Is this Yoga?

Last Saturday I went to an event announced as Yoga Seminar. As the advertising was all in Japanese – and my Japanese is still pretty crappy, I didn’t bother really reading it. So all I knew was, where the seminar will take place and what time it’ll start.

First surprise was, when I came there 10 minutes before, there was no one, the room was locked, quietness. Some minutes later 2 people appeared, who also wanted to attend the event. Hmmm.

So bit by bit some more people came, the room was opened and someone announced, the seminar will start half an hour later – OK….

In the room no one had a yoga mat, besides me, no one came in typical yoga cloth or would change his cloth. Then three guys came in, a tripod was built up. I slowly got the impression being on the wrong spot.

After some time one of them started talking, started talking about the chaotic energy field around people, painting funny graphics on the white board. My Japanese is not yet so sufficient that I could entirely follow what the guy said, so I went. All I wanted to do was Yoga Asana, to get some new input for my own teaching, especially with Japanese people, but obviously this was not part of the program. So I went.

I went down to Bon On Sha, a coffee bar in Koyasan, run by Takeshi a friend of mine. during a coffee, he translated the whole paper about the seminar for me and as it turned out, I got it all wrong. The teacher says, he can manipulate the energy field of people to become healthy by certain breathing techniques. I decided to go back and give it another shot to see what’s really going on.

When I came back the lecture was finished. People where sitting in groups and holding hands palm to palm each other without touching.

The teacher just became free and as his pamphlet stated that he learnt that in India, I assumed that he speaks English, so I went to him.

Oh, assumptions are evil, I was wrong, he didn’t. He immediately called for help, but the English of the guy he called was worse than my Japanese 😀

He was asking me to do Ujai breathing, the victorious pranayama, in a way I’m not familiar with. Ujai breath is usually done by closing Mulha bandha, the root lock and Jalandhara bandha, the throat lock. Breathing in and out is done though the nose and one can hear a sound while breathing. What he told me was different. He didn’t say anything about bandhas, but to breath through the mouth into the chakras from down to top and then keeping the air for a short time, like Kumbak. While I was breathing the way he desired me to do, he started to rotate his left index and middle fingers over my hand, causing a whirl in the energy field over my right palm, his right hand was gliding over my arm without touching it, like trying to figure out my energy field. After some time he went over my back and on the end he told me, my energy field is very nice, without any blockages. I was wondering, because I know this is not true.

Later he told me that this way of breathing comes from Qigong and that he learnt all these things from an Indian and a Taiwanese teacher in Kobe. He then send me to the guy, who tried to translate and he tried to apply the same techniques, like his teacher.

On the white board was a drawing showing the chakras in the body with number next to each chakra, starting with 5 at Muladhara and finishing with 20.000-30.000 next to the Sahasrara, the crown chakra. I was asking the guy who did the lecture about this and he told me, that every chakra has an energy load which starts with very low energy at the bottom and ends with a extreme high energy charge at the top. When I said, my understanding of the chakra system is different, he insisted that it is like that. Didn’t made any sense to continue this conversation.

On the end the whole group went to Miyasan, Koyasans excellent Izakaya, a place to enjoy food and drink.

To be honest this seminar left me with more questions than it gave me answers. I still doubt, he can really change or even manipulate the energy system of a person consciously. We all do constantly manipulate energy around us usually in an unconscious way. I experienced that acupuncture and acupressure can manipulate the energy system of a person to help someone to heal. I believe that this manipulation is temporary and only I by myself can change my energy system to the better or the worse. I also believe one can use the entry points of the energy system to do a lot of harm for example by targeting kyushus, vital points, with martial arts techniques the same way as these points can be used to heal with acupuncture or acupressure.

I clearly would state that this was not a Yoga seminar, but something different. I’m still unsure, if the guy is really able to do something to you, or if he’s just swimming on the „esoteric healing wave“. Personally I didn’t experience anything special there nor I think this is really helpful, it might be for someone else.

Comments? Anyone?

The Cloud

Happy new year everybody 🙂

Today I kicked my getting things done app in the trash.

Getting things done is a book and Method by David Allen. The method originally works with paper and boxes and helps you to get organized and things out of one mind to free the mind for being creative instead of storing stuff there and having to think on that, what’s still not yet done.

Naturally a lot of applications have grown around this idea. Quite some time I decided to use Things from Culture Code. There is a desktop and a iPhone application which were synchronizing over the local network. The user interface of the application is neat and clean and I liked it a lot. I was pretty happy with it.

So what made me trash it?

Culture code decided to update Things to Things 2.0 and with that update they introduced synchronization over their own cloud service and announced very proud how many users are already having an account there. Theres nothing wrong with that, but they also decided to drop local synchronization. So if I want to use the new version, I’d be forced to use their cloud service, a server I have no control of and leave there all my to do lists including all the personal or business information, which I might have noted in one or the other task of my to-do list.

I’m amazed actually, how many people blindly trust a company and leave their personal data on the companies server. Didn’t we all learn meanwhile, that google scans the mails of their gmail service to place proper advertising to the user? So why should we trust a software company, especially when they just abandon the local service, so if I want to continue using the software, I’m forced to use their cloud service.

It becomes even more interesting, if one knows that Culture Code is a German company and the German Ministry of inner affairs is currently working on some laws to give security service access to data in the cloud, meaning forcing providers to open their servers for police or other security services to access these data, preferable without any consultation of a judge. The Patriot Act of the US does this already.

Upps, you didn’t know that? You synchronize your iPhone via the Apple’s Cloud Service, store your documents on amazon’s cloud service. You think it’s all well protected by your personal password and login data. If you run your own server, you know that you have access to everything and anything stored on that machine, so has the industries.

Of course you can encrypt your data with an point to point encryption, which will make it harder for anybody to look into it and only government services or big companies will have the computing power to crack your encryption. Well and what happens, when government and industries work together? It already does as I learnt recently by an article published by the Guardian. A peaceful protest movement against the power of the banks was marked as terrorist activity by the FBI.

You might think, you don’t do anything illegal, so why should you care. We’ve seen over the past couple of years, how quickly innocent people can get into the focus of law enforcement authorities or the industries. The result is often scary. And well, we all have something to protect and be it only our privacy.

Well, I didn’t give up, organizing my to-do and getting things done in a organized way, I’m just using a different software from the omnigroup, a well know Apple development company. Omni Focus offers different ways of synchronizing the desktop and iPhone app. One of them is via Bonjour and the local network another one works via WebDAV or a file server.

These days I just learned, you can set up your own clod services with OwnCloud. OwnCloud is a software-suit based on php and a SQL-server, which can be set up on nearly any Operating-System, all you need is access to a server. This probably works also with dynamic ip addresses and a service, like dynDNS. So now I’m thinking to setup this on my server here.

So, you don’t believe me? Then check this out: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/microsoft-admits-patriot-act-can-access-eu-based-cloud-data/11225

New Dinj Online

While I was on Shikoku, I was asked to run the Dinj mailing list.  Dinj stands for German speaking people living or interested in Japan. It was maintained for over 15 years by Michael Engel and the community has expressed their deepest gratefulness for doing so.

The first job was of course the get mailman, the list server software up and running with virtual domains – see the last post. After that Michael transferred the domain to me and now everything is done 🙂 The list is up and running now. One can subscribe here.

The next plan is to add more content to the website and mayeb adding a Wiki later.

Mailman on SnowLeopard Server

Snow Leopard Server (Mac OS 10.6.x) is until now the most solid server-system from Apple I had up and running. It comes with apache, postfix, dovecot and mailman preinstalled. All the software is well know open source software, but some things were changed by Apple. So the best is to leave the mailman installation as it was shipped by Apple.

Mountain Lion has mailman not preinstalled, so you need to do everything by yourself, like on any other Linux System.

Running mailman on SL Server with virtual domains is not supported by the Apple’s ServerAdmin, so one has to set up things by oneself. This is what I did to get things up and running:

1. I activated mailman in ServerAdmin and created one mailing list, called mailman, this will do the basic setup for Apache and mailman.

2. I edited /private/etc/postfix/main.cf and added:

virtual_alias_maps = hash:/private/var/mailman/data/virtual-mailman

you probably already have a file for virtual aliases so you just can add it:

virtual_alias_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/virtual
hash:/private/var/mailman/data/virtual-mailman

3. I edited: /private/etc/postfix/master.cf and uncommented these lines:

mailman   unix  –       n       n       –       –       pipe
flags=FR user=list argv=/usr/lib/mailman/bin/postfix-to-mailman.py
${nexthop} ${user}

4. I edited /usr/share/mailman/Mailman/mm_cfg.py and added this:

VIRTUAL_HOSTS.clear()
add_virtualhost(‘lists.virtual.com’, ‘virtual.com’)
POSTFIX_STYLE_VIRTUAL_DOMAINS = [‘virtual.com’]

this domain of course also has to be in /private/etc/postfix/virtual_domains, which is created by ServerAdmin

4. restart postfix and mailman via terminal:

sudo postfix reload

sudo  /usr/share/mailman/bin/mailmanctl restart

5.  go to your browser and point it to:

lists.virtual.com/mailman/create

6.  run sudo  /usr/share/mailman/bin/genaliases

and your list should be working.

Two things, you can’t have 2 lists with the same name on different domains and the list name can’t be equal to a short name in your OpenDirectory db.

For Q&A there’s a mailman wiki:

http://wiki.list.org/

and for more tricky question you can subscribe to the mailman mailing list here: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/mailman-users

Have fun and enjoy 🙂

 

After is Before

I’m back, back in Koyasan, back home. It’s been a long time, more than tow month I was on th road, walking from one place to the next one, uphill, downhill, on roads, through woods, along rivers and creeks. It has been a time for being with myself out in constant changing environment and now I’m back.

The last days

It was quite easy, no big climbs anymore, no steep ways downhill, just walking. After I arrived at Ōkuboji (#88), I decided to close the circel and go back to Ryōzenji (#1) to tell thank you to my friend Kinoshita San. She was very busy, so I decided to take a day off, hoping she’ll have more time the next day, but she didn’t. Anyway there wee also 3 friends there from Naruto and one of them has done Tokudo at Muryokoin 2 years ago. Together we visited the Namaste Guesthouse in Naruto and I stayed at thier place over night. I also used the opportunity to wash my cloth the last time during this journey.

The next day it became really hot and I walked to Tokushima to catch the ferry for Wakayama. I had to wait a while, time for eating and resting a bit. The ferry takes roughly 2 hours to Wakayama, so I still had a bit time to walk a little more. The heat continued the next 2 days, actually it’s still hot even up here in Koyasan. The last evening before goign up to koyasan, I went to a local place to eat something. First the guy told me he has only beer, nothing to eat, on the end I got Kani (Crab) and Sushis. I had a nice talk with people there, on the end I additional received 1000¥, the last osettai during this journey.

All the sudden, surprinsgly I was standing in front of Diamon, the big gate. I expected a lot of stairs – I remembered it wrong. It was easy the last part. Of course I was sweating, everything was wet 😀

Yesterday I still went to Okunoin, today back at he temple for morning ceremony and coffee later.

What’s next?

Well good question. I plan to write a book about this journey, but also need to make some money now. So first I’ll start to clean out the place here a bit and get reorganized. Still a lot of things, which were cooking up are not yet in place and still need some more reflection.

All in all it was worth the effort, it changed my view a bit I think, the way I think about different things and hopefully also the way how I deal with people.

I received so much friendliness during this journey, uncondtionally, just like that and I’m most greatful for that. I also was often thinking on my teachers, on Habukawa and Hashimoto Sensei specially and I want to say I big thank you to everyone, who directly or indirectly supported hepled me to make this possible.

Done

Murphies Law

Walking, weather report says, partly cloudy. It starts dripping, I put the rainsheet over the backpack, continue to walk. Dripping slowly becomes rain. I think it’ll stop soon. Passing by a coffee bar, which is the only place to sit in around. It has its day off. Slowly rain starts streaming, wind comes up, shoes get wet, finally a shrine along the road with a small place under a roof. I put my rain gear on. Keeping on walking. Rain decreases, stops. 15 minutes walking, clouds move, sunshine, still having wet shoes 😀

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Anger, Attachments and Freedom

Well, well, the journey slowly comes to it’s end. I’m now on the way Nagaoji (#87), which is just 5km from the Okunomiyaki-place, where I’m sitting right now. Later today I will walk towards Ōtakiji (b20), which is the last of the bengai-fudasho or bekakku temples. Together with the 88 temples it makes 108 temples, as many as mala has beats. Most people think on 108 attachments, in the context of Buddhism each beat presenting one.
What made starting thinking more deeper on attachments or bonno as they are called in Japanese, was a short event at Senyūji (#58), where I participated in the morning ceremony. As usual I was sitting in halflotus and on the end the priest told me, there is no halflotus in Shingon, only Zeza, meaning kneeling and sitting on ones heals, because this is Japanese culture. After that he was talking about attachments and of course being unaware how much he – like other people here as well – is attached to the idea, Shingon is a Japanese cultural property, what it is of course not. I didn’t reacted of course, but when I was going down the mountain, this event occupied my mind. In a glimpse of moment I got even angry about that guys ignorance. Has he ever seen Kūkai or any of the Buddha statues sitting in Zeza? Didn’t dharma teaching came from India to China and then to Japan? This lead me to thinking more about my own attachments and expectations. How can I expect that people understand emptiness, when they recite the heartsutra in Kanbun, a language, normal people don’t understand. Kanbun is actually old Chinese with Japanese pronunciation. It was used long time ago by educated people who able to read and write.
… I need to move on and will continue writing later, as I haven’t made my point yet. Please bear with me and stay tuned 😉
Thanks for your patience 🙂 I’m now just a few km away from Ōkuboji, the last temple. From there I plan to go back to Ryōzenji to close the circle.
Anyway to continue from before. What really pissed me off wad, when I was thrown off the temple ground at Kokubunji (#80) after receiving my stamp, before I could recite my mantras. They guy said that’s Japanese culture, not a bad thing with a grin in his face, saying the opposite.
After I cooled down, a voice spoke inside to me, saying do your thing in front of the gate, that’s fine. This guy will receive his fruits at one point, but it’s not your business. So I made a little incense holder, did my recitations and moved on.
What triggered anger, were my own expectations, that people do have some understanding, but they just cling as much to their social framework as I stick to my expectations. These expectations are attachment. The only thing I can change here is dropping this idea, that people at least partly share my understanding. They just don’t and they will never do. Dropping this idea means dropping this kind of attachment, opening the door to freedom and experiencing the unexpected.
And exactly that happened to me yesterday. I went up to Ōtakiji. When I got my stamp, the son of the Jushoku insisted in speaking English and told me the best option is to go and stay in a Onsen Hotel, because there’s no place with food the other way. I was thinking all the time, I’ve seen this face before… on the end, when I was about leaving, I asked him and in fact, he was studying with Sanja and we met a couple of times some 4 or 5 years ago in Kōyasan. He told me then, they will now go to that onsen and I should come with them. As I wanted to go by foot everything, I had to reject this friendly offer. The compromise was, they took my backpack with them. So these 12km downhill just took me 2 hours only. After enjoying onsen, nice food and an air-conditioned room without mosquitos, I wanted to pay my bill this morning and the guy charged me only the beer I drank the evening before. I was so surprised! Everything else was already taken care of and my heart was filled with gratefulness about this unexpected ossetai, making me again clear what kind of freedom I receive by not expecting anything 🙂

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Double Temple

Today I went to Jinnein (#68) and Kanonji (#69), which are 2 temples in one. During the Meiji period Jinnein was moved to the same place as Kanonji. During the Meiji period the state tried to destroy Buddhism in Japan, because it was strongly connected to the traditional clans and Samurais, who didn’t like the modernization of Japan, which was actually enforced by the US. Anyway, that’s all history and I often can perceive it’s traces it left behind.
The let’s say practical thing was I got stamps for two temples from one office.
What amazed me was the site, a little hill hosting two temples in the back at one site. These temples are so different! Jinnein has a very interesting Hondõ, a successful mixture of modern architecture mixed with traditional elements. The entrance reminds to the museum of modern art in New York, followed by a building like a traditional temple. The Hondō of Kanonji on the other side is a red painted old style building.
Of course there’s a big Shrine in front of the hill and behind a big park with a huge sand coin. They say if you look the coin you’ll be healthy and wealthy.
Well, I did 🙂

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Now I’m sitting in a pub writing this blog and still want to walk to Motoyamaji (#70), where is a park next to it. Parks usually have toilets and often a roof. Weather should be fine tonight anyway 🙂

A short update

The WP-app just crashed, so I try again to give you a short update.
I’m on the way to Unpenji (#66), sitting in a little hut, where I built up my tent. Straight floor and a roof on top in case it starts raining. The last days I had really nice weather, walking became a kind of routine. I’m even not disturbed by busy roads anymore. One step follows the next, breath goes in and out, sweat runs down the back.
Sometimes I’m nearly overwhelmed by the friendliness of people. Some days ago, a woman stopped her car in the middle of the street, jumped out, gave me 200¥, said “osettai desu”, jumped back into her car and disappeared before I could say thank you. Later 2 days ago, I met an old man on the street. He was on his walk for health, as he said. We were walking some time together until Enmeiji (b12). After visiting the temple, he invited me for lunch and coffee. When I left him on the station, where he took the train back home, he gave me 1000¥, “for dinner” he said. On the same day in the evening, while I was buying dinner, another guy gave me 2 beer and some more food.
I still didn’t do takuhatsu, begging as monks were doing in the old times. It feels embarrassing for me and I guess I have to learn more humbleness to overcome this.
Today I was at Hashikuraji. I renamed the temple to “Kaidanji”, temple of stairs. Until one reaches the gate, it’s already quite a sweaty way uphill. Beyond the gate comes a nice wide way, leading to a red bridge, followed by 777 steps until the office and the Fudodō, 27 more steps to the temple bell and another long stairway until the Hondō and the Daishidõ. It’s worth the effort though. It’s a wonderful and peaceful place. The monk, who put the stamps surprised me on the end by asking me, if I know Kurt. We were talking for some time and we figured out that we had the same Shidokegyo teacher. So nice!
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