There are, of course, many ways that cats communicate with humans and one another that I didn't enumerate in the previous post. Everyone knows about hissing cats and arching of backs, fluffing-puffing of tails, sideways posing, and other aspects of cat territorial defenses and protective postures. They've heard female cats in heat calling for a mate. They've also heard rival male cats yowling at one another.
But what of cats rubbing up against you or weaving in and out of your legs? What about cat greetings, both with one another and (sometimes) with you? Head butting, purring, kneading?
There is a wide physical vocabulary cats seem to use consistently across species with one another and they use it with humans, too, so even when we aren't necessarily aware of it, we learn to "speak cat," because they teach us. If we're going to be in proximity with them, we must learn to use and appreciate their language, just as they will come to understand and (sometimes) use bits and pieces of ours.
Recent study suggests that (wonder of wonders) cats are quite capable of using our language concisely and adeptly to communicate their wants and needs. Unlike dogs and gorillas and such, they don't seem to want to or quite understand how to make full sentences (as we would see it) but are content to indicate their desire/intent with one word: "Food!" "Out!" "Dog!" and such.
There's a white dog in our neighborhood, for example, a big Pyrenees/Pit mix named Douglas, who is supposed to be kept in an enclosure or in the house, but he sometimes gets out and runs free. At first he would make a bee-line for our place and chase the cats mercilessly. So far as we know, they all always got away. The cats learned that just hearing the word "Douglas!" was a signal to take cover, even if they didn't see or hear the dog. Then there were the times the dog would amble over to our place and just sort of hang around, not chasing cats or really doing anything. We wouldn't even necessarily know he was here except that the cats would come to tell us: "Dog!" They'd do it with their eyes. With their pacing. By getting down low and flat, then coming to one of us with an imploring look on their face. It took a little while to learn that's what they were saying. And once they understood or saw for themselves that Douglas was under control, they'd be fine and go about their business.
Cats primarily communicate with one another and with us through physical action (and/or telepathy, as mentioned in the previous post.) Most are not usually vocal, and when they are, their vocalizations have a tendency to grate on our nerves rather than communicate much useful information. Right now, there's a cat named Larry (for the skeleton in Clash of the Clans -- it's a long story) who wants to be fed. He will vocalize if his actions don't result in Food!, but he much prefers physical acts to get our attention and get us to feed him. He paces back and forth in front of us. He will jump on the back of my chair as showily and deliberately as possible and sometimes whack the back of my head. He will pace to the door, and when I get up to let him out, he will turn and run to the food-dish in the kitchen. He will threaten to spray urine if he doesn't get his food promptly. He will sit and look at me with the saddest possible face -- don't believe people who say cats don't have different expressions depending on their mood and demands.
So on and so forth. All to get me to open a can of cat food for him (harder and harder to get these days). Then he's happy and goes to sleep on a high perch above the washing machine.
Oh there is much more to say about cat communications, but that's it for today! 🐱
It all started with a feral colony cared for by a neighbor who moved away. We took over the colony and eventually managed to get most of them trapped, neutered and released before we moved here full time in 2012. The problem was that we weren't able to trap all of them, so there were still a few fertile females and a couple of males, as well as unneutered males in the neighborhood, so the colony kept expanding and now numbers about 25 - 30.
Ms. Ché, bless her heart, is the local Cat Lady, so we now and then collect strays, and from time to time people come by to drop off kittens or older cats, too. 25 - 30 is the maximum we can handle at any given time, and if there are more the surplus is either run off, voluntarily leave, or in some cases, dies off. Kittens, for example, have a rough time of it among the feral colony, and maybe only one or often none will survive from a litter. We've tried trapping the few unneutered cats, but they're wise to it now, and they are not cooperative. So we just have to deal with the situation as it is.
Ms. Ché, bless her heart, has taken to domesticating some of the ferals, which means some of them become house cats. Too many of them in my view, but she sees them all as potential companion animals, and enjoys the whole process of domestication. The cats seem to like it too.
One of the things that's happened is that all of the domesticated ones have learned basic communications with us. They not only understand and use some spoken language, some are quite adept at using other forms of cross species communication.
For example, several years ago we hung a set of red plastic Christmas bells by the front door as part of our decorations. There is a table by the front door as well to hold packages and such, and one of the domesticated ferals we call Woolly Bear (due to her resemblance to a giant caterpillar) one day sat on the table by the front door and casually batted at the bells with her front paw. This caused us to wonder what was going on at the door -- "who is that at the door?" -- and one of us (I don't remember who) went to check.
Wooly Bear was on the table when we opened the door, and she promptly came in. Hmm. A day or so later, one of the black cats, probably Tubby, batted at the bells, and we went to check, and sure enough, he was on the table and came in when we opened the door.
A day or so later, the other black cat, Ash, tried it and sure enough, when we went to the door to check, he was on the table and came in when we opened the door.
Now five or six of the cats routinely rattle the Christmas bells when they want to come in. And a few who know how to work the bells will actually do it for others who want to come in but don't know how to -- or don't want to -- ring the bells themselves.
We got a yak bell from the Dharma Store in Santa Fe before the Covid shut everything down, and we put it up outside thinking it would ring better than the plastic bells, but the cats wouldn't touch it. In fact, instead, some tried to ring the doorbell, but they weren't strong enough to push the button. They tried, though.
We put the plastic bells back up and put the yak bell inside by the front door at cat height and told those who wanted to go out to ring it. Sure enough, Tubby learned to do it right away. Then the one we call Kitten learned. And Woolly Bear. No others have so far learned the yak bell trick, but we are sure that some will one day.
Tubby also starts "touching" things when he wants something -- like food or attention -- going around the house touching or knocking over various objects. We've tried training him away from doing it, but he knows it will get our attention, so he keeps on, much to our chagrin.
All of the indoor (domesticated) cats know their names, but what's remarkable is that many know one another's names. That's right. If you call one, the others who know one another's names (not all do) will look toward the one you're calling or even go so far as to point out where that one is.
This winter, we have too many cats in the house which I sometimes become annoyed about. As any cat owner knows, they can be very destructive. Having so many in the house means it's a constant duty and struggle to clean up after them and protect anything you don't want broken or destroyed. Much of what they do that makes people annoyed with them is territorial. Scratching the furniture or peeing/spraying where you don't want them to is marking territory and instinctive with cats. They will do it regardless of what you want.
Cats seem to think that people are just strange, big, cat-ish creatures that need to be trained in proper cat-ish behavior. They like snuggling with people at night, sleeping in piles with their people. They're very happy to do the same with one another -- but usually only if they are related to their sleeping companions. In some ways, they seem to think that their people are their relations. I don't know how that works, but it seems to be universal among the feline species. Some form of cat-adoption, perhaps. Sometimes they curl up with non-related cats, but it's not typical.
Cats are very social. They are not solitary by nature. And their social hierarchies are very strict. There is almost always an Alpha male and an Alpha female, and they sometimes mate -- though not always. The Alpha female is in charge of the colony as a whole; the other females are subservient to her. The younger cats of both sexes take instruction from her. She's looked up to by them.
The Alpha male is the guardian of the colony, deciding who can be a colony member and running off any interlopers in concert with the Alpha female. They decide how many colony members there can be. Cats can count, you know. The Alpha male fights territorial fights with strangers and sometimes is badly injured. If he is badly injured or infrequently killed in these fights, another male becomes the Alpha. As Alphas, they physically bulk up. An Alpha cat is usually quite a bit larger than other adult members of the colony and thus is usually easily identifiable.
Cats vary in intelligence. Some are not so bright at all while others are simply brilliant. Some are vocal; most are not. Some seem to use human language; whether they are actually trying to say things in English or not, I don't know.
Ms. Ché believes that cats actually use a form of telepathy in communicating with one another and with humans. She says they communicate this way by inserting mental pictures in one another's and your brain, but how they do it she doesn't know. Nor do I. But it may be true. They can also tell time very accurately without a clock and they can do it in the dark.
There's a lot more about cat communications, but I'll leave it here for now.
I haven't participated in rohatsu in the past so this sesshin was part of my education in Zen forms and rituals that I missed back in the early days of my practice, when, if I recall correctly, Richard Baker or whomever I was in communication with at the San Francisco Zen Center made clear that Zen practice did not require shutting oneself away in a monastery or even following any particular form or rituals or necessarily even knowing what they were.
I've seen some documentaries on Zen in Japan -- where it has never been popular -- and among laypeople that's the essence of the practice. You sit. That's really all you have to do to practice Zen. None of the rest of it is essential, and there is a lot of "the rest of it."
Sitting is the key.
Rohatsu is the commemoration and celebration of Sakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment more than 2,500 years ago in Bodh Gaya, northern India. In the practice I participate with, rohatsu lasts 8 days, and during that time, there is much sitting. Oh my yes! There is chanting (which I don't do aloud) and liturgy and study. Whether we, the lay practitioners, are to achieve Enlightenment thereby, I don't know. I would say, given what I witnessed, that some certainly thought they'd be Enlightened and were Enlightened by the conclusion of rohatsu, but... well, I'll say no more about that.
I would go back to the mantra I was given when time was: "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path."
(Buddha, Dharma, Sangha = The Three Jewels of Buddhism)
This mantra actually gives the practitioner lots of leeway and freedom. It's not necessarily an easy or straight path to Enlightenment (ha!) but one way among many to become enlightened. Buddha says basically, "You're already Enlightened. You just have to discover and recognize it."
The World of Illusion obscures your Enlightenment. Let go.
Many years ago, I had the physical experience of what may have been Enlightenment but probably wasn't. It's not a physical thing. Or... well, no, I don't want to get into the mystical/physical conundrum in this essay. Let that go, too!
But I would say that once there -- wherever -- I never left. I never went back there because I am there all the time, and I've mentioned to some of my teachers in the last year or so that my life is practice.
In other words, sitting zazen is a minor part of my practice, as it forms a few moments of my daily life that is in its entirety practice.
Imperfect as it is.
And that's a key to understanding. Our material lives are totally imperfect. It's OK. It's the nature of Being/NotBeing.
In the midst of our imperfections, however, we adopt vows and set goals -- not necessarily material goals, not at all. To become what we really are.
That's the hard part, the struggle that Buddha and all Buddhists go through. Who are we? What are we?
What should we do about it?
Buddha taught, and that was the full expression of his Being/NotBeing.
Zen, I think I mentioned in an earlier post, grew out of Japanese Samurai culture, as an expression of and adaptation of Chinese Chan Buddhism, for the needs of the medieval Japanese higher warrior aristocracy. It wasn't for the common people at all.
It was also adopted by the Imperial and some Shogunate households.
The Zen practice I was introduced to came from Japan in the late 1950s, through the agency of Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen priest from the time of his youth early in the 20th Century, descended from a line of Zen priests. He was deemed roshi by his US followers, and it made him laugh. But then, many things made him laugh. Especially American things.
There isn't a lot about today's Zen practice in America that I identify with the more or less "pure" Zen Suzuki Roshi brought to America. There are forms and rituals that trace back to Japan, certain costumes and physical properties of zendos and such, but not much else. Very little understanding of where this practice came from and why it was important in the context of a particular culture at a particular time and how it has had a profound influence beyond that culture and time.
I see in the context of every US Zen center I've looked into a deep seated urge to change it, change the practice to more Americanize it, decouple it from Japanese practice, especially from the rigors of Japanese monasteries. Or rather practicing some of those rigors as forms and rituals only.
Make it more like Catholicism or Orthodox Judaism. In other words, familiarize it to American notions of Religion...
When participating in the various practice periods and sesshins I have this year, I've noticed strong -- sometimes overwhelming -- resemblances between the Americanized Zen practice and say Catholic and/or orthodox Jewish observances. Why is that? Is it in part because so many influential American Zen priests and roshis and such come from those backgrounds? I would think so. Is it because so few have had an elemental experience of Japanese Zen Buddhism -- which is of course the origin of American Zen practice -- though they may have gone on pilgrimage to the sites in Japan where the practice was formulated.
And I think about these origins in the context of Gary Snyder and his epic "Mountains and Rivers Without End," a kind of Zen-ish gloss on his life and practice and relationship to mountains and rivers.
As I've said, I didn't get along with Gary Snyder, though our meetings were social and very brief. I think there was an immediate repulsion. I'm trying to get over it. I should have gotten over it decades ago, but instead, I held it in me all this time, though I obviously didn't think about it or him until returning to Zen practice, picking up Kerouac again and observing his near-worship of Gary in "The Dharma Bums."
A worship which, by the way, was not and is not reciprocated. If anything, Gary shows little regard for Kerouac at all. Borderline contempt. The barest of acknowledgement that they ever knew each other.
Why is that I wonder? There may have been more of a repulsion -- on Gary's part -- toward Kerouac than might have been the case if Kerouac had not been an alcoholic/drug addict, and not shown Gary such puppy-dog admiration and followership/worship for the few months/years they palled around.
A key passage in "The Dharma Bums" is their climb of the Matterhorn of the Sierras, something ordinarily objectively impossible, but they do it, survive it, revel in it. Gary (Japhy) has magic powers. He practically flies up the mountain and then flies back down while Kerouac (Ray) must trudge and struggle. Kerouac is tied to the Earth; Gary is a free spirit in a jockstrap, so pure he can merge with and walk within the mountain.
In "Mountains and Rivers Without End," Snyder doesn't even acknowledge it happened, and to some critics, Kerouac's description of their climb, and perhaps the climb itself, was fiction. Who knows? Kerouac drank himself to death many years ago, and Snyder isn't saying -- well, not in any detail.
Kerouac is not a wizard. Snyder, apparently, is.
I recall -- barely -- a mountain-climbing adventure I went on years ago. I came "that close" to losing my life due to an allergic reaction to warm trail mix. Anaphylaxis is no fun, and that's primarily what I remember from the adventure. There was also the attempt to hike up to a peak but getting mired in a mysterious bog not on the hiking map. Wondering if it was possible to cross it -- no -- or find another trail -- no. It was barely possible to get out of the bog without sinking ever deeper and getting stuck. There was no surface sign the bog was even there...
Nude swim in a lake. Camping under the stars. Having no real fear despite the hazards encountered or imagined. In fact, from this distance of fifty years or more, that mountain climbing adventure seems more and more imaginary. Did it happen at all?
In going through some of the stuff we moved and brought back from California, that sense of an imaginary past, adventures that never happened, and very faulty memories of what did happen came up again and again. But in Zen, of course, everything is illusory. Delusory.
There's not much "water" in this reflection. I was born a stone's throw from the Mississippi River, Father of Waters, so there's that. And I've pretty much always been or lived near the ocean or a river of some sort, except for where I live now. Plenty of mountains, but no surface water at all.
There's only what we call 'The Swamp' in the back of our place, a small wet-ish region where there must be water close to the surface, where plants grow lush in the spring and summer, and the ground is soft. There's no water on the surface, nor does it seem like any water is flowing. But it must be there.
Phantom water.
But then, isn't everything a phantom of one sort or another?
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Here is a podcast by David Chadwick about Dogen's Mountains and Waters Sutra. Much consideration of Gary Snyder's "Mountains and Rivers Without End." And very much in tune with my own thinking about the sutra...
I see that a lot of people are having real difficulties with Dogen's Mountains and Rivers/Waters Sutra, as I'm pretty sure the monks he delivered this sutra to in 1240 were bewildered and perplexed.
There's no consistency to the sutra. It's formless, something like the Void I've mentioned in other Zen postings. Mountains are used as metaphors, but for what exactly? Mountains walking, mountains flying with the clouds, mountains flowing... what does this even mean?
I've tried to rationalize it with experience, but I realize that misses the point of Dogen's vision and message. It's not rational. Not meant to be. It's a knock upside the head, a call to Wake Up! at midnight, and recognize the nature of experience, things, people, mountains and rivers, and how transitory and ultimately false it all is.
Mountains do walk and fly through the clouds and flow just so. They come and they go and they appear and disappear just as you do. For in the end, there is no difference between what we call "you" and the "mountain." It's all one thing/no thing.
Just so with the lakes and rivers and vast seas. It's all one, and you are part/no part of that one.
You know, the monks in Zen monasteries become complacent too easily, and knocking them upside the head from time to time is routine. They become attached to routine, to practice on command, to the sounds of the bells and clackers, to the feelings of comfort at meals, washings up, robing and disrobing, to the sensations of tatamis and wooden floor boards and running from hither to yon.
Relieving them of attachments to any of that often takes the form of a shock, a kick in the butt, a push into the mud, an impossible challenge in a koan, a struggle engaged. And an understanding that no matter how close you are to Enlightenment, you're held back by attachment -- like the tail of the ox that won't go through the latticed window (thank you Kozan, 🙏.)
We are attached, all of us are attached to something, someone, all of the time. That is part of our being, and detaching is an elemental part of Buddhism. Which in a sense means self-destructing. Or deconstructing the self.
Dogen lets on that mountains and rivers do it -- so can you. The very green mountains we are so attached to... aren't really there at all. What we see and feel and respond to is an illusion. The mountains we climb aren't actually there. The rivers that flow -- and by the way, rivers that wear down the mountains till they're no longer there -- are as illusory as mist.
Revere the mountain and the river, but don't become attached to them.
The struggle is not to climb the mountain but to let go of it.
I gave a khata scarf from Nepal to a friend in Santa Fe earlier this year, thinking that he knew what it was and knew what my giving it to him symbolized. He... did. And then he mentioned that his son had gone to Nepal the previous year and circumambulated Annapurna with some friends and how exhilarating it had been for him.
I said, "Please feel free to pass on the scarf to someone else if you're so inclined."
I don't know whether he has or not, but I wouldn't be surprised if he gave it either to his wife or his son.
And I've just reached the point in Gary Snyder's epic poem "Mountains and Rivers Without End" where he is about to begin the circumambulation of Mt. Tamilpias in California. Because he learned the significance of going around mountains in Nepal and India. It's what you do.
You circumambulate as a form of reverence and honor. And when I was in California in October with a friend from Gallup, we had a discussion about what was a "hill" and what was a "mountain," noting that in California they were not the same thing, and what would be considered a mountain somewhere else would be considered little more than a hill in California.
And I considered where I lived a child -- a smallish valley near the coast surrounded by mountains (as I saw them when I was little, but maybe they're only hills now) and considered where I live now, a rather larger valley surrounded by mountains and mesas and ridges, enclosed (and once a glacial lake) on all sides. It's the same.
I'm not much of a Carmelite. But since I've been back from that quick trip to California, I've found myself reflecting on the couple of hours we spent on the beach there more than practically any other experience we had.
And there were some remarkable, even wonderful, experiences during the whole trip.
So what was it about the beach at Carmel -- as opposed to say the beach at Pacific Grove or the entire California coastline from Monterey south -- that has stuck with me?
Was it the fact that I sat zazen on a driftwood log for close to an hour while we were there?
No, more than that.
I'd never been to that beach, never even really knew it was there. Been once in Carmel so long ago now, I have no memory of it (so many memories lost.) This time, many memories, every one of them good. Well, almost. There was an exception which I may get to.
The beach was not crowded. The sky was partly cloudy but sunny and warm enough. There was little wind. The sand was soft and welcoming.
Around us was so much money the soul ached. Where did it come from? What was being done with it?
Above and behind me was a vast stone mansion on the cliff. Why?
But it wasn't the only one. There were mansions beyond mansions. Wisdom where?
Yet on the beach, it hardly mattered. The sand, sea and sky were more than sufficient and complete in themselves.
I sat zazen on a driftwood log. Nothing else quite like it.
I was at a celebration yesterday for a friend who just got her masters degree. One of the very few times this year I've been socializing. Part of the get together was ceremonial and included a Navajo elder who provided blessings and songs and a surprisingly detailed explanation of Navajo religious perspective -- which of course includes mountains and waters.
Mountains personified. Waters alive. Sometimes when I drive by Mt. Taylor, one of the four sacred mountains, I see upon it/as it a sleeping woman with long black hair. The mountain and the woman are the same, indivisible, and some of what the elder had to say yesterday was aligned with if not identical to the view I've long had about Mt. Taylor/Tsoodzil. Of the other three sacred mountains, I'm only familiar with San Francisco Peak/Dookʼoʼoosłííd outside of Flagstaff. It too has quite a personality, one that changes depending on the time of year, the angle of the sun and the distance you are from the mountain.
On the way to and from this get-together, I was contemplating the mountains we passed by and the ones in the distance. Each mountain and mountain range has their own personality, their own beingness.
In some of the study we've been doing, "mountains" are stand ins for ourselves sitting zazen. That seems to be the consensus for what Dogen is saying in his (to me) bewildering Mountains and Waters Sutra. We are mountains when we sit? Metaphorically, perhaps. But I see his metaphors in a somewhat different way, metaphors without a literal analogy. He uses the mountain metaphor as an approach to the ineffable. The vastness and the sameness of the non-duality realm, the ground state, as I call it, of all that is, was and will be.
The mountain flows. The mountain walks. Walks forward and backward. The mountain is never still.
In our usual perception, the mountain doesn't walk, the mountain doesn't flow, the mountain is among the stillest things in our environment.
And yet it does, it flows. It walks. We don't see it -- unless there is an eruption or massive earthquake. But in Dogen's metaphor, the mountain walking and flowing has no reality in our common perception. Not even in an eruption or earthquake. The mountain walks beyond our ability to "see" or "know."
No, his metaphor is about the inner-being-nothingness of the mountain (and thus, yes, of we ourselves sitting in zazen or not.) In that realm, the mountain (and we ourselves) don't actually "exist." Not as separate entities. We are one and the same, and we can walk and flow and dissolve into the mist and reconstitute at will. Or not.
When I see Mt. Taylor as a woman sleeping, it's real to me, but it's not. It's an illusion. A mirage. But then... so is the mountain. And so am I.
Well no. I've never much cared for Gary Snyder for a whole lot of unimportant reasons. Why? Because he's short and old and thinks he's the King of the World? I don't know. How very Zen.
But on a whim and suggestion from Roshi, I'm reading his "Mountains and Rivers Without End" one of his seeming many Epic Poems of being-not-being and wanderlust. And I rather like it. Well, insofar as I can relate.
And that's the thing. I have had long years of wandering the landscape. Mountains and rivers yes. Many mountains, many rivers, many forests, many deserts. It's my bloodline.
So I can in part relate to Gary and his own wanderings far afield, abroad and at home. Never settling, though he's been a fixture in Nevada City for generations. He still wanders.
Yet I've become rooted.
Partially anyway.
An ancient adobe home on the high plains of New Mexico -- llano alto -- keeps me rooted to the land that's harsh and cruel and yet... the mountains brood or smile in the distance now and then dusted with snow, mostly standing charcoal gray in the daytime, dark and monstrous at night. You can't see the mountains easily from our house, though they are there, through the thicket of trees, invasive Siberian elms that were planted so long ago no one remembers.
The trees protect us from the mountains.
There are no rivers close at hand, but last spring Mary discovered what she called The Swamp, a portion of our land where water seems to collect and even flow though not on the surface. She was walking her circles and said to me, "You know the ground is soft there, up there near the fence, and you can see how the plants grow thick and tall. And look, the swampy place extends toward the house. We can see where there's some kind of water flow."
And I looked and it was there, a broad patch of wetlands in the midst of the dust-dry.
Time to bathe now. My daily Tubzen.
And then I'll read some more of Gary Snyder's Epic.
And then for the Daily Dharma Talk.
Then it's off to Santa Fe for socializing (rare, still) before returning home to feed the cats.
Ah well. Here we go again with the Buddhist retreat thing. Yah. This time a "silent retreat" -- right -- meant as a celebration/commemoration of the Buddha's Enlightenment. A week of meditation and consideration focused on Dogen's text of Mountains and Waters Sutra translated by Kaz Tanahashi.
Mountains and Rivers... Meditating yesterday with a rotten old text, wonders of the world as it is or was back in the '30s when the text was written ostensibly for young people, explaining the world and history while admitting vast ignorance about just about everything. Mountains and Rivers were brought into the picture with the acknowledgement that the mountains which seem so rooted and permanent -- because our lives are so short -- are worn away by the waters until in time they disappear as if they never were, and then are reborn by forces deep within the Earth that force and twist and uplift the very living rock into new mountains that are then worn away by the waters. Over and over in an endless repeating cycle.
And that is the theme of this Rohatsu sesshin.
Dogen says mountains walk, and they do.
The realization is a step toward Enlightenment. This realization is Enlightenment. But in Dogen-speak there is neither Enlightenment nor non-Enlightenment. The Koan of the Ox Through the Latticed Window, no?
And yet our ancestors knew for a fact that mountains walk and you could say they run, given the right perspective and time scale. Our perception is too limited to witness it in its entirety, but it happens just the same.
Now I could go on and on about the limits of perception compared to the vastness of reality, but now is not the time for that. Been down this road before, however. Trodding it one more time.
Years ago, I wrote a play that centered on a fictional encounter between Tennessee Williams and Ernest Hemingway that might have taken place at Hemingway's Key West compound in 1955. The play was structured somewhat like a bullfight, and like a bullfight, there was tragedy, particularly the tragedy of Ernest Hemingway that would result in his suicide a half dozen years later.
My use of the bullfighting metaphor and structure for the play was based largely in Hemingway's "Death in the Afternoon"(1932) and "The Dangerous Summer" (1985, written in 1959 and 1960) together with Williams' interest in and admiration for bullfighters that Hemingway shared -- particularly Antonio Ordóñez.
I did not read Hemingway's first novel "The Sun Also Rises," which is in part a bullfight novel featuring the running of the bulls and bullfights in Pamplona and a romantic and beautiful young bullfighter character, Pedro Romero and those who love him. I didn't read it because I had seen the movie version of the book many years ago, long before I even thought of the play, and thought the movie was terrible. Perhaps one of the worst film adaptations of a Hemingway novel ever.
The other day, I watched it again on the YouTube. It was worse than I remembered it. It was utterly dreadful.
The movie posits the Hemingway character (Jake Barnes) as a curmudgeonly middle aged man played by Tyrone Power, though the story (according to the film's opening narration) takes place in 1922 (the novel says 1924-25). Hemingway was born in 1899. He was a young man, a very young man in Paris and Pamploma during the period of the novel (creative non-fiction or roman a clef).
Well, the last week or so, I've been reading a copy of "The Sun Also Rises" that I brought back from California last month and I finished it yesterday. It's much better, worlds better than the movie. It, however, reads like a first novel by a very young man who hadn't actually lived much but who was coming to believe he was or soon would be King of the World.
Hemingway has fascinated me for most of my life, and I have enjoyed practically everything of his that's come my way. Perhaps I feel some kinship with him, though the adventures of my life are nothing like his. Practically nothing in my life has been like his.
And yet... there may be kinship of some sort, maybe it's that Midwestern origin we share, an origin we left behind early and never really reconnected with.
While "The Sun Also Rises" is very much the work of a novice novelist, it's not a bad book. In fact, I found it fascinating. Hemingway's descriptions of his (character's) lives, loves and longings are sometimes superficial, yet it wasn't difficult for me to find compassion for them, even when they behaved badly -- as they very often did.
They were young -- Barnes and Romero particularly so -- and wild and the world had recently been turned upside down by the War to End Wars.
Barnes had been wounded and made impotent in that war. Hemingway had been wounded as an 18 year old ambulance driver in Italy. He may well have been made temporarily impotent, but he got over it and fathered the first of his children in 1923 a couple of years before he started writing "The Sun Also Rises."
The play I wrote deals with desire. And my interest in exploring these characters' desire stemmed from my Buddhist studies. Neither Williams nor Hemingway were Buddhist practitioners as far as I know, and both were clearly driven by desire throughout their lives. Desire for attention and fame, desire for love and devotion, desire for wealth and glamour. Desire for drink and drugs as well.
Their drive and desire led them to gain what they sought, yet it also ensured their demise, Hemingway much sooner than Williams, but both in the end driven to death by their demons of desire.
"The Sun Also Rises" deals with desire too, but formlessly, as if Hemingway hadn't yet discovered what was driving him. And I think that's true. He didn't know, and he wouldn't find out for years. When he did, when he saw and confronted his own desires, I think it tore him apart -- and led to his suicide.
I appreciated the book -- whereas I didn't appreciate the movie -- in part because it was formless, searching. Whether it was the definitive novel of the Lost Generation I'll leave to the critics to decide.
We make our morning coffee in an 8 cup Revere Ware stove-top percolator. We have a number of electric percolators, some of them quite old, all of which 'work' in that they will percolate a pot of coffee. The only problem with them is that they don't stop when the pot is done -- even if they are supposed to. No, they keep right on percolating away, just like the stove-top one will do if we don't turn the gas off. We prefer the reliability of the stove-top model and have used it daily for years now.
So the electric percolators wind up on display. Or in the appliance cupboards. We have a couple of very fancy ceramic electric percolators from the '20s or '30s that we keep out on tables to see and admire, and several chrome ones from the '30s that are on high shelves to collect dust (we don't get up to them to dust very often...😋) There's even a nearly new stainless steel electric percolator we don't use because the coffee it made was almost undrinkable -- some off-flavor seemed to be baked into the stainless steel and could not be removed.
We also have a pair of Silex glass vacuum coffee makers we sometimes use. They came with a dual electric hotplate -- one to perc, one to keep the pot warm -- and it's a convenience when we need to have a continuous supply of coffee. Then there are the French presses (I think we have two or maybe three), and the Italian moka pots (two or three of those, too) that we rarely get out and use. But the options are there!
Note: no espresso machine, no Mr. Coffee or one of its clones.
When I was growing up, we never had coffee in the house. My mother said the smell of it made her sick. So for me, coffee was an acquired taste. I learned to like diner coffee -- sometimes very weak, sometimes very strong -- at first with lots of cream and sugar, then over time I came to prefer it black. I never really understood the ritual appeal of Starbucks and such, and I don't like their coffee. But some folks do, and that's fine with me. I'm not a fan of flavored coffees, but we have a bag of "chocolate-piñon" coffee beans in the freezer, just in case I get the hankering...) Mostly we just drink standard grocery store brand ground coffee made fresh in the morning in a Revere Ware 8 cup stove top percolator.
Simple old things. That's the ticket.
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A contrasting view of morning coffee that gives me the willies:
Well, we're told that's a Crisis... again. It's come around again after fading a bit during the pandemic's worst days -- which we're supposedly actually still living through despite vaccines and such. But we're told people are on the move, all over Europe and forgathering in Latin America for more "caravans" to the USofA.
And I've pondered some of this in the context of my own migration to New Mexico from California, as well as in the context of my German, Irish, and English ancestors. What impelled them and what impelled Ms Ché and me on our journeys?
Simply: why?
Though I was told no stories of it growing up, the Irish Famine was clearly a factor and probably the main one in my Irish ancestors' decision to emigrate to the United States. The whole family left at once in 1849, all except my great-grandfather who stayed behind for some reason while his parents and five of his siblings took ship to -- surprisingly -- New Orleans and then made their way upriver to Ohio where a relation had been since 1835 or so.
My great-grandfather doesn't show up in the US records until 1856 when the family and their relations had moved to Iowa -- with no clear indication of when he arrived. Part of what struck me about this is that the most of them arrived during the California Gold Rush, but they didn't go to California, though it would later become the home to all their descendants (none are left in Iowa) including my own self.
So far as I know, none of my Irish ancestors' descendants are left in Ireland. Or if they are, they aren't in County Offaly or Tipperary where my Irish roots were planted.
I can understand the Famine impelling them to leave Ireland. But why would they not go to California right away? Clearly it was a longed for dream destination. But it's a question I can't answer.
They went to the United States because they could; there were no restrictions on emigration from Europe at the time. They encountered sometimes extreme levels of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic discrimination once they got here, but that wasn't the same as prohibition from entry. I'm pretty sure they were driven out of Ohio by the Know-Nothings back in the day. But they put a brave face on it ("There were better opportunities on the Iowa frontier") and made a success of farming and later the law.
As for the German side of my ancestry, I'm not at all sure. I know very little about them. My German great-grandfather left his little town in Baden-Wurttemburg when he was 14 -- 1854 -- after two of his brothers had already left. He arrived in New York when he was 15 (taking almost a year from the time he left home till the day he arrived in NYC.) He apprenticed to a bookbinder in Brooklyn until 1863 when he moved to Iowa, got married to another German immigrant and lived among his brothers there. He took work as a carpenter on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, a job he held till he died in 1901.
One thing I discovered was that there were still people with my great-grandfather's last name in that little town in Germany, so it's likely the whole family didn't emigrate to America the way my Irish ancestors did. What I found was that my great-grandfather, his parents, and two of his brothers all emigrated at various times from 1852 to 1856 or '57, but other relations stayed behind and their descendants are still there. Why the ones who left did so, I don't know. The situation in Southern Germany was unsettled to say the least after the Revolutions of 1848, but how that affected my ancestors and whether it was a motivation for them to leave I don't know.
Unsettled or deadly conditions at home and the opportunity to emigrate to somewhere else appear to have been the motivations for my ancestors to leave their homes in Europe. It wasn't adventure and conquest -- such as it was for many British emigrants during the Colonial era.
I've been able to trace my mother's British ancestors to arrivals in New Jersey in the 1640s. That was a surprise. There was no hint from her that she had ancestors that were practically on the Mayflower -- and in fact, if some of the stories I've found being told are true, she may well have other ancestors who were on the Mayflower. The impelling cause of their emigration from England is not entirely mysterious. Religious animosity and civil war seem to be obvious. Together with opportunity to live somewhere else, why not leave?
But the opportunity to emigrate in the 1620s and 1640s was risky to say the least, and if one survived, it was the opportunity to live rough. Colonists until the late 1600s and well into the 1700s were largely a miserable lot. Most lived rough on a frontier where the Natives were no longer inclined to welcome them.
So why would my ancestors take that kind of risk and endure such discomfort?
I didn't know anything about them until did all that research in the Ancestry archives.
And that gets us to current events and the masses of migrants all over the world, many impelled by wars and social disruption as well as the acceleration of climate change.
Many seem to see no other choice but to take the risk and endure the discomfort -- and if it comes to it, lose their lives in the attempt.
Dreadful. But it's happened before, and it's happening now.
When my ancestors went abroad to America migration was celebrated in song and story. Not so with current migrants whose suffering and deaths are a "tragedy" -- but apparently unavoidable. There is no welcome for them. Anywhere.
Like the Jews trying to escape Pharaoh or the Nazis. Nope. Can't come here!
For the millions on the move today, there is no welcome anywhere.
Still they come, still they try, still they long for succor.
And some, a very few, will succeed.
As for our own migrations to California and from California to New Mexico, that's another story I think I'll leave for another time.
There's much dooming and glooming about the current political and economic landscape for a variety of reasons. Inflation, congressional gridlock among them.
Well, I tend not to panic over any individual circumstance or event, but I've begun to wonder.
I live out in the country, right? Miles from anything. We don't have home mail delivery, have to go to the post office to pick up mail. Electricity and natural gas service is available but costly. In fact, the gas association has raised our monthly bill by 80% because they anticipate their costs for gas going up that much. They'll make an adjustment up or down next June. Meanwhile we pay.
Gasoline prices went up from just under $2.00 a gallon all last year to almost $3.50 for a while, then inched back down. Yesterday, I think the posted price was $3.25, and in town it's down to about $3.00.
Food prices have increased a lot at our local-ish grocery store, up 30% last year on average, and another 25% this year. Some shelves have been bare since the start of the pandemic. Supplies don't arrive. When they do, they are less than ordered.
The local-ish Walmart in the next town over burned a couple of weeks ago (suspected arson) and there is no date certain for reopening. There is a kind of panic over it because their pharmacy is closed, and patients have few options. The pharmacy closest to us closed just before the fire at Walmart and my prescriptions were transferred to a supermarket pharmacy I've never used. So were a lot of the Walmart pharmacy's prescriptions. I've heard that service is terrible to say the least. This is literally thousands of patients added all at once.
In fact, Walmart had become a kind of regional supply depot, and without it, the surviving local businesses are strapped. They don't have the personnel or supplies to meet the local demand, and for some things you will have to go into Albuquerque -- which is quite a distance if you're shopping.
I wish I could say online ordering is reliable. It's not. If you need something and you order it online, be prepared to wait, weeks in many cases, or be prepared to be told it's not available -- after you order.
It's a crapshoot.
People aren't panicking yet, but there is a lot of tension. Out here we're used to making do and doing without, so the tension isn't as high as it might otherwise be (except among some of the elderly who are very worried about getting their prescriptions.) But I went into town (Albuquerque) to try to stock up on cat food (a precious commodity and sometimes hard to get out here) and tensions were high. Of course it's holiday season, and that's always tough for many people, but this seemed tougher than usual.
I see that some of the media is deliberately ginning up the tension, too. They're running false stories about inflation, for example, saying that prices for essentials have more than doubled in the past year, gas prices are through the roof, so on and so forth. It's not true, but people feel like it is, partly because that's what they hear on the "news" and partly because they are paying more. Shortages are flogged constantly, but from our perspective out here nothing really essential is in short supply. What is in short supply we've been doing without for a long time and probably don't need.
But... this is "ratcheting." Things are getting harder and harder to get, and prices are going higher and higher. The pandemic is not abating but is coming in wave after wave. Illness and deaths continue to mount, and as medical care and medications are harder to get, people are "falling through the cracks."
I've speculated that the death toll as a consequence of the pandemic -- both from Covid and from neglect of other illnesses -- has easily topped 1,000,000 in this country, god knows how many world-wide.
Personnel to work in various low-paid and poorly paid positions are scarce. Employers have resisted raising wages, but they have no choice if they plan to continue operating. Some of course won't.
Thee paradigm is still shifting but we're entering uncharted social, political and economic territory.
Meanwhile, authoritarians of all stripes are marshaling their forces.
Since returning from California last month, I've spent a surprising amount of time in reverie of the coastal sojourn, particularly the time we spent (it was only part of one day) in Monterey, Pacific Grove, Carmel and Big Sur.
When I was a kid I liked going to the ocean (usually at Pismo Beach) but then when I thought about it, I really didn't like it at all. When I was a kid, the beach was always 1) crowded; 2) cold; 3) windy; 4) foggy. It was fun... but. And then on those few times when the sun came out, I got a terrible sunburn because I'm a red-head, no melanin to speak of, no possibility of a tan. So any joy connected with going to the beach was countered by the hazards -- at least the hazards for me.
Yet this time, the hours my friend and I spent at the Pacific Ocean -- at Pacific Grove, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the beach at Carmel-by-the-Sea, and along Highway 1 at Big Sur, including a stop for a late lunch at Nepenthe -- were as the saying goes Amazing.
In my reveries, I go back to one or another stopping place along the way, one or another vision of the ocean which in many places was sparkling aquamarine blue rather than the dusky green it usually is, one or another high place overlook, and it's both comforting and magical. So many times I'd been to the beach previously, but nothing was like this.
And one day, I was cruising real estate listings for Pacific Grove (a place I particularly liked, given Ms Ché's and my long history of adventures in Monterey -- going back to Monterey Pop, 1967) and I happened across this:
(Note, the video is 14.5 minutes long, and I recommend muting the narration and just taking in the house and guest houses and the views au naturel as it were.)
The point is made that this place was featured on the cover of the July 1938 issue of Sunset Magazine, and it hasn't changed much since then. In another video, the real estate agent says that the property was subdivided from the Post Ranch of long ago, and this was one of the first retreats built in The Coastlands which has become a popular summer and winter retreat for the very well off.
I don't watch the video as a real estate listing, because of course, I couldn't afford to buy something like this. No, I watch it as a historical tour, something that really appeals to me. I wasn't around in 1938, but this is the kind of place along the coast I was aware of certainly and probably spent some time in when I was (much) younger, and it was the kind of place that hippies and pre-hippies liked to snap up if they could get their hands on them.
Obviously, from the video and from the listing photos this place has been stayed at, lived in and well-loved for many years. It's a little run down, a little jammed with stuff, a little homey and a lot real. This is quite different than the newer places that dot the coast, the architect's dreams, perhaps the nightmares of the owners and residents. Some of them, I guess, are nice enough, but I wouldn't want to live in them.
This one, I most certainly would move right into and feel right at home, though it would probably take me a couple of weeks or more to figure out where everything was and check out all the nooks and the crannies and the many vistas on the 2.5 acre site. The newer guest house is pleasant enough, but I would want to spend my time at the original "cabin" that still feels like 1938.
The listing says the "cabin" is 2 bedrooms and 2 baths, but you don't see that in the video. One of the original guest houses has two bedrooms as well. The newer guest house, though, only has one bedroom, a very large one, with extraordinary views of the ocean.
This location is very high above the Pacific, so you can't exactly walk to the beach, but one of the things I like about it is that you don't feel impelled to walk in the sand by the roiling surf. It's not all that far away, but it's a journey to get to the water, one that I could easily see taking in a 1941 Buick convertible if I had one.
No, this is a place I can see myself just hanging out, vegging, reading, meditating, watching, enjoying, having friends over as well as being alone, fussing with the plants and imbibing the oceanic ozone.
I think I'd never want to leave.
The cabin and original guest houses sold for $3.2 million; the newer guest house sold separately for about $3 million. I don't know what has become of the property since the sale, but I sincerely hope the 1938 portion has been preserved pretty much intact. It's not for everyone, of course, and people with that kind of money tend not to be particularly respectful of the past. The cabin was obviously old and needed maintenance, but I can imagine someone with lots of money and not much sense buying it as a teardown and building something super deluxe and modern. If it happened it would be very sad.
There's an unwritten story of these historic coastal properties in California, what they were like, how they came to be -- and certainly the story of what's become of them is mostly untold. Many are gone as if they never were. The few that have been preserved, like this one until its sale, seem to be from another world, not just another time.
While I have plenty of mixed memories of being at the ocean during my life, I would happily spend my remaining days looking out at the ocean from this place 🤩
(Note: I've been working on this post for some time now. Let's see if I can finish it! 🤪)
I recently got out my ancient copy of "Living Poor With Style" (1972) by Ernest Callenbach and I was shocked to realize how strongly this book and the ideas in it influenced my life, and how strongly it still does all these many years later.
Re-reading it, I'm also intrigued at how much and how little has changed since publication. The United States is still a cancer on the Earth, sucking up and squandering resources to no discernible object, devastating people and societies at will, enforcing consumerism on a largely pliant population, and pretending to hold the moral high ground while Americans still have no universal health care -- among so many other deficiencies. Yet in 1972, it was possible to live reasonably well off the fat of the land if you knew how and were willing to take the risk of failing.
Now? I'm not so sure that one can live well. One can survive, perhaps. Though it is getting harder and harder. Much of what Callenbach suggests a poor person can do to live better is as useful today as it was 50 years ago -- and more -- but many of the public support programs he advises taking advantage of either don't exist any more or have been so transformed and bureaucratized that they might as well not exist for the vast majority of people.
In 1972 it was possible to live poor and reasonably well if you were clever, skilled, and adaptable. In 2022? Maybe not.
The ideas Callenbach presents, however, have formed the foundation for many movements we see today, from ecology to minimalism.
The title of his book changed through many reprints and revisions from "Living Poor..." to "Living Cheaply..." in part, I think, because of the negative connotations of "poor" among his largely white middle class readers. Even in the early edition I have (it's like the third printing of the original 1972 Bantam edition), he acknowledges that the offspring of white middle class families are the primary drivers of the search for "alternative lifestyles," and living poor or living cheaply is one of them or is actually a constellation of them.
You don't need so much stuff, for one thing. Let go of it. You don't have to eat out, you don't have to have a car (if you're in the city), you don't need a lot of living space. You can do without a lot of what you've been conditioned to believe you must have for a happy life. You can disconnect from all of that and still live well -- though your friends and family may think you're crazy, especially if they're still immersed in consumerism.
The one thing I'd say about his approach is that though he calls on community, he's addressing individuals. This is what you, personally, can do to live well without a lot of things and money.
I look around and realize that, yes, I've lived very much that way for most of my life and am doing so now. The only caveat is that we have a LOT of things, most of them accumulated and not disposed of over a lifetime (or several lifetimes as our things include many of the things of others who have passed on.) Some would consider us hoarders because we've kept so much stuff over the years. I brought the final bits of stuff we'd been keeping in California out here to New Mexico last month, and we're slowly sorting through it, disposing of some but keeping much. Keeping for what, though?
Most of what we have is old. Older than us. Our house is over 100 years old, and much of the stuff in it is nearly as old or older. Many things we've had for decades. But much of it was old when we got it. What's newish is almost entirely a few appliances, electronics, minimal clothes -- and some books and art.
We have a 14 year old Subaru that we bought used and a 25 year old Chevy van also bought used. They're "new" in our view. We don't drive nearly as much as we used to, and the van really is superfluous, but we keep it and I sometimes drive it. It's a convenience in a pinch, for example when the car is in the shop or when we need to transport something large/bulky that won't fit in the car.
I've bought some tools/equipment necessary or helpful to growing things and taking care of our little patch of ground. But I also do without. For example, we don't have a wheelbarrow. Seems strange, but I make do with a wheeled garbage can that serves the purpose just as well if not better.
Many other examples of making do could be given, but the point is that much of what needs to be done can be done without things you simply have to have in order to do them. And very often, things that can't be done without this or that tool or equipment don't really need to be done.
"Living poor..." is a lifestyle of survival if you will. Callenbach was adept at it, but he didn't need to live poor because he lacked money or any other benefit of and upper middle class white male life during his lifetime. He wasn't forced into and kept in poverty the way so many Americans have been. He recognized the truth of their plight even in the early '70s, though, and in seeing that truth, he offered what he could of solutions; advice and ideas he thought would be helpful.
At least for me, and I suspect many others, they were.
Whether poor people today need or want them, I can't say. Much of the practical advice he gives is second nature to someone who's been living poor for a while. A good deal of it no longer applies because of cultural, social and economic changes since the '70s. And the number of abjectly poor people living unhoused on the streets has grown exponentially. His advice won't and can't help most of them, because "Living poor..." in the Callenbach style requires shelter and access to so much of what someone on the streets doesn't have.
We've seen one failed attempt after another to rectify forced impoverishment over the decades; "nothing seems to help" for long or in many cases, at all. In my view, most of these activities aren't meant to seriously address the problem. They are meant as job creation for surplus sons and daughters of the higher classes. They cannot solve a problem they seek to perpetuate to ensure their own well-being. This is not unlike the situation of the monasteries of yore. Yes, some did good works, but that wasn't the point of them.
Meanwhile, I can and do recommend Living Poor With Style (if you can find the original publication not one of the later revisions) as a window on the history of poverty in this country. It's not a complete picture by any means, but it serves to illuminate what people could and did do to alleviate poverty themselves. It became something of a guidebook for disgruntled middle class folks who sought to simplify their lives by "living poor" without necessarily being poor (which I suspect was Callenbach's own position.) And it proved inspirational to any number of alternative lifestyle and ecological/utopian ideals we see in operation today.
I have a modest collection of books, magazines and pamphlets published during and in the aftermath of WWII. I think they are better windows into US society as it was back then than most of the movies that were made during and immediately after the War.
To hear lots of us gabbing these days or to see and read the posts on social media, you'd think we are living in the Worst of Times and Doom is on the perpetual horizon, but you'd be wrong.
The thing that is most striking to me about the material from the War years and immediately after was the overall positivity and futurism it featured. Yes, things were bad, life was tough, conditions were harsh, and yet... "When Tomorrow comes..." ran many refrains, so much of what people were suffering through during the War and prior to it during the Great Depression would be gone, poof, as if it never was. "When Tomorrow comes..." Life would be better -- for everyone. Friends and current enemies alike. We knew how to fix things so that the world would not descend into this kind of madness again -- and the War was definitely considered madness, something deranged and unnatural, but something that had to be done and had to be won, and we (the Allies -- aka United Nations) would do it come hell or high water or both at once.
We might be sacrificing now, but it was for the right reasons, and the hardship Americans were experiencing was light, nothing compared to the Brits, the French, the Belgians, or bless them, the Soviets. The US might be rationing meat and butter, but at least there was meat and butter. Tires and new cars might be unavailable, but there were still rattle trap jalopys to be had, and if you were handy with tools and didn't drive very much (which you couldn't do anyway due to gas rationing) you could keep it running indefinitely. Same with your newer car if you had one. If you got a blow out, you fixed it. If your tires were bald, you were careful. Etc.
People lived rough in many cases, families confined to tiny trailers, tarpaper barracks or shacks, rooming houses that once were mansions, or doubled-tripled-quadrupled up in city apartments in buildings that were falling apart and for which there was practically no maintenance available due to lack of materials and supplies.
People made do.
Jobs were plentiful, there was that, and everyone who could was either working or in the military. One thing you couldn't help but notice is that private companies -- many of them the same multinationals of today - - were the bulwark of the War effort. They manufactured and supplied everything to the military and the civilian markets. And they were fiercely regulated by government.
At the time, people made jokes about some of the regulations -- they seemed absurd or were impossible to meet -- but they appreciated that tight leashes were kept on the corporate overlords of the day.
Those leashes have been loosened to such an extent that there is no longer any but the most tenuous "public interest" -- only corporate interest, and particularly finance interest, in the current political economy.
And there is no futurism or even any concept of a Future to dream of and aim for and realize.
Many years ago now, I wrote a piece on what was then a 75 year old Toastmaster toaster that I'd rescued from the Goodwill discard bin and fixed up to use every day. It's by far the best toaster of the half-dozen or so we have these days. It was in storage in California for the past 9 years since we moved to New Mexico and it was one of the odds and ends that we had delivered here when we cleaned out the storage unit on what was probably my last trip to California last month.
And we've been using it to make toast pretty much every day since it arrived here.
It's a remarkable yet simple machine that in its day was very expensive. It's heavy -- certainly heavy compared to any toaster on the home market today. The cord is fabric wrapped and very sturdy, but when I picked the toaster out of the Goodwill bin the plug had been cut off and I had to find and attach a new one. It works fine now.
This toaster seems to work a little differently than more recent ones, and truth to tell, it makes better toast. Here's how I think this toasting miracle is accomplished:
The bread goes in the slots like any other toaster, but you have to push hard on the black lever there to make it go down, wind up the clock work and start the electric heating elements. The heating elements are encased in mica rather than being exposed, and they start to heat slowly rather than all at once. During the toasting cycle, the clockwork ticks cheerfully, and the lever slowly rises as time passes, but the toast stays in place till the end of the cycle. As the timer counts down, the heating elements get hotter and redder, till at the end of the cycle, they are cherry red and then the toast pops up done perfectly.
This perfection is, I think, accomplished by heating the bread before toasting it, and only toasting the outside of each slice at the very end of the cycle rather than toasting the bread through and through during the whole cycle -- which can dry out the bread and make it crispier and harder than ideal.
At least that's my theory of what's happening.
All I can say further is that the toast we make -- again -- in this toaster is good. Better than the toast from any other toaster we have or have ever had.
On the last day of our Fall Practice Period. I became very much attuned to the ideas of Attachment that pervade the study and practice of Buddhism, that are a big part of the Vimalakirti Sutra, and that shape the Ox Through the Window Koan I was given at my first practice interview of this period.
Oh yes, it's all about Attachment and how and why we put off Enlightenment. Buddha made many comments about Attachments, Desires, Suffering, and Enlightenment, and Buddhist practitioners are supposed to be training to let go of all that, somehow, some way, and in the Mahayana Zen tradition, become Lights Unto the World, vowing to free all sentient beings from their traps of Suffering, Futility and Attachments.
Right now, of course, I'm attached to those ideas, to the thought processes of contemplation and meditation on Attachments, and there will be no Enlightenment while that process goes on. But that's OK.
In fact, the more I consider Attachments, the more I realize that :letting go: of Attachments is not something I need to strive for; Attachments. like Desires, are Life (as one of my Zen teachers puts it), you need neither to let go of them nor hold on to them. The useful thing is to notice and acknowledge them.
For example, yes, I am attached to my home, my wife, and many of our cats. I'm attached to my chair, my laptop, my smart-ish phone, my car, my van. I can go on and on and on, listing attachments, and as I go through the day, I notice and acknowledge attachments to various things, people, places, thoughts and ideas, memories and dreams.
They are all part of my life; some are not healthy, others are necessary for right -- or any -- living.
We don't have to judge them, but just notice them, recognize them, acknowledge them. Yes, I am attached to this action of journalizing parts of my days, my thoughts, opinions, joys and disappointments.
Attachments fall away. They come and they go, much like thoughts and emotions during zazen. The trick is to let them. Let them come; let them go. For most of us, an attachment doesn't last forever or even for a particularly long time. We may be engaged with our attachments for only a moment or two, or for months or years, or in a few cases for a lifetime. But, like ourselves, attachments are impermanent, transitory, and something like the clouds of the sky. There and then not, growing, diminishing, vanishing, or suddenly re-appearing.
A cloud is real but evanescent.
Just so with attachments.
And if we can acknowledge them as they arise, greet them even with a bow, then we might be on our way to liberation from hold over us.
Buddhism in essence is very simple. The commentaries on the Sutras are far longer and more complicated than the Sutras themselves in part, I think, because the teachings are almost too simple and direct for many individuals to grasp. A Truth so simple must be bogus, right?
The basics are that we live in the World of Perception -- which is in fact an illusion, in some aspects a delusion. This World of Perception-Illusion doesn't have any corporeal existence. There is ultimately nothing there, that is to say nothing we can perceive.
This Great Nothingness or Void is the ground state of being. Everything that "is" -- including ourselves -- arises from it, and thus, everything that "is" is ultimately the same thing. Our perception of separateness is an illusion. We can't shake that illusion, and in reality, we don't have to. A better approach is to accept the alternative and apparently actual reality along with the illusion. To understand they are intertwined and cannot be separated, don't need to be separated, and by accepting both, simultaneously, one approaches the nonduality that is the energy of Buddhist thought and practice.
In essence, this is the process the Buddha went through during his years of fasting, contemplation, meditation, study and struggle to grasp what's really going on.
And then he shared it with his disciples who then shared it with the rest of us and whose descendants do so today.
"The Dharma is vast and subtle..." Well, yeah, but it is also very simple.
Vimalakirti's insight -- which he shared with gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople, anyone who would listen -- was that having grasped this subtle simplicity, a whole new universe, indeed an inter-nested series of Universes -- opens up within us. What we can perceive is just a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal corner of the "vast and subtle", inconceivable and incomprehensible reality/unreality that we are part of. Our languages can't adequately express it. We just have to accept it.
The commentary that came with my version of Vimalakirti's Teaching Sutra (211 page pdf) by a well-known rinpoche is longer than the sutra itself and is centered on how stupid the commentator is and how little he understands the arguments and dialogues of the various gods, goddesses, and so on, with Vimalakirti.
Well, OK.
He describes the appearance of things as they are presented in the sutra and then states his utter ignorance and inability to grasp any meaning from it.
The Teachings are so far beyond him.
OK.
No, from my perspective, it's not that hard. It really isn't. And Attachment in the broadest sense is what can prevent an individual -- even a rinpoche -- from grasping the teaching of the Dharma in this (or any) sutra.
We may be attached to our ignorance, for example, or to the appearance of our ignorance, and if we acknowledge and even respect that attachment, it can begin to lose its power over us. It doesn't mean it goes away -- it may be an integral part of our identity in the material world, after all! -- but our attachment to our ignorance, say, doesn't have to be in control.
Much of what Vimalakirti is teaching is to help us (even gods and goddesses) to "let go." Not to deny but to acknowledge and recognize and then to let go of what came to be called our "hang ups." Don't fret over them.
Don't try to get rid of them. Don't judge them. Don't fear them, but don't yield to them, either. There are myriad Universes beyond our perceptions. We are less than motes of dust in that context. Even as gods and goddesses.
And that's all right.
At the beginning of this practice period, the Dharma teacher said to me, "Desire is Life." It threw me for a loop because I had long operated on the idea (from the Buddha) that Desire or Attachment to Desire was the source of suffering, which ideally we want to end -- for ourselves and all sentient beings. Right?
Right?
In some sense, maybe. But that's what the Buddha teaches; it is the core of his teaching!
And?
Without Life in the World of Perception, you don't and can't experience suffering nor can you do anything to end suffering for yourself or anyone else. Letting go of our Attachment to Desire and Suffering doesn't end them so long as we are alive, but it does let us see them more clearly and it can end their control over our lives.
Once we are free of that control, we can begin to help others free themselves, though we are still experiencing Desires and the Suffering they cause.
And that is the Dharma of Vimalakirti's teaching as I see it.
Part of my study during this practice period and sesshin has been about renewing acquaintance with the people and places that were important during the early period of my introduction to and practice of Zen Buddhism. Not just important to me but important to the Zen movie (as I call it) that was then being made and shown.
This was pre-Counterculture. 1964-1965 ish. Zen came to America earlier of course (c. 1958-59), but it only seemed to be beginning to blossom when I encountered it and got in contact with the Zen Center in San Francisco. I would see it that way because that was when I myself was "beginning to blossom" as a rebellious teenager. Zen practice was part of my rebellion. I think that was true of many Anglo early adopters. Not so much for the Japanese American Zen practitioners at the Sokoji, though. It wasn't rebellion for them. Or was it?
I have to give great credit to David Chadwick* among others for preserving so much of the Early Days literature, photos, film clips and reminiscences. People who were there then are dying off quickly, probably many more lost than would have been otherwise due to the Covid pandemic. It's a shame, but much has been preserved, and I could spend the rest of my life poring through it.
It's not just David's stuff, either. The San Francisco Zen Center has preserved extensive archives; Suzuki Roshi's archives at Shunryosuzuki.com is another source. I'm sure there is much more to explore.
*Links to other sites David maintains or recommends are available at the first linked site.
So much more to explore. And one of the insights I had about it was that all of us -- well, most of us -- were living on the surplus of the post-War (WWII) era. This was one key to the what the Counterculture would become. '64-'65 is pre-Hippie, just barely, but following the assassination of President Kennedy, young people's lives began radicalizing almost immediately. By 1965, many -- particularly on the West Coast -- had effectively separated themselves from whatever had gone before, their parents' lives, the experience and expectations of the post-War suburban life, etc., and were exploring alternatives.
Zen was (and still is) an alternative.
A certain kind of young Anglo adopted it, tried to adapt to it. Zen wasn't for everyone. It still isn't.
Suzuki Roshi gently tried to guide the newcomers into the practice through his adaptations of Japanese Zen practice as it had been when he was trained (pre-WWII).
I say gently because he was very gentle with his Anglo charges who were attempting to practice a very strict Japanese discipline.
So gentle that by the time Richard Baker took over after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, only the outward, visible forms of Japanese Zen remained; the inner practice had become something else, for different purposes I think.
Because it wasn't what I had been introduced to -- and what I had studied hard to start to master the practice -- I stayed well away from Richard Baker's Zen Center in San Francisco and whatever they were promoting.
It wasn't "Zen." They called it Zen but it wasn't.
It had become Baker's vision of grandeur. I hate to say it, but that's what I saw.
But maybe that grandeur was part of Suzuki Roshi's vision as well. Maybe that's what I'm trying to find out with all this study.
It's possibly useful to see the origins of Zen in America as a pre-Counterculture "living on the surplus" alternative -- ie: pointing the way for what was to come.
Sokoji, for example, was housed in a former Jewish temple, Tassajara was a former "carriage trade" resort, the City Center was a former Jewish women's center and residence. All these locations and many more were surplus, they weren't needed by their original users anymore and they could be reused for alternative purposes -- such as Zen. The alternative lifestyles that came out of the Counterculture were almost all based in the fact that there was a big surplus of practically everything needed for living from which to create and sustain alternative (at least for a while.)
Many of the branches that would arise from the SFZC began in well-off people's homes, unused commercial or religious sites, and other private but surplus locations. None have become what primary Zen sites are in Japan. They all still have this temporary, ad hoc, reused location sensibility about them.
Sometimes it's charming. No doubt about that.
There's also a sense that none of it is really here, either.
Zen is still trying to plant roots in America.
As opposed to, say, Thich Nhat Hanh's Plum Village in France. Which seems to be about as permanent and rooted as something Zen can be outside of Japan (and, well, Vietnam...)
I think my study will continue for as long as I can keep it up, and the two practice periods I've been part of this year have renewed my sense of Zen as it was and as it is now (something else again.)
So many elderly women participants... I've been thinking about that.
How different that is from times gone by. But then, it's probably natural, too.
This sesshin, well, the whole practice period so far, has been one thing after another, obligations piled upon actions and distractions, travel and preparations. Not much time to sit, just sit. Every now and then, sitting seems like the natural thing to do, though, so I sit, and when the time to sit is over, I go about my other activities.
In between, I've done a lot of study and recollection of times gone by, when all of this Zen shit was new -- or new to me -- and neither the world nor I had quite figured out what it was all about. Hoshi and sensei have given me challenges and questions to ponder, koans to delve into if not answer and the daily Dharma talk confirms or questions my assumptions and beliefs.
Tuesday's Dharma talk was filled with quotes from Suzuki Roshi's Dharma talks in 1969. That was important to me as a look back to the Old Days when this Zen shit was all still very new, and Suzuki Roshi was still in the process of introducing it to the American consciousness, such as it was.
Suzuki Roshi recognized the suchness of the conditions and situations he put himself into or he fell into, and he made the most of it. Nothing seemed beyond his ability to see through or penetrate to reach the essence. Of course there were many things I did not know and didn't need to know about his life and struggles and disappointments. One thing I can say, however, is that he always seemed to find the humor in everything, and he always seemed to be laughing inwardly or outwardly, never seemed to take himself or anything else too seriously.
Even when he was dying.
He cautioned others not to take things that seriously, either. We're impermanent, everything is impermanent. The moment will pass. All we have is the moment -- this very moment. Live it fully.
Sometimes when I hear that from some of the contemporary Zen practitioners, I doubt they believe it. They know the words, but do they, can they follow?
Not to go all Ram Dass on us, but Being Here Now is all we've really got, so why not be -- and let be?
Suzuki Roshi embraced it without reservation. Nowadays, for many, that's very hard.
Now while I haven't sat zazen on a strict schedule or for long periods the way we're supposed to during practice period and sesshin, I have daily engaged in samu (work practice) sometimes for many hours at a time, and samu is practice as much or more so than zazen.
A practice period consisting mostly of samu is interesting. In the regular schedule, samu comes once or twice a day. Sitting is the primary practice. Hearing/studying Dharma secondary. Samu breaks up the day.
But for me, it's been samu, Dharma, and sits.
No less engaging.
I wonder what Suzuki Roshi would say.
"Good, good (laughs), but it's not zen, you know. (Laughs.)"
Yesterday's Dharma talk included a number of quotes from Suzuki Roshi's own Dharma talks in 1969 soon after Tassajara Zen Mountain Center came to be.
A film was made by KQED in 1968, shortly after the establishment of the Zen Mountain Center monastery at Tassajara Hot Springs above Big Sur that shows Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker at both Sokoji Temple in San Francisco and at Tassajara as well as various students and supporters talking about Zen in America.
The film seems primitive by today's standards. It appears to have been shot on Super 8 film (both silent and sound) then transferred to 16mm and overdubbed. The camera work is sometimes shaky and out of focus, as amateur film making tended to be in those days. Yet there's an honesty about it that is both charming and fascinating to students like me whose contact with Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker was physically slight (I'm still sure I never met either of them in person, and yet when I see them in this film or in other clips, I feel as if I must have met them at some point in my journey) but spiritually powerful.
And one thing I notice is that despite being with Richard Baker and Zen students and supporters throughout his sojourn in America, Suzuki Roshi seems always so very much alone. He's an exotic and he seems to know it. He's here to transmit the Dharma and Zen from Japan to the small-ish circle of adherents he was able to attract and keep interested in something new -- as Zen was still very new in the United States, even up to 1971 and Roshi's death from cancer.
He brought Zen from Japan but adapted it to the US and particularly to San Francisco as it was during the young people's cultural transition from the Beats to the Hippies. I don't want to say that Zen led the way, but maybe it did. What I notice though is that Suzuki Roshi wasn't concerned with that so much as he was with communicating the essence of Zen practice -- as he was trained for and knew it in Japan before, during and after WWII -- to a new audience and in forming a community to continue the practice indefinitely.
I've pointed out that I came to Zen when I was a teenager through the novels of Jack Kerouac and an innate curiosity about something I knew nothing of, the way of Japan and Buddhism. Just curious, that's all, and yet I found so many connections, superficial and very deep, between my being and those of Zen practitioners like Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker -- without whom I would not "know" Zen today. (There's nothing to know, so I don't "know" Zen; it's merely a convenient figure of speech...)
Zen was never popular in Japan, and in an overall sense, it's not popular in the United States either. It's a "specialty practice," indeed, often an elite practice, something done by those who cannot find satisfaction of their spiritual interests and needs in other forms of Buddhism or religion. Or like me, it's practiced by those who fell into it at some point in their lives, early or late, learned to practice and never stopped.
Suzuki Roshi was the catalyst and early teacher, called "Roshi" to his laughter, but in the Zen sense, a sensei. Teacher.
There's something so simple and straightforward about his presentation, something you don't often see in today's Zen -- which seems to me to be something else, not the Zen Suzuki Roshi and a few others brought to the US from Japan.
I can't say exactly what it is -- or was. I don't know. Zen-not-Zen-no-Zen.
Zen liberates bodhisattvas into the world of presence.
That's what I call it: "World of Presence", our ordinary, everyday perception of reality.
As we know, however, that's an illusion.
A dream as it were.
It doesn't have any ultimate existence.
But because it is our general, ordinary perception of reality, and we conduct our lives within it, the bodhisattva's presence is also called for and called forth.
The bodhisattva, on the path to Buddhahood, lingers in the World of Presence, the material world, to help guide other sentient beings to liberation and Buddhahood for themselves. The Bodhisattva vow is to liberate all sentient beings.
Buddhahood is ultimate liberation from suffering (ie: living in the World of Presence) we are led to believe, and many of us do believe it, and yet some of the sutras says that Buddhahood is itself an illusion, a dream as it were, and there is no ultimate liberation from suffering because there is no suffering at the ultimate level of... well, what is it?
"It" is the wrong term. There is no "it."
If we actually probe to the limit of perception/existence, delve as deeply as possible into the material world, we find, perhaps to our surprise, that there is no there there. Nothing, in other words. What we regard as "something," or "anything" or "everything," is not there. There is "nothing" there -- emptiness, void. Absence of "thing."
That is the ground state we can perceive if we delve deeply enough, from which "thing" -- everything -- arises. Because it is a ground state we can perceive if we delve deeply enough, probe with our minds and with our tools, it too is an illusion, That is not the ultimate. But it is the ground from which, thorough which, everything else manifests.
We cannot probe any deeper with our minds or with our tools, but we know there is a deeper inconceivable "reality" underlying it. "It." But there is no "it."
Bodhisattvas are called forth to help with compassion those on the journey through the material world, perhaps toward Buddhahood, or perhaps not. It doesn't matter. A bodhisattva is a teacher and a guide and a helper. Bodhisattvas are everywhere: not only teachers, guides, and compassionate caregivers. We often don't recognize them or we take them for granted out of habits of mind that simply don't recognize much beyond our own selfish needs and desires. The gift of a bodhisattva can go unnoticed in the press of events and the furious activity of the moment. But they are there, all around us, right next to us, and yes, sometimes the bodhisattvas are we ourselves.
We may not recognize the bodhisattva in ourselves.
Vimalakirti takes on all the gods, buddhas, bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike in his teaching we're studying in this Fall Practice Period. Though a layman himself, he doesn't hesitate to correct and instruct those around him, no matter their status, when he perceives them failing or flailing in their efforts to observe the proper forms of observance and devotion.
In a sense, he tells them to throw it all away. None of it means anything. It accomplishes nothing. At best, observance is an empty gesture; at worst it's merely fraud.
Live your life. That is practice.
Other bodhisattvas, even the Buddha himself, say the same thing. Your life is your practice. Focus there, not outside yourself, not on some arcane ritual, not on sitting in meditation.
None of it matters.
In Zen, sitting is a duty, but it's not a product, and it is not meant to produce anything. We don't sit for a purpose. We sit to sit.
Sitting is and isn't a means, skillful or otherwise, toward some end other than sitting. It is a means because sitting can be like opening a window beyond our usual expectations or experience. It can be. It isn't always.
It isn't a means because there is nothing ultimately beyond it. We sit to sit, no other purpose. But in sitting we can gain a more complete comprehension of ourselves.
Our roshi got into a bit of hot water a while back by saying that we sit with intention, aspiration, and/or motivation. We don't. Later on, roshi corrected this notion by saying "we sit to sit." No other reason or aspiration in sitting. But our lives -- which include sitting! -- are motivated with intention and aspiration, in the Bodhisattva Way to liberate all sentient beings from suffering.
We take vows as Zen practitioners, after all. Bodhisattva vows.
And second time I've participated in sesshin in my life.
Starting the first day with Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi's Dharma talk on August 21, 1971 -- podcast or transcript.
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Note: in sesshin, there are plenty many "don't do's" including "don't journal" like I'm doing now. As an inveterate rule breaker, I feel little guilt at not following the rule here, in part due to the liberation I was granted from monkish observance way back in the day. A whole list of "don't do's", page after page of them, was read off as part of the introduction to sesshin last night, and I'm sure it startled, even put off, some of the potential global participants.
They can't do that at home; if we were in a monastery, maybe.
I'll just quote something that Suzuki Roshi said in explanation of a quote from Dogen in that Dharma talk so long ago -- a few months before he died:
“When all things are Buddhism—all things are Buddhism, there are defilement, practice—defilement, practice, birth and death, buddhas and sentient beings.” The point is they are—they are. All things are Buddhism. Whatever you do, that is Buddhism. But there is some danger in your understanding of this kind of words—statement. “Whatever you do, that is Buddhism.” You know, whatever you do in Tassajara, or in city zendō, or in city life, that is Buddhism. It looks like—it sound like this: “Whatever we do, it doesn’t matter. Anyway [laughs], that is a practice of Buddhism.” If it is so, there is—it is not necessary for you to study Buddhism, whatever—if whatever you do, that is Buddhism.
But actually, what Dōgen-zenji meant is not—is not like that. So there—there is, maybe, in—in—when you understand this statement, “Whatever you do, that is,” you know, “Buddhism.” There may be two ways of understanding it. One is, whatever you do [laughs], you know, if you understand—you take this statement literally, from your non-Buddhist—non-Buddhistic understanding. That is one, you know.
1971, it was a different world, very different I think, and he's getting into the whole notion of Buddhist "liberation" and what it means in the modern world having seen how the idea was misinterpreted by some of his followers who took it to mean license. If everything is Buddhism and there is no judgement then "liberation" means you can do whatever you want, right? Whatever urge you may have at any given moment is OK because everything in every moment is Buddhism, right?
Well, yes it is, but it doesn't mean what you might think it means.
No, you have precepts: right thinking, right understanding, right behavior. And there are rules, many rules, that constrain the thoughts and actions of priests and monks and laypeople alike, though not all the rules apply equally to all practitioners.
But in 1971, the precepts were not fully understood, nor were they fully observed by many (most?) Western devotees of Suzuki-Roshi. So he tries to make clear, and not for the first time, that "liberation" in a Buddhist concept is not license.
In my own case as a teenager in 1965 or even 1964 -- memory falters -- I wasn't and couldn't be in a monastic setting in San Francisco or later at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, so I was granted a kind of dispensation, you might say, to practice at home and adapt the Rules as was able to. I believe this dispensation was granted by Richard Baker, Suzuki Roshi's right hand and successor at San Francisco Zen Center, as a skillful means of introducing me to and keeping me following Zen practice no matter my situation. Over the years, I've found few Buddhist leaders who require strict observance of all Rules by all practitioners. But the Precepts form the basis of assessment of individuals. How closely do you follow them? What failures have you had? What lessons have you learned? So.
In addition to starting the day with Dharma talks by Suzuki Roshi, I also review the reminiscences of David Chadwick, an early adopter and current practitioner of Zen in America as brought and taught by Suzuki Roshi so very long ago. They are potent reminders of my early practice and of some of the people I never knew.
Then to round things out, there is the study and review of Vimalakirti's Teaching Sutra which I expect to return to many times.
