WALKING MIRROR SAMADHI

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                           “Just to be alive is enough.”

                                         Suzuki Roshi

I’ve always loved walking. I walked to school as a kid and I walk to the bank or market whenever possible, or I just amble around town. Now that it’s raining here in Northern California I’ve been getting on my treadmill in the mornings, which might be boring to some (I see people reading on treadmills), but as a longtime meditation fanatic I’ve learned to get high on mindless repetitive activity. I saw a photo of the Dalai Lama on a treadmill, in his robes no less.

With an eye towards doing more walking meditation on my Sunday retreats I’ve been working on the pathways around my little meditation hut/teahouse in the woods. I added an additional loop to the trail that circles the hut so that it makes a loose figure eight (like an infinity symbol). It goes up past moss-covered pines and rhododendrons and around Huckleberry bushes under a lacy Hemlock tree. The beauty of the coastal light there, shining down though morning mist is, in a word, awesome.

Previously I’d been walking slowly around the hut three times for a total of about five minutes, between 25 minute periods of sitting meditation — Rinzai Zen style, except that they frequently walk fast. In Soto Zen, the other major Zen school, they sit for 40 minutes and walk for 10 at a very slow pace. I walk at a relaxed, somewhat slow but still normal pace (about 1 mile an hour).

In the Thai Forest tradition the monks alternate sitting for an hour with walking back and forth on a short path for an hour. I’ve practiced a little with those folks and after I got used to it, the longer periods of walking started feeling pretty good. But it’s only recently that I’ve come to fully appreciate walking meditation.

FINDING EMPTINESS

Usually to “feel empty” denotes a negative depressed state of mind. Most people find the idea of emptiness unappealing, if not downright scary — as is evidenced by the constant need to be occupied with some kind of mental activity, as if the world they’ve constructed might crumble and leave them without a mooring should the mind become empty, even for a moment.

In meditation, being empty, if not the goal, is at least the pathway and the gate.

Despite being simple and direct, emptiness is hard to fathom. The mind is devoid of mental activity, like empty space, yet not asleep or oblivious, quite the opposite — it’s totally awake and open to what is immediately present, like a clear mirror that simply reflects what is before it. The distinction between self and environment, subject and object, disappears. Everything, all concerns, are let go of and resolved in emptiness, while the immediate scene comes alive with renewed energy and brilliance.

That such a simple state is blissful and timeless would seem to defy common sense. But there it is. The whole of creation and all of time in a single place in a single moment. 

Ironically, I seldom experience that kind of emptiness, or samadhi, while sitting in meditation. I’m usually too involved in a struggle to just slow down and be present. But when I’m calmly walking around the pathway between sittings, without any particular goal, my mind can open up. There’s something about the combination of inner stillness with movement. Buses and planes have the same effect on me.

You might say, why meditate at all? Why not just walk?

It’s only those sitting meditation periods, and the effort involved, that make it possible for that mirror-like experience to unfold while walking. I usually have to meditate most of the day before my walking takes on that wonderful character. It’s like cooking something — the right amount of heat and time is necessary for the food to get done.

Now when I sit in my hut on Sundays, after several hours of my usual meditation routine, I alternate half hour sits with half hour walks. What a blessing!

ETERNAL LIFE

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“…what is inherent in you is presently active and presently functioning, and need not be sought after, need not be put in order, need not be practiced or proven. All that is required is to trust in it once and for all.”

                                                     Foyan

The other day two nice ladies from the Jehovah’s Witnesses came by to give me the good news — God was preparing to create a perfect world, without all the vexations we have to contend with, such as old age, sickness and, of course, death. The Mormons, and others, also come by occasionally with a similar message.

I’m always happy to engage them in conversation, since I typically have a huge reservoir of pent up thoughts on such matters. At first they are polite and even glad that someone is actually willing to talk to them. However, as my speculations and questions become more pointed, they invariably start backing away, with nervous glances at one another, like maybe they’ve stumbled upon a madman.

I almost pursued two hapless gentlemen down the street with demands to know “Where is Jesus, at this very moment?”

eternity-knotThe promise of eternal life is a powerful incentive. Nature has programmed us with an overwhelming will to live and to procreate. Every being, down to the most miserable bug, is primarily concerned with survival as a distinct, separate entity. That all evidence points to the fact that this is a losing proposition, only makes this need more urgent.

No wonder then that people take “religion” so seriously — even to the point of giving up everything to follow and promote the hopeful messages of eternal life they have come to believe in.

I read recently that “Jannah,” or Paradise, has become a very popular media topic in Pakistan and some other Islamic countries where economic conditions and terrorism have made things so untenable and hopeless that, for many, the promise of a better life after this one is looking increasingly appealing.

While the stories and dogma surrounding different religious beliefs vary somewhat in detail, the mainstream religions all make the same essential promise — believe what they say is true, behave yourself according to the principles and rules they adhere to, and you’ll have life everlasting. But here’s the rub — you can’t know for sure until after you die, presuming there will even be someone there to “know.”

That such beliefs are wholeheartedly embraced, largely on the basis of hearsay and say-so, by a preponderance of people on the planet, is probably due more to people’s insecurity, along with the authority that the major religions have accumulated over centuries in their respective cultures, rather than any thoughtful analysis of the available data.

Even Buddhists and Hindus, who are, for the most part, non-theistic, still maintain that this life sucks and that it is only through following their recommendations that one can be assured of a better existence through rebirth in a future life — or, if one is really deserving, eternal bliss in Nirvana.

Buddhists are especially creative when it comes to afterlife scenarios. Not only is there the classic carrot and stick, of Heavens (several) and various Hells, there is also potential rebirth as an animal, ghost, titan, god, or, as a human again. It all depends upon “karma,” which is a fancy way of saying that one’s behavior in this life will determine where one is reborn in the next.

Behaving well and doing good under threat of suffering in a future existence presupposes a firm faith in order to be effective. If that faith wavers, or disappears completely, then the moral imperative wavers and disappears as well, and one is free to behave badly.

I think it would be be better if folks were encouraged to see that good behavior is worthwhile simply because it is good — because it works better for themselves and the rest of the world. I know atheistic humanists who are incredibly moral and compassionate, without the threat of punishment in a future life hanging over them.

Religions that emphasize a better life in a future birth, whether in heaven or in another form of rebirth, all tend to denigrate this present existence, which is considered an unclean vale of suffering and degeneration — merely a stepping stone to a better life somewhere else in the future.

I can’t help but think that this attitude can be self-fulfilling.

Some fundamentalist Christians even appear to be hoping that this world is visited by more catastrophes than it already has been, which will herald the final days when they will ascend to heaven. They might well get their wish if we continue to destroy ourselves and our environment. But whether heaven will be their due is an open question.

Jesus had some interesting things to say about this in Luke 17:20-21 —

“The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”

I find the first part of this saying (which is generally overlooked) to be especially significant. The “Kingdom of God” is neither “here,” nor “there.” In other words it doesn’t have a specific location, like a place existing in space and time — not as another life in some future time, nor as rebirth in a distant heaven. It is not anywhere that “observation” can reach.

But he says “Behold.” So somehow, It can be seen, just not in the usual way, as an object or phenomena apart from us, but “within.” Because it is sought somewhere else (or in someone else), it remains hidden.

Jesus doesn’t qualify it by saying it is only in some and not in others. Presumably, it’s not just within you, but in me and everyone, or, as some say, in everything. It’s ironic that despite all the talk of gaining eternal life, it could turn out to be something that is already within every creature as a birthright.

“The Kingdom of God” is not a place to which directions can be given and which one can arrive at in the usual fashion. But, “behold,” It is always “within” — as close as one’s own face.

I’d venture to add that to actually behold this mystery is not a matter of intellectual understanding and analysis, of simply reading and reckoning. Instead, it is necessary to strip away all of the conceptualizations and mental habits that have been accumulated — to become as innocent of thought and discrimination as a newborn child.

THE MAGIC FLUTE

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Bamboo is admired (and feared) for it’s tenacity. It’s steel-like roots can even penetrate concrete. In fierce winds it simply bends rather than breaking — a model of perseverance under pressure.

It is actually a giant, primitive  grass, a holdover from an earlier prehistoric period. Although each stalk or “culm” is distinct from the others, they are all one interconnected plant under the ground. They might appear to be separate individuals — but not far beneath the surface they are living just one life.

Bamboo has many practical uses. The tender shoots can be eaten and the hard wood-like stalks are used to construct everything from fences to flooring.

It can also make music. Since earliest times bamboo has been fashioned into flutes of various types. In many traditional cultures the flute was a favorite instrument for young men out courting. There is nothing so attractive, and penetrating, as the solitary sound of a flute on a moonlit night. The god Krishna is pictured holding a flute to the side of his lips, standing with one leg causally crossed in front of the other. It’s said that the sound of his flute was irresistible to the gopi (cowherding) girls he favored.

MAKING MY OWN MUSIC

What prompted me to think of constructing a flute from a length of bamboo I’d found was the lack of electricity in my little hermitage in the foothills and my consequent inability to play music on a radio or phonograph. Not that I really missed those “conveniences” but I did miss music and I was excited by the prospect of making my own with an improvised bamboo flute.

When I spied a thin steel rod connecting the radiator to the firewall on an antique pickup truck, one of the old rusting vehicles that dotted the landscape in the vicinity of my shack by the pond, I immediatly thought of the lovely white-hot coals that the narrow fire chamber in my cook stove produced.

I took the rod from the old truck and filed one end to a sharp point. Then I sawed off a length of bamboo and reamed out the thin nodes that separated the inner chambers, leaving one end closed. After heating the steel rod in coals until the tip was glowing red, I pressed the hot point on one side of the bamboo near the closed end. The rod burned smoothly through, emitting a satisfying sizzling noise and a light, fragrant smoke.

Holding the piece of bamboo to one side I blew down into the hole with pursed lips. Then I blew some more. I blew and blew. After a few hours, when I was about ready to give up, a deep reedy sound suddenly flowed out of the flute with my breath.

Ecstatic, I wandered about for the rest of the day blowing that one low mournful note, a sound much like an owl would make.

One by one I burned four finger-holes along the top of the flute and finally one for my thumb on the bottom side, adjusting the pitch as I went along. Soon I was tootling happily around, composing simple melodies which became “variations” as I tried to repeat them.

THE SHAKUHACHI

Later, after I’d made a few of those side-blown or “transverse” flutes, I tried my hand at shakuhachi, which are blown from the end like a clarinet but without the reed and mouthpiece — just the open end of the bamboo with the front side cut at an angle to make a sharp edge to blow against, similar to blowing on a bottle to get a sound.

Although they can be constructed in a variety of lengths and diameters, producing deeper or higher sounds, the shakuhachi is named for its most popular length of one and an eighth “shaku,” or just over 21 inches. They were developed in medieval Japan by Zen Buddhist monks who formed a sect all their own — wandering mendicants called “Komuso,” or “priests of emptiness and nothingness,” who wore baskets over their heads as a form of self-effacement on their begging rounds and practiced “Suizen,” or “blowing zen.”

Focusing on sound is an ancient method of meditation. It is especially favored in zen, with its emphasis on the present moment. Avalokiteshvara, or Kwan Yin (one who hears), is said to have experienced great enlightenment reflecting on sound, along with the question “who hears?”

After making my first shakuhachi flute I soon learned why it originated as a way of meditation practice. Its main feature is the quality of the sound produced and the intense concentration necessary to bring forth any sound at all, much less the vast range of subtle nuances that are possible with these simple instruments.

I discovered that the shakuhachi was almost impossible to play without a quiet mind. But after prolonged meditation it seemed to almost play itself, my body and the flute forming one unified whole, with the sound coming from deep in my gut and spontaneous music flowing out with surprising quality and depth.

But if I was distracted and lost in thought the shakuhachi refused to play along.

JAMMIN’ WITH THE BIRDS

When I drove around on my landscape painting expeditions I kept an eye out for bamboo. The shakuhachi is ideally made from the thick root-end of Japanese bamboo, which can be difficult to find.

On one of my trips I stopped to investigate some bamboo growing beside a tiny stream. It was the typical bamboo usually found growing in California, more like corn stalks than the hard wooden culms of oriental bamboo. However, as I peered into the small grove an odd stalk caught my eye. Almost completely black in color, it looked to have broken off and died long ago. But the root end was hard and intact. I carefully dug it out of the ground. There was not enough for a full length shakuhachi — only about a foot of good wood, with a few rings of root to give it thickness and a nice taper.

When I returned to the foothills I shaped the small piece of strange bamboo into a short flute. After I’d finished burning the holes and I blew into it, the timbre of the notes astonished me. Shakuhachi are normally rather low in pitch and their music is slow and haunting, almost mournful at times. But the notes fairly flew out of this shorter version, in light and joyous birdlike trills.

I’d already made several shakuhachi and each one had it’s own personality. Some seemed to have more music in them than others. But this small black flute was something else entirely. The quality of the sound and the music that flowed effortlessly out of it was truly magical.

One day I meandered downstream playing my new little flute. It was springtime and carpets of wildflowers were appearing everywhere. At a place where the creek flowed through a grove of tall Digger Pines, I stopped and sat on a huge log. The sound of my flute soared up exuberantly in every direction.

Before long I noticed that birds were landing in the pines above me and chirping merrily along with my flute. The surrounding trees filled with hundreds of birds, all singing at the tops of their little lungs, a delirious chorus in a multitude of different chirping voices.

RENUNCIATION

When an old friend visited me and heard the sound of the new flute he was naturally entranced. He was a musician and could play shakuhachi fairly well. He deeply desired that little flute.

I was trying, at the time, to live the life of a renunciate, giving up all attachment. I never locked my door when I left home and always gave what little extra cash I had to panhandlers. I tried not to desire anything that others had and to only accept things that were freely given, without aggressively seeking anything for myself. I often sold my watercolors for less than I could have gotten and deliberately didn’t promote myself or make much of what I did.

So, of course I felt compelled to give my beloved flute to my friend when he departed.

A few months later, when I saw him again, I hesitantly asked about the little shakuhachi I’d given him. “Oh, I forgot it somewhere,” he said casually.

I kept my disappointment to myself but the saying, “Pearls before swine” came to mind.

Not long after that I managed to make a longer, mellow-toned shakuhachi that also had some natural music in it, although nothing compared to the one I’d given away.

Another friend came by and when he heard the sound of my playing he deeply desired that shakuhachi. He’d never played one before, so I told him that if he could get a sound out of it he could have it. He spent the entire day blowing and blowing, until he was exhausted, but he never got a single sound. So I declined to give it to him.

A few weeks later I caught that same shakuhachi in a car door while hitchhiking and shattered it.

POSTSCRIPT

After I moved back to the city I continued to make shakuhachi for awhile. I soon discovered that those random-length unrefined flutes I’d been making were looked down on as “backyard shakuhachi,” not worth playing. When I visited one well-known western shaukuhachi player he at first commented on the beauty of the bamboo and the quality of the sound of my flute, but when he took it and attempted to play it himself he frowned and dismissed it as “not in tune.”

I tried making shakuhachi in the prescribed way, with a smooth coating of resin on the inside bore and an inlay of ebony on the mouthpiece, but the results were not worth the trouble and I soon lost interest in flutes altogether.

Now, decades later, with a nice grove of Madake bamboo growing outside my meditation hut, I’ve started to fool around with shakuhachi again. After a little research I discovered that the unrefined shakuhachi I’d been making are called jinashi (unfilled) for their lack of a precise resin-coated bore and the necessary two-piece construction that characterize most modern shakuhachi.

Many jinashi shakuhachi are said to be “in tune with themselves” and not meant for playing with other instruments. Apparently, as shakuhachi began to be used in performances with koto and shamisen, rather than for solo meditation, they had to become uniform and tuned exactly the same. But a certain quality and essence was lost in the process. Now, at least in some circles, the old style jinashi shakuhachi are coming back into fashion.

FASTING

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                              “All beings are evolved from food”

Bhagavadgita

In the late sixties, while on an extended retreat in the foothills of the Sierras, I experimented with fasting. I was inspired, in part, by the fact that I didn’t have much money to buy food. I reasoned that since fasting was reputed to have some spiritual benefits, I might as well take advantage of the opportunity to see what it was like to go without eating for a period of time.

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I never looked this bad, but my little pot belly did finally disappear completely

My first attempt ended after just half a day, when I wolfed down the remains of a bag of granola, which tasted fantastic, even without milk.

Undeterred, after several more attempts, I finally managed to go an entire day and night without consuming anything but spring water from the nearby well.

I soon learned that it was easier to fast if one stayed busy and didn’t linger when one task was accomplished but immediately moved on to something else that was mentally and physically engaging. I also found that fasting is like any other activity — it becomes easier with practice, almost like exercising some muscles that hadn’t been used much.

Recent research indicates that periodic fasts are actually conducive to health and longevity. Humankind apparently evolved in an environment where food was not always readily available and fasting was normal. Our bodies, ever adaptable, learned to make the most of it.

LONGER FASTS

Over the course of several months, I slowly lengthened the duration of my fasts. I discovered that after three days my entire organism shifted gears. Suddenly I no longer craved food. I felt as if I could go on fasting as long as I liked.

Up to that point, the only benefits I’d noticed was an increase in self-discipline (not to be underestimated) and a new appreciation for the subtle flavors in even the simplest fare. But after three days of fasting, my mind, as well as my body, settled into an indescribably relaxed and peaceful state — a peace that “passeth all understanding.” Suddenly I could sit in meditation, almost indefinitely, without being pulled this way and that by flurries of impulses and thoughts.

My fasts gradually became longer, until one summer, intent on going for two weeks with nothing but spring water, I was overcome with severe leg cramps on the twelfth day — to the point where I could barely stand. I learned later that my cramps were from a lack of salt and other minerals, brought on by walking the surrounding hills in the hot sun — despite drinking plenty of water.

I decided, henceforth, to be more moderate with fasting. I hadn’t noticed any additional benefit after three days and eventually the body will start consuming itself. Vital organs can fail. Longer fasts, of more than a week, can be dangerous.

REGULAR FASTS

I eventually settled down to just two fasts a month, on the days of the new moon and the full moon, for a full day and two nights each time.

After several months on that regimen, I was intrigued to discover that not only did I know when the moon was new or full without consulting a calendar, but my appetite disappeared on those days, and fasting was effortless and natural.

After returning to the workaday world it has become increasingly difficult to fast every fortnight. But even when I can’t fast, I still observe the new and full moons by examining my habitual patterns and resolving for the next two weeks to eliminate, or at least cut back, whatever habit I deem might be negatively effecting my health and well-being.

Usually my fasting is from things like alcohol, sugar or marijuana, but I also frequently “fast” from other habits that have become excessive, such as the internet and TV. I’ve even thought of fasting from talking for two weeks, if it ever became feasible, just to see what effect it has on my inner life, and perhaps to tamp down my tendency to jabber excessively.

DIGESTING IMPRESSIONS

I think it was Gurdjieff who said that “impressions” are food. This is an interesting view. We can picture ourselves as a very large, one-celled organism, with our senses and mind making up a circle of awareness — like a huge mouth which consumes all of the impressions that enter it, chews and digests them, stores them if necessary, and eliminates them when they are unhealthy or used up. In this scenario, internally generated impressions, such as thoughts and feelings, are essentially the same as external sense impressions, they are also food.

Negative impressions that we consume (or generate), such as violence or hate, have a negative effect on our system, like a psychic belly ache, while positive impressions, such as beauty and peace, are nutritious and conducive to long term health.

With that in mind we might be more careful about the impressions we seek out. I think it is possible to become addicted to the stimulation that negative and violent impressions generate. We don’t have to run away from difficult situations, but we can learn ways to digest them without bad effects and “fast” from them occasionally by retreating to places where impressions are healthy, such as into beautiful natural surroundings.

MEDITATION AS FASTING

To meditate is to fast from impressions, particularly thoughts. The circle of awareness is allowed to return to its natural state, which is clear and open. The incessant stream of accumulated impressions are digested and eliminated — simply by letting them disappear into that original clarity. Eventually they empty out and there is recovery and renewal.

When I’m meditating, if I’ve been over-stimulated by meeting lots of people or from surfing the news on the internet, those impressions, the dialogues and storylines, tend to come back up on me, like acid reflux of the mind. It can take some time to digest and eliminate them.

So if I stop posting on this site sometimes, it might not be due to writer’s block, but simply because I’ve decided to fast from the internet for awhile.

SWEATSONG

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Ho! Grandfather, Grandmother, thank you for this day!

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CHIEF AMERICAN HORSE

I was initially unaware of the spiritual significance of the sweat bath. I just liked the remarkable feeling of rejuvenation and freshness produced by the right combination of heat, air and moisture.

Perhaps this propensity was encoded in my genes by the Finnish part of my ancestry. There’s some speculation that the Finnish sauna and the Native American sweat lodge share a common ancestry in the Nomadic tribes of central Asia.

I built my first sauna using an abandoned chicken coop and recycled (scrounged) barn wood, with rough cedar fence boards for lining the interior. Underneath the small, rustic structure, a capped-off steel pipe, with holes drilled along its length, attached to a five gallon propane tank, provided a steady source of heat to a large, heavy steel pan full of rocks that fit into an opening in the floor.

When the hot rocks were splashed with water, a perfect blast of moist, steamy heat, known a “loyly,” or spirit of life, by the Finns, would rise up and fill the sauna.

The sauna was situated behind an old ranch house in the Sacramento Valley, under a huge, one hundred year old fig tree whose leaves reached the ground on all sides like a translucent green dome. A cold water shower attached to a garden hose hanging over a branch completed the picture and soon I was enjoying the camaraderie of communal bathing, as friends and neighbors started showing up for regular sweats.

That first custom-built sauna functioned beautifully for several years. But it had one serious flaw — it didn’t have a thermostat or timer to automatically shut it off. At my own peril I ignored Murphy’s First Law. “If something can go wrong it will.”

Late one night, after taking a sauna, I was awakened by a tremendous whooshing noise, like a jet plane landing in my back yard. I leapt, half asleep, from bed to window.

A monster pillar of fire was shooting about fifty feet straight up into the night sky from where my sauna once stood. The inevitable had finally happened. I’d forgotten to shut off the burner. It had gotten so hot and dry inside that the wood walls had burst into flames. The ensuing heat caused the propane tank to burst open — hence the whooshing pillar-of-fire.

My first impulse was to return to bed. Maybe I could go back to sleep and find out it was just a dream. Instead, I ran, butt-naked, out into the night in a rush of adrenaline, performing superhuman feats of strength and endurance to extinguish the blaze.

Both the early Finns and the American Indians viewed fire as a dangerous element, but one that could be harnessed with the appropriate rituals to produce power and vitality.

The next sauna I built, in the late seventies, employed the lower section of a water heater tank to heat the rocks — with a thermostat that shut it off automatically when it became too hot. Located behind our house in the Santa Cruz Mountains, on a steep bank overlooking the San Lorenzo River, it had a sod roof that sported ferns and other forest plants trailing down the dark redwood exterior. The inside, lined with choice golden brown cedar, was dimly lit by narrow insulated windows. A thick section of a madrone branch supported the ceiling.

I thought I was just making another sauna, but I was to discover that the small womb-like structure I’d built was actually something more — a sweat lodge. No sooner was my new sauna completed, than I was introduced to various devotees of the Native American spiritual path who began showing up for frequent sweats.

Chief among them was Standing Bear. When I first met him he was a pipe-bearer, conducting pipe ceremonies using a beautiful traditional medicine pipe with the name “Kind Heart” carved on the bottom of its red pipestone bowl. He kept it in a large bearskin pipe bag, along with a feather incense fan for smudging with sage and other special objects used in the ceremony.

When he would take out the pipe and raise it to the heavens, the atmosphere seemed to abruptly change.

Bear was a former Catholic (when he was known as Arthur), and he apparently had retained a feeling for ritual. The only other place I’ve experienced such profound reverence was while traveling in Mexico, where I sought out the local village churches for my meditations. I’d sit off to the side near the altar, which was invariably inundated with small offerings and votive candles that cast a halo of dim light over the worn wooden benches and ancient plaster walls. As I gratefully drank in the moment like some rare wine, a pilgrim would come crawling down the aisle to the altar, knees bloody from the distance he had traveled on them.

It’s unusual to witness such deep devotion towards something so intangible and mysterious, especially in a world more concerned with concrete attributes such as what we’ve done and what we own. But from the truly religious perspective, it can be said that we ourselves have never really done anything, much less owned anything.

After carrying the pipe for a time, Bear gave it to someone else, just as it had been given to him. The odd thing was that when he gave away the pipe, it was if he also gave away the energy that went with it. He was suddenly somehow diminished and more subject to the usual human foibles and egotism — as if the pipe had conferred on him a special responsibility and power.

Bear was expert in all kinds of traditional lore. He showed me how to make a water drum, traditionally used in the peyote ceremony, but perfect for playing in the sweat. The edge of a piece of deerskin is formed over marbles, around which a continuous piece of cotton rope is wrapped and tied over the legs of an old three-legged bean pot, to pull the deerskin tight. When the cast iron pot is partially filled with water and the deerskin is wet, these simple drums produce a wonderfully resonant sound when struck with drumsticks fashioned from wooden dowels.

For years we held weekly sweats there on the side of the river and many different people came and went, bringing with them songs and chants from all over, some in English, Lakota, or Navajo, others in no known language.

Sitting cross-legged, the brown walls and bodies only faintly visible in the dense golden light and steam, with the throbbing rhythm of the drums reverberating in my chest and the different voices rising as one, I would remember the old Finnish saying, “In the sauna one must conduct oneself as one would in church.”

Occasionally I traveled with Bear to traditional sweats, in lodges built in the prescribed ritual manner. In these structures, willow branches are bent and tied together to create an igloo-like framework, over which a thick layer of rugs and blankets is laid, with a flap left for entry. In the center a shallow pit is dug, around which aromatic cedar boughs are spread to sit on.

Into this small, low space, as many as fifteen or twenty people are crammed together side by side, sitting with knees against chest, almost in the fetal position.

When the flap is closed, it is pitch black and you can’t even see your own nose. Tactile senses suddenly become very acute. Sounds and smells are heightened.

Outside, rocks are heated in a roaring fire. When the sweat leader calls for them, rocks are rolled into a pit in the center of the sweat lodge with a pitchfork of deer antlers. They are greeted with salutations, like honored guests. Each rock is the size of a human head and so hot they glow white in the darkness. Pinches of cedar are thrown on them, producing little sparks that dance in the darkness like stars, as a pungent woodsy odor instantly permeates the lodge.

When water is splashed on the rocks, a rush of overpowering heat spreads out and assaults every fiber of one’s being. Sometimes, vainly seeking some cool air, I’d try to bend down near the ground, until I had almost reversed my fetal position. But there would be no escape and finally I’d have to sacrifice body and mind to the relentless heat, melting into a tiny little spark of essence calmly shining in the darkness.

The sweat leader reminds us that suffering is an unavoidable part of life, that the brief pain we experience is in sympathy with the suffering of all beings everywhere. He exhorts us to walk in balance with the earth and the other creatures on it. The Creator is in the creation, not separate. We must show respect and consideration for all of life.

And finally, he asks us to always speak from the heart.

In his native tongue the sweat leader sings an invocation, accompanied by a drum. The other participants are then invited to offer prayers, to seek help for loved ones, or guidance on the path. The prayer moves clockwise around the sweat lodge, as one by one each voice cuts through the burning darkness.

Always there is someone who goes on at length, until suddenly their voice chokes with emotion and a wave of healing tears sweeps silently through the lodge.

Between rounds the flap is opened and fresh air and light stream in. If anyone needs to go out, this is their chance to leave. No one moves. More rocks are called for and there is another round of sweating, singing and praying.

After a last round, glowing bodies finally emerge from the dark, moist interior of the sweat lodge, as if from the womb of Mother Earth herself, purified and cleansed — reborn.

*This piece first appeared in Coast Magazine in 1996.

PERFECT LOVE

ZAFROGZEN Posted on by
wrentit3_edited

Wrentit, Chamaea Fasciata

Not long ago I found a small brown bird perched on the step at the back of the house. Just sitting there. It didn’t fly away, even when I reached down and gently picked it up.

Small and remarkably round, the bird fit nicely into the palm of my hand. It was still alive, but appeared to be unconscious. I figured it must have flown into the glass door, thinking it could fly straight through the room and out the window on the opposite side of the house — the same way these little birds zip through the thick brush outside.

My examination of the dazed bird was interrupted by a commotion in a large rhododendron bush behind me. It was another bird, sounding very agitated. Although I couldn’t see it, I was sure it must be the mate to the one I held in my hand.

Spurred to action, I glanced around the yard for some place safe, high enough to escape the notice of cats, where I could set the injured bird to allow it to recover in peace. The only spot I could think of was the roof of my teahouse, which was some distance away.

Cupping my other hand over my little passenger I set out across the yard towards the teahouse. As I moved up the path I felt the bird’s feet grip my finger.

Nestled in a small clearing surrounded by dense brush and moss covered pines, the teahouse seemed a good place to set an injured bird. I reached up and carefully placed it on a shingle near the edge of the low roof.

My teahouse is a small structure built of rustic redwood board and batten with a shake roof. Used more for meditation than serving tea, it is inspired by the romantic image of the isolated hut in the wilderness where the ancient Chinese recluse dwelt far from the tumult of ordinary society and all outdoors became a garden to wander freely. In the words of America’s most famous recluse, Henry David Thoreau, “I found myself suddenly neighbor to the birds: not by having imprisoned one, but having caged myself near them.”

I checked back occasionally to see if the bird was any better. It just sat there, beak hanging open and eyes glazed over. I began to doubt it would make it. I decided that if it didn’t recover by nightfall, I would bring it in and put it in a box over a heating pad.

I remembered seeing a pair of these birds, a few days earlier, as they bathed at the edge of the small pond near the house.  Plain brown, round, with no neck, and eyes on either side of their body, they were not much bigger than ping-pong balls, with perky tails that bobbed up and down as they flitted busily about. One bird would bathe while the other stood guard perched on the head of a stone stature of Kwan Yin that stands at the edge of the pond.

I was able to identify them later as “Wrentit, Chamaea fasciata.” They are a species all their own, neither a Wren nor a Tit (chickadee). Shy, reclusive and seldom seen, these non-migratory coastal denizens dwell within a one or two acre territory. They mate for life and are constant companions: grooming one another, sharing the incubation chores, and curling up together at night in what has been described as a “headless, puffed-up ball of feathers with two tails and four little feet protruding.”

As it was starting to get dark, I walked back and peered up at the teahouse roof. The Wrentit hadn’t moved.

I reached up, intending to take it into the house, when suddenly I heard a noise off to my side. On the ground only a foot or two away was another little bird. It was jumping frantically from side to side, looking up at me and emitting a rapid series of trp trp sounds that managed somehow to simultaneously communicate encouragement to its mate and alarm at what I might do. I was stunned at the depth of feeling in those odd notes.

I quickly left the scene and circled around behind a clump of trees.

A few moments later I returned from another direction. Both birds had disappeared. All that remained on the roof where the comatose bird had been was a small pile of white birdshit.

Later I was told that birds that smash into windows will sometimes abruptly come-to like that. But what stuck in my mind was the devotion of the bird’s mate.

Now, when I sit meditating in my teahouse, I frequently notice the Wrentit’s distinctive song (two notes followed by a receding burst of stacato notes) and I’m reminded of the love these little brown birds have for one another.

Humans, the strange featherless bipeds who have wreaked so much havoc on the natural world, are not the only creatures capable of deep feelings for one another. Love plays an important part in the preservation and continuance of every species. I think love serves a higher evolutionary purpose as well.

It’s been said that all love is really self-love. The Wrentit was trp, trping because he thought he was about to lose his little puff-ball. I know how he feels.

For most of us love does not extend very far beyond our immediate circle. We only love those who are closest to us, or those who are like us. But human beings are also capable of a higher, more unselfish form of love, in which our separate individual self dissolves. Then loving and caring for the world is loving and caring for ourselves.

*This piece first appeared in Coast Magazine in 1996.  I posted it here so that it will go into my permanent archives.