Gaia Community: Zummy Bear's Blog

Omega Man

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 23:12:20 GMT

Okay, so I'm not dead or in a coma. And I didn't have a motorcycle accident and get amnesia and begin a new life as a reclusive suburban hamster whisperer, secretly reconciling estranged owners and their rodents. (Though that would have made for an interesting entry.) I've just been seriously neglecting this blog. Apologies to the six of you who actually read this blog....and have apparently returned about 80 times each to see if I've gotten my butt back in gear!

So, back to the matter at hand: wrapping up my walkabout and the lessons it taught me.

I went back to the Omega Institute for a few weeks at the end of the last season. Omega is a retreat center in rural upstate New York featuring a smorgasbord of workshops throughout the year (excluding winter) offering everything from more traditional courses like yoga, meditation and art classes to the outer fringes of the new age culture ("Past-Life Therapy Training" or "Shapeshifting into Higher Consciousness").

In exchange for part-time work in various departments supporting the campus (kitchen, maintenance, guest services, set-up, etc.), we "volunteers" get room and board, access to various facilities and activities (sauna, tennis courts, lake canoes, concerts, daily tai-chi and dance classes,etc.), as well as a multitude of courses offered just for the staff. These are generally more modest courses than the workshops and are often taught by others on the support staff itself. These classes also run the gamut from meditation to sweat lodge ceremonies to psychic healing.

Appropriately enough, since I tend to cruise in to Omega for a few weeks at a time, I usually work in the "Float Department", which places us wandering souls in whichever other departments need more staff during the ebb and flow of work each day. An important element of the staff philosophy is an emphasis on service as spiritual practice. Karma yoga in action. But it's easy to lose sight of this lofty sentiment when I have to dice forty onions or make beds for three hours straight, or, on the flip side, when I'm gleefully zooming around the lush campus in a golf cart, ostensibly delivering luggage. So, as usual, it is largely a practice of remembering to practice.

And it's always great to get back in touch with the sweet souls that flit about the Omega flame-----some flying high, others spreading their wings for the first time, and a few on fire (interpret that as you wish). There is a core staff who make a career out of working at the institute, but us "seasonal staff" are a fairly transient bunch. It's a treat (and a challenge!) to rub shoulders with this colorful crew of multi-talented gypsies as we all work on opening our minds and hearts.

My artist friend Young whom I had met on my walkabout came up from New York City to visit me. As I showed her around the campus, we reminisced about her art show in Poughkeepsie that I helped her install and she caught me up on the activities of the other artists I had met. Although it had been only a year earlier, my time in New York City felt like ages ago. She generously offered to have me be a part of a multimedia interactive performance art piece involving the NYC police and the homeless, called MetroPols. But I felt that I wasn't quite suited for the New York art scene, so I turned down a role coordinating the homeless. Later, Young told me that the police got cold feet and pulled out, so she had to cancel the whole experimental event.

As usual, my time at Omega was an exhilarating mixture of work, play, and practice. Well, actually, between the work and all the play, my meditation practice usually gets a bit neglected. But of course there are ample opportunities for the practice that I try to implement in my daily activities: developing awareness, relaxing, accepting, and letting go. My results are fairly mixed, especially since each successive step is a little more challenging than the previous one. But my self-awareness has deepened somewhat and I have some small victories, like when I let go of jamming my schedule full of too many tantalizing distractions or when I relax into dicing those forty onions.

Speaking of playing, it was great to enjoy sports again, namely tennis, ultimate, and basketball. I'm usually one of the best tennis players at Omega, but I found myself in a humbling match with a visiting staff member who beat me quite easily. And man, did I suck at basketball! My first day back on the court, not only did I go scoreless, but I never even managed to hit the rim with any of my shots! After a while of this shooting debacle, I was matched up against a young woman (the only female playing, bless her bold heart!) to make the teams fair. She was almost a foot shorter than me, which is saying something, cuz I'm not exactly a Pau Gasol out on the court. (Think 'Spud Webb'.) And I still sucked really bad!

Through all the basketball games, I tried to enjoy everything (the competition, the camaraderie, my sucking, the indifferent Basketball Gods), but only managed meagre results. Afterwards, however, I did have a good laugh. I played on a couple of other occasions and still never made a single basket, though I did manage to throw up a few rim-rattling "bricks", which, I guess, was a minor victory in that I finally managed to draw some iron.

Which finally brings me to another walkabout lesson: Failure is my friend.

While one could reasonably argue that my walkabout was a "success" since I was able to live the better part of a year as a wandering beggar monk, I certainly experienced my fair share of "failures" too.

First up, I failed to free myself from my primal fears. (Again, I'll tackle these bogey monsters directly in another entry.)

I repeatedly failed at my relaxation practice ("letting go") during competitive activities such as chess, poker, and the sports I mentioned above. I also had some angry moments with several homeless guys. (Yet another one of the entries that I didn't write when I got behind in this blog.) And I lost my cool with some of my artist friends in New York and even reacted angrily during some tense moments with Carol and her mother during that difficult last month of her life in Los Angeles. Clearly, I've still got plenty of buttons that are too easily pushed.

This blog itself is a glaring example of my limitations. I have failed to stay up to date and had to skip several entries when I got behind. This blog has become an albatross around my neck (well, that's a bit much----how 'bout a seagull or a big pigeon then?) and despite my efforts to make this writing a practice in liberation itself, I still struggle mightily because I turn it into a grinding slog.

So it has become quite clear that my ego has claimed this blog as its own, another shiny bauble to agonize over and keep polishing, for it reflects me. My perfectionistic anal-retentive proclivities take over, constricting any kind of free-form intuitive flow. Where's the mental laxative to help me unblock my creativity? Oh yeah, it's the re-laxative ingredients of meditation itself. So, meditation in action, Monkboy. Breathe deep, be aware, relax, accept, let go, move forward. And don't forget to laugh, humor being one of the greatest laxatives!

So yes, I experienced failures big and small on the walkabout and beyond. But as a Taoist seeking to balance and harmonize the yin and yang polarities within me, I am called to embrace the dark and not cling to the light. This is a direct contradiction of my usual impulse to push away negative experiences (e.g., pain, insults, eggplants, the Celtics) and grasp at positive ones (e.g., success, knowledge, mint chocolate chip ice cream, bikinis). By unraveling my instinctual rigidity, I would be free to walk peacefully in the light or the dark, in harmony with the great Tao itself. And perhaps then I'd see that my delineations of "negative" and "positive", or "light" and "dark", might not be so accurate after all.

So failure is my friend. Defeat is my guru. And every foible and fiasco is actually a veiled opportunity, a secret key to the back door of liberation.

If I can truly embrace failure then I will free myself from the crushing weight and limited horizons imposed by the yoke of the failure/success paradigm. I will be free to breathe easy and be at peace through all my triumphs and disasters (Kipling's "imposters")----and all the ordinariness in between. When the vagaries of life no longer dictate my feelings and actions, then I can access true unconditional peace, happiness, and love. I can act from the heart instead of react from fear and craving. That's a pretty good definition of freedom for me.

So can I really live the wisdom imparted to me by a friend's young son that I quoted so long ago?: "If I enjoy both winning and losing, then I never lose." Can I truly imagine how liberating it would be to fail, and yet laugh anyways? To taste defeat, and enjoy the bittersweet tang of loss? To crash and burn, and still come up smiling, scars and all? To be the Fool, and keep on dancing?

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, I can imagine it. I can visualize shooting air balls, receiving criticism, typing a mangled sentence, losing an argument, getting fired, or being dumped by a girlfriend, all the while maintaining a relaxed and open attitude, appreciative of the play of light and dark, and keeping an eye on the greater Game of Life itself. I can almost taste it, and that's a great first step toward moving beyond these self-imposed games of winning and losing, and thereby achieve a much grander victory: freedom.

I can almost feel the weights falling away from my shoulders, my mind clearing, and my heart opening. With the internal struggle removed from my endeavors, I could taste the fruits of the Taoists' wei wu wei, or "effortless effort". I can imagine the reserves of energy and creativity that would open up if I could truly let go of my fear of failure. Yet I must be careful that any new-found effectiveness is not my primary motivation, or else I'm back where I started: grasping at success. It's a tricky process, for I am attempting to succeed at failing, and this requires an open and balanced approach to the nuances of "success" and "failure".

Hah! Time to burst this frothy bubble! For I usually lose this game too. I fail at embracing failure. I am still piqued by defeat at the chess table. I juggle humiliation on the basketball court. Criticism directed my way still carries its barbs. And I continue to bang my head against this keyboard in frustration. I want to win, to succeed, to be right, and the sting of self-judgment still accompanies defeat. Failure is still a bitter pill to choke down. (Don't get me wrong----I'm a good sport, win or lose----it's just that I'm a long way from enjoying losing as much as I enjoy winning.)

It's a tough goal, this trying to succeed at failing, for it runs against ALL of my genetic programming and social conditioning. I am designed to win at all costs, to experience a heady rush of endorphins during victory and corresponding depressive chemicals when I lose. My genes scheme for me to be an alpha male in the tribe, claiming status, power, territory, mates, resources. Exacerbating these pre-programmed impulses, our society indoctrinates me further in the cult(ure) of victory. We pay lip service to the notion of sportsmanship, yet we idolize those who actually "win"----in sports, in our literature and movies, up the corporate ladder, in politics, and on the battlefield. Losers aren't lionized.

Our culture pushes us to achieve our "highest potential" with the not-so-implicit message that we are somehow less of a person if we don't attain these lofty goals. Personal progress must be ever upward. I'm having difficulty unraveling all this inherent hard-wiring and downloaded social software. How can I hope to swim against such a strong current that flows all around me and even within the genetic core of my being?

Ah, but here is another opportunity: I can embrace my failure to embrace failure. And if I fail at that, then I have yet another opportunity to embrace that failure. And so on and so on. This line of failures and the opportunities they provide can go on and on. Ma Universe is infinitely generous with her remedial lessons for knuckleheads like me. Somewhere along this line of practice and failure, my brain usually cramps up from all of the mental gymnastics.....and I let go. I chuckle and sigh and manage to accept failure at some level, sometimes even enjoy it. And if I don't, well, ultimately that's fine too. And there I am, smiling at failure.

So while my ego still tends to sweep me along in a flood of testosterone and adrenaline during the heat of battle (chess, debating politics, chucking air balls, watching "Survivor"), I have managed to loosen up my previously rigid notions of "defeat" and "victory". Perhaps I have even learned to take both a little more gracefully. So who cares if my glass is 98% empty or 2% full? For if I embrace both emptiness and fullness, then I'll savor my Absolut 100% of the time! Drink deep, Monkeyboy.

This practice is a form of psychological sublimation where one uses so-called "negative" experiences to achieve "positive" results. Hence why I refer to it as sneaking in the back door of liberation. It's similar to practices found in various "left-hand paths" such as tantra yoga which seek to channel our energies---"positive" and "negative"---toward spiritual goals. Anger, fear, sexuality, intoxicants, death----nothing is off limits for a tantrika to investigate, master, and eventually use toward spiritual awakening. Left-hand traditions are willing to get down and dirty and mix it up with the shadows, for they teach that the Divine exists in the world and within us too-----and it does not limit itself to only the well-lit alleys of the world and our psyches. Not quite the "Dark Side of the Force", but left-hand paths definitely have their own special set of pitfalls. These traditions are clearly not for everyone, and so they tend to keep to the shadows, away from the glare of the limelight.

(This brief description doesn't do justice to the multi-faceted and controversial field of left-hand paths. Yoga tantra itself consists of multiple traditions with varying beliefs and practices. I feel compelled to clarify this because the word "tantra" has been appropriated by some in the West where it has come to be synonymous with "sacred sex". Indeed, there are sexual practices to awaken kundalini energy for spiritual realization, but these are only one aspect of the varied landscape of tantra philosophy.)

And what of right-hand paths or "front door" traditions? Well, these disciplines tend to view divinity as external to the material world. Personal transcendence is achieved through association with this divinity, usually in the form of deity worship. They generally have a more rigid perspective on dualism, especially "good" and "evil", and so they shy away from the "dark" and cleave to the "light", cultivating "positive" qualities. Their main practices focus on renunciation and purification as a means for transformation. These are the majority of practices, East and West, and are primarily embodied in the world's main religious traditions.

Again, these are broad generalizations. Separating traditions into left hand and right hand categories is a dubious undertaking at best and many would chafe at these distinctions. As with all dualities, there's a lot of gray area and overlap between the polarities. While there are some clear differences, many of the practices are very similar. As I've said before, the left-hand practice of embracing aversions is the flip side of the right-hand practice of letting go of cravings. (E.g., embracing criticism is a practice in letting go of self-image.) Both paths seek self-mastery to transcend the limitations of our conditioning. And ultimately, the goals are pretty much the same: Liberation, Salvation, Divine Communion, Transcendence, Awakening, Realization, Enlightenment, The Cosmic Hoedown, whatever you want to call IT.

Whether I enter through the front door or the back door, the House of Liberation remains the same. I'm sure there are plenty of other doors too, for it's a big ol' open house. The servant's entrance---Karma Yoga---is another door that comes to mind.

And I'll bet there are a whole bunch of pretty windows we can break into too!

(To be continued...)

"You're the man, Zum!"
---Omega basketballer, mocking my court skills

"Yeah, I know that and you know that, but I think everybody else is gonna need some convincing."
---my response

"He who has the most fun wins."
---Izzie, Omega staff member

"Meditation: it's all fun and games until somebody loses an I."
---spotted on a shirt at Omega

"Humor allows me breath and space to pursue my spiritual path."
---Steve, Omega staff member

"We couldn't figure out how we could afford to staff Omega, and then we realized that we could just get slaves!"
---Elizabeth Lesser, co-founder of the Omega Institute, joking about the "volunteer" staff

"Success is the proper utilization of failure."
---anonymous

"That by which we fall is that by which we rise."
---Yoga Tantra aphorism

"My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure."
---Abraham Lincoln (I love this quote, though I'm pretty sure that Lincoln is concerned that we not be content with failure----the opposite of how I prefer to interpret the quote.)

"How can they say my life is not a success? Have I not for more than sixty years got enough to eat and escaped being eaten?"
---Logan Pearsall Smith, essayist (1865-1946)

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Past Present

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 01:09:13 GMT

Okay, so I went through my old walkabout notes and wrote up one of the entries that I had previously skipped when I started getting behind in this blog way back in March of last year. I tried to backdate it in so that it would show up in the right spot, but the Gaia Gods would have none of that.

Looking back on it, I'm not sure why I took all the time and effort to write it all out. I guess I'm being a bit anal and probably need to let go of the past. Which is pretty darn ironic since the entry is largely about the past's influence on the present.

Sheesh.

Oh well, here it is:

Past Present

One fine day I was wandering by Reed Park (originally Lincoln Park) in Santa Monica when I realized that I was near the apartment that my family lived in during the first year of my life. Amazingly, despite all of the commercial development along busy Wilshire Boulevard, those apartments still remain above a few small shops. (But Santa Monica has made it a point to maintain its small-town charm, so I guess I shouldn't be so surprised.) The only memories I have of that early period of my life are of a neighbor's boxer dogs named Beanie and Buffy, and some kid's toy train set that entranced me as a toddler.

Stumbling upon my family's old apartment gave me pause to reflect on my life coming full circle back to my humble beginnings. Interestingly, after some brief nostalgia, my next thoughts were that I hadn't accomplished much with my life, especially considering my even more humble current homeless status, no matter how intentionally self-inflicted it may be. On the face of it, I don't have much to show for my crazy kaleidoscope of a life-----just a box of old photos, a few scars, a paper bag full of tangled memories, and a few kooky notions borrowed from some old dead guys with names like Lao-tzu and Patanjali.

My knee-jerk reaction to this kind of personal assessment is usually to start defending myself by reflecting that there are many kinds of accomplishment beyond just material assets and other standard ideas of achievement. Luckily, I usually realize what I'm doing and am able to remind myself that I am working to free myself from the crushing weight of hopes and expectations regarding accomplishment itself. (Again, accomplishment itself is not a problem, except when I let my desire for it ride me roughshod.) Ironically, letting go of accomplishment is quite an accomplishment for me.

In many ways, the past keeps elbowing it's way into the present of my walkabout.

The yellow school buses used to transport us to and from the overnight homeless shelter are exactly like the buses I rode to junior high and high school. (Except that the city is apparently required to tape over the word "school" wherever it appears on the homeless bus.) I grew up in a black neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles-----a conscious decision by my parents to raise my sister and I in a minority neighborhood as a personal effort to help integrate society. Yep, they were riding high on that wave of idealism ushered in with the Civil Rights movement.

So it was a little ironic that with the school integration programs I was bussed with my black friends to "white" schools on the West Side. They were long bus rides---upwards of an hour each way as we made multiple stops and muscled our way through rush hour traffic---so I spent a large chunk of my formative years on those buses. Whenever I get on the homeless shelter bus, childhood memories come flooding back as I make my way down the crowded aisle. It's worth noting that as a half white, half Japanese kid I never experienced a single incident of racism from the black community. (They never made me sit at the back of the bus!)

One recent Sunday morning I visited the same Quaker meeting house that my family attended when I was a kid. Upon learning my name, some of the members even remembered my family, especially my father who was very active with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization which works on social justice and development issues domestically and internationally. I don't remember much of my childhood at the meeting house, but their egalitarian and somewhat iconoclastic philosophy definitely struck a chord in me. Their doctrine of a direct and personal communion with the divine probably sowed some seeds for my future interest in mysticism. And their practice of "silent worship" is so akin to meditation that I really couldn't say what the difference is. After this recent service, I helped make a couple hundred cheese sandwiches "for the homeless". Two days later these very same sandwiches were handed out to us homeless folks at the Ocean Park Community Center. Talk about things coming full circle.

A slightly frustrating reminder of my more recent past has been watching others play sports. There are basketball courts in almost all of the parks that I frequent, as well as tennis courts in Lincoln Park. And there was even an ultimate (frisbee) tournament on the Santa Monica beach. These are three of my favorite sports, and while they elicit many memories, more often they trigger my longing to get in the game and play. But I've been holding back from getting all sweaty cuz of my limited access to showers. I hate going to sleep all sweaty and sticky. Humph!---free monk indeed!

One night I dreamt that my mother saw me playing basketball with homeless people and sent a young cousin to come after me. There were people dancing conveniently next to the basketball court, so I ended up stage diving into a mosh pit of anonymity. Apparently the guilt of not telling my family about my walkabout is weighing heavily on my unconscious. My conscious self too, for that matter. But evidently not enough to come clean just yet.

There's a Tommy's "World Famous" Burgers franchise on the corner of Lincoln and Pico. I often walk past it as I bounce back and forth between Santa Monica and Venice. Tommy's is famous for its chili-cheeseburgers, a delicious mess of artery-clogging gastric-frightening joy. You can also get fries smothered under a mound of toxic chili. Tommy's is such a popular joint that most of the franchises are open 24/7. At the original little shack not far from downtown LA, there can be a line of fifty people snaking into the parking lot.....at 2am! But the line moves fast as the servers bang out burgers made to order in about 10 seconds. Throw down your money, grab your burger and a can of soda from the fridge, then get the hell out of the way.

Besides being a frustrating temptation for the growling stomach of this hungry monk with his small ration of Vienna sausages and snack crackers, the smells emanating from "the shack" bring back great memories of our infamous "Tommy runs" when I was ostensibly attending the University of California at Santa Barbara. Whenever I or one of my friends shouted "Tommy run!", we'd dutifully pile into someone's beat up old car and hit the road south on a quest for the holy chili-burger. Invariably, this would happen quite late at night, so we'd end up making the four hour round trip to Los Angeles and back in the murky hours reserved for lovers and meth addicts. Well, we were neither, but dang if we weren't gonna have our "fix" too---usually a double chili-cheeseburger with all the fixin's. So we rumbled down that late-night wide-open highway, sharing the closest thing to a consensus religion: the road trip and the freedom it represents.

Our pilgrimage was a tribute to the Lords of the open highway (and perhaps the Gods of gastro-intestinal duress). This was our hajj, to our Mecca. (Uh-oh, if some grumpy imam sees this, I might get a fatwa slapped on my infidel butt.) And, like most crusades, jihads, inquisitions, or other poorly thought out religious campaigns, it was a good excuse for a male bonding ritual-----females usually being too uptight (read: intelligent, mature) to be cajoled onto such an asinine lark. For even the pimpliest of young men retain within them the latent DNA of the nomad, the explorer, the hunter, the warrior seeking out new territory, new spoils, and, in a sense, a new identity. So we pushed beyond the boundaries of the ordinary, even if that meant into the realm of inanity. Hey, anything was better than the mediocrity we associated with the status quo. Well, at least that was my motivation. The other guys may have just wanted a chili-burger, for all I know.

But there was definitely the wisp of mystery in the night air as we rattled and hummed down the highway. Possibilities beckoned in those magical hours after midnight, even if they only turned out to be the promise of severe indigestion and the likelihood of a different kind of Tommy's "runs" in the morning. At the very least, it was a great way to procrastinate that paper on "Platonic Ideals" due at 9am the next morning. Heck, you could make a Tommy's run after midnight and still have five hours left to write the paper before class! (Yeah, I've always had problems with writing...)

On one Tommy's run, we took a late night detour and drove onto the campus of UCLA. "Onto", as in on the walkways, bike paths, and even the grassy commons. We were nowhere cool enough to carve tire-screeching donuts into their main plaza, but we zoomed around a few of the buildings with wild abandon. UCSB was considered a pretty lightweight institution back then, and this was our juvenile way of thumbing our noses at our more prestigious UC brethren to the south. (A big shout out to all the hard-working students who have come along since my slacker college days at UCSB and bolstered the school's reputation, making my neglected diploma so much more valuable!)

This was a chance for us mild-mannered semi-nerds to be bad boys, to break the rules, to channel our inner warriors. It was our tribe vs. their tribe. Of course, us bold warriors were very lucky that the campus police didn't show up and throw our warrior butts in jail. In another act of brazen warfare, we even used the women's bathroom in one of the campus buildings! Take that UCLA! We were amazed at the heartfelt and lonely graffiti on the walls of the toilet stalls, especially when compared to the usually crude and unimaginative scrawlings in the average mens' restroom. We rumbled home, stomachs full, chests puffed, yet also somewhat humbled by the poignancy of womens' bathroom graffiti.

Several years later, as a somewhat less-than-responsible resident assistant in one of the on-campus dormitories, I once tricked quite a few of my student charges into "joining me for a chili-burger". We jammed twelve of us into my pick-up truck and hit the road south. My truck was a Nissan (nee Datsun) King Cab with a camper shell on the back, containing thick foam padding and a bunch of pillows inside. So while a bit crowded, it was a comfortable ride. After we'd motored through Santa Barbara, they began to wonder when we'd get to this burger joint that I'd been speaking so highly of. We played an extended version of "Are we there yet?" with me continually responding that we were almost there. After about an hour they finally gave up and resigned themselves to the forced socialization of sardines.

We finally reached Tommy's and poured out of the truck, uncoiling cramped bodies. It was a distinct pleasure to introduce so many virgin palates to the wicked combination of gastric anxiety and bliss that make up the Tommy's chili-burger experience. And while perhaps not quite a spiritual awakening for them, they were at least appreciative of a good burger. Sated, we piled back into my truck and headed back up the road. They all soon fell fast asleep and I drove back through the quiet night, proud of my contribution to their cultural edification. For days afterwards, some of them would threaten to take me out for a taco.....in Mexico.

I grew up not far from here, so it's really no surprise that my past keeps shouldering its way into the present. But how much influence does my past have over my present? Does the past really pull all of my strings, as the determinists would have me believe? Am I a slave of the past? Am I beholden to my past doubts and hopes, sorrows and triumphs? Am I doomed to repeat my conditioned behaviors? (Am I condemned to keep reminiscing about the past?!) Well, of course, I hope not. After all, liberation philosophies are based on the premise that we can break the chains of the past.

(A notable exception is the controversial teacher Ramesh Balsekar with his radical take on Advaita Vedanta philosophy. I visited him in Mumbai (nee Bombay) to try to come to grips with his provocative doctrine. I won't go into all of it here, but one of his fundamental teachings is that everything that happens is God's will. Whatever beliefs that we have or choices that we think we make have actually already been pre-determined by God. Hence, we should surrender our notions of free thought and free will. So let go into the stream of life and be "free". This will also help us realize that our belief in our individual identities is an illusion. The true fundamental nature of our reality is pure consciousness, God. It's an interesting form of religious determinism.)

Long before Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now or Ram Das's seminal Be Here Now, spiritual traditions have been exhorting us to focus on the present moment to free ourselves from the burdens of the past and our worries about the future. Without the phantoms of the past and the future obscuring our vision, we can learn to experience Reality directly. After all, the present moment is all we really have, right? Well, to be honest, sometimes I think we don't even have that. Whenever I look for the present, I can't seem to find it anywhere. It's just the name we've given the point where the bruising shoulders of the past and the future bump up against one another. This point, this present moment, has no length or breadth to it. It's gone before it even begins.

At various times, I'm able to convince myself that the past is all we have, or that the present is all we have, or that the future is all we have, or that none of them actually exist. Even time itself is just a human invention---a conceptual tool to measure the rate of change. It's not even standardized everywhere: time passes at different relative rates depending upon proximity to mass. (Scientists proved Einstein right by showing that an atomic clock flown in an airplane high in the atmosphere---thus farther from the mass of the Earth---ran incrementally quicker relative to a similar clock on the ground.) With no past, present, or future---no real time even---I'm left swimming in a Buddhist ocean of emptiness. I guess it's not such a bad place to end up, as long as I can enjoy swimming without clinging to anything. Ah, I'm starting to wander off (swim off?) again. Well, how about one last reminiscence then?

My recent encounters with the police keep reminding me of past run-ins with the law. After a tough break-up with my first girlfriend, I took a short hiatus from college and went on a meandering drive-about around the Southwest. I had barely just arrived in Phoenix, Arizona when I was pulled over by a police cruiser.

I was traveling around in the same pick-up truck that I later used to shanghai my dorm residents onto that Tommy's run. I really loved that truck. (Laszlo Emilio Rizzoli by name, for those who are interested.) Much later I would drive it all the way up to Alaska, then drive it back down four years later. The connecting window between the front cab and the back camper shell had been removed and the opening had been widened so that I could just climb into the back from the front cab without having to walk around outside to enter from the back. When I was traveling around, I would just pull over and park anywhere at night, and then climb into the back and go to sleep. With the aforementioned foam padding and copious pillows, I slept quite comfortably. Tinted windows and homemade curtains assured my privacy. Even when I turned on the inside lights for some late night reading, it was impossible for anyone to tell that I was inside.

Oh, and there was a pink plastic lawn flamingo that rode up on top of the camper shell. (His name was Rex, later to be replaced by Dex, Lex, and finally Tex as each one was stolen in turn). Well, apparently the Phoenix police weren't big flamingo fans (especially when they were perched on vehicles with California license plates). So the officers generously advised me that there wasn't anything for me in Phoenix and that it would be best if I just kept on moving out of town. Well I'm not a big fan of heavy-handed Big Brother tactics, so I thanked them kindly for their advice and let them know that I was actually planning to spend a bit more time exploring the charms of Phoenix than I'd originally planned. Heck, maybe I'd even relocate.

Now I'm not the paranoid type, but almost everywhere I went over the next two days there was a police car magically a few cars behind me or a few cars over or just around the corner. I was amazed that they would waste manpower following a lightweight like me. I became a very very law-abiding citizen, driving well below the posted speed limits and stopping well behind the crosswalk lines at intersections. I wouldn't even think of jaywalking. They followed me less when I was on foot, so I drove less. I finally discovered Arizona State University and began hanging out a lot on campus. After a couple of days, the police lost interest in me. Or so I thought.

Several uneventful days passed (well, except for a strange encounter at ASU with a red-haired, red-bearded, red-robed "wizard"---long staff included---who tried to convince me that I had amazing magical powers and that he could teach me how to unleash them) and then late one night I was jolted awake by someone banging on my truck. I looked outside to see a policeman smacking my camper shell with his baton. And five police cars arrayed around me. I climbed out and he informed me that it was illegal to sleep in my truck.

Considering the possibility of a night in jail and maybe a fine to boot, I decided that my best course of action would be diplomacy (i.e., groveling). So in my most apologetic and naive tone, I asked them if they knew of a place where I could sleep in my truck. Why, just my luck, the policeman did happen to know of such a place! With a sly sideways glance at his comrades, he told me to follow him in my truck. I caught that cunning little glance, but I was still too rattled and tired to think much of it. Besides, what was I supposed to do?---say no thanks, I'd rather spend the night in one of your charming jail cells?

So in the middle of the night I got a five car police escort to the middle of a huge parking lot. (It was probably next to some stadium, but again, I was too tired to really notice.) I thanked them, bid them farewell, and promptly went to sleep in my truck, amazed that even The Man could be big-hearted sometimes. Or so I thought.

Very early the next morning I was shaken awake by what I thought was an earthquake. But as my truck continued to tremble and rattle, I opened my curtains on an astounding sight. Tanks and other armored vehicles were rumbling around my little truck as soldiers marched all over the place. Not sure if I was having a bad dream, I scrambled up to the front cab and drove wicked fast out of there, steering well clear of any military hardware. After I was out of the area, I tried to collect my wits, but it still took me a while to figure out what was going on. I hadn't realized that it was Veteran's Day. The army must have been using the large parking lot as a staging area for some kind of military parade for the holiday. I had a good laugh, appreciative that even Big Brother has a sense of humor.

"Head the future off at the past, part the freeway, let my people go free"
---Exene Cervenka (member of the punk rock band "X"), engraved on the Venice poetry walls

"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
---F. Scott Fitzgerald, from The Great Gatsby

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
---George Santayana

"Free will is overrated."
---frazzled robot having a drink at a bar in a framed cartoon on Ramesh Balsekar's wall

"I'll have a double chili-cheeseburger with no meat and no chili."
---vegetarian Laurie, one of my dorm residents, ordering her Tommy's burger

"What's your power rating?!.....I've been watching you. You are very powerful!.....I can teach you how to make women fall in love with you!"
---the Red Wizard at ASU

"You look like one of the Monkees. What was his name? Yeah, Micky!"
---ZZ, a drunk fellow I met one night in Chess Park (back in the relative present)

"No he doesn't, man. He looks like that little alien dude on the Flintstones. That's him-----the Great Gazoo!"
---homeless Dwayne, referring to when the Flintstones jumped the shark

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Chop Wood, Carry Water, Tie Up Your Kayak

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:54:02 GMT

I spent almost two months at the end of last year with my great friend Rebecca at her log cabin up in Maine. The cabin occupies an ideal spot on the tip of a wooded peninsula named Fox Point. The peninsula juts into an inlet off of the Bay of Fundy not far from the Canadian border. The bay has one of the highest vertical tidal ranges in the world, so the low tide will practically empty out the inlet while the high tide will reach almost up to the front door of the cabin.

The cabin is the only dwelling on the whole peninsula and building codes prohibit construction along the inlet's other shorelines, so it's pretty much wilderness as far as the eye can see. (The cabin itself was built long before the building codes were implemented, so it occupies a primo piece of shoreline.) Fox Point makes for a beautiful and solitary lifestyle, especially since the cabin has no phone and is about a mile and a half hike in from the road. It's off the grid too, so there's no electricity except for a small solar panel that powers a couple of lights. It's like stepping back in time a century or two ago and was a nice respite from the urban hustle and bustle that made up most of my walkabout.

The Fox Point log cabin

And of course there are plenty of critters amongst all that wilderness. Among the feathered are the requisite seagulls, crows, and ducks of all kinds, as well as kingfishers, loons, woodpeckers, and great blue herons. A bald eagles' aerie overlooks the inlet from the arms of a dead tree towering above the forest. Its inhabitants often trill to one another as they soar overhead, making the waterfowl nervous.

The rest of the wildlife is a bit more elusive than their winged brethren. Deer, rabbits, porcupines, and foxes (of course) forage and hunt in the woods and there's a lone seal who occasionally fishes the inlet during high tide. I've also spotted bear tracks in the tidal mud flats not far from the cabin. We once saw a cute scampering ermine whose fur had prematurely changed to a rather conspicuous white before the snows had come. And of course when the snows do come they provide a nice record of all the critters' comings and goings, including evidence of a pair of playful otters sliding down the sloping trail.

Ah, and what of Rebecca? She has been a real blessing in my life. She spent a good chunk of her childhood at Fox Point and the place has definitely left its mark on her. Quiet and calm, Rebecca has been an anchor to my reckless and scattered ways. In this way, she has helped me find some balance within myself. We first met in Alaska many years ago and have been on many journeys together, internally and externally. So compassionate and reflective, Rebecca has taught me much over the years as we parse the myriad dialectics of self transformation. I'm sure we will always remain great friends until one of us finally jumps this mortal coil.

Ice cream, a rare treat at Fox Point

At the cabin, my main task is to fell dead trees, saw them into smaller lengths, and then split these on a chopping block for wood to fuel a heating stove and the "Little House on the Prairie"-style cast iron cook stove constructed in 1896. For this city boy there's a visceral satisfaction I get from having my physical labors translate directly into such a tangible end product, especially something so primal as fire to keep us warm and cook our food. Life at Fox Point is a very basic existence embodying the zen ethos "chop wood, carry water".....with the possible additions "read lots of books, stoke the fire, and poop outside". (There's no indoor plumbing.)

A few years ago I bought a kayak for Fox Point. (My only purchase on eBay, no less.) It made life a little easier since we could then transport groceries in without having to hoof them in by backpack. It also made life a little more fun since we could take it out on excursions to explore the coast and other inlets. And it helped us get even more in tune with the rhythms of nature since we had to be very mindful of the tides, winds, weather, sunset times, and temperatures. Mainly, our trips had to be planned around the extreme tides of the Bay of Fundy since they create dramatic tidal currents as the ocean rolls in and then out twice a day. Occasionally we would return after dark, paddling silently under the magnificent Milky Way spilled across the night sky.

The kayak also came in handy in another way. As the weather starts to turn cold, mice and squirrels move into the cabin for shelter and warmth. We bought a live trap and baited it with nuts, dried fruit, and peanut butter. Almost every night we'd hear the trap door clang shut on some interloper. In the morning one of us would transport the captive across the inlet to an island we dubbed Alcatraz. After transporting dozens of mice and squirrels over to Alcatraz, we started to worry that we might be overpopulating the little island. I was concerned that they might deplete the island's resources and we'd have a miniature Easter Island eco-disaster on our hands. I kept an eye out for monolithic carved stone rodent heads, but the shoreline---and our consciences---remained clear.

Me with a rodent prisoner (Alcatraz on left in background)

Except for the occasional chittering of the squirrels in the trees, the woods are eerily quiet. A couple of years ago I spent a few months alone at Fox Point. One of my projects was to cut a new path through that tranquil forest. I used to love taking breaks and just soaking in all that stillness. It's a silence that seeps into my bones...when I'm lucky.

Another project was to channel Henry David Thoreau and his Transcendentalist simplicity. For the most part, my hungry mind kept wanting to feed its usual appetite for stimulation and distractions---books, NPR shows on the radio, playing a little electronic chess game---but I did eventually manage to get a taste of the calm freedom offered by a simple lifestyle. (This, of course, was all very similar to the practice at my forest monastery.) But ultimately, for all of the peace and quietude I experienced at the cabin, I still felt that I wanted to see if I could cultivate these qualities living a basic lifestyle in the midst of our hectic society. This was a major part of the motivation for my walkabout.

So, encouraged by the simplicity of life at the Fox Point cabin, I'll start again with the basics of my walkabout lessons.

Lesson: I can survive out on the streets.

When I initially set out on my walkabout, I didn't know if I would come running back after only one cold night with my tail tucked between my legs. It was a nervous moment (to be followed by many others, fersure) when I stepped off the Omega Institute grounds and headed down that lonely lane over a year ago. But I managed to stick it out and the world opened up in ways I never could have imagined. To be clear, I didn't survive because of any great skills on my part or even due to any "street smarts" I may have picked up, but because of the generosity of others and our society in general.

Support came in three main ways:

1. Anonymous donations to my begging bowl. These were sporadic and I surely could not have survived on these donations alone.

2. People who got to know me and then proceeded to provide me with food and/or shelter. Examples of these kind folks include my artist friends in New York, my Santa Monica chess buddy Rob, and Carol's mother Maria Teresa.

3. Society at large: food programs, homeless shelters, public bathrooms, water fountains, etc. These amenities were the majority of my support out on the streets.

I should also give a shout-out to the generous friends who supported me along the way. Shine and her delicious Mediterranean cooking sustained me as I transitioned off the streets of Los Angeles to Austin, Texas. And then she convinced me to join her for our escapades in the Yucatan. In Colorado, my good friends Jim, Nomali, and Gyanbindu sheltered and fed me as my walkabout wound down to its conclusion.

So my social experiment was largely a lesson on dependence and interdependence. After all, we all rely on the world to succor us. For all of my interest in liberation, true independence is a myth. (Of course, the freedom I'm working on is psychological, while the dependence I'm talking about here is material.) The most hypothetically independent person we could imagine is still dependent on the world for basic sustenance such as food, water, and shelter. Even "breatharians" with their wild claims of surviving solely on air are still at least dependent on air. (Anyone who wants to attain these amazing powers need merely pay 25 million dollars---"No Refunds"---to the Breatharian Institute of America. As a bonus, the introductory workshop "includes a visit to Earth Prime in the 5th dimension".)

In this way, my walkabout was also a beautiful lesson in Trust and Faith-----trusting people, trusting society, trusting the world, trusting the Universe (or trusting God, if you prefer). This amazing planet provides everything for us on a constant basis. Not only were my basic needs covered, but I was also blessed with new friends and opportunities throughout my monkabout experiences. (See previous 67 blog entries.) So I have a newfound sense of gratitude for these blessings, and, as I've written before, I'm thankful for the things I used to take for granted. I have a new appreciation for healthy meals, hot showers, beds, a roof over my head, and not having to carry my life on my back everywhere.

Surviving on the streets showed me how dependent I am on others, but it also provided me with challenges to help me spread my wings a bit too. The nitty-gritty of homeless life---sleeping in alleys, being hungry, changing in public, running from the cops, peeing in bushes, waiting in long lines, humbling myself for handouts, etc.---became easier as time went on. By pushing the envelope I was able to expand my comfort zone considerably. This sent a strong message to my primal self---the survival fears and hungers that drive much of my life. I wanted my primal self to confront these issues on a fundamental level---to experience the truth of them directly. And my Id apparently got the memo: I know on a deeper level that I'll be okay---at least with respect to food and shelter---and my fears and hungers appear to have correspondingly loosened up a bit. (At least until the economy totally tanks and the safety net is completely yanked from under us!) But I will get more into this later when I address my fears and hungers more directly.

A related lesson: I can be happy with very little.

Except for my broom and dustpan, my walkabout life fit snugly in my backpack. While my shoulders took on more physical weight, the psychic weights fell away. Not knowing where I would be or what I would be doing the next month or week or sometimes even the next day, I learned to let go of concerns about the past and the future. Sometimes I would bed down late at night in one of my alley nooks with such a soaring sense of freedom and joy from having let go of these concerns. Of course, letting go of these concerns may be much easier in a homeless lifestyle. The challenge for me is to do it now: "let go", not as in "push away", but hold gently, openly, as I move forward with my life. Learn from the past and plan for the future without being emotionally dependent on outcomes. Loosen up these tight fingers that cling and grasp. Breathe deep.

Indeed, many would argue that it's actually easier to be happy with less stuff. Less stuff often means less worries. Simplicity = Freedom. At least that's what Thoreau and a whole host of half-naked yogis would have us believe. Yet our acquisitive culture lives by the opposite creed, proclaiming that accumulating more stuff is the road to happiness. The right clothes, cellphone, television, car, house, job, friends, or partner will surely bring the happiness that must be lurking just around the corner. And often these new acquisitions do indeed buoy us. No one can deny the drug-like highs of "retail therapy". (Actually, it probably is a drug high, since I'm sure that buying stuff we want triggers "happy chemicals" in the brain.) But those half-naked yogis would sigh and chide us that these temporary highs just reinforce the cycles of craving that create an underlying sense of discontent in our lives.

And perhaps now more than ever since the Great Depression we are learning this lesson the hard way. Our global ecosystem has been paying the price for decades (centuries even) and now it looks like the wheels are coming off of our culture of consumption. We'll probably manage to patch up those wobbly wheels and ramble on---after all, our economy survived the Depression and other recessions too---but I hope that we will have learned an important lesson on the excesses of an unchecked rampaging consumer culture. Can we make the choices to lead simpler lives? Lives with less stuff? We don't have to become half-naked yogis, but maybe we don't really need that third DVR for the bathroom television either.

My walkabout showed me that true contentment can be as simple as a full belly, a place to pee, and a place to sleep on a rainy night (ideally, a different place from the pee place). We don't really need much to survive. And perhaps we don't need much to survive happily as well.

To be fair, acquisitiveness is not just limited to the material plane. One can also be hungry for all sorts of other "stuff" too---information, entertainment, skills, attention, achievements, friends, adventures, etc. Addictions come in all shapes and sizes. I am a prime example of a greedy "experiential materialist", acquiring diverse experiences like valuable antiques to store away in the attic of my memory.

And I still tend to jam my life with activities, information, stimulation, distractions. There's nothing wrong with these interests, of course, it's just that my tendency to bounce from one diversion to the next doesn't allow for much calm. By constantly feeding my appetites, I make my life more hectic and stressful as I speed up all of my activities to fit more in. And in my haste I become less aware of what I am actually doing.

This is when most of my accidents happen. I break the glass in the sink as I'm washing the dishes quickly so that I won't miss the the Lakers beat the Celtics. I trip on the cat as I rush out the door to visit some of my homeless homies. (Poor little guru, she is always trying to get me to slow down.) I forget that my dang queen is en prise (at risk of capture) when I bring her out into the fray too soon. I bite my tongue as I'm devouring some potato chips while discussing job prospects with my mother. (So I'm not a great multi-tasker either.) As long as these accidents don't cause too much bloodshed, they are actually nice reminders to slow down, to be more aware, to wake up.

Lesson: Slow down, monkey boy. No need to hurry.

Like the antiquated lifestyle at Fox Point, my walkabout was largely a practice in patience. Common daily activities took ten to a hundred times longer than normal. Using the bathroom, taking a shower, having a meal, or getting admitted to a shelter involved time to transport myself to the area, usually on foot and carrying my backpack. Then we usually waited in lines, sometimes for hours, sometimes in the rain, and sometimes just to register for services for the next day. I would often muse that I had traded waiting in rush hour traffic for waiting in lines, lines, and more lines.

But the homeless lifestyle is blessed with a surfeit of time---it is the one true wealth of the homeless---so even though everything took much longer, there was still no need to hurry and I was usually able to let go and relax into the long waits. (This was often when I'd have interesting conversations with other homeless folks.) And, of course, it was always good to remember that these wonderful services were all free. A lesson in patience and a free meal---you can't beat that.

If I'm really lucky and I slow down and relax deeply, then sometimes all of my concerns fall away and the present moment looms up, startling in both its breadth and intimacy. I remember to just BE and my grimy window on Reality gently opens. I open, and begin to see as if for the first time. Grace unveils her infinite delights-----sparkling, radiant, and completely ordinary. Boundaries dissolve as I recognize that space and time stretch beyond all horizons. I am humbled by the scope and mystery of this very moment. Peace and gratitude wash over me and my heart swells. Everything---broken and perfect---is okay. Nothing needs to change. And in a deliciously ironic turnabout, as I let go of change, a fleet of possibilities unfurls its sails. I bow down to All.....even my grimy window, cracked and distorted as it may be. And the world comes flooding in.

Are these 47 seconds---or 30 minutes, or even a day---of blissful clarity worth all the effort to learn how to not make effort? Damn straight.

The 47 seconds leave their mark. I have seen a new perspective, tasted a new way of being, and it has gently changed the way I look at myself and the world. The boundaries between things have blurred. We are all interconnected, part of the grander cosmic dance that has been whirling along for eons. And while I realize that I don't know where this dance is taking us, or even what my own future holds, I'm okay with that. I worry less. I am calmer. I see and hear more. I laugh more. I breathe easier. And the planet breathes with me.

I'm sure there have been other subtle shifts in the substrata of my being, though Buddha knows, I'm hard-pressed to say exactly what they are. But who cares?.....because the light from the garden, off the water, through the window, in your face, is somehow more achingly exquisite now. And I am shattered for it.

Okay, having gone to luscious extremes to describe the benefits of learning to slow down.....this is taking forever! I better get my butt in gear and wrap this up or I'll never finish. But gently, monkboy, and mindfully. Cuz of course there's a way to move quickly when necessary without creating stress or anxiety. I can move smoothly and fluidly while maintaining a relaxed and aware state. Breathe deep again. Be Peace, as Thich Nhat Hanh would say. Now move. This is my main practice in daily life. Yep, even as I wrassle this monster entry.

But first, how about that inauguration? What a beautiful moment in history, and oh so appropriate on the day after MLK day. Obama's speech was so moving and inspiring that even this jaded vagabond got all choked up, teary, and snuffly. I knew that it would be thoughtful, eloquent, and broad-minded, but it still took my breath away. His open-handed approach to internationalism was especially heartening. It gives me hope that one day we may transcend all the petty conflicts over our differences.

Recently, Obama admitted that he "screwed up" on his nomination of Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services secretary due to Daschle's tax problems. It's an important issue, but even more importantly, Obama took responsibility for the situation and owned up to his mistake. I have immense respect for a man who has the integrity and courage to admit when he's messed up. So already we have a major departure from the self-serving, narrow-minded, stubborn, immature, never-admit-mistakes previous administration. Bush's stay-the-course-no-matter-what modus operandi---besides being arrogant and immature---didn't allow for policy evolution as circumstances change. This moribund approach deserves to be buried alongside the neo-cons' neo-Cold War ideology. (Uhh, what did I just say about "transcending all the petty conflicts over our differences"?)

I was very enthused that some of Obama's first acts as president were to ban torture and close down Gitmo and its farcical military tribunals. But before this turns into hagiography, let me be clear that I'm also very disappointed that he chose to keep the horrific CIA rendition programs. And I ain't too happy with some of the pork in the stimulus plan. (There's no such thing as "clean coal" energy.)

So yeah, we've got some major challenges ahead of us---oh, say, an economy in free-fall, a couple of intractable wars, a damaged global ecosystem, a crumbling infrastructure, the proliferation of nukes, the powder keg that is the Middle East---but maybe this really is the beginning of meaningful change. And maybe these major challenges will actually be part of the impetus for us to transform our domestic and global politics into a new age of enlightenment. Perhaps this truly is the dawn of a new era of modern day versions of Lao-tzu's humble emperors and Plato's idealized philosopher kings. An era where wisdom rules the day and peace walks the land, and our leaders display a passion for truth and innate humility, evolving from mere politicians into true statesmen and stateswomen. And thus inspire the philosopher kings and queens in all of us.

One afternoon up at Fox Point, I kayaked a captured mouse across the inlet to another peninsula. I dragged the kayak onto shore and took out the cage trap with its prisoner. I released the mouse by an apple tree so that it would have plenty to eat to start off its abrupt new life. It quickly ran up the tree and that's when I saw just how big and juicy those apples really were. I began picking as many of them as I could hold and even began filling up the cage trap.

Finally slowing my apple picking frenzy, I turned back toward the water and was stunned to see the kayak happily floating out to sea, already about forty feet from shore. The sneaky incoming tide had crept quickly up the shore and set it free. That was bad enough, but sitting on the kayak's "passenger seat" was my laptop computer (in a waterproof bag) since I was also heading to the local library to get on the internet. I dropped all the apples, grabbed a paddle which had thankfully not floated off, and splashed into those frigid North Atlantic waters.

I waded in, cursing at the awol little craft. When I was in up to my chest---just before I would have had to start swimming---I reached desperately with the paddle and managed to snag the rear storage rigging cord. With a few more choice words, I pulled the insubordinate boat back to shore. I guess I've learned to trust in Allah, but I still need to work on tying up my camel.

Back on dry land, I poured the water out of my boots, then quickly set off again in the kayak for the neighbors' house about a mile away. It was a cold day, but the sun was out, so I managed to paddle over to the neighbors before hypothermia set in. The neighbors had a good laugh and threw my wet clothes in their dryer. I borrowed some overalls and quickly headed off to the library to make it before it closed. I was really appreciating the well-heated little library when I noticed the librarian looking at me a little funny. I looked down and realized that I had the overalls on backwards. (See, monkeyboy, accidents happen when you rush. Or was this a lesson in apple greed?) Well, at least the overalls didn't have one of those butt flaps, cuz I wasn't wearing any underwear either.

Hey, every inner philosopher king needs his philosopher court jester.

"There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands."
---Plato, from The Republic

"When the best rulers achieve their purpose
Their subjects claim the achievement as their own."
---Lao-tzu, as translated by Peter Merel at TaoTeChing.org

28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
---King James Bible, Matthew 6:28-30

"What you don't have you don't need it now."
---U2, from "Beautiful Day"

"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."
---Janis Joplin, from "Me and Bobby McGee"

"Ain't nothing as afraid as a million dollars."
---a woman interviewed by Studs Terkel in 1971 regarding the Great Depression (Studs, the great chronicler of the masses, recently passed away)

"If you're poor, ugly, and stupid, then your friends are real friends."
---I can't remember who told me this

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify."
---Henry David Thoreau

"I so much regret the loss of his rare powers of action, that I cannot help counting it a fault in him that he had no ambition. Wanting this instead of engineering for all America, he was the captain of a huckleberry party."
---Ralph Waldo Emerson, speaking at Thoreau's funeral

"You can just go back to the streets, right?"
---my mother, commenting on my job prospects during these difficult economic times

"If I knew the meaning of life, would I be sitting in a cave in my underpants?"
---a New Yorker magazine cartoon of a half-naked yogi speaking to a spiritual seeker

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A couple of photo updates

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 22:11:47 GMT

I went back to California to be with family for the Holidaze. I dug through some boxes of photos I've got stored at my mother's house and found a couple of pictures that were relevant to this blog.

I'm especially glad that I found the shot of our Pakistani guide by the avalanche on Mt. Rakaposhi that I mentioned in the entry 9/11.

I also found a photo from my Alaska fishing folly that I mentioned in The Fickle Gods of Fishermen. And for the same entry, I found a pic of the derelict "Wolf Blade Razor" on the internet.

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At the Feet of Kali

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 05:54:48 GMT

Rated: PG for occasional non-PC content

(...continued from previous entry)

The more I flow with the stream of my life, open to the divergent currents (even the back eddies), and respond in flexible ways, then the more I am able to move freely through my world. (Here in the West, we tend to limit our conception of flexibility to the physical, and so we are drawn to the practice of hatha yoga, which develops flexibility of the body. But the "higher" yogas-----raja yoga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga, jnana yoga-----practiced in the East focus on developing flexibility of our mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions as well.) I endeavor to embrace reality---in all of its forms, light and dark---and respond flexibly. So I bow down deeply at Kali's fearsome feet, and yet dance nimbly to avoid those treacherous toes!

I rode the waves of my walkabout, the ups and the downs. The crests brought me to my wonderful artist friends in New York, numerous generous and funny homeless friends on both coasts, chess in the park, a beautifully mad lark to Mayan ruins with Shine, and an opportunity to help Carol during her final days. The inevitable troughs involved hungry days, dodging the cops, a rainy night with maniacs, sleep deprivation, and too many deaths.

Death, the biggest Change (from our bio-centric perspectives), barged into my walkabout in all manner of ways. It came gently on soft feet for my aunt Rosie who passed away at the age of 90. It came slowly and painfully for Carol as cancer claimed her body, spectacularly, horribly. It was shockingly sudden for my mother's young Japanese boarder Tepei who died in a tragic skateboard accident. And it was all too violent for Terry and Nate, two homeless people who were murdered in Poughkeepsie, NY and Venice, CA, respectively. (Recently, Los Angeles has experienced more murders involving homeless victims. An especially horrific attack occurred when some young men burned a homeless man to death by dousing him with gasoline and setting him on fire. In another shocking incident, five people were killed in a homeless encampment near a freeway overpass. No suspects have been identified in either case.) Kali will have her due.

As we are witnessing, economies also change, stumble, crash. Perhaps my experiences with the homeless are becoming a bit more socially relevant during these days of widespread home foreclosures, vanishing savings accounts, and epidemic job layoffs. The ranks of the homeless are surely swelling as I write this. Budget deficits are prompting local governments to make cuts in medical and mental health services, food programs, and youth and senior programs. Homeless shelters in Los Angeles are already reporting a sharp increase in the number of families using their facilities.

And, of course, political regimes change too. (Thank God!....er, Kali!) In fact, "Change!" has been the battle cry of Obama's presidential campaign. I'm optimistic about the possibility of Obama implementing real systemic changes, but I'll believe it when I see it. Cuz I'm talking about actual structural changes here, not just policy shifts. Pulling out of Iraq is a much-needed change, but it is merely a lateral policy shift. I look forward to evolutionary changes to our socio-political systems themselves.

Oh, maybe stuff like:
---Campaign finance reform to curtail rampant influence peddling to the deepest pockets. (I won't hold my breath on this one.)
---Universal healthcare (an especially nice boon for homeless people and wayward monks!)
---Real steps toward creating a green economy to address energy dependence, pollution, global warming, natural resource depletion, etc.
---Ending the horrific Bush Doctrine policies of pre-emptive war (what a nice euphemism for "attacking whoever the hell he wants"), misinformation (another nice one for "lying"), warrant-less (i.e., "illegal") wiretapping, and "enhanced interrogation techniques" (can you say "torture"?) will be a great ("no-brainer") first step. But I'm hoping we can switch gears entirely and implement a more proactive international diplomacy to defuse conflicts at their roots-----yes, even with those some would call our "enemies". Okay, maybe this is more of a policy change.....
---Well how 'bout putting the damn solar panels back on the White House then! (The ones that Carter put up and then Reagan tore down. How symbolic was that?!)

Whoa! How did that soap box get under my feet? So much for the detached composure of this ex-monk.....

Before I get too caught up in the nitty gritty details of recent changes, it would probably serve me to remember the big picture. Otherwise, I can get worked up into the kind of lather that spawns the conflicts that I am seeking to cure, internally and externally. So I will try to balance my subjective observations with some objective considerations about the nature of Change itself. I remind myself that Ma Nature teaches me that destruction and creation---the left and right hands of Change---are inter-dependent. The old gives way to the new, and the new becomes the old. Endings are beginnings, beginnings are endings.

So if I look closely enough, I may start to see that creation and destruction aren't so different after all. Maybe they are actually the same thing dressed up in different language depending upon the context. The creation of a sculpture or a painting is also the "destruction" of the original state of the media (the block of marble, the acrylic paints organized neatly in their tubes). The demolition of a building is also the "creation" of a mound of rubble and dust and memories and possibilities. Creation and destruction are ultimately just the change from one pattern of matter and energy to another pattern. We usually call it "creation" when the new pattern is one we prefer or is more recognizable. We use the term "destruction" when the new pattern is less preferable or less recognizable. Our distinction between "creation" and "destruction" is merely the result of judging Change through the filters of our biased perspectives.

Sound bleak? (Cup half empty or half full?) Well, not if I recognize that, as the Great Terminator, Kali is also the destroyer of ignorance, of evil, of the odious and odorous-----in other words, of all things Bill O'Reilly. Kali doesn't choose sides-----she's an equal-opportunity destroyer. So the next time she relieves my nagging headache or evaporates my writer's block or slaps down the Celtics' winning streak or throws the bums out of office, I'll try to remember to tip my hat to the Goddess of Garbage Collection. Kali's dance of destruction is simultaneously a dance of creation.

In a year, these ramblings will mean very little. In ten years, even less. In a hundred years, they will be long gone and forgotten. (So relax, ex-monkboy. Breathe deep, let it go, let it flow.....) In a thousand years, empires will have risen and fallen. In a million years, human civilization---if we survive---will be unrecognizable to us now. And in a mere billion years, I'm sure us humans---as we recognize one another---will no longer be around. We may very well have "naturally selected" ourselves out of the evolutionary race* by then. But I'm an optimist and I envision a future where we will evolve into much more complex and capable beings. A future where we will truly understand the unity of humanity and transcend the petty conflicts we inflict upon ourselves. A future where we will recognize the unity of life and learn to support our brethren animals and plants. A future where we will realize the unity of the Universe and build bridges to the stars, without and within. A future where both sexes can pee standing up.

*Now there's a concept: an "evolutionary race". I can imagine the "Evolutionary 500... ...Billion":
".....and as we come out of the first turn of the four and a half billionth lap, humans are in the lead, followed closely by the cetaceans, with apes not far behind. In the middle of the pack are about 10 million other species jostling for position. Working their way up on the inside are the cockroaches, whose pit stop for radiation shielding may soon prove to have been a stroke of genius. Struggling on the outside are the polar bears and snow leopards who have faded as things have begun to heat up. The reptiles are still looking nervously over their shoulders ever since that cataclysmic smash-up that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million laps ago. And bringing up the rear are lemmings, tapeworms, WWE fans, and smart toasters."

Of course, this is a very anthropocentric treatment where I've deemed intelligence to be the leading edge of evolutionary development. Humans have only been around for a few million years at most if you go back to homo habilis. If we instead use the measuring stick of species longevity, then the truly long-lived animal species-----sharks, crocodiles, ants, mollusks, and various single-celled organisms that may go back a billion years or more-----could make a strong argument for already having won the race! (And the plants and bacteria may just be laughing at us, entertained by all the animal species rushing around the planet, here and gone in the blink of an eye.)

And yet, the race goes on. Does it ever end? I think not. Species continue to evolve and I wonder what other intelligent creatures will come along over the next hundred million years. Whales already sing---will they develop a taste for poetry and theatre too? Will cats and dogs hold rallies for the right to vote? Will chimps shun technology if we make a mess of things?

And evolution continues to work on us too. (Keep hope alive, WWE fans!) We are living longer, getting taller (well, at least the rest of you are), and our brain genes continue to evolve. And apparently the gene for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has become much more prevalent over the past couple thousand years. (Really, no joke. The gene is a form of the dopamine receptor gene DRD4. And here I thought all along that ADHD was MTV's fault!) As I've said before in this blog, we find ourselves at an interesting threshold: either we will evolve into wiser beings or we will probably select ourselves out of the picture. It's quite an elegant design, actually. (Intelligent or otherwise.) It remains to be seen if our species will be the ultimate "winner" of the Darwin Awards!

Jeepers, look at the size of this behemoth entry! My apologies. Obviously, I chose way too big a topic for my first lesson here. And I shall endeavor to be much more concise on my future lessons, or I'll never finish this. Though it may seem that the writing floodgates did finally open, I've actually been sporadically tinkering away at this for a few weeks now while I was up at the cabin. I bow down at the feet of Kali and pray that she may one day gently massacre my resistances to writing.

Funny. All this talk of Kali and I only just remembered that I met her at a small temple in a remote part of Kathmandu, Nepal. Her disciples called her Kali Mata ("Mother Kali") and she was supposedly the earthly incarnation of the Goddess of Destruction herself. She didn't have eight arms or a garland of human heads, but she did have the grim goddess' deranged glare down pretty good. What I remember most was her taste for expensive whiskey and the resulting mood swings between jocular hostess and imperious goddess.

But now the librarian glances at the clock and considers me through narrowed eyes. Ah, Mighty Kali, Goddess of Time, stamps an indelicate foot, her impatient sword gleams red. The library is closing now and I'd best head back to the cabin if I know what's good for me. (Ah, the cabin, now don't get me started.....)

Lesson #2: Everything takes longer than I planned.

"Don't worry about it. It might be the best thing that ever happened to you."
---black-robed Kali-das ("Servant of Kali"), responding to my query regarding the prevalence of malaria as we walked a dusty path along the Ganges in Rishikesh, India

"Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another."
---John Muir, naturalist

"The difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind."
---Charles Darwin

"In your pet's universe, you are called 'the ape that brings food.'"
--- Scott Dikkers, from You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day

"Black Guy Asks Nation For Change"
---a decidedly non-PC article on the Obama campaign in the satirical Onion News

Merry Christmas! (Oh....and Joyful Kwanzaa....and Jolly Winter Solstice.....and Happy ~~Hankunnah~~.....~~Chunkyhun~~.....~~ChakaKhan~~.....uh, that Jewish Holiday!)

(Dang, am I being all un-PC again?!)

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Lessons

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:49:04 GMT

Okay, I've been putting this off long enough already. I said that I'd try to sum up what I learned on my walkabout. And most questions I get involve what lessons I gleaned from my time as a wandering monk.....as long as we also count "What the hell were you thinking?!" (Actually, the most common question has been "What was it like?", to which my mouth and brain usually seize up as a thousand different thoughts and feelings logjam in my frontal lobe. Luckily, the part of my brain that keeps me from drooling usually remains unaffected.)

Some lessons are obvious. Some I've already covered in previous entries and will be somewhat of a rehash here. Others are lessons I've encountered long ago, but have been reinforced during my monkabout. And a few are even brand spanking new from my time on the streets.

As usual, getting this all down here will also help me clarify to myself much of what I experienced, though I still struggle against the writing process itself. (What, me procrastinate?) As you can see, without the urgency and simplicity of my walkabout lifestyle, I have found ample diversions to distract me from this blog.

And I better get to it too, before my notoriously slippery memory loses its grip on events, external and internal. Some of the salient details are already starting to slide into that murky fog that masquerades as my memory. Not surprising really, since much of this past strange year already feels like a surreal dream to me now.

So let's see, what other chestnuts did I forage from this experience, other than the aforementioned earth-shaking revelation that my socks don't need to match? Wow, there are so many lessons-----where do I start? Well, perhaps my fading memory itself is as good a place to start as any.

Lesson #1: All things fade. All things change. All things end. Paradoxically, change is the only real constant-----the only thing that doesn't change. We've all heard the old adage that you can't step into the same river twice. We all see everything changing all around us. Everything is a river. Energy and matter stream through everything, even solid-seeming stuff like rocks and Hummers---the flow is just a little slower with these, so we don't see it so easily. Just come back in a geological blink of an eye and see how that Hummer is doing in a million years.

This fundamental force of Change was a daily lesson for me in my wandering monk lifestyle. The transitory nature of life is so pronounced amongst the homeless. Faces come and go on a daily basis. I never knew when---or if---I would see some of my homeless friends again. I often didn't know when my next meal would be or where I would sleep that night. Each day was a practice in staying open to what the world would throw my way. I bounced from New York to California to Texas to Mexico to Colorado and finally back to California.

And sure, this lesson is pretty much a no-brainer: everything changes, get over it. But as I've said before, for most Buddhist traditions, a deeper understanding of annica ("impermanence") not only gives us insight into the workings of the Universe, but also helps us loosen up the rigidity at the root of so much of our personal strife. The more I accept change and let go of clinging to static expectations, then the more easily I am able to move with the natural ebb and flow of the tides of Time.

And the less I will struggle against Ma Kali, Goddess of Time, and her relentless dance of destruction. Fierce eyes bulging, tongue lolling, numerous arms bristling with pointy, slicey, bashy, bloody implements of havoc, she thunders "Cling to anything and you will suffer! Fight me and you will lose!" Eventually, Kali tramples all. (Including any insights or clarity I may have gained, so I try not to hold them too tightly either.)

But give battle we do. Aging is one of our primary battlefields. Armed with a plethora of colorful drugs and emboldened by battalions from the cosmetics industry, we flail against the passing of the years and our waning youth. We even have some victories: we cure diseases; we extend lifespans; we stave off the signs of aging. But Kali's implacable foot and bloody sword are ever descending. We are still mortal. (Of course, this may all change some day-----after all, everything changes, right?-----especially if we unravel the secret of "programmed cell death" or learn to store matter as data. Then, oh boy, is Kali gonna be pissed!)

In a strange sort of reverse nostalgia, I sometimes catch myself imagining an idealized dotage where I am too old to care about my appearance or self-image in general. I am a wise old man, free of the immense burden of caring what others think of me. When I become aware of this fantasizing, I give myself a few gentle mental smacks and remind myself that I can be free right NOW, right HERE. Even as I write this. I don't have to care how this turns out, what it "looks like". I breathe deep. I relax. But the moment is ever fleeting as my brain and chest soon tighten up as I struggle to hammer out sentences. There isn't much "moving naturally with the ebb and flow of Time". But it is a practice, a process, and perhaps my lesson is to be content with this slow trickle of words and not count on the floodgates opening anytime soon. (Perhaps, laughs the zen master, the smacks were not hard enough!)

This talk of "going with the flow" reminds me of a story told by Chuang-tzu:

One day Confucius and his pupils were walking by a turbulent river. They saw a man dive into the raging torrent up ahead. Thinking that the man sought to kill himself, Confucius sent his students to try and save him. However, when they reached the river's edge, the man was already walking along the riverbank, singing to himself. Astounded, Confucius asked him how he had managed to survive the wild waters. The man answered, "I go under with the currents and come out with the flow. I just go with the Tao of the water and never think of myself."

Again, I feel it is important to reiterate that "going with the flow" does not mean passive submission to whatever comes along. It means finding an appropriately harmonious response to what is before me. This response may be as "simple" as laughing along with the trash-talking chess player who is ridiculing my play as he slices my army to shreds. Or it may be as "difficult" as asking "God" to stop singing so that the other 150 of us at the homeless shelter could get some sleep. And it may be as paradoxical as "going against the flow" of my own programming or social expectations when I am ready to transcend these limitations. After all, the whole gamut of options from Yin to Yang are available for implementation.

But Lao-tzu cautions us to favor the gentler Yin responses, for we are a formidable aspect of Life, already full of strong Yang impulses. (Just look at our impact on the rest of Life on the planet.) In a way, it is a call to empower more of our nurturing feminine energy to counter the more destructive aspects of our male energy. (Madam Kali notwithstanding!) My job is to find the balance, the "center point of the Tao". For to be stuck in any extreme is to lead a life of self-imposed slavery.

(To be continued...)

"Yes, God is everywhere, but we should worship his different forms in appropriate ways. We worship God in the guru by bowing at his feet. We worship God in the hungry child by giving him food. We worship God in the poison by putting it safely away out of reach. We worship God in the thief by arresting him and bringing him to justice."
---Chandra Swami (This is not an exact quote. I am remembering something he said a few years back. Actually, he didn't "say" it because he has been in mauna ("silence") for the past fifty years or so. He responds to questions by writing his answers on a sheet of paper that one of his disciples then reads aloud.)

"It was humbling, educational, weird, sad, exhilarating, scary, maybe even liberating. But mostly it was humorous."
---a typical response when I am finally able to engage my brain and mouth to answer the question "What was it like?"

Happy Holydaze, All!

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Carpe Noctem

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:53:59 GMT

It's been wonderful transitioning back into my previous lifestyle and getting back in touch with family and friends. So yeah, lots of fun and light stuff, as evidenced by my last entry. And on another light note, my sister and I have reconciled our differences about my walkabout, mainly agreeing to disagree. We still value one another too much to let differences of opinion stand between us for long.

But, as always, with the light must come the dark. Lately, I've often been feeling a bit burned out, or even used up. Obviously, part of this is due to my transition back into my sped-up lifestyle. I haven't been meditating, yoga-ing, and tai-chi-ing very much, so it's no wonder that I have been feeling less centered while more scattered and tired. But there may also be a certain amount of bone-tired weariness from my walkabout finally catching up with me too. It's possible that since I'm no longer living on the edge, my defenses have relaxed and now I'm feeling the deeper fatigue of my monkabout. Or perhaps this hungry life of travel and adventure has left me jaded and a bit world-weary. Lately, I feel like I have been "On" so much and now I'm looking for the "Off" switch. Sometimes when I drive late at night, the city lights beckon, promising sweet anonymity.

And on a much darker note, there have been what feels like an inordinate amount of deaths.....again. A very dear friend of my mother's who long ago had once been our housekeeper passed away a couple of months ago. She was a pillar to her family and was beloved by so very many. She was a beautiful soul who always prayed for my well-being, sensing that my wandering ways could use a bit of divine vigilance. She was in her nineties, so her passing was not really a surprise, but a couple of other deaths came as quite a shock.

The daughter of another of my mother's good friends was recently diagnosed with cancer and then died two weeks later. But perhaps the most surprising death was that of one of my mother's former boarders, a young student from Japan. I had gotten to know him during my break from the walkabout to be with my family for my Aunt Rosie's funeral and the holidays over this past winter. He was a high-spirited and active guy, enjoying all sorts of sports like surfing, golf, tennis, and even skateboarding all over our neighborhood like I used to do when I was younger. He had only recently moved out of my mother's house to live with his girlfriend when he went skateboarding down a big hill and lost control. He fell and hit his head on a curb and died. Since he was an only child, his death came as an especially hard blow to his parents. And then just a couple of weeks ago, my newly married cousin's (see last entry) grandfather went for a walk on the beach and fell off a cliff and died. He had been in fine health, so it was quite a shock to their family.

And again, I'm not sure what to make of all these deaths. (See "Going Home" for my somewhat befuddled approach to multiple deaths.) I guess it makes sense that knowing a lot of people means experiencing a lot of deaths. And I've gotten to know so many people, especially over this past year of walkabout. Perhaps the lesson for me is that ultimately I can choose my response to death. Different people will take different lessons from the same experience. Two people might remark on the ephemeral nature of life and respond oppositely, one choosing to be more careful while the other tosses caution to the wind in a newly minted carpe diem approach to life. And of course, both responses are totally valid.

For me, the fleeting nature of life lends it a deliciously bittersweet beauty. So I choose to grieve as appropriate, but most of all, I choose to honor and celebrate both life and death. And I will try to remember to do these before those dear to me reach the end of the road. And despite Dylan Thomas' best exhortations, when my time comes, I hope to go gently into that good night, and not "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." I watched Carol fight to the bitter end, and her days were filled with frustration, anger, and pain until that final dark night descended upon her. And yes, that's totally valid too, but I wish to seek the peace and harmony within the light and the dark. Of course, that's easy for me to say now when I am not faced with my own imminent demise. We'll see what happens when it's my time to turn out the lights.

Personally, the most palpable manifestation of this latest sense of internal darkness has been an anxiety that has crept into my dreams and meditations. Dark visions filled with menace and conflict have invaded my sleep. This is nothing new of course, what with dreams being a primary processing plant for the unconscious, but the nightmares have been more frequent than usual. And during my meditations I have become aware of an underlying apprehension.

For the most part, I still feel pretty upbeat, if a bit tired, but I know better than to ignore these less-than-subtle messages from my unconscious. If I ignore them for too long, then a persistent unease can easily build to a very discernable stress, which in turn can grow into sickness and even disease. Again, it might be some repressed angst that I am finally releasing from my walkabout experiences. And it very well could be apprehension over my very unplanned future. Probably some of both of these, and it could be some other emotional issue(s) that I'm totally clueless of. (Hey, I'm a guy, after all.)

So I will explore these shadowy woods and do my best to embrace the spiky beasties that lurk within. Fears and sorrows and pains, oh my! And if I can learn to play nice with the beasties within, then maybe the beasties without won't seem so frightening either.

So what---beyond the clichéd psycho-babble---does it actually mean to me to "embrace the dark"? Well, for me, this means engaging so-called "negative" feelings as fully as possible, on mental, emotional, and even physical levels. (My psychic pains usually have a corresponding physical pain somewhere in my body. I tend to carry a lot of stress in my shoulders, but this time my discomfort resides mainly in my lower back and stomach.) To do this, I meditate deeply on my feelings, attempting to understand them, accept them, and, above all, feel them---emotionally and physically.

And often, just emoting my darkness is enough. (Intellectually understanding it is often not really necessary, though it can help to learn the root causes.) In this way my unconscious realizes that its communications of unease have been received and they can cease their urgency, even stop altogether. After all, my beasties are usually just messengers who have been kept in the dark too long.

It's important that I approach them with acceptance, not as an attempt to be rid of them or even "release them". For it is also a practice of becoming comfortable with the uncomfortable. And an opportunity for the paradox to reveal and reconcile itself: the less I need the light, the more the light becomes apparent. The less I need to feel better, the better I feel. The darkness is a doorway itself. For ultimately, the dark and the light are one.

One night as I walked the forest paths in my monastery, I had a revelation. I was thinking how much easier it was to make my way in the dark when the moon was full. And then it struck me like a thunderclap: the moon is always full.

Just like us.

Seize the night.

"I saw the crescent,
You saw the whole of the moon."
---the Waterboys

"One dervish to another: What was your vision of God's presence?
The other replied, I haven't seen anything. But for the sake of conversation,
I'll tell you a story:
God's presence is there in front of me,
fire on the left, a lovely stream on the right.
One group walks toward the fire, into the fire,
another toward the sweet flowing water.
No one knows which are blessed and which not.
Whoever walks into the fire appears suddenly in the stream.
A head goes under on the water surface,
that head pokes out of the fire.
Most people guard against going into the fire,
and so end up in it.
Those who love the water of pleasure and make it their devotion
are cheated with this reversal.
The trickery goes further.
The voice of the fire tells the truth, saying I am not fire,
I am fountainhead.
Come into me…..and don't mind the sparks."

---Rumi, "The Question" (translated by Coleman Barks)

"And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the radiances shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven."
---Jack Kerouac, from On The Road

midnight crescent moon
whispers its divine secret:
I am always full

---a haiku I wrote at the monastery

"Brokenness is the Way." (among others)
---me, responding to a friend's insistence that I sum up my walkabout in a single sentence

“Hey, at least I’m alive!”
---a guy I met walking down an alley in Venice who recently suffered a stroke

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Return of the Prodigal Zum

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:43:30 GMT

It’s been a busy few weeks as I transition back to my life before robes.

I flew back to Los Angeles and it's been great to be back in the warm glow of family again. I finally fessed up to them about my walkabout activities over the past year, but they didn’t have much time to chew it over before we all headed down to San Diego for a cousin’s wedding and the big Takahashi family reunion with the relatives on my mother’s side.

My cousin’s wedding was a beautiful celebration near the beach on Coronado Island. The bride was lovely, the groom charming, and it was all a very sweet low-key ceremony, as evidenced by all the bare feet walking down the aisle.

Barefootin' down the aisle

Meghan and Josh

It was great catching up with all of my relatives at the wedding reception and especially the next day at the reunion on the beach. Fun was had by all, tons of food was eaten, sports and games were played, and we finished the day off with a bonfire. We even had a watermelon eating contest and a donut eating contest with the donuts suspended on strings and the competitors not allowed to use their hands. After my past year with limited access to food, it was slightly strange to be a part of all this conspicuous consumption. I'm not judging it---cuz hey, watermelon eating contests are a fine slice of Americana---I'm just recounting my initial awkwardness. I played way too much volleyball and spent the next couple of days recovering from over-exertion and aches.

Donut eating contest

And of course I spent a lot of time trying to explain my walkabout. The most common questions dealt with my motivations, biggest challenges, and lessons learned. (I plan to write a future entry to try to sum up some conclusions.) I was pleasantly surprised---okay, extremely relieved!---that my mother took the news really well, and was actually looking forward to reading this blog. My sister, on the other hand, had the completely opposite reaction and was very angry with me for being dishonest with the family, especially when I was close by on the streets of Los Angeles.

Of course, her point is totally valid: it was very uncool of me to keep the family out of the loop. It was just a matter of being the lesser of two evils since I didn't want my mother to worry about me over the whole year. Not telling my family the truth during my walkabout was actually the most uncomfortable part of this whole monk experience. (Okay, maybe "God" threatening to slaughter me was a little uncomfortable too.....and alright, the whole episode with Carol was pretty overwhelming...)

I returned to some of my "old" haunts in Venice and Santa Monica. I've only been away for a few months, but it feels like a lifetime ago. Well, perhaps a lifestyle ago. I drove around the roundabout that I shared with a sculpture of a nude female torso where I used to eat my Vienna sausage dinners while watching the surf movie projected on the wall of a nearby restaurant. I drove past my Venice alley nook and saw that someone had significantly upgraded it by placing a comfortable looking chair in it, though it must cut down on the limited sleeping space considerably.

I wandered the Venice boardwalk, taking in the comfortably familiar vibe and characters. I looked for Sean and Rebecca, my two homeless artist friends who were trying to carve out their survival selling their art along the boardwalk, but I couldn't find them anywhere. I did see Mr. Choeng Kim at his bike rental shop and he said that business is doing much better now that summer is in full swing. And as I drove to Santa Monica, I went past a fellow waving one of those advertising signs and then realized that it was Derrick, the Christian apologist who tried so hard to save my soul. I would have stopped to say hello, but I was already late to meet up with Rob.

I met Rob at Chess Park and it was great to catch up with him and some of the other guys I'd gotten to know over a chessboard. Kind Ronald, the homeless El Salvadoran illegal immigrant who had been so generous to me, was as congenial as ever. Gruff “Download” was showing his genuine sweet side, playing a game with a little boy and keeping his conspiracy theories under wraps. Sir Charles was trash-talking as much as ever as he chased Dwayne's pieces all over the board.

Dwayne is one of my more eloquent homeless friends. What he lacks in chess skills, he more than makes up for in street smarts from various life experiences. He is one of the few who have actually chosen to be homeless, seeing it as an opportunity for adventure and learning. Originally trained as an army engineer, Dwayne has held various jobs all over the country, including lumberjacking in the NorthWest and being a stockbroker on Wall Street. (Although he does admit to being a pretty lousy stockbroker.) He had run across a book a while back and had been holding it for me. It's called Practical Mysticism by David Samuel. It kinda looks like a typical New-Age/self-help distortion of Eastern traditions since it bills itself as a path to "...self-awakening, financial growth, and harmonious relationships", but I'll try to keep an open mind and give it the benefit of the doubt.

Of course Rob and I had arranged to bike down the beach along the bike path just like the "old days". He treated me to lunch at the Baja Cantina and then we headed off down the beach. I made it down to about Manhattan Beach and chose to be humbled in a game against his chess computer while Rob continued biking down to Redondo Beach. Besides being quite generous, Rob is also quite an excellent chess player. When he returned, he soon helped me with my humility practice by thumping me in a couple of quick games.

We got back to Chess Park too late to see if my zen buddy Gentle Gene had showed up. And I was a little disappointed that I had also missed both the skill of Duckworth and the antics of the Great Carlini. Jocular Shoma, the Russian immigrant who had been injured when he was hit by a car, was still not well enough to return to battle at Chess Park. And Wolf, the native Apache who turned his life around after prison, hasn't been seen since he moved from his apartment near the park.

Later that evening, I met up with Kevin and we had a nice conversation about his homeless status and his political blog at BTCnews.com. It was nice to hear that he's on track to get out of the homeless shelter and get his own housing. He's still looking after my bike, which is a win-win situation for both of us since it comes in handy for him when he needs to run errands. Seemingly contrary to his leftist leanings, Kevin has an interesting take on the presidential election. He actually believes that a McCain presidency would be better for the country in the long run. However, this is because Kevin thinks that McCain's Bush-style policies would further drive the country into the ground which would in turn provoke the radical will to turn this country around on a grass-roots level. Not quite a revolution perhaps, but a resolve to implement New Deal style changes birthed from a depression.

The next morning I met exuberant Ruben for some paddle tennis out on the courts at Venice beach. Ruben is a jovial friend who was living out of his car. He has since moved in with his girlfriend and is also enjoying bonding with her young son. The paddle tennis was a blast, especially since it was a lot easier to play than regular tennis. But again, I overdid it as we played for four hours and I ended up exhausted and well-cooked by the blazing summer sun. Except for a bit of biking, this monkabout year has left me fairly out of shape and I'm paying the price as I transition back into sports.

As expected, my life has sped up again. There are definitely less moments of calm comtemplation, especially as I bounce all over visiting friends and family. Distractions and activities abound and I'm pretty much back to my old scatter-brained ways. But then again, I was a pretty scatter-brained monk too, so no big difference really. I do seem to be maintaining a fair amount of self-awareness, and this helps me remember to relax into the unpredictable flux that is my life---an occasional calm in the eye of the storm.

I remain appreciative of beds, hot showers, plentiful food, and the roof over my head, among other things. Gratitude has been one of the big lessons on my monkabout and I definitely don't take these blessings for granted. At least for now. I'm very well aware of my propensity to get used to the status quo and start taking things for granted, so we'll see how long this lasts.

There are lots of little things I'm getting used to doing again, like using money (borrowed!) or wearing different clothes. I got so used to wearing my simple monk robes that it felt strange to choose shirts and pants to wear. I do miss my robes a little, but it's also nice not to be a walking sideshow freak. (The Amazing Homeless Kung-fu Janitor! Watch him sweep the street! Look at him run from the cops! And you can even feed him too!)

An example of not quite choosing appropriate clothes occurred when I visited some friends who live in the San Fernando Valley. To avoid the traffic, I had gone early and read in a park until they got home. I had forgotten how hot the Valley gets in the summer (upper 90s fahrenheit that day) and had dressed in long pants and a black shirt. It made for quite a sweltering wait.

Whenever the heat starts to get me down, I try to remember something I saw in the city of Lucknow in northern India. It was 117 degrees and I was slogging my way through the heat to a market to buy some fruit. As in other third world countries, Indian merchants and peddlers often set up tables along the sidewalks to hawk their wares and skills. I was bemoaning the oppressive heat when I looked over and saw a tailor happily working away at his sewing machine. He sat in the direct sunlight, right next to a large patch of shade. He could have easily moved his little table into the shade, but he seemed oblivious to the heat as he sewed away, humming a tune to himself. And he was wearing a black long-sleeve sweater.

On the other end of the spectrum, I remember seeing a picture of some very young Japanese schoolchildren walking to school through the snowfall, wearing only shoes and matching red shorts. The mind can be so powerful if we give it some room to flex by removing the constrictions of previously conceived notions and conditioning. When I remember to let go of my resistance to the heat, I definitely suffer much less. I've tried this with the cold too, but have gotten mixed results since I find it harder to relax into the cold.

Anyways, I ended up falling asleep in the park, so I guess I haven't given up all of my homeless ways just yet.

So what's my Plan? Well, I will soon be heading back to the Omega Institute in upstate New York. This will bring my walkabout full circle since Omega is where I first set off on this monky path a year ago. And, appropriately enough, "omega" is the last letter in the Greek alphabet. (The institute's name is derived from Teilhard de Chardin's concept of the "Omega Point": the endpoint of complexity and consciousness toward which the universe is evolving.)

And yet, I have another wedding to attend in San Diego in October! This time it's a couple of good friends who are operating under the delusion that the event is all about them and audaciously neglected my needs when they set the wedding date.

And at some point relatively soon, I will need to make some life decisions about what direction I want to head in, probably involving some form of employment since the jig is up regarding my monk gig.

But for now, this wandering boy with his wandering mind and wandering eye is on the move again. For the road is singing its siren song, the horizon is opening its arms wide, and marvels are blossoming on all sides, especially when I remember to keep an eye out for the miraculous in the mundane.

Ever stalking Wonder.

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
---Jack Kerouac, from On The Road

"So how's it being back home? Monk all gone, spastic boy back?"
---email from a friend

“I have come to accept and make peace with the way you live your life.”
---my mother

"I don't want to talk to you because it will probably end up in your blog."
---my sister

“You’ll end up in the street.”
---an aunt, predicting the fortune in my fortune cookie at a Chinese restaurant

“Next victim!”
---Sir Charles, exclaiming victory in his chess match against Dwayne

"I should note here that I’m not advocating individual or mob violence as a solution to financial difficulties; only the credible threat of it."
---Kevin, on his blog at BTCnews.com

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Fast Forward

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:06:24 GMT

Okay, not surprisingly, I am way behind in this blog again. Right now I am actually in Colorado, hanging out with friends in Boulder and Longmont. Yeah, really.

Again, I promise to write and backdate the entries for the rest of my Mexico trip with Shine and our final days together. I'll post notifications when I do so.

So how did I end up in Colorado? Well, after our trip to Mexico, Shine and I returned to Austin, Texas and I was soon preparing to travel again. With my family reunion looming on the not-so-distant horizon, I was anxious to hit the road again before I headed back to California to be with family. I finally decided to head north because I have some friends in Colorado and figured that it would be a shorter distance to get back to California than if I headed east.

I was getting ready to try hitchhiking north and was even planning to make some cardboard signs-----"Monk Needs Ride" and "Will Share Chocolate Chip Cookies!". (I've had great success in the past with the latter sign.) But then my friend Jim in Colorado got wind of my plans and generously offered to buy me a bus ticket instead!

Now I was truly torn between both options, for I was really curious to find out how this monkabout would play out on the highways and byways of America. But weighing in on the other side were the sizzling Texas heat (over 100 degrees daily) and the fact that a friend had told Shine that hitchhiking was illegal in Texas and Colorado. Neither of these factors would have eventually deterred me from at least trying to hitchhike, but the final kicker was that I didn't have a lot of time before my family reunion. If it took me a long time to hitchhike to Colorado (almost a thousand miles on the minor highways), then I would have very little time to visit with my friends there.

And hey, as well as embracing the challenges strewn across my path, my practice is also about accepting the largesse of the Universe, this time in the person of my friend Jimbo. As it turned out, the Greyhound bus ticket was quite exorbitant on such short notice, so he ended up buying me a cheaper flight instead. So it was time for an all-too-quick, yet sweet, farewell with Shine and she dropped me off at the airport. (A few days later she flew back to Israel for her summer break from the Ph.D. program.) I had packed much of my stuff into a box, including my long-handled dustpan, but my broom wouldn't fit. Arriving at the airport in my robes and carrying my broom, I looked like a reject from the Harry Potter Fan Club. I was tempted to tell the ticket agent that I had to fly by plane because my broom was broken.

It's been a nice soft landing here in Colorado. Jimbo is ever the generous host and it's been great catching up with old friends. The conversations have been deep, challenging, and meaningful. And they've kept me busy in other ways too. I've been playing tons of disc golf, as well as some tennis, basketball, and even some ping-pong and billiards. Jimbo also coaches a little league team, so I've attended several of their entertaining games. And then there was that exhilarating African dance class where I learned that it is logistically impossible for me to shake my butt like an African woman.

And of course Colorado is home to these gorgeous Rocky Mountains. I went with a couple of friends on a challenging hike straight up the Calypso Cascades to Finch Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. And I even went on another beautiful hike in Roosevelt National Forest with someone who contacted me through this blog. I had to keep reminding myself of all the natural beauty along the trail (Ceran St. Vrain) since I was so easily distracted by all of the stimulating discussions on spirituality, philosophy, and politics. Except for my trip to Mexico, my walkabout has been pretty urban-heavy, so it was wonderfully refreshing to relax and breathe in all that glorious wilderness. I missed it more than I realized.

And all of my friends have been feeding me so very well. Jimbo often takes me out to dinner too despite my awkward objections about how much money he's spending on me. He's also treated me to a couple of action flicks. ("Wanted" and "Hancock", both entertaining, if a bit violent. Hey, I voted for "Wall E". Wandering through the theater lobby in my robes, I look like a man-child searching for the latest showing of "Kung-Fu Panda".) But the most interesting movie was a documentary that one of my friends helped film called “Hidden Sorrows: the Persecution of Romanian Gypsies During WWII”. It's a tragic and important testament to a side of the Holocaust that too few people know about.

Another friend re-introduced me to the Enneagram personality typing system. Apparently, I am a number seven, "The Enthusiast", the busy, variety-seeking type: spontaneous, versatile, acquisitive, and scattered. And supposedly I keep busy to avoid underlying pain and fear. Hmmm.....

With all this busy-ness and fun, there hasn't been much time for sweeping either. Of course, there isn't a whole lot for me to sweep up in uber-clean Boulder. But the fact remains that I haven't been very monkish here in Colorado. And in truth, this "walkabout" has been winding down.

July 13th marked the one year anniversary of my monk-a-thon. Granted, I took a long break from this monk shtik to be with my family for my Aunt's funeral and the winter holidays, but I feel that this experiment has gone on long enough. It's been a beautiful, mad year with many challenges and lessons, and I've decided that it's time to hang up my robes. As with most endings, it's a bittersweet decision for me. I will miss this gig and the carefree days and ways I've been cultivating.

So now I'm heading back to Southern California for my family reunion. I've borrowed some money for the flight and I've packed away my robes, begging bowl, and dustpan. Again, the broom remains free, reminding me of who I was (still am?). I'm still not sure how I'm going to tell my family about my shenanigans over this past year, but it should be interesting. I just hope it doesn't upset my mother too much. She's used to my wanderlust and crazy ideas, but this monkabout may be a bit much even for her legendary openness. But I'll cross my fingers and hope for the best. After all, it will be the return of the prodigal Zum.

And though much of this past year has been about facing my fears, perhaps I will now finally face my biggest fear (cue menacing music): Fear of the Ordinary!

"That's okay-----it's a magical broom. It can't be damaged."
---me, responding to the airline check-in agent who wanted me to sign a form releasing the airline from liability for any potential damage to my broom

"The monk is a bird who flies very fast, without knowing where he is going. And always arrives where he went, in peace, without knowing where he came from."
---Thomas Merton (This quote was recently sent to me by a friend.)

"Oh, by the way, you're going to be the only man."
---Nomali, informing me just before we walked in the door for her African dance class (approximately 15 women)

"Tear man out of his outward circumstances; and what he then is, that only is he."
---Johann Gottfried Seume

"My mother gave me the same advice about girlfriends."
---me, responding to Savitri's comment that she preferred to have a dog that she can overpower (Sorry Savitri! All that great conversation on spiritual philosophy and this is the best I can do!)

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Meandering in the Jungle

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:01:26 GMT

After Chichen Itza, Shine and I spent a couple of days in Merida, capital of the state of Yucatan. It's a great old town, and yet very modern too: lots of colonial architecture, public art, good museums, numerous cultural events, and, in typical conqueror fashion, many Catholic churches built over destroyed Mayan temples, often constructed from the very stones of the destroyed temples they replaced. It's a lively city with music and dancing all over the place, especially on weekends when they close off the town center for pedestrian traffic only and numerous bands play latin music (mainly salsa and mariachi ballads) in the parks and streets.

A couple shaking their stuff in Merida

In an attempt to avoid going shopping with Shine, I got a haircut in a local mercado. I gave the hair stylist free rein to do as she pleased and I ended up with it buzzed pretty short on the sides with a poof of hair on top. Not bad really, but unfortunately I wasn't able to weasel my way out of shopping (Shine doesn't know Spanish) and we spent much of the next two days looking at clothes and jewelry. Ho hum.

Next we headed to the charming seaside city of Campeche, capital of the state of Campeche. This old colonial town on the Gulf of Mexico was a favorite pillaging target of pirates for hundreds of years, so the Spanish eventually secured the city by encircling it with a fortified wall and bastions. Most of the wall is now gone, but the bastions remain. It was fun to explore the old cobblestone streets lined with buildings painted in bright pastel colors.

Campeche colors

Then we headed further south into the state of Chiapas to explore the Mayan ruins of Palenque and encounter the jungle proper. We stayed in an area called El Panchan located in a lush jungle setting not far from the ruins. The place was overrun with cute wild kittens.

Feral cats at El Panchan

And so the next day we explored the amazing ruins of Palenque. There were far fewer tourists than at Chichen Itza and we were allowed to climb on most of the pyramids, sometimes even being able to go inside some of their narrow, murky, dripping passageways. At the more obscure sites, we often had the place to ourselves and even managed a furtive dip in the Arroyo Otulum stream. I especially enjoyed exploring the dark catacombs within various structures by flashlight.

Temple of the Inscriptions (left) and The Palace

Shine in the Tomb of the Red Queen

Ascending from the catacombs within The Palace

The most discernable difference between Chichen Itza and Palenque is the scope of the surrounding jungle. The jungles of the Yucatan are lower and sparser than the dense, sprawling jungles of Chiapas. The hills, trees, vines, and wildlife all merge into a huge profusion of surging Life. The plants climb all over one another, stretching for the high jungle canopy and the precious sunlight above.

The first structures we visited were a line of towering pyramids, and yet the hills and jungle still loomed over them, endeavoring to swallow them back up and reclaim their territory. At one area, I saw workers using machetes to cut the branches and vines back in an endless effort to keep the encroaching jungle at bay. I am still reading Kerouac's On the Road, and appropriately enough, he also headed into Mexico and appreciated the jungle's penchant to blur boundaries.

Temple 12 and tourists oblivious to the jungle trying to eat them

We spent a lot of time at El Palacio ("The Palace"), a fun labyrinthine complex of corridors and courtyards. Shine feverishly sketched even more complicated color patterns that she "saw" on the walls and other structures. And while she's still unsure what any of this has to do with her system of healing, she has learned to be patient and wait for answers to become clearer in the future.

Shine meditating in the main courtyard of The Palace

A beautiful bas-relief in The Palace courtyard

We explored the structures in the Templo de la Cruz ("Temple of the Cross") area, climbing more pyramids and enjoying the vast views out over the ruins and the jungle. After investigating a couple of the more remote sites, we finally came to Los Banos de la Reina ("The Queen's Baths"), a picturesque waterfall pouring into perfect limestone pools. Unfortunately, no bathing was allowed, so I had to settle for scheming to sneak back in after hours.

The towering Temple of the Cross

The Queen's Baths

That night Shine felt called to Agua Azul ("Blue Water") to perform her moonlight rituals. Agua Azul is a river area with a long series of gorgeous stepped limestone pools. Normally, the waters are a beautiful shade of turquoise, but during the rainy season they are a murky greenish brown. They were also about an hour's drive away on winding roads in the pouring rain through a notorious robbery zone (at night) at a cost of about $100 US for the roundtrip taxi fare. And of course the park would be closed to the public at night so we would have to sneak in again. We considered The Queen's Baths at Palenque as an alternative, but with the pouring rain and the fact that we were feeling pretty tired, Shine decided to hold off on any nighttime rituals.

A curious coincidence: Being back in the jungle and seeing a large spider, I was reminded of an incident I witnessed back in the jungle/forest of my monastery in Thailand. I described to Shine how I saw a large spider and what I thought was a fly rolling around on the ground. They separated and I thought that the "fly" had escaped the clutches of the spider as they both moved quickly in opposite directions. And then they came together again, rolling around a second time. And again they separated. And came together again.

Extremely curious, I went closer to try to figure out what was going on. The "fly" turned out to be a wasp that was continually stinging the hapless spider, which had finally succumbed to the onslaught. The wasp then methodically ripped off all of the spider's eight legs with its powerful mandibles. And then, to my wonderment, the wasp somehow pulled out the spider's own silk thread, wrapping it around both of them to strap the spider carcass to the underside of the wasp's body. Even with its legs removed, the spider's body was still bigger than it, so the wasp set off on foot through the forest. I followed it until it reached the base of a tree, whereupon it calmly climbed up and went into a hole about ten feet up the trunk. I imagined that it was probably going to lay eggs in the carcass so that the hatching larvae would have something to eat. (I was reminded of the movie "Alien".) In the jungle, the roles of hunter and hunted are often interchangeable.

Then, a little while after I relayed this story to Shine, we came across a bright blue wasp dragging a large spider across the jungle path. I grabbed Shine's camera, but only got one blurry picture before some people coming from the other direction scared the wasp away.

Blue wasp dragging a big spider

The next day we went to Agua Azul in a collectivo van that the locals use. The pools and falls were indeed beautiful, though a bit murky from all of the rainy-season run-off. We walked way up the river and swam near a small village and picnicked on the shore. On the way back, a generous woman gave Shine a beaded necklace and matching earrings.

The main cascades at Agua Azul

The ruins of Palenque reminded me a lot of magnificent Tikal, located in the remote jungles of Guatemala. I went there almost twenty years ago with a girlfriend, a Brit named Carol. Like Palenque, the ruins at Tikal are set amongst a lush jungle setting. But being so remote, there were very few tourists and the wildlife was correspondingly quite abundant. Numerous monkeys scampered in the trees, including loud howler monkeys bellowing away. We also saw a gray fox walk straight up one of the ancient walls in the ruins. Colorful birds of all shapes and sizes squawked and chattered away in the foliage. (Toucans, quetzals, parrakeets, etc. There was even one strange bird that made a musically metallic sound as it repeatedly swung on its perch to hang upside-down!) It wasn't hard to imagine jaguars lurking in the shadows.

And of course the pyramids and other structures were awe-inspiring in their jungle milieu. We excitedly explored all the amazing complexes by day, and when night came it was easy to sneak off and enjoy the ruins after closing hours. From the top of a pyramid, we watched the moon rise and illuminate the ancient city in its magical light.

But when we headed back to our lodge, we got lost in the jungle. We were still on paths, so I wasn't too worried, but the jungle definitely shows its more menacing side at night. The thick foliage conspired to make all of the paths look the same and the shadows threatened at every turn. But despite the jungle's best efforts to swallow us up before daylight, we somehow managed to stumble back to our lodge.

For me, jungles are equal parts enticing and intimidating. So primal and visceral, they inspire both fascination and fear with all that sprawling nature humming, throbbing, chittering, twisting, breathing, consuming. All of this seething Life feeds on itself, and everything else too. Boundaries blur between plants, animals, the elements.....and me. If I listen too closely to the jungle writhing around me, I begin to understand its soft susurrations, murmuring that it is coming for me, whispering of my end, and dreaming of our inevitable reunion.

It's an interesting contrast, these "dead" ruins amidst this thriving jungle scheming to reclaim its ancient baubles. Will the jungle succeed some day? Will our cities be reclaimed by the wilderness in a thousand years too? A hundred thousand years? A hundred million? Will we have moved on to other planets or solar systems leaving a lonely (relieved?) Mother Earth behind? Will we have evolved into a new species? Will anyone even remember names like Confucius, Caesar, Cleopatra, Christ, Muhammad, Genghis, Shakespeare, Einstein, Picasso, Gandhi, Hasselhoff, or Bush? Will we mature past this critical threshold where our technological power seems to have outstripped our moral development? Or will we kill ourselves off? As it stands, we are mere children juggling hand grenades. (And yet I remain pretty optimistic cuz we're pretty dextrous children.)

But perhaps the Earth itself is impassive. Maybe it doesn't really care. After all, it will survive no matter what we do. (At least, until we develop enough power to threaten the existence of the Earth itself.)

But we are bio-centric. We favor life over non-life cuz that's what we are. Maybe someday we will come to realize that the line between life and non-life doesn't really exist. (Scientists still haven't quite figured out what viruses are. And even fire satisfies many of the criteria for a definition of "life".) All life is composed of the universal matter and energy building blocks that form the foundation of our being. Our sweet Sol warms us from without and within. Our lonely Luna tugs at the tides of our inner seas. The dust of dying stars mingles in the marrow of our ancient bones. And, just maybe, supernovas explode in our brains.

Ah, I have wandered far afield again, lost in the tangled jungles of my mind. And perhaps my machete isn't quite sharp enough for me to be straying so far from home, rambling on and over-stretching metaphors. So I will slice at these discursive vines, try to scrape the moss off of my memory, and rail against the shadows of my ignorance.

And as I shake my fist, the seething jungle hushes.....and Jupiter trembles.

"...I realized the jungle takes you over and you become it.....For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me. The atmosphere and I bacame the same.....I began to tingle all over and to smell of the rank, hot, and rotten jungle, all over from hair and face to feet and toes.....I didn't even know if branches or open sky were directly above me, and it made no difference. I opened my mouth to it and drew deep breaths of jungle atmosphere. It was not air, never air, but the palpable and living emanation of trees and swamp. I stayed awake. Roosters began to crow the dawn across the brakes somewhere. Still no air, no breeze, no dew, but the same Tropic of Cancer heaviness held us all pinned to earth, where we belonged and tingled."
---Jack Kerouac, from On the Road

"Maybe I'm just crazy and that's all there is to it."
---Shine, referring to the whole trip and her healing system

"Agua Lodo ('Mud Water')."
---our taxi driver, referring to Agua Azul during the rainy season

"I'm a student of life.....mainly cuz I don't know how to do anything else."
---me

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The Ruins by Moonlight

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 07:21:40 GMT

The next day we were both sick, mainly from exhaustion (lack of sleep prior to the trip) and overheating in the hot sun at the Chichen Itza ruins, but Shine was also nauseous and weak. She decided to guide me through the process of trying to heal her with colors. First, she told me to "shield myself" so that I wouldn't take on any illness that she had. Then I placed my hands on her stomach and she told me to imagine that I was channelling healing colors into her, first yellow and green, then orange, then black briefly, and finally white.

Well, apparently I'm not much of an adept, so that afternoon we ended up taking her to see a doctor at the local clinic. Through my very mangled Spanish we got him to understand the situation and he prescribed Kaopectate, antibiotics, electrolyte solution packets, and anti-nausea tablets. She took the electrolytes and the anti-nausea tablets and was feeling better by the next morning.

Back during our first day at the ruins, Shine informed me that she felt called to perform a ritual at Chichen Itza at night when the ruins are closed to the public. Initially, I resisted the idea for various reasons-----respect for the wishes of the archaeologists, a desire to get a good night's sleep, an aversion to spending the night in a Mexican jail-----but after about three seconds of deep deliberation I acquiesced, thinking how nice it would be to have the place to ourselves and be able to climb on those ancient pyramids. Okay, so it wouldn't be the greatest example of low-impact eco-tourism, but what the hey, all in the name of Shine's spiritual evolution, right? Good thing I don't have any vows against trespassing.

That day we went back to explore some more, including another water-filled cenote and some smaller, more obscure ruins in the jungle. I saw a lot of big bold iguanas lurking all over the place, especially on the ruins where they enjoyed commanding views of their territory. And we kept an eye out for good hiding spots and areas where we might be able to sneak back in after dark. There were tons of great places to hide---caves, the jungle, in the ruins themselves---but we decided to come back in the evening and try to sneak off during the nighttime light show.

An imperious iguana

Unfortunately, when we came back for the light show, there were very few people---maybe fifty in total---and we were all ushered into a small roped-off area with chairs set up in rows, watched closely by the guards. We initially tried to head toward the big Pyramid of Kukulcan, but were quickly intercepted by a guard and redirected toward the chairs. The light show was not all that impressive and the narration was naturally all in Spanish, so we didn't get much out of it, especially since we spent most of the time trying to figure out how we could sneak off into the jungle.

I sat there practicing what I would say if the guards caught us sneaking around the ruins that night. I didn't know how to say "healer" in Spanish, so all I could come up with was: "Ella es una bruja de la salud. Ella necessita hacer una ritual al Cenote Sagrado." ("She is a health witch. She needs to do a ritual at the Sacred Pool.") I finally settled on the simpler "Somos brujos del agua." ("We are water witches/wizards."----rain shamans?) because "brujos del agua" were mentioned a lot at the light show.

The show finally ended and everyone headed off for the exits. I pulled the old shoelace tying trick so that we could straggle behind everybody else and then, after a few tense moments trying to figure out where the guards were, we dashed off into the jungle when no one was looking. There was an especially nerve-wracking moment when I actually got stuck in a fence we were climbing through because the plastic water bottle on my backpack got caught on the wire, making a lot of noise.

So we hid on a jungle path for a little over an hour, hoping that there would be very few guards patrolling the grounds at night. Fireflies drifted through the evening, emitting bright white lights that often made us jump whenever we thought that they were a guard's flashlight off in the distance. Winding roots did their best to impersonate snakes as we tried not to imagine what other beasties might be lurking in the jungle shadows. The moon rose higher, lighting our little glade and making the leaves glisten in the moonlight.

And in our silence the jungle noises really came alive for us. Insects everywhere were buzzing, whirring, and clicking. We realized that what I had originally thought was a guard blowing a whistle was actually some kind of strange bird calling through the night. Heavy unseen wings flapped overhead, perhaps an owl or a large fruit bat. And then as we listened to some women chatting as they walked along the main path, they suddenly let loose with piercing screams. I expected to hear them laugh or scold a friend who had scared them, but there was nothing. Just chilling silence. That really increased the eerie tension. I guess I should have checked on them, but a motorcycle (a guard?) rode by on the main path a couple of times, so I assumed that if there had been a real problem he would have seen it. Those screams set a surreal tone for the night. And we were only just getting started.

We finally got up the courage to head back into the ruins and edged along the jungle next to the main path. We didn't come across any bodies, so that was a good start. But at one point we had to hit the ground and lie as still as possible as two bicyclists came out of the darkness and rode by us. I was actually more worried about being detected by the dogs that roam the site than by the guards.

We continued along and the forest opened up to reveal the main clearing with the majestic Piramide del Kukulcan dominating the milieu. Impressive by day, the pyramid is even more majestic when bathed in the magical glow of the moonlight. All of the ancient stone structures in the area radiated that pale light, making for an other-worldly dreamscape.

Daytime shot of the Pyramid of Kukulcan

At first, Shine felt called to the Cenote Sagrado, but as we began to make our way across the courtyards of the Mercado ("Market"), she decided that the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote ("Tomb of the Great Priest") was another good alternative for the rituals she needed to perform. So we changed direction and headed west toward my favorite temple with its twin serpents adorning the stairways on all four sides of the pyramid. (We have since learned from a helpful Mayan fellow that snakes represent intelligence, jaguars symbolize power, and eagles signify freedom.)

We made it to the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote without any problems and circumambulated the base of the pyramid. I convinced Shine to accompany me to the top of the temple, so after making obeisances to the rain god Chac Mool and the plumed serpent god Quetzl Coatl, we climbed the steep stone stairs, walking up to the night sky. At the top, we were treated to a sublime view out over the jungle and ruins awash in that mystical moonlight.

Shine removed the darker clothes that were camouflaging her white clothes and performed her rituals in a walled central chamber. (She has asked me not to give any details about the rituals, but I can vouch that no animals or vegetables were harmed in the process.) I sat on a wall atop the pyramid and meditated, experiencing one of the deepest meditative states I've ever had. When Shine was finished, we climbed back down the Tomb and she repeated her rituals at the base of the pyramid. And again, I went into a deep meditation.

Meditating atop the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote

When she was done, Shine was ready to leave the ruins, but I convinced her that we should go to the Cenote Sagrado since she had felt so strongly called there earlier. We headed north, circumnavigating that magnificent Pirimide del Kukulcan one last time and threaded our way through the pillars at the Templo de los Guerreros ("Temple of the Warriors"). Having encountered no guards, we were pretty relaxed as we walked the long path to the Cenote Sagrado until we saw some lights on at the sacred gift shop near the Sacred Pool. We made our way quietly to the Pool and sat for a short midnight meditation.

Then when we moved to another area so that Shine could perform more rituals, some dogs finally detected us and unleashed a barking ruckus. I expected that we would soon be busted, but no guards came out. With the dogs still barking, we decided to call it a night and took another path north. We climbed under a barbed-wire fence and I deftly managed not to get stuck this time. We reached the highway and walked about two miles back to the small dusty town of Piste.

When we got back to our lodge, we discovered that Shine had accidentally left her jade necklace at the Cenote Sagrado. On reflection, she decided that it was an appropriate offering since the ancient Mayans had often offered jewelry and other belongings (besides virgins) to the Sacred Pool.

And then Shine told me that she needs to perform nighttime rituals at the Mayan ruins at Palenque and Tulum too!

"It would have convinced you to join me even faster."
---Shine, responding to my initial objection that she hadn't told me that the trip would involve breaking into the ruins at night

"I can see the headlines in Israel now: 'Israeli Woman Arrested at Sacred Mexican Ruins on Top of a Pyramid at Midnight with a Beggar Monk Because Voices Told Her To Perform a Ritual There'."
---Shine (she's Israeli)

"I wonder if there are still jaguars in the Yucatan?....Oops!"
---me, realizing that this line of thought would not really help ease the tension as we waited in the jungle

"Don't be afraid---you're with me. I'm not afraid. Of course, that's because I can run faster than you."
---me, reassuring Shine

"But it's all illegal, baby!"
---me, gesturing to all of the ruins after Shine objected that it was illegal to climb the pyramid

"Five more minutes and I might not have come back."
---me, referring to my meditation on top of the pyramid

"Everything is unfolding exactly as it is supposed to, exactly as it is."
---the answer I received in my meditation when I asked how I can be of service

"There's a limit to everything."
---Shine, after I asked her if she wanted to continue with the ritual even though the dogs were barking and we thought the guards were coming

"What gives you the idea that I'm unprofessional?! Maybe when I got stuck in the fence?"
---me, responding to Shine's comment that my stealth abilities don't measure up well with Israeli commandos

"Yeah, maybe an old, blind, fat cat!"
---me, responding to Shine's comment that she walked as silently as a cat

"And you walk like a rhino-corn-asaurus!.....How do you say it?"
---Shine, attempting to say "rhinoceros"

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When in Chichen Itza.....

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 02:46:58 GMT

Rated: PG-13 for violence (mostly Mayan)

Snapshots from a mad lark to the Yucatan:

Why is it that I always exhaust myself right before a journey? Two nights before we left, I stayed up all night editing Shine´s 50 page prospectus for her rhetorics dissertation on "the ineffable". (Good stuff on aesthetics, pain, spirituality, and the limits of language.) Then the night before our flight we only got a few hours sleep as we packed our gear and cleaned the apartment for a young guy who is subletting her apartment for the duration of our trip.

We arrived at the Austin airport to find out that our budget airline, VivaAerobus, is the only one located on the other side of the airport, requiring a $30 taxi ride to get there. We took off at 8am in the morning and the flight went smoothly, but I was unable to sleep during the trip. We arrived in Cancun at about 11am and Shine decided that we should head directly to Chichen Itza. So after a quick lunch and changing some dollars to pesos, we jumped on a 4 1/2 hour bus ride to the small town of Piste located near the ruins.

Shine with "R2-D2"

So I'm back in Latin America after many years, and the visceral memories came flooding back. Sure, there are a lot of visual recollections-----the brightly colored clothes of the locals, especially the indegenas, the lush tropical greenery, tired buildings, beat-up vehicles, and cracked roads. But the strongest mnemonic triggers have been olfactory-----car exhaust in narrow streets, chickens cooking on roadside grills, garbage, smoke mixed with the smell of rain; and auditory-----the calls of the street vendors, the roar of trucks down narrow lanes, latin music pumping out of homes and restaurants, and jungle birds - raucous in sound and color.

Along the coast road south of Cancun

Family car

During the bus ride, the skys opened up and a deluge came pounding down. I found myself wondering what the hell I was doing in the Yucatan during the rainy season. In the city of Vallodalid, our bus waded through streets turned to rushing rivers as shopkeepers haplessly squeegeed water out of their stores. After three hours, the rains finally stopped just as we arrived in Piste, totally exhausted.

The next morning we went to the ruins at Chichen Itza, the focal point of this whole trip. Shine made a bee-line for the imposing Pyramid of Kukulcan (another name for Quetzl-Coatl, the plumed serpent god of the Mayans), called El Castillo ("The Castle") by the Spanish, which dominates the main clearing. She saw colors in intricate patterns all over the pyramid and began sketching all of the color schemes into her notebook.

The mighty Pyramid of Kukulcan

Shine sizing up the Pyramid of Kukulcan

Sketching the pyramid and noting its "colors"

The pyramid is impressive, not only because of it's size and symmetry, but it is also a literal calendar: it's steps, levels, and stone "panels" mark days, seasons, and epochs. But I was disappointed when it soon became apparent that visitors are no longer allowed to climb up the pyramid. When I visited this place about fifteen years ago, there was a chain handrail which helped visitors mount the steep stone steps to the temple at the top.

Much has been made in New-Age circles of the fact that the Mayans predicted big changes at the end of this era, specifically December 21, 2012. I've heard all kinds of predictions, from gradual changes in human consciousness to massive cataclysms across the globe ending human civilization as we know it. The Toltec shaman Tlahuizcalpantecutli (or, more familiarly, "El Gorila") that we met in Austin (yeah, I'm sorry---I know I haven't written about my time in Austin before this trip) said that "the sixth sun" would come on this date. (I assumed he was speaking of a solar "sun", but in retrospect, he may have meant a divine child "son".)

I've lost count of all the doomsday predictions I've heard over the years. There was the supposed prediction by Nostradamus that the apocalypse would be triggered by a clash between the Eagle and the Bear (the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.). The Brahma Kumaris predicted the end of the Kali Yuga ("Age of Destruction") and the dawn of the Sat Yuga ("Golden Age of Truth") in the 1990s, then changed the date at least twice when their predictions were incorrect. The Harmonic Convergence came and went with a whimper. And Y2K created a lot of doomsday hysteria too. And there have been many other failed End-of-the-World prophecies-----too numerous to go into here. (But if you're really interested, check out http://www.religioustolerance.org/end_wrld.htm which compiles a pretty exhaustive list.)

While there is an understandable focus on the end of the Mayan calendar (a mere 3 1/2 years from now), the beginning of the calendar tends to be conveniently overlooked. According to the Mayans, the world was created on August 13, 3114 BCE. While interesting, this date doesn't jibe so well with our modern understanding that the Earth is about 4 1/2 billion years old, while the Universe itself clocks in at a spry 18 billion years.

Despite all my skepticism, I'm trying my best to maintain an open mind, and I must admit that I'm actually looking forward to 2012 with a certain degree of excited anticipation. After all, I'm always up for change-----heck, I'm addicted to it.

Anyhow, Shine went back to our lodge for a break at mid-day and in a matter of seconds the skys let loose with their daily deluge. I was soaked to the skin before I could even get my umbrella out of my backpack. But after an hour the clear blue skies returned and I headed off to explore more ruins along with throngs of other tourists who had been arriving in increasing numbers throughout the day, bussed in on package tours from Cancun and Merida.

Raining cats and dogs at the Temple of Jaguars and Shields

El Templo de los Guerreros ("The Temple of the Warriors") and the nearby Mercado ("Market") with its numerous stone columns make up a sprawling complex that was fun to explore, but again, we weren't allowed to surmount the alluring temple. Another large complex contains the observatory El Caracol ("The Snail", named for its shape and its interior spiral staircase), a domed structure that aligned various constellations through windows on auspicious dates. My favorite site was the Tumba del Gran Sacerdote ("the Tomb of the Great Priest") adorned with twin serpents flanking the stairways on each of the pyramid's four sides.

The Temple of the Warriors

In the Market area

El Caracol observing the rainy-season skies

The Tomb of the Great Priest

Shine returned and we headed to the Cenote Sagrado ("Sacred Pool", one of many water-filled sinkholes occurring all over the Yucatan, apparently created by that big ol' asteroid that thumped the peninsula, possibly wiping out the dinosaurs). The Cenote was a huge round hole in the ground, very deep with dark murky water at the bottom. Despite seeing gold light everywhere, Shine still felt a "heavy darkness" over the whole area, mainly because of the human sacrifices that were made here, especially the young female virgins who were either shot with arrows or had their hearts cut out. Yikes.

Shine at the Cenote Sagrado

One can't really talk about Chichen Itza without mentioning all the bloody rituals that occurred all over the place. The Mayans were already big on warfare and sacrifices, but things really got bumped up a notch when the Toltecs exerted their influence over the region. Chichen Itza has numerous artefacts commemorating their bloody lifestyle.

Besides the Cenote Sagrado, el Templo de los Guerreros also saw its fair share of human sacrifices. The Plataforma de los Craneos ("Platform of Skulls") is decorated with numerous skull glyphs that matched the real decapitated heads of sacrificial victims that were placed on the platform for display. It also features charming reliefs of eagles tearing open peoples' chests to eat their hearts. At the nearby Plataforma de las Aguilas y los Jaguares ("Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars") there are amazingly clear images of eagles and jaguars holding human hearts in their talons and claws.

Detail on the Platform of Skulls

Detail on the Platform of the Eagles and Jaguars

The Gran Juego de Pelota ("Great Ball Court") features high walls with stone rings near the top for the Mayan game that was something of a cross between soccer, basketball, and hackeysack. And---cuz you just never know if the game will be entertaining enough---they apparently often decapitated the losing team! Imagine the Lakers and the Celtics playing for those stakes! (Though I read somewhere that they might have actually beheaded the winning team, sending them off to a glorious after-life in their version of heaven.)

A scoring ring at the Great Ball Court

Whenever I visit ruins, I try to imagine the daily life and rituals that took place hundreds or thousands of years ago. At the Sacred Pool I found myself imagining throwing tourists into the deep dark waters, their screams echoing off the impassive limestone walls. Hey, when in Rome.....

Maybe I was a Mayan priest in a past life?

"Ooh! We're over the ocean now! If we crash now, that means we're all gonna die!"
---little girl sitting in front of me on the plane

"You don't see the colors?"
---Shine to me, regarding the Pyramid of Kukulcan (No I didn't, not even after rubbing my eyes and hitting my forehead a few times.)

"What a waste of good virgins!.....Some monk, huh?"
---me, regarding the sacrifices at the Sacred Pool

"As you have seen, God did not appear on channel 18 and the end of the world did not occur last night. All of my predictions have turned out to be crap."
---Hoh-Ming Chen, leader of "God's Salvation Church", awaiting the end of the world in Texas in 1998

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Toltec Twist

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:56:56 GMT

Okay, here's the deal:

I'm way behind in this blog and still have a number of entries that I will probably backdate in if I ever get around to writing them. (I'll make sure to post notifications of anything I backdate.)

But for now, my walkabout is taking a serious detour to the South. (How can anything be a detour when I don't have any destination?) South, as in Mexico.....specifically, the Yucatan. Yeah, really.

After quite a bit of wrangling, my friend "Shine" here in Austin has convinced me to accompany her to the ruins at Chichen Itza and probably some other ancient sites as well. You see, although she's working on her Ph.D. dissertation here at the University of Texas at Austin in the field of Rhetorics (say what?), she's also been developing some kind of crazy healing abilities over the past few years too. It's all quite complex, involving colors, shapes, pyramids, energy fields, visions, and a whole bunch of other stuff that goes over my head....or at least in one ear and out the other.

Last year Shine felt "called" to Oaxaca, Mexico where she spontaneously learned various aspects of her healing system at different ruins. Now she's feeling called to Chichen Itza and possibly further destinations that may be revealed as the trip unfolds. I've already been to the Yucatan and seen some of the ruins, but that was a long time ago, so I'm looking forward to the trip and the inevitable lessons along the journey.

And okay, so I'm a skeptic at heart, but I know that a good skeptic realizes that there are also times to be skeptical of skepticism. So I will do my best to maintain an open mind and an open heart.....and try to keep my snarky comments to a minimum.

We leave tomorrow morning! Adios, muchachos!
Woohoo!

"Ever notice how "What the hell!" is always the right answer?"
---a friend's refrigerator magnet

"Use the Force."
---my Burger King Star Wars Yoda action figure, responding to my query, "Should I go to Mexico?"

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On the Road

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:52:53 GMT

There turned out to be no pending warrants for my arrest, so the fine city of Santa Monica arranged for my one-way ticket to Austin, Texas, courtesy of their "Homecoming Program". Ironically, Los Angeles is probably the closest thing to a "home" for me since it's where I grew up and where my family still lives. I jokingly refer to the "Homecoming Program" as the "Get the Hell Out of Our City Program", but I am truly thankful for the blessing of being able to travel half-way across the country for free. (My caseworker at St. Joe's told me that they will call my Austin friend at approximately monthly intervals to "check up on me". I guess that's the "And Stay the Hell Out" portion of the program.)

So it was time to bid farewell to my friends, "old" and new. They're a transitory crowd (even the chess players), and I really haven't known them that long, but it still brought up some sadly sweet moments for me. I'd only barely gotten to know some of my newer friends. Sean and Rebecca are working hard to carve out their niche in the Venice boardwalk art scene. (The LA Times recently had an interesting audio-photo essay depicting the colorful ambience of the boardwalk.) And then there's cerebral Kevin with his incredibly incisive liberal blog at btcnews.com, written under the tasty pseudonym "Weldon Berger". And he's got a great new blog detailing his experiences being homeless at urbanrefugees.blogspot.com. His pseudonym on this site is the clever "P. Handling". (Golly, it makes you wonder how many of us homeless dudes are out here blogging about our experiences.) Not sure what to do with my bike, I finally left it with Ruben, an exuberant fellow with a permanent grin on his face who promised to take care of it until I returned.

Rob and I went for one last bike ride down to Palos Verdes and back, making stops for Subway sandwiches, ice cream, and women's volleyball. We even threw around a Frisbee disc on Palos Verdes beach, doing our best not to injure any of the hordes of sunbathers enjoying the gorgeous weather. As a kind parting gesture, Rob bought me packages of beef jerky and tuna for the road.

On my last day, I said goodbye to Ma Ocean and swung on the swings on the Santa Monica beach. A sign of the times: they sold the Santa Monica Pier ferris wheel on Ebay. I think they're gonna put up a new one, but it made me feel even more ready to hit the road.

So then it was time to go. My trip started off a bit inauspiciously as I took the wrong Metro bus downtown, thinking that Union Station was where the Greyhound bus station would be. Luckily, I had enough time and an extra bus token to get to the right place. Besides the usual funny looks at my gear and get-up, the folks at the ticket counter informed me that I wouldn't be able to take my broom and dustpan with me. But the bus driver didn't have a problem with them, so I was able to keep all my gear intact.

Snapshots from the one and a half day bus ride to Austin, Texas:

The bus is pretty full, stopping in dusty little towns to trickle passengers on and off. Most of my fellow travelers are lower to middle class, gruff, mainly male, of all major ethnicities. All of our transient lives are intersecting on this bus, some running away, others running to. Which am I?

At every stop, the smokers (most of the bus) herd off to puff away grumpily in (hot) outdoor smoking pens.

109 degrees in Phoenix, Arizona.

This is not the way I usually like to travel, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. (I'm still amazed at the free ticket.) But I tend to go pretty slow when I travel. My last road trip across the U.S. in 2005 took six months. But then I remember a faster trip I did in the early 90s: ten days from Miami to Los Angeles in a "drive-away" Volkswagon Jetta with two crazy Swiss women and their too-short skirts. (Thought I was gonna get killed at one Alabama truckstop...)

As usual, I haven't gotten enough sleep before the trip and I'm having trouble sleeping on the bus. I wake up from one nap with a sore neck that stays with me for most of the trip.

The guy sitting next to me is heading all the way back to Florida-----three and a half days on seven buses. That means he will spend a total of a week on buses for the round trip. He went to San Diego for his mother's funeral. His name is Scott and he used to work with the state lottery until his company lost the contract, so now he's out of a job. I mention that I think I read somewhere that studies have shown that lottery winners are not any happier than people who suffer debilitating injuries.

The vast fields of huge white windmills generating electricity in the deserts of California and Texas-----so graceful, so surreal.

We hit El Paso, Texas at 6am, but I won't get to Austin until 1am the next morning.

Appropriately enough, I'm finally digging into Jack Kerouac's On the Road. With the bus rolling across the night, I can feel myself getting the fever again as I read Kerouac's amped up prose. Despite the ironic fact that I am literally "on the road", I can feel the yearning growing in me, the yearning for the open road and the vast horizons that whisper of possibility and wonder. I remind myself that Wonder is wherever I am, in all places, at all times, but I can still feel the fever rising in me. His words pour down like late night jazz, building to sweaty frenzies and then crashing down in exhaustion. But always, the fever flows across the pages.....and into my veins.

I like to joke that I'm a "Jack of no trades, master of none", so like Kerouac, I like to put myself in interesting circumstances with interesting people, hoping that interesting things will happen around me. I'm such a chameleon that I'm not sure who I really am under this quicksilver skin. Maybe I'll peel it back and find nothing. I'm becoming more comfortable with that possibility.

I slowly begin to realize that Kerouac is writing my life more passionately and eloquently than I ever could. And then, in a sudden flash of insight, I realize that I am, quite literally, a "dharma bum".

"babe, what highway are you on now
what direction?
north, south, east
how is the wind the sun the smell of earth?
how does it feel under your shoes?
have you eaten?"
---Wanda Coleman, engraved on the Venice Beach poetry walls

"My favorite color is yellow."
---Rob's less-than-inspiring attempt to talk to a young woman in a yellow bikini

"We're a bunch of educated fools standing in line. We don't want to work for anybody else. We want to run our own businesses. We are the leadership overflow of America!"
---Sir Charles, pontificating to the homeless crowd waiting outside of the Bread and Roses Cafe

"Will blog for ~~Fame~~ .....~~Food~~.....CASH!
Immortalize your encounter with a mentally ill homeless person!
urbanrefugees.blogspot.com"
---Kevin's idea for a panhandling sign

"You know what we should do? We should go to a strip club and keep all the receipts to claim as donations to charity on our taxes! You know how many girls we'd be putting through college?! 'Excuse me, Ma'am, can you give me a receipt for that lap dance you just gave me?!' And can you imagine all the one dollar receipts?!"
---phone conversation in the seat behind me on the bus

Jack Kerouac, from On the Road:

"But then they danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"

"...and as the river poured down from mid-America by starlight I knew, I knew like mad that everything I had ever known and would ever know was One."

"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing?---it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

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Shadows of Eden

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:25:43 GMT

Rated: PG-13 for nudity

Back in January when I was re-packing my backpack for the West Coast part of this monkabout, I fumbled through my socks looking for matching pairs. Then I realized that no one would really be able to see my socks under my samue pants and tennis shoes, and I laughed at my impulse to find matching pairs. And then I realized that I didn't have to care what other people thought about my socks at all. I'm still a long way from generalizing this liberating detachment to the rest of my appearance or to what others might think about my life in general, but it's a small step in the right direction. If I accomplish nothing else on this walkabout, I will at least have learned that my socks don't have to match.

But I've also gotten better at changing my pants in public. Before, I would find a bathroom or some surreptitious spot to add or subtract thermal layers as dictated by the changing temperatures throughout the day. Changing layers has become less necessary as the days have warmed up, but I got to the point where I could slip my pants off and on in public, mostly oblivious to the eyes of friends and strangers.

Again, I must tip my hat here to my hero Diogenes who happily flaunted many social mores. His habitual nudity often got him in trouble with the Greek authorities. And it seems appropriate to give a shout-out to UC Berkeley's modern-day Diogenes, the "Naked Guy", who often roamed about campus in the buff. (Unfortunately, his story ended tragically with his suicide two years ago after years struggling with mental illness. I'll knock on wood and hope that my form of "mental illness" leads to healthier pastures.)

I also went through a naked phase in college. Not as brave nor as brash as the Naked Guy, my nudity was constrained to drunken fits of streaking after parties with my radical student colleagues. Sometimes my friends would start chanting "Zum streak! Zum streak!". But I refused to bow to their peer pressure, choosing instead to sneak out later, shed my clothes, and dash off into the night. Once, at a progressive student conference (at UC Berkeley?), some friends found me passed out naked on a bike path. Another time I ran through the late night streets of Isla Vista (UC Santa Barbara's college town), trying my best to keep up with a pack of dogs who didn't quite know what to make of this strange naked human hounding their steps.

So what was it all about? Well, besides a penchant for exhibitionism, it was my strange way to express my rage against what I perceived were the limitations imposed on me by society.....as well as the limitations I imposed upon myself due to my fears. (It took me a long time---and some serious Buddhist introspection---to also realize that my hungers imposed a lot of limitations too. And that hunger and fear were flip sides of the same coin.) Stripping off my clothes was a symbolic way for me to tear away the constricting cultural codes that I felt were invalid because they were based on puritanism, commercialism, orthodoxy, elitism, repression, fear, greed, and/or ignorance. But more than just symbolic, it also felt so liberating to run naked through the night, not knowing where I was, not caring where I ended up. Amazingly, I was never arrested during these inebriated frenzies.

I have always been flabbergasted by the fact that---with the possible exception of turtles, most mollusks, and certain crabs---we humans are pretty much the only animals that are actually so ashamed of our bodies that we are afraid to show them in public. And yet we think that we are so superior to the rest of the animals! Sure, we tell ourselves that we need clothes because we don't have fur or feathers or scales to protect us from the sun, wind, rain, and cold, but this is just a rationalization, for there are plenty of times and locations when and where clothes are totally superfluous.

After all, nudity was apparently pretty hunky-dory until Adam and Eve took those fateful bites of the forbidden fruit. It wasn't until after they shared the fruit that they suddenly became ashamed of their nakedness. Which brings me to the progenitor of the fruit, that knotty Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What a great symbol of our primary impulse to make dualistic judgments, to divide and separate reality into "good" and "bad".

Eastern traditions might interpret the Eden story this way: Adam and Eve fell from paradise when they began making dualistic judgments about paradise itself. This very act caused their schism with paradise when they began labeling things as "good" or "bad". In this way, they cast themselves out of Eden as they turned it into a world dominated by their dualistic opinions. (An Israeli friend recently told me that the original hebrew word that is translated in the Bible as "knowledge" can also be translated as "opinion". Perhaps it's really the Tree of Opinion of Good and Evil.) The key is that the Garden never changed-----it was only their perception of it that changed.

Remember, nudity was neither "good" nor "bad" until us humans labeled it so. So maybe there were other aspects of Eden that really weren't so "bad" to begin with too. After all, the snake was there in Eden too. Did its presence make the Garden any less a paradise before they tasted the fruit? Okay, so maybe I shouldn't try to argue the case for the snake---that could get pretty slippery---I'm just trying to say that if fangs and venom already existed in paradise, then what were they used for? And since God had already created "every beast of the field and every bird of the air" then there must have been a whole bunch of other critters with claws and other dangerous pointy bits too.

Okay, the real point is that maybe paradise can contain some pretty dark stuff too. Perhaps the Garden is big enough for some other nasty beasties lurking in the dark, or some other bitter fruit happily growing in the shadows of Eden, the Yin side of reality so essential to the balance and harmony of the way of the universe, the Tao.

Pain is a good example. I meet pain with resistance and fear, labeling it on a very fundamental level of my being as "bad". But if I stop to think about it, I will realize that I am actually designed to feel pain. In fact, pain is a very effective messenger of damage (or potential damage) to my body or psyche. It has helped me survive and my species evolve. Pain has been faithfully serving us all along in the most thankless job in history.

On the flip side, we tend to idealize "Nature", often equating it with a peaceful paradise where everything gets along in perfect harmony. But when I look closely at the plant and animal kingdoms I can see wars, murder, rape, pillaging, extinction-----injustices of the highest order. And yet they are harmonious and perfect. Chaotic, peaceful, bloody, friendly.....paradise. (By the way, just what is not "nature" anyways?)

Golleee, but I sure am sermonizing! It’s enough to make even Derrick blush…..especially since (from his point of view) I’m extolling the virtues of the dark side of the Force, those bad boys, the zen masters and Taoist sages, drunk on life. These last three blog entries were all supposed to be a single entry, but it got out of control. I’m sure I’ll look back on all this malarkey some day and be appalled. But for now I’ll give my ego free rein and thumb my nose at that future easily-appalled stick-in-the-mud Zum. Damn him and the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Where was I? Oh yeah.....

So in a very literal sense, "original sin" is the belief in dualism. The radical corollary then is that dualistic thinking is what keeps us from seeing paradise all around us, right before us, within us.

So maybe it's a big BIG Garden-----plenty of room for sunshine and shadows too. Big enough for lions lying with lambs.....and eating them too. After all, that's what lions do. That's who they are. And if they let the lions in, then the Garden has got to be big enough to include us with our pain and neuroses. (Of course, the great ironic paradox is that our neuroses stem from thinking that we fell from Eden in the first place: the belief that the world, especially ourselves, somehow isn't "good enough".) And maybe the Garden is even big enough for war, disease, hunger, greed, poverty, ignorance (this rant?), schizophrenia, mismatched socks, and nude dudes.

But we take sides, we label "good" and "bad", and our fortunes become tied to the vagaries of chance as we are blinded to the perfection right before us. And so we wait for heaven....as well as peace and happiness and love and freedom and Denny's Tuesday Grand Slam Breakfast Special. And the delicious irony is that all this judging and fear and craving and waiting and blindness is within the garden too. So it's fine and beautiful to pick sides. Go ahead and root for the Lakers. Sometimes we can even taste the divine in the ecstatic joys and bittersweet pains we experience on the rollercoaster of duality.

And there's no need to sit back and passively watch the shadows do their dark work. There are powerful ways to engage and transform the shadows by honoring and embracing them. So yes, if you feel called, then work to end war, or buy your loud neighbors the latest Pearl Jam CD to add to their collection, or feed the hungry. (A good way to do this last one is to support micro-credit programs like the Hunger Project which seek to empower the poor to end the cycle of poverty). And see how effective you become when you embrace the shadows, undermining the power we give them over us and brightening them with the power of compassion. Feel free to bring light to the shadows. Or not.

Do I actually believe all this balderdash? Well, yes, though I have a hard time remembering it, especially when the shadow is in my empty belly, or shouts "Checkmate!" at me, or gets cast across a typhoon ravaged flood plain in Myanmar. Memory, that sweet capricious beast runs after his shadowy sister, Forgetfulness, both forever at play in the Garden of my mind. And what is it exactly that I’m trying to remember? Oh yeah...

...We never really left Eden.

So I will try to take off my dualistic glasses.....cast off some constricting notions clothed in opinion.....and go for a sprint in the Garden.

Come run with me?

"Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there."
---Rumi, Sufi poet

"Don't trust your mind, it will trick you. Don't trust your heart, it will lie to you. Trust your belly-----that's where God talks to you."
---Derrick, homeless Christian apologist

"The Perfect Way is only difficult
for those who pick and choose.
Do not like, do not dislike;
all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference,
and Heaven and Earth are set infinitely apart.
If you want to get the plain truth,
be not concerned with right and wrong.
The conflict between right and wrong
is the sickness of the mind."
---Seng-Ts'an (When I first encountered this quote ten years ago, it inspired me to get two small Japanese kanji tattoos: "Heaven" on my left shoulder and "Earth" on my right.)

"Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional."
---anonymous

"We are all driven by our need for approval. And if you say that you aren't, then that's it too. The zen teacher's job is to go after that."
---Yoshin Sensei

"I charge my voices rent!"
"I told my voices I'm gonna listen to KLOS from now on!" (KLOS is a rock radio station)
---Sir Charles, one of my homeless chess buddies

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Marionette’s Dream

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:37:53 GMT

A friend recently asked me for my definition of “perfect happiness” and it set me off on a meandering musing. The first thing that came to mind was “when the internal and the external are in harmony”.

In the West, our main approach to this model of happiness is to attempt to shape the external world (relationships, homes, jobs, belongings, appearances, activities, etc.) to match our internal impulses. The Eastern approach is to transform our internal conditioning so that it harmonizes with external realities.

Of course, these are extremely simplified generalizations, especially when considering that the boundary between East and West is dissolving---beautifully, tragically---as we embrace components of one another’s cultures. But allow me this simple conceit and I shall soldier onward.

And of course there are advantages and disadvantages to both philosophies. While the Eastern goal of unconditional peace, happiness, love, etc. may be more appealing to me, the Western approach to happiness may actually be a lot easier to accomplish, at least in the short term! It’s usually a lot easier to go out and get another half-gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream than it is to learn to curb my appetites (current beggar lifestyle excepted, of course). As usual, the healthiest approach is probably to balance both methods. There is a time for manipulating external variables and a time for working on our internal compulsions. Mint chocolate chip ice cream in moderation.

Being a child of the West, I am well-versed in the practice of attempting to tweak external reality so that it matches what “I want”. It’s been a pretty radical shift to now try to re-align my internal impulses with external reality. And sure, that may all sound very grand, but what does it really mean to “harmonize the internal with the external”? Well, I think it means embracing---without clinging to---“What Is”, and letting go of---without pushing away---“What Is Not” (the past, the future, things I desire, fear, dream of). In other words, being at peace with myself and the way the world presents itself to me moment to moment, the light and the dark. In a word: Relax.

And yeah, I can already hear the Wise Guys banging on the door, slipping notes through the mail slot, reminding me that we are already in total harmony, that chaos and order go hand in hand, as do pain and happiness. The Tao is already balanced, unified, whole. And so that’s part of my practice too: to let these absolute (objective) truths in, to let them flavor and influence my largely relative (subjective) experience of life. And of course it’s also important to remember that I very well might not know what the hell I’m talking about here…..Humility is always a nice final resting point. (Good starting point and mid point too, for that matter.)

On the face of it, this practice of “harmonizing the internal with the external” can appear to be a fairly passive approach. One could, however, also easily argue that succumbing to our internal impulses day after day is actually a much more passive way of living. (It’s interesting to notice my very Western resistance to the notion of passivity…and let go.) Indeed, there are aspects of passivity to the Eastern path---after all, like all things, passivity has its place and time---yet it is actually a very active practice with some far-reaching ramifications.

Obviously, it can be a real battle to recondition deeply entrenched thought and habit patterns. If I can get them to open up and embrace whatever the world places before me (by convincing, cajoling, begging, threatening, even surrendering---whatever it takes!), then I will have opened a door onto a whole ton of unconditional internal potentials, such as peace, happiness, self-acceptance, love, freedom, gratitude, humility, energy, creativity, wisdom, fashion sense…..uh, yeah, etc.

But there are also implications that reach much further than “just” all this yummy unconditional stuff. (And here’s where we really disembark the passive train of thought.) The more I bow down to reality, the more it bows down back to me.

As I bow down to them, I can begin to truly see the ten thousand and one energies that come into and through me. (E.g., gravity, sounds, air, temperature, images, food, emotions, ideas, millions of years of biological conditioning, etc., etc., etc.) And the more I see them, the more I realize that they have been running the show the whole time anyways, dangling me on their strings like the puppet that I really am.

My ego objects. It doesn’t want to be a puppet. It wants to cut the strings, to be “my own man”. But if I can calm it down and teach it to embrace and resonate with these ten thousand and one puppet strings, then I may be lucky enough to realize an amazing thing: the strings work in both directions.

It makes sense---both intuitively and rationally---that the more I learn to harmonize with the energies of the universe then the more I will be able to bend and shape them. And perhaps this is the threshold between pre-determination and true free will. A determinist---which my coldly rational self is---believes that we are totally controlled by external elements through our biological and social conditioning, nature and nurture. We don’t see much compelling evidence for free will. So this may be a real flight of fancy, but just maybe free will can truly blossom when we fully harmonize with the world…..and learn to pull back on the puppet strings.

But for now, this marionette tries to let go of this dream and embrace the pirouettes and tumbles I am made to dance, especially the dance of bowing…

If I harmonize enough, perhaps the boundary between the internal and the external will dissolve as they merge. Or more accurately, maybe I will realize that the boundary has been totally imaginary all along and that the concepts of internal and external are merely an illusion to begin with. (That correction helped me dodge a blow from the zen master’s staff!) For the ten thousand and one things don’t just come into and through me, they are me.

Okay, I realize that I’m playing one of my broken records again, repeating songs that I’ve already sung in previous entries…..

So is it my fault or the Cosmos’ fault? Does the Cosmos dance this puppet Zum, or do I dance the Cosmos? Is there really a difference when I realize that it’s all simply The Dance?

Ah, what possibilities lie on the horizon then?!

Bonk! (The Wise Guys clonk me upside the head with their clear bottle and its clear clear liquid.) Ahem…I mean, what possibilities unfold, right here, right now?

We have never stopped dancing…..

Come dance with me?

"If you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel."
U2, from Mysterious Ways

"Surrender is not submission, it is letting go..."
---Yoshin Sensei

“Really now, just where do you leave off and the rest of the universe begin? Or where does the rest of the universe leave off and you begin? Once you can see the so-called ‘you’ and the so-called ‘nature’ as a continuous whole, then you can never again be bothered by such questions as whether it is you who are controlling nature or nature who is controlling you. Thus the muddle of free will versus determinism will vanish.”

---God, in Raymond Smullyan’s essay “Is God a Taoist?”, an entertaining dialogue between a “mortal” and “God”

“I decided to come back into my creation. And this time I want to keep a low profile. You remember what happened last time!”
---“The Creator”, who I met at Chess Park
(Well, I’ve already met “God” and “the Messiah”, so why not "the Creator"?)

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Heaven and Hell

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Tue, 27 May 2008 18:18:15 GMT

At my last visit to the Santa Monica Zen Center, Yoshin Sensei told the famous story of Hakuin and the Samurai. (The version below is the one I originally read in "101 Zen Stories" in Paul Reps' Zen Flesh, Zen Bones.)

A warrior named Nobushige came to zen master Hakuin, and asked: "Is there really a heaven and a hell?"
"Who are you?" inquired Hakuin.
"I am a samurai," the warrior replied.
"You, a warrior?!" exclaimed Hakuin. "What kind of ruler would have you as his guard? Your face looks like that of a beggar."
Nobushige became so angry that he began to draw his sword, but Hakuin continued: "So you have a sword! Your weapon is probably much too dull to cut off my head."
As Nobushige drew his sword Hakuin remarked: "Here open the gates of hell!"
At these words the samurai, perceiving the master's discipline, sheathed his sword and bowed.
"Here open the gates of heaven," said Hakuin.

We create our own hells and heavens. And even though it is our internal thoughts and attitudes that determine the quality of our life experiences, we tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time and energy fussing endlessly over our external circumstances-----our appearance, our jobs, our belongings, our activities, our acquaintances, etc., as if they are the means to happiness, to heaven.

Given the same circumstances, two different personalities can conjure up two radically different experiences. I received a wonderful lesson on this out here on the streets. Most of the homeless sort of muddle through life with a certain amount of grim determination and acceptance of their lot. But there are some who occupy the extreme ends of the attitude spectrum, the heavens and hells of homeless life.

Donna recently became homeless, being one of the few who actually chose to live on the streets. She approaches homeless life with an upbeat attitude, seeing it as an adventure and even as a form of entertainment. She's quick to laugh at the little absurdities we all face out here on the streets (e.g., dodging the cops) and she attracts friends easily.

Ron also recently became homeless, but his outlook is all doom and gloom. Of course, the homeless lifestyle is that much more challenging when you're a bit obsessive-compulsive. He refused blankets from the homeless center, saying that they weren't clean enough, and so spent a recent cold weather snap walking around during the nights to stay warm. (I gave him my fleece vest.) He even manages to complain about the delicious (free!) meals that we are served at Bread and Roses Cafe, saying that they could never compare to the food he used to cook when he shopped at Whole Foods. While most of the homeless do indeed struggle, Ron takes it a big step further and turns his life into misery.

But I guess most things tend toward the middle after a while. Donna still smiles easily, but she's looking a little more tired these days, perhaps because she's working on her fourth boyfriend by now. Ron has gotten into a residential program and is looking for a job. And he's decided that a better attitude would help a lot too. They are my teachers. (Of course, everyone is my teacher if I just look closely enough to see the lessons they offer.)

So yes, I understand the well-worn homily "Attitude is everything." And then there's "Happiness lies within." Simple, yes, but not so simple to integrate deeply into my programming, my being. There's a lot of wiring that needs to be ripped out first-----all sorts of conditioning that tells me that happiness is just around the corner or on the greener grass or just over the horizon if I would just do or say (or write!) the right thing.

So I try to remember that the glass is half empty or half full depending upon my attitude. And of course, just when I think I'm making some progress, those annoying wise guys come along and offer me another sip of Absolut. The zen master pushes me over the edge, whispering "The glass is totally empty!" And the Taoist sage catches me, laughing "The glass is totally full!"

If I'm lucky, some day I may truly realize that they are drinking from the same bottle, singing the same song. And then paradoxes will reconcile, as they eventually must, right? (As they already are!) And I will see that Yin and Yang are merged in this perfect shiny moment. Total. Clear. Stunning. Forever.

Scattered. Hazy. Terrifying. Temporary.

Broken and Beautiful.

Come drink with me?

"Every place is beautiful and horrible. It depends upon what you are looking for."
---Maria Teresa, Carol's mother

"A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth."
---Thomas Mann

"I can make a phone call and be home in no time, but why would I want to do that? It's a freak show out here 24/7! You can't pay for that!"
---Donna

"I'm trying to stop whining. It doesn't help any."
---Ron

"We are disturbed not by what happens to us, but by our thoughts about what happens."
---Epictetus

"I must die. Must I then die lamenting? I must be put in chains. Must I then also lament? I must go into exile. Does any man then hinder me from going with smiles and cheerfulness and contentment?"
---Epictetus

"I don't want an open mind. I want my mind closed. The path to heaven is narrow."
---Derrick, a homeless Christian guy who constantly harangues me about the righteousness of his faith

"I think God can wear more than one hat."
---me, responding to Derrick

"What difference does it make after all?---anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind."
---Jack Kerouac, from On the Road

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."
---John Milton, from Paradise Lost

"In Buddhism, hell isn't where we might be going, it's where we're coming from."
---Yoshin Sensei

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The Fickle Gods of Fishermen

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Mon, 19 May 2008 22:29:24 GMT

A while back.....before the episode with Carol (BCE).....one very foggy morning I arrived at Venice beach to find lifeguard trucks and police SUVs lined along the shore. When I drew near, I saw a small cabin cruiser floundering in the waves. Apparently a couple of fishermen out for some early morning angling had gotten lost in the thick ocean fog and mistook the rock breaker near the beach for a marina and had gotten caught in the surf. The fishermen had already abandoned ship and were on the shore, forlornly watching the small boat get battered by the waves. It was already completely swamped, rolling from side to side with each incoming surge.

Belying its name, the "Wolf Blade Razor" was now anything but sleek as it was being inexorably dismantled by the pounding surf. One fisherman sat huddled in a blanket as the other joined lifeguards fetching loose belongings and pieces of the disintegrating boat being washed up on the beach.

It was another powerful lesson on anicca ("impermanence" in the Buddha's original Pali language) as we all stood there watching the boat's seafaring days come abruptly to an end. The tides of time get us all eventually. (Which, apparently, everybody is actually happy about! I'm a fan of hypothetical questions and I have yet to meet the person who would choose immortality over mortality.)

After a few hours, a big tractor finally dragged the battered boat out of the surf and up onto the beach near the "public art walls" (read: "graffiti"). For the next week, debris from the cabin cruiser continued to wash up on the shore, providing me with some bonus flotsam to clean up. It's now over two months later and the carcass of the Wolf Blade Razor is still lying on the beach, now covered in colorful graffiti.

Colorful fate of the "Wolf Blade Razor"

This whole event reminded me of an incident that occurred during my time in Alaska. One summer, I decided to do "the Alaskan fisherman experience" and joined a small crew planning to fish the far side of Kachemak Bay across from my small town of Homer. (Yeah, I know, it's an unfortunate name, but the town is actually very beautiful, attracting quite a few artists and their Bohemian ambiance.)

Our small boat was a "purse seiner", which requires a crew of four. There was Brent, our gruff, grizzled and pot-bellied captain. Tsviki was a handsome and proud Israeli guy fresh from his mandatory stint in his country's military. He used to enjoy spending his evenings throwing his knife into a target board he'd set up. Thomas was a young kid just out of high school from the East Coast, and true to his fiery red hair, he had a hot temper to match. And then there was me---dark, bearded, brooding.....and still wrestling the demons that drove me up to Alaska in the first place.

So yep, we were basically four caricatures. And yes, we had our share of discord-----that's inevitable when you've got a curmudgeon, a proud warrior, a hot-head, and a brooder isolated together on a tiny boat. But for the most part, we got along fine and even though some work days lasted as long as eighteen hours, the summer flew by in a blur of sunshine, salmon, sea otters, and sleep starvation.

Brent operated the boat and barked orders from a short "crow's nest" of sorts which allowed him a good angle to scan into the water for schools of fish. Tsviki manned the small motorboat attached to one end of the net as we zoomed off in the bigger boat, laying out the rest of the net in a big arc or circle around the fish. Thomas ran the "lead line" which is the heavy edge of the net that hung down into the depths. I was responsible for the "cork line", which was the edge of the net that floated at the top of the water. As we reeled the big net in, tightening it around a school of fish (hence why it is called "purse seining"), Thomas and I tossed our lines into the storage area at the back of the boat, folding the net so that it could be deployed quickly and smoothly the next time. We were mainly going after "reds" (sockeye salmon), because the price was better than "pinks" (humpback salmon), and now and then we'd get some "silvers" (coho salmon) or even a big "king" (chinook salmon) as a bonus.

I guess there's a lot more I could write about that magical time-----like the long metal plungers we used to simulate seals diving into the water to scare the fish toward the middle of the net, or the aggressive jockeying between rival boats, or the tasty weekend salmon BBQs with friends-----but I don't really have the time (or the inclination!) right now.

The event that the demise of the Wolf Blade Razor reminded me of happened very early in our season. Our little fishing boat only had room for the big net and another storage area for any fish we'd caught that day. (At the end of the day---or if we'd caught enough to fill the hold---we'd deliver the fish to a tender boat which stored the fish on ice until they were transported to a processing plant.) So basically, our ship didn't have any compartments where we could sleep.

For sleeping arrangements, Brent had arranged with an acquaintance, Bob, to rent a very small cabin cruiser with four very small sleeping compartments-----shelves really, two on each side of the bow, one over the other. Now Bob was an eccentric character, a real do-it-yourselfer who had never met a project that he didn't feel he was already an expert on.

Since it was far from seaworthy, this old cabin cruiser needed a lot of work. For some crazed reason, Bob decided that the boat would be more maneuverable if the propeller was located further forward than the normal position at the stern. So he constructed a dubious "motor well"----basically a square hole with sides straight through the back deck and hull of the boat. He figured an outboard motor would work splendidly mounted in the well. Among other repairs, he also re-fiberglassed the entire hull. And to top it all off, we painted it in hideous shades of green and black.

We worked hard for a couple weeks helping Bob get the little boat ship-shape. And every night I would go home scratching my head about the latest theoretical "improvement". But I deferred to their deeper experience because I knew little about ships and the sea. After all, these were tough Alaskan men, wizened and wisened by lives spent carving out their survival from the harsh environment and rough seas. Or so I thought.

We finally launched the little cabin cruiser at the beginning of the salmon fishing season and my spirits were buoyed considerably when it didn't sink straight to the bottom. Unfortunately, that insane motor well design proved to be utterly useless, so we ended up towing it all the way across the bay and anchored it in a protected cove. After long days of fishing, we would return very late to sleep in the cabin cruiser.

Just a few nights into this routine, I was sleeping somewhat fitfully when I heard a foreboding series of events that in my state of exhaustion I did my best to ignore. First, I heard the bilge pump kick on. Now most boats naturally take on a little water, so they have bilge pumps that are automatically activated by float switches when the water reaches a certain level. Since this was nothing new, I easily went back to sleep. I woke up a little while later and realized that the bilge pump was still on. In my hazy half-sleep I still didn't think much of this and rolled over for more sleep. Then I heard Brent get up and start bailing water out of the boat with a bucket. I'm sure that the other guys heard this too, but we all did our best to pretend that we were still sleeping. I finally woke up more fully when I realized that Brent was bailing faster and faster. And then he said, "Uh guys, I'm not keeping up with the water." That got us going!

We jumped up, grabbed some buckets and pots, and began bailing like crazy. But somehow the water kept coming in faster and faster and it quickly became apparent that we were fighting a losing battle. Brent fired up the motor and headed us toward the shore as we continued madly bailing, profanities flying in all directions.

Sinking lower and lower, our sad little boat limped slowly toward the shore, due to that terrible motor well design and the fact that we had taken on so much water. Just when it looked like we would go under, the boat ran aground near shore. None of us had gotten the chance to get dressed, so we made for quite a sight as we abandoned ship in our underwear, splashing into the cold Alaskan water as we lugged our gear to shore, still cursing up a storm. Catching our breaths on the rocky beach, we watched as the tide came in, quickly submerging the helpless craft.

As I replayed the night's events and looked around at us, soaking wet in our underwear, I couldn't help but start laughing. Soon we were all busting up, unable to contain the absurd hilarity of the moment.

The next morning's low tide exposed the forlorn boat, revealing the cause of our calamity: apparently Bob had mixed the glue to the wrong proportions and the fiberglass waterproofing had simply peeled away from the hull. He eventually salvaged the little boat and I last saw it sitting on the famous Homer spit with a big "For Sale" sign painted on it. It's probably still there.

Thomas and I drying our boots (the tip of mine got burned)

Sometimes when I remember that night, I wish I had been a spectator, watching from the shore or the surrounding cliffs. How priceless it would have been to see and hear the spectacle unfold! I even wrote a story called "The Fickle Gods of Fishermen" told from the point of view of three young sisters who are summering with their mother in a lone house on a bluff overlooking the cove.

We camped on the beach the rest of the nights and managed to finish the fishing season without any other major disasters. Prices were down that season and we didn't catch that many fish (for a commercial operation), so we made next to nothing. But the weather was exceedingly gorgeous that summer and I treasure my memories out on that beautiful bay. Especially that night of adrenaline-pumping profanity-laced hilarity.

"We'll be boarding the Titanic at 5pm sharp!"
---Non Sequiter Man to the crowd at St. Joseph's homeless center

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Blessings from St. Joe

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Wed, 14 May 2008 03:31:47 GMT

The weather turned unseasonably cold and my low-grade exhaustion has turned into a low-grade cold. I'm trying to drink more fluids, get more rest, and I'm dosing up on a bottle of chewable vitamin C that Maria Teresa kindly left me. And of course this is another good opportunity to practice staying upbeat, cuz unconditional peace and happiness means embracing whatever comes along.

Feeling under the weather has made the latest temptation for this pseudo-monk that much more challenging. I was offered the possibility of housesitting for some friends of friends of friends (yeah, degrees of separation again) when they go on a two and a half month vacation to Europe at the end of May. My only responsibility would be watering the plants. And this isn't just some ordinary place----it's a luxury home with a pool located in a really upscale neighborhood of Hancock Park. And they were offering $500 too!

My, my, what a tempting challenge to my only two vows: homelessness and poverty. I could probably make a good argument that I wouldn't really be breaking my practice of homelessness since it really isn't my place and I've already stayed in friends' homes in New York and Carol's apartment in Culver City and motels with Maria Teresa. And after all, my practice is not only about embracing the challenges this lifestyle throws at me, but is also about accepting the blessings that flow my way too. But the 500 bucks would definitely be breaking my practice of not using any money.

I was truly torn: after all, I could still housesit and turn down the money, but I also really want to hit the road again and see what happens in a new town. Stasis, introversion, and security vs. mobility, extroversion, and risk. Taoists are supposed to balance yin and yang and thereby attain their freedom, not get stuck between them.

Anyhow, this tempting offer never fully materialized because the owners found a friend that would do it for them instead of some dubious dude who thinks he's stuck in some kinda Kurosawa flick. (Actually, it often feels more like a Charlie Kaufman mind-bender....)

Speaking of samurais, there's a guy that frequents the St. Joseph homeless services center who wears the top robes (a hapi coat?) of a light blue samue, very similar to my robes. He also carries two round sticks stuck through his waist belt like samurai swords. One stick is long and the other is shorter, just like the long sword (katana) and short sword (wakizashi) that the samurai used. He cuts quite an imposing figure since he always wears dark sunglasses and gloves. And then there's those two big sticks.

Well, this town ain't big enough for two homeless kung-fu nut jobs, so I finally approached him to find out what his story is. I was ready to scream and run like hell, but he turned out to be a nice guy, if a bit intense. His name is Orlando and he is genuinely interested in the culture of the samurai, having read the classic The Book of Five Rings by Musashi. (Musashi was probably Japan's greatest swordsman. He was so good that for his final duel with his arch rival he didn't even take his sword. He was being transported in a boat to an island where the duel was to take place, so he merely carved one of the oars into a wooden sword, quickly dispatched his adversary, and then gave up sword fighting altogether.) Orlando and I also talked a bit about bushido, the code of the samurai, or, more literally, "the honorable way of the warrior". He is quite sincere about his practice and even spars with his sword sticks against trees. As I reflect on him attacking trees with his sticks and me picking up trash and begging for food, I think our practices come closer to kukushido, or "the honorable way of the nut job".

Another day at St. Joe's, I met a frenetic woman named Nancy who kindly gave me an extra watch she had. We continue to touch base whenever we see one another, but to be honest, I don't always understand what she is talking about since her conversations aren't always rooted in reality. But she has a sweet disposition and she is somehow surviving fairly well on the streets. And the watch is very handy since many of my basic activities (meals, showers, laundry, internet, etc.) are scheduled at specific times.

One morning I found a copy of Jack Kerouac's On The Road in one of the bathrooms at St. Joe's. I've always meant to read it, especially since it seems so apropos to my life. Yet another blessing from St. Joe. And I've decided to take it as a sign from the Universe to get my butt in gear.

So I've arranged with my St. Joe's caseworker to use Santa Monica's "Homecoming Program" (AKA the "Get the Hell Out of Our City Program") to get me to my next destination. (And yeah, I realize I'm bending the rules a bit, but to a wandering Taoist all places are home.) A friend in Austin, Texas has generously offered her place as a landing pad, so I'm hoping to leave sometime next week. But first, there's the small matter of getting a background check at the Santa Monica Police Department so that they don't accidentally send someone out of state if they have a warrant out on them. I imagine that this process will go smoothly, but in the past it's often prompted curious question and answer sessions.

(Despite my run-ins with the police---both recently and throughout the years---I truly appreciate them. They have a very difficult and often thankless job, and for the most part they are pretty decent people. The only ones that were ever disrespectful towards me were some cops who were screaming obscenities at me as they chased me in a dune buggy as I ran through the desert at a Nevada nuclear test site protest as police helicopters flew overhead. But I'm digressing here.....)

(And now that I think of it, two policemen actually saved my life back in college when they jumped this guy who pulled a gun on me, intending to shoot me......But I'm digressing back into Egoland again. (But notice that I haven't deleted any of this...yet.) Of course, it's all Egoland-----some parts are just subtler than others. Now where the heck was I? Or better yet, where should I be?)

Looking even further on the horizon, one of my numerous cousins is getting married in July and then there is a family reunion on my Japanese side, the Takahashis. I am tentatively planning to return to Southern California for these events. And if I make it that long, then it will be a year since I started this walkabout back in upstate New York. I plan to fess up to my family about this whole monk gig because I am becoming increasingly uncomfortable not being honest with them. I called my mother for Mother's Day and we had a wonderful conversation. But she thinks I'm back in New York City. Good thing I don't have any vows against lying.

Ouch.

"Anybody want some 99 cent acupuncture?"
---a homeless guy I call Non-Sequiter Man, querying the crowd at Bread and Roses Cafe

"I'm suing Ralph Nader because he's not German like Joseph Thomas, Jesus's father."
---Nancy

"Don't piss off the voices."
---written on a guy's shirt at St. Joe's

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Back to the Sea

http://TruthPlacebo.gaia.com — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:48:38 GMT

My transition back to life on the streets of Santa Monica and Venice has gone fairly smoothly. There have been only a few bumps along the way, though there's also a tiredness in my bones that I can't quite seem to shake.

It was especially nice to get back to Ma Ocean with her sumptuous sights, sounds, and smells calling for me to remember who I really am. (If you know, please email me....) I was welcomed back by a seal and a pod of surging dolphins practically jumping out of the water as they plunged deep. I think they were feeding. I was also greeted by a trashed beach. The warm weekend weather encouraged hordes of people to come frolic by the seashore. It was wonderfully calming to be back to my "simple life" cleaning the beach.

I'm back to morning meditations at the beach. The four elements tease and prod me, seeking to show me that the tenuous boundary I maintain between myself and the rest of the world is totally imaginary. The wind blows around me, into me, through me. The crashing of the waves pounds in through my ears. The sun toys with my thermostat. The soft sands ceaselessly pull me into their embrace. The skin of my being is so much more porous than I could ever truly imagine. I try to let the elements in fully so that they can reshape my perspective, my consciousness, my being. And sometimes there is a slight shift and a door opens to wider awareness. But it is quickly slammed shut and forgotten by the next scatter-brained impulse that wanders by. (e.g., "Dolphins!", "I should have sacrificed the rook", "Go Lakers!", "What month is this? Is it time to change my underwear?", "Well, at least us ADD types don't tend to fall asleep during meditation","Look at me! I've got 'wider awareness'!", "Nice bikini!", etc.) Is it really worth the effort?

It's also been nice getting back in touch with "old friends" and catching up on their lives. Ronald, my homeless El Salvadoran chess-playing friend, is now working construction jobs by waiting outside of building supply stores with other immigrant guys and has bought himself a nice bike. There's even a wild rumor that he's engaged to somebody, but I haven't been able to track him down since I heard it. Unfortunately, Andrew was fired from his Jack in the Box job, apparently because of a "power struggle", but he's now arranging to take the test to become a postal worker. John continues to write his short stories, but he's been struggling with a bout of writer's block lately. Dolphin never actually left for Asia, but instead had surgery on his left hand to repair some damage from a vehicle accident that happened quite a while ago. And speaking of car accidents, Shoma is reportedly rehabilitating well at a nursing home. And "Download" soon gave me the cold shoulder when I questioned his latest conspiracy theory that Timothy McVeigh was merely a pawn in the Oklahoma City bombing.

I'm once again enjoying the meals back at the Bread and Roses Cafe. There are a lot of familiar faces and a lot of new ones too. By definition, the homeless crowd is such a transient bunch. One day, the person who was supposed to wash dishes didn't show up, so they asked me to lend a hand. My clothes were soaked by the end of the afternoon, but it was nice to give back a little after receiving so many yummy meals there. And of course I've been getting reacquainted with the cans of Libby's Vienna Sausages handed out by a local church. (Does Austria condone the naming of these little beasties? Well, the word "wiener" actually originates from the word "Vienna", so I guess it makes sense.)

I've gotten back into the chess scene at Santa Monica's Chess Park, but not quite with the same enthusiasm as before. I'm not sure why, but perhaps this latest episode with Carol in the bigger Game of Life has put a temporary damper on the littler games I play. Or maybe it's because I just can't quite yet muster the mental energy that chess requires.

And I'm back to spending a lot of time with my buddy Rob on the weekends. One evening we went to see Grand Master Varuzhan Akobian play twelve opponents simultaneously at the Santa Monica Chess Club. Result: Akobian won eleven games and drew the last one. Rob also told me about the "Carlini files" that he stumbled onto on YouTube. Apparently these videos chronicle the exploits of the Great Carlini, the most outrageous of the trash-talking players at Chess Park. (Unfortunately, I don't have headphones, so I can't hear the audio for these videos on the computers here at the Venice library.)

And just this past weekend, Rob and I got me a bike, courtesy of Maria Teresa's generosity. We picked out an inexpensive used mountain bike from a guy who rents them down on the Venice boardwalk. It was another beautiful day, so we headed off down the beach bike path to the Manhattan Beach pier and back again. It's great to have my own bike now and not have to worry about someone else's.

The guy we bought the bike from is an immigrant from South Korea named Choeng-Kim. He is also a pastor and has an M.A. in comparative religions. He was very curious, asking a lot of questions about Buddhism in general and my walkabout practice in particular. He has been teaching people to become pastors for the past ten years, but he's become very disillusioned by the process, saying that his students are motivated by money or other worldly pursuits and not by true spirituality.

I've been calling Maria Teresa every few days from St. Joseph's homeless services center to check in on how she's doing. She is of course still grieving deeply, but her friends in Seattle have been very supportive, so she is slowly making her way through the pain. It's a long road, one that probably never really ends, but perhaps gets easier to walk as time goes by.

Speaking of elderly women (yikes, sorry about that segue!), the so-called "Black Widow trial" concluded with guilty verdicts for both of the elderly women who murdered two homeless men to collect millions from various insurance policies they had taken out on their victims. Nice to see justice done on behalf of the homeless.

So what's my plan now? I don't really know. And I don't really know if I need a plan. I'm a monk, after all. But at least in the short run I want to catch up on this blog. There were several entries that I was meaning to write before the whirlwind of Carol's life and death swept me up. But to tell the truth, I don't really enjoy writing, hence why I tend to procrastinate these entries. So, like most other things I have difficulty with, I try to approach it as a practice in transformation. I try to relax into the writing and see if I can loosen up some of my resistance and rigidity. Of course, it didn't really help that I wrote most of this entry up yesterday and then the library computer crashed, sending it all into cyberspace oblivion. Ah, but I guess it's another opportunity to practice letting go....

Oh yeah, the "few bumps" I mentioned at the beginning of this entry:

My samue robes have become quite worn and threadbare. A few days ago my pants split from the knee up to the thigh as I was putting them on one morning. The tear is about ten inches. Luckily, I had found some light blue material (with little flowers on it!) a couple of months ago, so I was able to patch it from the inside with my sewing kit. My sleeves are starting to unravel a little and I can see a couple of other areas (e.g., the shoulders where my backpack rubs) that will probably require some repairs soon too.

A slightly bigger bump: As I mentioned in my last entry, someone has put a ratty old carpet into my venice alley sleeping nook. My first night back, I found some cardboard to cover the carpet and was setting up my sleeping bag when I heard a soft sound behind me. I turned to see a dark shape descending through the branches of a tree a few feet beyond a fence right behind me. Several branches bent down with the dark form and then it quickly disappeared over a wall. It was dark and it all happened so fast that I never got a good look at whoever or whatever it was. The only answers my startled mind could come up with were "monkey!" or "ninja!" I still can't figure out what it was and I wonder how much the shadows were playing tricks on me.

After I calmed down, I decided to sleep there anyways and endeavored to let go of worrying, similar to my experience that night under the Santa Monica Pier when a deranged guy threatened to kill us. ("...And a Word with the Devil") About an hour later, a guy parked his car a few feet from my feet and left the lights on, which illuminated my whole niche. He walked around the car and then stopped, staring straight at me. I probably should have waved or offered him a Vienna sausage, but I was still half asleep. After hesitating a while, he turned off his car lights and went into his apartment. Early the next morning I was woken up by one of the numerous people who raid the recycling containers for cans and bottles that they can cash in on. He stopped by my nook and looked in on me, then went on his way. Maybe he's the guy who carpeted the nook?

Then, two nights ago, I arrived at my sleeping spot to find another figure bundled up in blankets amidst the shadows. (I hope I didn't scare them, especially since I do look sorta like a ninja. How ironic!) I was so tired I just went straight back to the roundabout where I eat my evening meals. I went to sleep near the stunning sculpture of a nude female torso.....amidst the circling traffic and the rumbling buses.

As I angrily stomped away from "my nook" in "my alley", I suddenly realized that it was as much his or her spot as it was mine. Duh. Then I remembered that we are all brothers and sisters, sharing the same big house. And then I remembered that he or she.....is actually me.

Ahh, now I remember Ma Ocean. I am but a wave of energy on the Great Sea of Being. I am you and you are me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

And please forgive me, Dear One, for I shall surely forget again in about five seconds....or less.

"The biggest obstacle to realization is forgetting."
---some swami I read in the Times of India newspaper (Funny, but I can't remember if I've already used this quote before in this blog!)

"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."
---the Beatles, from I Am The Walrus

"'Keep on rockin' in the free world!' Remember that song by Neil Young? It makes perfect sense, man! It's a free world!"
---"Tijuana Dave", explaining his life with his blanket: "I just unroll it wherever I am and go to sleep." (It's ironic that Neil Young's song is actually decrying our culture of homelessness in the U.S.)

"Dogs are great protection for being homeless. I had a pit bull/lab mix and nobody messed with me. I didn't even have to feed her! She ate cats and squirrels."
---fellow at Bread and Roses

"When you start spitting up blood, it's time to stop doing what you're doing."
---overheard in a park

"You gotta have good manners so that you can be hired by the gerbils."
---etiquette advice from a homeless guy I met in a park

"I caught a fire truck delivering a stolen child and they've been after me ever since. They've been frying me by electrifying my teeth."
---irate man who threw his coffee on the ground outside the Santa Monica library

Sometimes I feel like I'm a big magnet for crazy talk....

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