Psychology + Zen = Philosophy and methods to relieve suffering and reveal happiness.
Psychology: We project onto others what we reject in ourselves. Some call it a Shadow. Healing comes from making the unconscious conscious, taking responsibility for our projections, integrating what is split off as our own thing.
Zen: There is no separate self. When we can be at one with every aspect, then we belong everywhere and we reject no one.
We heal the world by becoming intimate with our whole selves.
I didn't see it coming.
Unlike the high drama and torture of last year, this zen retreat was relatively uneventful, which is to say it was a veritable cauldron of long-forgotten demons, physical pain, boredom, and large helpings of bliss. Nothing special. So, when I came home I was surprised to discover vast swaths of freedom in my life where previously there were tiny little congested closets.
Lisa AltomareFinally, the clown took stock, gathered herself, and delivered the message to the teacher: fuck you.
I gasped, then exhaled to partake in the laughter. "More of that," said the teacher, and the clown delivered: "FUCK YOUUU!!"...middle finger in full salute, body crouched, shaking with rage and pride, she expressed the truth of her experience, and it was absolutely hilarious.
It was the first day of the weekend workshop with Caroline Dream, master clown teacher, and we were playing games.
Caroline, with class
Nightmare, Brick Theatre, January 2013Why is it that I love clowns so thoroughly and yet so many of my friends tell me they fear and loathe them? Ok, I understand that they look ridiculous, do silly things, and sometimes embarrass the audience, but scary?? loathsome???
Lumping all the clowns together for now (even if they don’t like each other’s company), I include circus clowns, theatrical clowns, tricksters and jokers, court jesters with surprising insights, various imbeciles, happy-birthday-party clowns, bouffons, and provocative wise fools. All these characters have a way of breaking the rules that we so carefully follow.
A packed house, a teen nightmare, a sweet story of communion, and a deeply offensive work of not-art.
Not by Bread Alone features a troupe of deaf blind 'actors' ladling out friendly vaudevillian vignettes that feature pantomime, supertitles, and kinesthetic sign language. Also, they are baking bread. We learn that the deaf and blind "have dreams, too," dreams of love and marriage, and dreams of having hair done by a super duper stylist. Just like us.
Share Article → | Comments Off How can something that has never been soiled be cleaned? asked the teacher when a monk requested the job of Sanitation Officer. When the monk presented his answer, the teacher hit him, the monk broke into a sweat and stepped into enlightenment. In gratitude, he diligently cleaned the toilets in the monastery for 10,000 years. I suppose he was cleaning what was not soiled. Was his shit shining? Steaming and oh, so luminous?
We humans are very interested in cleaning soiled things. We sanitize, kill our bacteria, hide our homeless, cleanse our ethnics, and defeat our dictators. Striving for purity, we
Share Article → | Comments Off
Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:33PM by
Elena Taurke
My hips were already hurting as I was standing on the platform. I could almost feel the relief of the seat as I waited for the train…and waited…and… the desire intensified with the growing awareness of the delay, the imagined relief intensifying the pain. 
By the time the train pulled in, a crowd had gathered and I was terrified of the competition for seats. Naturally, there was exactly one seat in the car and the woman who pushed her way past me got it. In agony, I pondered: Was she disabled? My hips don't have a big sign on them and I'm not carrying any supports like crutches. Do I say something? What if she is mentally disabled and doesn't understand the subway protocol? If she gets angry and accuses me, do I understand her as limited or mean? What's the difference? Who deserves what?
Share Article → | Comments Off Part 1: The Cure
Have you ever had an electric toe? It's quite an experience, unlike any other pain. You step on it funny and suddenly a shocking, excruciating pain shoots through the toe into the whole body and the brain contracts in the instant. It goes away and you think, ok, that was that, and then it happens again. After several repetitions you become like one of those freaked-out lab mice terrified of the next shock, seeming to have no control. Except that then you notice that getting tense makes it happen more!
Like other life koans, this was impossible to grasp. How could I possibly relax into something that made my body involuntarily seize up?
Share Article → | Comments Off 
The first time I heard the question was shortly after I told my rheumatologist about the pain in my knees after tap-dancing for some length of time. I recall that I was rehearsing for a little showcase. I recall that I was proud. I recall that he said: These are not normal knees…of course you are going to have inflammation if you tap-dance. And a little while later he asked if I have trouble wiping myself. It's important, obviously. Tap dancing? Not so much.
Share Article → | Comments Off
Updated on Friday, June 8, 2012 at 4:30PM by
Elena Taurke
So named for the challenge of running blind in a straight line, this film (at the Reel Abilities fest) features a young, rich, male runner, recently blinded, who encounters a not rich woman recently out of jail. They are both hard and angry. In a totally unbelievable moment, he recognizes her as kin. He--actually his mother--hires the ex-con to guide him as he learns to run again. Both are guarded, misunderstood, angry. They fight, become vulnerable to each other, begin to trust. The interfering mother interferes. (Don't forget, when you make a movie about heroes, to include either a dead mother or an interfering mother.) Love blossoms. Against all odds, he wins the race. 
I braced against the emotional manipulation, my cynicism reinforced by the titles for the hearing impaired: [soft inspirational music plays]. But gradually, my resistance weakened.
Share Article → | Comments Off Crip People Gales of laughter in the bus as he gets the first reaction--people on the street in some kind of shock and awe at a man using crutches to skateboard through the streets of New York. He is known as the Crutch Master, and the mastery is evident and spectacular. We are in the bus as the audience to his performance. Hooked up to cameras, a DJ, and a major sound system, it feels like a combination of a hip dance party and a sting operation. 
"Wall Stall" Shannon Technique 2010
So we are in the bus to watch the watchers. We desperately want to see people on the street react to our Crutch Master. We want their "Huh?" We want to see them dislodged from their complacency. We are hungry for it. Many of us standing, craning necks from window to monitor display, aching to see a bystander get shook up. Crutch Master is doing his best to deliver. Here he is bumming a cigarette from a Wall Street Trader. There he goes doing a jig for a tourist bus. We see the people try to resist, turn their backs, shake their heads. In the bus, we are cracking up, laughing forcefully at how people try to just keep going, how they can't recognize a true phenomenon, how they miss what is right before their eyes.
Share Article → | Comments Off