You might have noticed a video I posted last week by Alessandro ( Happy Birthday for yesterday Alessandro) about Ashtanga....and Zen in Crete.
I mentioned that while on Manju's TT course last month I met Hyon Gak Sunim, a wandering American 'Korean Zen' monk who was taking Manju's course and also teaching with Kristina a Zen/Ashtanga workshop. Alessandro's video is at the end of this post but here we have another video, this time from Christine Schmitthenner concentrating on Sunim.
"Zen's ancient teachings seem a mystery to many. But actually, Zen is very simple: Zen means attaining my true self -- "What am I?" In this revolutionary film by acclaimed filmmaker Christine Schmitthenner, we see a Western Zen monk in his daily activities in the world: chanting, meditating, preparing breakfast, riding public transport, meeting with friends, even shaving his head -- from moment to moment, not attached to conceptual thinking, everything is Zen, which just means everything is "moment." The subject of this unusual film, Hyon Gak Sunim, allowed filmmakers to follow his daily living and teaching activities for a week as he met with students and organized his daily activities. Sunim is widely recognized as one of the most influential Zen monks in modern Korean Buddhist history, a graduate of Yale and Harvard who entered the monastic life in 1992 and has done over 20 years of intensive Zen training in the ancient Zen temples of Korea. His enlightenment was certified ("inka") in a public ceremony in 2001 by his teacher, the legendary Zen Master Seung Sahn (1927-2004). Now based in the West, he wanders the world, teaching wherever invited".
what is zen? from 915industrygallery on Vimeo.
Hyon Gak Sunim's blog/website
And here's the video I posted last week from Alessandro.
Hyon Gak Sunim ( that's him, the monk, chanting in the Video) describes the video best it best perhaps in his Share of the video on fb
"A GREAT video about Zen meeting Ashtanga at our recent retreat in Rethymno, Greece. Wanna see the soft, wide world of yoga meet the laser-like technology of Zen? Please share this video! Please share this video! Just another amazing work of art by Alessandro Sigismondi.... "
"A GREAT video about Zen meeting Ashtanga at our recent retreat in Rethymno, Greece. Wanna see the soft, wide world of yoga meet the laser-like technology of Zen? Please share this video! Please share this video! Just another amazing work of art by Alessandro Sigismondi.... "
While on the topic of Ashtanga and Zen, I've been looking at Zen Training by Katsuki Sekida, keep hearing about this book, thought I should finally get around to ordering it.
This book is interesting in that it looks in detail at the actual practice of Zazen, the posture, the breath. But what struck me most was that in In the preface the editor presents the author as discussing the purpose of Zen training, why put oneself through such a rigorous process....that struck me as a question we might ask of ourselves in our Ashtanga practice. Have a look at the following passage and just substitute Ashtanga for Zen while reading.
I'd be interested to hear more about Sunin's reflection on Zen and Ashtanga (Kristina's too), hopefully Kristina will have him back in Crete again for another workshop next year.
Of interest to me at least Katsuki Sekida has also read Heidegger, Being and Time at least ( akin to only watching the first series of The Wire perhaps) and discusses him and resoluteness in the book. But then the Kyoto school was big into Heidegger, Nishida Kitarō, Keiji Nishitani etc. Here's Nishitani Kenji discussing why Heidegger's Being and Time had been translated so many times into Japanese.
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Up early for practice, trying to get into the habit of practising before opening the new shala Monday. On a trial run this week with M. getting up for her Ashtanga class at 6am (yawn).
4 comments:
Simply astonishing how things flow into each other!!
I found this weekend some teachings from Alan Watts from the late 50's-60's on the topic of Buddhism, Zen and co. And it just flows further and further, because Alan Watts has an enormous amount of lectures as well on Hinduism, Yoga, Meditation, Western Religions, etc.etc.
Funny how he labels Buddhism as "Hinduism stripped for export”.
As he said Hinduism is a culture which lives in India, so taking out the parts that cannot be exported to other cultures, what is left is Buddhism.
He also talks different lineages, and I also found some similar concepts to the 8 fold path, of course.
I'm pretty sure you know about Alan Watts, I'm just discovering his world of teachings and integrating it.
Seung Sahn's book "Compass of Zen" is very good.
Very lovely. I practice zen informally with a zazen group for over a year and moved to Vipassana. However, Zen definitely reminds me of Ashtanga. Loved the vidoes. They were beautiful.
Might add some strong parallels between yoga and zen:
In van Lysebeths Pranayama: 'pelvic area should be tilted slightly forwards' p82
(this of course is well known in zen),then in the whole chapter called 'Control of the Abdomen' we can read 'Pranayama without active control of the abdominal muscles is nonsense' p107.(zen of course puts tremendous importance on contracting the lower abdominal muscles-we can call it partial uddhiana). Then, we can see a photo of a yoga master touching his student's lower abs to check if they are contracted p122.
That reminded me of Kapleau's book, Yasutani roshi asking a student to touch his lower abs to see how strong they are.
'Tension and pressure must be kept in the lower part of the abdomen as much as possible,as this brings about both physical and mental stability'-Sekida p55
Bytheway, the first thought of Heidegger is of his hut-so zen
Regards,Milan
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