We went to the mountains this weekend in Nagano to visit a friend's French restaurant/bar, soak in some hot springs, and go to the top of a mountain to do a cloud ocean watch. On the trip home, we had time to kill before our last train back to Tokyo. We decided to go check out Zenkoji Temple even though it was pouring rain. It is where the first image of the Buddha to arrive in Japan is stored back in 642 AD. It got me thinking that I am surrounded by Buddhist temples here all the time. There is one next to our apartment called Takezuka-jinja from 983 AD.

It made me think that I should really listen to an audiobook about Japanese Buddhism while I work this week. I like podcasts and music, of course, but my book listening is a little sparse. I did a quick search and found that *Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind* by Shunryu Suzuki seems to be recommended. I started in on it yesterday but I am only halfway through it.

At first listen, there is a lot of talk about the importance of practicing and how there is no finish line with practicing. That resonates with me because I like practicing a simple pattern over and over. I take for granted that playing a beat slightly harder than my ability slowly over and over makes it hard for other random thoughts to pop in my brain.

I also liked the parts about striving to remain a beginner. It reminded me that I need to start thinking of the next drum thing to learn in 2026. Past things I studied were linear drumming, swing drumming, brushes, etc. The top candidate right now is drum beats from the Benin/Togo region of Africa. It could change though so don't hold me to it.

The other random thing that popped out was this quote from Shunryu Suzuki...

When my teacher was seventy, he said, 'When I was young, I was like a tiger, but now I am like a cat!' He was very pleased to be like a cat.

I did a little bow to that one. m( ^ _ − )m