Two And A Half Years Later.............

We're on the verge, it seems, of the next major leap, or change, or book, as Nancy originally named it, of our lives. We've been talking about the meaning of this next stage, in political/personal, spiritual, and ecological terms. Some things are becoming more clearly imagined. Family. Our impact on the planet. Logical next steps in our lifestyle, given our last 28 years of living off grid, of pioneering a piece of raw, inhospitable, rugged, harsh New Mexico land, of having taken a nearly 4 year break from living in the house we built, of spending significant time in Asia; given that we will return very soon to this house and land in order to sell it and begin that next new book of our lives.

The thought that we may not return to Asia later this year, as has been our recent habit. The idea that we may instead remain in the States, in the Van RV we're planning to live in, and see what it's like to do that, and to not travel by air so far, and to settle in, after some fashion, to a new way of life. A way of life that is consistent with our way of life to date, and even, I affirm, a next logical evolutionary leap in our way of living.

Since we are indeed destroying our planet, and leaving a legacy of despair and difficulty to our children and grandchildren (Nancy remains more hopeful than I tend to be about this, believing that the infinite creative potential of humanity may still offer as yet unknown positive possibilities......) then what can we do, that is, what can Nancy and I do that is within the scope of making sense for ourselves, that will be consistent with the magnitude of the losses and changes we are painfully aware of? The way of life we are imagining next for ourselves, that of living nomadically in a rather small vehicle, makes a great deal of sense for us. We both wish to live more and more consistently with our renunciate selves, while appreciating that this choice has not only concrete implications in and for the material world, but that it has also potently symbolic and ritual meaning for the psyche and soul especially of our American countrymen. What statement do we wish to make with how we choose to continue to live on Earth, now, in Her decline, and in our individual ever more assured declines?

Simplify, simplify, simplify, has been one of my mantras these last few years, increasing in volume and intensity with each passing year that we have lived so simply, and comfortably, and minimally in the world, and have not felt or been deprived, and have enjoyed ourselves, and have been healthy and creative and compassionate. In other words, we haven't sacrificed anything of value in order to do this, but instead have increased our appreciation of the value and quality of our lives. We wish to continue this development, and we believe that downsizing even further in what we call our home is the best way that we can now do this. My wish, or one of them at this point, is to be houseless, but not homeless. (Nancy says that this move into a more minimal living arrangement is still a bit of an experiment for her. No way to know now where exactly it will lead).

Personally, I do not want the responsibilities (one could say the entrapments) of house ownership, or the expenses, or the energy consumption demanded by it, or the wasted – for me – thinking and imagination required by it. I don't need it to ground me, or to define me, or to shelter me, or to perform any function at all for me, and so I wish to be free of it.

I don't want to consume more and more of anything. I rather wish to consume as little as possible to keep me comfortable (by my own definition), safe and nimble, and thereby continue my personal revolution of transformation of the consumerist mentality now more universally embraced around the world. When the Idiot Bush 2 told us all to go shopping after 9/11, he actually knew precisely what he was talking about, in order to facilitate the endless rapacious expansion of American, and now global consumerism, the very heart and blood of the endless wealth expansion of the 1%, and perhaps the most fundamental enemy of the Earth and of life on Her. Much more so, I suggest, than the often touted over population “issue”. I maintain that there are more than enough resources on Earth – or.....there were? - to sustain the entirity of Her populations, but that the insanely misguided mismanagement of these resources may be the single ecological issue underlying all others. To put it simply, but in much less fashionable terms, greed. And the corollary of more and more, and insatiable, desires. Which of course become imagined needs. Blah blah blah.

We intend to move forward into greater simplicity and into the greater expression of native intelligence and common sense. I'm grateful that we are able to do this (well, it's a bit speculative at the moment, but not entirely unprecedented; we shall see), as clearly not everyone is. We apparently need to remain out of the box even in the latter/final stage of life. And why be surprised by this?

My Heart Remains Heavy

We're carrying on with daily life, now at our beach haven near Chumphon. Terra has been with us for 9 days, leaving tonight on her two day trek back to San Diego. Of course it's been good to share our experience with her, and hopefully she may begin to appreciate why we're here.

We went with her to one of the islands off the east coast, Koh Phangan, for just a couple of nights. My intention was to get some first impressions, just a taste, to see if it was anything like Pai, but at the beach, which we were led to believe it might be, in which case we would have an additional location that we might like to spend some extended time in. I'm not sure why we even thought about additional locations, when really, we're quite happy here, but we did, and the notion of a Pai at the beach had a certain appeal, even though in the last couple of days I've realized that, for all of our appreciation of what Pai has to offer in terms of feeling like some part of our "tribe" is there - that 70's hippy thing - we have no community there at all, while I've realized more strongly that we do in fact have a community right here at Thung Wua Laen.

Anyway, life goes on, daily enjoyments and joys, including my long morning walks on the beach, meetings with new friends, adventures driving a motorcycle with an elaborate side car contraption that accommodated all three of us on more than one outing, hanging out, going to the little town or the "big" city for bicycle shopping with Sidney and Gail, eating, newly riding bicycles and imagining expanding this endeavor (we did buy a bike for Nancy, and I'm now borrowing another one to find out if I might like to get more involved - I already expect that I do), visiting local areas of interest like the "monkey temple" with John and Helen from Oz (I was duly reprimanded by a self appointed lexicographer farang woman when I referred to it as the "monkey" temple: "Not monkey's! Lemurs!"), etc.

All this goes on, and in the midst of it all, simultaneous with the joys and the laughter and the fun and the calm and the everything, my heart remains heavy with the pain, grief and sorrow of what people are capable of doing, and not doing.  In a profound emotional and psychological way my world has been turned upside down. Nancy shared a very good article by Ken McLeod, about whom I know nothing other than that he is some kind of well respected Buddhist teacher, writer, scholar(?), translator(?), and apparently publisher of a newsletter called Unfettered Mind: Pragmatic Buddhism, in the December 2016, Number 29, issue of which appears this piece talking about "difficult feelings". I recommend it, and I assume it can be found online, but if you try and can't find it, let me know and I'll send it to you.

Part of my upside down-ness is this experience of heavy heartedness. You'll be aware for example that I'm not publishing photos of our experience in the last few blog posts. I haven't been taking many photos of things and people that I could well be photographing.  No motivation to do so. And I haven't been posting nearly as much of anything as I was. No motivation to do so. I'm living my experience, but I'm not motivated to display it, or share it much, or document it in the way I had been. It seems a bit irrelevant, or of considerably less importance, in light of how the world, and my experience of the world, has recently changed. I'm subliminally preoccupied, in the midst of my blessed daily life in our beautiful, happy, comfortable bit of tropical paradise, with digesting and integrating what it all will mean, or already means.

So here's a little update, just because I do still want to be in touch, and I do still want to express what I'm up to. I'm just up to something very different right now than I was before November 8, 2016, and I suppose I will be up to this something different for a while yet, time being what it is, and leaving it open being what it is, and the relatively unstructured life in retirement being what it might be.

Until next time, then.

The Slow Return

It's been good to talk with newer and older friends about all this  over the last weeks. Many people are or have been in shock, in deep grief, in disbelief, in fear, in confusion. Sharing this experience has helped me begin to come to terms with the implications. I'm not in a place of resolution, but I've begun to feel myself return from the depths of despair and terror. In the spirit of practicing/being in Grace and Easefulness, the direction I'm taking is toward the full embrace of surrender to what is, to begin with. Where that will lead I can't say just yet. I do believe we are experiencing further manifestations of the darkness of the Kali Yuga.  I do believe there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, or as we would more likely say today, heightened death and destruction of all kinds.
 
It is clear that those who are now in power in America, and also, according to our European friends at Sherabling, in some cases abroad as well, are Fascist promulgators of much that will welcome, advance, inform, energize and promote this death and destruction. There is no way to completely avoid this, in my opinion. There won't be a Savior or a Messiah arriving to clear the decks and make all things loving and wonderful. The saviors and the messiahs that we might  like to see reside within each of us, and they can be cultivated and nourished, or not.

People will suffer in the next years. Basic services that we Americans have come to rely upon, somewhat paltry though they are in comparison to many other places, will change, be diminished, or disappear. Human rights that have been won with blood and dedication will be diminished or will disappear. Hate speech and hate driven actions will increase, and will be not only tolerated, but encouraged. More people will die as a result of this. Our Earth will be further degraded for profit, and out of profound greed, stupidity and ignorance. Amen.

Not a particularly hopeful picture, I admit. But I haven't yet arrived at hopefulness. I'm still coming to terms with the truth as I see it. If we were dealing with rationality, there might be sensible reason to be hopeful. Of course we aren't. We are dealing with the deepest, darkest, basest aspects of the human psyche, driven not by reason or compassion or caring or wisdom, but by fear, megalomania, unbridled power, violence, lust, and dissociation. There's nothing rational going on here, and so I don't believe we can hope for reasonable behaviors or resolutions just yet. We are being subsumed within the irrational drives of wildly out of control Egotism.

So. Allow me to be a bit psycho-analytical for a moment. We all have within us these same capabilities. I could be, and have been in my perhaps smaller ways, a rigid, controlling and dominating fascist. I am or have been a hater and fear monger. I could be a murderer, a rapist, a power glutton, a war and money addict. And so could you. There is nothing alien or other worldly or incomprehensible here. On the contrary, it is entirely comprehensible and familiar. And it is, simply, the failure to admit, to acknowledge, and to integrate healthfully these psychic components that has brought us to this point. The great Shadow is upon us, only because we, as a species, and our current leaders most dramatically at the moment, prefer to ascribe these qualities to "others" who are "outside" of ourselves: our "enemies", who are the cause of all of our unhappiness and woes and troubles and frustrations and hard times, and who must therefor be rightfully blamed for and made responsible for it all.

Oh Lord, there's nothing new under the sun. This has been, and continues to be the desperate story of human kind on Planet Earth, at least in this Dark Age. There have always been exceptions however, and these are the blazing light figures who inspire us. Their message has never been an easy one, or one that will guarantee escape from the pains and trials of the human condition. It is precisely because of this though that they inspire. For those of us who have seen some of this light, who yearn for a truly and more fully human possibility, there isn't much choice, I think. We must be, after all, the change we want to see.

And so I accept the challenge of the moment: to re-commit myself to the path of wisdom, of love, of compassion, of service to humanity and to Truth. I think of the Prayer of St. Francis at this moment: Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.......................
Or the Bodhisattva of Mahayana Buddhism, dedicated to serving and fostering the enlightenment and liberation of all sentient beings for all time.
Or the teaching of Tikkun Olam, that we work to repair the world that has been torn asunder.
Or the Sermon On The Mount, in which blessed are the peacemakers, and the gentle, and the pure in heart and the merciful.
Or Thich Nat Han's breath taking poem, Call Me By My True Names.

I remember Gandhi, and King, and the Buddha and the Christ and the Baal Shem Tov, and Kabir and Rumi and Mirabai and the countless other carriers of the light of Truth, all of whom, we must remember, experienced a good deal of pain and suffering, either voluntarily or otherwise, on their paths of great Light in the face of great darkness.

My prayer today is that I be able to surrender, gracefully and fully to God's Will, not my will, and see where that takes me. May it be so. Amen.

Sorting Through It

Since the election I've - we've - been experiencing shock, grief, fear, futurizing, all sorts of emotions. Personally I'm looking into a bleak and sometimes terrifying future. In my mind we've just experienced the beginning of what Germany experienced in the early 30's (1933?) when Heir Hitler was elected to office. The Third Reich lasted only about 12 years, til the end of WWII, rather than the thousand years it was  projected for. I don't think I'm being too hysterical if I think of America now as having just initiated the Fourth Reich. We may be looking at 8 years of extreme damage, and a  lot of extreme damage can be done in that amount of time, as we so clearly know. Nothing the president elect is saying or doing offers hope; everything he is saying and doing supports my thesis.

I'm writing this because I haven't been able to write lately, not knowing what to say,  sorting through my feelings and thoughts, struggling to find a place to "land" with it all, knowing there may be no such place. Wondering what "leaving it open" means now. I've read various Buddhist writer's blurbs (see Lion's Roar magazine online) about how to approach this situation. Some I find saccharine and unsatisfying. Some make some sense to me. Between the extremes, for me, of  taking to the streets and passivity, I'm searching for how to be loving and compassionate - I still hold these as dear, and now somewhat more challenging than before - while remaining realistic, aware, prudent, not wedded to fear or anger or numbness, non-violent both outwardly and inwardly.

When the burnings and shootings and hate crimes and political policies of destruction take serious hold, will I be able to remain "accepting"? Will I offer myself, my children, my beloved wife, to the fires of hatred without resistance, calling it, and meaning it, God's Will?

Any way, this is where I am now, so probably the tenor of the blog has changed for a while. When I'm in this moment, and not in the future I'm seeing, or the past I know about, it's pretty ok. Maybe that's really all we have, after all, which I'm sure is true, and yet now not all that reassuring. We're off to Bangkok by air today, then on to Chiang Mai for just a few days before heading up to Pai for a couple of weeks, and then down to Thung Wua Laen for the imagined longer haul. All is in flux. All is open. All is unknown (or is it?)

Be well, dear friends and family. Take good care of each other. 

Oh........My.........God.

Anyone else ready to think about leaving the US now?
I know......jobs, kids, family, etc. Of course, all important reasons to stay put. But Jesus H. Christ. What does it take to make you wonder, for real?

I can only see this latest horror as another signal of the collapse of the American Empire, in the way that every previous empire has collapsed of its own accord. Surely, ours will follow suit. Or so one can hope.

We're deeply disturbed by the just won presidency by a person who ought never to have been taken seriously by virtually anyone, let alone gotten himself elected to this office. And of course it isn't just the presidency. It's the control of Congress and the Supreme Court as well, with seemingly no real limits in place to temper the onslaught of heightened insanity that is about to come. True madness here. Diagnosable pathology. The real deal. The damage that will be done is....................well, I was going to say unthinkable, but I know better now. Now I'd say it's predictable.

If we thought the economic collapse starting in 2008 has been bad, I think it's entirely reasonable to be expecting something of an even greater magnitude now. Will we see bread lines again in the good ole US of A? Will Social Security as we know it disappear? Medicare? Certainly, it seems, The Affordable Health Care Act will get repealed, with no elected power to stop it. Legal abortion rights?
Planned Parenthood? Medicaid? Food Stamps? Higher education out of reach for all but the super rich? Climate Change accords, finally signed, now ignored?

Achhh. Who knows where it will all end? Well, it's been a while since the world has seen a large, major Fascist State dedicated to the worship of a morally bankrupt, but "charismatic" personality. Maybe it's time again. The cycle of things. The Kali Yuga. The Wheel of Samsara.The raison d'etre of Planet Earth?

May all beings be happy. May we remember to allow for the evolution of souls in the midst of the devolution of governments. May compassion not be lost, especially. May we understand more deeply the surrender to that wisdom which we cannot see or fully comprehend. Shit happens. Always has. Always will. And so does Grace, let us not forget.

Be well, my friends. Be kind.

This And That In The Here And Now

Here are some "random" photos of this and that here and there and now in the Sherabling mandala.......
                                                                                                   

                                                                                                                

First coat white washing of the unfinished Chenrezik shrine hall

Collecting pine sap for sale

Piles of old prayer flags cut down from the trees

Strolling up the road in young monkly affection

A path through the woods and the jungle of wild lantana

My uninvited volunteer companion on my 3/4 hour loop around the grounds

In and around Sansal, a nearby village, on my walk there with Tsultrim

Main building of the shedra, or monastic college at Sherabling

Here are the Sherabling monks during a 10 day drupchen or "vast" puja they held recently. This puja is said to be as efficacious as several years of solitary retreat in awakening and creating the conditions of the sacred necessary for realization, especially in this degenerate age:

Tso Pema, Lotus Lake

According to Rewalsar Hospitality, Private Limited website:

Tso Pema, Lotus Lake, viewed from the huge Guru Rimpoche statue above the town

"A place of beauty, a place of pilgrimage
 
Rewalsar has long been a traveller's secret just off  the  beaten track in Himachal Pradesh. Pilgrims come to make prayers, meditate or simply soak up the peaceful atmosphere.
At its heart lies the holy lake that is home to three Hindu Temples, a Sikh Gurudwara and three Buddhist Monasteries. One of the local names for Rewalsar is Trisangam (Three Holy Communities) and as such it serves as a fine example of religious tolerance and harmony that makes India great.

The Tibetan and Himachali Buddhists call Rewalsar Tso Pema (Lotus Lake) in honour of the Indian Yogi Padmasambhava who lived and meditated here. A 12 meter high statue of Padmasambhava has been erected on the hillside above the lake, a sight that dominates the landscape as you enter the town."

Guru Rimpoche, overlooking the town

For Tibetans, Padmasambhava is known as Guru Rimpoche, and is revered as, essentially, the founder of Tibetan Buddhism. The story goes something like this:

This great yogi, who had been meditating by himself for some time in the local caves, up and took the local royal princess, Mandarava, as his consort, and after some more time meditating and practicing together in these caves, the king decided he'd had enough of that sort of thing and arrested the guy, and set about burning him at the stake. Being the great yogi that he was however, the soon to be Guru Rimpoche turned the funeral pyre into a lake (the now famed Rewalsar or Lotus Lake (Tso Pema), of course), and was seen to be coolly and comfortably sitting there in its middle, on.................a lotus, naturally. The king, realizing his foolishness, and "overcome with remorse, and in homage", offered his entire kingdom to Padmasambhava. I assume this included the Royal Princess Mandarava, who some say was the cause of all the rukus in the first place.

Pinku, from Bhattu Village

But be that as it may, Nancy and I hired local taxi man Pinku Kapoor
to drive us from Sherabling up up up farther into the mountains of Himachal Pradesh, about a 3 1/2 or 4 hour ride along the endlessly winding one lane - as usual - road, sometimes paved, sometimes very broken, rocky and rough, past villages, towns, construction, working mules, horses, cows, people walking or carrying loads of branches or brush on their heads or backs, or working on the road itself, big tour buses, large dump trucks, ubiquitous motorcycles and scooters, other cars and taxis with other pilgrim/tourists or local residents, monkeys, dogs, children, holy men....... swerving with high skill and practiced aggressiveness, frequent/regular/somewhat relentless horn honking which is the recommended and encouraged practice on India's "highways" whenever you want to: 1) pass another vehicle or pedestrian or animal, or 2) warn another vehicle or pedestrian or animal that you are there or that you intend to pass and you want them to move over, or 3) are coming up on a blind curve, which most of them are, and you want to warn oncoming vehicles of your presence on this road built for single lane/one way traffic but which in a continuing present tense miracle on the fly serves to accommodate all manner and size of vehicles in two directions.

Believe it or not, there is an intuitive logic to all this that would elude anyone committed to a linear kind of rationality. Perhaps a conservative Asperger's mathematician or scientist, for example, or a rationalist philosopher. It makes no sense in that framework, but..................it is nonetheless mysteriously understood by all, and it works. Welcome to mystic India, where "logic" has an altogether different meaning.

I told Nancy that the way these things work here is analogous to how (free) improvising musicians are able to communicate with and engage with each other in deeply meaningful ways, ways that are often not available to, or understood by highly technical classical musicians, who cannot break out of their formal and studied skill sets to be able to think or play creatively out of the box. That kind of flow, spontaneity and connection is just out of reach for them, as they will, sometimes, readily admit.

And so we three arrived safely and soundly, none too much the worse for the wear, in time for lunch at the Kora Cafe, just near to our Lotus Lake Hotel, which is run by one of the Tibetan Buddhist monasteries in town, and in which our room offered a great lake view. After lunch and a bit of a rest, Pinku drove us farther up the mountain to find the meditation caves of Padmasambhava and Mandarava (it's not too hard to find these, as the area is now a developed, but still pretty low key pilgrimage/tourist destination), and then on the way back down to stop at the huge statue of Guru Rimpoche which overlooks the lake and the town.

Pilgrims at the caves

Mandarava shrine in smaller cave next to Padmasambhava's cave

Nancy was moved to some strong emotion praying and sitting in front of the cave statue of Guru Rimpoche: sadness, she said it was, for all the suffering of so many people in the world. I felt a deep stillness sitting, praying and meditating in front of the smaller cave statue, in the smaller cave, of Mandarava, just next door (or next cave), so to speak.     
















According to legend, this foot print was left by Padmasambhava in the rock near his cave .

Guru Rimpoche's foot (shoe?) print in rock

Back down to the huge statue for some photos and circumambulations, and to town, and to another rest and parting for the night from Pinku (we gave him money to pay for his room and food, the balance of his fee to be paid upon our next day return to Sherabling), before dinner, again at the Kora Cafe, a walk around town, and, as usual, a pretty early retirement.

"Padmasambhava" in his cave

After a light breakfast at Kora Cafe, we set out to walk around the lake, which Nancy wanted to do, and which I wanted to do also, and specifically to stop in at the Shiva Temple on its shore. One of the sights to see at the lake is the jumble of fish that gather at the shoreline because, of course, they are fed each day by monks or others, and when they are, they create a water churning feeding frenzy just like the ones you might see in the movies. They weren't eating at the moment we saw them, but here some of them are anyway:

 

And here's a bit of the Shiva Temple, in which you see the Shiva Lingam on the floor, and a pot of oil hanging above, which drips drop by drop onto the lingam into eternity, while the temple keeper goes about his morning tidying up of things.

Shiva Lingam inside the temple

And back to Stupa Guest House with a fresh supply of apples and bananas, and some peanuts too, and having lunch with friends, including our boy "Tiger", the ferocious monkey removing, dog fighting Stupa watch dog:

Tiger, at rest