Captain's BLOG 2013.03.27. RAC Day 4

This is the fourth of many daily logs that I'll make via my iPhone for Ride Across California (RAC), so excuse the spelling and formatting. Go to the day one post to find out what RAC is.

My cold was in full force when I went to bed. I suffered last night. There was no air flow, it was hot and sticky and if I was going to blow my nose I had to get up and go outside so as to not disturb the others sleeping in the community center. I got to sleep at 0200 and at 0215, I awoke to a five alarm cramp in my hamstring. It was a rough night.

The wind was howling until 0530 this AM. The talk today is still all about yesterday's crucible for the fifth graders. It was really a good experience for them. They really got to find out what they are capable of and what suffering really is.  There is nothing like that as a test for most 5th graders.

Captain's BLOG 2013.03.26. RAC Day 3

This is the third of many daily logs that I'll make via my iPhone for Ride Across California (RAC), so excuse the spelling and formatting. Go to the day one post to find out what RAC is.

I woke at 0430 and couldn't go back to sleep so I got up an decided to shave. Gary Rossi was doing the exact same thing so we decided to make some coffee together and chat while we waited for the sun to come up.

While filling the coffee pot up, Gary ran out of water so I took the pot to the sports coolers to add some. What went into the pot was some gatorade flavored water. So we drank Kona gatorade coffee. Pretty nasty but it just added to his list of stories.

Captain's BLOG 2013.03.25. RAC Day 2

This is the second of many daily logs that I'll make via my iPhone for Ride Across California (RAC), so excuse the spelling and formatting. Go to the day one post to find out what RAC is.

Today was a long ride, 53 miles. It started with a wake up at 0600. I'd been awake for a while listening to a dog bark but I slept well, as did Mari Lu. She woke only once to use the restroom. It took her a bit to figure out where she was though. I think Jeanette slept ok.

Breakfast was eggs, hash browns and mini cakes. Not bad for a catered fare. ML helped me pack up, and I mounted the goal zero solar panel to the bike to charge the cell phones.

Captain's BLOG 2013.03.24. RAC day 1

This is the first of many daily logs that I'll make via my iPhone so excuse the spelling and formatting.

The day started with an earlier than expected wakeup for a Sunday. Spirits are high. Mari Lu can't wait to get going. Juan is leaving earlier than us for a scout outing. He'll be taking a canoe down the Colorado river for five days while Jeanette, ML and I ride across California for six days on our bikes. Ride Across California (known as RAC here forward) is organized by the YMCA and Gary Rossi. RAC was started years ago by a teacher for fifth graders to build confidence as they get ready to start middle school next year. Mari Lu has been training for this for 3 months.

Cactus Only Know How To Be Cactus

A cactus only knows how to be a cactus.  If you are poked by a cactus plant, it’s not the cactus’s fault, it’s doing what a cactus does.  Without the cactus, you would be missing a portion of the texture of life.  You wouldn’t know pokey/scratchy (and a special pain that a cholla cactus can bring) and therefore life would be just a bit duller.  Also, without the cactus, the pleasure of soft, supple, smooth rose petals would have just a bit less punch.  

If you are poked by a cactus, you don’t get mad at it, its just being a cactus.  If you are poked, you aren’t mean or shout obscenities at the cactus (or worse).  The cactus only knows how to be a cactus.  Now I don’t recommend that you hug a cactus, but just appreciate it for what it is.  It’s beautiful in it’s own way and it adds to the total texture of life.  

Now substitute people for cactus.  I’ve known people that were a real a cactus, but they don’t know how to be anything more than who they are but I’m glad to have experienced them.

- Chris Claborne

Living Within Uncharted Waters

Uncharted waters normally meant that you were sailing into an area where the charts hadn’t been created yet, therefore it meant sailing life got exciting.  The sailor no longer knew the location of a shoal or sand bar that could change her day or sink her ship.  If the charts are old, then you may be in uncharted water.  Life is like being in uncharted waters all the time.  Change is constant so the charts you thought you had for your life are worthless.

For some, change is scary.  Getting up in the morning I don’t know what it will be like, who I will meet or what problem I’ll need to solve.  The experience I had at my friend’s funeral was different than expected.  The audience reacted better than expected to my presentation.  Traffic was funky on my way home, much different than yesterday.  If I embrace this idea of change, accept that I will navigate through life’s uncharted water, things are better somehow, even fun.  Embrace what comes, it’s the truth.  Truth doesn’t give a shit if you like it, it just is.   

Will my computer dream tonight?

- Chris Claborne

Life Is Like A Song

Life is like a good song.  If you focus too much on that fact or that you want it to last longer, you’ll miss a bunch of notes.  Just listen to the song, be the song, have hot backup singers.
- In memoriam Tony Cesena

- Chris Claborne

Why Is There "Beautiful"?

Beautiful,  I submit, is not just an adjective, but something we feel.   Sure, it’s a word that we commonly use to describe something or someone, but beautiful isn’t a typical adjective.  Beautiful is  not like other adjectives.  Adjectives like color, or smell that you use to describe something aren’t really “felt”.  

Beautiful is something that you experience as a positive feeling or “high”.  Beautiful is a nice experience, probably a release of some chemical.  When you see something and experience beautiful, it’s something that you don’t want to look away from or easily stop experiencing.  

Beautiful is similar to the experience men have when they see a pretty girl.  For men, when they see a pretty girl that they are attracted to, there is a tiny chemical released that makes it pleasurable.  Being a man, I can’t really explain it, but the tiny release of oxytocin is a documented fact.  Men are slaves to their chemistry.  I can’t speak for women, but I would imagine it’s similar (scientists say the mechanics are similar).

After experiencing “beautiful” when seeing a sunset and the clouds on my way home from work, I wanted to stop on the freeway and just look.  As usual, my geek came out.  Why do we have the experience “beautiful” as part of our reaction to some things?  I can understand why we receive a chemical high when seeing an attractive girl, survival of our species.   Foods have a color or taste that is pleasurable to us humans so that we are driven to keep eating things that are good enough for our survival so that we make it to the age where we can make more little humans.  

What is the purpose of “beautiful”?  Why is there such pleasure in seeing a sunset, or watching the birds while at the beach, or looking at your favorite artwork.  Why is there such pleasure in just watching beautiful things?  Most things about us are darwinistic in their origin, they help us survive to an age where we can procurate.  What role does or did the feeling of “beautiful” play?  What is the purpose of beautiful.  

Send me your thoughts on this.

-- Chris Claborne

Just Live!

When I wrote my silly little post on Facebook the other day I knew it would never truly carry the context or the totality of my thought.   It was a quick blurb to communicate what I was thinking at that instant to the world.  I was standing outside grilling some meet for dinner and drinking a glass of merlot, my normal Friday routine.  It was cold and very clear.  I looked up at a single star in particular, thinking how small my little planet is from that star's viewpoint (we're probably not even visible, like our problems).   I thought about all of the drama, arguments, and worries that people have.  There are tons of things that people are consumed with every day at work, at home, in our town, within our culture, society, and planet.   Many people are so consumed and absorbed with all of this drama, that they lose perspective to the big picture.  In fact, they spend so much time doing this that at times they forget to just live.  

Eat Breakfast, Pet Cat

On Zen Enlightenment

“Chop wood, carry water.”  - Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Master

“Make Love, drive freeway.” - Charlotte Joko Beck, Zen Master

"Eat breakfast, pet cat." - Chris Claborne, Padawan, (12/2/2012)

The Canvas of Suffering

Suffering is the canvas upon which we live.  No matter who wins, the election, how much money,  power, etc., that you have, there will always be suffering.  Once a human accepts this, every moment in life is fantastic.  Anyone that tells you they can end your suffering is only offering up a fantasy or selling a cult.

Shunryu Suzuki who (I think) expounded that when you see a beauty, it is visible because of the contrast to the canvas of suffering.  Without the canvas or the 18% gray of a B&W photo, you wouldn't be able to experience the beauty of the moment, visual or otherwise.   

Hmmm, where does this leave country music?

- Chris Claborne

I went to the Moon with Neil Armstrong

by Chris Claborne
In July 1969, mankind started their trek to the moon and I was with them.  I watched them blast off and then as they traveled to the moon, I was with them.  When I went to bed at night, I pretended I was there, riding in that small little capsule to the moon.

My mom bought me a small plastic box about the size of a lunch-box.  When it unfolded, it was the inside of the lunar lander and command module.  On July 20th, 1969 my imagination was running at full tilt.  I sat next to my mom and dad in front of the TV and was totally and completely immersed in what it must be like.  I lived through each second of descent and landing with the crew.  I was there, my imagination that is.  The moment of touchdown and the elation of the world, I was there.  

After the landing on the moon came the wait.  I remember it taking forever but listening to the journalists on TV (I can still hear Walter Cronkite in my head), I continued to watch until the shadow of Armstrong became visible in the dodgy B&W transmission.  After the first step on the moon, I took a breath.  

I’ve always thought the words that he spoke, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” were as perfect as they come.  But more than this, I felt proud to be an American because we weren’t saying this was an American step, this was a step made for all people of the earth.  I remember reading an interview by one of the astronauts while on tour around the world and he said that people were chanting “we did it” or some incantation thereof.  

Neil Armstrong died yesterday but my recollection of the events that unfolded on July 20th haven’t dimmed.  These events added to our confidence as a people.  Statements like “If we can put a man on the moon, we can  <fill in the blank>”.  It certainly expanded the envelope of what I thought possible.  

Godspeed Neil.

Being Alone

This quote from "Sit Down and Shut Up" is interesting. It's in reference to the explanation to an old zen monk story where the student realizes he's not only alone in the universe, but no one else even knows he's here.

Other people may be able to get some rough idea of what we think and feel.  But no one else can ever be "aware" of you in the truest sense.  Only you can know what you really think, feel, and experience.  Yet a lot -- perhaps even all -- our conflicts are based on the assumption that whoever we've disagreed with thoroughly understands what it is we're trying to tell her.

You are are freaking out, fret not, it's all good (as usual there are two apposing points of view in zen).  We are the universe and the universe is you. 

Do we have Too Much Processing Power?

OK, you would expect a title like that from a geek like me but I’m applying the geek computer stuff to the human brain stuff. While reading Everyday Zen by Charlotte Beck, it occurred to me that maybe we humans have too much processing power upstairs. All that extra processing power gets us into trouble and at times can make us miserable. But at the same time it’s responsible for propelling humanity forward, allowing us to walk on the moon. Much time is spent in Beck’s book and other Zen books trying to explain “zazen”, Zen meditation, with the goal being no real goal other than non thinking. This is harder than it sounds. Brad Warner explains it best in “Sit Down and Shut Up” as grabbing onto those spaces between thoughts (this is simplified, just read his book). To me, it helps to quiet the brain down and discard some of this extra processing that’s always going on.

More to Come

No this BLOG is NOT dead.  I plan on posting more thoughts.  Look for new ones on Zen, and my upcoming article, 1000 conversations.