Casio G-Shock G7301B-3V

According to Lee Segall,

“A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.”

In my case, I should perpetually be in question!  OK, but I don’t believe time truly exists.  So I don’t really care what time it is.  The sun is my favorite indicator.  It’s what matters to me in my little Zen “retreat” mountain existence!  Nevertheless, to attempt to fit in with the rest of society, I do succumb to using time…

The watch I’ve been wearing lately is a solar-powered Casio G-Shock model number G7301B-3V.

My review:

For me, this G-Shock has the perfect combination of functions, toughness, and looks.

With the accuracy of quartz watches today, I felt no burning desire to have the atomic time setting feature–so why pay for it?!

This watch has a great countdown timer with a variety of functions including auto-repeat, warning signals, for example.

It allows 5 alarms–one that has snooze.  Love this feature, although it’s not loud enough to wake up to.

It’s a big watch, but still fits my small wrist.  The whole design looks nice with a subdued brushed dark steel mixed with black plastic design.

The position of the light button is ideal because you can’t accidentally set it off by bumping the watch.

The watch also has dual time that is easy to set and reset with one button press.  Nice if you travel much.

The little digital dials at the top show battery strength (nice!), alarm functions and time (5 sec?) intervals look OK, but are really hard to read for the alarm and I have good eyes.

The band is flexible, very rugged and comfortable enough to wear to bed if desired.

Overall, I think this is an excellent watch and value.  It’s perfect for my daily needs, but taste plays a big role when choosing a watch!

Specifications:

Brand Name:	Casio
Model number:	G7301B-3V
Part Number:	G7301B-3V
Dial window material type:	Mineral
Clasp:	Buckle
Case material:	Resin
Case diameter:	45 millimeters
Case Thickness:	15 millimeters
Band material:	Resin
Band length:	mens
Dial color:	grey and black
Movement:	Quartz
Water resistant depth:	660 Feet (200 Meters)
Warranty Type:	Manufacturer

Morning Snow

Morning snow gliding down,
Touching the peaks of mountain pines.
Have I missed something important my friend?
For this is happiness,
Nestled deep in the forest.
Embraced by nature!
What is summer without winter,
Birth without death?
You say this winter is long — it is hard.
When I awoke this morning,
It had just begun.

This Present Moment

Today, just one thing:

THIS PRESENT MOMENT!

It’s all we ever have.  Live it fully, accept it fully (including yourself and others) and you will be happy.  Drop your obsessions with becoming. Realize BEING. There’s nowhere to go, because you’re already there.  There’s nothing to do, because it’s already done.

If change is necessary, don’t hesitate!

So whatever you do or are, don’t lose this precious moment…your life…

Blessings!

God is Light

Before my agnostic and atheistic readers protest, let me explain my position!

As some of you know, I grew up Methodist so that certainly influences my mind and heart.  I won’t deny it.  BUT, I fully consider myself a committed student of the Zen path.  So I know the notion of a Creator God is not Zen.  However, the notion that God is not Zen clearly points toward God as well!  God is not Zen because he is Zen!  “Ultimate Reality” is the closest Zen may approach to the “Super God” Westerners imagine.  My notion of a supreme deity might be described a bit like pantheism or more accurately panentheism.  Yet, I tend to relate to God on a personal level as well as through the wonders of Nature.  The personal part feels natural simply because I am a person!  Remember Wilson on Cast Away?!

My view of the world is essentially scientific and naturalistic.  So I agree with the hypothesis of the “Big Bang” as well as the Theory of Evolution (BTW: The scientific usage of ‘theory’ does not mean it’s a guess but a best explanation or fact).  So I do not need a creator god in my world view.  However, to me the Infinite is not only creator but the created.  Where did the Big Bang come from?  If I say God, it is very reasonable to ask, “Then where did God come from?”  To which I know all the typical Christian answers…  I was a very dedicated and well-read Christian.  We end where we started!  To say God always was is no different than saying the Universe always was.  Again, no need for a creator god to explain the world.  The Universe may simply exist.  Also, like a circle, it may have no ultimate beginning or end…only relative beginnings and endings.  Like the cycles of our seasons on Earth.

So God can die, but he is never dead and is always rising from the dead.  Eh-hem… With this end of this rambling introduction, I will share with you one of my favorite Bible verses, which also happens to be very Masonic as well.

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. – 1 John 1.5

Maybe the ambiguity of this verse makes it particularly suited to my view of the Infinite, but to me it says a lot more by saying less.  Simply: God is light! We can take this verse scientifically and spiritually.  E=MC^2 and then of course the ancient concept of all mystics that true Being is Light, brilliant light and Oneness with All.

In parting, I’ll share a quote from the late, great scientist Carl Sagan:

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

It may be interesting to speculate, but in the end the only spiritual liberation is from the mind and its incessant stream of noise, opinions, obsessions, views, and so on.  So we’ve come full circle.  If you disbelieve in any god or strongly believe in the existence of a god, it changes nothing of the fact.  Those are simply our thoughts…just thoughts and feelings…

Whatever your place on the journey, may you be well, may you be happy!

The Ideal Freemason

“A Freemason should be a man of honor and of conscience, preferring his duty to everything beside, even to his life; independent in his opinions, and of good morals, submissive to the laws, devoted to humanity, to his country, to his family; kind and indulgent to his brethren, friend of all virtuous men, and ready to assist his fellows by all means in his power.”

—Albert Pike

Suffering Melts to Light

If you know what what path you are on,
It isn’t it.

Standing opposed to life’s events,
You scheme to escape or overcome.

The beginning belongs to the end.
This is utter despair, or brilliant Light.

Isn’t this the realization of Nothingness?  Void of form?
Yet all is contained in this moment.

Thank you to suffering, thank you adversity.
You smile at me, I see All.

Linksys Routers & WildBlue

After years of decent service, my Linksys WRT54G wireless router started acting up after getting WildBlue satellite Internet service.  Before that, I’d had Comcast cable and Qwest DSL at various times all without trouble.   After many years, was it just my router’s time to go?  That’s what I figured, and after investing hours and hours working on the hobbling WRT54G over the last several months it was time to move on.  Being an ex-computer programmer, it’s very hard to put down a tech problem without solving it, but this time I exercised my discipline to enjoy the freedom of not needing to understand or fix this router problem.  So I took it outside and ended its misery (really mine).

After surfing around for a good replacement router, I picked up a Linksys WRT54GS2 just to show “no hard feelings” for my old nagging Linksys router.  Got it home and began to set it up.  The LAN worked fine, but couldn’t get outside to the Internet.  So I disconnected the cable and hooked a laptop directly to the WildBlue satellite modem…boom, Internet was fine.  Connected the computer back up to the router and…no Internet!  After doing this nonsense for a couple hours, decided to surf around and see if anyone else was having similar troubles with my combination of equipment.  Not surprisingly, yes, others were.  On the forum WildBlue Uncensored, I found this article about the WRT54GS2:

http://www.wildblue.cc/wbforums/showthread.php?p=74980

The guy had the same problem with the WRT54GS2, bought a bunch of new routers and decided to try them one at a time.  The first one was up and running in under 15 minutes!  It happened to be the Netgear WGR 614v9.  Although it was getting late, the IT guy in me couldn’t wait so I drove to Wal-Mart to fix this irritating, multi-month-long problem.  Story short, the Netgear WGR 614v9 was up in no time.  No sweat, no tears.

Is this a WildBlue problem?  Apparently, some tech geeks are seeing a lot of problems with the new Cisco Linksys wireless routers.  So maybe WildBlue is innocent.  Whatever the case, for what it’s worth I hope at least a couple people stumble upon this blog and are saved some hours of life to do something more fun and interesting.

Losing Books

Zen may fairly be called the most uninteresting “religion.”  At it’s core, Zen is hardly a religion.  Yes, the Eastern counterparts are adorned with their culture.  What does that have to do with Zen?  After some extended time sitting, I asked myself, “What does Buddha have to do with Zen?”

At the end of this morning’s practice, I whacked the singing bowl for a nice “Gong….”  But did not bow.  I sat, I walked, sat then “gonged.”  I didn’t feel like bowing to myself today.  The incense was nice enough, Buddha’s statue as still and serene as ever…  It is plastic!

At the last 30 minute session, the overwhelming urge to get rid of excess books came over me.  I’d heard it said that’s a sign of one’s Zen practice progressing.  So from there to here…  I’ll never have time to read them all, unless rendered bedridden.  Plus, many are of topics that interested me long ago.  Deep books on studying the meaning of Biblical words, or texts about texts in the Bible.  Others are weird odds and ends of spiritual books with probably nothing more than some author’s own anxious searching for truth.  They seem useless.  Not one of them has answered any questions.  Some questions cannot be answered with words.  This was the feeling this morning…

A poem came to me after sitting this morning:

practice zen.
drop speculation,
lose striving.
be.
philosophy is vain.
what is this?!
this moment.
burn down notions
with fire.
i enter the stream.
no other side.
no return.
water is me,
or not.
just zen.
live right.
drop judgment.
dance, cry, walk
with this.
nothing to say.
nothing…

Lonely Mountains

If only people
would not come to visit me
in lonely mountains
where I have built my retreat
from the world’s many trials.
- Musō Soseki

This is a common refrain in the Zen poetry and attitude.  Certainly, we all can use solitude at times, but my gut instinct is that being in total isolation goes against the grain of being human.  So was Buddha not human?  I think it’s helpful to remember that Buddhism is called, “The Middle Way.”  These words of the Teacher in Ecclesiastes come to mind:

To everything there is a season,
A time for every purpose under heaven:

…A time to cast away stones,
And a time to gather stones;

A time to embrace,
And a time to refrain from embracing…

- Ecclesiastes 3 NKJV

A more modern, and extreme, example of “retreat” can found in the experience of Christopher McCandless in the book/movie Into the Wild. Christopher wants to go to Alaska to get away from society and its sickness.  Eventually, he dies of starvation, but also of loneliness I think.  In his writing he finally sees that life means nothing unless shared with another person.

It seems his error was in extreme view.  Certainly, modern (and even ancient) overgrown society is a breeding ground of misery.  Retreating from all people, however, is the error.  Making life simple, living in smaller communities, selling unneeded possessions and so on can be a sufficient remedy for the excesses of our imposing civilizations.  However, to shun human contact is a mental, and heart, disease.  Balance is the answer, and it is different for each person, but I doubt that any human was so made (or evolved) to exists happily and successfully completely alone.  So I offer an updated poem to reflect this moderation in retreat…

People, birds, animals and insects
Coming and going
To share this mountain retreat
And the world’s many trials
That are common to us all.

Firewood Zen

There’s a popular Zen quote that goes,

“Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

Preparing for winter at my mountain cabin means chopping a lot of wood as it’s the only source of heat.  Fortunately, I have a well so carrying water isn’t necessary.

Being my first year here, I’m not sure how much wood will be needed.  My initial guess is about 5 cords.  For those needing a reminder, a cord is 4ft x 4ft x 8ft.  So 5 cords is about equal to a cube of wood 9 feet high, wide and deep!

Fortunately, Zen is not about sitting around all day!  Work has always been a part of it.  Yet, work and rest are fundamentally the same.  If the practice can’t follow one off the cushion, what good is it?  Chopping wood is particularly helpful, though, because not much thinking is required–just a lot of concentration.  When I find my mind absorbed in something other than the wood, that is how I know to return to the wood.  Also, I must be watchful of being concerned about how far my work has progressed.  Only one piece at a time.  Never mind the result.  That will come out of being mindful of the moment.  The wood is the practice.

The wood and I inter-are.  At some future date, I will absorb its heat–heat that came from the sun.  So the sun and I inter-are as well.  This inter-being is also called dependent origination.

Finally, when the work is done for the day, it’s time to rest a bit.  This too is Zen.  Just rest…  Zen, being so deceptively simple, will probably always be ignored–ignored like a tiny wildflower along a busy road.

The birds have vanished from the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

- Li Po (Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain)