Leave No Ashes

Leave No Ashes by Ken McLeod from What to Do about Christmas?

when something is experienced completely, good or bad, it’s done, that’s it. Yes?

Student: I have a question [unintelligible]

Ken: All of this is connected with impermanence because we know the passage of time by recalling what we’ve done and that engenders all of these feelings. But as we’ve seen, if you experience things completely in the moment, they tend to leave fewer traces and fewer reverberations or resonances around. So that’s one of the things to take out of this.

In the Zen tradition, Suzuki Roshi says, “Whatever you do, do so completely that there aren’t even any ashes left.” Which is an extraordinary intense way of living. But you see this reflected in the attitude of a lot of athletes, of basketball players or somethings that don’t leave anything on the court. Which is: do it totally.

So I just want you to think for a few moments about what it would be like that everything you do, you do with your total attention. Complete, there’s nothing left. What would life be like that way?

This is a quote, both in audio and transcribed form, from a class given by Ken in 2004.

The transcription of this class is kind of a warm up side project from the group transcribing all 37 Now and Then classes. It is a big undertaking started many months ago by a group of volunteers out of the UM Ning site (and fortunately with the full support of Ken himself, who again makes the material generously available for the public). When they first made their efforts known by asking for more volunteers, I was excited about the project, as the podcast sessions are and have been very dear to me.

I thought it would be wonderful to search in them for special sections I do remember, but that are hard to find amoung the many hours of audio content. Also, it would be very nice to select and send a quote to someone who isn't necessarily interested in meditation or Buddhism, yet something gets touched that might be relevant to them. But I wouldn't have the patience or skill myself to contribute directly. However I had created by hand individual audio clips for my personal use with sections that spoke to me. This was a way of finding certain locations again in order to listen to such a clip repeatedly for a better understanding and also to let things sink in.

At the first meeting with all the volunteers it became clear that there might be some synergies with the transcription project and also that it would be nice to have a tool to conveniently create new audio clips.

As a first result as part of the bigger undertaking you see on each of the transcripts pages audio icons interspersed in the text, which let you listen to just a particular section. BTW, the timestamps have been added by the transcribers, they are then used to create the appropriate clips automatically.

But just as the transcriptions might be useful for more than reading them top to bottom (and we are very interested in getting to know how you would like to use the material, as Valerie and Jesse are preparing a short questionaire), hopefully there will be more uses for individual audio clips as well. If you can't wait what's next in store, make sure we learn about your ideas and needs, and if you want to contribute, e.g. creating your own audio clips or collections thereof, just get in touch.

Ciao, Clemens