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Crooked
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Paul Shippee
January 23, 2021 -
Nonviolent Communication
(NVC) and Buddhism 2-25-16 - My friend, I offer you a reflection fresh from this snowy Colorado morning:
Why Do I Meditate?
To enjoy blissful, empty mind free, unburdened of thinking.
It’s that simple!
The open space is a relief.
My own experience is luminosity and boundless space,
No question about that.
To just sit down in erect posture with straight spine,
Directing attention to feeling breath in the body
Is to check in with the amazing spaciousness of true nature.
It’s much more than mindfulness.
It’s like checking in to the Palace of Emptiness,
A rich, luxurious hotel.
Who will sit with me and enjoy this palace above the clouds?
The password is effort to break the bonds of samsara.
In order to cut desire and attachment I offer this up to everyone.
Then I go sweep the floor.
With warmth & love,
Paul
May 11, 2020 - You can listen to a good deal of Paul Shippee on the Cuke Audio podcast dated May 12, 2020 and named Chapter Three of Crooked Cucumber. Cuke Podcast with Paul 🔊 | May 12, 2020 Podcast 🔊 Paul has had many articles published in his local Crestone Eagle, the latest being Community Solar Microgrids Explained.
9-08-15 - Angels of Darkness, Angels of Light - Paul writes about working with prisoners 3-01-14 - Why I Became a Buddhist, Meeting My Two Spiritual Teachers, Ascending and Descending Spirit by Paul Shippee 8-21-13 - Paul Shippee, one of two friends into Tibetan Buddhism who told me to go hear Anam Thubten in Point Richmond (see 8-19-13 in What's New), interviewed: Crestone Energy Fair will present a Nonviolent Communication Forum at 1:30 pm on Saturday under the tent...see you there. Meantime, here's a 4-min preview video by Scott Murrish 11-21-12 - A Paul Shippee Facebook page: Sustainable Conversations - Community Page about Nonviolent Communication 5-19-12 - Paul Shippee sent a quote from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche 5-18-12 - Paul Shippee - Ten Tips For Compassionate Communication 5-17-12 - May 2012 Crestone Mt. Seat Ceremony for Dan Welch and related happenings. THE HEALING NEEDED IN OUR WORLD: PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON BUDDHIST MEDITATION, NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION, ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, AND PATHS TO A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS See his article on the stupa at Shambala Mountain Center. SOLAR HEATING
DESIGN & NATURAL BUILDING http://www.healthresource2000.com THE HEART SUTRA AND COMPASSIONATE COMMUNICATION With Paul Shippee November 9 / 7:00 pm - November 11 / 5:00 pm Madison Shambhala Center Madison, Wisconson Notice of a September 2010 workshop in Davis Ca plus his notes from a workshop in Madrid. 6-01-11 - Paul Shippee has written an article on Lester Brown, WORLD ON THE EDGE in the Crestone Eagle, on page B-1 June issue. 6-05-11 - Paul Shippee recently reached the "Tenth Ox-Herding Picture" and is now entering the marketplace with open hands. To learn what Paul is inspired to share with you about Internet Marketing just go here: http://www.MyHomeBusinessPalace.com When you click on the link I will see it if/when you enter name and email, You can also call me at 719-256-4656 or send an email to paulfromcrestone@gmail.com. My Thirtieth Birthday Opens to Zen (written at the request of my daughter)It’s hard to remember much of anything about my birthdays, probably because most often I have not taken the trouble, the joy, the planning or the desire to celebrate them. What about that? What’s the underlying motive for avoiding my birthday celebrations? The first thing I think of is that the emotion of fear, mostly unacknowledged, has blocked any enthusiasm or happiness arising on those annual personal holidays. I also see, when looking deeper, that there was probably sadness accompanying the fear. It seems I was most often not happy about advancing one more year away from my happy youth and moving one more step toward a reminder of what? …old age, sickness and death? So it seems that some unhappy mixture of sadness and fear drove me to shrink away from getting happy about growing another year older. I suppose, too, there was some element of shame mixed in there about lifting myself upward and outward, pretending to be happy by inviting friends to gather round a birthday cake. Add to that the reality that I was often living alone on birthdays, or traveling, but mostly I kept the birthday secret, quiet and hidden. Oh dear!!? …do all double Scorpios do this? Now that I am older and living close to my daughter in Crestone we have been honoring and celebrating our birthdays which are five weeks apart in the Fall. I have enjoyed those small private gatherings which seem to be an easy and simple feature of our shared reality. No big deal perhaps, but a family ritual that I now treasure and enjoy. Now, having said all that, I do remember a few things, and perhaps a few gifts, from around the time I turned 30 years old. I was living on the top floor of a 5-story walkup, rent-controlled apartment on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, on 2nd Street between Avenue A and 1st Avenue. This was a tumultuous time of social activism and widespread protest against America’s war in Vietnam including huge street marches in NYC that I participated in. In addition to that, a button turned up around this time with the words “Don’t Trust Anyone Over 30!” Yikes, I thought, how shall I relate to that? I had lived in San Francisco for about ten years before this where I had participated in creating and performing in a street theater group protesting the war. Now in New York I joined the Pageant Players, another street theater anti-war protest group. We created our own characters, costumes, music and plays, then performed them from a flatbed truck in various NYC neighborhoods on Saturdays. During this year living in New York I was also employed by the NYC Department of Social Services where I attended to welfare cases in Brooklyn’s Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood. It was an office job with required visits in the field to mostly black single mothers living in the poorest housing projects. Since it was a dangerous neighborhood the black mothers, to whom I was funneling money, would often watch for me from their 3rd floor window and call out to me as I approached. They wanted me to be safe and let everyone know that this white boy was here on business to support their livelihoods.
At this time I was also a novice meditator. Upon coming home from
work each day I would practice Zen meditation sitting on a cushion
in front of a stick of incense until it burned completely down. Here
at sea level this took about half an hour. In order to begin and
remain undisturbed I would ask any guests or visitors to leave and
go on a walk and return when I was finished. I had learned zazen
sitting meditation at the San Francisco Zen Center a year or two
earlier from Suzuki Roshi and liked it a lot for reasons I wasn’t
yet clear about. Sometimes I would go to the local NYC zendo of Eido
Roshi and sit formally with the group in the dimly lit room,
encouraged by soft Japanese bamboo flute music and pushed deeper
into our practice by the low, determined growl of our kind Zen
teacher.
One of the Buddhist books I was studying, besides Zen
Mind Beginner’s Mind, was titled Three Pillars of
Zen, by the late American Zen master Philip Kapleau who had
established a Zen Center in Rochester, NY. One evening
after finishing reading the book I wondered who was this American
who had studied, meditated and been ordained as a Zen priest in
Japan? After closing the book I found the telephone number and
called the Center hoping to speak with Kapleau; and it was he who
answered the phone! After speaking with him for about half an hour I
decided that he was not the teacher I wanted to study with. I do not
recall my reasons for this decision; it was a feeling based on
intuition with a convincing level of certainty.
At another time I saw a picture on the front page of the Village
Voice newspaper of Swami Satchidananda who was staying at his
Integral Yoga Center and offering talks and yoga training. I
attended some of these gatherings and thus dipped into another
aspect of early American spiritual teachings. Still another time I
read in the same Village paper that a learned Tibetan monk, Geshe
Sopa, was scheduled to give a talk in Greenwich Village, aka the
West Village. I attended his talk and afterward asked him some
questions during which he told me about a small Tibetan Center for
monks that was now established in a residential house somewhere in
New Jersey. He said I was welcome to visit there and I got the
address from him. On an upcoming Saturday I drove over to this
Center where I found maroon robed monks sitting around a table
somberly, it appeared, eating a meal and not talking. Later I
learned they did not speak English. There was another American white
man present and I engaged him in conversation. I think his name was
Jeffrey Hopkins and I asked him to help me find the answer to my
burning question, “Why do I sit meditation?” I believe I was looking
for some lofty philosophical answer to this deep question. He looked
at me and asked, “What do you experience or like about meditation
when you sit?” I replied that I feel good. He offered that instead
of trying to find a philosophical answer, just look into how I feel
each time I sit and let that be motivation to sit the next time. I
was satisfied and happy with Mr. Hopkins' answer; it made perfect
sense and has lasted me a lifetime. It pointed a way for me to make
meditation home.
These are some of the events that constellated around my 30th
birthday. They seem like birthday gifts from today’s perspective.
But there’s more! In the Spring of that year I noticed an
interesting article, again in the Village Voice paper,
that featured a college friend that I had lost track of. The article
was about the newly formed Tassajara Zen Mountain Center,
a Japanese-type monastic center located deep in the mountains of
California, near Big Sur, and about two hours south of the city
center of the San Francisco Zen Center. What caught my attention was
a big surprise; that my college friend, Peter Schneider, was the
Director of the Zen monastery! It didn’t take long for me to see the
hand-writing on the wall, which called to me like a familiar song
saying, “If Peter can do it, then so can I !!” I had reached the
point in meditation practice where I had wanted to get serious and
really learn how to do it, and this seemed like just the ticket. I
contacted the San Francisco center and told old friend and Zen
Center secretary, the late Yvonne Rand, that I wanted to join the
monastery in the Fall. How much would that cost? Two years earlier I
had left a motorcycle behind in San Francisco in care of a friend.
Hoping it was still there I called and was able to use the sale of
the bike to finance my first 3-month zen monastery training. I liked
this strict but gentle monastic training, set next to a pristine
full roiling creek, so much that I ended up staying at Tassajara for
two years, and three more training training periods. Entering
Tassajara in the Fall was to mark a big turn-around in my life. I
arrived there with long hair and was told that the men were required
to shave their heads monastic style. I refused! I was allowed to
keep my long hair when Peter told everyone, “Let him do what he
wants.” However, after a few weeks or a month it seems the human
drive and lust for belonging began to capture my heart and I went
into the middle of the creek and cut off all my hair watching it
float downstream. I was abiding with the zen rule to let no one step
on your hair!
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