a new school at school.... we are slowly adding to our tank which is becoming a hallway focal point, maybe it will even replace the water cooler one day

More on the Pew poll:

The survey finds that constant movement characterizes the American religious marketplace, as every major religious group is simultaneously gaining and losing adherents. Those that are growing as a result of religious change are simply gaining new members at a faster rate than they are losing members. Conversely, those that are declining in number because of religious change simply are not attracting enough new members to offset the number of adherents who are leaving those particular faiths.

To illustrate this point, one need only look at the biggest gainer in this religious competition - the unaffiliated group. People moving into the unaffiliated category outnumber those moving out of the unaffiliated group by more than a three-to-one margin. At the same time, however, a substantial number of people (nearly 4% of the overall adult population) say that as children they were unaffiliated with any particular religion but have since come to identify with a religious group. This means that more than half of people who were unaffiliated with any particular religion as a child now say that they are associated with a religious group. In short, the Landscape Survey shows that the unaffiliated population has grown despite having one of the lowest retention rates of all "religious" groups.

There is much, much more. The characteristic here that most jumps out at me is that the fluidity of religious orientation in the U.S. is in itself reflective of American culture and history. Americans seem to be on the move all the time, responding to the tremendous economic and social pressures twisting the American family and workplace into new shapes. Religion seems to be less an influence than something subject to influence. More importantly, the poll seems to confirm the growing cosmopolitanism of this country. Most people here seem to go through multiple changes over the course of a life, and this is only possible in the giant (and hugely varied) complex of urban cores, inner rings, suburbs, and exurbs that characterize the majority of American communities.

One thing I have not found in the poll: how individuals change their religious affiliation throughout life. For instance, what changes correlate strongly with family life, with divorce, widowhood, urban single life, and so on. Who are the searchers, and who are the religious drifters?

I am also curious about the results given for the Buddhist "community". The split between immigrant Buddhists and American practitioners is profound. But this is not at all indicated in the poll results. Moreover, this split is significant, as the high-income, highly educated composite seems to mask the economic profile of immigrant Buddhists. Very interesting.

Friday Morning, Hello....

Several months I was polled by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. Very interesting. I thought of it again after Obama's inauguration, as he made the radical assertion that this country has a lot of religions. There are even non-believers!
Personally, I find non-belief much more appealing than belief. As a Catholic, I grew up with an elaborate system of paradox, mystery, and ritual (at its best) and glib, empty formalism (at its worst). Zen works for me for many reasons, but I have no doubt that my skepticism extends from my Catholicism. And it is grounded, phenomenologically speaking, in my Zen practice.

This poll is quite interesting. I will post more on it later.

Slow Posting, Busy Week

My apologies. Some of these school weeks are busier than others.

A dark headline, indeed

Dead athletes' show damage from concussions

This is, I would say, a serious public health issue. Many thousands of kids are getting their heads knocked much too often. An excerpt:

...using tissue from retired NFL athletes culled posthumously, the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy (CSTE), at the Boston University School of Medicine, is shedding light on what concussions look like in the brain. The findings are stunning. Far from innocuous, invisible injuries, concussions confer tremendous brain damage. That damage has a name: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

On Tuesday afternoon, researchers at the CSTE released a study about the sixth documented case of CTE in former NFL player Tom McHale, who died in 2008 at the age of 45, and the youngest case to date, an 18-year-old multi-sport athlete who suffered multiple concussions.

While CTE in an ex-NFL player's brain may have been expected, the beginnings of brain damage in an 18-year-old brain was a "shocking" finding, according to Dr. Ann McKee, a neuropathologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Bedford, Massachusetts, and co-director of the CSTE.

"We think this is how chronic traumatic encephalopathy starts," said McKee. "This is speculation, but I think we can assume that this would have continued to expand."

for the article, click here

Good Morning!

That good ol' disrupting winter rhythm. I don't listen to the weather on the television or on the radio. But I overheard a couple of people discussing how histrionic at least one station was about Wednesday's snow. Something about laying in supplies and the possibility of power outages and so on. Anything to fill up the news hour.

Wouldn't it be fine to hear on TV a coming storm spoken of as being "lovely" or "peaceful" or "a good chance to step back and slow down" or "cozy"?
Or perhaps, saying that, remind us of the comfort and ease that many do not share, and how winter is both hard and soft...

And perhaps school should be canceled on one of those perfect May mornings, when life is stirring gently and the leaves and the grass are green and tender, and the blossoms full...

THURSDAY ONE HOUR DELAY, That's ONE hour!

Classes begin at 10:00 am.
THIS IS A CHANGE. Roads are icy now, but will be fine by 9 or 9:30.

ONE HOUR DELAY!

Darn It!

No School Tomorrow!

I love winter, the cold, the snow, the quiet, the black river, the snow crusted banks, the empty fields, the dark night skies, the brilliant moon, vaunting Orion, the late sunrises, the crisp air.

But how can a teacher teach with students getting sick all the time and these blasted snow intrusions?

I think I can deal with it, though. Can you?

Out of town message.

Out of town for the day. Away from the Computer. Carry on.

The Big Self, Zen style

The question has to be asked: why a Zen school? Or more fundamentally, is it a Zen school? The answer to the second question is: "No".

As far as the operations of the school are concerned, hour to hour, their is little to indicate a Zen orientation. We meditate in the morning and briefly in the afternoon. There are classes offered twice a year or so on meditation and basic Buddhist philosophy. We have an altar.
As a Catholic high school student at a Jesuit high school, I would say that the presence of the Church was more substantial than the presence of Zen at TAS. But perhaps there is something else going on. Perhaps it has to do with the nature of Zen practice. A few students have quietly taken on some interest and practice in the history and the techniques. All seem to be able to sit still when asked.
And most- except for the youngest students- seem to be able to reconcile their problems with others in terms of self-awareness and community well-being. These are things we should investigate more deeply.

There are many kinds of forgetting. Forgetting to do something, forgetting in order to forgive, forgetting for a moment all one's problems. And forgetting the self when deeply involved with something or someone. Learning is not necessarily the opposite of forgetting: one can learn to forget. That being said, learning and forgetting, that is, memory, go right to heart of who we are, what this self is. As a teacher, I am always playing with two strings: being aware of the self, and forgetting the self. In music, in psychology, in learning over all. So for me, TAS is a self-workshop, a way of getting a student's self-conception to play out over the whole of this small school. Accomplishments, relationships, ups and downs, quiet and noise. Moment to moment.

Insofar as what we do is the conscious cultivation of self-observation and letting go, then we are a Zen school. It also happens to be an excellent way to move through life.

Your Morning Coffee

If you haven't wandered over to the New York Times, you might want to check this out:

Coffee linked to lower dementia risk. First of all, 3-5 cups is "moderate" consumption. To me, that is a lot of coffee. Second, they look at a link to diabetes, and how coffee seems to reduce risk of that disease. My guess, wholly uneducated, is that it is related to the effects of caffeine.
For instance, amphetamines administered after learning a task seems to reinforce that task. And in rats, it seems to stimulate recall of previous tasks. My thinking is that somehow mild caffeine use ramps up the affective involvement in what one is doing, coding it for longer term memory, and maintaining a healthy rate of neuronal growth in the hippocampus.
And that is very much a guess. To bad there are no neurologists out there to set me straight.

I am running out of time to get my sitting in. Links and references to be posted later...