Catharsis on the Fly

There are so many interesting things I’ve read, seen, or listened to and not posted about that I’m going to have break down my usual round-up into separate posts. To start off, here’s my reading for the first two months of 2009:

January

1. Danger on Peaks, poems by Gary Snyder (R) — Not as absorbing as Mountains and Rivers without End, but it would be hard to top a book-length poem that you’d worked on for forty years.  Snyder is always worth reading, though–for the interpenetration of Buddhism, ecological wisdom, and what might broadly be called shamanism in his work.
2. The Eight Gates of Zen by John Daido Loori — Loori is the head of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism, an American-born roshi and a gifted photographer.  He’s also the first writer on Zen to make any sense to me.  This book outlines the training system used by his order, which applies with variations to both lay and monastic practitioners.  What enthralled me was that it includes work (as in one’s job, or housekeeping), art, and exercise as forms of Zen practice along with zazen (sitting meditation), koan study, and interaction with a teacher.  I liked it enough to read more of his work, as you’ll see below.
3. Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan — A collection of 108 haiku from all over the world, from Japanese classics to living writers, with short reflections on each poem by Donegan.  Some of the reflections were a bit too obvious or generic–peace meditation and psychology, rather than being specifically Buddhist–but it’s a good book for seeing the variety of which haiku is capable, and for reading a couple of entries at a sitting and letting them percolate.

February

    4. Lucifer v. 4: The Divine Comedy by Mike Carey et al. — The art can’t compare to Moore’s Promethea, but this spin-off of the Sandman series continues to hold my interest, with its often grotesque humor, plundering of world mythology, and surprising (to me, at least) plot twists.  The initial premise of the series is that Lucifer, aka Satan, you all know this guy, has retired from running Hell and is running a casino, instead.  His peaceful retirement is interrupted when he inadvertently creates another universe, and his former Boss (or the Boss’s minions) want a piece of it. So far my two favorite characters are the fallen cherubs Gaudium and Spera–wisecracking, foul-mouthed little gargoyles who nevertheless have a basic decency about them.
    5. The Dhammapada, Shambhala Pocket Edition (R) — I feel I ought to read this most basic compilation of Buddhist teaching once in a while, but I don’t care for this translation, which is a little abstract and spare.  I prefer the version by Eknath Easwaran, who also translated a number of other important Scriptures of Indian religions.
    6. Between Two Souls: Conversations with Ryokan, Mary Lou Kownacki — Kownacki is a Benedictine nun who took Ryokan’s poems for her daily lectio divina for two years.  The result was a body of poetry inspired by and in dialogue with Ryokan’s work: a Zen hermit of the nineteenth century, living a life essentially the same as his predecessors for hundreds of years prior, and a Benedictine solitary living in a troubled city neighborhood, both facing suffering and impermanence head-on and hanging on to religious practice by the fingernails.  Good, thoughtful work.
    7. Invoking Reality: Moral and Ethical Teachings of Zen by John Daido Loori — I gulped this book down and asked for more like Oliver Twist.  Loori teaches on the precepts, Buddhism’s ethical guidelines, with exquisite lucidity and clarity.  I will not soon forget his description of how running over a raccoon and leaving it to die in pain, rather than killing it outright so it wouldn’t suffer further, actually violates the First Precept, not to kill.
    8. Lucifer v. 5: Inferno — Further adventures with the chief fallen angel.  I just wish the artists could draw Lucifer the same way twice.
    9. Lucifer v. 6: Mansions of the Silence — Okay, this is where the story got *really* wacky.  Lucifer borrows Naglfar, the ship of fingernails, from Loki and sends a motley crew on a mission to a place that’s neither Heaven nor Hell to rescue the soul of a strange little girl whose father is the Archangel Michael.
    10. Bringing the Sacred to Life by John Daido Loori — Another lovely, lucid little book from Loori, this time on Zen ritual and what it means to perform a religious service that isn’t worship of an external divine something.  And all his books have some of his black-and-white photography.
    11. An Arrow to the Heart by Ken McLeod (R) — McLeod, an American Buddhist teacher who studied with the noted Tibetan lama Kalu Rinpoche, offers a commentary on the core text of Mahayana traditions, the Heart Sutra, a commentary that includes poetry, prose, notes, and amusing little drawings that all feature a target.  It’s another book that’s good to read in small chunks as food for thought–or no-thought.

At the moment I have bookmarks in the following books:

• Kissing the Limitless by yezida 
• Great Eastern Sun by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche
• The Pocket Tibetan Buddhism Reader, edited by Reginald Ray
• Epic, a young adult novel about an Earth colony where all conflicts and disputes are settled by participation in an online role-playing game–including conflicts with the government

I’m expecting delivery of a new book by occult author John Michael Greer, The UFO Phenomenon: Fact, Fantasy and Disinformation, and of the next volume of the Lucifer series.  I’m not hugely interested in UFO stuff, but Greer is a good writer, and I did watch X-Files for a while–I’m interested to see whether Greer will pick up on the similarities between UFO/alien lore and faery lore, and what he’ll have to say about it.

And now it’s time for more tea, fresh food for the boys, and possibly some oatmeal.