Joe Montani under clear
Sonoran Desert skies (at Spring planting-time), with tomato sprout.
Joe Montani under clear
Sonoran Desert skies (at Spring planting-time), with tomato sprout.
The author, as a sprout.
...And...
[Providing instruction and a Sangha structure for practice and intensive retreats in: Chan (Ch'an) meditation for beginners; Chan meditation for meditators and contemplatives in all traditions; Chan Buddhist Yoga for meditators; Buddhist Yoga for meditators in all traditions; Chinese Buddhist Yoga; Chinese Buddhist meditation; Chan Buddhist Yoga exercises; Chan Buddhist self-massage].
Publications
NEW! Minor Planets that Joe has
named. CLICK for list! (Updated 2010 Jul 28)
The "gallery" below, a learner's exercise, is largely
undisciplined and somewhat sprawling to date; it may take on a new structure
if there's time to learn or pirate more HTML, ...and put it into practice.
The author depicted in a stereo pair.
Use crossed-eyes technique, or other technique. "Get the views to fuse; See me
in 3-d" (bad poetry, I know). --JLM
The fine animal "Socks", once kept in the White House
by the First Family. Send them an admiring note about him, as I did, and you will
receive this postcard of thanks by return mail in about 90 days (Cards are
reportedly addressed and mailed by high school student volunteers; Cat-fanciers,
they must be). [Note added early 2001: Socks has moved away, and I think
lives with the former White House Press Secretary. See the sites devoted
to Socks on the Web for further info.] [Note added a bit later in 2001: The
First Family has also moved away; I am not sure what animals live there now]
Many amateur astronomers are taking up the search for
supernovae in galaxies beyond the Milky Way. This is an area where real
contributions to research can be made, by identifying supernovae early in
their brightening cycle, and alerting the world. A pitfall of this work is the
possibility of confusing an asteroid in our solar system passing over the galaxy
as a supernova. Above series taken with the Spacewatch 0.9 m
telescope on April 24, 1998, from Kitt Peak, while I was searching for new
asteroids. The galaxy is the spiral NGC 4517 in Virgo. The snapshots are cut
from the much larger Spacewatch scan strips, and there is about 30 minutes of
time between each of the three exposures. The asteroid is a newly discovered
mainbelt object, magnitude 19.2, moving north and west. Exposure times are 150
seconds on the CCD.
One notable time while observing at the Spacewatch
telescope,
an asteroid passed near the image of one of the many galaxies in this galaxy
cluster, and while I looked at that cluster so far away with the nearby
solar system object superimposed upon it, I got a sense of vertigo for a
moment. We're probably looking to 500 million lightyears to see the galaxies
here, while the asteroid is probably less than only 100 million MILES away.
Something about this enormous scale difference made my head spin. Astronomers
are not immune to this.
This is a series of three images I took on
Oct. 23, 1997 with the Spacewatch 36-inch telescope on Kitt Peak, 8 days after
the Cassini spacecraft was launched on its mission to Saturn. The spacecraft
shows as a star-like point at the center of each of the 3 snapshots cut from
the much larger Spacewatch scan-images. Red arrows have been added to guide
the viewer's eye. Stellar magnitude of Cassini is 20.0; it was 2.814 million
km distant, over 7 times the distance of the Moon. Each exposure was for 2 1/2
minutes on the Spacewatch CCD; time runs from left to right. The spacecraft
was moving so fast among the background stars that it could have been mistaken
for a near-earth asteroid: it was moving over 0.61 degrees per day projected
on the sky (Main-Belt asteroids at opposition move only 0.25 deg/day). Thanks
to the excellent finding-ephemeris from George Lewis of JPL, Cassini was easy to
find, and was, moreover, right where it was supposed to be. Go, Cassini!
The NEAR Spacecraft sun-glint visible from Tucson AZ on
Jan 23 1998, about 06:39 UTC. ASA 400 Kodak color film and 135 mm lens at f/2.8,
taken from my back yard, among the stars of Perseus. A rare opportunity to see a spacecraft in interplanetary
space with the naked eye, and photograph it very easily. The duration of the
"glint," however, was very brief: 2 seconds! A specular reflection from the
craft's solar panels. NEAR is visible here as a trail in the lower right quadrant
that mimics a short meteor trail. Distance: 20,000 miles (1/12 the distance to the moon!).
Zen came from India in the time of the Buddha (about 500 B.C.); went to China where it developed greatly and underwent a Golden Age; went to Japan, where it was preserved in the form received and also developed further under the Japanese genius, influencing everything in that country to this day; and went everywhere else beginning in the 20th century, largely due to the popularizing influence of the essays of Prof. D.T. Suzuki, and later to his courses taught at Columbia University in the 1950s. Roshi Philip Kapleau's book The Three Pillars of Zen came out in the mid 1960's and revealed how the theoretical and philosophical points written about by Suzuki are actually put into practice, and contained reports written by Westerners, as well as transcripts of interviews between a Japanese Zen- master and male and female Western students. Kapleau's book gave many Westerners confidence that they could actually and finally practice Zen. It was the first practical book in the English language on Zen practice. All that was then necessary was teachers .
The time was then ripe for pioneering teachers from Japan and China to make their home in the West and begin to introduce people to the actual practice of Ch'an, with its characteristic methods and its emphasis on practicing together as a group, or "sangha." Many fine Western teachers are now heir to these teachers' lineages, and a vital Western zen is developing on American, Canadian, Australian, European, South American, and African soil, and in other places besides. Ch'an is called Zen in Japan, and this is the name most of the world knows it by.
Zen practice may be destined to decline for the time being in the Far East, but is now being adopted in the West by greater numbers of people.
(Ch'an)
My Shih-fu, Ch'an Master Sheng-yen (1930-2009) at the time of
the second large Buddhist Conference he organized and hosted in Taiwan.
The First Ancestor, or Patriarch of Ch'an, or Zen:
Bodhidharma; here depicted in a watercolor by Tim Jundo Williams, c. 1997.
Bodhidharma's strong practice was legendary. To avoid the effects of drowsiness
on his meditation, he is reputed to have discarded his eyelids. Where they fell
to the ground, tea plants sprang up. After Bodhidharma brought Dhyana (Ch'an)
to China from India, tea was subsequently used by Ch'an monastics to give them
stamina in their long spells of "sitting" (meditation) practice; and then,
Ch'an spread to Japan, and tea went with it; both developed in a big way.
Painting appears thanks to generous permission, via Jane Lago (Click
painting
for large version). Jane and Tim have postcards available of this and
three other of Tim's original paintings, with proceeds going to their
sangha's temple building-fund.
Link to contact Tim Jundo Williams: twilliam@mail.coin.missouri.edu
An Ivy League school in the middle of New York
City: my undergraduate Alma Mater (of over 40 years ago). The world's
greatest university, all personal bias aside: the best place to attend college,
and one of the best places to live imaginable and realizable (New York City).
This recent scene depicts College Walk, at 116th Street, looking west to
Broadway and over the Hudson River to the Palisades of the New Jersey side of
the river, in evening twilight at Holiday time.
Ever feel like this?
Dr. Sally Love is past director of the Insect Zoo
at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History.
A forward-looking stamp series issued by the United
States two years before the third millenium opened.
Star Trek fans visiting will recognize the symbol
of the Federation.
A product of Joe's wood-turning and woodworking: a
view of the Mallet with which to strike the "Han,"or signalling board.
Commissioned by and used at the Zen center in Tucson. American Cherry wood
head, Ash handle; Feb. 1998. [The pine han shown here, a seat-part from a bench,
donated by Indiana Nelson, has since been broken on sesshin in May, 1998, by
Joe, as jikijitsu. It has been replaced at the current ZDS zendo by a
Mahogany han brought from Amarillo by Pat Hawk Roshi. The mallet is still in
use.]
Another view of the Mallet, with Han below it.
American Cherry wood Drinking Goblet on the wood lathe;
early stage; Feb. 1998. 
Another view of Cherry Goblet. Commissioned by Sarah Duffy,
for her use at the Renaissance Festival in Arizona, 1998.
Shaker "Weaver's" chair. Rock Maple and cotton chair
tape. I'll use this for sitting at the lathe sometimes; a good height,
it has a low back allowing freedom of movement for the turner.
A stool would work better perhaps, but the back adds a great look, and
sometimes you want to rest the spine a bit: If T'ai Chi hasn't prepared me
for STANDING at the lathe, then perhaps Zen practice has prepared me for
SITTING there; I do BOTH. Patterned after a design c. 1830 from the
New Lebanon (NY) Shaker community; March 1998.
Cat gallery will start here one day soon!
Bike
gallery may start here one day soon!
A favorite Japanese lacquerware plate design.
The true Poet-Laureate of the
United States, Allen Ginsberg (Jun 3 1926 - Apr 5 1997), in two views.
Fellow New Jerseyan and Columbia-man. Three nights after he died,
I discovered my first comet; three nights after that, I discovered my second.
Whimsically speaking (and Allen would like it that way), I know Allen "sent"
them to me. Thank you, Allen! Rest in Peace. Om, Shanti.
Bodhi, Svaha! "Frog jumps in: PLOP!" (--Basho)
Comet C/2000 A1 (Montani). I took these images at
the 0.9-m Spacewatch telescope on Feb. 21.3, 2001. The comet's tail and coma
are more developed than at discovery 13 months earlier. Yet, this little
tadpole still looks quite anemic because it is very distant from the sun
(about 10 AU, which is beyond Saturn). This animation of
the three Spacewatch "passes" shows the motion of the comet over one hour
of time. To the left of the slow-moving, distant comet, a moving main-belt
asteroid can also be seen, closer to sun and earth, and so moving much faster
than the comet.
The asteroid (3070) Aitken which I photographed with
the Spacewatch 36-inch telescope on Kitt Peak on Oct. 11, 1999. The asteroid
is named for the famous American astronomer Robert Grant Aitken, great double
star observer, past Director of Lick Observatory, and Grandfather of Robert
Aitken Roshi, the Zen teacher and writer. The animated GIF file shows the
motion of the asteroid among the stars.
Sometimes the moving asteroid is much brighter
than the stars in the surrounding field of view. And sometimes, it's the
asteroid, and not the stars, that bears the diffraction spikes! This can
at first glance be a bit confusing to the observer, who expects the stars
to be the very bright objects in the field. But the earliest-discovered
asteroids are quite large and hence intrinsically bright. The object here,
(19) Fortuna, was only the 19th asteroid discovered, in 1852, by J.R. Hind,
of London (100 years before my birth). See how bright it is!: fully saturated
on the Spacewatch 0.9-m telescope CCD camera, and sporting bright diffraction
spikes from the spider-support.
...and at base, a bass Clef (F-Clef).