It's been wonderful getting back in touch with my family and friends. On Halloween I took my twelve-year-old niece and some of her friends out trick-or-treating. They were dressed as a fairy, a demon (my niece, appropriately enough), a 1950s era swing dancer (broad polka-dot skirt), and "Little Black Riding Hood", with a couple of feather masks thrown in for good measure. (It was a diverse group: one black girl, two hispanics, and my niece who is 3/4 white and 1/4 Japanese.) I wore my blue samue and a matching blue hachimaki (a wide Japanese headband usually tied at the back). I looked like a sushi chef, or perhaps the Karate Kid going through some mid-life crisis. (Maybe not too far from the truth...)

It was kinda strange to be wearing my monk robes around my sister's family because they don't even know about my Walkabout yet. But I told them that I was dressed up as Zen Monk Ichibuti, which was appropriate enough since during my Walkabout on the East Coast I had been corresponding with my niece by e-mailing her brain puzzlers that I always framed as experiences of Ichibuti's. (For example: "Zen monk Ichibuti visited the SashimiSmashi Samurai School. He saw that it took seven samurai with seven sharp swords seven minutes to slice and serve seven Caesar salads. How long would it take sixteen samurai with sixteen sharp swords to slice and serve sixteen Caesar salads?" Hint: it's not sixteen minutes.)

As I've been visiting with family and friends, I've watched myself slip back into the old habits of this familiar lifestyle. My self-awareness decreases as my distractions increase. I'm as scatter-brained as ever, but then again, I was pretty scatter-brained as a monk too. Any sense of inner peace that I may have cultivated from my experiment on the road is rapidly dissipating. It's harder to remember to practice mindfulness when the mind and body react to familiar stimuli in their previously conditioned ways.

But I've been careful not to set myself up with too many expectations. My transition out of the monastery eight years ago taught me that insights can fade, and new ways of being often give way to the old. Letting go of transformation itself may be the most enduring lesson after all. Already, my Walkabout is beginning to feel like it was a dream. Did that deer really wake me up behind the Dollar Store? Did that "hooker with a heart of gold" really pull a coat out of her purse for that cold homeless guy ridiculing her? Did Terry really die? If I hadn't written these things down, then I would be seriously questioning my memory now, for many of my experiences seem surreally dream-like.

Speaking of dreams, I had an interesting one a little while ago that humorously reflects my continuing angst about this whole monk experience. (More on the angst itself at a later date.) I dreamt that I was in a small town musical revue. I was experiencing a lot of anxiety, partly due to the fact that I couldn't remember the words to the song that I was supposed to be singing, but probably more because I was exceedingly uncomfortable in my blue dress with its multitude of blue balloons attached all over it---an all-too-familiar shade of sky blue, I might add.....


"Are you going to get a job?"
---my Mother

It's almost midnight and we're down to the final hand. Brian and I are facing off in seven card stud for one of the biggest pots of the night. After six cards, I've got two pair---jacks over sevens. That's okay in seven card stud, but it's been a strange night with large pots being won with monster hands, so I'm not as confident as I normally would be. I once had a straight and that was only good for third best! Besides, of Brian's four up cards showing, three are clubs, so he's threatening a flush....again.

The guys in the poker gang all have their gambling styles. Hugh plays his cards pretty close to the vest, not taking many chances and waiting for opportune moments to play good cards. Fred bets aggressively, intimidating others out of hands. Michael keeps us off balance with a constant stream of jokes and trash talk. Sheldon just laughs no matter what he's got. Brian never folds. And my style is to act neurotic whether I've got a good hand or a bad one so that they can't tell the difference.

To my poker homeys, my nom de guerre is "Monkboy", appropriately enough. I have a standing joke with the guys that I went to Asia to find a guru who could teach me how to fold. But despite my irreverence, I actually do have a centering practice that I attempt to implement as the cards and money are flying around the table. It's pretty much the same practice that I mentioned before in the Knights on the Square entry regarding chess. I try to relax into the game and enjoy both winning and losing, attempting to free myself from the crushing weight of "success" and "failure", of grasping and fear. Ideally, I can generalize this lesson beyond mere games and learn to embrace the natural ebb and flow of life itself. Perhaps I can even develop an internal and unconditional peace amidst the comedies and dramas that we all experience.

So I smile when my straights are beaten by flushes. And I try to laugh as my chip stack dwindles and my friends' 401(k) plans and their kids' college funds become that much healthier. But, as with chess, my poker practice results are very meagre at best. Yes, the game is mainly for fun and socializing, but I still very much do want to win the pot. And I still very much don't want to give my money away. (Perhaps even more so because it's not my money! I'm gambling with money that I've borrowed from a friend to live on during this interlude from my walkabout. Good thing I don't have any vows against gambling.)

Mostly though, I'm so caught up in the game that I don't even remember that I'm supposed to be relaxing about somethingerother. But on those rare moments when I actually do remember to breathe deep and let go, to embrace the cards whatever may come, I am sometimes rewarded with a taste of freedom, and I become aware and elated amidst all the cards and the money and the trash talk and the vagaries of the gambling gods. This usually lasts about five seconds. These rare reveries are routinely squashed by the anguish of being dealt something like a three of clubs. And in spite of all my ambitions for peace, love, and understanding, I still very much do want to bitch-slap Fred for seeming to always know my cards better than I do. (Oops, is the poker trash talk spilling over into my blog?)

So the adrenaline is flowing and my heart is thumping double time as Brian and I are each dealt our last card face down. He's first to act and he bets the maximum, so I figure he's made his flush.....again. But hey, for once I'm actually happy about that because the gambling gods have been kind to me and I've been dealt another jack, giving me a full house! So I raise him the maximum amount, and then we go back and forth re-raising one another the maximum until we reach the limit on raises. Yeah, not much finesse or subtlety between us. So there's about 25 bucks in the pot now and I notice a funny thing: I've got him totally beat, but I'm still nervous! I've got him iced, and yet I'm still not able to relax. What's up with that?! (Imagine how anxious I get when I actually bluff at one of these big pots.) We show our cards and there's a very un-monkish moment of greedy gloating as I lay down my beautiful boat (full house) to beat his ace-high flush.

But what was that nervousness that remained despite the fact that I knew I had the winning hand? This is a key issue for me because there are implications here that reach beyond a mere game of poker, for there are parallels with the rest of my life too. Like that last winning hand against Brian, I think I've been dealt some pretty amazing "cards" in the rest of my life too. And yet, as with that poker hand, I still experience some anxiety despite my winning cards. So what is this fear lurking under "the best of times"?

And just how good a hand of "life cards" have I been dealt? Well, for starters, I can pick up this amazing invention called a telephone and speak with someone who will bring me Italian or Mexican or Chinese food in exchange for a few pieces of green paper. (Depending upon where I am, if I'm really lucky, I might even be able to get Thai food delivered.) Or I can give someone a plastic card for only 30 seconds, after which they will return it and arrange for me to fly (!) to Katmandu in this impossible contraption called an airplane in a matter of hours. (This alone is worth the price of admission, or, to keep with the poker metaphor, worth the "buy in".)

I can play tennis, or go dancing, or join a Christian mime troupe. (Okay, maybe not that last one.) With the internet, I can learn all about black holes and white dwarfs and someone called Paris Hilton at the touch of a button. If I break my arm, doctors can take a picture of my bones, set the fracture, plaster cast it, and I'll be out of the hospital that very same day. And, despite my irresponsible vagabond ways, I have the greatest family and friends. (Sure, there's the usual amount of dysfunction and neuroses too, but that's part of the spice of life.) And then there's mint chocolate chip ice cream. The list goes on and on.

Heck, I've already lived longer than the vast majority of humans throughout the 250,000 year history of homo sapiens. (Longer than most of the rest of the animals and plants too, for that matter.) As for contemporary comparisons, my socio-economic status guarantees me opportunities, experiences, and luxuries way beyond those accessible to most of the world's current population. I've travelled a lot in the third world and I've seen some bad hands. Many would kill for a hand like mine.

Unfortunately, for the most part, I take it all for granted. Even now, only a month and a half after leaving my walkabout, I barely notice the plentiful food, hot showers, and comfy beds that I learned to appreciate so much on the road. During my walkabout, I intentionally cut myself off from easy access to these privileges, not only to challenge my attachments and fears, but to develop a sense of gratitude for these big and little blessings themselves. This past Thanksgiving was a good opportunity for me to reflect on this great hand that I've been dealt. Amidst all the food and the camaraderie, it wasn't too hard to get in touch with a deeper sense of gratitude and humility. And yet, somehow, despite all these incredible cards I'm holding, I still experience a fundamental anxiety and dissatisfaction lurking beneath my approach toward the game of life. My primal fears and hungers are still pulling a lot of my strings and it's really been pissing me off for a while now.

On rare occasions the poker gang will hold a "no-limit" tournament. That means there's no limit to the betting and players can go "all in", pushing their whole chip stack into the pot as the ultimate bet. It makes for an evening of big pots, big bluffs, high drama, hilarious histrionics, and, of course, the requisite trash talk. By the end of the night, the top couple of winners leave with all the money and everyone else walks away empty-handed, their blood pressure a little higher and their wallets a little lighter.

My walkabout is a similar endeavor to up the stakes in an attempt to win a much bigger pot. But to win this high stakes game, I think I'm going to have to subvert the standard rules of "winning" and "losing", for the pot is a non-standard one: freedom from the fear and craving inherent in the game, freedom from the caprices of the cards and the game itself. (While it is all very likely that this game may bust me, I will at least have learned how to torture a metaphor to death!)

But for now I'm not yet free of the game and I'm still at the mercy of the cards. I guess I haven't truly learned to fold yet---to let go---after all. And even though I think I've got a good hand, I can't help feeling like I'm bluffing someone.....probably me.

And oh yeah, I'm all in.