I am not an expert on Zen Buddhism. However, even if I had spent decades of my life studying its tenets (instead of, for example, baseball stats from the 1920s), I would hesitate to call myself an expert because of what would be my resulting adherence to shoshin, the Zen Buddhist concept of the beginners mind. Shoshin encourages its practitioners to approach their studies as beginners, and cautions against the arrogance and dogmatism that often characterize the self-proclaimed expert who assumes he already knows all there is to know about a subject.

Lawyers and legal professionals, in particular, would do well to adopt a measure of shoshin in the practice of their chosen pursuit, in which no matter how much expertise one has acquired over their years of experience, they are only one appellate decision away from looking like a complete fool.

Take the question of intestate succession for stepchildren, for example. For decades, the experienced probate attorney has been able to rely on Probate Code section 6454, which dictates that a stepchild may inherit from their intestate stepparent only if: (1) the parent-child relationship began during the stepchilds minority and continued throughout the stepparent and stepchilds joint lifetimes; and (2) clear and convincing evidence shows that stepparent would have adopted stepchild but for a legal barrier.

Simple and straightforward the stepchild is either an intestate heir or they are not. The experienced probate expert can answer the question of intestate succession with ease and be on the golf course twenty minutes later.

Not so fast, says Estate of Martino (2023) 96 Cal.App.5th 596.

Estate of Martino sure looked like an easy case. Petitioner Nick Zambito, stepchild to decedent Nick Martino, petitioned to be deemed an heir to his intestate stepfather. Martinos biological children objected. But Zambito and his stepsiblings agreed on essentially all of the relevant facts though Zambito and his stepfather maintained a father-son relationship through virtually the entirety of Zambitos lifetime, up to and including the stepfathers final days, it was undisputed that there was no legal barrier that prevented the stepfather from adopting his stepson. Accordingly, there was no way that Zambito could meet the requirements of section 6454, and, consequently, no way for him to establish intestate heirship.

Case closed! shouts the probate expert, who proceeds to turn off all of the lights on his way out to hit the links.

But the true practitioner of shoshin, and more importantly the Court of Appeal, believed otherwise. The Court turned its volume of the Probate Code back just one page and found section 6453, which says that a natural parent and child relationship is established where that relationship is presumed and not rebutted pursuant to the Uniform Parentage Act, which commences in section 7600 of the Family Code. Pulling its volume of the Family Code off the shelf, the Court found section 7611, which notes that a person is presumed to be the natural parent of a child if, among other things, the presumed parent receives the child intotheirhome and openly holds out the child astheirnatural child.

At this point, the probate expert is red-faced and choking, screaming into the wind. But section 7611 has nothing to do with intestate succession! he shouts. Its only been used to govern unrelated parent-child issues, like visitation rights, custody disputes, and standing to pursue wrongful death actions! In contrast, Probate Code section 6454 explicitly applies to intestate succession! (To his credit, the probate expert is articulate even when frothing with rage.)

The Court of Appeal did not share the experts concerns. The Court instead felt the need to apply California Supreme Court precedent and harmonize the various statutes, to give force and effect to all of their provisions . . . even where, as here, one of the statutes involved deals generally with a subject and another relates specifically to particular aspects of the subject. The Court reasoned that because section 6454 did not expressly hold itself out as the exclusive means by which a stepchild may establish intestate heirship, there was nothing to bar the use of section 6453 and Family Code section 7611 as an alternate means. That is, even if a stepchild did not meet the narrow requirements for intestate heirship under section 6454, he or she could still take the roundabout way to heirship through Family Code section 7611.

Ultimately, the Court of Appeal affirmed that Zambito had standing to pursue heirship of his stepfathers intestate estate based on the lower courts factual findings that the stepfather had both taken Zambito into his home and held him out to the world as his own son. As a result, a stepchilds road to intestate heirship is no longer quite as narrow, or as simple, as it was once thought to be. Where once there was only one pathway to heirship, now there are (at least) two. Score another win for shoshin.

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Experts Beware: Estate of Martino and a Zen Buddhist Approach to ... - JD Supra

Japan Art and Horses (Zen Buddhism)

Lee Jay Walker

Modern Tokyo Times

The stunning print of a horse and sled by Kawano Kaoru(1916-1965)highlights the independent spirit of this esteemed individual.

His early childhood during the Taisho Period (1912-1926) impacted his thought patterns. Kawano belongs to thesosaku hanga(creative prints)movement that enabled individualism and creativity to a higher degree within the traditional settings of printmaking during the Edo Period.

Aoyama Seizan (print above) produced amazing Zen-style horses in the 1920s and 1930s. However, little is known about this unique individual.

He understood the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra. Henceforth, his art pieces of horses pertain to a different law of movement that transcends reality.

Nichiren said,Life is indeed an elusive reality that transcends both the words and concepts of existence and nonexistence. It is neither existence nor nonexistence, yet exhibits the qualities of both. It is the mystic entity of the Middle Way that is the ultimate reality. Myo is the name given to the mystic nature of life, and Ho, to its manifestations. Renge, which means lotus flower, is used to symbolize the wonder of this Law. If we understand that our life at this moment is Myo, then we will also understand that our life at other moments is the Mystic Law.

The final print is by Maekawa Senpan (1888-1960). He studied oil painting under Asai Ch and other instructors at the Kansai Art Academy. However, Maekawa moved on to thesosaku hanga(creative prints)artistic movement.

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Japan Art and Horses (Zen Buddhism) Modern Tokyo Times - Modern Tokyo Times

Glass flowers nestled inside hunks of glass finely shaven down with diamonds. A mesmerizing orb that appears to be floating, but is in fact just a two-dimensional acrylic painting on canvas.

At the entrance to "Fooling the Eye: Optics of Vasarely and Kuhn," visitors will notice an array of small glass orbs and paperweights that look like they have actual flowers inside. But it's all an optical illusion, an imaginary world embedded in glass created by artist Paul J. Stankard.

"[Stankard] is really known for hidden details, so if you look at the roots of some of the pieces, they have hidden figures and then the mirror helps reflect the bottom of them so that you see the faces and things like that," said Cafesjian Art Trust Museum Executive Director Andy Schlauch.

Inside the gallery, there are more than 40 works by two artists who are known for creating optical illusions in their art. Glass artist Jon Kuhn's laborious glass sculptures, many of which take several years to complete, often have geometrical designs embedded in them and reflect slices of rainbow-tinted light onto the floor and the walls, and are influenced by Eastern philosophies. Hungarian-born artist Victor Vasarely (1906-1997) is known as the grandfather of Op Art the 1960s movement where artists used geometric shapes and perspectives to create eye-bending visual effects.

The majority of the work in this show comes from the Cafesjian Art Trust Museum's collection, which houses more than 3,000 works of primarily glass art.

"Kuhn reveals things in his work, and Vasarely plays with your depth perception," Schlauch said. "I thought it would be fun for people to learn about how artists figure out how the brain works before psychologists even did in the 1960s, which led to the Op Art Movement, but artists have been doing it since the Renaissance."

A visual connection

Often, the two artists play off each other, even though they weren't necessarily in each other's lives, though this is the second time that Kuhn and Vasarely have been in an exhibition together. The first time was at the Dennos Museum Center in Traverse City, Mich., that also happened to be Kuhn's first museum show.

In Kuhn's rainbow-hued "Joseph Ribbon," 2019-2022, he shapes glass into a twisting line, creating various deep angles, then affixes it atop a silver stand that one can spin (but only in specific ways, lest the glass get scratched). Kuhn's sculpture feels like a physical manifestation of Vasarely's optical illusionary paintings "Gestalt MC," 1980, a checkered seemingly three-dimensional cube, and "Kezdi (Start)," 1990, a similar cube but with lines of color.

Kuhn, who speaks with a slight Southern accent and is based in North Carolina, got into glassmaking accidentally. He was originally a potter, then a furniture designer. He was working on a master's degree in furniture design and the department head was a glass blower, and he got curious about glass. After the first semester, he realized he was spending more time in the glass studios than the woodshop and switched to glass. At the time, he felt it better fit his personality.

"I am philosophical, but woodworkers seemed more philosophical than glass blowers," Kuhn said last week at the museum. "Glass blowers are more mercurial."

Kuhn's three-part series, "Untitled," 2012, "Blue Line," 2012, and "Grand Disruption," 2013-2015, a series of framed glass works, some of which look like sound waves made of tiny diamonds, was inspired by his divorce. He has since remarried.

"It was all chaotic in the middle, then going in opposite directions," Kuhn said, pointing to the triptych of framed artworks. "And then this one went in opposite directions but toward the end, there's order."

Despite being a glass artist, Kuhn is still interested in philosophy.

"I started with Zen Buddhism and moved to Confucianism and I Ching, and I've meditated for most of my life, and now I do a lot of breathing meditation," he said. "I don't follow any particular teacher or guru or anything. After a while, you realize that it's all in the breath."

'Fooling the Eye: Optics of Vasarely and Kuhn' |Where: Cafesjian Art Trust Museum, 4600 Churchill St., Shoreview When: Ends May 4. Info: cafesjianarttrust.org or 612-359-8991. Cost: Free. Hours: The museum is open for tours only at 10 a.m., 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Thu.-Sat. Make a reservation via cafesjianarttrust.org or 612-359-8991.

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Optical illusion art on display at Cafesjian Art Trust Museum in ... - Star Tribune

The Asian country was one of the last destinations to fully relax its pandemic travel restrictions, but is wide open once again

My elevated viewpoint is from my room at Hotel Groove Shinjuku one of two hotels in the new 48-story skyscraper (the other is Bellustar Tokyo), which has bars, restaurants and cinemas. Tokyu Kabukicho Tower opened in May in Shinjuku one of Tokyos liveliest areas, as I discover when stepping outside to explore. Everything hits all my senses at once. Its around 34C, and there are crowds of people walking in every direction many under parasols for shade from the sun. Every building has rows of colourful signs, and there are billboards high up playing noisy ads. The air is filled with tempting food aromas.

Theres so much to take in. The black and white pedestrian crossing is the widest Ive ever seen; the streets are spotless. Theres a sign for an Inu (dog) caf. You can rent an umbrella. Electronic music blares from gaming centres. Everything is huge Shinjuku is Japans largest entertainment district, with thousands of bars and restaurants. Its train station is so busy (around 3.6m people a day pre-Covid), its in the Guinness Book of Records.

Kabukicho tower in Tokyo. Picture: Y Kuronuma

Apart from the new skyscraper, Im interested to see what has changed since the pandemic my last visit was in February 2020, just before Japan closed its borders for two-and-a-half years (it lifted the last of its vaccination and testing requirements in April of this year).

On my first morning in Tokyo, I visit some of the citys most popular sites. The first is TeamLab Planets (teamlab.art), an art museum with live installations you can walk through.With your entire body, immerse, perceive and become one with the art reads a sign at the entrance. Some of the rooms are filled with knee-deep water where koi fish dart along the surface. Others have thousands of flowers. The Infinite Crystal Universe has thousands of LED lights. Its a thrilling experience and of course, an Instagrammers paradise.

Another Insta hotspot is Shibuya Scramble the famous pedestrian crossing which sees up to 300,000 people a day. Its fun to cross with the crowd. Viewing it from Shibuya Sky, on the top of the Shibuya Scramble Square skyscraper, the people look like tiny ants.

Its easy to get to and around Tokyo. I flew from Dublin to Haneda via Helsinki with Finnair, theres a direct bus from the airport to Kabukicho Tower and the subway system is efficient. But Tokyo is busy, so Im thankful to meet tour guide Kenji KJ Murakami from Inside Japan, who knows where to go. To get away from the crowds, he suggests Meiji Shrine, a Shinto shrine surrounded by forest in the city.

The executive room at Hotel Groove Shinjuku Tokyo

As we step through the Tori entrance gate, we bow to the deities as we pass symbolically from the ordinary world into the sacred one. We walk along peaceful tree-lined paths and KJ tells me stories of Japans emperors, Samurai and Shogun rulers. The shrine is dedicated to Emperor Meiji, who contributed much to the modernisation of Japan after the Edo period of seclusion ended in 1868. Thousands of trees and an inner garden with a lily pond and teahouse make it feel like a rural retreat.

KJ says more things are becoming automated in Tokyo because of the manpower shortage, especially since the pandemic. We see an unmanned convenience store and a sushi bar where the food circulates on conveyor belts. Theres a long wait for a table, so we go to Gusto restaurant, where you order on an iPad and a robot comes with the food. It whizzes around on wheels and doesnt interact with us, but its still a novelty.

KJ says there are pros and cons to automation. Automated things are not so expensive, but communication and conversations are gone, he says.

It can sometimes feel lonely if youre alone.

Most visitors to Tokyo go to TeamLabs, Meiji Shrine, and Sensoji Temple, Japans oldest which dates back to 628, he adds. Younger people love to go to the anime shops and Pokmon and Nintendo game centres.

We finish at an izakaya a bar which serves food after navigating a network of streets behind the railway track to find a tiny alley lined with bars. Over the music, the buzz of conversation, and the rumbling of trains, we order dishes of cabbage in seaweed, bonito (fish) with green peppers, skewers of delicious beef, and beers.

Fushimi Inari Taisha Shrine, Kyoto

After a whirlwind couple of days in Tokyo, I board the Shinkansen bullet train for Kyoto, two hours away. After Tokyos crowds, I am thrilled to arrive at Hotel The Mitsui to find a low-rise building on a quiet street. My room overlooks the peaceful central garden with a large pond and theres an underground spa fed by a hot spring.

Its my first time in Kyoto, so I plan to see some main sites and some quieter ones. I meet Inside Japans Insider guide Van Milton, a Kyoto expert who also leads two-week Japan tours. He talks me through the citys layout and history. With more than 1,200 temples and shrines, its regarded as Japans historic centre.

We visit Myoshin-ji, Japans largest Zen Buddhist temple complex with 46 temples. One of them, the Taizo-in Zen Buddhist Temple, dates back to 1404. Here, we stroll beautiful Japanese gardens, admire Zen art and marvel at rock gardens where pebbles are raked into patterns. Its peaceful and uncrowded.

Another temple, Horin-ji Temple, dedicated Daruma-daishi, the founder of Zen Buddhism, has 8,000 daruma dolls inside. Its fun to see the different forms of the distinctive round red dolls. In the late afternoon, we visit the famous Fushimi Inari Shrine, with its rows of red tori gates. There are lots of people at the start of the trail, but the gates stretch right up Mount Inari it takes around 1.5 hours to reach the top, so the crowds fall away further along the trail.

I ask Van about the problems of overtourism the citys population is 1.4m and visitor numbers reached 53.2m in 2019. He says that sometimes at the train station or at Fushimi Inari, its so packed he cant see the ground. Theres a taxi shortage many drivers left during Covid-19, others are ageing out and residents get frustrated when local buses fill up with tourists.

Van says an opportunity was missed to rethink tourism when Japan closed its borders during the pandemic, but just after my visit, Kyoto announced some overtourism countermeasures such as extra bus services and signage for visitors. The Japanese tourism ministry followed suit, announcing plans to draw visitors away from hotspots like Tokyo and Kyoto to lesser-known areas.

Van says the less touristy areas can offer just as much to visitors. People need to realise whats just beyond Kyoto, he says. The towns have the same history Kyoto has. Theres so much within two hours of the city. Farm stays, hot springs, sake breweries. And you barely see another foreigner.

Read our Japan travel bucket list here

Finnair flies from Dublin to Tokyo via Helsinki from 993 in economy, 1,127 in premium economy and 2,275 in business class return. The layover in Helsinki is about three hours. finnair.com

A seven-day Japan Rail Pass for travel anywhere in Japan starts from 336. japan-rail-pass.com

InsideJapan Tours offers private or self-guided trips to Japan. The 14-night Best of Japan self-guided trip costs from 2,340pps (ex flights) including accommodation, transport, some guiding and experiences. InsideJapantTours.com

Irish passport holders do not need a visa for tourist visits of up to 90 days.

Yvonne Gordon stayed at Hotel Groove Shinjuku Tokyo (hotelgroove.jp) and Hotel The Mitsui Kyoto (hotelthemitsui.com/en/kyoto).

If youre not staying in the Tokyo Kabukicho Tower, consider booking in for dinner at Jam 17 restaurant and bar on the 17th floor (hotelgroove.jp/en/jam17) for epic night views across the city.

Yvonne was a guest of Finnair, Hotel The Mitsui, InsideJapan Tours and Tokyo CVB. For more information on things to see and do in Tokyo, see gotokyo.org, and for Kyoto, see kyoto.travel.

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Big in Japan: My post-pandemic trip to Tokyo and Kyoto - Irish Independent

Art

Kettles Yard, Cambridge What happened when the Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia turned an old barn in Cumbria into a free-form space that attracted everyone from Delia Derbyshire to Andy Goldsworthy? Find out in this captivating group show

I can hardly think of a more uplifting show for the dying days of autumn than Making New Worlds at Kettles Yard in Cambridge. Everything about it is bright, beautiful, hopeful and as amiable as the subtitle suggests. For the Chinese artist Li Yuan-chia (1929-94) had many friends, and attracted so many more to his extraordinary museum in Cumbria in the 1970s that over 300 artists eventually came to work in Banks, a remote village beside Hadrians Wall. This show is filled with their spirit.

Li, as he was known, was born in Guangxi and studied in Taipei, where he co-founded the Ton Fan group, who found global fame as Taiwans first abstract artists. He was rapidly spotted by European curators and shown alongside Derek Jarman and Yoko Ono in the newly opened Lisson Gallery in 1967. He was much praised for his airy white panels of magnetic discs that could be moved in endless permutations, casting an infinite variety of shadows; objects of contemplation that are exquisitely made.

There is one here, in an opening gallery of Lis own works introducing his idea of the cosmic point. This is both Blakeian the world in a grain of sand and spiritual, drawing on Zen Buddhism and Taoism. The dot becomes a circle, embracing a world within itself. It becomes a disc, then multiplies, unfolding in delicate paint across watercolour scrolls: grey, vermilion, gold and night black in sequence, condensing the diurnal passage of time.

It proliferates on paper and canvas, in loops and bubbles, rising upwards like laughter; it is a disc hanging over an undulating line like the moon over evening hills. It is a drop of water, a second in time or a dark medallion, black on white, expanding like radiating sound.

Lis kind of abstract painting was at once poetic and conceptual, played out in sparse tones and elegant forms. Some of the earliest works here, from the 1950s, conflate overtones of Joan Mir with ancient Chinese watercolour. But with the move to the village of Banks, into a stone farmhouse with outbuildings on a patch of land loaned him by the painter Winifred Nicholson, the local landscape begins to enter, quite literally, with the bark and branches found on the ground.

Installed upright, in a vertical pageant, these fragments of a wood amount to a glade in themselves. A series of Lis discs, mirror-bright and suspended before them, turn the scene into a living, open-air day.

Lis art so lyrical, so condensed sets the tone for everything that follows. The young Andy Goldsworthy came to work at Banks. Photographs record his early land art, in which Goldsworthy walks the locale, collecting sticks around Hadrians Wall, which he then throws into the air above him like spillikins: dark fireworks against a pale sky. The young David Nash also arrived, turning twigs into drawings and sculptures, piling branches, ragwort and peat into sculptural forms on the floor.

Artists used humble shelves and cupboards for their installations at the Li Yuan-chia Museum and Art Gallery (LYC). Shelagh Wakelys array of fragile containers in transparent resin, unfired clay and papier-mache, conjuring the memory of a long-ago urn, are laid on a slab just above the floor. Lis own calligraphic abstractions, painted on hessian and given to friends, occasionally doubled as draught excluders.

There was no hierarchy at Banks. Rag rug workshops went on alongside high-end conceptualism, childrens print-making beside the most refined abstraction. Some of what you see appears timeless haiku carved into modest wooden tiles and some of it exactly of its time: a pair of clear Perspex cylinders, inside which pink and blue discs seem to multiply through their own dancing reflections.

Unlike the Bauhaus, with its academic programme, the community at the LYC was never doctrinaire. This art is always expansive in its notion of what could be made with, and of, the landscape. Here is a silver-leafed stone, dropping like some shining meteorite from the sky. Or a miniature ship nearly lost between towering waves, all made from shards of local slate.

The music of the spheres, as it seems, ripples through the galleries. This is a homage to Delia Derbyshire, pioneer of electronic music, composer of the Doctor Who theme, who went to live and work with Li in 1976. True to the LYC ethos, her work has been remixed with ambient sound from present-day Banks by the academic David Butler. You might hear a sheep bleating as you look at an image of the landscape.

Most works are by artists who visited the LYC the Benedictine monk Dom Sylvester Houdard, whose concrete poetry evokes the waves of time and tide; the light works of Liliane Lijn. Others continue what was there. An ephemerally beautiful film by the Taiwanese artist Charwei Tsai (b.1980) shows a dark circle, described with a Chinese watercolour brush, appear and then gradually dissolve: a storm sweeping in, then passing away.

The curators of this show have worked with exceptional dedication to present another story of art in this country, patiently rediscovering many works by Li that were scattered after the closure of the LYC in 1983. They even found an early stained-glass panel by David Nash among the relics of Lis great enterprise. It is suspended in a tall window at Kettles Yard, its beautiful blue disc rhyming with the clock of the Cambridge church outside.

And time, in the end, becomes the essence of this captivating show. Not just Lis own idea of time as constantly circling, and never linear; but of a time when the art world was open-hearted, nobody was restricted by museum and market structures, by whos in and whos out of this colossal money-spawning industry. When a spirit of generosity and curiosity prevailed, and everyone was invited to make something out of almost nothing, to make a new world of the imagination, as envisaged by this remarkable man.

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Making New Worlds: Li Yuan-chia and Friends review the open invitation of one remarkable man - The Guardian

Often playful, sometimes comical, and always profound, Zen paintings represent one of the worlds most fascinating religious and artistic traditions. "None Whatsoever" features masterworks of Zen Buddhist Japanese paintings from the renowned Gitter-Yelen Collection spanning more than four centuries. Selections from the MFAH collection of modern and contemporary art complement the presentation.

The exhibition explores the origins of Zen Buddhism in Japanese painting through ink paintings and calligraphies by painter-monks, such as 18th-century Buddhist master Hakuin Ekaku, who expressed Zen Buddhist teachings through their art. A related selection of modern and contemporary art influenced by Zen Buddhism features work by Franz Kline, Takahiro Kondo, Robert Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt, and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others.

The exhibition takes its title from a legendary encounter between a Buddhist monk and a Chinese emperor. According to 8th-century Chinese sources, itinerant monk Bodhidharma, patriarch of Zen Buddhism, visited the court of Emperor Wu Liang. When the emperor asked how much goodwill his generous deeds had earned in the eyes of the Buddha, the monks curt reply, None Whatsoever, shocked the ruler. This exchange - seemingly casual and dismissive, yet also uncompromising, profound, and revolutionary - has come to embody the relationship in Zen Buddhism between student and teacher.

The exhibition will remain on display through May 14.

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The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston presents "None Whatsoever: Zen ... - CultureMap Houston

In the third volume of Michael Posners oral biography of Leonard Cohen, friends, lovers, spiritual kin, musicians, and business partners all tell stories of the besuited poet and singer-songwriter. This final segment begins in 1986 when the singer Jennifer Warnes, his sometime lover and collaborator, releases Famous Blue Raincoat, an album of Leonard Cohen songs that helps revive his reputation, and runs all the way through Cohens widely noted death in 2016. Cohens late-in-life resurgence as a recording and touring musician receives well-deserved attention but the most impressive episodes in this volume show us Cohen, in the 1990s, turning 60 and confronting the chaos inside himself while carrying on with his lifes work. Its a crowdsourced redemption story with graying flecks and a dramatic soundtrack.

Cohens reputation owes quite a lot to other musicians who covered and championed his music, starting with Judy Collins who recorded "Suzanne" in 1966, then another three of his songs a year later on her next album. In 1991, the tribute album Im Your Fan presented Cohens songwriting in recordings by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, R.E.M, and other heroes of alternative rock. This album also featured the seminal John Cale cover of "Hallelujah," but for which the song might not have been covered by Jeff Buckley, but for which the song might not have become a seemingly universal pop hymn.

The personal storms that roll through this volume are as momentous as any in the earlier books and yet more interesting and revealing. One almost pities Cohen as he spends ever more time at the Mount Baldy Zen Center near Claremont, Calif., enduring a demanding course in Zen Buddhism under Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. Old Leonard is a man in crisis: yanked by his own appetites toward dissipation and whoring; drowning in prescription-grade depression; seduced by fame and Hollywood, both personified by his latest girlfriend, Rebecca De Mornay; and, to his credit, unable to quit his vocation as a poet and a singer.

His practice as a Zen Buddhist seems to have been a way through the madness. It was not itself a path of sanity, though. Picture not a Zen garden, balanced, artful, and at peace. Picture New Age bedlam. "You do realize that we are on a hospital ship here, where all of us are broken, and none will ever get well and the ship is sinking," Cohen told fellow initiate James Truman.

The writer Pico Iyer appears as yet another friend and interpreter of the great Cohen koan. He offers a helpful gloss on the hospital comment: "Partly hes saying, 'There are no answers here. This is not salvation, just the opposite. Its about sitting still in a burning house, going up in flames."

Around this time Cohen gave a deeply interesting interview to Arthur Kurzweil of the Jewish Book Club, addressing the possible tension between Buddhism and Judaism. After he took up Zen Buddhism, Cohen said, he practiced Judaism with a passion for the Absolute that he hadnt known before. Buddhist meditation was therefore not so much an alternative to his own religion but a re-initiation into the sacred. Cohen, who toyed with many other journalists and interviewers, seemed to be playing it straight as he described the Bible to Kurzweil as a "landscape," spiritual and historical, that we are invited to inhabitpart of a larger moral universe continuous with the lives of the original Kohenim, a world that is still in existence, still holy, and still broken.

"There is a crack in everything," as he famously wrote. "Thats how the light gets in."

These years of rock bottom followed by an upward ascent provide an extraordinary glimpse of an extraordinary person at an extraordinary time. One is reminded of Henry taking leave of Falstaff to assume the crown, of the prodigal son coming home. This very fallen character reaches for the divine and it is quite moving.

There are other major episodes, such as the revelation that Cohens accounts are unstable and he may be heading toward insolvency. In the usual telling, he is simply ripped off by his manager Kelley Lynch, who was interviewed at length for these volumes. She is unrepentant and blames much of the difficulty on Cohens own profligacy, but the evidence against her (to say nothing of the jail time she served for harassing Cohen) seems overwhelming. The setback, however, does encourage him to keep working, keep recording, and, at an age when most people are watching the ink dry on their final will and testament, embark on a world tour.

Posners volume offers a lot of chapter and verse on the financial scandal and a number of excellent anecdotes of Cohen on the roadhe is so old and tired after performing that he cant bear to hang out with even the likes of Paul Simon and Bono. His problems with girlfriends decline in number but never quite zero out, as we hear from his many friends and acquaintances.

Assembling a life story through so many individual stories raises important questions about what is finally the truth, but Posner's oral history does so intentionally, making a virtue of its own inconsistency. It may be less scholarly or deliberate than weighing every piece of evidence and forcing it all through the sieve of a well-considered thesis, but there is a lot to be said for its free-flowing method. For one thing, it foregrounds the evidence, in a playful way, respecting the readers right to make up their own mind. Secondly, it keeps the principle of uncertainty front and center, ever present amid the polyphony of multiple witnesses relaying different takes on the same events.

Just as earlier volumes offered contrary opinions on Cohens lovemaking, singing, and guitar playing, so volume three tells us he was, in truth, not political at all but also that he was an NRA-card-carrying, pro-Israel realist who was deeply versed in the problems of the Middle East. (It seems possible to write a convincing essay on his political positions that could very well upset some of his most liberal fans.) We also hear that he was a man of superlative integrity and yet an apologist for sexual assault. (When his Zen master was credibly accused of multiple counts of groping and far worse, Cohen, reportedly, was more embarrassed than angry and did not lift a finger to see his beloved Roshi punished.) That he was, at times, a no-show parent and deeply committed to his childrens well-being. (The voices of his two offspring are all but absent, which seems just as wellthese three volumes, even when youre enjoying them, which is most of the time, do not leave you wanting more.)

Leonard Cohen was, apparently, a fiend and a friend. A gentleman and a rake. A voluptuary and an ascetic. And why not all of these?

At its best, however, this Babel of voices is ultimately unifying, producing a multiplicity of impressions that stack into one larger meta portrait like a Chuck Close painting. What brings it all together is the unlikely triumph of this aging troubadour who, after seeking refuge from his own recklessness, continued to climb the tower of song.

Leonard Cohen, Untold Stories: Thats How the Light Gets Inby Michael PosnerSimon and Schuster, 475 pp., $35

David Skinner is an editor and writer who writes about language and culture and lives in Alexandria, Va.

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The Various Positions of Leonard Cohen - Washington Free Beacon

Japanese Zen philosophy has inspired a culture that finds beauty in imperfection. This idea is found in the crack of a teacup in the art of kintsugi.

Where we Westerners might consider it broken and useless, the Japanese pieced together such broken ceramics using lacquer and then sprinkled the joints with powdered gold to decorateand indeed celebratethe flaw.

This emphasis on the so-called broken part embellishes the history of the objects life. It is the richness of this history that enhances and beautifies, thus allowing a broken object to be reborn.

This art form differs from Western ideas and it stems from the Japanese principle of wabi-sabi, which encourages us to discover charm and blessings in the unseemliest and most desolate of places.

The philosophy germinated with the introduction of Zen Buddhism in Japan from China in the late 12th century. It found expression in the Japanese tea ceremony where lavishness was soon replaced by the simple and rustic.

Kintsugi is believed to have originated when Shgun Ashikaga Yoshimasa sent a broken porcelain tea bowl to China to be repaired. It came back mended with metal staples whichAshikaga Yoshimasa found unsightly. He ordered artisans to devise a more aesthetic solution, and thus kintsugi was born.

The process itself is simple. Stemming from the time-honored artform of Japanese lacquerware, dating back to prehistory, the technique uses lacquer extracted from the indigenous urushi tree combined with bonding mediums, such as flour or rice, as a glue to join broken pottery pieces together. It is applied to the pottery using a fine brush. The artisans then placed them in humidified storage compartments, called furo, for anywhere from two days to two weeks. Bowls of hot water placedinside the furo increase the humidity which is absorbed by the lacquer, helping it to dry more quickly.

Once the piece has set, a layer of powdered gold is sprinkled over the crack, embellishing it with precious metal. From start to finish, the process can take as long as three months to complete.

Typically, kintsugi is used to mend cherished family items; on a group of islands fraught with earthquakes, broken pottery is something to be expected.

It is said that the art of kintsugi became so popular that some pottery collectors were accused of smashing pieces intentionally to have them rejoined using this method. It is also possible that defective or deformed pottery pieces were broken and re-mended in this way, salvaging them from being tossed away.

Such resourcefulness and frugality in saving these pieces embodies the whole philosophy behind kintsugi. It can be summed up using the Western idiom Waste not want not. This philosophy of making do has much to teach us Westerners: perfection is too easily lost and impossible to keep, but by embracing the imperfections in ourselves, and finding beauty and redemption in them, perfection and rebirth are always near at hand.

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Michael Wing is a writer and editor based in Calgary, Canada, where he was born and educated in the arts. He writes mainly on culture, human interest, and trending news.

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Japanese Artists Use Gold to Revive Broken Ceramics in Zen ... - The Epoch Times

Pico Iyer is widely regarded as one of the most articulate observers of emerging global culture. In almost 50 years, he has had 15 books published translated into 23 languages on subjects ranging from travel to philosophy, and visited almost 90 countries.

His work is immersive for example, documenting his appreciation for Zen Buddhism after a period living in a Kyoto monastery for his bestseller The Lady and the Monk; and his decades-long friendship with the Dalai Lama, in The Open Road.

In his new book, The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World, the Oxford-born essayist son of an Indian philosopher and political theorist, and a religious scholar dives deep into notions of satisfying our needs and finding optimism amid difficult circumstances.

Like so many, Iyer was catalysed by the stasis of lockdown after a lifetime of flitting backwards and forwards across the globe. For The Half Known Life, he has thumbed through the catalogue of his travels, presenting his thoughts on paradise through a prism of political and social strife in countries such as Iran and Sri Lanka.

Having taught at Harvard in the 80s and travelled widely throughout his half-century-long career, he has been based between Japan where he moved in the 90s and California, where he moved from England with his family as a child. I speak to him via Zoom at his home in Nara, outside Osaka, before he set off for Santa Barbara.

It is striking that so many of the troubled places that I have described in my new book are in the news, whether it is Sri Lanka, Iran or North Korea. I think the pandemic opened doors that we might not have seen otherwise. Im hoping in the years to come, more of us will see that, despite economic and physical devastation, he says.

Lockdown proved to be the ideal time for him to ruminate on 48 years of travel, trying to figure out what all the movement and stillness has amounted to. History has reminded us of so much that can go wrong and has given us scars that we can never recover from. But to give up on hope is to give up on everything.

One of the challenges Iyer faced was stitching together multiple locations into a single narrative. It would be easy to write one chapter on Jerusalem, one on Kashmir and one on Belfast, but linking them all together and defining some of the similarities was hard. It was made easier by the fact that I could not travel. Spending all that time in one place really gave me the stillness and space to put these different places together.

He takes readers firstly to Iran, a country that in recent years has made headlines for almost entirely negative reasons. Iyer thinks about how different it is to what he has known religiously, culturally, linguistically until he visits in September 2013. As soon as he arrives in Iran and gets into a taxi, he strikes up a conversation with the driver. I soon recognise that he [the taxi driver] sounds like any other taxi driver from London or New York. He is worrying about his kids, hes talking about the economy. I am quickly reminded of the many things we all share, at a human level.

While the digital age has made it easy to access and be bewitched by places that are foreign to us places such as Japan and Iran, for example Iyer points out that it is harder to be reminded of what we have in common until we encounter those places in person.

Even in North Korea, which he describes at length in the book, he emphasises how unfamiliar many of us are with the country and consider it to be alien. He trusts that we will think differently and more compassionately once we are there, meeting its people and seeing the challenges they face.

Another impetus for the book was the age of endless information that we know less about the things around us than ever before and least of all, the countries we hear so much about, like Iran or North Korea.

Im really trying to take the reader to places theyve never been to, such as Iran, North Korea and Kashmir, to remind us that the world is richer, deeper, complicated and much more interesting than our ideas of it. If you have the time and resources, please go out and see the world because it will never stop surprising you. Youll quickly have to leave all your assumptions behind and remember that the world itself is a half-known life.

When Iyer began writing in the mid-1980s, he believed that the point of travel writing was to visit a remote place whether that was Cuba or Tibet and gather as many sights, sounds and smells as possible. It was mainly to bring back all these elements to readers and friends, who might not be able to experience those places.

Now, anybody who reads one of my books can access online such vibrant aspects of those places that I would never be able to go to. The travel writers job has changed. We cant compete with cameras. However, there are things we can do that no camera can.

Growing up, he noticed that most travel writing was written by men from privileged backgrounds. However, he notes that the genre has broadened, becoming more global and more democratic in sync with the world.

It is exciting that travel is open to many more people than it used to be. A lot of the best travel writing now is coming from women. If I read Zadie Smith, its not going to be a typical English perspective, its not going to be a typical Jamaican perspective, its going to be something fresh and different, not least because shes a woman.

Travel has also gained a conscience. People are travelling not just to gain something but to give something towards social justice in places that are in trouble.

It is transcending historic limitations, which is ultimately what he is seeking to illuminate in his new book beauty amid friction and optimism among discord.

The Half Known Life: Finding Paradise in a Divided World by Pico Iyer is published by Bloomsbury tomorrow at 16.99

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Maharana Pratap is primarily remembered for his military resistance against the Mughal Empire. (Photo credit: Wikimedia commons)

From the death of Maharana Pratap to the annual celebration of Kokborok Day, much has happened on this day over the years.

New Delhi: Human civilisation has evolved over several centuries, engraving key events throughout its journey. This day, that year will look into the important historical events, incidents and major happenings on that particular day of the year. As history keeps inventing itself, we are also keen to rekindle our past to keep our knowledge quotient high. Today in history, i.e. January 19, the following notable events took place.

Maharana Pratap was a 16th century Rajput king of Mewar, from the Sisodia dynasty. He is widely considered one of the greatest warriors of his time and a symbol of Rajput pride and self-respect. He fought against the Mughal emperor Akbar in the Battle of Haldighati in 1576 and although he was defeated, he continued to resist Mughal expansion for the remainder of his life. Pratap is also remembered for his chivalry, as he was said to be a just and fair ruler who was always willing to help his people. On January 19, 1597, at the age of 56, Pratap passed away at Chavand from wounds acquired after a hunting accident.

Indira Gandhi was first elected as the Prime Minister of India on January 19, 1966, following the death of the then-Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri. She was the first female Prime Minister of India, and her election was historic as it broke the tradition of male leaders in the country. Upon her election, she served as the PM for three consecutive terms from 1966 to 1977 and a fourth term from 1980 until her assassination in 1984. During her tenure as Prime Minister, Gandhi implemented policies focused on poverty reduction, land reform, and the nationalization of banks and major industries. She also played a central role in Indias victory in the 1971 Bangladesh War.

On this day in 1977, Miami and other parts of southern Florida were hit by a rare winter storm known as the Blizzard of 1977 or the White Hurricane. This storm brought unexpected and record-breaking snowfall to Miami, with up to 6 inches falling in some areas, causing widespread damage, power outages, and travel disruptions. It was a historic event as it was the first time in recorded history that the city of Miami had received measurable snowfall. The storm caused major damage to agriculture, particularly to the states citrus crops. This event is still remembered as one of the most extraordinary weather events to have occurred in Miami.

Osho Rajneesh, also known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, was a spiritual teacher and guru who was active in the second half of the 20th century. He is best known for his teachings on the science of the inner and his emphasis on the individuals potential for self-realisation. Rajneeshs teachings drew from a variety of spiritual traditions, including Zen Buddhism, Taoism, and the teachings of J Krishnamurti. Rajneesh was a controversial figure and his commune in Oregon was involved in legal battles and scandals. He passed away on January 19, 1990, but his teachings continue to be followed by a dedicated group of followers and his books continue to be popular around the world.

Kokborok Day is celebrated in Tripura, to honour the Kokborok language, culture and heritage. Kokborok is the indigenous language spoken by the majority of the tribal population of Tripura. The day is celebrated on January 19 every year to commemorate the official recognition of Kokborok as a language in 1979. It is marked by cultural programs, traditional dances, songs, and speeches. This day is also celebrated to promote the Kokborok language and culture among the younger generation. The state government of Tripura also organises various competitions such as debates, quizzes, and essay writing in the Kokborok language to encourage the use of the language and to promote the culture.

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