Uncontacted Tribe in Brazil

This story from the BBC today:

One of South America's few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes has been spotted and photographed on the border between Brazil and Peru... More than half the world's 100 uncontacted tribes live in Brazil or Peru.

Wow...I had no idea there was such a thing as "uncontacted tribes" in the world today.

Enlightenment

Why are you looking for the cow? You are sitting on it.

We have a saying here in Korea...

"...Canada is a boring paradise. Korea is an exciting jail."

~told to me by a Korean lady who was wistfully reminiscing about her 3 years in Canada, and wishing she could go back.

Froggie went a-courtin!

Uh huh!

Social Anxiety Nasal Mist

Appears as though you can now cure your social phobias as easily as your stuffy nose! Simply squirt some mist into your nostrils, and voila! shy no more.

Apparently, according to the BBC news story,

[Scientists] found that people who inhaled the "love hormone" oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed.

Brain scans showed the hormone lowered activity in the amygdala - a region which is overactive in social phobics.

Drug trials are under way and early signs are promising,

say the swindlers, er, I mean scientists.

Conversation with a Zen Master

...otherwise known as mental gymnastics.

Today I was part of a group of about 20-30 foreigners and Koreans who sat to listen to a Zen master give a talk at a temple.

He started his talk with something like, "Nothing exists. Do you see that tree? No you don't. If you turn around it is gone. If you approach it, it looks different. It doesn't exist. If I say to you, where is the tree, and you point, why are you pointing outside yourself? Nothing exists outside yourself."

"Do you understand?" Our wrinkled brows betrayed us.

"Is it raining? Does the rain exist?"

Then he points to me and raises his eyebrows expectantly.

"Yes," I say, quite sure it was pouring rain outside.

"Where is the rain?"

I point. "Out there."

"What do you mean out there? Why do you point?"

"Erm. Because it's raining out there."

"What is 'out there?'"

"Outside this room. Out THERE, out..." (out, out! damn spot!)

"There is no 'out there,' so how can you say that? It does not exist, just as the tree and the rain and the cloud do not exist. It is only raining inside yourself."

Eh? I could nearly hear the whirring of all the brains that didn't exist.

He continued on, occasionally coming back to me to clear things up for everyone. ;) He succeeded in confusing me and everyone else greatly, which I think is part of the job description for being a Zen Master. I actually felt like I didn't know anything, and wasn't even convinced that anything around me actually existed, even though I could see it in front of my face, and most of all decided that language just doesn't cut it sometimes, especially when you're trying to define your perception of reality to a Zen monk.

What I think he was getting at was that things only really exist because of how we perceive them. Everything depends on our perceptions, and therefore, he says, we are all completely deluded.

So I said, "So if everything we perceive is a delusion, then even that thought, what you just said, is a delusion."

"Yes."

"What? How can we function then? How can we exist and talk? How can we think about this when all our thinking and our thinking about our thinking is deluded? How can I understand this?"

And he said, "There, now you understand," which was, actually, news to me. Then he likened my mind to the mud and mire that give life to the lotus flower. At the moment, though, I'd say its a pretty big, flower-less, mucky mess. At the end of the talk, he said the search was to be deep within ourselves for something that is not a concept, not a delusion, something we cannot throw away or dismiss as a construct of our own mind. This I think I can understand.

Actually one of the trademarks of Zen is the "koan" or problems it gives to its followers to puzzle over for an eternity. For example, a student once asked his master, "Master before even a thought arises, does sin exist?" The master replied, "Mountain."

Or how about, "What was the appearance of your face before your ancestors were born?" Or maybe you've heard, "What is the sound of one hand clapping?"

The book, "Buddhism," by Huston Smith and Philip Novak offers us some help when trying to make sense of the mysteries of Zen:

Our impulse is to dismiss these puzzles as absurd, but the Zen practitioner is not permitted to do this. He or she is ordered to direct the full force of the mind upon them, sometimes locking logic on them, sometimes dropping them into the mind's deep interior to wait until an acceptable answer erupts. We in the West rely on reason so fully that we must remind ourselves that in Zen we are dealing with a perspective that is convinced that reason is limited and must be supplemented by another mode of knowing. ... It intends to upset the mind--unbalance it and eventually provoke revolt against the canons that imprison it.

So, I'd say my mind is still bouncing around inside its self-made jail of concepts and perceptions...and you?

Three Months In

For all you cool cats who have been on pins waiting for another look at my apartment, now's the moment you've been waiting for. If you're really looking for some thrilling viewing, you can see my one-week update here. ;) xo

Nature

*exasperated sigh*

Why do people have to do things that they KNOW are not in their best interest?

Why do they do things because they feel stuck? They are not stuck. They dug their own trenches, and they can get out if they want, but they refuse to see it. It's so eeeeeeasy to see from my side of the fence! So logical and simple.

Of course...I am complaining about my friend...however, I guess I could write the same words about myself in a different context.

Anyway! Just needed to get that out there. Euh!

Happy Belated Buddha Day/A Weekend in the Sun

Picture this, my friends. A magical night.

So when I got home last night, I still had some daylight left, and I hopped on my bike and headed for the hills. I haven't had any time to explore my area at all, and I've been bemoaning the lack of nature near my place. I'd seen some trees in the distance, so that's where I headed.

Lo! What I found was better than I could ever have hoped for: a GIANT (I mean giant) forested park with well-lit walking/biking trails. So I walked and rode through it for quite a while, the light draining from the sky as I went further in. And then, curiously, through the trees, I heard a man's voice singing, chanting, clear and deep, rolling like a river over stones. Onward, thought I, hoping to find the source. Not five minutes later, through the dark forest I began to see the soft glow of multicoloured lanterns. I had come across a large, beautiful temple. Oh, the luck of the Irish! The trail wound around it, and I was able to find an exit from the forest in order to make my way to the gate.

I parked my bike, walked into the courtyard, strung with many paper lanterns, bobbing and swaying in the gentle breeze. The moon was overhead, and a few Buddhists were standing in the dirt courtyard, hands in prayer position. I stood with them, and we faced the open door of the temple, through which light was spilling into the yard, and inside I saw people sitting on mats in front of a gold statue of the Buddha. I couldn't see the monk who was singing, but I stood listening to him for about an hour, maybe less. Occasionally the people around me in the courtyard would bow slowly from the waist down, and those inside would stand and then bow deeply to the ground, foreheads on the floor. The air was cool, but in a summery, pleasant way, and a calmness pervaded the entire place, despite the children running hither and yon on the forest's edge (children and religious services appear to be the same the world over). I felt as though God himself had called me there, what a magical experience.

Yesterday (Monday) was a holiday here: Buddha's Birthday. Hence the religious service I'd stumbled upon. Actually "Buddha's Birthday" is apparently a misnomer, so I've been told by a monk. He told me with a smile that every year he writes a column for the newspaper, and every year he says the same thing: the day has nothing to do with the historical Buddha's date of birth but rather is more like a "Buddha Day" or a celebration of Buddhism and enlightenment. He said people call it "Buddha's Birthday" because "Birthday" is easy to remember. Cute.

Since we're speaking of temples, here is a daytime shot of the International Zen Temple that I have gone to a few times, in northern Seoul:


And here is its courtyard decorated for the Buddha Day celebrations:
Yes, I admit, kind of tacky in the daylight (wouldn't be Korea otherwise), but by night they really do look beautiful.

So, I did make it to a nice ceremony after all. I thought I would miss them all, because I spent the long weekend on a lovely little island called Deok-jeok-do (pronounced: duck-juck-doh). "Do" usually means "island" in Korean. It was relaxing, very rural, and restorative, what with being around clean air and sunshine and being smiled at by peasant rice farmers, and all.

Here are a few shots from the weekend...sorry I've none of the rice fields...each time I walked there I forgot my camera.

Fisherwomen (old fisherwomen), selling their live goods on the ferry slip:


The dock we came in on. Hmmmm, reminds me of somewhere....


J being funny on a rock run we did, trying to catch the sunset (just missed it):
Me and A (my best friend) on the beach:

We hiked to the top of a little mountain to see the sights:


Pagoda at the top:Me and A being warriors with the bamboo spears on the way down the mountain. Arrrr!:
C, our adorable, sweet friend, barbecuing some shish-kebabs:
So that's it in a nutshell. A very large nutshell. Sorry for the long post...gotta groove while the groovin's good. Love you all, hope you had a great weekend as well! xoxo

(A)Pathetic

So, it's been a week since the torch came through Seoul. After leaving here, it went to North Korea for the first time, and of course, had no difficulty. Everything the world sees of North Korea is carefully choreographed and happy-looking.

Anyway, I've been doing some thinking. I am angry with this group of Chinese people here in Korea. What the hell were they doing, being violent toward South Koreans, who were protesting China's treatment of their North Korean brothers and sisters? Ignorance! How can they support sending people to labour camps, torture, death?

They were throwing rocks at one point, for god's sake, and even a wrench, and a reporter got sent to hospital. All for what? Because we (who are living in a democracy, I might add) are not allowed to say anything negative about China? Ludicrous. Sure, be happy, and even proud, you are Chinese. Be happy you come from a huge, varied, and beautiful country. Be happy about your friends, family, language, culture. China has a lot of beauty. But don't be happy about the corruption in your country, even against your own people, who are routinely thrown out of their houses in favour of development, and left with nothing. Who, if they dare protest, are punished: beat up or put in black jails (jails that don't exist on paper). And now that you are abroad, educate yourself and don't be happy, be dismayed (!) about your country's abysmal treatment of those under their thumb. Don't be a blind nationalist, and start abusing people who don't share your opinion! Especially when you're a guest in their country!




And what's with signs like this one, below??
I mean, come on. You're in Korea now. You have freedom of information. You can read, you can look on the Internet. Just what kind of indoctrination have you been fed all your life that would lead you to make a sign that says, "Ugly Dalai Lama?" If you've ever heard him speak or read anything he has written, you will know he is the most kind, intelligent man, and despite his own and his people's abuse at the hands of the Chinese, still holds a non-violent, conciliatory attitude toward them and their government.


As you can see, I can go on ad nauseam about this. It's actually not what I sat down to write about. Digression is a favourite pastime of mine.

Have you heard the phrase, "The opposite of love is not hate, it's apathy"? Do you agree? I think it's kind of both. I mean, on the one hand, we have the violent mobs that are filled with hate, and they definitely have no love for the people who disagree with them. But then we also have those who are not in the midst of it (ie most of us in the West, in relatively calm countries), who just don't care.

I have one friend, and he just doesn't care, for real, I think, about anything that does not directly affect him. He's thrown me a for a loop, because otherwise, he's actually a pretty decent guy. So I've really been wrestling with this question, because if you start to talk about these things, and you come up against, "Sorry, I just don't care," with a shrug of the shoulders, well, then, what do you say? It's easier to debate with someone who is passionate about their side than it is to converse with an apathetic person. I guess if he doesn't care if no one helps him (should he ever need it), then what argument do I have?

The unfortunate conclusion to such attitudes is usually torture and genocide. So...help me out. I'm quite stumped here. What do you say to indifference? To those who seem to lack (and don't care that they lack) empathy or compassion?