Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Day 32: Netzach of Hod, four weeks and four days of the Omer

For today's sefirotic combination, Endurance in Humility, it's good to look at the suit of Pentacles. The 7 card captures the endurance required of a gardener — not only over the course of one season, but over the course of many seasons for a garden to grow and flourish. This is not only endurance, but patience and love.

The 8 card, Humility is often described as an image of an apprentice — someone who works for a master of a trade and learns from that master with true humility. That true humility does not discount that talent and ability that brings the apprentice to the master in the first place. It is an acknowledgment of the need for direction and guidance coupled with respect for the master who gives that guidance as a spiritual path. For both the master and the apprentice are in a spiritual relationship that enables both to grow. In a sense, they are equals — one has simply gone further down a path and can help the other on the way.

I have seen this at work in Japan, where master potters take on apprentices. Like the apprentice in the 8 of Pentacles, these "deshi" make the same object again and again, learning the perfection of the form. Because they work for the master, if the form is not acceptable, it is destroyed. If it meets the standard, the master signs it. When the apprentice is ready, he or she starts out on his own, and at that point will begin the artistic variations that will make the work truly theirs. But first the form is learned from the inside.

Imagine how it might feel to have someone else sign something that was the work and sweat of your hands. And consider how that form is not only the result of your work, but the training you are given by a teacher. That the form would not exist without that training. This is humility that is also gratitude.

So what is endurance in humility. Well, I can only speak for myself here, as a Westerner who has a great deal of trouble with the system I just outlined above. Because while I understand it, and can respect it. And while I have even attempted it in my studies as an amateur potter and ikebana student in Japan, I am a rebellious American, a New York Jew and thus somewhat, uh, argumentative shall we say? I may take on the role of apprentice, and pledge to myself and a master the discipline of humility. But my endurance in this discipline is weak. Which is perhaps why I've never been a very good gardener either.

What is your relationship to apprenticeship and humility?

May 5th: In Japan It's Boys' Day

Cinco de Mayo? Forget it! Just as February 2nd is Girls’ Day in Japan, also known as the Doll Festival, the 5th of May is Boys’ Day. Families fly streamers in the shape of carp that are colorful and phallic to celebrate the boys in the family.

So below, to celebrate the young men of Japan, here are a fresh crop from a recent issue of Oshare Hair, a Japanese magazine devoted to the latest hair styles for the au courant. By  the way, you can pick up copies of Oshare Hair at Kinokuniya in NYC on 6th Avenue at 41st. Street.

Today is 25 days of the counting of the Omer: Netzach of Netzach

This is the endurance of endurance. And it brings to mind a quote and a song. First, the quote, said by the vanquished Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, in his speech announcing the surrender to the Japanese people. He said, "We must endure the unendurable." This comes to mind because Netzach is also called VIctory. The ability to endure is an inner victory, which eventually will manifest in the outer world. Japan's eventual victory was economic. Their constitution forswore war. And in so doing the actually created the Greater Asia Co Prosperity Sphere that was their propagandistic reason for invading China and the rest of Asia.

The song? The anthem of the civil rights movement in the United States — a song of endurance not only in one life, but across generations. Something that Jews are not unfamiliar with. It's a song that recognizes sometimes hope only comes to those who know they must endure...

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome someday

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand
We'll walk hand in hand some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

We shall all be free
We shall all be free
We shall all be free some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

We are not afraid
We are not afraid
We are not afraid some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day    

We are not alone
We are not alone
We are not alone some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around
The whole wide world around some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day

Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day

Seventeen days, making two weeks and three days of the Omer: Tiferet Squared

As the Scarecrow said to Dorothy, "Of course, some people do go both ways."

So here we are on the 17th Day: Tiferet of Tiferet, the heart of compassion. And once again, what better image to call up than Avalokiteshvara / Kuan Yin.

Well, I guess most Jews would disagree, given that this is, after all, a graven image!

But I am more concerned with the principle, the meaning, not the statue itself.

Previously I mentioned the fact that in the movement of Buddhism from India further east to China and Japan, the boddhisattva transformed from male to female.

Some see this as Compassion That Transcends Duality. And that feels like the right energy for this day in the Omer count.

This is a compassion that calls us out of our old patterns, to free us from the slavery of creating enemies. Nice work if you can get it. But as Gershwin wrote, you can get it if you try.

Todays is the 10th day, which is one week and three days, counting the Omer: Tiferet of Gevurah

Yesterday, I wrote about ikebana and discipline in my discussion of Gevurah in Gevurah. Today is Tiferet in Gevurah, and one way of looking at this sefirotic relationship is the Beauty of Form. Or Beauty expressed through Discipline. So once again, the example of ikebana seems appropriate. Or indeed truly any art form, with the accent on form. After all, a sonnet is as highly formalized as a haiku. So today is a good day to meditate on the demands of a discipline and how it channels our creativity and enables us to bring beauty into the light.

Alternatively, the energy of this day can also be considered as a time for expressing the compassion of discipline. I think of the advice given in the 12-step world: Easy does it. This is a recognition that someone in recovery needs to be easy on him or herself. After all, there is much internalized shame and judgement when one is in recovery. And there is no perfection in recovery. Simply recognizing that we are all human, that we all fall, is to experience compassion for ourselves, and for all those who fall once, or again and again. (This is not excuse making or abrogating responsibility, it is the simple recognition of that there is no perfect form)

Today is 9 days, which is one week and two days, of the Omer: Gevurah of Gevurah

The form of form. Emptiness of emptiness. Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles (yes a Fiddler on the Roof reference, which was also made in You Will Experience Silence, the brilliantly funny and deep queer jewish play I saw at Dixon Place last night).

So when faced with this, the 9th day, the first thing that came to my mind was my chafing under the form when I first began to study Sogetsu Ikebana, the modern school of Japanese flower arranging. Even though Sogetsu is the most modern of the schools, the beginner starts with a basic form and does it again and again. When you look at the diagram of the form, you can see it is very, well, formal:

As you can see, the arrangement of the flowers is quite fixed. And when I first started working in this most basic of forms, if I varied an angle by so much as a degree my teacher would move it to the correct angle. If I tried to improvise something because I felt it would be a little more interesting or creative, she would correct me and move it back to the proper form. I resisted at first. And then I surrendered to it.

And I learned the freedom of form. For that matter, when I realized how truly different the arrangements looked from student to student, I was stunned. When I saw how varied this one form seemed as the materials varied from week to week, I was impressed. And when I considered that no matter what, the arrangment always looked natural, I was a disciple.

Eventually I studied enough so that I became a low level teacher in the school, and exhibited in the annual show at the Takashimaya department store in Nihonbashi.

Today is the day in which we look at the structure we give our lives, and whether we follow it and feel the freedom in that structure. Whether we resist. Whether we think of it as imposed from outside or something we joyously take on and make truly our own.

In this way, I look to this ancient Japanese practice developed by Buddhist monks to inform my experience of this ancient Jewish practice of counting the Omer and meditating on the sefirotic energy of the day. Some would consider this boundary breaking — and thus destructive of form and discipline. What do you think?

Plucking the Chrysanthemum...

...was a literary and poetic phrase in Japanese that meant to take the anal virginity of a young man. I don't think that's what the art director and copywriter in Saudi Arabia had in mind when they came up with this print ad for hemorrhoid cream:

Queer Product Watch: The Door Knob Cover

That's actually what the katakana says in this photo found on <3Yen.com: Doa Nobu Kaba. This goes to my very first experience shopping in Tokyo. I had just moved into my Western style apartment in Mita, and found that the oven was in severe need of cleaning. So I took my trusty Japanese English dictionary down to the local store and trying to put together two words to create the phrase "oven-cleaner" I came up with some very odd locutions that made no sense to the Japanese. So I threw up my hands in frustration and said in English, all I want is some oven cleaner. To which the clerk said, "Ahh, obun-kureena!"

Of course, it's true the Japanese use loan words all the time. In their own inimitable way. But this product, the door knob cover captures for me the Japanese obsession with keeping things clean and germ free. And it also captures my both silly and salacious imagination as a penis cozy.

Recession? What recession? Consumers line up for high priced pseudo-japanese kitsch in Soho.

Okay, I love the Shibuya kawaii aesthetic as much as the next Giant Robot subscriber, but I was shocked, shocked to find a line of eager shoppers a block long yesterday on Spring Street in Soho for the opening of the NYC branch of Tokidoki.

Oddly enough, I was on my way home after spending the afternoon working freelance at a Japanese agency where I sometimes find myself writing English language copy based on copy that's been translated from Japanese but that doesn't quite rise to colloquial English yet.

It was an amazing day. After all, it hit 70°F only 4 days after it had been a horrific 15° with a wind-chill that made me seriously consider snow bird status. So the streets were filled with New Yorkers throwing off the cabin fever of the winter, checking out the street art on West Broadway, and the shoes on sale at 90% off at a shop that, like so many, was going out of business.
I had never heard of Tokidoki. But the crowd felt insinctively familiar. And the line, well, what New Yorker can resist a line. So I went over to check it out. In the window were Hello Kitty handbags. Soccer balls with Tokidoki designs. And inside was the founder and head designer of Tokidoki herself, the very Italian Simone Legno. Hence the crowds of admirers hungry for expensive totems of faux-asian coolness.

I have to admit though, I loved the stuff. Just like I love all the tchatckes you can find on Takeshita Doori. Of course, the stuff on Takeshita Doori doesn't command the prices Tokidoki does. Still, I had $150 to throw away, I'd love one of the soccer balls. However, given today's economic news, it's just not an investment I am willing to make. I'm just in shock there are still so many who can and will buy one.

Ecological disaster, consumerism, animism and Japan's Ritual for the Souls of Broken Needles

February 8th is the day of the Broken Needle Festival in Japan. For more than 1500 years, people have come to temples, where in a combination of Shinto animism and Buddhist rituals for the dead, they say prayers to thank and propitiate the souls of needles used throughout the year that have broken. Why say these prayers? The Japanese believe that to simply discard a tool you have used; a tool that has given you good use; a tool that has put its soul to work for you, would be to invite the anger and rage of that soul.

 
Of course, this belief would mean that Japan is free of discarded consumerist trash. And nothing could be further from the truth. A writer over at 3yen.com noted last year that there should be a ceremony for the souls of discarded toner cartridges. This animist belief in the anger of discarded tools is at the center of one of my favorite Japanese films: Yokai Dai Senso — The Great Yokai War.

Directed by the great Takaashi Miike, the film opens on a vision of a post apocalyptic Tokyo. And shows the film's villain standing on a mountain of discarded electronics and machinery that extends to the horizon. Chanting a spell, he raises the souls of all the detritus of this throwaway culture and gives power to their rage, unleashing a very different kind of monster on the oft monster-destroyed islands of Nippon.

This villain, one Lord Kato, has been capturing the traditional spirits, the local tutelary gods and creatures of Japanese folklore and using their life force to animate and give power to Transformer-like monster mash-ups of machinery. These traditional spirits and creatures, known as Yokai, go to war against Lord Kato to save themselves, and all Japan.

The film is as brilliant an ecological allegory as Wall-E, and much more fun from my point of view. Lord Kato's lead assistant is played by Chiaki Kuriyama, known in the U.S. for her role in Kill Bill, and notoriously famous in Japan for her role in Battle Royale.

The film has all the motifs and elements found in the most popular western stories, from the Wizard of Oz, the story of King Arthur, The Never Ending Story, Peter Pan, The Lord of the Rings. You can find parallels throughout. But these motifs are shared by all humanity — you can find them cataloged in the Aarne-Thompson motif index of world folktales. And this film puts them together masterfully.

Which brings me back to the Needle Festival — known as Harikuyo. One of the Yokai is Kasabake, the umbrella monster. There are Yokai shoji screens, Yokai lamps, Yokai towels (yes, Towely from South Park has an actual folklore heritage!) and the list goes on. Of course, Yokai include animal creatures like the Kappa. And the Kirin. But because today is the Needle Festival, I wanted to take a moment to speak of the soul in the machine, the soul that lives in everyday objects.

If as a people, we truly believed in such a soul, the sea would not be filled with plastic trash, choking marine life and soiling our beaches. If as a people, we acted on such a belief, recycling — a kind of reincarnation for our tools — would be commonplace.

Yes, in the U.S. we hold no such beliefs. And in Japan, where they supposedly do hold these beliefs, the problem is only marginally better. In fact, there is little market for anything previously owned in Japan because it is believed that something of the spirit of the previous owner adheres to the object. And the object's soul takes its anger at abandonment out on the new owner. Which is why it's a steal to buy anything second-hand in Japan.

So before you throw anything away today, stop for a moment, even if you are not animist in the least, and take a moment of thanks for what use this object has given you. And consider how to give its remains back to the earth in a way that is respectful of all life on the planet. And then go to Netflix and rent The Great Yokai War.