Hi ED,
The practice which is the same between Bill and our school is "Just
This(a la Bill)" and "as is" in Buddhist terms. What does it mean for a
thinking man?
It means the "be part of the present moment", "be in the life force, or
chi, of now". That's all. Now, what does this mean?
It means, don't think of the past or the future. Don't compare. Don't
judge. Don't worry. or in short, don't think. Don't use the brain.
Use our heart instead. Feel it. Sense it. Don't judge or analyze.
Feel our alive-ness. Sense our Chi. Enjoy every present moment. Live
with our heart and not our mind. This means there is no need to
reference wiki, or web or dictionary. Just sit down, shut up and stop
thinking. Open our heart and feel how alive are we.
This is the only way, we could be connect to the life force and wisdom
of the universe and receive from the universe inspirations to act at
every moment.
It is not hard, once we stop thinking and focus on our chi.
:-)
On 8/29/2010 9:21 AM, ED wrote:
Quite an informative message.
> But it was only when I stumbled on the delightful novels written by
Tony Hillerman that I was first introduced to the Navaho concept of
hozho. One source nicely (and hopefully accurately) defines it
as "harmony, beauty, balance, tranquillity, equilibrium, rightness,
centred, present moment centred awareness, truth, clarity of action,
thought and thinking."
Very Zen-like. Any hozho in our culture? Any hozho in any extant
culture?
> And we drove, and the land went on and on, harsh desert land yet
teeming with life, and the few scattered houses, and I felt as if,
just as the ancient Hebraic religions make sense if you trek through
the harsh Judean hills, hozho, if it feels right anywhere, feels right
here.
Ancient Hebraic religion(s) with hozho?
Hmmm ...
--ED
Brian Schwartz wrote:
Night fell somewhere around Amarillo, and the stars blazed down as we
crossed the high plains of New Mexico. First light just outside
Gallup, and from a hill we saw the endless empty lands and red mesas
of the Four Corners spread out below us. The flatlands stretched on
and on, a rich blue-green carpet of desert vegetation. A lot of bushy
salsola weeds, mixed with who knows what. It's basically desert but
there are 500 species of plants out there. I was wide awake now. The
arid land hummed with life and energy. It was another world. The
Navajo world.
The Navajo trickled in from northern Canada about 1000 years ago but
now the Four Corners is the center of their world, and for them the
world ends if they leave the area bounded by their four sacred
mountains. It's a tightly ordered world. Everything has its assigned
place and meaning, and all the shapes correspond. The four mountain
directions find their analogy in the walls of the traditional Navajo
house, the hogan. The south walls are for making a living; weaving
takes place there. The north is for reverence, and it's there that
blessing ceremonies are organized. The women stay on the north side;
women are sacred, powerful, and it's they who own family property. A
man moves in with his wife's family.
As we drove through the rugged roads of the Navajo Nation, I could see
houses scattered on the high plateau as if a giant man had
thrown handfuls of dice around. Most were trailers or cinderblock low
flat houses, but each and every one of them had a hogan attached. They
weren't used except for ceremonies but no one wanted to cut themselves
off from this link to ancient tradition and harmony of life.
I first ran across the Navajo concepts of harmony about 5 years ago
while researching Navajo weavings. I'd read a lot of the dry history
of classic weaving's three phases, and a lot of the bloody history of
how the Navajo were dispersed and chased and killed and herded onto
some barren land far to the east before, years later in 1868, being
allowed to return. But it was only when I stumbled on the delightful
novels written by Tony Hillerman that I was first introduced to the
Navaho concept of hozho. One source nicely (and hopefully accurately)
defines it as "harmony, beauty, balance, tranquillity, equilibrium,
rightness, centred, present moment centred awareness, truth, clarity
of action, thought and thinking." I immediately put a postscript on my
Navajo rug essay and here's part of it: "The Navajo believe in the
interconnectedness of the natural world. If a butterfly flapping its
wings in China causes a storm in New Mexico, they wouldn't be
surprised at all. They have a word for it. Hozho. It connotes harmony
and balance. It also connotes beauty. The beauty of their weavings is
an attempt to express and honor the beauty, the hozho, of the natural
world."
And we drove, and the land went on and on, harsh desert land yet
teeming with life, and the few scattered houses, and I felt as if,
just as the ancient Hebraic religions make sense if you trek through
the harsh Judean hills, hozho, if it feels right anywhere, feels right
here.
I was too dazzled to take any photos in the Navajo Nation but later on
I took this photo just after we'd left it, and it gives you some idea
of the terrain:
Their traditions steeped in ecology, the Navajo unwittingly and
ironically violated it. They ruined the land. Wood-gathering stripped
the terrain. Later, around 1600, they got sheep from the Spanish.
Herds of sheep ate the grass down to the roots, turned the lush
grasslands into desert. Just beyond the sleepy capital of the Navajo
Nation, Window Rock, where we ate a McDonald's breakfast served by a
kindly Navajo lady and watched stray dogs fight in the parking lot, we
passed through hills planted with evergreens in a recent attempt to
restore the land. Beyond that, desert flatland and scattered hogans as
we approached the rugged hills beyond.
The hills closed in around us. Jagged cliffs and monstrous mesas
hemmed us in. We came to a place named Steamboat (strange name here)
and found a tiny store with a laundromat attached. If you have no
electricity or running water, a laundromat is a fine and precious
thing, and this one was packed. Then we were through the hills and
entered Hopi land. The Hopis, pueblo people, have been in the area
forever. Northern Arizona is dotted with long-abandoned ruins built by
the mysterious Anasazi people, who disappeared during a drought around
the time of Genghis Khan. Not quite disappeared; some of them drifted
into the Four Corners and became known as Hopi. During the 1600s, to
escape the Spanish conquistadors, they moved their villages to the top
of rugged mesas, sometimes running 50 miles every day to till the
fertile fields in the green valley of Moenkopi. Here's a look at that
valley; you can see why it's worth a long walk in the desert.
The Hopis have a cosmology like the Navajos, also tied to the land,
but it's much more complex and little known to outsiders. Their world
is one of peace and harmony, and their calendar is punctuated by a
complex round of ceremonies. The gods (or so they say) join them
during planting and harvest, and dancing and masked processions
celebrate their arrival. Even today, when it's far easier to live on
the flatlands, the clifftop villages (and the ceremonies) thrive. The
Hopi eschatology is much like the Book of Revelation. We are living in
an era called the Fourth World, and that is coming to an end, but the
Fifth World can begin only if those sacred villages are occupied by Hopi.
Tourists visit the Hopi lands, and bring needed cash, but they bring
disruption too so nothing is done to welcome them. The turnoff for the
fabled villages of First Mesa is barely marked at all. I was looking
for it and I spotted it and off we went. UP we went, as the narrow
bumpy road suddenly climbed in switchback curves, rock wall on one
side and a 1000 foot drop on the other. The dizzying roller-coaster
ride disoriented me. I hadn't felt that way since hitchhiking the
narrow skyways of Tibet. Then with little warning we were on top,
thousands of feet above the land that stretched out on either side.
Crazy low-slung houses were jumbled up together like one sprawling
monstrous organic being. (And in fact most of those houses are
connected by interior doors just like the ancient Anasazi pueblos.)
Some were cinderblock, some mud adobe walls, all brightly painted -- I
was still disoriented from the ride and this place seemed so alien. It
was far more like a village on the Tibetan plateau than the normal
world of malls and McDonald's I'd left a few hours ago. It was far
older than that world, in some ways far richer, and very very strange.
Up one street, no wider than an alley, and down another and then we
went to the valley below. Soon the road climbed again, giving us an
eagle's view of the land we'd crossed.
Not far beyond that was Oraibi, which is on Third Mesa but which
doesn't have the climb since the cliff is only on one side. Oriabi,
perhaps the most sacred of Hopi villages, is also the oldest, and
dates back, incredibly, to around 1100 A.D. The same sort of pueblo
buildings, but somewhat less crowded, and I walked along the dusty
alleys for a while. The streets were deserted. I think I saw the
entrance to a kiva, those secret underground chambers where the most
intimate communion with the Hopi spirit world takes place. I wouldn't
have been surprised to meet a spirit walking in First Mesa or Oraibi,
not surprised at all. Then we left. You're not allowed to take photos
at First Mesa or Oraibi but just at the edge of town was a
long-abandoned house built in the old pueblo style and, telling myself
that we were doubtless outside the village, I took a photo. It shows
the exhilarating, mind-bending view that surrounds you 24/7 if you
live on those mesas.
Not far beyond Oraibi was Moenkopi, and just beyond that Hopi lands
ended. We were back in Navajo territory now, but after a few miles we
left the Navajo Nation and turned onto Route 89 to Salt Lake City.
Dazzling landscapes awaited us. The bizarre, towering wind-sculpted
mesas as we passed along the southern fringe of Grand Staircase
Escalante, wildest of the national parks, full of bear and elk, and
then beyond Kanab the road turned north and a long green valley began.
A few farms here and there, and old towns. This area had been settled
by Mormons long ago. Farther north through Utah: jagged grey barren
hills punctuated by verdant strips of valley land. It looks SO much
like Afghanistan, I said, and indeed it did. But the feeling of
strange and alien exhilaration was gone. We had left Indian land. We
were back in the U.S.A.
Brian Schwartz
Here is part of a Hopi dance, recorded at a Hopi village near Third
Mesa and Oraibi:
http://music.myspace.com/Modules/MusicV2/Pages/PopUpPlayer.aspx?songid=46522001&artid=21777231
<http://music.myspace.com/Modules/MusicV2/Pages/PopUpPlayer.aspx?songid=46522001&artid=21777231>
Here is a portion of a Navajo religious ceremony, recreated about 50
years ago by a group of Navajo singers.
http://music.myspace.com/Modules/MusicV2/Pages/PopUpPlayer.aspx?songid=49183799&artid=22204378
<http://music.myspace.com/Modules/MusicV2/Pages/PopUpPlayer.aspx?songid=49183799&artid=22204378>
Listen to the voice of the Navajo Nation broadcasting from Window Rock:
http://den-a.plr.liquidcompass.net/standard_plr/audio_player.php?id=KTNNAM&playerType=wmp
<http://den-a.plr.liquidcompass.net/standard_plr/audio_player.php?id=KTNNAM&playerType=wmp>
Listen to the voice of the Hopi people:
http://www.kuyi.net/listen-online
For a much larger and clearer version of the photo taken near Oraibi,
go to
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Oraibi1.jpg
If you go:
Go to Gallup, New Mexico, which is on Interstate 40. Take route 491
about 4 miles and turn left onto route 264. This is the long road that
goes through Navajo and Hopi lands. When you get to Tuba City, take
route 160 west a few miles to route 89. Then turn north to Utah or
south to Flagstaff on I-40.
--
Be Enlightened In This Life - We ALL Can
http://chanjmjm.blogspot.com
http://www.heartchan.org
