Zen Pilgrims

Thanksgiving is a good time to talk about pilgrims, right? But if I am being honest, as much as Thanksgiving is far and away my favorite holiday--for recognizing gratitude, for spending time with family, for eating great food and falling asleep watching football--I don't give a rat's ass about the Mayflower pilgrims.

The pilgrims who are my spiritual kin are a more solitary folk. The live their pilgrimages and are astounded daily by life around them. They are people like Annie Dillard and Peter Matthiessen.

1973 was an epic year for pilgrimages. I was born in 1972, so I am going to say that was a cooler year, but let's stay on topic here. 1973 was the year Matthiessen and George Schaller went to Nepal, which is the story of "The Snow Leopard." We've been over that here. 1973 was also the year that Annie Dillard began to write "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," which takes place outside Roanoke, Va., in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I have read Tinker Creek, loved it, and for some reason it called to me yesterday, to grab it from the bookshelf. Maybe it was the play on pilgrim and Thanksgiving.

This is what Dillard set out to do with writing her book:

I propose to keep here what Thoreau called "a meteorological journal of the mind," telling some tales and describing some of the sights of this rather tamed valley, and exploring, in fear and trembling, some of the unmapped dim reaches and unholy fastnesses to which those tales and sights so dizzyingly lead.

One of the things I particularly dig about reading Tinker Creek and The Snow Leopard alongside one another, is looking at the nature of the journeys. You can't get a lot more epic than Matthiessen--looking for the exotic, rare snow leopard, traveling across the world, sherpas and porters, a lifetime adventure. Dillard on the other hand, stays put. She goes for depth, not breadth. She dials in detail. She gets the rhythms of the place and internalizes them. She becomes part of the landscape.

It's the most beautiful day of the year. At four o'clock the eastern sky is a dead stratus black flecked with low white clouds. The sun in the west illuminates the ground, the mountains, and especially the bare branches of trees, so that everywhere silver trees cut into the black sky like a photographer's negative of a landscape. The air and the ground are dry; the mountains are going on and off like neon signs. Clouds slide east as if pulled from the horizon, like a tablecloth whipped off a table. The hemlocks by the barbed-wire fence are flinging themselves east as though their backs would break. Purple shadows are racing east

The thing about pilgrimages, in my mind, is it is the pilgrim that is transformed. The journey, whether around the world or walking around the creek, is a means for the exploration of self and the world.

While Matthiessen and his crew are camped in the mountains at 9,000 feet, he is thinking about his son Alex, who he had to leave home to make the journey. He talks about how Alex as a toddler would stand in his sandbox in an orchard, rapt, almost in a trance.

The child was not observing, he was at rest in the very center of the universe, a part of things, unaware of endings and beginnings, still in unison with the primordial nature of creation, letting all light and phenomena pour through. Ecstasy is identity with all existence,..

There is something striking that in all our wandering, in all our activity, in all our busyness, that what we are all after is stillness. It's unity. Peace. "Ecstasy is identity with all existence..."

Matthiessen and Dillard are founding members of my Pilgrim Hall of Fame. They recognize the infinite in the everyday. The see that it is the mind that needs to be set in motion, as much as the body. And that there are different ways to go about each.

They explore themselves, their minds, their souls and the world around them. Not Thanksgiving pilrgims, but zen pilgrims.

Wanderlust or kick it root down?

I've never had a passport. I've driven to Colorado; driven to New Orleans for Mardi Gras; driven to Chicago; driven to Key West and to Maine. Put my feet in the Pacific Ocean at Santa Cruz. I've hiked in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; I've finished a 50-mile foot race. I say all that as background so that it may make some sense when I say that if I die without having left the country, my life won't be less for it.

The Universe itself is the scripture of Zen, for which religion is no more and no less than the apprehension of the infinite in every moment. - Peter Matthiessen, "The Snow Leopard."

A zen guru, I am not. But Matthiessen is on to something, that I try to bring to my life. I've spent a lot of time running, trails, roads, mountains, around lakes. I've spent a fair amount of time on a skateboard, looking at my surroundings differently than someone who hasn't marveled at a painted parking curb, a loading dock, or an embankment. I try to experience places deeply. I can go running at Tuckahoe State Park, where I can't begin to count how many miles I have logged there, and still see things I've never seen before. There is always something new. Part of that comes with the idea of beginner's mind; of not assuming I've seen all their is to see.

All that said, I don't sit still well. I have always been one ready to throw a backpack, running shoes or hiking boots, a book or two and a notebook in a car and hit the road. I have convinced others and been convinced for road trips with zero planning or budget and poor designs. Sleeping in cars has never been a deterrent. Wanderlust and I have always been good friends. Wandering and roving about. The thing about roving is that it doesn't need a clear direction.

The fact that I can't stand flying could sway my form of pilgrimage. But I will fly when it's warranted. If I do pop my passport cherry, it could well be to go check out Finca Bellavista, a treehouse community a friend and former classmate founded in Costa Rica. Or maybe to hike England's Lake District, a la Wordsworth, and hang in taverns or catch a Liverpool match at Anfield.

There is a difference between me and a nomad: my restless soul has deep roots. My family has been connected to Maryland's Eastern Shore since the 1600s. I can feel a source of strength in being on the Tred Avon or Choptank Rivers. I feel most at home here. I've described it before, but coming across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, eastbound, is a daily euphoria, of feeling like I am coming home to a magical place, all over again; its newness doesn't disappear because of my familiarity. There are parts of the Shore that I will likely never tire of experiencing.

Running and skateboarding have both allowed me the opportunity to keep my body, mind and soul in motion. So has being on the water in whatever form. Oddly, they've also helped me explore my roots. Roots are an interesting phenomenon. When we look at a tree, we look up. Maybe we climb it. But there is a huge part of the tree not visible to us. Not without some digging.

If we always explore, looking up, looking ahead, moving to the next thing, we are missing a shitload of what is in front of us and underneath us. Sometimes maybe exploring the wilderness means delving into the things around you that you have left unexplored.

"Know thyself." For some people to know themselves, to understand themselves, they have to cover new ground, explore new terrain. And that is awesome. But it's also possible that the push to move on to explore new things, abandons life around you with only a skimming of the surface.

Trees and people, we all have roots. Occasionally we can learn a thing or two from trees. Just ask Herman Hesse:

When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk; in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured...

A longing to wander tears my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind at evening. If one listens to them silently for a long time, this longing reveals its kernel, its meaning. It is not so much a matter of escaping from one's suffering, though it may seem so. It is a longing for home, for a memory of the mother, for new metaphors for life. It leads home. Every path leads homeward...

Hesse's wandering isn't an escape. It's a longing for home. And that's not the kind of longing that gets answered without going deep. You can't understand the tree, without knowing the roots. This kind of understanding came to folks like Aldo Leopold. Gary Snyder. Thoreau. It comes from depth and familiarity. And yet, it's hard to argue with Tom Robbins, when he reminds us:

People aren't trees, so it's false when they speak of roots.

Robbins of all people should understand metaphors. I dig being able to show Anna and Ava something of roots. Something of being connected to a place. Something of what home means. Sometimes it is a place. Sometimes it is a feeling, a state of mind. But it has to come from somewhere.

I will always have a backpack ready to go. My soul will always have restless legs and I've not traveled or explored my last mountains, trails, cities, towns. But if someone asks me how we're gonna kick it, I'll direct them to Mike D. (who just turned 49): we're gonna kick it root down.

Gary Snyder's campfire and Bodhidharma

I recently met Bodhidharma. I'm sure we've crossed paths before, but I was too busy rapping with Buddha and Du Fu and Li Po to catch Bodhi. Turns out, he has a lot to say, albeit with few words.

Bodhidharma is the cat credited for turning the Shaolin Temple upside down and for bringing Zen to China. He was upset at what crappy shape the Shaolin monks were in. So he taught them techniques to get in and stay in shape as well as teaching meditation. Physical and mental prowess and awareness.

Daniele Bolelli introduced me to Bodhidharma. Reading Bolelli's "On the Warrior's Path," he relates the story of the Shaolin ass kicking. Bolelli is on a modern day mission akin to Bodhidharma. DB says:

"It is time for an athletic philosophy: a philosophy forged through muscles and heart; a philosophy born out of the union of body and mind, of pragmatism and utopia, of sweet sensibility and a warrior's determination."

I've been a warrior since high school (Easton High School Warriors). But I've also always felt in step with the warrior ethos. I began to think of it that way after finding Chogyam Trungpa's "The Sacred Path of the Warrior" at a pivotal time in my life.

This concept of warrior though isn't what we currently envision when we hear the word. It has an Eastern bent, something that Trungpa and Bodhidharma and Bolelli bring to it. It is that one-two punch of spiritual and physical, bringing out a deeper experience. As Bolelli puts it, "An individual who is truly alive should not settle for anything less than the totality of experience."

I like writers in whom the East meets West in everywhere. I've always been lit up by thinkers and teachers who marry the spiritual, mental and physical pursuits, realizing they are all connected. And the ones who can do that with originality and humor get my vote and my full attention. Bolelli roped me in when he connected Tom Robbins (another favorite) to the martial arts. And then he called on Gary Snyder.

"We have chosen to follow Kant along the road of "progress" and science rather than sitting around the campfire with Gary Snyder.... Big mistake."

"On the Warrior's Path" is a wild ride. The first chapter, "The Body as a Temple," should be taught in schools, as early as possible. It should be practiced and preached. Maybe around the campfire that Snyder stoked.

Tastes Great... Less Filling

F. Scott Fitzgerald and Mark Twain were both hip enough--forward thinking into our ADHD-ish society to write really big books with very few pages. They got across what they wanted to say and cut out the crap. Fitzgerald also created his own koan for people to spin their brains on, which is one of my favorites:

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

Dude, light is a wave and a particle. Miller Lite tastes great and is less filling. The kind of thinking that Taoism, quantum physics and relativity, and Zen Buddhism have been laying on us for eons.

In my mind, there is nothing cooler than watching your child's imagination get kicking into high gear. It can leave me giddy and in awe. We took our girls to see Tim Burton's version of "Alice in Wonderland" yesterday and our 8-year-old, Anna, and I traded observations back and forth and had each other busting up. It's been 17-ish years since I read Lewis Carroll (though I may be picking him back up soon), but a quote that figured heavily in the movie is one that we'd all be well served to have written above the door going out our bedrooms in the morning:

"Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

If your kids hold on to that, they can be world changers. But we don't have to write ourselves off either. I think grown ups have as much, if not more to gain from applying that thinking on a regular basis, when practicality says not to waste your time. Sometimes, it's best to bend practicality over and kick it square in the arse.

And that's my thought for a Daylight Savings dark Monday morning, half-way through a cup of coffee.

Billy Collins, Poet as Crack Dealer

I see you Billy Collins. Standing alone in your room. You, the plainest named of all poets.

I have been meaning to sit down with you. To chat. I know you dig jazz. But I've been busy. You understand. And there are writers with fancier clothes and shinier cars. And then I heard you called the "Oprah of poetry."

Dude. I'm a guy. I'm walking a tightrope of toughness with poetry as it is, which I've got to balance with bare-knuckle boxing, raw eggs with meals, and driving a Ford pick-up. I can't consort with any kind of Oprah, for crissakes!

So you sat. And I wasn't looking for you. Then I was exchanging some winter-inspired poems back and forth with folks and an old friend sends over, "Shoveling Snow with Buddha." And that opened the door.

Zen. In the momentness, clothed in the everyday. The infinite revealed in the mundane. Collins' pyrotechnics take place beneath and above simple words and form that ambles through the room with its feet slightly above the floor.

Damn you Billy Collins and your wry, easy smile, knowing you're peddling aesthetic and philosophical crack rock, inviting us in easily and then spinning the room like a bottle.

Have you seen the stack of books I've got going? I don't need another poet to read. And an oxy-moron like a "best-selling poet?" Nothing against best-sellers, I generally just try to find my own way, slightly off-center.

Well, if you can't beat 'em, to hell with it, I suppose. What time does Oprah come on?

Dialed-In Like Cat Nip

Serendipity. Being dialed in. In the groove or flow. Every now and again, if we're lucky, we get a glimpse of this kind of feeling. For me, when it happens, it often happens outside. Running can open me up to it. Walking. Occasionally while playing a team sport like vacant lot football or pick up hoops. Writing, reading, and talking with people about same presents one of the main veins or avenues of opportunity for this feeling.

Saturday morning I was the only one up. Kicked back, drinking coffee, reading and writing on the couch. Christmas lights glowing and just watching our cat, Carlos, for a good stretch of time. And contemplating the life and actions of a cat. They are a trip to watch, their forever-in-the-moment approach to life. And I thought about how freeing, to be able to just be there, not so caught up in the next thing. So I took the photo above and a couple others. And I scribbled this down in a notebook:

Cats have got zen down.
It's now. And the next.
Fuck tonight, or tomorrow--
neither exist.

Everything is fixed in a gaze.
Or a coiled-spring crouch.
Or a stretched out nap.

Weather forecasts,
shopping lists,
checking balance,

superfluous.

There's not much to that. That's an exercise I call skimming the surface of first thoughts. Just snatching the rough material that's there at hand before it wanders off somewhere else. Hopefully it opens a door, or becomes the on-ramp to bigger flow.

I sipped some coffee, picked up Gary Snyder's "The Real Work," and started reading where I left off. Here's what I found, where he's discussing the value of meditation and his study of zazen:

"It wasn't alien to my respect for primitive people and animals, all of whom/which are capable of simply being for long hours of time. I saw it in that light as a completely natural act. To the contrary, it's odd that we don't do it more, that we don't, simply like a cat, be there for a while, experiencing ourselves as whatever we are, without any extra thing added to that."

Uuuummmm... Yeah. I guess Snyder gets what I'm talking about. Perhaps gets it enough that he can expound on the thoughts I'm having at present via an interview he did in April 1977, just as I pick up his f-ing book on page 97. Go figure. Thanks, Gary ;)

So that's my dialed in moment for the weekend. I love when that happens. It charges me, inspires me, affirms thoughts occasionally. And keeps me tuned in to being open to it happening more. I think it's a kind of experience where you've gotta recognize it in order to be able to cultivate it and invite it back. Make sure it digs hanging out.

Any of those kind of moments for others? What activities or experiences put you in touch or get you dialed in?