"Why Are You All So Grim?"

A story is told of Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master, visiting Green Gulch Farms in Marin County, California, sometime in the '80s during a period when the San Francisco Zen Center (of which Green Gulch like Tassajara was a part) was going through some very stressful times.

As he walked around the farm and walked the path of kinhin (walking meditation) used by the residents, visitors and monks, a path that led through forest and toward the sea, he is said to have said:

"You have one of the most beautiful kinhin pathways in North America. Why are you all so grim?"

And when I heard that from a long-time worker, student and teacher at Green Gulch, I had a sudden flash of enlightenment (satori) that yes, students of the Dharma, whether through Zen or some other way, are often, too often, far too grim -- at least appear to be.

We sometimes become attached to adversity and suffering. I witnessed it a few minutes ago when reviewing yesterday's Dharma talk by the Zen center's Roshi.  And when we are attached, we suffer and become grim, even in the presence of natural beauty such as that at Green Gulch. We are not, in other words, in the moment, experiencing and appreciating what is there and then. We are instead immersed in our misery or as we learn from the sutra of Vimalakiriti, in the delusion of our misery.

It's been interesting to see how Vimalakirti's teaching has been approached during this practice period. Many have said they never knew of it, never read it, never studied it, and some at least have not read it even now during the practice period. Of those who have, they seem somewhat off-put by it; it's not in the standard pattern of Buddhist sutras, in fact it's far outside the mainstream. It's in a word: radical.

It's a pageant, it's magical realism, it's a knock upside the head, not unlike the whap with the tomahawk I experienced in July from a stranger who invaded my home.

It's a "Hey!" 

Vimalakirti is saying "Hey!" to all the gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike that, "Hey! You're doing it wrong!" Why are you all so grim?

Vimalakirti has taken on the sickness of the world, as a bodhisattva would, and he is therefore physically "sick" -- ie: feigning sickness. But his realization and teaching is that "sickness" and "suffering" are illusions, delusions if you want, and attachment to them perpetuates them. Detach, liberate yourselves, and even if you are physically ill -- or the world is sick -- on the material plane, that is not, by any means, the ultimate reality. 

I've been reviewing some of Suzuki Roshi's teachings from back in the day. He tries over and over again to get this very point across. Ultimate reality is that there is no "reality"; it's all an illusion. Words fail, however, because our concepts are illusory themselves. The ground state -- what I call the ground state -- is inexpressible. It is neither there nor not there. Neither real nor unreal. It's beyond that. Beyond duality.

But saying so doesn't tell us much. You have to experience it, which Vimalakirti does... But having done so, the challenge is to communicate it. Ever the challenge. Communicate it to the gods and goddesses, Buddhas and bodhisattvas, monks and laypeople alike. 

Pfft. 

Well, he tries. And they all say they understand. But of course they lie.

Maybe the trick really is to just ask:

Why are you all so grim?

Thinking Back, Catching Up

Unheard Dharma talks are piling up, I have one chapter to go in the study text, and I'm scheduled for a practice interview with one of the Zen teachers this afternoon. The truth is, I haven't gotten back into the rhythm and discipline of a Zen practice period of sitting and study and meditation and contemplation and mindful effort. I thought it would come back really quickly after that whirlwind tour of the Other California, the one less seen or known. But no. It hasn't.

Part of what I've seen throughout my return to conscious Zen practice after a period away from it is a tendency of some practitioners to want to be perfect. They desire, nay demand, perfection of themselves certainly and sometimes from others. They seek and see perfection, for example, in their teachers; the elevated illuminated ones, the living bodhisattvas, enrobed and wise.

Well, no. I have a hard time doing that, though I think I am open enough to the idea of what might-could be. I saw for myself how a Dharma talk on the Diamond Sutra by one of the current teachers led me in due time to return to the rhythm and discipline of Zen practice, at least for a while. But when I asked him if would consider taking me on as a student, there was no answer, and I realized soon enough that no answer was an answer and it wasn't "no" nor was it "yes." It was silence to open my own consciousness to the fact that I've had teachers all my life and I still do. What is one more? Or one less? 

Also to open my consciousness to the fact that I am and have been a teacher for a very long time, and I am one now. We study the concept of bodhicitta and bodhisattvas, and we study how they are described in the sutras, and we study exemplars, and we aspire or desire to emulate them. But many of us in the program don't realize how close we may already be, nor necessarily do we see the same qualities in one another. We may see or seek them in our teachers, but in Zen it always circles back to we ourselves.

I think back to one of the earliest teachings I received from Suzuki Roshi when I was a snot-nosed rebellious teenager:

The Buddha is within you, the Dharma is you, the Sangha is with anyone you encounter who is on the Dharma Path.

Buddha-Dharma-Sangha are the Three Jewels of Buddhist practice. We are rarely fully conscious of this fundamental though. We seek the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha outside ourselves, and in truth, it's not there. We won't find it there because it is not there. 

The Dream I had of being in San Francisco after I had experienced The Void during zazen is a case in point. The teacher I told the story to called it a Dream, but that's what "Reality" is in a Buddhist context. Real-Not-Real. The cognitive dissonance of it all. And so forth. And what she saw in my story was basically the Living Truth: the Buddha is within, the Dharma is what is, the Sangha is with whomever, wherever, whenever.

I described how that could be in the past-present-always.

There's a series of podcasts by David Chadwick, an early adopter of the Zen brought by Suzuki Roshi from Japan and popularized by the San Francisco Zen Center at Tassajara and (interestingly) in Los Altos Gatos. Some of what he is describing of the Early Days is not at Sokoji Temple in San Francisco in other words. There was no there there. The there, wherever it was, was at the tips of the branches. At Tassajara, at Los Altos Gatos, Berkeley, Marin, wherever Suzuki Roshi and Richard Baker reached out. 

Chadwick -- DC as he calls himself -- recollects what it was like and some of the people who were there at the Beginning, or Not-Beginning. It was so very different. Well, it was a different world, wasn't it?

I can see why Richard Baker and Suzuki Roshi wanted out of the City, to spread out from the City, to put down permanent roots in the country. The Sokoji city temple was abandoned -- well, they were asked to leave -- shortly after the branches were established. Indeed, before some of them even had the dust covers removed. 

They were asked to leave by the Temple board because they appeared to be uninterested in serving the Japanese American community which provided the space and sought to practice. They were more interested in attracting and serving/being served by Anglos and the nascent (white, very white) counter culture of San Francisco and the Bay Area.

Los Altos Gatos may have come before Tassajara, I'm not sure, probably not, but who knows? Time is not necessarily linear.

Anyway, during that time, I was a kid out in the Central Valley, a lone outpost of Zen in a place that San Franciscans still don't quite acknowledge as "real." They shudder to think. It hurts their delicate sensibilities. The Central Valley is a place to move through quickly if at all. An Empty Quarter. 

It's kind of like where I am now compared to the delicate sensibilities and sophistication of our Santa Fe friends. 

Well, San Francisco, Santa Fe, what's the difference? 

I can't say that Buddhism or Zen has ever been much of a struggle for me. It just seemed natural. Zen postures -- the strictness of them as described by Suzuki Roshi -- were difficult, and I can't do them now due to infirmity -- but... soon enough I learned that you don't have to strictly follow the "rules" and you can still practice zazen.

If you're a monk practicing at a temple then yes, perhaps, but most of us are not and don't aspire to be, so why make ourselves suffer unnecessarily? We have other more important things to do with our practice. Yes?

The core teaching of the Vimalakirti text we're studying is: (in my view) "You're doing it wrong." In other words there is an ease and simplicity to the practice that the rule bound can't grasp. Let go. It's all right. You'll be fine, and you'll find wonderful things.

And this was 2,500 years ago, during the Buddha's lifetime. 

So I'm catching up but slowly. Still a little zzzzzhy from the trip. That's OK. I've seen some of the Dharma talks and they make me laugh. I had one practice interview before I left, and I laughed then too. 

Without laughter, why Zen?

On Returning Home to New Mexico After One Last Trip to California

My travel companion and I made it back to New Mexico yesterday, and we've been decompressing and dealing with the altitude ever since. Spending a week near sea level for the first time in years means that when you get up at altitude (6-7000 ft) it takes some getting used to. 

And there's all the recollection of the trip to do. My companion may think of herself as "a simple girl from Gallup" but she's been in the Army serving in Korea, is finishing her Masters at a prestigious East Coast university, is planning on a trip to Europe a week from now (subject to change due to possible upcoming job), and is becoming well known in art and museum circles as a force of nature. She's an artist, a curator, a scholar, and a fine human being. The rest of us could take a lesson or two from people like her.

She toured me around Gallup when we got back. It was good because I was not that familiar with the town, and I certainly didn't know all the hidden pockets and the many stories she could tell of families and squabbles and living rough. Gallup has a notorious reputation, some of which is well-deserved, for racism, drunken Indians and more than its share of violence. But she obviously feels great empathy and high regard for the place and the people. So I was grateful to be taken around, to meet an old friend of hers, and to just consider the kind of life she's led, how it differs from the Standard Model, and how those differences can be an advantage and a curse. And to contemplate the differences between her life now and what it was like when she was "just a simple girl from Gallup."

She's been to California before, but she never experienced the places we went or if she had been to one or more of them (like Monterey) she'd never spent the time we did or explored the corners and intersections we did.

Nor had she seen a buffalo herd or an elephant seal refuge in California. Never stood on a beach watching a sea otter hammer a clam shell on its chest. She'd never seen ostriches running free in California nor had she visited a California mission before. She'd never been to Big Sur, never crossed the Bixby Canyon bridge, been in a redwood grove or late lunched at Nepenthe. Never been on Highway 1 at all that she remembered. 

She'd never seen Hearst's Castle glowing in the sunset light atop La Cuesta Encantada, nor did she know exactly what it was.

She'd never had split pea soup for breakfast, nor, honestly, had I. But I love Andersen's Split Pea Soup, and soon enough, so did she. But these days, it's hard to find, and we left the pea soup restaurant with cans to take home. 

She'd never been to the Cesar Chavez National Monument, nor had I, and we both got choked up remembering or learning the story of the rise and struggle of the United Farm Workers Union. She'd never seen field workers in the numbers we saw on our rural journey through the farms and orchards and vineyards and ranches. She saw how hard they worked and sensed how little they were regarded. 

She'd never been a fan of John Steinbeck, but since she read the opening paragraphs of Cannery Row on a street sign in Monterey, she thinks she'll become one. I gave her the book. 

She's never been a fan of "Ti Jean" Kerouac and never read his books, but she thinks she might become a fan and read his books after experiencing parts of Big Sur and hearing my story of how he drank himself to death after achieving fame for On the Road, c. 1957. I gave her a copy of his creative nonfiction novel Big Sur and asked her to read it after reading Cannery Row.

Returning home to New Mexico. Fall afternoon, sun low in the southwest, almost fruitcake weather. Oh so glad we went. Oh so glad to be home, greeted by a passel of kedies. "Where have you been?!" 

Where I needed to be. And now where I need to be. The Dharma Talks I missed while on the road are now posted online. I'll give myself time to decompress and catch up. Routines will return. Life goes on.

Briefly Back to the Theater

As I say, this trip is in part a pilgrimage, and yesterday we were able to briefly revisit the theater where so much of my life and Ms. Ché's life was centered from 1973 to 1983, and really long after that. 

We arrived unannounced and found an unlocked door and proceeded into the lobby where a startled young woman asked, "Yes?" Indeed.

And I explained that I was an alumnus of the institution and was interested in just looking into the auditorium for a few minutes' nostalgia and memory. Would that be possible? And I've brought a friend so she could see where we spent so much of our youth. Could we?

"No. Well, maybe. The theater is closed for the time being, and we're very short staffed, but... " She was acting confused. Another young lady came from behind a door.

"Yes?" So I explained again, and again I was told about the short staffing and how it might be difficult to find someone to go with us, but she would check, and return shortly. 

A few minutes later a young man, well young to me, came through the lobby and greeted me and my travel companion, and I explained one more time, and he was thrilled and delighted, and he said, "Sure, come along," and off we went on an extended and compelling tour of the theater where literally my life was transformed and saved in a way all those many decades ago. 

It hasn't changed a whole lot. Some of it hasn't changed at all. Those changes that have been made are, so far as I could tell, for the better, much better, and everyone involved I think should be proud. 

We went up and down and all around and at times I felt I was home again. I think this is a big part of why I wanted to go on this trip. It's not just for the memories and nostalgia for les temps perdu. It is the recapture, if only for a moment, of "home" -- wherever and whenever that home was established, and whatever sort of home it might have been.

I've noticed the places we've avoided and though I've lived there, they were never "home." Everywhere we've stopped and spent time has been a home-place of one sort or another, and every time we've had wonderful encounters with extraordinary people who in some ways were always there. Even in Monterey, where I've never lived but have always felt a kinship to, comfortable and in place, we had extraordinary encounters with remarkable people, some strangers, some not, and that's how this trip has gone throughout.

And so it goes. Briefly I was back in the theater that became so much a part of me many decades ago. It was strange that at times we were the only ones there, and my mind's eye was filling it with casts and crews and the swirl of activity that was intrinsic to the operation. Ghosts, if you will, of what once was everyday. Now because of Covid, the work has stopped or been transferred off site or... well, it's complicated. The place could even be called an empty shell of what it once was, and yet for me all that life and life-giving and sharing is deeply, deeply a part of me and a part of that place. The building houses spirit. Those of us who have been through it know that, as did our tour guide, the current production manager, and we... bonded?.. with our shared sense of what was and what could be, despite the generation or more that separated us in age.

Things change, oh yes. But some things stay the same.

And the Zen of all this continues to astonish. Enlightenment? Nah. 

Well, maybe...😉🙏

Making Pilgrimage at the Bixby Canyon Bridge

We were on a tight schedule, and Highway 1 twisting along the coast of California is not exactly a quick drive, so we didn't have a whole lot of time to gawp in wonder, nor did we stop particularly close to the Bixby Canyon Bridge of lore and legend and practically every fast driving commercial and movie we've ever seen. That's how my travel companion knows it, whereas I see it as an emblem or avatar of Kerouac's "Big Sur" -- the creative non-fiction novel of his descent into alcoholic madness after the publication and sudden success of "On the Road" in 1957.

Jack Kerouac went to dry out in Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin or shack located some distance up the canyon from the bridge, but its presence is a character in the novel. He and those who came to visit him in the shack (and who brought him more liquor) passed under it and it figured as an arcing force throughout the novel. 

Many make pilgrimage to the bridge during the year, and when we arrived, many were already there, performing ceremony and worshiping. So we didn't stop at the first turnout. It was pretty much full,  and we'd already encountered stupid people in the road not far from it. 

We stopped at the second turnout -- which is where the picture above was taken. The bridge is barely visible in the distance -- something I like. 

There were pilgrims, but only a few, at the second turnout, and we had an interesting encounter with one who thought he was a comedian. There is a steep cliff after all below the turnout. Someone could fall. 

We took many pictures, I took deep breaths, became somewhat emotional and then we continued on our journey. 

In some ways, the whole trip is pilgrimage. 

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Note: Alternate names: "Bixby Bridge," "Bixby Creek Bridge," "that famous bridge neat Big Sur," "Big Sur Bridge", "that bridge on Highway 1," "Rainbow Bridge" etc., etc.

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While I was going through some of the literature we brought back from our trip to California, I came across a reference to this:

In some ways, it's horrifying. In other ways, aww, kinda cute and kinky, no?

When I first saw the reference, I thought "Wow, is that the ranch a little further up the canyon from Ferlinghetti's shack where 'Ti Jean' went to dry out and where that sad donkey who came to greet him lived?" But no. This is on top of the hill with a view of the canyon and bridge, not in the canyon by Ferlinghetti's shack. 

I'm sure other wonders will appear in due time...

Traveling Zazen

We made it to our first destination in California on Sunday evening, went to work on our tasks and socialized on Monday, and hopefully we'll complete our tasks here and socialize some more this evening then set off for our next destination. 

How do you practice zazen on the road like this, doing so many necessary things and socializing with friends and relations you haven't seen for a while? Where's the time to squeeze in a little meditation or just sitting in a whirlwind schedule like we've been keeping?

Right now there is a morning sit at the Zen center which I have accessed online, and I spent at least four minutes sitting before I started composing and writing this post. That's probably not enough of a sit, and I'll probably squeeze in a little more time later in the day, but it was enough to let me change my frame of mind and calm a little of the nerves that get me all agitated when I'm agitated in the city, with all the traffic and people and noise around. It's overstimulation for me. I need the relative calm tranquility of the country.

And yet no. I need the tranquility of where I live when I'm there, but here I am in the city in California, skies filled with smoke from the fires burning in the Sierras, I'm sitting in a motel room next to a rushing freeway the sounds of which are not masked much by the a/c blowing modestly cooled air. 

And this is what I need, because this is where I am. And so it will be through the rest of the day and through the days to come. We'll be in very, very different environments, strange locales, meeting with people here and there, on the road a lot, staying in small hotels and large, paying fortunes for gasoline, and so forth. Along the route, we'll encounter opportunities to witness, to view, to appreciate, and sometimes to sit. 

This is the Fall Practice Period and there is a fairly rigid schedule that we can't and don't keep to on the road. But it's there, and I can touch it and check in whenever we have the opportunity, need and desire.

I may only practice zazen a few scattered minutes a day. I may study the text only a few minutes before I fall asleep. But they're there -- the opportunities to sit and to study -- even as we are amid furious activity in the city, sitting beside the ocean at Big Sur, wandering a path through the redwoods, or sampling some Danish food treats in Solvang. 

Every moment of every day is Practice if we let it be.

Why I Stayed Away From the San Francisco Zen Center When I Lived In The City

I lived in the city of San Francisco for a year or so in the mid 1970s. The Hippie era had passed, of course, but the Counterculture was still very much underway. San Francisco was still providing the heartbeat of many alternative ways of life, most of which proved to be dead ends, quite literally in some cases such as the People's Temple mass suicide in Guyana. That happened after I departed San Francisco for the country at large, but Jim Jones and his operation on Geary were very much apparent and in the news when I lived there. 

As was the San Francisco Zen Center on Post, no Bush, or was it Page (I think! Man, I lose track of locations over the years...) where I was invited to attend zazen many times but never did. No. I stayed away.

Here's the thing. Some of the people I was working with had attended zazen at the Sokoji Temple and had moved with Suzuki Roshi to the Page Street facility in the later '60s. Zen was popular among a certain set of artists and actors and such -- as it still is. 

I'd been practicing on my own for oh, a decade or more, a practice I began after getting in touch with the San Francisco Zen Center when I was a teenager, possibly no more than 15. I forget the exact year, it was either 1965 or '66 -- or in a partial memory as early as 1964. The literature and instruction I received was enough to start me on a lifetime Zen path, but because I was not in San Francisco at the time and could not be and there was no nearby Zen sangha become part of, I was essentially a solitary Zen practitioner in the wilderness and I became accustomed to that state. "The Buddha is within you; the Dharma is you; the sangha is among whomever you find along the Dharma Path."

By the time I lived in San Francisco, the Zen Center had become fashionable. In fact, it was so fashionable that people competed for spots in the zendo in hopes of brushing knees and elbows with some of its famous practitioners. This grated on me, rubbed me very much the wrong way. What was the point of sitting zazen among a crowd whose minds were taken up with fame and notoriety. Was this any better than the jostling at the People's Temple or the ever-passing scene at Grace Cathedral? (Note: a friend from my time in San Francisco got AIDS and died and his ashes are interred at Grace Cathedral I learned years later...)

I blamed Richard Baker for the fame-seeking that seemed to overwhelm the San Francisco Zen Center. He had been the one I corresponded with early on. He took over when Suzuki Roshi died in 1971, but he'd been kind of the shaper of the Zen Center as an institution from well before that, and his influence is still strong -- which I don't judge as either good or bad, but it is an influence that shapes the SFZC and many others in this country and elsewhere -- toward an appeal to the rich, famous, renowned, politically powerful and those prominent in the arts and academics. 

That's not in and of itself a bad thing, but when it becomes the totality or near totality of the focus of the institution, it warps it, I think, in ways that do it no service in a Buddhist context and form barriers to the bodhisattva way of life for practitioners. 

I struggle with this a bit in the context of my current Zen practice and setting. The Zen Center I'm associated with is a legacy of Richard Baker, quite directly in fact. He founded a sangha at the facility in the '80s and eventually gave the facility, lock, stock, and barrel, to the current roshi in the '90s when he set out on a different quest. 

That legacy is more than just buildings -- though they are very important to the current sangha. I carry some of that legacy with me, but it is very different because it is earlier, much earlier in origin, more closely aligned to Suzuki Roshi who I keep saying I never met, nor did I ever meet Richard Baker, yet when I see and hear film and video and audio recordings of them, I recognize them immediately, and even the zendo at Sokoji -- the earliest Center in San Francisco -- is instantly familiar. I don't know where these memories come from. I attribute them to having seen films of Suzuki and Baker at the Midnight Movies in the later '60s. On the other hand, maybe I did visit Sokoji and maybe I did meet them somewhere, sometime, and I've just lost track.

This is somewhat similar to my memories of meeting Jerry Rubin in San Francisco in the '60s. I'm more certain of those meetings, and where and when they took place and why, but sometimes I wonder: are they false memories? Did it really happen?

Was I really at the Oakland Induction Center in October of 1967 during the Moratorium police riots? As a potential inductee? Yes, I'm certain I was, and there is film of me there and yet... maybe it's all an illusion... 

Which ultimately is the foundation of Buddhist enlightenment. It is all an Illusion, you see? Memories are real and false at the same time. "Reality" is real and false at the same time.

I didn't want to be part of the fame-seeking at the San Francisco Zen Center in the '70s. Even if I had kept to myself, there wasn't a way I could see to avoid it while in the company of others there. So. I didn't take up the invitations, I didn't go, and I continued practicing on my own in the apartment on Geary with the wonderful garden outside the living room bay windows. It was to me very much a Zen garden.

Where something happened. 

I've described it, I think, in other posts, and I went into considerable detail about "what happened" with one of the Zen teachers I deal with these days. The Void. I entered the Void while sitting zazen in my apartment on Geary one day. I wasn't entirely sure what it was, and after a time, I could not not enter it when sitting zazen. So I stopped regular practice. 

I described "what happened" and I also described an incident in San Francisco that took place while not sitting zazen, an incident that came back in brilliant technicolor detail when I was late for a morning sit during Spring Practice. The Zen teacher I described this incident to said, "You know what? That sounds like you were dreaming." Thinking back about it, it was very much like a dream. Yet the memory of it -- after sitting zazen and entering the Void for perhaps the first time that day in 1970-something in San Francisco -- is crystal clear, even now, and I am certain it "happened", but on what plane of existence? 

Was it a dream? Is it all a dream? Was my avoidance of attending zazen at the San Francisco Zen Center justified or even necessary? Or did it even "happen?" But the zendo at the Page Street Center is not at all familiar to me, whereas the Sokoji zendo very much is. So what happened? Or did anything?

Was I there or was I not there? Or both or neither?

Yes.

On Losing Weight

I've lost about 40 pounds in the last few months. I need to lose 10 or 15 pounds more. But at this point, my clothes are mostly too big, I've got to punch more holes in my belts, I have more energy and can perform more tasks, and losing weight has proved to be quite a counter to the persistent fatigue that is a consequence of rheumatoid arthritis. 

I was at one point getting so heavy (at 240+ pounds) that I could barely get around, but sitting still or lying down was very uncomfortable too. I set a goal to lose weight, but even though I changed my diet, nothing seemed to happen for months. Then all of a sudden, weight started coming off, and I've tended to lose about a pound a week ever since -- with several plateaus along the way when nothing came off for a week or two.

I never consciously tried to lose weight in the past. In fact, for most of my life, I was darned skinny, tallish and not very well-built at all. A "rail." I didn't start gaining weight until I stopped smoking in the early '90s, but even then, I didn't weigh much above 180 or so -- which was still 40 pounds more than I'd weighed when I was smoking. Then when I developed rheumatoid arthritis about 6 years ago and was treated with large doses of prednisone, I gained weight at a remarkable clip, and even when I stopped taking prednisone, I kept gaining weight. 

It's only been about a year and a half ago that I set a goal of losing weight, at least 50 pounds, and less than a year since I actually started seeing weight loss. 

I feel better, much better. My rheumatoid arthritis is largely under control. I have not had a flare in several years, medications have been reduced, and overall, I'm well enough to accomplish much or most of what I set out to do. 

There is still so much more that needs doing. 

One of those things, of course, is this One Last Trip to California. I'm looking forward to it, and yet... there is a finality to it, a closing chapter, that I am struggling with. Ms. Ché isn't going, she has other plans (one of which involves taking a very sick cat to the vet) and she believes she is needed more here at home than on the road with me. And I think about how many times she and I made the trip between California and New Mexico on our own -- she often to attend writers' conferences, me to rest and work on the house -- and the times we came here together though we were still living in California. 

As we age, we see things differently, and reminiscence comes to the fore. As elders, we have stories to tell, and Ms. Ché has spent much of her life preparing to tell quite a story. I've been telling mine all along. But she's held back, mulling over the best way to communicate her extraordinary life. She's done it in plays and poems and creative nonfiction, but she's got so much more to add. I think that's part of what she'll be working on while I'm gone.

As for me, it's more like touching elements of the past, touching lightly, remembering positives, and doing a brief Kerouac-ian pilgrimage along Highway 1, Big Sur and Bixby Canyon and all that, just because. More than just that, though. There is a kinship that goes back a long way, and it's a form of honor. I wouldn't be back with Zen, for example, without Ti Jean's inspiration so long ago that came back in a flood. 

So. 

That's a minor update. Nothing more...

Listening to the Translator

Huh. Last evening's Dharma talk, or just talk, I'm not sure it was to be taken as Dharma, by the translator of the Vimalakirti Sutra was a hoot. 

Dude is 80 and has translated numerous Buddhist works and was ordained by the Dalai Lama and left the monastery to go teach at Columbia and who knows where else, and he has all kinds of degrees and not much of it matters because he doesn't know anything, and don't take what he says as gospel, he's just sharing what he can, you know?

He talked a mile a minute, clearly enjoying every minute of it, and informing the gathered multitude as he did, both about Vimalakirti and himself and Buddhism and whatever you want. I mean it's all the same in the end, isn't it?

I've said the sutra is one of the more enjoyable I've encountered, and after listening to Robert Thurman talk about it last evening, I think I know why. He loves it. He loves what he is able to do, and if he could, he would just keep doing it forever. But he's old, like so many of us are getting, and he won't be able to keep going forever, so why not meet in Costa Rica and have a grand old time? (He said he hoped to meet with Roshi in Costa Rica soon, or maybe somewhere else... but of course with the pandemic and the infirmities of age, it's not clear that that will ever be possible.)

So much of Zen and Buddhism is presented as something so damned serious and it's really not. Not if you scratch deep enough. There's a lot more hilarity and silliness than sometimes the abbots and roshis and senseis and such want to let on. 

And so, Robert Thurman has my admiration for making our task as students of the Sutra of Vimalakirti an enjoyable exercise, an uplifting Dharma teaching, and much less of a struggle than it might otherwise be.

🙏

Thurman's Wiki page is almost as fun as he is:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Thurman

And if you're into this sort of thing, go to his own website:

https://bobthurman.com/

Contradictions: "You're Doing It Wrong!"

 Ha.

I do find the Sutra of Vimalakirti's Teaching to be funny and serious at the same time. It is filled with contradictions -- rather like Buddhism itself -- and it is almost entirely the story of Wealthy Householder Vimalakirti (sick) telling everyone, from the lowliest to the highest gods and Buddhas, you're doing it wrong.

Householder: Vimalakirti is a layman, not ordained or having taken vows or shut up in a monastery. Oh my no. He's a rich and important man in a rich and important city, though, and thus he has stature and merit, and he is listened to by the people of the city and his is well-regarded for his wisdom and generosity.

The Sutra of Vimalakirti is said to be over 2000 years old, going back nearly as far as the Sakyamuni Buddha himself. It's very, very different than practically anything you'd find in other spiritual texts of the era, certainly different than anything in the Bible. 

I call it "magical realism" in that the sutra is filled with gods and goddesses, buddhas, demons and their hordes of attendants and myriad people, bodhisattvas, bhikkus, and ordinaries in their various qualities and multitudes listening intently to the teachings of Vimalakirti and becoming enlightened spontaneously. 

Well, sure. Of course. 

It seems perfectly natural given the context.

Contradictions abound. Dualities and nondualities. We live our lives in a hot mess of "what is." If there is a purpose to the practice of Zen and Buddhism, it is threading our way through it and helping others along the way.

As someone said very early in my study: We are already enlightened; we do not acquire enlightenment through the practice or through any effort of our own. What happens is unfolding, rather like a lotus blossom opening. We come to the realization of what we already are. 

OK.

I haven't finished the sutra. I probably won't before leaving for California, but that's OK. There should be plenty of time to read it and re-read it before the end of the practice period. 

Vimalakirti

The Teaching of Vimalakirti Sutra (211 pg pdf with commentary) is the text for this practice period. I'm part way into it, and I said to one of the teachers that I found it astonishing, not at all what I expected, and filled with wonder. "It's poetic, isn't it?" I pondered that for a moment. No, or possibly yes, or both at once. It's a work of art. I thought but didn't say. A work of transcendent art. Not meant to be taken literally, with tens of thousands of gods and goddesses arrayed around the householder Vimalakirti to hear his teaching and obtain enlightenment. It's a metaphor. Magical realism, maybe.

Constant drumbeat of contrasting dualities. This not that, not this not that, nor this either. You're doing it wrong. Teaching the Mahabodhisattvas what they're doing wrong and how to do it right. No matter how close they come, how far they are from perfection, even the Lord Buddha himself.

One of the topics and questions I brought up at the initial practice interview was that of Desire, and how should we approach Desire without becoming attached to it, or rather attached to what we desire. As the Buddha found and says, Desire -- or attachment to what we desire -- is the cause of and source of Suffering. 

And I thought the response was fascinating, not at all what I expected, and something I'm continuing to chew over: "Desire is life."

Oh so many levels in that one simple phrase. I won't go through those levels here right now, as I am by no means of the Wisdom of householder Vimalakirti, but... yes. 

And I brought up the Enso, the uncompleted circle, the pattern of my life. Of so many lives.

I confess, I'm not following the discipline of the practice period this time around. I sit when I sit for as long as I sit rather than formally sitting at set times for set lengths of time with the rest of the participants in sangha. This is not an act of deliberate separation from the sangha. Indeed, when I settle among them, which is every day, several times a day, I feel embraced and embracing. The point, however, is that the sangha is of the mind, much more so than of the body, and once embraced and embracing of the sangha, it never goes away. It is part of you, and you are part of it, no matter what you are doing or where you are. Just so with sitting zazen and other forms and rituals of Buddhism and Zen. And, too, the Dharma. 

The forms and rituals of sitting and practice are training aids.

Once you "get it" you don't have to practice in that way, but you certainly can. Once you "get it" ideally your life becomes Practice. Full time.

Which is part of what Vimalakirti is getting at in his teaching of the gods and bodhisattvas and buddhas. 

Your practice is your life. 

Fall Practice Period

Yes. I've now begun the Fall Practice Period with the Zen Center -- online, of course, via Zoom and several texts, primarily the Vimalakirti Sutra, one I'd never encountered before (oh, there are so many of those😊🙏) which I'm finding both astonishing and hilarious. This is not what I expected.

But then, what did I expect? After the Spring Practice Period, I felt refreshed and renewed and able to accomplish many of the tasks I'd set for myself, like clearing out some of the deadwood on our place and getting set for the arrival of the last of our stuff from California while growing something of a garden of corn and beans and squash and peppers and tomatoes. 

Well, the corn and beans and most of the squash has been harvested. We ate most of the beans already. The blue corn is drying and if all goes well, we'll grind it into flour for atole in a month or so. The squash is waiting for the right meal, but our crop was not abundant. Many, many squash blossoms, but not so many squashes, they say because it's hard to ensure fertilization. Especially without bees, and we've never had those around here. 

The tomatoes did reasonably well. There were a couple of hail storms that caused some damage, though, and so now that we're near the end of the season, picking the last of the tomatoes, we can see how they might have done better in a greenhouse, like our farmer friends down the road do with theirs. Our temporary greenhouse is too small to grow the tomatoes beyond starting the plants, while they have three huge hoop houses where the tomatoes can reach to the sky. 

The peppers were very flavorful and we will no doubt grow those varieties again. 

There were some failures as well. I grew spinach for the first time here (I'd grown it in California). It bolted within a couple of weeks. Will have to re-think planting and caring for the plants. They will need much more shade than I provided, and that's something I have to keep considering. We're so high in the mountains that pretty much anything we try to grow gets sunburned and at least some shade is a requirement for many plants, especially when they're young. Me too. I get sunburned easily, and so I'm usually shrouded in hats and gloves and long sleeves and sunglasses. Quite a sight. 

The corn flourished at first but then was beset by the grasshoppers, spider mites and caterpillars. We harvested a lot nevertheless, so I'm not disappointed. First time growing blue corn last year did not go well, but I learned that it had to do with where I planted it. There are several spots around our place that I think were used as trash dumps over the years, and planting does not do well on those sites. Live and learn!

There are some sites we discovered this year that are almost swampy after rains. We knew there were places where water puddled, but this was different. These were places we hadn't noticed before where water would collect underground rather than on the surface, so there weren't any puddles. Instead, it was wet enough for long enough below the surface for plants (in our case, weeds!) to flourish. And these places were right next to dust-dry areas where practically nothing will grow even with irrigation.

All this is preparation for Practice Period, and there is much more. This afternoon, I'll have an interview with one of the teachers for the month long session, a priest I've met with several times (via Zoom!) since the spring. I've told him he was the reason I got involved with this Zen center -- there are others after all -- because of his approach to the Diamond Sutra a couple of years ago. I thought he was doing it just right through indirection rather than wrestling with it directly, and I appreciated that compared to something that might have been. I told him a bit about my own life and practice. How I got to Zen in the first place (oh, those many years ago) and where I saw myself going with it. 

There has been much progress (I think) since then, but there has been plenty of backsliding too. That's part of the process, but still... I tend to think of things more directionally and I need to discuss and consider the unclosed circle (enso) concept more thoroughly. The direction is around and around, isn't it?

And so we begin. 🙏

On Planning (One Last?) Trip to California

Wow. This has turned into a strange and headache making adventure, if you want to call it an adventure given that it's becoming more like a quest or troubled desire.

You see we still have stuff in storage in California that we weren't able to bring with us when we moved (9 years ago!) and haven't had the opportunity to move out here (or get rid of) since. I know moving is a big task -- especially if you've been in the same place many years as we were in our little house in California -- and sorting stuff and getting rid of stuff you don't need can take forever. Easier just to put it in storage and deal with it "later." But then the years go by, you have other things to do, and voila! The task you set never gets done.

So the time came. The storage unit rental had reached astronomical levels (I thought, anyway) and most of the stuff we have there is stuff I didn't know about because I was busy packing up the last of the house into the van while others were taking odds and ends I never saw to the storage unit in the rental truck.  

Three years ago (or was it four?) we did a quick trip out there to work on clearing out the storage, but we didn't get very far. Ms Che found something she treasured in the storage unit, something she thought had been lost forever, something of her mother's, and that was basically it as far as doing any more work there. We took three or four pick up loads of things that shouldn't have been saved in the first place to the dump, packed the treasure and a few other items (pictures and such, an antique floor lamp with a Downton Abbey shade) into the car and drove home to New Mexico.

That's when we discovered how much oil the car uses! Oh, I didn't know. It's an older Subaru and apparently they have an oil consumption issue I hadn't heard of until the engine ran out of oil just over the New Mexico border from Arizona. Well, we eventually made it home after limping into a truck stop and buying quarts and quarts of oil to put in the engine, and the car seems to have recovered well enough. We figure it can make it to California and back one more time -- so long as we add a quart of oil or so at every gasoline fill up. Details.

So after a year of going nowhere because of the pandemic, we got a terse little note from the storage facility that the automatic monthly charge had been turned down by the bank, and oh, there would be a late charge, and oh the rent is going up again (!) and oh, would I like to take care of it by check or credit card?

Oh, I'd like to get the stuff out of there and save the nearly $300 a month for other things.

Twenty Years On

I was going through old papers, burning the ones that didn't need saving -- meaning most of them -- and one that was kind of striking was the receipt from the Executive Hotel Pacific in Seattle for a five day stay, 9/10/2001 - 9/14/2001. The total was just over $600, whatever the Government rate was (I think it was $105 in Seattle at the time). The hotel is across the street from the Central Library and my room (on the 5th floor?) faced the construction site. The old library was being demolished in preparation to construct the new gleaming one that stands on the site today. I remember waking up to the sound of what I thought was a pile driver and a wailing siren. It was just about 6am.

I washed up and kept hearing the siren and pile driver. I remember looking out the window at the construction site. Didn't see anything out of the ordinary. The morning was a little bit foggy. I turned on the teevee, and the news on every channel running news was showing the burning World Trade Center Tower, the hairdos and makeup jobs expressing puzzlement, most seeming to think it was an accident that probably involved a small private plane. And then a large, four engine jet, probably a commercial airliner, appeared out of nowhere on the screen and struck the second tower. I think the talking heads were talking with the camera on them when this happened. It may or may not have been split screen. I'm not sure now. 

But suddenly, the talking heads seemed to realize what was happening was no accident. They were still puzzled. But two planes into two towers was no coincidence. Their ear pieces were were no doubt filled with chatter from producers and floor directors and such. I watched for a while, switching channels, and just after 7:00am, I called the office to find out what the plan for the day would be. "Come in," I was told. "We'll do what we can."

What that was, who knew?

I continued watching the news until shortly after the Pentagon was hit, and then I walked to the office a few blocks away.

What we did was watch the news on the big screen and try to get direction from HQ in DC. They initially said continue with our original schedule. I was conducting training classes, so that's what I was to do for the interim. The class was a disaster. Half the students didn't show up, and those that did couldn't concentrate, so we broke up and went into the meeting room to watch the news on the big screen. Everyone was sent home early, the class told to return in the morning to pick up where we left off. 

Surprisingly, or maybe not, we were able to complete the training the following day, and I spent the next two days in Seattle strategizing ways to get home (no commercial flights, remember?) and helping out with office things when I could. Everyone was in a daze, uncomprehending really. No one that I was aware of was in a rage of bloodlust determined to go war-rampaging in the Middle East. The news was on the big screen, but we only watched occasionally. Nobody actually knew what was going on or what would happen, and HQ in DC was not at all communicative. 

Finally, I was able to rent a car from Alamo and a colleague and I loaded up and headed south. Took two days. We were practically silent the whole way, in shock. Much shaking of heads at the news on the car radio. "This will not turn out well." No, no it won't. And no it didn't. One tragic thing has led to another and to many, many others since. 

I applaud getting out of Afghanistan -- even when Trump announced it. It was the right thing to do, as I believed sincerely that going into Afghanistan on the side of myriad murderous warlords was wrong. Afghanistan was not the cause of the 9/11/2001 attacks, and it wouldn't be the cause of the Endless Wars our rulers decided to conduct. Afghanistan wasn't even a side-show to all of that and yet it bled like any other war-theatre, and hundreds of thousands of Afghans died because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time or they wore the wrong kind of clothes or the war-gamers in Florida wanted/needed a kill for the win. It was a foolish goon show that did nothing at all to lift either Afghanistan or the US or perhaps especially Nato from the mire of neo-imperialism.

It's supposedly "over". We'll see.

I left government service in 2009, fed up with the increasing insanity within. That's what I saw. A creeping but unstoppable insanity that was consuming government and those who served. It became worse, much worse, upon the election of Barack Obama, and that's when I became convinced I had to get out. I know many of my colleagues saw the same trends, and many got out before I did. Some died. 

On the internet we discuss how Bad this or that Leader is, how deeply antithetical Government is to the wants and needs of The People -- however we define that mass -- and how grotesque the Government is and has been, yada-yada, world without end. 

It's team sports. It's a game. Nothing fundamental ever changes. We may rail and argue constantly, but how many have any intent to change anything for the better or even understand there may be something better to change to? We coulda. We shoulda. We didn't.

So here we are.

Biden is providing a pause to the general insanity of Government, but the overall trend remains the same. The continuing hysterics over the withdrawal from Afghanistan shows how deeply compromised and corrupted the so-called "defense" industry and almost all the media has become -- or maybe they always were. To me, it's most stark on BBC where there appears to be a neo-imperial cult in charge, and where nothing at all is ever permitted to counter the Official Narrative that Afghanistan was Wonderful under the rule of the Imperial Powers/USA, and everything has gone to shit under the Taliban, though sotto voce, you might hear something like (shh, it's the way most Afghans want it....shhhh). 

Getting out was a matter of my own sanity. Getting as far away as I prudently could was part of that. And then one day the Madness came silently up behind me and thwacked me solidly on the head. I still have a divot in my brow-ridge where that tomahawk (come on!) hit me. That was a reminder that I'm not that far away from it at all. It can come up behind us at any time and Thwack! 

Twenty years on, everything is different, but nothing really has changed. 

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. 

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

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. 

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

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.