Bygone days

North Pier Blackpool

"Designed by Eugenius Birch and commissioned by the Blackpool Pier Company, work commenced on the first of Blackpool's piers in 1862. The North Pier was opened on 21st May 1863 by Mr F Preston."

continued here.

Waiting at Broxbourne

Broxbourne Station

Overnight from Singapore and waiting for an early train at Broxbourne in a watery sunrise. These trees have become good friends over the years, rustling leaves on a warm afternoon on the way to Japanese classes, more often, waiting in a bitterly cold wind returning from Cambridge, and this morning, listening to a conclave of local rooks discussing rook plans while the sun was rising and the moon was setting. The world just "is" - simple really.

Financial literacy

I am financially "old-fashioned", illiterate if you prefer, but the response of the market to Dubai World's request for a 6-month hold on debt repayment seems typically overblown. Hedge funds call their lawyers, markets are in turmoil. I am always bemused by the "market" as if it were more than the sum of its parts, some uncontrollable behemoth with a life of its own. The editorial in yesterday's Financial Times was typical. "The economic crisis was caused by the build-up of leverage. As the crisis unfurled, policymakers rescued debtholders, rightly betting that the best escape route was to meet obligations to creditors and then rely on future economic growth to make debts manageable.
As a result, the financial system remains over-leveraged and under-capitalised."

Let that "remains" sink in. Nothing has changed. The crisis was caused by the uncontrolled and irresponsible build-up of leverage, not the build-up of leverage per se.

Manjusri - Korean

Rev. Master Mugo at JadeMountains highlights the "utter expansiveness" of Manjusri's Great Vow.

In that spirit, I offer a Korean image of the Bodhisattva Manjusri as a boy figure, tongja, from Sangwõn Temple on Mount Odae in Kangwõn Province. The temple was built in 1376 and restored in 1464. The image was commissioned two years later by Princess Uisuk and her husband in the hope of having a boy. I am not a scholar of Korean Buddhism and other accounts seem to differ. Nonetheless, the image is atypical for the Bodhisattva Manjusri.

National Treasure 221
Sangwõn-sa Munsu tongja, Manjusri-as-a-boy

"Manjusri represents the 'wisdom and realisation of all the Buddhas'. Accompanying Buddha Shakyamuni, he and Samantabhadra (Pohyõn Posal), who represents 'intrinsic principle, meditation and practice', would form a triad. His appearance as a boy with two top-knots is unusual, but as a Bodhisattva he is adorned with a pendant necklace and wearing bracelets. ... Manjusri in Japan always appears holding a sword, the symbol of wisdom in one hand, and a Buddhist scroll placed on top of a lotus in the other. But the Sangwõn-sa Manjusri shows a hand gesture that is more commonly associated with Amitabha Buddha. In the fifteenth century Korean Buddhist iconography was not strictly adhered to, and instead both mudra (hand gesture) and posture were more freely adapted to various images."

From "Handbook of Korean Art, Buddhist Sculpture," Youngsook Pak & Roderick Whitfield, Laurence King Publishing, London 2003. (Available in limited preview on Google Books).

Any copyrighted material on this page is considered to be "fair use", for the purpose of study and review, and will be promptly removed at the request of the copyright owner.

From the Genjō kōan

"At the end of his Genjōkōan, Dōgen cites a dialogue between a monk and Master Pao-ch’e of Mt. Ma-ku.

As Pao-ch’e was fanning himself, a monk came by and asked, 'The wind’s nature is eternal and omnipresent. Why, reverend sir, are you still fanning yourself?'
The master replied: 'You only know that the wind’s nature is eternal, but you do not know the reason why it exists everywhere.'
The monk asked, 'Why does it exist everywhere?'

The master just fanned himself."

Translated in Francis H. Cook, Sounds of Valley Streams: Enlightenment in Dōgen’s Zen – Translation of Nine Essays from Shōbōgenzō. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989.p. 69.

Cited by Miraldo in Journal of Buddhist Ethics, vol 13, 2006

"Body-mind cast-off" (shinjin datsuraku)

From the Genjō kōan (現成公案) of Dōgen:

"To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things of the universe. To be enlightened by all things of the universe is to cast off the body and mind of the self as well as those of others. Even the traces of enlightenment are wiped out, and life with traceless enlightenment goes on forever and ever".

Kim, Hee-jin. Eihei Dogen, Mystical Realist. Wisdom Publications, 2004.

Ācala

Ācala

"Destroyer of delusion and the protector of Buddhism"

Yesterday in the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum.

Manjusri

Manjusri

"The image of Manjusri is often seen holding a sword and riding on a lion which represents the Dharma. His right hand is holding a Vajra sword which ends the vexation of sentient beings, and the roaring of the lion awakens the obsessed sentient beings."

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple & Museum

For my father on his 86th birthday!

Bodhisattva Manjusri (2)

Bodhisattva Manjusri

Bodhisattva Manjusri at sunrise today

This being, that exists.
Through the arising of this that arises.
This not being, that does not exist.
Through the ceasing of this, that ceases.

A Corporate burden

From the Financial Times,

"...Goldman's pre-tax profit margins, at 29 per cent, were 10 percentage points higher than the average for other financial firms in the Fortune 500 this decade, and substantially higher than in other industries such as energy, healthcare and consumer staples.
The average for Fortune 500 companies was 8 per cent."

Goldman's 30,000 employees can look forward to an average of $650,000 in compensation.

I wish them well.

"When this is, that is.
From the arising of this comes the arising of that.
When this isn't, that isn't.
From the cessation of this comes the cessation of that."

Remembrance Day 2009

The last dawn

Manjusri at Sunrise

Cutting through illusion

Cambridge Pensioners

Onwards!

Monozukuri

From the Economist , November 7th-13th.

"Moreover, the knowledge about the technology is tacit, not formal. It cannot be transmitted by writing a manual or reading a patent application. Rather, it accumulates by working with colleagues over many years. This poses a barrier to entry for rivals. It also explains why firms try to maintain lifetime employment in specialised high-tech sectors, though it is ebbing elsewhere in the economy.
This belief that the strength of the company is stored in the collective mind of employees–rather than in the share price of the moment–also helps explain why Japanese companies disdain mergers and acquisitions. Firms resist takeovers, rather than viewing them as the natural combinatory process of business, as in the West."

The Rainy Season

Mind games

Headline from today's FT:

"RBS cautious after reporting £1bn loss"

and from the Wall Street Journal:

"RBS Posts Loss, Takes Dim View on Recovery"

But from the BBC:

"RBS downbeat despite £15m profit"

But then the BBC is not what it was.

Falling on swords

On a day when it is reported that RBS will post the biggest loss in Britain's corporate history and when its share price plunged 67%, the government increases its stake to 70%. Where are the swords, the shame, the apologies?

Mr Elster writing to the FT at the end of last year spelt it out:-

"Sir, I am deeply saddened to find that my newspaper of choice for more than 30 years is indulging in the same shabby rewriting of history as our prime minister. One expects this from politicians, not from the FT.

Your editorial "Why free markets must be defended" (December 27th) is grossly disingenuous (not to mention over-simplistic). To say that "incompetence, and is some cases outright fraud, had grown so quickly that by the time market participants woke up to the problem, the entire financial system was threatened" suggests that nobody saw the problem coming. Of course they did. I suggest you read some of the brilliantly prescient articles written five years agao by your own journalists, some of which you have featured recently in advertisements for the FT.....

The fact is that we failed to protect the financial system in the same way we have failed to protect so many valuable components of our society because of complacency, lack of accountability and the failure to attach value to anything. Opportunism, recklessness and fraud were bound to fill the vacuum this created.

That large numbers of people in the financial sector have made huge amounts of money while acting irresponsibly, recklessly, incompetently or dishonestly is beyond doubt. That huge numbers of "little people" are now going to pay the price for this is also beyond doubt. That this should not have been allowed to happen, and that politicians, bankers, regulators, economists and bit players such as financial journalists (with a few honourable exceptions) have been complicit in what has happened, is also beyond doubt...........

What has happened is rooted in incompetence, recklessness and criminality of such grotesque proportions yet of such a simple and obvious nature that to suggest this was a complex and unforeseen failure of the market is a gross and self-serving distortion of the facts....."


And more tempered but equally accurate:-

"Last week, Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury...called into question many of the assumptions business leaders and financiers have made over the last two decades. He criticised the "endless spiral of accumulating wealth, which has nothing much to do with producing anything". He talked about creating "sustainable wealth", which supported "long-term welfare for populations" rather than putting extra noughts in the bank balance for [certain] individuals. We needed to consider wealth creation in terms of the well-being of society, he said."

Not too profound perhaps, but it needs saying.

Today's the inauguration. Let's hope for change, real change.

My Mother's Birthday

Today is my mother's 84th birthday.

Incense and turning of the great prayer wheel at the Buddha's Tooth Temple.

King's College Chapel

Henry VI laid the foundation stone in 1441. In 1471 he was murdered in the Tower of London. Glazing began after completion of the fan-vaulted ceiling in 1515 and took another 30 years.


The fan-vaulted ceiling by John Wastell, constructed between 1508 and 1515. A similar ceiling is in Peterborough cathedral.