Still Still

     Dōgen Zenji says, “To read words, unaware of the way of practice, is just like reading a medical prescription and overlooking to mix the compounds for it; it will be altogether worthless.” We just look at the prescription and forget to drink the medicine. We enjoy reading the prescription, saying, “Oh, this is wonderful medicine!” It is ridiculous, but we do this always. We think zazen is wonderful because Buddha says if we do zazen we become strong. From where does the strength come? Does it come from outside of you? We look at the scriptures and depend on them, and then we are really happy. But who must be strong, the scriptures? No, you must be strong.
— Dainin Katagiri, Return to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life, p. 107.

The six pāramitās or perfections that the bodhisattva practices are:
Generosity,
Moral conduct,
Patience,
Courage,
Meditation,
Wisdom.

The Eightfold Path consists of:
Right views,
Right intention,
Right speech,
Right action,
Right livelihood,
Right effort,
Right mindfulness,
Right concentration.

Buddha’s teaching of the four holy truths, or the Four Noble Truths, is as follows:
Life is suffering;
Suffering is caused by craving;
Suffering can cease;
The cessation of suffering comes about by following the Eightfold Path.

The Triple Treasure is:
I take refuge in the Buddha.
I take refuge in the Dharma [Truth].
I take refuge in the Sangha [Community].

The Three Collective Pure Percepts are:
Refrain from evil.
Practice all that is good.
Purify the mind.

The Ten Prohibitory Percepts are:
Refrain from taking life.
Refrain from stealing.
Refrain from committing adultery.
Refrain from telling lies.
Refrain from intoxicants.
Refrain from misguided speech.
Refrain from extolling oneself while slandering others.
Refrain from being avaricious in the bestowal of the Dharma.
Refrain from being angry.
Refrain from abusing the Triple Treasure.

The six senses are — (a), six sense organs (b), six sense objects (c), and the five skandhas (d); as below:
(a) color, sound, smell, taste, touch, thoughts;
(b) eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body, mind;
(c) visual object, auditory object, taste object, object of smell, tactile object, object of thought;
(d) form, feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness.

— Dainin Katagiri, Return to Silence: Zen Practice in Daily Life, “Notes,” pp. 175-176 passim.

INTERVIEWER

Still, some artists put such an emphasis on their work, on creating something that will last, that they put it before everything else. That line by Faulkner — “The ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is worth any number of old ladies.”

ALLEN

I hate when art becomes religion. I feel the opposite. When you start putting a higher value on works of art than people, you’re forfeiting your humanity. There’s a tendency to feel the artist has special privileges, and that anything’s okay if it’s in the service of art. I tried to get into that in Interiors. I always feel the artist is much too revered: it’s not fair and it’s cruel. It’s a nice but fortuitous gift — like a nice voice or being left-handed. That you can create is a kind of nice accident. It happens to have high value in society, but it’s not as noble an attribution as courage. I find funny and silly the pompous kind of self-important talk about the artist who takes risks. Artistic risks are like show-business risks — laughable. Like casting against type, wow, what danger! Risks are where your life is on the line. The people who took risks against the Nazis or some of the Russian poets who stood up against the state — those people are courageous and brave, and that’s really an achievement. To be an artist is also an achievement, but you have to keep it in perspective. I’m not trying to undersell art. I think it’s valuable, but I think it’s overly revered. It is a valuable thing, but no more valuable than being a good schoolteacher, or being a good doctor. The problem is that being creative has glamour. People in the business end of film always say, “I want to be a producer, but a creative producer.” Or a woman I went to school with, who said, “Oh, yes, I married this guy. He’s a plumber but he’s very creative.” It’s very important for people to have that credential. Like if he wasn’t creative, he was less.
— Woody Allen, in The Paris Review, #136: “Whither Mirth?,” pp. 216-217.