The Lake Tahoe Place

Well. The Caldor Fire has apparently topped Echo Summit and is burning downslope toward the Tahoe Basin. Summer people and year-round residents are packing up and leaving, though evacuations have not yet been ordered for the South Lake Tahoe area. The smoke, they say, is driving a lot of people to leave now rather than wait for the order.

The Lake (as it was called, still is, I imagine) was a refuge from the summer heat in the Valley. My sister's first husband's family had a "place at The Lake" that they'd go to when the Valley heat got to be too much, but by the time I knew about the Tahoe place, most of his family had either died or had moved away, so the "place at The Lake" sat empty some summers. 

One year, though, we all went up there. My mother, me, my sister and her husband, and their (then) two kids. 

It was kind of crowded, but we made do. The place was no mansion, but it was charming, old and a little creaky, dusty and musty. It appeared to be a log cabin -- and for a log cabin, it was very large. I learned that it wasn't actually built of logs, though. It was a straightforward frame house that had split log siding on the outside, and log-style panels applied to some rooms of the inside. There was a big rock fireplace in the living room made from rocks collected near the building site. That site was on the South Shore, right on the Lake. There was a steep stairway down to the beach and from there was a dock and boathouse. The boathouse contained a Chris Craft speed boat, very elegant but small compared to some of the other boats plying the lake, and not nearly as fast as they were either.

There was a garage on the street, and the back end of the garage was fitted up as a maid's room with a bathroom. There was no maid, though, and my brother in law said they hadn't had one for as long as he could remember. So the room in the garage was kept as a potential guest room but hadn't been used for that either. 

The place/cabin/house itself had two bedrooms and a bathroom, and there was a room upstairs that had a bed in it but was really just an unfinished attic room. There was a "winter kitchen" when you entered (from the back of the house) that had a wood range, and a "summer kitchen" just beyond that had an old gas range on legs and a small old electric refrigerator. 

The living room had an open ceiling, and hanging from the rafters was a huge (at least to me) gas chandelier. Well, it had originally been gas but was converted to electricity. There were other gas lights in the house that were now electric. There was a calendar in the kitchen dated 1904, and my brother-in-law said that this place was one of the first "cabins" built on the South Shore, if not the first. It was very plain and primitive compared to some of the mansions that had gone up since. 

Decorating the place were many Native American baskets, some used for storage but most just on display. I'd say, thinking back, there were probably 20 or 30 altogether, mostly small or medium size, tightly woven, while a few were large and held kindling wood and paper for the fireplace. I thought they were fascinating, and I was told they were purchased from Natives that lived (at one time) in the area.

Furnishings were made of logs, though the beds were brass. There was a dining table set up in the living room. There was a big picture window in the living room facing the lake. A long, not too wide porch was accessed from the living room, but the door stuck, and so the porch was actually reached from the yard after going out the kitchen door which scraped on the floor but wasn't stuck. The yard was dotted with pine trees and was quite large, especially the front yard. The bathroom had a corner sink, a toilet with a high tank and pull chain and a clawfoot tub. 

Altogether, the place seemed idyllic and I enjoyed the time we spent there. It was something completely new to me. It was something that rich people did. My brother-in-law's family was upper middle class. I thought of them as rich, but they wouldn't have agreed. When my brother-in-law's grandmother died in 1962, the place a Tahoe was sold as part of settling her estate. I don't recall the amount it was sold for, but it was not much for such a prime location, and I remember my sister said it was sold essentially for the land value, and she thought it wouldn't be there in a couple of years as the older places on the South Shore were being bought up by developers as tear-downs to be replaced with condos. 

That was a sad thought, but "progress" was what it was. I didn't really think about it much after that. 

Maybe ten years later, I took my wife to Lake Tahoe and drove around looking for the house. I told her I didn't think it would be there any more, that it had probably been replaced with condos like so many had been. We drove down the road on which it had been, and I didn't find it. I saw lots of condos instead, and it made me very sad. 

Turns out, I hadn't driven far enough. In fact the house/cabin/place is still there, looking from the outside almost identical to what I remembered. I found it one day idylly cruising Google Street View. How about that? It surprised the heck out of me. "That's it!" Yep.

Then to my even greater surprise as I was re-viewing the area because of the looming fire catastrophe, I found a listing for it on Bookings.com -- a listing that said it wasn't available now, but had been available for short term rental since 2016. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I was.

This is the listing:

https://www.booking.com/hotel/us/lakeview-holiday-home-897.html

There are 24 photos in the gallery. Some has changed, but much is as I remember it. 

This is the back of the house/cabin/place. The log siding has been replaced with board siding. Where the deck is was a lean-to addition that had the wood-range in it. There was no dormer. Everything else, though, including the pine trees, is as I remember it. 

This is the front porch, lake in the background. Note the slender log posts. This is as I remember it.

This is the living room. Some changes have been made. The fireplace is the same, I think even the mirror over the fireplace is the same, though the wood-stove insert is new. We had an open fire to take off the chill of morning. The picture window is similar if not identical. I don't remember the dining table in front of the window, though. I think it was on the opposite wall. What is so strikingly different, however, is the whiteness of the room and the closed ceiling. It really changes the feel of it. When I was there, the ceiling was open to the rafters above. The walls were paneled in faux logs. It was dark-feeling. But not actually dark because of the big window. The big electrified gasolier that hung from the rafters was turned on at night and despite it five or six globes, it cast a soft warm light rather than the bright light I expected. I wouldn't be surprised if the light bulbs had been there forever and were original Edison 25w or something. 

This is the opposite wall of the living room. I won't say for certain, but it's possible this is the same furniture as was there when I was there, just with new-ish cushions. What was there was made of logs, so... could be. There was no wall heater, no heat at all except for the fireplace, the walls were the faux log paneling, the ceiling was open, and there was no opening in the wall from the kitchen. Other than that, the table and chairs were on this wall, the sofa up against the picture window, and the other chairs were by the fireplace.

Another view of the living room. The corner cupboard was there. Filled with Native baskets and odds and ends. The door to the porch, I think, had glass in it but I could be wrong. All the windows had to be shuttered for the winter, and the shutters were kept in the garage. Taking down all the shutters was quite a job. 

This is the kitchen. It's hardly changed at all. You can see the bathroom through the door at the end. What's different is newish flooring -- I remember rough boards. The walls are white. I remember a kind of buff tending toward orange. The stove is newish, but it's in the same place as the leggy gas stove that I remember. Beside the sink is a laundry tub but the sink is the same, the laundry tub is the same, and the window is the same. There was no window into the living room above the stove though. The open shelves look to be the same as well except for the color. The butcher block next to the stove actually may have been there, but I don't remember it. The ceiling in this part of the house was enclosed as it is now.

This is the bathroom. The sink and little medicine cabinet are the same. The glassed in shower, no. As I say, there was a clawfoot tub. It may or may not have had a shower attachment and one of those oval shower curtain rods. I think it did, but I can't be sure. I know it smelled a little musty. The toilet was where the camera is for the photo.

This is the front bedroom where my sister and her husband slept on a brass double bed. The chair may be original, the bed and nightstands aren't. The enclosed ceiling, though, is what I remember. 

This is the back bedroom where my mother and I slept on two twin sized brass beds. I don't know how they fit in there, but they did! The kids, I remember, slept in the living room, one on the couch (the girl) and one in a sleeping bag on the floor (the boy.)

This is the lake-side front of the house. Except for the dormer, it's the same.

And finally, this is the lake view from the front. You can barely make out the stairs to the beach in the distance. There was a dock and a boathouse with a motor-boat, but they're gone now, I suspect lost in one of the storms that rocked the Lake some years ago. They may have been removed due to policy changes. I don't know. But they're gone.

I also don't know if the fire will get as far as the South Shore. Probably not, but just the chance that it might is disturbing, depressing. I've been seeing some of the consequences of the fires in California on the AlertWildFire website, and it's terrible. 

I don't think California will come out of this fire season the same at all. I grieve for what has been lost, as I did when Paradise burned to the ground. Ironic? Emblematic? I don't know. 

There have been many wild fires in California in the past, and when I was a kid, I used to watch the San Gabriel Mountains burn every year. But this time... it's different. 

I'm planning a trip to California -- probably for the last time -- in October. I hope the fires will be at least contained if not out. But you never know. 

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Going back and embiggening the pictures, there's no doubt that this is the house/cabin/place at The Lake I visited and stayed at many years ago, but my memories of it are... cough... somewhat faulty. 

First, I'm not sure now that the interior and exterior were log or imitation log. That's how I remember it, but looking at the pictures, I suspect the board siding was what was on the place when I stayed there and the interior was wood paneled but not to resemble logs. The rooms were not painted white. The kitchen and bathroom were painted, I think, but none of the other rooms were. The living room had a ceiling over part of the space, but there was no ceiling over the picture window and fireplace area. I note in the pictures that there is a lean-to addition at one end of the kitchen but I remember one where the back deck is now. My memory also turns the kitchen around. What I'm wondering is whether there was an entrance door through the current lean-to as well as an entrance in the now-gone lean-to. There had to be some place for the wood-burning range, and there appears to be no place for it in the current arrangement. 

As I've said before, memory can play strange tricks on us. Sometimes the most crystal clear memories are, for lack of a better word, false. Other times, they're like dreams. Elements are real enough, while a good deal of what we may remember is not real. It didn't happen, or maybe it happened but not the way we remember it. 

This is the place at The Lake, no doubt about it. And it's much the same as I remember it. But details, let's say, are not as sharp as I would like to think of them. 

----------------------------------

So the fires were diverted to Kirkwood, and all is sort of kind of well at SLT these days, smoke or no. 

I loved the media narrative that the folks who had to evacuate were "blue collar workers" who can't afford to live anywhere else in the Tahoe Basin. Yeah, right. 

No, most weren't. They were year-round and summer people, newcomers and long timers who see The  Lake as a kind of Paradise Escape, who -- mostly -- brought the suburbs with them, and their condos and "cabins" showed it. Their places, for the most part, weren't the mansions of the hyper-rich that dot The Lake's margins, but they were by no means shacks of the poor and working class. They are very much upper middle class substantial suburban houses and condos set in the forest. Had the fires come into South Lake Tahoe they would have wiped out this expensive notion of Paradise, like many suburban Paradises -- including Paradise, California --  have been wiped out before. It would have been sad, and for some, tragic. I wouldn't have liked to see it at all. 

But if these people were "blue collar" the notion has no meaning at all.

Some Thoughts on Chaos and the Crazy

The other day, I was pondering the chaos and crazy some of my ancestors and relatives experienced in their lifetimes and now, and of course I was relating it to my own life, and I was extending that thought process to the chaos and crazy that's been afflicting the United States and the world at large for many long years now. 

As I go through these exercises, I start to see more clearly how we are not only all connected but in reality we are all part of the same thing, in Buddhist parlance, we are all the same thing. This was a realization I came to (in a form or flash of enlightenment) many, many years ago, but the details were always elusive. As I get older, the threads of connections and the ground state of being becomes clearer and clearer. 

Afghanistan is "falling" to the Taliban we're told, but in fact, it has never not been "fallen" and the Taliban (however they are conceived) have never not been pre-eminent. They are the Afghan people, whether our establishments and ruling class like it or not, know it or not, and beating them back can only be accomplished through a campaign of extermination, genocide in a word. That hasn't happened... not yet... so the end-state, outcome of the Afghanistan campaign was foregone: right back where we started from. 

The whole campaign was a crock from the get... in a manner of speaking. 😞

It was wrong and wrong-headed and it's led us back to where we began, or nearly so, as time is a spiral not a straight line. 

Not unlike the case of Vietnam, to which comparisons are made more and more starkly and openly. We've been down this road before, haven't we?

How many of our lives are just like that? In many ways, mine certainly is and has been.

What have we learned from our mistakes? What have I learned from MY mistakes?

And how much farther do we have to go?

I'm reminded of an opinion column by Mark Morford from 2017: 

HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR END TIMES, AMERICA?

Please read it. And realize he wrote this four years ago. How little has changed. Even though... everything has. 

So What's Next?

Wow. I've been going through some of the hundreds of reports and posts I wrote during Occupy -- a decade ago now -- and... wow.

It was a nascent revolution that... fizzled out. Not meant to be? With all the talk about co-opting and infiltration of Movements these days, it is glaringly obvious that Occupy was partially co-opted and heavily infiltrated by informants during its brief lifetime in the public square. In the end it was brutally crushed and dispersed by a nationwide coordinated police action that resulted in thousands of arrests and hundreds injured.

I reported on some of what I witnessed, including the presence of obvious provocateurs, instigators and informers. I also saw public officials openly manipulating the encampments for their own political purposes, police experimenting with new and improved crowd control tactics (it was a game to them), and political party operatives trying to "guide" actions on their own behalf.

It was fascinating and stomach churning to watch. Not so much fun to participate in. 

And I saw and reported on one Occupy encampment after another disintegrate into squabbling factions almost always due to two things: unfamiliarity with anarchist and intentional community principles and practices, and the presence, sometimes by invitation, of mentally disturbed loudmouths who were almost inevitably allowed to take over.

While the public face of Occupy disintegrated and dispersed, the underlying energy has only grown stronger, and we've seen it manifested in a proliferation of intentional communities, many set up as quasi-independent associations for self-sufficiency and sustainability. The anarchist form of governance is still very alien to the US, and black bloc and diversity of tactics scares a lot of people. 

What I saw was that an anarchist intentional community-- as most of the Occupy encampments were set up to be -- is almost impossible to sustain among strangers. It's far too intimate a situation and responsibility for strangers to undertake with one another suddenly. That's how Occupy was organized, and in essence, the encampments were designed to fail. And they did. The brutal destruction and dispersal of the Occupy encampments wasn't necessary from an organizational standpoint, but it seemed to please the Powers That Be immensely.

The millions of people who participated in the Occupy movement in 2011 were followed by many more millions who marched and protested and assembled in the United States and all over the world on behalf of causes like stopping wars, gun control, women's rights, an end to police violence, protecting the environment and so on. Millions have taken to the streets, encampment tactics have been widely adopted, governments have been overthrown, and yet...

What has changed for the better?

A global rightist/fascist reaction has set in. Trumpism is fully a part of it. But it is by no means limited to Trump and his ilk; it's very wide-spread, heavily funded by the billionaires, and so far, it's been successful in taking over governments and largely suppressing dissent. 

From appearances, it aims for permanent dominance.

Barring the unforeseen, it will achieve that within short order. 

There is no vigorous, strenuous and determined counter-movement, let alone a more than flaccid Socialist or Communist ideological movement. 

So what's next?

I don't know. Every time I ponder what might be, I face a blank wall. 

Some things to consider...

After yesterday's detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me -- our neighbor calls him Ben but that's not the name he's being held under -- I thought much more about what happened, who those of us involved are, and what may be the larger meanings of it all, or if there are any.

One thing that instantly popped out was the absence of police brutality. The officer who arrested "Ben" or whatever his name is arrived within five minutes of my call. I saw him in the front courtyard of the house across the street apparently idly chatting with "Ben" who appeared to be sitting calmly on a bench shortly after his arrest. 

At the hearing yesterday, the officer stated that he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest. He didn't say what for, but I assume it was the joyride "Ben" took in the police chief's car in April. 

He described the most recent arrest this way: he saw my wife in the street and asked her where the suspect was. She pointed to the house across the street from ours. He got his automatic rifle and went to the front door and... knocked. "Ben" opened the door. The officer said he saw two knives, one in each pocket of "Ben's" jeans and that "Ben's" left hand was concealed behind the door. He ordered him out of the house and onto the ground. "Ben" did not immediately obey, but was somehow persuaded -- without violence -- out of the house and onto one knee in the front courtyard. The officer handcuffed him and relieved him of three weapons, the two knives in his pants pockets and the hatchet/tomahawk he'd assaulted me with.

And then they waited for backup. "Ben" sat on the bench; the officer stood beside him. The officer said that, yes, he knew "Ben" from a previous arrest.

During the hearing, an extensive arrest record was mentioned as well as sentencing to prison and probation for previous offenses. "Ben" is no stranger to The System.

He is, however, arguably severely mentally ill. While he rattled off a litany of diagnoses, it comes down to paranoid schizophrenia and addiction with violent tendencies. They are only partially controlled by medications and counseling. And in this case were not controlled.

I had this grand notion of how I would want him to be treated post-conviction. Held in prison for up to a year, then in a locked mental health care facility for up to three years while he undergoes training and therapy to manage his condition. then in 24/7 supervised release where essentially his is under observation of a minder all the time for as long as necessary. 

Seems, at least in outline, that's the treatment he was under, and yet he was able to slither away from custody rather easily and engage in mayhem.

He'd been remanded to a locked Department of Corrections drug and mental illness treatment and recovery facility (for I don't know how long) and after two days he was out and about. He said he was denied his anti-psychotic meds at this facility and he began to act out so much that he convinced the staff to transfer him to a hospital where he may or may not have received any treatment (apparently no treatment and did not receive his medications) and where he was able to call our neighbor to come and get him. This is not quite the story she tells, but anyway... he said that someone else came and picked him up and took him to our neighbor's house where he had stayed without meds for he didn't know how long (a few days) before he was arrested for assaulting me. 

He was on probation, he was under court order to complete treatment at the locked recovery facility and to report to his probation officer regularly. He did neither, and he was able to basically walk away from the hospital where he was taken when his psychotic behavior manifested at the treatment facility.

The treatment I suggested was actually partially under way, and it was ineffective; given what I heard, it was grossly counterproductive.

So.

Where do we go from here? That'll take a while to come to grips with.

A Few Further Thoughts on Being Assaulted Last Week

I've tried not to dwell on the incident though I occasionally find myself mulling over what happened, trying to remember and trying to forget simultaneously. "Trying" is probably a waste of time, but I seem to spend so little time on it, with so many other things to think about and to get done, that it doesn't seem like any loss to me to occasionally ruminate on the topic of being assaulted and what it may mean in the larger scheme of things.

At the simplest level, it was a "knock upside the head." It left a mark, yeah, but primarily it was a reminder of the need for redirection in my life and activities. This has happened to me repeatedly and it probably happens to others in different ways. We become complacent and habituated to whatever routine we're following. It's our lifestyle. We may not even think we should be or need to be on a different path, following different needs and desires, serving ourselves and others differently than we have become used to.

After that "knock upside the head" I was talking to the neighbor the guy was staying with. She's a friend. We're not close, but we get along fine and we have mutual friends and so on, and we help each other out when we can. We're neighbors. 

One of our mutual friends was for years my "helper" Wes. He came around first when I was in a very bad state from rheumatoid arthritis and could literally barely move. He offered to take care of whatever I needed, and I was very grateful for his help. I paid him for his trouble, and he was very grateful for the extra money and for my company for he'd been having many problems himself.

He was about 50, a diagnosed schizophrenic, on disability and living with his mother. She was a retired nurse. He had a son who he loved dearly who lived with his mother (the boy's mother) in Arizona. 

Wes's mother received his disability checks and doled out very little cash to him because she didn't think he'd be responsible with it, and she was probably right. For example, he'd buy cigarettes with the money I gave him, even though he had bronchitis, COPD, emphysema, and sometimes showed clear signs of walking pneumonia. I counseled him against smoking tobacco repeatedly, and sometimes he'd stop for a while, but then inevitably, he'd start smoking again. Having been a heavy smoker myself, I knew how hard it could be to quit, and I told him how I did it, recommended he try it and offered to help him through the rougher parts of the process. He tried but ultimately failed in part because he continued socializing with people who smoked cigarettes and who mocked his efforts to quit. 

Come to find out tobacco wasn't his only unhealthy habit. He didn't drink that I was aware of, but I would learn he used just about any illicit substance he could get his hands on. And it would kill him.

According to my neighbor, he was partying with "friends" one night, and he injected a cocktail of drugs -- she didn't know exactly what -- and went unconscious and never woke up.

I can well imagine how it happened; I can put myself in his place and recognize how vulnerable he was to a partying culture and recognize how tempting and easy it would be for the partiers he was with to take advantage of him and in effect cause his death. "Here, try this! You'll love it!" And he'd do it because why not?

And I can also well imagine that the partiers he was with had no remorse at all. They probably didn't even feel the loss.

Wes was less than nothing to them.

Just so when it came to my own brush with Death last week.

This time wasn't the End, but who knows how close it came? I felt -- absolutely -- the first time I encountered this dude the day before he assaulted me that his intention was to murder me. I didn't think he would do it, but there was no doubt in my mind of his intent.

Where did that come from? On my end, there's a long karmic chain. I can trace it back to 1904, but it probably goes back much farther. My mother's maternal grandfather was murdered (as it happened by his mistress) in 1904, and it's possible but not certain that my mother's father was also murdered in 1916. I actually had long thought that the accident that killed him was no accident, but the more I learned about it, the less sure about it I became. So I don't know. One of my mother's uncles was also murdered (I believe it was in 1898.) He was a police officer who was shot by one of the combatants when he tried to break up a fight in a bar. On the other hand, my mother's father was chased through the streets of Downtown Indianapolis by a police officer who was firing his gun at him. Didn't hit him, but caused quite a lot of damage and mayhem before the chase ended.

An uncle -- my father's older brother -- was accused of murdering his wife, and some of my relatives are convinced he did it and got away with it, but again, I'm not so sure. It's possible, but so is his alibi. So I don't know what really happened there, either.

I've had plenty of brushes with Death throughout my life. How many, I can't say. But enough to constitute a common theme, and it's something that I think most people never experience. I've been shot, mugged, robbed, assaulted, threatened, etc, etc, etc, many times. So far, I've survived every one of these incidents. 

I wrote "many times" and until now, I don't think I realized how often these things have happened to me. And how unusual it is in most people's lives. At least I assume it's unusual.

Part of it is due to my own rebel nature, something I have little or no control over. I tend to be a rebel, I tend to resist convention, I tend to prefer alternatives to expectations, and some of those alternatives lead directly to trouble, including life-threatening trouble. I suppose it's related to dare-deviling. Maybe I get an adrenaline rush from pushing the limits. I'm not sure what the reward is, but the risk is something I have often taken, more or less automatically. There is essentially no conscious intent on my part. 

In the recent incident, I sensed immediately that I was looking Death in the eye. I wasn't frightened. More concerned once he got in my house to keep him occupied so he didn't go looking around and finding my wife. Just keep him occupied. He was clearly fucked up on drugs, couldn't figure out how to do simple things (like working a doorknob or a lock) but he had a fixed idea: to dispatch me with his tomahawk. Maybe somewhere in his mind he saw himself as a hero. I don't know.

I don't remember him saying more than a few words the whole time, most clearly I remember him saying "Sit down" shortly before he struck me on the forehead with his tomahawk. Afterwards, I thought: "Is he counting coup?" But I think that's too sophisticated an idea for the state he was in. No, I don't think he was thinking at all. Some other process was going on, driven by drugs, his mental disabilities, and by something deep inside him. I asked him repeatedly, but he could not tell me what was wrong. 

So here I am, still recuperating. The wound is healing, and the black eye the doctor expected to develop is very faint. There's some pain now and then, I sometimes feel disoriented and dizzy, but it passes. I suspect PTSD, but on the whole, each day is just another day, plenty of tasks to get done, and remember to lock the doors and keep the gates closed. 

I contacted the Zen center to get more information on their prison outreach program. I'd heard about it from one of the Zen priests some time ago. He said, if I recall correctly, that it was focused on drug and addiction rehabilitation through Zen practice in the prison setting. I thought that might be something valuable for the guy who attacked me. I'm pretty sure the Zen priest himself has gone through rehab, probably more than once. Which is no negative reflection on him. What I recall being told about the guy who assaulted me was that he had "gone AWOL" from the rehab program he was in (probably by court order) and he had been partying with friends, got fucked up on something -- who knows what -- and had been flying high for several days. He had not been taking his anti-psychotic meds. And he had threatened or run off several other men who'd come to the house of a neighbor where he was staying. He believed, I was told, that every man was a predator on children.

So what do you do? Just send him back to prison and forget about him?

I'm sure some people would do just that, but that's not the way I think about these things or about people in crisis.

I was listening to an interview with Thich Nhat Hanh the other day. One of the topics was "terrorism" and how a Buddhist responds. Or should. He said, "Listening. Deep listening. Compassion." Not with violence. Of course, that's an ideal. It may not work, and it's not always possible, but without even trying, you're sure to see the cycle of violence repeat. Again and again and again. Why not stop?

The question is how to do that without enabling further violence. I was using tactics of Zen compassion and listening during the encounter with the guy who attacked me. I could see a little bit of a change in his behavior every time I asked him "What's wrong?" But it was only for a few seconds at a time, then he'd revert, we'd go around again, and finally he whacked me on the head. I suspect Thich Nhat Hanh would probably laugh at the outcome, and at times, I have laughed too. He would also say, I think, that simply by asking and listening and staying in the moment, I was moving the situation in a positive direction. Yes, some blood was shed, my own, but think how much more there might have been had I not done what I did.

But how to do that without enabling his demon-mind? I know there are ways, but I'm not skilled at them. That's why I'm reaching out to people who might be. 

One thing I didn't think of is the golden Kamakura Daibutsu 

By User: Bgabel at wikivoyage shared, CC BY-SA 3.0

that sits in the Buddha-shrine in the living room, something he must have seen though it may not have registered. In other words, he probably didn't know what it was, but he must have seen it, and eventually, just the sight could have profound effects. 

Who can say?

So. 

That's all I can say for now. 

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A bit of an update. Ms. Ché and I have been subpoenaed for a custody hearing on the guy who thwacked me with the tomahawk. Apparently the prosecutor wants us to testify as to what happened and why we think he should stay in custody and not be released on bail while awaiting trial. 

It's fairly simple. He's a danger to others and himself. 

We learned while discussing the case with the police captain that the dude has a history we knew nothing of. He was, for example, arrested in April for stealing the police chief's car and joyriding. He returned the car but refused to surrender his person, so he was tased, trussed up, and taken into custody. At the bail hearing the judge released him into a supervised rehab program which he left a few days before he assaulted me.

Police are very concerned that this not happen again with this dude. 

They want him locked up and not allowed to roam free. We do too. Clearly the rehab didn't work. If he is schizophrenic and he refuses to take anti-psychotics, but will self-medicate with drugs that enhance psychosis, then he's not really capable of handling freedom of any sort at this point.  

I told a friend that what I'd like to see happen is that he is imprisoned for up to a year, then put in a locked mental health care facility where he learns how to manage his condition -- maybe 3 years minimum; then if he demonstrates that he can and will manage his condition with medication and meditation, let him be on supervised release with a minder, essentially 24/7, for up to five more years.

She laughed. "There are no facilities, and no programs like that." I said, "Sure there are if you're rich enough. He's not. So what happens? Turn him loose? Or put him in prison for years and leave him to rot and let him continue to be a threat to others when he's let out?"

We'll see what happens.

-----------------------------------

There was a pre-trial detention hearing for the guy who assaulted me. We attended by telephone and both Ms. Ché and I testified. She was was traumatized by the experience and retraumatized by telling the story to the court. I felt terrible for her. Wasn't there an easier wasy? Well, I guess not, and by tomorrow I hope she'll feel better. I realize how much she's been holding in. She was in a terrifying situation, and though she handled it masterfully (she'd trained for years) she was really badly shaken.

Dude got to tell his side, and what a tangled tale. He has quite a record, including assault and burglary. His charges now are aggravated assault and aggravated burglary together with false imprisonment. He rattled off a list of clinical diagnoses for which he is prescribed several anti-psychotic medications. He said he had been in a locked men's recovery program run by the corrections department as a condition of his probation after a conviction. He was denied his anti-psychotics and began to act out. He said he asked that an ambulance take him to the hospital, he was hearing voices and having delusions. He was taken to the hospital. It's not cleat if or how he was treated. 

He said he called our neighbor while he was in the hospital and asked her if he could stay at her house, and could she come pick him up. Someone else came, and he was brought to our neighbor's house on Sunday. He did not have his medication and he was becoming more and more delusional. I first encountered him on Monday. Our neighbor was not home, but he was there with her children. 

On Tuesday, he came into our house uninvited and assaulted me, scared my wife, and returned to our neighbor's house where he was arrested a few minutes later.

I'll say this for him. He was lucid during the hearing. He didn't make sense, but at least he could speak in full sentences. 

The judge decided he would stay in custody until trial -- for the safety of himself and others.

Another Dem Political Disaster In the Making

I rarely comment on politics anymore as the situation has been dire and dismal for too long and I'm too old, grumpy and cynical to even bother with it any more. 

As far as I can tell, the Dems are done. They did what they saw themselves elected to do, passing the COVID relief plan of 2020, and that's it. Done. Going home now. Bye-bye. The Congress starts its LOOOONNNNNNGGGGG vacation tomorrow, and they, our elected representatives in the two Democrat controlled bodies, are outa here, so long, too bad about all the things they didn't get done. Maybe next year, eh?

It truly is shameful, primarily for the Dems' failure to recognize that anything is urgent enough to keep them from going home for the summer and letting everything burn while they do whatever it is they do during the hot months. 

Nothing at all is urgent enough for them. Certainly not the looming eviction tsunami. Climate catastrophe. COVID resurgence. Sputtering economic situation. Federal voting rights protections. The faltering lost in the weeds infrastructure half-plan. And on and on and on.

Enh. Too much trouble. Going home now. Y'all can fend for yourself. mkay?

I'm old enough to remember the catastrophic Democratic wipe out in the elections of 2010. At the time, I speculated that it was deliberate. The Dems did not try to hold state and local offices, and they failed to hold on to their congressional majorities, largely it seemed to me because of gross policy failures to adequately address the financial and economic meltdown of the failed previous administration, and perhaps worse, the imposition of what was at the time a very unpopular health insurance mandate (which was not yet in effect) on a long suffering and fearful population. 

This was like a one-two "fuck you" punch to the public, and the public responded by voting them out. 

Bye-bye, so long.

And as is so often the case, those superfluous Dems turned around and blamed the voters for failing to show up at the polls. 

The 2010 R take over of state houses meant that they would be in charge of gerrymandering election districts for the next ten years, possibly longer -- it will be twenty years because Rs still hold the majority of state houses -- and now with voter suppression all the rage among Rs, the outcomes of elections will be determinable by R legislatures and/or election officials regardless of the actual votes. 

It would be astonishing if we hadn't seen this sort of dereliction by Democrats before. In fact, it's so frequent, it's considered normal. Dems don't have a follow-through. They present X+++ as their Plan, they do Y-, and then they go home -- either voted out or as in this case simply because they want to. Nyah. Nyah. 

It's always the voters fault when they do this, never their own.

A lot of internet opinionators hate on the Dems for everything because it's their brand to do so. They claim to be "progressive" or something but objectively they're R shills in "progressive" drag, and they've been around in one form or another since before the internet was born.

And these days we should understand that a lot of Democrats, some in powerful positions in or out of office (particularly but not exclusively in the media) are ex-Republicans who are still ideologically aligned with conservative political and economic ideology. I like to think of Markos over at Daily Kos in this way. He was a die-hard Republican who "switched" during the Bush2 years, especially in support of the Dean campaign in 2004. Dean himself, though nominally a Democrat, was for all intents and purposes a Rockefeller Republican like his parents. Ie: he came from money, was raised in a Republican household, was basically conservative in ideology though with many old-line progressive attributes (Progressivism was originally formulated and implemented within a Republican political context), and had he been elected, he would have governed as a progressive Republican, in contrast to Bush2, who was essentially a corporate shill and war-monger, in other words, a representative of the un-progressive wing of the Republican Party.

Markos likes to claim that his site is intended to help elect "more and better Democrats" -- which it has utterly failed to do. Instead, his and many other ostensibly Democrat-aligned sites on the internet have served to elect many more -- and often worse -- Republicans who have turned into bat-shit fascists. 

I have often criticized Daily Kos for failing to even name a Democrat on its front page, even during election season, while featuring and amplifying Republicans endlessly. Interestingly, the tactic of constantly writing and talking about Republicans while ignoring Democrats doesn't seem to work very well in electing "more and better Democrats," does it?

But since the Republican Party has essentially taken over the Democrats, indeed become "Democrats", we're really dealing with two branches of a Uniparty that both serve corporate interests quite shamelessly, leaving the public to fend for itself. Relying on politicians of either party to serve the public is a fool's game. We haven't seen that happen for generations. And even then, political service to the public was limited.

The failure of Democrats in Congress and the White House to substantially move government from inappropriate corporate service to long-neglected and necessary public service -- again -- is likely to lead to yet another mid-term blow out election for Republicans which signs and signals suggest will be the last more or less "free and fair" election this nation/empire conducts.

Any future election will be an overt sham intended solely to preserve an illusion while protecting and perpetuating neo-fascist oligarchic rule regardless of which team nominally holds power. I think many would say this already happened, perhaps with the Bush v Gore decision of the Supreme Court in 2000.

There's no going back.

Every attempt at restoring some kind of public service -- as opposed to corporate service -- ethic to government since then has failed.

There is no sign any such effort will succeed in the future. Every sign suggests the opposite.

Thusness, Zen and Not Zen

I was considering a lot of Zenish nonsense not long ago and found some wonderful archival videos (home movies and tv film excerpts) of the San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara from the 1960s that was very evocative and memory jogging. What I liked especially were the segments featuring Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, the Japanese founder of the Zen Center.

I was driven to find these YouTube videos by part of a day-long intensive program through the New Mexico Zen center I associate with that featured Kazuaki Tanahashi, a Japanese Zen artist, writer and elder who had been a colleague of Suzuki Roshi and who became part of the San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971. He shared some of his memories of those long-ago times, and I sought to rekindle some of my own. The videos I found more than satisfied my interest and curiosity, and I suspect I'll go back to them many more times. This is one of the playlists I found consisting of segments of a KQED documentary from 1968, close to the time when I first got in contact with the SFZC (c. 1964-65). The film above is quite long but includes most of the clips on the playlist as well as quite a lot of other archival material.

Zen has evolved so much in this country since then it's sometimes hard to believe it's the same practice, and I believe that in many centers these days, it's not. Sukzuki Roshi might laugh, I think, at what passes for Zen these days, and yet he'd probably say "Why not? Sure." Zen Not Zen.

Zen practice had been evaporating in Japan since before the War in the Pacific, and after the War it seemed close to disappearing altogether from the land of its birth in the 1200s AD.

This is kind of ironic given Zen's cultural grounding among samurai and the shogunate; ie: warrior culture. It was in effect Buddhism for warriors and rebels. 

And that was the essence of what Suzuki Roshi brought to the United States starting in the late 1950s.

That was still the essence of what I came across through the SFZC in the mid-1960s.

In those days, Zen was sitting practice (zazen) and other Japanese Zen rituals, study of the sutras, Dharma talks which involved extensive Q&A with participants, and learning to live a fulfilling, happy, and 'generous" life. It was not psychotherapy, grief counseling, or rehab. It was practice, training. It was based on Japanese Soto Zen practice, but it was not monastic Zen, at least not for lay people though some monastic practices were incorporated. And after the Tassajara retreat opened, monastic Zen was offered to those who were interested and could withstand the rigor.

But for the most part the rigors of the Japanese monastery were applied lightly if at all, and the practice was less about form and ritual than it was about doing more or less what came naturally within the structure of Zen. The structural outlines of Japanese Zen practice were there, some of the fashion and props, but most of the practice was involved with the rebel counterculture of the era, and that meant many modifications from the stricter Japanese Zen observance, even if those who were involved with Zen practice in San Francisco and Tassajara didn't quite know what was being modified to accommodate them, how or why.

Following those outlines kept Zen in America sort of Japanese yet not. Zen was becoming Americanized, and after Suzuki Roshi's death in 1971, the San Francisco Zen Center became something else again under his successor, Richard Baker. Something Big. Important. And Eccentrically Fashionable. It was "out there" in the sense that Zen still wasn't commonplace, but it was attracting the rich, the famous or would-be famous, and the well-connected. It was a hotbed for striving to see and be seen among the powerful and influential in California and San Francisco society and what was left of the counter culture. And it began to change.

When I lived in San Francisco in the mid-1970s, I consciously avoided the San Francisco Zen Center though some of the people I worked with attended zazen there (At the Page St. facility) more or less regularly and encouraged me to attend as well as I'd been introduced to Buddhism through the Center when it was at the Sokoji Temple in Japantown. I declined. At the time I was practicing zazen on my own, usually in my apartment on Geary St., but not infrequently in Union Square or in North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, and other destinations where the cable car or 38 Geary bus would take me. (I had a car but hardly ever used it in the City.)

I had learned very early on that zazen practice did not require a formal set up, a zendo, a cushion, or really any of the trappings of traditional Zen practice. It could be done anywhere, any time, for as long or as short a time as one wanted or could, and in any position. Full lotus or no lotus or anywhere in between, or lying down, sitting in a chair, it was fine. The point was to sit without conscious desire or aspiration, without conscious thought, just sit. Once you learned to do that -- it takes practice -- you've found your center, and once you do, you can return to it pretty much any time under almost any circumstance. It was liberating. 

After 10 years or so of regular practice I entered into what I called The Void whenever I sat zazen. It's a state we were warned about because it could be (probably was) a delusion and it was best to let it go if you wound up there. Well, needless to say, striving to "let it go" merely reinforced it in me, so I let go of regular zazen practice instead. 

Afterwards, I engaged in zazen practice a few times a year, always encountering The Void, and being wary about it. I didn't have a formal teacher, so there wasn't really anybody I could discuss it with. 

But I think these encounters with The Void changed me significantly.

After I returned to regular practice this spring, I did not encounter The Void -- so far as I know, and things may have been happening that I was not aware of consciously. I did mention it to one of the teachers, but she didn't think it was particularly worrisome. I found sitting zazen to be easy most times, and that the way of zazen practice was akin to a body memory in me. It centered me. And it was almost automatic. 

I sat to sit, no other aspiration or motivation, and each time it was like a renewal.

I usually didn't sit for more than 20 minutes at a time, sometimes quite a bit less, but I found myself sitting throughout the day, not just at scheduled zazen times. I still do. It's still refreshing and centering and enables me to continue my tasks in a "proper" frame of mind, which means focused on the now and what is real in the now, not wandering (too much) off on tangential matters.

Richard Baker, who took over operations of the San Francisco Zen Center after Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, appears in a number of the films from the '60s. Though I don't recall ever meeting him or Roshi for that matter, I recognized him immediately even when he wasn't identified. Though advanced in age, he's still around I understand, founder of Zen centers in Colorado and Germany between which he spends his time, an honored if somewhat tarnished elder. As far as I know, the Zen center I associate with in New Mexico was started by him after he left SFZC in the '80s, and gifted in the '90s to the current roshi.

Baker took SFZC into realms and in directions I have a hard time thinking Suzukl Roshi would have imagined, particularly when it came to raising oodles of money, going into business, numerous businesses, buying lots of property and otherwise becoming a significant economic and cultural force in the City and the Bay Area. Numerous offshoots were set up around the country as Baker's vision of expansion came true. Much of it wasn't really Zen in traditional sense at all.

Zen Not Zen.

But it was very rewarding financially and very appealing to some people of wealth, fame, and/or power and that helped keep the expansion going for some time, even after Baker Roshi was asked to resign as abbot. 

I won't detail the scandal or scandals to come at SFZC, but I will say that abuse of authority at Zen and Buddhist centers, monasteries and temples is not unheard of and in fact seems to closely parallel financial and sexual improprieties and scandals that have riven most religious endeavours -- probably throughout history. I'm pretty sure it's in the nature of the beast. Zen abbots and roshis are often granted enormous spiritual, moral, and temporal power and authority over their followers and over quite a lot of property and investments. They are supposed to act with wisdom, and most do, most of the time (at least we'd like to think so), but the kind of power and authority religious and spiritual leaders have or can acquire may lead to significant abuse, too. Zen monasteries in Japan can be notoriously abusive to monks and sometimes lay people as well. Mostly it's been forgiven or excused, or even routinized, but the power abbots and roshis have over participants and monks is nearly absolute, and that too often leads to inappropriate action and uproar.

So in some ways, I feel lucky to have encountered SFZC relatively early on, before it became famous and fashionable, before it expanded into Marin, Berkeley, and other locations, before Tassajara, before it was what it became and to some extent still is. I'm grateful that my first encounters with Buddhism and Zen were through Suzuki Roshi, not through some of his successors -- although apparently I was corresponding with Richard Baker when I contacted the Zen Center '60s, all the literature I received was either Suzuki Roshi's own work or that of previous Buddhist and Zen teachers.

As for Suzuki Roshi himself, I think I must have seen some short films of his Dharma talks back in the day, probably at the Midnight Movies which I attended fairly regularly in the late '60s. When I see the clips now, though I may not remember the individual clips, I do remember the settings, the man, and the sound of his voice rather clearly. "This I've heard before" even though it may not have been that particular talk. 

The zendo at the Sokoji temple in San Francisco looks identical to my memories of it -- even though I'm almost certain I was never physically there. I probably saw films of it, again at the Midnight Movies, and that's what I remember. There is a bare possibility I was there once during a visit to San Francisco with my mother when I was 16 or maybe 17, as we would sometimes go on adventures in the City, but I don't remember seeing the outside of the building (very distinctive) which I'm sure I would recall if I'd been there. 

I have no memories of Tassajara as such. When i see films of it, it's an unknown place to me. I was aware of it, though, soon after its acquisition and I can recall meeting some people who had been there. I was encouraged to go to the Zen Mountain Center myself, but I never did.

As for Green Gulch Farm in Marin, until I heard Wendy Johnson talk about it during an intensive workshop this spring, I can't say I'd ever heard of it at all. Isn't that something? How could I have been so oblivious? However it came about, I was oblivious to Green Gulch and to the various business enterprises SFZC set up around San Francisco and the Bay Area, as well as to the various centers and temples that sprang up around the Bay Area led by former students of Suzuki Roshi and Baker Roshi.

Much of the history of SFZC under Baker Roshi and his successors is still around, the players are still active, and their influence is strong. I'm convinced there wouldn't be more than a tiny bit of Zen in the US or much of anywhere outside Japan but for them. I saw a statistic once indicating that there were more Buddhist practitioners and Zen practitioners in the United States than in Japan and that Japanese Buddhism is slowly fading away. Zen was never a popular practice in Japan in any case, as it was meant for the upper classes where it has largely stayed. Some of what passes for Zen in the United States is also very class conscious and seeks to appeal primarily to the upper strata -- where it's had some success.

In Zen, lineage and history are very important. Though it may be convoluted, you can trace any number of Buddhist endeavors right back to Shakyamuni Buddha or his immediate successors. Some lineages may be partly legendary, but others are extensively documented and there is no doubt of their authenticity.

Those lineages can show how and when the practice was modified and by whom. Adaptations and modifications were going on all the time and still are. Various schools of Buddhism and Zen have developed over the centuries, and they sometimes dispute vigorously and occasionally violently with one another. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Buddhists generally make terrible national rulers. Buddhism is not a governing ideology or philosophy; often it's just the opposite. Not anarchy as such, but rebellion, individualism, and practical autonomy are core principles. Gautama Buddha was, after all, a rebel, and his followers were rebels back in the day, and many stories from Buddhist history are of rebellion from whatever Establishment then existed. Even as part of the Establishment, Buddhists are intrinsically rebelling against it. 

Buddhism concentrates attention on the individual coming to "know" him/herself from the inside out, and from that knowing, coming to realize how interconnected all people and things -- physical phenomena -- are. In the end, you come to the realization that at the ground state of being there is no separation into individuals. Everything is one thing, and one thing is everything. 

But you can't do much with that realization as it has no practical application in everyday life. So Buddhists are encouraged to see their autonomous existence as connected with all of existence and thus be compassionate toward existence as one would be with oneself.

It doesn't always work on the individual level, and it seems impossible to work on a large scale. 

Thusness.

(Which will have to wait for another post)

The Zen of Being Assaulted, The Zen of An Assault, The Zen of Being

Those of us who practice some form of Buddhism -- for me it's a sort of slap-dash version of Soto Zen -- do so with the certain or uncertain knowledge that things as they appear to be, things as they are, aren't.

Maybe it was that suspicion that led us to Zen or Buddhism in the first place, the suspicion that what we could perceive was not all of reality, wasn't reality at all. Through the practice of Zen -- or most any form of Buddhism and many other spiritual endeavours -- we come to a better understanding of the incompleteness of ordinary perception, and if we're diligent or lucky enough, we might gain the ability to perceive much deeper or more fully into 'what is.' Suchness.

The practice is a form of training that alters our consciousness, and for most of us, there is no going back once that's happened. What we perceive and the way we perceive it goes through a transformative process which I can't explain though i have experienced it a number of times over the decades  - satori and samadhi they call it -- that is often taken as 'enlightenment' though I doubt it's anything like that of Shakyamuni Buddha's Enlightenment. Or maybe it's the same. I don't know. It can be debated to the finest of grains, and yet cannot be resolved. We know it when we feel it, but what it is, who can truly say?

I came to Zen at a difficult time in my life, the dreaded teen-age years, awkward adolescence. Zen practice helped to get me through it, and it's helped to ground me through an often chaotic life ever since. I'm grateful, since otherwise I probably wouldn't be here to tell the tale. 

Part of Soto Zen and much of Buddhism in general is the recognition that our Buddha nature is to serve. This is often expressed as following the Bodhisattva Way, living a Bodhisattva life. That was the study we engaged in during the intensive Spring Practice Period Ango I participated in earlier this year. 

Shantideva's A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life was our text. He'd run away to a monastery -- run away from the kingship he was supposed to assume on his father's death, run away to the largest and most famous Buddhist monastery and teaching institution Nalanda -- where he found himself beset by bullying and self-doubt. He felt he didn't fit in on the one hand and he was the victim of constant abuse on the other. He felt like leaving the monastery, running away again, but what would be the point? Instead, he stuck it out and in the process formulated the Guide which he presented as a teaching to the other monks at Nalanda, probably to much mockery and derision, but which has long survived him and them and Nalanda itself (destroyed during the Moslem invasion and conquest of northern India in the early 1200s.) 

While bemoaning his fate throughout the Guide, Shantideva argues compellingly for keeping on with the practice and developing bodhicitta, awakened compassion on behalf of all sentient beings, perhaps most especially those which had been his tormentors. 

It's not really necessary to go into all the details, for we have other things to do, but the point is that one on the Bodhisattva path is called to serve with compassion those they meet along the way with the intent of bringing them along to Enlightenment or at a minimum helping them to do so.

I never knew I was on that Bodhisattva path myself, because that really wasn't a conscious part of my practice; compassion, service to those I encountered along the way was simply what I did naturally, or so I thought, and there was no great argument or self doubt about it.

And so time passes, much time, and time came to a few days ago, and an encounter with someone new to me, a youngish man maybe 30 years old, tall, muscular, blond, standing across the street from my house staring at me as I trimmed weeds in my front yard. I greeted him simply and informally and asked if there was anything I could do. He stood still for a moment then came threateningly across the street, getting right up to me, and after some back and forth it appeared that 1) he was on drugs, possibly meth, and not fully aware; 2) he was delusional, paranoid; 3) he had a violent intent. 

What was I to do? I'm a pretty frail old man these days (though I don't like to admit it), and he was young and strong and full of rage and paranoia and whatever substances he had ingested or injected. I asked him, "Is there anything I can do for you?" He fumed and raged some more, ordering me to stay away from the children who lived in the house where he was staying and threatened dire consequences otherwise, and I told him not to worry, I had no interest in the children and that I was going in to my place now. He stomped away back into the house where he was staying.

I didn't think that that was the end of it. I thought there would be more somehow, when or where or how I didn't know, and fleetingly I thought I had met the image of Death -- and not for the first time -- and that he would be back.

Sure enough. 

The next day, I was sitting in my chair in my living room taking a break from trimming weeds in the back  when I sensed someone standing behind me, and I turned and it was him. He'd come into my house through an unlocked gate and door to the laundry room and kitchen, quietly -- I had no idea -- and stood with a hammer or ax in his hand, breathing hard, ready to commit mayhem and violence. I got up and told him to get out of my house. He advanced on me, threatening without words, waving his weapon around, breathing hard, eyes riveted on me. He got within inches of my face. I could smell chemicals in his body, alcohol on his breath. He advanced and retreated, waving his ax or hammer around, passing it from hand to hand, threatening me with it. He said little, maybe nothing most of the time as I remember almost nothing of what he said. The closer he got to me, the more threatening he was, the less I felt fear. 

I said, "What's wrong? You can tell me. What's wrong?" When I did, he seemed to calm down for a few moments, but then he would become emboldened and puff up and wordlessly threaten me again, and I repeated "What's wrong?" several more times. Each time, he would seem to calm down for a moment or two. He went to the french door in the living room and I said, "You can leave that way if you want." He opened and closed it several times and seemed to be bewildered by how to work it and the screen door beyond. He motioned me to come to the door, and I did, and I tried to show him how easy it would be to leave that way, but he pulled me away from the door and shoved me back toward my chair, threatening with his weapon, which I saw now was a tomahawk, and becoming more and more agitated. I asked him his name; he said I didn't need to know. I asked him again what was wrong. He said nothing. I asked about Barbara who lives across the street. He said she wasn't there -- and I flashed on a vision that he'd murdered her. I asked about the kids, Barbara's kids, and he became enraged: "What do you want with them?" and became threatening again. He told me to sit down, pushed me into my chair. "What do you need? How can I help?" I asked him. He breathed hard, waved his weapon around and all of a sudden hauled off and whacked me hard on the forehead with it. I got up, shocked, blood gushing from the wound, and shouted at him "Get the fuck out of my house, NOW!" He retreated, bewildered, but he didn't leave. "Look what you did! GET OUT!" I shouted as blood dropped in big splashes on the floor, down my face and arm. As I shouted at him, my wife came from the bedroom where she'd been napping. "Who are you? What are you doing here? Get out!" she shouted at him, and he seemed to retreat somewhat further, but he didn't leave. She shoved him, but he stood still. I looked around, saw my phone on the chair arm, and took it into the bathroom and locked the door and called 911. 

I could hear my wife at first shouting then talking calmly to the man with the tomahawk in the living room as I reported what had happened to the dispatcher. I staunched the blood from the wound with paper towels while I talked to the dispatcher and listened for anything in the living room. 

I heard my wife say, "Is there anything you need, anything I can do for you?" meaning the man in the living room, the man who had assaulted me. I did not hear him speak at all. But later she would tell me what he was doing: going to the french door, opening and closing it, and seeming to be bewildered by it. Then he went to the front door, she said, puzzled by how to work the lock on the screen door. Then she said he went toward the bathroom door, and she saw an opportunity to escape. She said she ran across the street, calling on Barbara to help but realizing eventually that Barbara wasn't there. She said she saw the man with the tomahawk coming across the street toward her, and she realized she was in a sense trapped and she had to be calm. Suddenly, she said Barbara's huge Pyrenees dog appeared beside her and sat down as the man got to Barbara's front gate. "Is this your dog?" she asked. "Yes," said the man. She said, "You know he gets out and runs around. You really need to keep him inside the gate or he'll get hurt." She said she showed him how to keep the gate latch closed as she inched out of the yard while he went inside it with the dog. They passed so close to one another they touched. He didn't seem to know who she was, and he didn't try to harm her. She would tell me that she thought Douglas, the dog, was her angel at that moment. She said with the guy inside the gate, she could escape and she ran across the street to the house next door to ours trying to raise help, but no one came to the door. The first police car arrived seconds later -- no more than five minutes after I called -- and my wife told him where the man was. He took his AK style rifle and went to Barbara's house where the man surrendered without a fight.

Shortly many police and sheriff's deputies arrived, my wife came back to our house, and I could hear her say through the bathroom door, "Are you all right?" and then "The police are here." I was still on the phone with the dispatcher, who was talking to the police and with my wife. 

I said, "OK," and still bleeding and woozy, I came out to witness the rest of the drama unfold. 

There was of course quite a lot of drama to come, but it was anti-climax, so it's unnecessary in the context of this story.

I'm OK, and I'm extremely grateful that my wife was not harmed and was able to handle the situation so calmly and well. She said she was trained to do it when she worked at the courthouse in California, and she was surprised and delighted that her training came in so handy in real life. 

We had used similar tactics in dealing with this violent stranger. Be calm, express concern for his well-being, offer to help, don't agitate him, don't threaten. My approach was through my Zen training and practice, her's was through professional situational training in a courthouse setting. It's not much different. Someone is violent and seemingly out of it, you do better to try to empathize than to confront and further agitate. 

The fact that I was assaulted and wounded in this encounter with a "demon" was in a Zen context something like the shock that sometimes accompanies Zen training -- of which there are many stories. The shock from the Zen teacher whacking the student or pushing him into the mud or from life-experience is supposed to lead to satori -- sudden enlightenment -- and sometimes it does. Physical wounds can happen, but they heal. The point is to awaken. And by awakening, more fully take in the nature of things. 

I see what happened in those terms, and the awakening is still unfolding. So many layers of lessons. What happened was not the first time I have faced "Death." Far from it. Each time, I learn, but not always as quickly or as much as I should. The lessons and awakening and enlightenment this time is coming in spurts, not all at once, as each layer peels back. I physically sleep a lot since the events described, and I see it as symbolic of my non-awakening. And then when I'm awake, realizations tumble down on me. So much illusion and delusion still to dissolve away.

Just a part of the realization, the Zen of Being, is that "I" am not. Not separate, that is. Each element, every participant, was "me." I confronted myself, I was saving myself, I whacked myself on the head with a tomahawk, I was my attacker, I was my wife, I was the police and medics who came to help. I was the ER personnel who seemed overwhelmed by the crush of patients,  and I was every one of those patients. 

I've since talked to Barbara our neighbor with whom this stranger was staying. He's now in jail on a no bail warrant, and he probably will not be released before trial. Well... you never know. Judges in New Mexico are notorious for releasing people they shouldn't. Barbara says he's an old friend of the family who'd been in rehab but had gone AWOL and he had discovered his brother in bed with his girlfriend. Which was why he was staying with Barbara and her family. Further, he was diagnosed schizophrenic and had not been taking his medication since departure from rehab. He'd self-medicated instead. He'd always been nice to her and she let him stay at her house out of loving kindness  -- and in hopes that he would be able and willing to help her get the house fixed up. But he'd been acting odd since he got there. She knew he'd been partying and suspected he'd taken some drug but she didn't know what. She did not, she said, expect him to be violent, though she said he'd run off a pizza delivery guy and another friend of the family who came to visit. She said he was seeing every man as a predator. But she was shocked he'd invaded my home and attacked me. 

She wanted him to get help because "he's really a good guy" and he's fine when he's taking the right meds and stays away from drugs he shouldn't be taking. But this time he went way over the edge, and she was really sorry for what had happened to me. 

Of course, we hear these kinds of stories a lot, and many of us become numb to them. Too many "really good guys" turn into violent monsters, no? Statistically, no. It doesn't happen a lot. It happens much less statistically than it used to, but it still happens, and the victims are multiple, often whole communities with tragic consequences. "Something should be done," but nothing seems to work, right?

Well, actually, some things do work, and they're not always what we think. The guy who assaulted me is in custody, and he should stay there for a long time. Some are saying permanently, and in a sense I agree. But not in the sense of imprisonment, because I don't believe in imprisonment except for the most incorrigible and the most dire crimes. 

No. If this guy is schizophrenic and if medications do work (I've known a number of schizos who are fine on appropriate meds) then he should be confined for so long as necessary to 'train' him to use the correct medications essentially automatically. And to stay away from self-medication substances. As you might expect, there's a Zen program for that. 😃

There are still many more layers to this incident, and I might describe more in time. But for now, let us be grateful.

Side Note on the Insurrection

I don't know that I've even mentioned the January 6 Storming of the Winter Palace on these pages, but it's not for a lack of interest. The whole thing has to do with the notion that the Government of the USA is frail and fragile and brittle and truly easy pickings for the likes of the Ubermenschen who want so badly to take over.

Out here in the wilderness we have what I can only call cells of would-be Ubermenschen arming up and meeting together to strategize what to do when called by Higher Authority. Do they seize the water tower? The Animal Control truck? How about storming the community center? The tire store?

I don't know what they're doing really. All I know is that there are plenty of them, and they like the idea of being heroes for a cause they think is just. They have their reasons. No one else may agree with them, but they have their reasons, and they believe in their own righteousness -- as well as the evility of practically everyone else.

I was doing a drive by of nearby places just to see what's new. Counted five new residences, oh my. But I also saw ten places where the US flag was flying where I hadn't noticed it before. I know some of them have been Trumpist gathering places since before the 2016 election. But others, no.

There was a time when I saw big ol' truck driving around with Stars and Bars, but not now. Instead, we see trucks with US flags flying, and now houses and barns and gates and such flying flags, too. Just the US flag, no Stars and Bars, no Trump flags. Long after the 4th of July.

"Patriots," right?

Even in the wilderness....

Some House Thoughts -- and Ruminations on What the Tiny House Movement Has Become

 Since I've been feeling better lately, I've got to thinking again about doing a full renovation of our house one more time. It's been fifteen years (!) since the last one, and it's showing its age. Things have deteriorated partly because when I was ill, I could not take care of things properly even with help. It was all "too much."

Now I see how much needs to be done, starting with a new roof, and I've been calculating how much we can afford. Given the jump in the cost of lumber and the unavailability of other equipment and supplies, let alone finding an honest contractor, maybe not much. We'll see, we'll see. In a sense, we might be lucky because the house is largely adobe, but it will still need a lot of lumber, and I'll get to why in a bit. 

Meanwhile, I've thought quite a lot about what's become of the tiny house movement in the 20-some odd years since Jay Shafer began it with his Tumbleweed Tiny Homes. And what's become of Jay Shafer?

The first models I recall were "cute Victorian" and very small, all wood, and perhaps deliberately uncomfortable. They were made on trailers because they were supposed to be alternatives to travel trailers, meant to be towed behind a sturdy pickup, to take you anywhere and provide you with cool and unusual temporary housing unlike anything else then on the road. 

They were uncomfortable because sleeping was always in a loft, often under eaves that sloped sharply guaranteeing bumped heads, accessible by ladder only, and in early models with little or no ventilation ensuring that heat would collect in the loft making sleeping there impossible during the warm months. Later, ventilation and even air conditioning were integrated, but for many people, the loft sleeping areas were still uncomfortable.

Jay's ideas were considered brilliant and radical back in the day and they triggered many. many imitations and evolutions. One of Jay's ideas was that the tiny house was meant to be self-built (probably with friends, and only by necessity with professional help.) The result was limited in size because of regulations governing what could be towed on the highways without a permit. One was supposed to travel with one's tiny house to destinations of beauty, peace, and contemplation. There was something sort of Buddhist about the idea, meditative, liberating. Jay himself often came across as a Zen sprite. Meant to inspire.

Self-built tinys (Tiny Homes On Wheels-- THOWS) are still a thing, but not to the extent they once were, partly because it's difficult or impossible to get ready-made trailers to build on, and custom trailers are very expensive. The planning and work itself is difficult, well beyond the skill level of most do-it-yourselfers, and in most cases, the whole project is going to cost a LOT more than anticipated -- or than a decent used travel trailer that can be reno-ed into a tiny home on wheels.

The typical tiny home today is not cute, is not "Victorian," is nothing like Jay's original plans and ideas, is much large than the early tiny homes, is built by specialists, and costs a veritable fortune in order to create a slice of a contemporary high end house to haul with you when you go for a jaunt. And it seems most never move after their first giant journey from the factory, partly because they are too heavy and awkward to be taken on the road. Most cost in the $100,000+ - $200,000+ range and are permanently confined to "villages" and as accessory dwellings on private property. The whole idea Jay started with proved to be impractical for most of those who took up the idea and propagated the Movement.

Defenders like to say that though the cost is high per square foot, it's about the same as an Airstream, and the result is far sturdier and home-like. It is honestly not as transportable, however. A tiny home is meant to resemble a slice of an expensive contemporary suburban home, not an aluminum sausage, after all. And if you can get one built for about the cost of a new deluxe Airstream travel trailer, why not?

Many of those who have taken over the tiny home market are high-end builders who sell exclusively to well-off clients who, let's face it, are looking to show off and often to profit from the gullible followers of the Movement through AirBNB rentals.

They can pay $100,000 or more for their THOWs that never move because they can rent them for a couple of hundred or more per night to those who want to "experience" the Movement. It's a profitable business for some, not so much for others.

The point of building on a trailer was so the little houses could be towed around, but they were found to be so heavy and awkward in movement that after the first flush of enthusiasm, they largely stopped being towed, even though many were still built on trailers and these days RV certification is considered sine qua non for tiny homes. 

Jenna Spesard went on a "Tiny House Giant Journey" in her Tumbleweed tiny for years and ultimately gave it up. It was uncomfortable, impractical, expensive, and far more limiting than she had imagined. The Dream was one thing. The Reality was something else again. Nevertheless, she is still very active in documenting alternative lifestyles, including tiny home living, and has a reputation as a survivor.

As is, for he record, Kirsten Dirksen.

Bryce Langston likewise with his "Living Big in a Tiny House" series on YouTube is a long-time tiny house documentarian and advocate. He's documented an enormous number of tiny homes in Australia, New Zealand, British Columbia and the United States, always with enormous enthusiasm and interest, and he's documented some of his own builds including a couple of failed ones (a tiny he commissioned in the US that was apparently never finished and was abandoned when he and the builder disagreed over something, and an ambulance build that was never finished because -- apparently -- the vehicle kept breaking down.) Most of the tinys he documents are not moved once they are emplaced, and they are usually placed on land owned by a relative or the owners of the tiny, generally out in the country somewhere.  Very few are found in urban or suburban contexts. That's partly because of zoning and other regulations that disallow them for long-term location on private property or for long-term (sometimes even for temporary) residential use.

An exception to the common prohibition on tinys in an urban/suburban context is the relatively recent use of tinys to house the homeless. This is always difficult, always expensive, but it is showing up more and more in urban areas beset with a growing homeless population. It has been modestly successful in some places, in others, it's little more than a horror-show. 

Some of the worst examples I think are in Los Angeles where acres of concrete or asphalt paved parking lots are dotted with grim pre-fab mostly metal sheds that resemble nothing other than individual prison cells not meant to "house" anybody but just to store them away for a while -- out of sight, out of mind. 

They're horrible, and they should be shameful, but it's LA, and LA, as always, plays itself.

So what to make of Jay Shafer's impulse to build tiny houses back in the day and what it's become? I've always felt there was something ridiculous about it. It's re-inventing the wheel, self-indulgence too. On the other hand, initially it was charming, even for a time delightful, as this sprite, Jay Shafer, came up with sweet little houses that could be towed from place to place and could provide a slice of old-fashioned simple living (a key concept almost absent from the field today) for those on the road to adventure. It wasn't camping or RV-ing. It was compact cabining or even pioneering. 

Jay ran into problems with regulations almost immediately because his tinys didn't fit any known building concept or code at the time. There was no proper way to categorize what he was designing and building, so there was no proper way to permit them. Without proper permits, they couldn't be placed on land, and legally they couldn't be towed. They were in limbo. 

So ultimately Tumbleweed, the tiny home company he co-founded, settled on providing plans for self-builders and building a few tinys themselves and getting them certified as RVs, meeting RV standards and codes, but with understanding that once they are delivered, they are probably not going to be towed again.

Some builders and owners have ditched the THOW concept altogether because they never had any intention of traveling with their tiny. Instead they simply want to build and live in a small house or have a small house (casita in New Mexico) on their property for occasional guests or to rent out. Well, good luck!

In many parts of the country, it's not possible. A "dwelling unit" is required to be of minimum size (generally 600sq ft, but often more) and only one is permitted per property; accessory dwelling units smaller than the minimum are often not permitted at all. And tinys are almost never more than 350 sq ft, often much smaller. 

Where they are permitted (and more places are allowing them due to a critical housing shortage)  it's typically out in the country somewhere. And out in the country, it's kind of absurd to spend $100,000 or more for a tiny that may be no more than 300 sq ft, when an entire 1,200 sq ft or large mobile home can be purchased and emplaced for about the same cost. 

What would most people rather live in and why?

Of course Jay Shafer never envisioned the $100,000+ tiny home (or at least I hope he didn't.) And his point with tiny homes (simplicity!) has been largely lost.

And what's happened to Jay Shafer? From what I've read, he's essentially disappeared. Gone into hibernation mode. Not active on social media, disabled email, silent companies. And not for the first time.

From what I saw of him prior, he struck me as possibly bi-polar, and if that's the case, I can understand why he might go into a slow-down, quiet-down phase of life. But I also think what the tiny house Movement has become (a plaything for the rich; storage bins for the homeless) must be very disturbing to him. That's not what he intended. 

Much of the initial idealism has disappeared replaced by... showing off.

Our house is not tiny -- for us, it's big, one of the biggest houses we've ever lived in, so big a couple of rooms are closed off more or less permanently; it's old and creaky and needs renovation; hard to heat in winter, hard to cool in summer; leaky roof, leaky pipes, ancient electric (knob and tube in some places!) flooring needs replacing, and realistically, the whole kitchen, laundry room, and entrance hall (once an open porch) needs rebuilding, sewer lines need replacing, be nice to have a new bathroom. We have a couple of small buildings on the property that could be renovated into tinys, but I don't think we'll do that. At one time, I thought we might, but not now. 

What comes after the Tiny House Movement? Can it continue to evolve? I don't know. Right now, I don't know whether we'll be able to once again renovate our home, either. 

Right now, it's not at all clear what the future may -- or may not -- hold for us or anyone else.

Here's an interesting discussion that went on over a number of years regarding Jay Shafer and his work, including his $5000 tiny created in 2018:

https://tinyhousetalk.com/jay-shafers-designs-and-builds-a-5000-tiny-house/

Wake Up -- A Life of the Buddha by Jack Kerouac (1955)

Wow. I has no idea. I did not know that Kerouac wrote this until I found a reference to it in a paper on Gary Snyder a couple of weeks ago.

In 1955 Kerouac was not yet famous or the icon he would become after the publication of "On the Road" in 1957. Kerouac was still in precarious circumstance when he set out to write "A Life of the Buddha" but it doesn't really show in the work itself. There is very little of Kerouac in the book unlike most of his others which are so deeply personal.

No, "Wake Up" is a more or less straightforward retelling of the Life of the Buddha from the Sutras in English for Americans, and as approachable as any number of Catholic "Life of St. So-and-So" pamphlets and books. Or more pertinently, "The Life of Jesus."

In fact, that seemed to me to be the model Kerouac followed in writing his "Life of the Buddha."

And he makes explicit comparisons between Jesus and Sakyamuni Buddha in a few places. He sees them as kindred spirits. 

Which of course many people do. And in a sense they probably were. In their own times and later.

Much is made in Kerouac biographies of his strict Catholic upbringing and strenuous Catholic belief. Yet from my perspective having read some though not all of his books, he had submerged most of his Catholicism in a conceptual Buddhism that encompassed the "good parts" of Catholicism and left the rest behind.

He was a practicing Buddhist but not a practicing Catholic (though he could be).

I'm still not entirely sure where he picked up his Buddhism. It's clear from "Wake Up" and other works that he's studied Buddhism deeply and for quite a long time, too. None of it is unfamiliar to him. He could be a Dharma teacher if he wanted to be, and in some passages of some of his works, that's exactly what he was.

I'm assuming he must have encountered Buddhist teaching in New York in the early '50s, perhaps through Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs, maybe among others of the Early Beats. I don't know. But I feel it had to have been years before he wrote "Wake Up" -- or it wouldn't have been as sensitive and as straightforward a telling as it is. 

I came to Zen in the mid-'60s through Kerouac's "The Dharma Bums" (1958), but from all the evidence, Kerouac is not really a Zen practitioner; Gary Snyder (Japhy Ryder) in "The Dharma Bums" is. Kerouac's Buddhism is more Indian or Tibetan, Theravada rather than Mahayana, whereas Snyder's is becoming very strict and Japanese in the book. At the end, Snyder has sailed off to Japan to join the Sokoku-Ji temple monastery in Kyoto where he will learn and practice for years, and return to America as a Zen Master --  in I believe 1965. 

And it will change him. I would say not necessarily for the better, but that's just me. 

From "Wake Up" and other works, I get the impression Kerouac was very much a Believer in Buddhism, much as a Catholic or other Christian believes in Christianity. 

From a Buddhist perspective, that's a mistake, perhaps a critical one, because Buddhism is not a religion. You don't believe in Buddhism, you practice it. The Dharma is a path, way, not the end point. Nirvana comes or not, but it doesn't matter. As long as you stay on the Dharma Path (following the precepts, etc.) then you're on the road to Enlightenment, and once Enlightened, you're on the road to Nirvana -- eventually. Don't worry about it. Just follow the Path. Keep going. Don't give up, even if you fail, make mistakes, or get confused. 

As I was taught many years ago, "The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, and the Sangha is with whomever you find on the Dharma Path -- even if they don't know it."

So there were times when I was reading "Wake Up" that I felt Kerouac was making an attempt to "own" the Buddha, something like Christians "own" Jesus and the Gospels. It won't work very well, at least not in the form of salvation. There is no salvation as such in Buddhism. As I said to one of the Dharma teachers, my practice is "chopping wood and carrying water." In other words, my practice is my life. ("The Dharma is you.") Whatever I do, day by day, even hour by hour, is practice. And it is never perfect, never ideal, never complete. Whatever is, is. 

I think about Kerouac ("Ti Jean" as he referred to himself from time to time. I think it was his mother's endearing name for him) and how he drank himself to death in 1969, still I imagine believing in Buddhism and probably believing that drinking to excess for as long as he did -- until it killed him -- was a form of practice, and in a sense, of course, it was. Of course he was violating the precepts, but that's what people do. Drinking to excess is a direct violation of the precepts, as were so many of the other things Kerouac did during his brief life. Some Buddhists would say (and I suspect he would say) that he was living out the karma he was born with. Interestingly, the way he presents karma in "Wake Up" is essentially no different than genetic inheritance. He wrote in 1955 at a time when psychological inheritance was being made much of in plays and movies like Maxwell Anderson's "The Bad Seed," essentially arguing that what you inherit from your ancestors -- including your "mind" and its many impulses -- is immutable and inescapable. 

Rhoda Penmark was a murderer because her mother's biological father was a murderer. She had inherited the "psychopath" gene from him. There was nothing (much) she or anyone else could do about it. 

That's as may be. The Buddhist path says there is something you can do about it by following the precepts and the Eightfold Path. In that way it's something like AA or psychotherapy. No matter what your karma -- or genetic inheritance -- you can be in charge of your own life and change what you do and what you leave behind, though it may take many, many lifetimes to work out all that "ancient twisted karma" you're born with.

I don't know what sort of ancient twisted karma Ti Jean may have inherited. I've read that he was alienated from his father, but I know no details. Also that he was very close to his mother and sister, though their relationships were clearly complicated. The loss of his brother when he was a child was very troubling for him. And at least from the time he was at Columbia and soon thereafter, he acted kind of wild and crazy given the conformity of the times. Yet except for his alcoholism and frequent heavy drug use (mostly amphetamines and marijuana), he was never as wild and crazy as some of his Beat friends and colleagues proudly were and as he sometimes says he wishes he could be.

But "Wake Up, A Life of the Buddha" isn't about Kerouac. 

It's about Siddhartha Gautama, Sakyamuni Buddha, World Honored One, as told by the Sutras and commentaries, interpreted "for Americans today" by Jack Kerouac. As I say, I did not know he wrote this until I did some research on Gary Snyder and found a reference to it in a scholarly paper about Snyder. Snyder became an acknowledged Zen master -- as no doubt he still is -- and Kerouac wrote "Wake Up" during the period he and Snyder were palling around and climbing Sierra peaks and such well before Snyder left for Zen studies and practice at a monastery in Japan. 

To me, "Wake Up" follows the standard stories of the Buddha's life, Enlightenment and teachings very closely. It's not any more embellished than the usual stories are, but there are several passages of deeply felt poetics in the work that are more Kerouac than the Sutras. Yet they stick with the story. They are not out of place. 

It's just too bad this is not a more widely known work than it is. 

Some Post-Practice Period Ruminations

It was good to get back into regular zazen practice, though my way is not exactly that of the Zen center. Of course, "my way" started with instructions from the San Francisco Zen Center c. 1965 -- before it became hip and trendy, before New Age, before hippies. Zen was still very Japanese in those days. We were followers of Suzuki Roshi's training, and he went way back in Japanese Soto Zen practice. I think he was made a monk when he was 11, and that would have been sometime around 1915 or so. He brought Zen in perhaps its strictest and purest form from Japan to the United States in the late 1950s, but it didn't really catch on until a decade or so later. Even then, it was still very Japanese.

It isn't any more. Not really. And I've struggled with that. Some of the forms are still observed -- robes and chanting in "Sino-Japanese" (the chants transliterated into syllables, but no translation as such). Zendos. Cushions to sit upon. In fact The Cushion seems to have become the central fact of modern Western Zen. Being On the Cushion is sometimes thought of as Everything. Ok. Well. That's interesting.

During practice period, we had three one hour sits a day and then during sesshin, sitting increased to up to 8 hours a day and could go longer. For me? No. 

Sitting is very important in Zen practice, necessary in fact. But... a wealth of caveats are necessary too. 

Remember, I took up Zen based on instructions from San Francisco Zen Center in the mid '60s. I wasn't at the Center, so I couldn't practice the way they did with such rigid and formal discipline. I wasn't a monk, and I couldn't be. Guess what? I was told I didn't have to strictly observe the forms, that learning how to sit and making time to sit regularly, and the study of the Sutras and Paramitas was essentially all a lay practitioner of Zen needed to do. 

Zen appealed to me because it was so lean and straightforward. You could sit zazen anywhere, any time for as long or short a time as needed. By studying the Sutras and Paramitas, by incorporating the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, becoming the Dharma as it were, you were doing all you really needed to do. 

The rituals that Zen monks and officiants engaged in at temples and monasteries and in this country at Zen Centers that weren't either temples or monasteries were akin to Catholic or other church services. Necessary for some -- some of the time -- but rarely appropriate for continual practice by lay-people.

Who have lives to live. The point is to get to a point in practice where "practice" is everything you do in life. 

There is nothing that is Not-Practice. 

So what happens when this rotten old bhikkhu (as I call myself sometimes) enters the more rarefied and ritualized modern Zen world, and I look around and say, "Wait, this isn't Zen."

And yet it's appealing for what it is, a sort of amalgam of psychotherapy, counseling, Tibetan Buddhism, and bits and pieces of a Zen tradition barely recalled or understood mixed with memories of Santa Fe New Age.

OK, fine, let's go with it, see where it leads.

It was a remarkable experience, and an astonishing reminder of not only where I've been in my wandering bhikkhu phase, but where I'm headed, too.

I learned, among other things, that so much I thought I had forgotten was still with me and had been so incorporated into my day-to-day life, I took it for granted and didn't notice.

Very vivid memories were brought back, and I learned that those memories ("Dreams" if you want) are guideposts. They're there to be recollected, yes, but also to point forward: this is where you've been, and where you're going.

None of what I learned over the years has gone away. It's all still there. And for whatever reason or no reason, I'm not quite done yet. 

I've never lacked for teachers or guides. The Void I entered all those years ago showed me a vision of Truth that has never gone away, and it never left me.

Being as isolated as I've been during this pandemic was disruptive to what had come to be my routine as "bhikkhu in the world." That's not a bad thing at all. 

I've already seen how my viewpoint and actions have changed since starting the practice period, and how much I've recovered, and how much more I need to get done.

Zen is there as a pivot point, but it's not a whole lot more than that, and by golly, it's not for everyone. Nor is Buddhism. It is simply a way among many to exist in the world and act on our better nature. 

🙏