Forty people in a tiny temple, sitting in silence, ponder two great questions: What is this and why does it hurt? In other words, what is life do we suffer?
and why do we suffer?
Christianity provides possible answers, Judalism provides other answers, but Zen Buddhism offers its followers no packaged truths, just a meager path to follow — the path of enlightenment.
At 9:30 Sunday morning, Cary Dewit rests with his legs crossed. His lungs expand and contract. Inhaling and exhaling in perfect silence, he reaches a moment of clarity.
Dewit, Lawrence graduate student, practices Zen Buddhism at the Kansas Zen Center, 1423 New York St.
"When I went to the Zen Center, it was like coming home," Dewit says, his voice soft and echoing. "I was always looking for something."
"Since I was 12 or 13 years old, I had some kind of sense that there was more to life," he said.
The art of meditation
Dewit practices Chogye, a traditional Korean form of Zen of the Kwan Um School.
He meditates in the lotus position, his feet resting on his thighs, his hands cupped in his lap. He also meditates while he walks. At other times he chants, all in an effort to attain enlightenment.
"I had had experiences that I couldn't really relate to the rest of my life," Dewit said. "The Zen practice was a form that was aimed toward bringing about those experiences.
"It's like an experience of being completely aware and awake to all of your experiences, your whole life, and yet being calm at the same time." he said.
Dewit compares his meditation experiences to the feeling quarterbacks have when passing a ball.
From the moment they let go of the ball, they know who is going to catch it, Dewit said. It's like the player and the ball and the receiver are all one, and they sense that.
Stan Lombardo, professor of classics and the guiding
Buddhism asks deep questions and offers the pathway to answers
Story by Nicole Kennedy Photos by Brian Hott
teacher at the Zen Center, said meditation was the method Zen Buddhists used to answer questions about life and its meaning. The quintessential Buddhist question asks, "Why is there suffering?"
"People who practice Zen seriously tend to have a great question," Lombardo said. "So meditation often is facing that question in a disciplined way."
The great questions are not answered with words or logical thinking, but rather through the sheer asking of the question itself.
Lombardo said that in meditation, the Buddhist simply was keeping that question without jumping to any conclusion, simply holding that question.
Often the question is asked while the person meditating is acutely aware of his or her own breathing.
"On the inhalation, ask yourself, 'What am I?' and on the exhalation...I don't know." Lombardo said.
He said Zen didn't give the Buddhist any answers to these questions and so meditation was used by individuals to find the answers themselves
"In order to do that, you have to still your mind," he said. "The individual has to do the practice.
East meets West
"If there is an answer to this, the direction lies in the interconnection between all beings and their complete interdependency, but that's giving too much direction."
Lombardo and Dewit are not unique in practicing what may seem like a mystical and bizarre method to answer the largest philosophical questions of humankind. The Zen Center in Lawrence is one of many that dot America.
"This is a wide-spread phenomenon in this country," Lombardo said. "It's a cultural phenomenon that began in the 1960s."
Perhaps the key to Zen's popularity among the subcultural groups in America lies in the mid-20th century. Beatnik writers and poets in the 1950s like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs rejected the confines of the nuclear family and suburban track-homes, sending their characters on transcendental journeys to the mountains of the northeast.
In the 1960s, some hippies practiced Drug Zen, experimenting with hallucinatory drugs and taking the Zen ideal of compassion to a whole new level during the free-love movements.
The Zen of today, like the practice of Zen in Lawrence, is a bit more true to its roots, Lombardo said.
"Zen in this country has developed into an ordinary practice as opposed to the monk or the nun's practice," Lombardo said. "We don't have a monastic style. The Zen center is open to anyone."
Zen Master shows KU Eastern though
Fukushima Kaldo Roashi, the head abbot of the Tokushi aijin, a Japanese Zen center in Kyoto, Japan, is coming to campus tonight. He will lead a seated Zen meditation at 7 tonight in 240 Robinson Center.
attended his lecture
At noon transurve, the Boom will do a calligraphy demonstration in the Central Court of the Spencer Museum of Art. He will conclude his visit with a lecture entitled "Ten Teachings" in attachment, at 7 tomorrow night in the Bissington Auditorium.
Akira Yamamoto, professor of anthropology and linguistics, said the Rooftop was cladding the University to discuss Zeen with anyone who's interested.
"Be's looking for a wider audience, Yannanou said. "He is trying to reach out through the collagen to many people."
The Roast's lecture on non-attachment will help explain, how enlightenment is analogous.
"Non attachment is simple that you are not bothered by anything." Yasmine said. "Your mind is completely free so that you can like to have something. You reach the unattachment when your mind becomes free."
Local bands aid cost of singer's surgery
By Robert Moczydlowsky
Kansan music writer
Tim Nelson has a scar that runs from near the top of his head down to his right ear.
It's the kind of scar you'd expect to see as part of a cheap Halloween costume, but there isn't anything fake or funny about the seam in Nelson's head.
"My band, Let's Kodeo, had just finished playing a show at the Bottleneck, and I couldn't feel my hands," Nelson said. "I'd also had some pretty bad headaches and some numbness on the left side of my body. That's when I had to go to the hospital."
After several trips to several doctors and countless neurological tests, Nelson was diagnosed with a brain tumor. On Dec. 30, he had surgery to have the tumor removed.
But surgery wasn't the end of the ordeal.
"My doctors were about 85 percent sure that it wasn't cancer, but that was still pretty tough," he said. "Thankfully, it wasn't. They say that everything ought to be fine now."
Nelson spent his first night after surgery in the intensive care unit wondering if a biopsy on the tumor would reveal he had brain cancer.
Fine as far as Nelson's health is concerned, that is. He still has sev-
together for two benefit shows. The first show was last Saturday at the Granada, and it raised about $1,200. The second show, featuring local heavyweights STICK, Kill Creek, Action Man, and Means to an End, will be Friday at the Bottleneck. 737
"My insurance took care of most of it, but I still owe a lot of it."
t ear medical bills outstanding. His insurance company paid for 80 percent of the $35,000 surgery, leaving Nelson and his family responsible for roughly $7,000 dollars.
money — not to mention the time from work I lost," Nelson said. "I'm just now getting back to work full-time, and these bills are pretty high."
contributions made by the Bottleneck.
St. Tiger Marion, comember of Let's Rodeo and headman at Red House Recording Studio, has been credited with organizing the shows.
In an attempt to raise money for Nelson's bills, members of the Lawrence music scene have banded
Marion said every band that he called was willing to donate its time. He said he was grateful for the
New Hampshire St.
"Essentially, they lost money on this deal in order for us to make some money," Marion said. "What this is really is a tribute to that fact that Tim is the nicest guy in the
STICK will be performing songs from its recently-released second album, Disgruntled Ex-Employee, and Kill Creek may be giving its final appearance before breaking up.
world and that he's really made a lot of friends through music."
STICK vocalist Mark Smirl said that although his band was excited to have the chance to show off its new material, the focal point of the show was to raise money for Nelson.
"Tim's very much a staple of the Lawrence music community," Smirl said. "It didn't take any talking from Tiger to get us to play. All he had to do was ask, and we were there. Most anybody would help Tim without too much thought."
Nelson said getting help from the music scene has been a boost, both financially and emotionally.
"I really have been overwhelmed by all of this," he said. "I honestly can't say enough about all of the people who have helped me. It's really meant a lot."
The Benefit for Tim Nelson is at 10 p.m. Friday at the Bottleneck. Admission is $5.
Review: STICK pounds out a new sound on album
STICK Disgruntled Ex-
Employee (Manic). The STICK
story is a complex one. Ask Mark
Smirl, vocalist and the band's co-founder.
"Well, we've got two new members, bass player Mason Fann, who we call "The Jet," and drummer Bill Brimblecum, who we call Billy Bubblegum," he said.
Swirl admitted that while the new guys are young, he and fellow band-member Mike Tobin were a bit older.
And that's not even the half of it.
Matt said it even the last of all.
There is also the band's love-
turned-hate relationship with
Arista Records. Arista released
STICK'S first album, Heavy Bag,
in 1993, and after a long period
of touring, asked STICK to go to
work on a second album.
"Our band has a whole new dynamic," he said.
So Smirl and bandmates went into the studio. Arista executives didn't like what they heard, and soon after STICK was dropped from the label.
That's all right. Any label that signs and promotes Ace of Bass hits the top spot on my lame-o-meter every time.
The new STICK record is, from start to finish, inventive, intelligent rock n' roll. Where Heavy Bag would've beat the listener senseless with unrelenting guitar hooks, Disgruntled Ex-Employee is more musical — adding some acoustic guitar and strings to the band's catchy guitar crunch.
If the new lineup can keep the same quality of sound that the album has, this new disc could grab STICK a whole new set of fans. And if Arista doesn't care, forget them. Overall, out of ten: 7, and climbing.
7
7