"To follow knowledge like a sinking star..."

Posted on: Fri, 03/30/2007 - 08:55 By: Tom Swiss

Well, didn't rain. Was a lovely day, in fact when I went for my run I would have appreciated a pair of shorts.

Got my laptop audio set up so I can use it as an "IP phone" - make very cheap calls, like 2 cents a minute, back to the US. Sound quality ain't great, but workable. Called home to talk Rachel though computer set-up, the DSL line was back up but for reasons unknown we needed some config work to get her PC back on line.

Last night I was doing some reading on-line about Red Thread Zen. Turns out that crazy wonderful lusty Zen master Ikkyu was abbot of Daitokuji, the Zen temple I went to last week, in his later years. Now I must go back.

Also I saw this evening in Japanzine that there's an exhibit on syncretic Shinto and Buddhist art at the Nara National museum. Another must-see. And, picked up a flyer for a big sakura-viewing party in Osakajo-koen at the end of April, bunch of DJs and stuff; I'm hoping to get to some smaller events but good to know of one big one.

"To follow knowledge like a sinking star..." That line from Tennyson's Ulysses bounces around in my head as I sit in a martini bar in Osaka. I have followed the sinking stars so far into the West that I have ended up in the East. I don't know if it's far enough. Certainly far farther than Ulysses ever traveled, but much, much easier a journey....

A few years ago, at the FSA Beltane celebration, I walked a labyrinth that someone had laid out on the ground in pine boughs. (Not an official event or offering of the festival, just one of those random impulsive things; a woman I didn't know laid it out, and I impulsively decided to walk it.) As I approached the center, I felt a presence that stopped me, challenged me, asked me, "What is it that you do?" (I present this as a report of subjective experience, not to be confused with any statement about the "objective" existence of spirits, gods, kami, or whatever.)

The answer that immediately came to mind was that line to Tennyson: "To follow knowledge like a sinking star." And I felt that in that moment I was given a new name: Starchaser.

Anyway. That line from Tennyson holds some potency for me.