Permanence is Delusion...

Where has my blog gone?....

Quote of the Day...

"The whole point of this life is the healing of the heart's eye through which God is seen." -- St. Augustine

What do you want?

I want to awaken.

When is a bike seat like a zafu?

A recent piece in the New York Times on the dangers of bicycle seats (especially for men...) was the most forwarded article, according to the Times' website. And no surprise.

Not to be coy about it, the problem discussed in the piece, in the words of Dr. Steven Schrader, a reproductive health expert who studies cycling at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, is that bike seats can kill your love life.

It was no longer a question of 'whether or not bicycle riding on a saddle causes erectile dysfunction.' Instead, [Schrader] said in an interview, 'The question is, What are we going to do about it?'

Ouch.

I'll spare you the details (it involves a sevenfold increase in pressure on the perineum, and that's enough for a blog entry!) but here's the practice-related question: Sitting on a zafu, based on first-hand experience, can cause the same symptoms. Oxygen is not getting to an important part of your anatomy, which goes numb. As Dr. Irwin Goldstein, a Boston-based urologist, notes, "Numbness is your body telling you something is wrong." (This is the same doctor who notes, "there are only two kinds of male cyclists - those who are impotent and those who will be impotent.")

Obviously, there's a better way to sit on the cushion, but how many people are not even considering the issue? (Leaving aside, for a moment, the question of detachment...)

When bikers first began hearing of the possible problems, Dr. Goldstein explains, they became angry and defensive. "They said cycling is healthy and could not possibly hurt you. Sure you can get numb. But impotent? No way."

Yes, way.

I've switched to a seiza bench because the pain in the knees -- both operated on, neither with much catiledge left -- was too much. Who knew?

A P.S. ---

"The Buddha, the Godhead, resides quite as comfortably in the circuits of a digital computer or the gears of a cycle transmission as he does at the top of the mountain, or in the petals of a flower." -- Robert Pirsig

Confessions of a Zen Democrat....

One of the most articulate Democrats I know gives a speech entitled, "Confessions of a Zen Democrat."

OK, in the spirit of full disclosure, Bill Curry is my cousin. But don't hold that against him...

As I was saying......

Six months seems a nice round number to have been silent. In the interim: $6 billion a month on the war in Iraq, thousands more dead (with civilians, probably tens of thousands), not one but two storms of the century, the largest migration to the North since the mid 20th Century – in about a month, and a general sense of growing darkness and anarchy.

As Yogi Berra Roshi said, "This is like deja vu all over again."

Or, coincidentally enough, to be sitting with Mumonkan case 14. Nanchuan's Cat.

The case: Nanchuan saw the monks of the eastern and western halls fighting over a cat. Seizing the cat, he told the monks: "If any of you can say a word of Zen, you will save the cat." No one answered. Nanchuan cut the cat in two. That evening Zhaozhou returned to the monastery and Nanchuan told him what had happened. Zhaozhou removed his sandals, placed them on his head, and walked out. Nanchuan said: "If you had been there, you would have saved the cat."

My friend Mr. Sam Sarrah says, “The cat is dead. How can you kill the cat?”