Buddha

Lately Ms Ché and I feel like we're coming around full circle in some ways. Buddhism has re-entered our conscious lives. It never really went away, though our lives veered strongly in other directions between the time we started Buddhist practice in the late 1960s and now. Oh my yes.

In the interim we sort of drifted between a Franciscan-ish Catholicism, Native American-ish spirituality, and a kind of strict atheism. God, what God? I know of no God. Etc.

But underneath it all was a core of Buddhist thought and practice dating so far back in our lives that we forgot its origin -- must have been Japanese in our case, Zen, sitting meditation, satori, and semi-enlightenment, flashes, coming, going, dissolving, reconstituting. Very California when you get down to it. Zen masters and other spiritual teachers including Gary Snyder and some of his disciples. This was a long time ago. I feel every moment of the time that has passed. So many years but yet it seems to be only yesterday.

So we live our lives of Adventure, dashing around the country, seeing sights, meeting people, working in a wide variety of environments, living a kind of dream we never quite awaken from. So many aspects of a dream never deferred but always present. Even our retirement to the New Mexico wilderness is part of that ongoing dream. An illusion.

And then the signs... For a time, we were beset with Adventists, Witnesses, and Mormons. I tell you it  was a constant circus parade at our front door. "Come! Join us! God awaits!" The Catholic church down the road, modest and plain, run by Carmelite monks, seemed calm by comparison. Oh they had their issues, one being abortion, that sometimes got them so worked up it was a strange and bewildering environment. If it had been a Franciscan run church, like the Cathedral-Basilica in Santa Fe might have been if history hadn't intervened, maybe, maybe... oh, but they have their issues, too, which I won't go into here, but will just say that their bankruptcy has been driven by many years of priestly abuse of parishioners.

So a household Franciscan observance/altar was set up in a corner of the living room, and we included many Native American elements in it. Well, it seemed only natural. Then we added a Native section that just kept growing, so that now the Franciscan part, while still important, is the lesser of the side-by-side home altars.

St. Francis is not as highly regarded in New Mexico as he is elsewhere, in part because it was the abuse by Franciscan priests that touched off the Pueblo Revolt in 1680. The stories I've heard of what the Franciscans did to the Indians are almost impossible to imagine. Their cruelty was way over the top. To my mind, this wasn't Franciscan at all. Something deep-rooted and thoroughly evil had replaced the compassion and charity and love the Saint had preached.

I'd say in a way, New Mexico -- Spanish and Native alike -- has never forgiven the Franciscans for what happened. As a consequence, St. Francis's presence is minimized though the Santa Fe Cathedral Basilica is dedicated to San Francisco and there is a looming statue of him in a side courtyard. Ave.

In California, it's not that way, so we brought some Franciscan thought with us and we honored the saint in small ways. Of course the Cattery is the main Franciscan observance but let's not get into that right now. (Cats!)

Ms. Ché spent part of last summer at the Naropa Institute (as we still call it, though it is a University now) in Colorado. It is a Buddhist-founded institution, a Rinpoche, I believe, being the inspirational and spiritual founder along with Allen Ginsberg and a number of other creators and writers. Ms. Ché says it's not part of any Buddhist order, but Buddhist practice -- on one's own and in community -- is encouraged in any form of devotion and meditation one chooses.

Well, that brought back many early memories for her, and she said she felt refreshed and alive once she got used to it. Again.

As I say, Buddhist inspiration has never really left us, it just went dormant. For decades.

Time passed, and it was clear Ms. Ché yearned to recreate at home some of that spirit she reconnected with at Naropa, and every now and then a little clue would emerge. Years earlier at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, poet Jimmy Santiago Baca asked me, "What is a Bodhisattva?" For heaven's sake. Why would anyone ask me that? But then I realized it was a koan, and stumbled around coming up with a patched together "Devotee/practitioner on the way to Buddha-hood" answer. But it's much more than that. More and other. Both. Never mind.

So while I was cruising around Netflix one day, I stumbled on a 2013 TV series from India, "Buddha". Started watching it and saw promise. We're up to episode 36 now. Siddharth has achieved enlightenment and is starting to spread the word and spirit. He is now "Buddha" -- The Enlightened One. There are 20 some episodes left in the series. We try to see one or maybe two every day. And it has reconnected us with long ago Buddhist inspiration. I think the series was designed to introduce Indians to Buddhist thought and practice that once was prevalent in their land but has mostly been pushed out. I understand it has partially returned among Dalits, but not so much among the higher caste Indians. Perhaps now is the time.

Active Buddhist communities are all over Northern New Mexico and into Colorado, but out here in the wilderness, we might be something of a singularity. It's hard to say. There are many Catholics, a few Native spiritualists, and that plethora of Witnesses, Mormons, and Adventists I mentioned earlier. If there are Buddhists, they keep a low profile.

Maybe some of the cowboys sit in meditation from time to time, though. I wouldn't be surprised.




Michael Stipe, "I am not a Buddhist," but then he is.