The Sun Rises In The Evening

It's paradoxical but one of the main producers of gluten-free products is a country built on pasta. Yep, Italy produces a huge range of excellent gluten-free food; that is, except for the beer. Couldn't drink it. So was I excited when O'Brien's Brewery opened in 2007. They now supply Australia and the world with the best gluten-free beer available (declaration of interest: none), made in Ballarat, a 19th Century gold-rush city about 100 kilometers from Melbourne. I was enjoying an O'Brien's lager yesterday afternoon, and my thoughts turned to boutique beers, a phenomenon of my time on this planet. I can walk up the road from where I work to the Belgian Beer Cafe, I thought; and there are some great Belgian beers. And six of the seven Trappist beers available are made in Belgium. Which sort of made me think of Thomas Merton.
Merton was a Trappist monk, a Cistercian, a mystic, author of a 20th Century classic religious text called The Seven Story Mountain, and an expert on eastern Religions. Not bad for a bloke who became a Roman Catholic at the age of twenty-three! It is said he picked the Cistercian order because they didn't talk much. They follow the Rule of St Benedict, promulgated in the 6th century. The Rule of St Benedict is basically a set of Guidelines for monks. I wonder if he chaired a committee that produced them, wouldn't be surprised.
Thomas Merton is the best exponent and explainer of Zen Buddhism I have read. Perhaps because he understands the language of mysticism, and yet he doesn't say too much, just enough in simple terms. After all, that's Zen. Words are not considered important, they just confuse the (ultimate) picture. Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite is a collection of 10 essays. They are readable and uplifting. For example, one chapter is on Kitaro Nishido who formed what would later be called the Kyoto School of philosophy early last century. This has the makings of an impossible subject to understand for most of us, but Merton's interpretation is user-friendly, and very comforting. He writes that Nishida 'seeks to preserve the unity that exists between the consciousness and the outer world reflected in it'. And Merton goes on to make Nishida's philosophy as applicable to Zen as it is to a theistic religion. Quite a feat.
Thomas Merton starts the book with a Zen saying, known to many: 'Ride your horse along the edge of the sword, Hide yourself in the middle of the flames, Blossoms of the fruit tree will bloom in the fire, The sun rises in the evening'. It's meant to confuse, unsettle, and dispose of duality. Thank goodness Merton's book does the opposite - clears the mind, relaxes. Oops, did I write 'the opposite'? A Zen master would have whacked me on the head for that one. Beer, anyone?

There Is No Limit To This Moment

I would like to thank Fritjof Capra. Like millions of others since 1975, I own a copy of The Tao Of Physics. I have the 1982 Flamingo paperback edition, pages dog-eared and yellowed, cluttered with scribbles and highlights, re-read often. The subtitle of this book summarizes its attractiveness: 'An exploration of the parallels between modern physics and eastern mysticism'. Sounds daunting, but its relaxed, easy-going style is seductive, and by the end of the book you feel that you know it all, or, alternatively, you know nothing, but hey, there's no difference between all or nothing.
After some brief paragraphs on the Eastern religions, Capra then follows with nine brilliant chapters linking those religious or philosophical concepts to modern physics. In 'The Unity of All Things' he quotes Heisenberg: 'Natural Science (ie Physics)...is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves'. 'Beyond the World of Opposites' covers the quantum disparity between rest and movement and observation, and Capra quotes one of those frustratingly disturbing Zen sayings: 'At dusk the cock announces dawn; at midnight, the bright sun'. It's not meant to be understood, but to upset our sensibilities, sort of like quantum physics, you know, the particle is there until you try to measure it. The Void is an integral part of Buddhism, and Capra discusses this under 'Emptiness and Form' and tells us that, in physics, matter and space are inseparable. Every one of those nine short superb chapters is enthralling.
My favourite? 'Space-Time' because none of us understands infinity, which is a real drag. Capra has curved spheres and arrows and vectors, all good, but, you know, his best scientific citation comes from Huinang, a 7th Century Zen master, said to be illiterate, a most important figure of his time. Capra quotes him: 'The absolute tranquillity is the present moment. At this moment there is no limit to this moment, and herein is eternal delight'. Yeh, I don't understand it either, but it will have to do, er, for the moment.