; tonics, dominants, extensions, people, plants, books situations…

I harmonize with all reference points of perception, toying with rhythm and content, with infinite potential to draw from, creating a life, a story, a song to offer to the universe, as the subtle and mysterious process it is.

Dissonance always points. Harmony Relaxes home.

Current Reflections:

Okay folks, here we go. It feels important to deeply acknowledge my process of growth over time – it’s brought me to this point and continues to propel me forward. Looking over these last few entries, it makes me smile, recognizing just how thinky I was during my college years. And maybe I’m still thinky even now, but there has a tangible and qualitative shift in the way that I relate to my thinking.

So, to dive into it –

Thoughts. What the fuck are they? Where do they come from? Who exactly perceives them and where are they perceived at? Now, in a way, it doesn’t really matter what the answer to those questions are. Regardless of the answers, thoughts are going to rise and dissipate. It seems that a more important question may be this: am I giving my power away to my thoughts? Am I letting my thoughts and emotions drag me around and create suffering? Because, regardless of their content, how can we stay present with the circumstances of our reality, exactly as reality shows up? And how can we meet whatever moment that is showing up from a place of generosity and patience? Can I show up in a way that doesn’t make the world a worse place for others or myself?

Now, in my original entry, after I introduce my subject of thoughts and their mysterious nature, I immediately focus on a feeling:

“Feeling of Rhythm, time, gravity, density, and spaciousness are tangible anchors.”

From where I sit now, this is an interesting move that I pulled. Why?

Within the last few months, the Teachers and Sangha of the Buddhist Temple of Toledo offered a virtual teaching retreat for it’s members, focusing on the Home Liturgy outlined by the Abbot. I had the great fortune of joining for a portion of the week’s teachings, where I furiously scribbled poetry along with the teachings and conversations, using my words as a container for the wonderful wisdom that was being offered through the Zoom Retreat.

During the first day of teachings, the teachers focused in on the importance of ritual action and cultivating a feeling through intentional practice. In the context of Zen Buddhist practice, they were discussing the importance of creating a clean and aligned alter, creating a physical space of energetic power, and nurturing the actual feeling of the tradition within the body. This feeling is characterized by nobility, unity, grace, and ease, enabling the practitioner to skillfully use the alter and ritual action of lighting the candle, incense, and making bows as a means of empowerment and grounding, regardless of the circumstance of life in that moment.

In this moment, reviewing this entry from over five years ago, it strikes me as intriguing that within the first paragraph, I acknowledge the fleeting nature of thought and then immediately and subconsciously focus on ways of creating a tangible anchor in feeling. I had not explicitly received any teaching in my Zen training about this, though I was immersing in practice at the time. It seems that some of the unspoken and felt wisdom of the tradition was, even then, influencing my process.

Perhaps around this time, I had engaged in the formal process of becoming a Buddhist, called Jukai, taking up the 16 Boshisattva Precepts, encountering some novel ways of being in the world for the first time in my life. (Here is a picture of our Jukai class, I’m standing in the back wearing a blue necklace)

One of these novel ways of relating to the world I encountered at this time, came to me through a required reading called, “The Heart of Being” by Daido Roshi; There was a passage that spoke of the five sense organs and their object of perception, but also acknowledged a sixth sense organ – the mind – and it’s object of perception – thoughts. Framing the world in this way blew my mind at the time. Our mind is an organ of perception too? And it’s object of perception is thought? Just like our eyes see images and our ears hear sounds, our minds perceive thoughts? I was delighted at the revelation and spoke excitedly with my teacher, Rinsen Roshi; he smiled and told me “there is plenty more where that comes from within the practice.”

Now, back to the original entry, my intention here was to, at the time, and to the best of my ability, reframe the way I encountered my thoughts about music. I recognized that my thoughts were fluid and impermanent, always changing. So how could I center myself in my practice of music making, if not in my fluctuating thoughts?

Through ritualized practice. Through cultivating a feeling tone in the body, by invoking and evoking the tradition of Jazz and the musical ancestors that inspired me in a concrete and tangible way.

In my original entry, I say that “thoughts are a reference point in reality.” I don’t know if I would say it the same way now, perhaps I would leave this line out.

The juice? The nourishment?

“All perception acts as a reference point to harmonize with; tonics, dominants, extensions, people, plants, books situations…

I harmonize with all reference points of perception, toying with rhythm and content, with infinite potential to draw from, creating a life, a story, a song to offer to the universe, as the subtle and mysterious process it is.“

Or in other words, it is possible to harmonize with any moment in life, no matter the contents. It’s possible to meet the moment fully, in a way that, at the very least, does no harm, and perhaps at the best, actualizes good for others. Whether the circumstances are shitty, the notes are tense, creating augmented, droopy, diminished feelings, or divine, sweet, Lydian, sharp 11 major 7, minor 9 lullaby-esque sounds, or anywhere in between for that matter, it is possible to use the contents of the present circumstances as fuel for practice, as a way to express musicality and to transform suffering.

May the contents of the moment never hinder our ability to show up with compassion and generosity, and may it be so for all beings across space and time.

_/\_
Sam

Kogen