My HEALTHY LIFE

Ha ha ha ,  I know it is utterly misleading. 00 Because I don’t have a notion of Healthy Life.

I am just living as I am. —– and just happen to be healthy   ( apparently  🙂  )

If I have to analyze any peculiar practice  which might be related to my health is ——

I’m keeping my hands, nose and throat as clean as possible —– or just wash them very often.

To keep the hands clean was especially essential to handle photographic films.

But to keep the nose clean was taught by a teacher in my junior school.  Which was to take water in

the hands and suck it in the nose, then blow it out three times ! —– All the pupils in the class were

horrified, saying it’s too dirty though I convinced at once —– it’s a good idea and very rational, why not. 🙂

So that, when ever I came back to my place, like take off shoes, to wash hand, nose and gurgle are

the automatic routine.  Though, it might be related to a sublimated Japanese Shinto Custom — keep clean.

And there is no such thinking which relate this practice to health matter exists.— Just doing it.

It is not possible to have objective comparative test of  IF-NOT.    We got only one life and I couldn’t

replicate my same life, but only having NOT washed hands, and see what would  happen.

Simple fact is I rarely get ill, nor catching Cold, Flu.  Still, I don’t know whether washing hands are anything

to do with my health.  —– very funny you may think though, I rarely use soap ! —– same as, I don’t

use washing-up liquid.   I have one in the bath-room and another in the kitchen though they last—-may be

six months or more ?   My view of the soap is —– mankind is using soap not more than one or two hundred

years.  Removing our own natural oil, then applying pig-oil with artificial fragrance, is not a good

idea and the waste of the money. —– If I were ever smelly soapless person, still  it’s not a problem at all,

since I wouldn’t come closer to others less than an arm’s length  😀

So is a shampoo, I just shower the hair removing a salt in the sweat and use a shampoo less than once in

a month.  The shampoo is notoriously bad to the head,  the reason why I still have full head of hair, in more

than three feet long  pony-tale might be because of  not using shampoo. (So, one bottle of it last years  😀  )

—-

I eat anything though, the amount has been reduced in comparison to when I was young.

( I still have the same body weight 60 Kg / 9.5 stone,since when I was 15 years old ! —– When I was

physically very active, such as climbing the mountain , eat twice amount was no wonder though, sitting on

front of key-board  blogging or making electronic circuit needs to eat less —– and I never eat chips)

For my cooking, generally I use one carrot, one onion, a grab of green or green pepper etc and 150g~ 200g

of protein, meat, chicken, fish or egg etc everything from fresh ingredients, except  fish-tin (tinned fish has

no artificial preservatives) and smoked fish or bacon (to make bacon soup ) tofu or fried tofu are the rare

processed food.  And cooking them in many different way (by the way, I don’t buy cooking oil —– oil comes

from ingredients such as chicken naturally) and eat them with rice, pasta, noodle  etc.

So, I’m eating more or less the same food every day with my own cooking —– in past 25 years ?

Buying fresh ingredients is the cheapest, but I buy a lots of not cheap fruits as well.

And cooking from the fresh ingredient may take a bit longer cooking time still, my electricity bill

for a quarter is only £40~£50  (I don’t have gas —- I knew it become expensive ) 1/3 of other people.

——

This is literally, humble life —– or some said almost a life in poverty  😀

And I don’t take any drag, never do gamble, stopped to drink alcohol , never eat junk-food nor buy

fizzy drink but drink 1.5 ~ 2 litter of the tea —– hence there may not be any cause to get ill.

( Arh, no chocolate !  😀  )

In addition,  I gave-up woman 25 years ago.  So, no psychological up and down. —– Peace ! ! !

On top of this life style,  I used to have very vigorous exercise  (which looks like dancing  😀  )

once in every week, and these days I’m still doing it, may be once twice a month.

—-

It is hard to define a reason  why  I live  without getting ill — was it thanks to my  food life, exercise regime?

But, one thing I can definitely sure is, not to ever think or worrying about it.

If there is no crime, there is no criminal law or such concept at all.  Once if somebody start to think about it

then the notion of such activity teaches the possibility or another menu to the mind.  Shall I try ?

In a same way, a notion of illness trigger the imaginal symptoms and it become noticeable.

(Noticing ? Feeling ? —– isn’t it just in the Mind ? )

Even an intellectual medical information, once it caught your attention, it remains in your mind.  And as

often you think it,  it become your long-term memory and the memory / mind deepen and goes into your

subconscious —– as subconscious is in the old cortex in the brain, with its close proximity, it start to give

an influence to hippocampus / limbic system of the brain,  where the physiological control of the body

is taking place —–> hence stress and imbalance of the hormones —–> real illness !

Mind makes people becoming ill. —– It is a vicious circle and the domino-effects.

Here the Paradox of the Buddhism again, as long as the one is bothering with the notion of Health

or Illness, no healthy life ever come.  Here require the teaching of Mishin again.

So, better start Healthy Life when you are healthy and having full of vigor, and make it routine.

To keep the same healthy routine is far easier than to change a bad habit or regime.

___/\___

—

Virtue of DHARMA — What ?

Deep in the bottom of Dharma, there is the Physics.  And the basis of Physics, there are Atoms

which behaves or having its tendency according to their structure such as the number of

Electrons they got.  And the Atoms are made by the Nuclear particles, which were made by

the Sub-particles —– and those Sub-particles seemed consist even smaller Sub-particles —– and so on.

( According to the theories. —– Yet, nobody knows the truth, or it seems to be the unknowable.   🙂  )

I don’t think I need to listing-up the names of those and pretend to know anything about it.

Just leave the matter to the Nuclear Physicists —– as I’m not.  I’m only an outsider and merely qualified

to ask a question to the superficial phenomena.

Yet this question must be the ghastly fundamental serious one.

” Is DHARMA virtuous ? ”

M m m ———— So far what I found, the answer is Yes.

But if we take a  Humanitarian stance,  it is not necessary benign.

This was the reason why Buddha bluntly defined it in his Four Noble Truth, The life is suffering,

getting ill and get old and die, even though we are covered under the Dharma.

——

Long since a question of where the notion of Virtue in the Buddhism come from, was a conundrum to me.

The general morality is a necessity to keep the society’s unity and the peace, in other words it is the

obvious commonsense though, when it comes to a critical tricky situation, such as who should survive

when they faced to a crisis, blink of mass extinction, demise of the tribe such as a famine etc,

the compassion to others etc —– where those human virtue came from ?

To make it as a human duty to be compassionate, which appeared in the Buddha’s teachings from  its

earliest period, together with Four Noble Truth —– Its suggest, Buddha was fully aware that Dharma

is not necessarily kind to the man, hence need to take our own measure of helping each other.

Otherwise, Buddha would have said  “Ask your God to help you”  like all other religion.

But Buddha did know, No such convenient things in this world.  Buddha’s eyes were seeing

much larger picture ( Not having the man in the center, but the Harmony of the Universe in total)

—–

To see the nature and its evolutionary history, I can see the Dharma’s incredible kindness towards

the extremely rare existence —– the LIFE.

What sort of coincidence combined the some Atoms and created basic structural element like

amino-acid, and then simple virus / bacteria kind of Life form.

Far beyond the mathematical probability, while against the Principle of Entropy, yet congregated selected

Atoms and Molecules and to create Life, could not occurred in accident. ( —– If it was an easy occurrence

in chemistry, with today’s technology, artificial Lives could have been created already. )

Any moment in the history, in any global event, this process could have been halted and the Life could be

extinct long ago. —– But amazingly this history on the Earth continued till now —- billion of years,

as if there was a will to make it continue.

—

To make it continue, it is necessary the system of the existences has to be balanced,

ie; sustainable in today’s buzz word —– in other words intricate equilibrium has to be met.

This is What Dharma mean, and Buddha meant —– as only a part of the Dharma, man’s life

couldn’t be alone and trouble–free —– In fact, the man’s greed and the arrogance to expect and

imagine  ” It should be trouble–free”  is the cause of trouble in its own.

The balance is for the total system, not for the man’s convenience, since human is only a minute part of it.

Among the all the existences ( Dharma ), only but  the human, is having their own mind and the mean

to go against the Dharma’s Rule.

And this arrogant mind, greed is expecting more than the fair share of  which  Dharma allocated to man.

That is why the Buddha’s teachings says, to be humble and abandon the Ego / Self, in order to

achieve manifestation of the Dharma within —– Abandon the Self = Mushin ( Mind of No-Mind )

which mean let the Subconscious ( the reflection of the Dharma —> Please Refer to previous post )

to rule your life.

Like a compassion is in one’s Emotion / Subconscious (reflection of the Dharma ) inherently Virtuous. So, the

Virtue in the Buddhism teachings is not from the God or convention of the society,  but it is the Dharma itself. 

Hence, the teachings of Buddha is ” Not against, or struggle with Dharma, but live with it,

live in accordance to the Dharma.  It’s mean, observe it by yourself, and aware and listen the

Dharma deep inside of you.   And to live with the Dharma in Mushin, prevails the Virtue in you.

This is the Enlightenment, which lead you to the Nirvana”

—

When man-kind violated the Rules and destroy the balance of the Earth’s Climate Equilibrium,

the sea stream changed its course, and caused the heavy rain here and there.

Simply, the Dharma is adjusting new Equilibrium —– and, it happened to be in the Australia or Brazil.

It looks as if the Earth is intentionally giving a revenge. —– No it is not, it just happen to be there, where

no human used to live —– human is the one invaded the land.

Don’t exercise your Ego and Greed, and impose your own Idea. 

Virtue is not in one’s mind, but in the DHARMA.

Here a Paradox again, you can’t deliberately exercise Virtue, it’s appears in your Mushin.

___/\___

—

SUBCONSCIOUS again ? — is it a Face ?

Collection of images here are supposed to be a face, picked up by the Google Picasa Face-recognition

program.  Google is expecting us to make up a Web-album —– effectively  my own facebook.

Obviously Google want to tap-into the social-networking market therefore,  listing up the faces appeared

in my cyberspace —— then connecting the face to my Email etc by the name, to utilize their vast amount of

the information about my contacts, my interests, my search records, which they accumulated over the years.

So, Google can sell the AD ” Not just personally targeted, but also to their contacts / friends too ”

—— though, I’m not interested in that kind at all, yet still Google is keep scanning and making a face

collection without my permission ( I can’t remove this program —– do you know how ? ) while making

a number of mis-recognitions.—– So, I got an opportunity to collect ” False images”. 🙂

Some of those are looks like faces —– I can see too, though some are not at all, and puzzling how on earth

this image could be mistaken as a human face  / what made a computer to think this is ?

—-

I don’t remember the detail of  whose report though, there was a psychologist’s experiment, which showed

even a few months old baby can react to the photographic image of such as a tiger, and came to a

conclusion that the human has genetic memory of dangerous predator. We do not expect that a small

baby has learned knowledge of tiger yet—– its mean the reaction has to came from instinct, in another word,

its visual memory / basis of reference information is in our subconsciousness.

——– Whether it was a Genetic memory, Proto-image or just a mistake, we are very responsive to

the image of the face. And the Face recognition program which the human possess, seems to be a

very old / primordial program in the Old Cortex, hence it can function even a time of newborn baby.

——

In this blog, you might thought, I am using the word ” Subconsciousness ” as if it is a magic keyword.

But how do we know, such invisible, therefore unaccountable memories and the process can be reliable,

let alone a myth of Dharma is there or not. (Please read “Mistake in Philosophy — Answer in Zen” together )

——- The reason why I picked up Google Picasa program was, —– at least it is a rigid visible

counter reference. — In comparison,we don’t remember how many times ever mistook an image as a face,

let alone to know what % of probability.   So, this program showed a counter sample of the case when the

recognition was done by an artificial intelligence / computer automatic pattern, face recognition without

having any cross-reference (such as a flow of logic ” If it is a face, where is the body —-> false or true ).

So that it would show the worst case as a bottom line <—- Human got to do the better.  🙂

So far, Google Picasa picked up about 40 false images of faces out of 50,000 facial photos ( plus, may be

twice as much number of the graphic images in the saved Net files)—— 0.08% ~ 0.03% of False rate.

Statistically negligible figure ? —– still, one mistake could change one’s life, therefore significant ?

This is a very rough science or one might say, it is not even a science at all though, this is a DIY  Zen Blog,

hence, I would say, it is convincing enough to conclude, human can sense and able to accumulate

quite accurate information of the surroundings / environment. (Even a machine can do with

negligible false rate, why not a human)

—– Are you bemused ?   But this is the situation in our mind.

___/\___

—

Mistake in Philosophy — Answer in ZEN

You might heard a story to extract latent memory from a witness or surviving  victim, by way of hypnotism,

such as a profile of assailant or even from pass-by, the car number parked on the street then.

The car number may be utterly trivial and useless to a pass-by, still we may remember surprising detail.

They are the Subconscious Memory or our Hidden Data bank.

When we consciously watch the scene, we only pick up the information which we got interest.

And this selection is not consistent.  It will be biased by the preceding event, experience or a suggestion.

If you are interested in fashion, you may pay great deal of attention to the shop windows and

somebody’s style, but remember nothing else, as the mind was just stuck there.

But when our mind is free and open we can see the scene as it is, and able to memorize everything.

Of cause those data are not just visual, but also the information from other sensors, and the internal feeling,

subconscious thoughts as well, which has been accumulated since you are born.

From those immense amount of data, only minute part of them, which  matches to the precast category or

notion, it become conscious memory and it can be transferred to higher legion of the brain (New Cortex)

to be used for the conscious thinking process.

—– Hence, the data available to such as the linguistic, logical thinking process, are only a miniscule part of

the whole data bank, the answer or conclusion we make is always inadequate and ” Not the exact Truth ”

which we knew it. —–  So. we always say ” Don’t think in your head. Find the answer in your heart”.

—

It is obvious, our Hidden Memory, Subconscious Data bank retain the whole information of our environment,

and ourself.  In other words, the faithful picture of the world and the information of ourself / True Self.

And they are not just a static images but their dynamism, tendency and the Rules,how the things

work, and how this True Self has been behaving and prefer what etc.

Its mean, The Dharma / The whole existence and its Rules within, are all mirrored  here.

This is the very meaning of ” Everybody possess the Dharma inside”.

And literally the Self is a part of it, the Dharma, and as everything in there are without any

partition, no separate awareness watching the Self or Subject, there is no feeling of alienation.

———- Many years ago, somebody asked me whether a mad-man can have The Dharma in him as well.

I said, yes.  Because, even a mad-man got the same body and its function, feel the same pain,feel the

same hunger, see the same, hear the same, and may have more or less the same emotion — the process

of those information may be different, so that from the same image of black cat,  he may interpret it as

a Devil —– still, his Data bank having much more accurate picture of the world than his twisted thinking.

In the same context, even an idiot who lack the higher process in the brain, still having more or less

the same Data in his subconscious, it is nothing but the Dharma.

—

When we think, quite often we use a notion which we have imported ( in other words not emanated from our

own Data bank, but intellectually learned ), since it didn’t have the original source and the process to

deduce, it couldn’t have an accord to the person.  As a matter of fact, even a notion the person knew well

still,as its using the notion of the words, it is no more than a proxy.  The complexed idea having the situation

even worse.  Even an idea constructed from the own Data bank (which came from own experiences and the

observation) when it was  imposed to the phenomenon, it doubles the uncertainty. —— Observer and

be Observed.—– The word (a notion) HAPPINESS is just a name of category, so that, its realities has

millions of variations, and an observer is just one of 40 billions.

The certainty is only the statistical probability. There can not be any absoluteness exist.  Despite this,

Philosopher often impose his own idea to interpret a phenomenon.  Hoping, his words can covey

what he conceived. (and expecting others can guess the same )

Against this fundamental jeopardy, Zen abandons the conversion to the notion and the words.

( Hence, relying on the Direct Transmission)

And abandons the stance to be an observer, or more precisely, abandon to be an observer as an Ego.—

When facing a phenomenon or others,

Zenist just open his mind in Mushin. (without Ego without Thinking—– hence no conversion)

And leave the matter to the perception in his Subconscious = Dharma’s judgement or reaction.

(As the Observer and be Observed are both naked, both of the Dharma fuse together.

And the equilibrium will be spontaneously prevailed in the accordance of the Dharma)

This is the Ichijo (Oneness) in Zen —— the answer to the jeopardy of the Dualism.

___/\___

—-

Mistake in Philosophy

The most fundamental and fatal mistake of the western Philosophy lies in their basis of Dualism,

and seemingly it is originated from their notion of the God.

Against this notion, the SELF = ME became its counter notion as rigid as the God.

As the concept of Self is there, the Self is the one who see the subject ( of cause, you may say, who else

saw and talked about the subject in his book, in his philosophy.  And say, Is this a Zen Mondo ?  🙂 )

( Shut up  🙂 )  As long as the subject is somebody else, there is no problem, hence scientific, objective

rationality works well and yelled this impressive western technological civilization.

Because of the objectivity is Selfless in its definition. Anyhow, the nature and its phenomena,

physics are there before human existence. We are just the observer regardless whoever the Self.

—

But when the Self try to see the Self ( or True Self what so ever the context ) and the phenomena around it.

The perpetual question of  Who is the Self came into the play. Therefore, the matter related to

themselves, psychology, human science, social phenomena, etc, it always plagued by its view-point = Self.

In fact, from ancient Plato to modern Phenomenology etc, they misbelieved that they can objectively see

the human affair and able to construct the philosophy as well.  And they stuck in the cul-de-sac.

Because even an  Atheist, started exactly the same stance, The Dualism. —– God and Me / Me and

the Subject / Observer and be Observed,  the uncertainty of the Self is still persistent,

hence its stance of view point,  reliability itself is in doubt.

The fundamental trouble of this stance is, we can’t objectively observe the Self or the phenomena

attributed by ourself. —–  we always end-up in unseeable and unknowable.

On the end everybody just resigned to say  ” Don’t bother, there are thousands of truth ”   🙂

So that, some Philosopher try to grasp this unknowable with the notion of  Transcendental though, made

further  mistake try to convert it to explanatory words by thinking. ( You may say, What else ?  😀  )

This was the very situation, which Buddha encountered soon after he got his enlightenment,

Should I teach this to others or not.  Can this be transmittable by the words ?

( This is why, the Buddha’s teaching has been conveyed by the practice and metaphor )

—

While we are thinking, most of its process ( some says 90% of it ) are taking place in our

subconsciousness. —– And so-called Self is a mere temporally mock-up model by guess-work, since it

never stays the same, moment to moment and never rationally configurable like our thinking process.

Hence True Self which reside in our subconscious is ever invisible and remained undefinable.

This was the reason why Buddha said  ” Don’t bother there is no such thing like Self exists”  :-D.

The situation was made even harder, as the basis of our thinking are also contained in the immense

amount of the Data or information which we accumulated without aware of its existence.

—– so, am I talking hopeless ?  Am I giving cold water to the Philosopher’s pleasure to express themselves ?

The answer is again in the Buddha’s words ” Don’t take a word, think yourself “

And to against the fundamental flaw of Dualism, the Zen giving the answer ” Ichijo ”  Oneness.

In Ichijo we can overcome the alienation of the subject, alienation of the Self.

The barrier between observer and be observed disappear.

( Which I’m going to talk further in the next post )

___/\___

—

Proto-IMAGE

Most of the optical vision in human eyes had been well researched

and we believe ” Seeing is believing”

despite of nobody knows what the others are actually seeing it,  in absolute term.

( You may already know or you can find hundreds of false-vision, illusion trick samples in the Net.

What we believe, we are seeing is the mare reconstructed image in the brain, which may be a false. )

—

I used to have a friend who was a color-blind.  When he told me at an art class, while painting a land-scape,

he is painting a tree as green by the color name written on the paint tube.

He couldn’t see green or red,  neither he can describe whether those green and red looks like gray or

another color what so ever.  Since nobody taught him what it is, so, he couldn’t have a word to describe it.

—– and we, lucky to have Pan-chromatic vision couldn’t guess or imagine how the world looks to him.

Our eyes itself are rather simple optical device, there is no color filter hence the image projected to the

retina is in full color though, the sensors, nerves and the visual cortex in the brain are too complexed,

far beyond the today’s science and the technology.  So that we can’t tap-into the brain and extract

an image what color blind is actually seeing the world.

With the same reason, a topics what I’m going to write here may not able to give an objective proof

or to give a demonstration to others though, if anybody else can find the same phenomenon,  soon

or later it would be recognized as a common phenomenon.

—–

Once before, when I went back Japan, I found the mountains of duster-cloth (which we call  Zoukin)

piled up in my family house.  Each of them, the old cloth has been cut to the size and hand stitched.

They were made by my mother.  When she faced the condition of her hand became stiff and feel a pain

with her age,  she decided to fight back.  Instead to have a medication or pain-killer kind, she started to

make Zoukin by hand stitching them, using old cloths she had been accumulated over the years.

—– Among such Zoukin, I found the one I know very well.  I knew it, but not in my ordinary memory.

—– Time to time, I give a massage to my eyes,  by lightly pressing the eye-balls with my finger.

(While eyes closed, of cause  😀  )

Under light pressure, in the dark field of my vision, the same image of distinct pattern always appears.

The pattern is like a line print of four petals flower.  It appear only first moment, a second or two and

dissolved into the dark.

Astonished to see the very pattern on the cloth,  I asked my mother, what was it ?

She told me, that cloth was a Yukata ( thin, light Kimono) she used to wear when I was a new-born baby.

The pattern appearing in my eyes was the printed pattern on the Yukata which I saw when I was a baby.

The first image I saw, has been burnt into my eyes.

This is the Proto-Image of my life.

—

For a new-born baby animal,  to recognize and register  who is the mother, into their brain

is the most crucial matter in their survival. (If it was the case of Zebra / the black stripe pattern,

and the Penguin / the voice, and so on)

Likewise,  we human has the same instinct —– we capture the image of the first sight, assuming

the person whom the baby saw, is the mother, and the key image was literally burnt into the vision.

—–

As I wrote in an early post [ Subconscious Data Bank ], we are accumulating a loads of information

without even aware of it.  And the Data Bank in our Subconscious may contain even the Genetically

implanted information. ( Experiment of the psychologist found that even the few months old baby showed

the reaction of alert when he (she) saw the image of tiger (not a toy but real one)—–only the explanation

is, it must be a genetically implanted memory )

—— and those information is affecting our way of thinking, decision-making or preference etc.

But, how about this Proto-Image ?   Would this one image, direct the one’s life ?

May be the image of four petals flower made me to pay more attention to the flower —— yet it need to

have more research.  And the Internet must be a good forum to exchange the information.

—– So, if you were intrigued, just try to see whether you have the same kind of burnt into image

in the bottom of your eyes. ( It takes only few second to test.  🙂  )

And if you found one, please post a comment here.

—

Make Rice-Cake in 15 Min’

O-Mochi, Japanese Rice-Cake is an essential ingredient in the Japanese New Year.

Without eating it cooked in O-Zouni, we don’t feel New Year has arrived.

As it is deeply imprinted to us with the strongest memory, the taste, it makes a part of the

fundamental Ethos to be a Japanese.  It is in deed, a part of the Collective Subconsciousness.

Imprinted into the subconsciousness almost a hard-wired program, it is the imperative.

( So, the Buddhism is relying on this mechanism of the human psyche )

A matter of fact, Rice-Cake is common in throughout southeast Asia.  Essentially it is a pounded

glutinous rice, hence it is a very very sticky soft cake and some time it was made sweet.

( By the way, when the cell of starch was pounded and broken, the gluten will be released and the long

chain of protein entangled and it become sticky, so that if you pound even baked potato, it

will become very sticky. —- try this in your home  🙂  )

When this rice-cake was dried and baked with soy-source flavor, it become rice-cracker, O-Senbei.

—–

Since I arrived to this country,  I tried to make rice-cake myself. —— I’ve steamed glutinous rice,

or boiled it and try to pound etc etc without success.

Every year when the season came,  I tried different way and on the end,   with a feeling of defeat and

resignation,  I did the most inconceivable cheat (to the Japanese psyche) —– use a glutinous rice powder

just mixed with water and heated in a microwave cooker. —- m m m, wao !  ( not Jaw-Dropping  😀  )

I found supplely sexy white body laying in a rice bowl and she was so soft and sticky  😀 —

She was a perfect Mochi  😀 ( In reality, I’ve experimented the amount of water and the setting of the

cooker from the Mochi to completely dried up and burned into the rice bowl to a soggy gluey staff)

Since I found this technique,  I accustomed to make the Mochi in a square plastic food container, or make

a mix in a bowl then cover it with prepared Red-bean sweet paste and heat it —- to make an  An-Mochi  🙂

Traditionalist would say, it is a dreadful cheat though —- so far non of the Japanese ever noticed

difference and didn’t aware it until I told them.  ( Anyhow it is the genuine glutinous rice  😀  )

So,  If anybody want to try,  here is the suggestion. You need to get Glutinous Rice Powder from Chinese shop.  One pound bag ( would be about £1 ) may

make more than two-pound ( 1 Kg ) of  Rice-cake.  The size of a cake in the top photo is 2″x1.5″x 0.5″ —–

half of a bag may make 9 of such cakes ( Using 4.5″x 6.5″ food container ) and it would be a good

amount for 3 to 4 people’s meal.  ( One such cake is equivalent to one bowl of a boiled rice ).

To start, mix the powder with small amount of water, then gradually adding the water to make proper mix.

It should be more soggy than a bread making dough.  Still, the mix shouldn’t run down even if the

container was hold 45 degree but it allow the air bubble to come up slowly when you hit the bottom.

( You need to hit many times, and pierce the bubbles —— or it will blow-up when heated  🙂  )

The mix should be less than 1/2″ deep in a container.  Never attempt to make thick big one  😀

( Instead,  you can stuck together many pieces of cooked  Mochi to make it big —->Kagami-Mochi )

When the mix is ready, put a cover and put into Microwave cooker,  Med’ High —– 5 minutes.

( You may better watching inside of cooker —– if the rid of container

was blow up, Switch off. )

When it was cooked, then have a good use of your brain to take the

cake out of container.  Use of potato starch would save the stickiness.

Cut the cake in your taste.  And it is good to eat straight. —— wrap up

with Sea-Weed (Nori ) with a cake a bit wet with Soy-source.

Or put into a  Soy-source based soup ( with chicken what so ever)

like dumpling.  It called O-Zouni.

Which ever the cooking,  it’s better to give a bit of baked skin which

would enhance crispy flavor.  Japanese use charcoal fire to bake them,

though,  I found a use of gas-torch is pretty handy and effective too.  Ha ha ha  😀

( The truth is, my electric grill has been used for storage of food staff, and full-up —– sorry )

To make O-Mochi from the Glutinous rice powder is, not only it is much cheaper but unlike

plastic wrapped Japanese Kiri-Mochi, it is free from any artificial additives and white breach

——- since, dry powder needs no preservatives.

Once you found your formula,  mixing and cooking wouldn’t take more than 15 minutes.

So, try O-Zouni.  And have a flavor and taste of Japanese New Year.

___/\___

—-

Calligraphy — Cacography

A friend, who studied Japanese but struggling to write in Japanese asked me about the sample

New Year’s card design I’ve posted here few days ago —– ” Writing  of those card looks terrible.

Is Japanese these days couldn’t write properly because they no longer hand-write but use key-board ?”

” I don’t think so.  Some of them sending me beautifully hand-written letters.  And the writing on the sample

cards may be done by a good professional calligrapher” —— ” What, are they done by professional ?”

” Yes, I’m sure this person can write in  pretty square formal style as well though, —— think,

receiving  New Year’s Greeting from close friends, do they  want to see a card looks like a formal notice

from officials ? —– How relaxed or polite and formal, the commonsense is the same to western culture.

The choice of a birthday card to your friend or to company boss would be different here isn’t it ? ”

———- Give a close look to the sample cards, top one and the bottom card,  you  may realized that

the first three lines on top card and the four lines on the bottom card, the writing is identical.

( By the way, the writing starts from the right to left.  Hence I meant, three vertical lines on the right )

Its indicates, the graphic designer used the same resource of the writing and composed those two

cards —— its mean,  it was not his own casual writing, but it was there as the special resources.

And the calligrapher who did the assignment treated this as an art, hence he did rather funny writing.

It’s not for a solemn occasion but joyful one.  It’s a Happy New Year.  😀

—

Doing artistic calligraphy is a very special skill of the art.  While writing the same letter, the movement

of the blush and the force to push on the paper makes different boldness, etc etc,  million of resulting

differences on the line, hence the written letter gives different impression, on top of the letter’s own

meaning.  When the impression enhancing the meaning of the letter itself,  it makes the art.

A letter of the Grace written in smooth flowing line, or the Power written with bold, and blunt movement

of the blush, will give distinctive impression and it would strike the viewer’s subconsciousness.

———- Around my life, strangely there were many calligrapher. (Though, I was called Kana-kugi  😀  )

My grand father was a calligrapher and having its line of blood, my father and sister had pretty good

hand.  And an  AD / POP planing company where I worked for short time had started by the group of the

calligrapher as a lettering, font design studio , hence I had plenty opportunities to see them at work.

” The requirement of the assignment, the concept in mind, then just face a blank sheet of paper and put

blush on it.  The blush start to run as if he got his own mind.  My hand is just giving a support for his

movement.  And the letter prevailed as if it was there before hand ” —— m m m ?  What an explanation.

I was young (!) and hate irrational magic or mambo-jumbo like my father’s Buddhism then.  It was out of

my comprehension, though after learned what is the structure of the mind and the Zen —— now I know.

The meaning of the letter will be read by the brain, but the style of writing can hit the guts straight.

———- If you have seen a Chinese film ” Hero” you might remember, a master calligrapher wrote

one huge red-letter SWORD which was then hanged behind of the king (who became the Emperor)

the letter  was in the ancient form,  so that the Chinese calligrapher has even more choice to express

the meaning.  It was a very impressive powerful calligraphy. (—- I want to have a poster.   🙂 )

—-

You may feel strange though,  I found the psyche or deep psychology in the Calligraphy and the

Haiku, even the Art of Pablo Picasso are all having the common factor —– Zen.

—– Once Picasso said, art is easy but to stay in the mind of child is not easy.

An episode of Picasso —– One day he asked a carpenter to make a small structure and he drawn a

sketch with each dimensions on it.  When the carpenter measured the sketch, he found the drawing has

the exact dimension down to the mm accuracy.  —— and the Picasso’s blue period paintings are

well-known with its accurate realism.

How the same painter, who got such exact eyes and the skill, could produce notoriously deformed

paintings and especially such as like his last series Las Meninous —– almost like a child’s doodling.

—– Haiku master Basho taught the way to create Haiku, is to capture ” Wabi and Sabi” though,

in his later life, he reached and created the Haiku in ” Karomi ” ( light-heartedness ).

It is exactly the same in calligraphy.  All down to the same matter, liberation of the mind —- freedom

without the impediment of the thinking, mind = Mushin ( mind of no-mind ) in  Zen term.

( In Zen, this freedom of creation was called in the state of Jizai )

Of cause, not all of them even know the Zen, and the creativity is not the monopoly of the Zen.

Zen is only using  the inherent state of the mind or subconscious, common to all the human being.

( Zen is the one who elucidated and established the methodology.  Like a phenomenon of fire —– the

science elucidated the oxidizing mechanism, hence we are able to know how to use and control it now)

—-

Starting with exacting discipline, then free the mind and free the hand to write the letters inspired

by the occasion or the meaning of the letter —– freedom like a child’s imagination.  So, it looks almost

like a scribble of a child —— on the thin line between Calligraphy and the Cacography. 😀

This is the Art.

( Yet, distinguish them, you may need to have seen million letters of good and bad one beforehand )

___/\___

—

Healing POWER

There is a widely believed healing effect to stay in the nature, especially wooded forest.

And, I just picked up interesting news about another way to get Healing —– 🙂

An American Holly Wood actress, Helena Bonham Carter said that she found, to cleaning her kitchen

having good healing power, hence she stopped to go healing session as cleaning has even better effect.

On this news program, two psychologists gave their responses.

One was very negative, saying don’t believe, cleaning the kitchen is nothing but a chore.

And the other was much more positive and said, to have nice clean kitchen is a pleasure and it can be a

good exercise too.

—–

Very interesting, —– because, provably the purpose of this blog is all condensed in here.

In the Buddhism, related story is in Churi Pantac ( in Japanese Shuri Bantok ) the one who was

directed by Buddha to sweep the ground of Deer Park, and his Enlightenment 10 years later.

On the beginning, he might not like to sweep the garden while other disciples are in the session to

listen the Buddha’s teachings. ( He had learning difficulty )

So, he might have started his work as a hated chore with frustration and a resentment though.

Five years later, he might be even tired to think about his complaint and became humble.

Nine years later, he might have become expert to sweep the garden and even able to do all the

task while eyes closed, as all the works became almost automatic.

Then, ten years later, he became aware, he is the man to make the garden spotlessly clean,

where the greatest Teacher, Buddha to walk.

What is the honor and the pleasure !

With this deep satisfaction and the dedication to the Buddha, what else of the

Nirvana will be awarded to him ?   And Buddha knew him reached the enlightenment.

—–

A question to you.  Why you are here in this world, and happen reading this ?

Did you expect to find smart short-cut to get enlightenment here ?

Do you think you can live while picking a cherry avoiding anything else ?

Still, you must know there are lots of burdens in the life, troubles, pains—– and is this

the reason why you want to pick a cherry as much as possible for your pleasure ?

—— Does it mean, you are having two lives, one is in pain and the other with pleasure ?

And is this alienation, double faced life is the reality of the life, you think ?

You are totally wrong.  Where is your true self and the totality ?

For some, cooking is a pleasure and for most of them eating is pleasure, but never the cleaning.

Though, other than few millionaire, doing shopping, cooking, eating, then cleaning is the part of the life.

As long as the one is thinking to pick a cherry, the one can not get the totality / wholeness of the life,

not mention piece or happiness.  In fact such life is one part entangled  by the vicious Karma and

other part is drowned in the hunger of the desire to have pleasure.

This is why the woman (in this case, its happen to be an actress Helen ) found to regain the totality of

the life —— makes her feel healing.

It is the same kitchen, the same cups, same dishes, same washing basin —— do the same every time

every day is exactly the practice of the Buddhism.  Soon, the one can learn the way to be in Mushin,

and the kitchen get clean, ready for next comfortable cooking. —— what anyone want more pleasure.

Who can  expect a peace-full happy life living in a dirty chaos, let alone to reach enlightenment.

Because of the deep psychological / spiritual meaning behind, the superficial description “cleaning”

may give wrong impression, the core matter is all those processes in the mind or in the brain.

To start with cleaning, she gain the state of the mind, Mushin, and gain the understanding of

the totality of her life and her state of existence —– she is fulfilling the given roll to be Helen,

and becoming a part of the Dharma.

To be in this pathway, hence she can feel be in the right way, What more of healing the one needs.

And to follow Buddha’s pathway what more confidence and the pleasure there.

I guess, this actress may have some Buddhist’s guidance in her previous healing session, hence

it was not difficult for her to find the way —– Which, I may say ” Cleaning Zen ”  🙂

—– So, you may see, to have clean kitchen, a pleasure to have clean life and the comfortable cooking

is not just a chore,—— far from it, it can be a good pathway to the enlightenment. This is true.

You can start the same in New Year. ( Begin with clean-up New Year’s eve party’s mess  😀  )

___/\___

—

GREETING

——-

——————————————————— Parties started week ago

—————————————————— and I saw beautiful full moon

——————————————————— but missed lunar eclipse.

—————————————————— Still we passed Winter solstice.

——————————————————– Shining sun will come back.

—————————————————————— as usual  😀

———————————————–No big issue here, just enjoy the season. —————————————- No big issue here.

———————————————————————- ___/\___

—–