This morning I am standing in the kitchen I grew up in – in the house I grew up in, with my mom – She lives here too. Or, as she reminded me this morning, it’s her house. I’m making lunch as she grinds me down to a nub about some dishes I left in the sink. I’m not sure exactly what she’s upset about because you see, I’m not listening. When she starts talking this way, I do the same thing I did when I was in High School, which is that I play heavy metal “tapes” in my head. That strategy worked wonders back then, and I’ll be damned if it doesn’t still work pretty good. I would like to be present for my mom, because that would be productive and enlightened…the way I like to do relationships these days. The truth is that we get along well most of the time, but we reach some tipping point, some critical mass about every four days, where she needs to vent about something other than what is really bothering her. She picks a target, spews a few hurtful words, and then retreats back into her calm malaise. I feel that surge of energy shooting up my center, bite back my harsh response, and crank up the tunes in my head, which is the equivalent of plugging my ears and yelling LALALALALALA! That was what we did before heavy metal came along, right?
It is not easy for any two adults to live together, but it is even harder for us to live with our parents after being, you know, out in the world. I’m 42 and I live with my mother – this is not something I list on my dating website profile. It doesn’t matter that NPR reports that lots of people my age are doing it. It doesn’t matter that having been self-employed for the last 5 years, and battered by a shitty economy – the worse recession since the great depression - for the last two, has forced this kind of personal retreat of mine. This is not something that a man wants to lead with in any kind of public way. Granted, it’s only been a couple of weeks this time. Last year, I stayed for a year and a half. Last year, I had a plan, and it almost worked. This year, I’ve got jack. I’ve got ZERO. It’s a good ZERO, but my mom hasn’t quite mastered this concept yet.
The truth is, I do have a plan. But, right now, I’m standing in the kitchen, trying to make my food, and her toxic goo is splashing all over me. She’s just starting to bash through my invisible force-field, when I begin to realize what is really happening. You see, she won’t say that she heard me booking my train-ride to Ashland, where I will be commencing a nine-day bike tour back down to Sacramento. She won’t say that she has heard me planning and scheming about this trip, and about Burning Man, and about my trip to Washington DC in the fall to ride the C&O / GAP trail. She won’t say it, but hearing all this activity in the FUN department strikes her as something other than a 42 year-old man getting his shit together and getting "back on his feet," which is what any responsible 42 year-old man is supposed to be doing, right? Is she doubting my focus and resiliency? Is she resenting all of my hootenanny? Maybe she is just in a bad space this mornng. That’s the way family works sometimes…you just have to guess what the problem is.
When I was a kid, we took a trip across the country in a little foreign car that my dad bought just for the trip, because it was 1979 and gas had surged to 68 cents per gallon or something outrageous like that. It was the oil crisis, and this small car was a new thing for us. It was an Opel, which is French for FIAT I believe. We traveled to New York City to visit family – all the aunts and uncles who used to pinch the crap out of my cheeks when I was a 4 year-old fat and adorable little tyke. On this trip, I was twelve, and driving across the continent was a great adventure. On the return trip, my parent’s decided to take us to Mount Rushmore, so we shot up through Wisconsin and over to South Dakota.
About the time we entered the Badlands, something went wrong with the clutch, and the car would not shift out of 1st gear. It was the thick of summer – probably 105 degrees out, and this was pre-global-warming weather. Did I mention that this little car had no air conditioning. There is something very special about rolling down the highway in 1st gear, in blistering hot conditions, trapped in a car with your family. Actually, it was a kind of shared misery that bonded us pretty well. We stumbled into Rapid City, and my dad, being an experienced auto mechanic, and having had plenty of time driving at 25 miles per hour to diagnose the issue, decided that we needed a pilot bearing. Whatever it was, it became quickly clear that only an Opel dealer would have the part. We pulled up to the Buick-Opel dealer at 3:30pm on a Saturday afternoon, and were stunned and moved to gratitudinal wonder, when the sales department called the parts manager in from his weekend at home, to sell us the part.
But what happened next is something that has helped shape me as a man forever more – has formed the core of my work ethic, the basis of my resourceful nature, and a fundamental sense that I can do just about fucking anything. I watched and often helped my dad, as he jacked up the little car, laid on the near-molten pavement in the parking lot of this dealership, and dropped the tranny out onto his chest, to complete the required clutch repairs. Over the next two days, I passed him tools, held the flashlight, and drank with pride, the free sodas brought to us by the guys in the sales department of that dealership. They knew my dad didn’t have the money to pay for the clutch repairs, and they were kind enough to allow him the space in the parking lot. Roundabout Monday, when the car was all back together and we were packing up to go, the service manager, a guy named Conrad Knudsen, right there on the spot, offered my dad a job as journeyman mechanic.
If my mom doesn’t understand what the hell I am doing right now, I am confident she would at least know a bit about who I am in this world - maybe have some respect for the man she helped raise. And, the truth is that she does. She knows I am a hard worker. She watched me build my business with a honda civic hatchback, a few Craftsman tools and a Craigslist ad, to a point where I was working fifty to sixty hours per week, and living pretty large, when there was time for living. She has witnessed my resourcefulness in the months when I was so broke I couldn't buy a bag of farts, and my carefully settling all of my debts, at a time when many are defaulting. I wish that I could say she is fully aware of my various other pursuits, achievements, and passions, but the blue-collar sense of limitation in which she has lived provides limited context for such understanding. This blue-collar sense of limitation (that I have had to unlearn) dictates that one does what is necessary to survive - You climb up there and lower yourself into the open jaws of Capitalism, and as you are slowly digested, you toss out the dreams and passions that you mistakenly brought with you - they are not digestable. Actually, I believe she does understand this, after loosing my father to cancer at the age of 58. She knows the stock from which I come, and she has been very supportive most of the time. I don’t think I need to defend my motives to her as she observes my current excursions into hedonistic weightlessness. But if I were going to bother with that, I know what I would tell her.
I would tell her that this is a time of great opportunity. We don’t get to be zeroed out many times in our lives, and when we are, the best thing we can do is invest in ourselves – not materially, but in our souls, in heart-expanding experiences that are going to help us take our lives to the next level. I would explain that this process needs to be nurtured and supported, and it is different for everyone. I could even explain that, in spiritual terms, to zero out means to assume a Wu Chi posture. Wu Chi posture is a foundational posture of Tai Chi, and it’s a kind of zero point; reflective, receptive, open, and energetically neutral. In yoga, they call it Savasana. It’s a restorative posture, not just of rest, but of return to self. From this posture, we are free to move in any direction, and our senses are most available to the intuitive offerings of the universe.
It’s kind of unnerving, the way these existential frictions transcend the who, what, where, and why, and tend to focus on the “how” of living. When it comes to HOW I am living, it is clear that I have a hard time not being invested in something positive and productive. This gets back to my previous point about being nervous with so much freedom. I have a hard time running in neutral. Some of this comes back to the old-fashioned work ethic that I received from my father. “If there’s time to lean, then there’s time to clean.” How many times have I heard that?
There seems to be a sense of identity that naturally develops with being invested in something, as we grind away, cultivate and vision the terms. There is also clearly a sense of escapism - escaping of the present moment, as one leans into the future. I personally don’t have much use for identities at this moment, but some weak part of me can dig the escape part. I have always been drawn to escaping. I keep catching myself tilling the soil compulsively, making sure that I am making sure that something…anything will break loose and begin flowing in the direction that I want my life to be flowing. This character trait has served me well in the past, but it has been revised of late, like some kind of software program called BE HERE NOW has been installed on my hard-drive. An identity to hang my hat upon, like “graduate student” or “Peace Corps volunteer” would be comforting, but it would also narrow my field, and right now, I am all about wide. I'm about wide field, and I'm about forward trajectory.
The important distinction that I now make is that a forward trajectory is not about earning and consumption, not even about career development per se…a forward trajectory for me is about fulfillment, spiritual evolution, testing myself, and fully expressing the gifts that I have been given. It's about loving more, and more deeply. I don’t know exactly when that idea finally clicked into place for me, but it has, in a big way. It's a new spin on that old-school, blue-collar work-ethic that my father gave me. Thanks Dad.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Zero The Hero
It seems like a lot of my friends would like to have some zero in their lives. The tricky thing about zero is that it feels like it’s all or nothing. Like you can’t be partially committed to zero – it’s zero or it’s something else. It’s empty, or it contains something. I am not sure this is the case, but it's a premise that is being tested in my life. I have had 5 conversations in the last couple of weeks with dear friends who would like some of my zero. They probably are not ready for the Total Zero experience, but a taste of zero seems to be what they are seeking. some vacations offer a taste of zero, except when folks bring along their blackberries and laptops, and then zero is never really tasted – it's a mere sniff. Friends ask me questions as if I am a guest speaker at some kind of Total Zero workshop. They ask “what is it like to sell all of your stuff?” They say “it must be cool to not have to be anywhere.” They are coveting the freedom that comes with zero, and I understand their fascination. Many people have zero-envy, and I used to have it also. It’s a little ironic then, that several weeks into my ZERO experience, I am faced with the ominous responsibility of freedom. That's right, the looming choices, and the limitless possibilities - this wide open field of dreams is producing a distilled sense of responsibility…to myself and to the universe. It's a bit more than simply the pressure of "Gee-Whiz Wally, I don’t want to blow this." I’m beginning to believe that I can balance on the high side of zero – you know, have my cake and eat it too. I guess we'll find out.
It is 10am on a Wednesday morning, and I am pedaling my new touring bike – my Surly Long Haul Trucker, out along North Levee Road, somewhere between Elverta and Garden Highway. This baby rides like a Cadillac, and on this beautiful summer morning, it feels like I am moving backwards down the number line - to reference a Phish song. I rescheduled a handyman job today, to clear space for this bike ride, because I am preparing to take the train up to Ashland, Oregon in a couple weeks, and bicycle back down to Sacramento. Actually, we’ll catch some Shakespeare first, and shoot out to the coast, sweeping South on Highway 1 for a couple days, and then back inland over to the Russian River and down through Napa Valley, before returning to Sacramento. It’s going to be a great trip, and it’s just the beginning I hope. I am trying to craft my life around trips like this - Trying to bottle my freedom, and take big swigs of it each morning, like I’m drinking from a jug of moonshine, slapping the cork back on the jug with a chunky gulp and a hearty grimace.
Right now, I can do whatever the bleep I want to do with my time. I don’t have to earn very much money, and it is my business – I am the boss. It’s a blessing – a mixed blessing, but a blessing. With each spin of the crank, I am hit with a new impulse to grab onto these little pieces of identity that are breaking off and floating away from me. I struggle to resist. That’s right, my identity is breaking up, and this is good news, but it doesn’t come easy. I’m not really complaining, but I didn’t expect to be back in Sacramento, living at my mom’s house, deep in the Suckburbs, running my lame-duck business again. I was so done with being a handyman when I left for Spirit Rock. I was so done being self-employed. I wake up every morning with a great big What the Fuck? It’s a good What the fuck, but it is a burly, greasy, groany What the Fuck.
I completed my Peace Corps application last week – it took me over 6 hours. This is the problem with anything to do with the government. Paperwork. One would think that I had learned my lesson with four years in the military. One would think. I relish the idea of traveling abroad right now, and being of service. I know it will be an adventure, but I am also a bit reluctant to commit myself to 24 months away from the people and places I love right now. I am hesitant to sign up for anything, at a time when I am completely weightless – unfettered by the common debts and obligations. Of course, I have deep commitments to my community of family and friends, to my spiritual practice, and to my dog – but on paper, my biggest commitment is my Netflix account. I know that many folks my age might wonder if this represents a simple character flaw of irresponsibility. Am I some kind of Metro-hobo? Pedaling my bike in the quiet country on this warm summer morning, I ponder the fact that my biggest responsibility is actually my dog – my wonderful little buddy. The way was raised, dogs are family, and it occurs to me how much he feels like an honored guest, more a trusted friend, and less like a responsibility. I feel my feet on the pedals, look out over the levee road, across the rice fields and I can see the Sutter Buttes on the horizon. I can see the jet-liners circling the airport, slow and small and peaceful in the distance – I swerve to miss a pothole, and shutter to think that up close those planes are full of busy people moving and shaking and getting their various grooves on. My bike is inviting me to shift to the next gear, and pedal on to the next county before turning back for dinner. And then I remember the mouse that I set free at Spirit Rock. That sure felt great.
It was my last day there, and I was asked to check the mouse traps again – the tin cats as they are called – these are traps that don’t hurt the mice, but simply trap them so that they can be removed from the premises. There are tin cats (which strikes me as a great name for a band – the tin cats,) placed at strategic locations, and they frequently catch mice that would otherwise invade the dining hall or one of the residence halls. I zip around on the golf-cart and check each location and sure enough, there is a little fella in one of the traps. I jump in the golf-cart with the tin cat containing my prisoner, and drive out to the far end of the property. All the way there, I am looking into the trap, catching glimpses of the little mouse as he peeks out at me, and then hides again. I’ve never dealt with a mouse this way. It feels very Buddhist, very enlightened to practice non-harming. I get to the liberation spot, and place the trap on the ground, carefully opening the lid to allow Mr. mouse to exit at his leisure. I have to coax him out, by shaking the trap. It’s an incredibly poignant moment. He pokes his head out a bit at me, with an expression of waryness…is this a trick? I calmly savor the moment of watching the mouse reclaim his freedom. My heart is open. He is clearly shaken by the experience. He climbs out and scurries away into the tall brush, probably mouse-miles from his home. But he is free, and very alive.
So am I – and just like that mouse finds himself in strange uncharted territory out on the far end of the land beyond his little mouse-village, where he probably has never ventured before, I am getting out past the edge of town…lost but making good time as they say. There is nothing that even remotely resembles a crisis in my life. There is a fire, but it’s something akin to what the forestry service does to clear the forest floor of dead wood and stuff, to facilitate new growth and keep the elders healthy. I am getting empty, getting still and formulating a plan. This goes against the grain of my high-achiever self that has always pushed to be saddled with various indiscriminant commitments. I think this is some of what my friends are recognizing about themselves – seeing the yoke for what it is. There is a beauty in that. I can’t speak for anyone else, but clearly this is the work I need to be doing. The collapse of identities associated with my old life can be seen as making room for new identities, or it can be seen as an all-together liberation from the trappings of identity. Identities are cheap, but the care and feeding of them weighs on us like debts and obligations – this gets very expensive. Voluntary simplicity requires the retirement of these debts and obligations, and in our culture, it’s like learning a new language. I feel like such a novice.
After my bike trip from Ashland, I will be house-sitting for a couple weeks, and then going to Burning Man. When I return from that, I will depart to go stay at a monastery for two weeks, sitting and working with the monks in silence, and sleeping in a tiny hut in the woods. Maybe others live like this all the time, but I am not used to having such rich texture of variety in my life, such meaningful flirtations with freedom as this. Like Franky Says, the World is my oyster. I am investigating the idea of being a traveling caretaker for awhile, and WOOFing is definitely on the menu. The World Organization of Organic Farms has member farms all across the planet. I could combine bicycle-travel with periodic stays volunteering on organic farms (in exchange for room and board) across the country, and then across Europe – that is the big vision. “It’s good to have a plan,” he says with a crooked smile.
The possibilities are endless, and therein lies the stress. That’s what I am experiencing right now – a bit of freedom-related stress. More than anything, I am nervous about back-sliding and simply getting myself yoked – yoked once again. I want to be completely immersed in zero before ramping back up to whatever lies beyond. In that sense, danger lurks around every corner. Can I transcend mere survival? Can I get my ass out of this crappy neighborhood that feels like dead society with lipstick on? It’s clear that I am longing for something other than zero…but What? What do I replace zero with? This is the honest-to-God dilemma– there may be nothing beyond zero, or at least nothing that I desire. Is there a balance I can strike? Can I craft a life that combines a forward trajectory in career and material prosperity with an extraordinarily high quotient of time-autonomy, deep job satisfaction and personal well-being, freedom for adventure - to roam when I want to, and the financial resources to make it all happen? Can I craft a life that uses my biggest gifts, and strengths, and cultivates the highest wellness? I’m pretty sure I can.
It is 10am on a Wednesday morning, and I am pedaling my new touring bike – my Surly Long Haul Trucker, out along North Levee Road, somewhere between Elverta and Garden Highway. This baby rides like a Cadillac, and on this beautiful summer morning, it feels like I am moving backwards down the number line - to reference a Phish song. I rescheduled a handyman job today, to clear space for this bike ride, because I am preparing to take the train up to Ashland, Oregon in a couple weeks, and bicycle back down to Sacramento. Actually, we’ll catch some Shakespeare first, and shoot out to the coast, sweeping South on Highway 1 for a couple days, and then back inland over to the Russian River and down through Napa Valley, before returning to Sacramento. It’s going to be a great trip, and it’s just the beginning I hope. I am trying to craft my life around trips like this - Trying to bottle my freedom, and take big swigs of it each morning, like I’m drinking from a jug of moonshine, slapping the cork back on the jug with a chunky gulp and a hearty grimace.
Right now, I can do whatever the bleep I want to do with my time. I don’t have to earn very much money, and it is my business – I am the boss. It’s a blessing – a mixed blessing, but a blessing. With each spin of the crank, I am hit with a new impulse to grab onto these little pieces of identity that are breaking off and floating away from me. I struggle to resist. That’s right, my identity is breaking up, and this is good news, but it doesn’t come easy. I’m not really complaining, but I didn’t expect to be back in Sacramento, living at my mom’s house, deep in the Suckburbs, running my lame-duck business again. I was so done with being a handyman when I left for Spirit Rock. I was so done being self-employed. I wake up every morning with a great big What the Fuck? It’s a good What the fuck, but it is a burly, greasy, groany What the Fuck.
I completed my Peace Corps application last week – it took me over 6 hours. This is the problem with anything to do with the government. Paperwork. One would think that I had learned my lesson with four years in the military. One would think. I relish the idea of traveling abroad right now, and being of service. I know it will be an adventure, but I am also a bit reluctant to commit myself to 24 months away from the people and places I love right now. I am hesitant to sign up for anything, at a time when I am completely weightless – unfettered by the common debts and obligations. Of course, I have deep commitments to my community of family and friends, to my spiritual practice, and to my dog – but on paper, my biggest commitment is my Netflix account. I know that many folks my age might wonder if this represents a simple character flaw of irresponsibility. Am I some kind of Metro-hobo? Pedaling my bike in the quiet country on this warm summer morning, I ponder the fact that my biggest responsibility is actually my dog – my wonderful little buddy. The way was raised, dogs are family, and it occurs to me how much he feels like an honored guest, more a trusted friend, and less like a responsibility. I feel my feet on the pedals, look out over the levee road, across the rice fields and I can see the Sutter Buttes on the horizon. I can see the jet-liners circling the airport, slow and small and peaceful in the distance – I swerve to miss a pothole, and shutter to think that up close those planes are full of busy people moving and shaking and getting their various grooves on. My bike is inviting me to shift to the next gear, and pedal on to the next county before turning back for dinner. And then I remember the mouse that I set free at Spirit Rock. That sure felt great.
It was my last day there, and I was asked to check the mouse traps again – the tin cats as they are called – these are traps that don’t hurt the mice, but simply trap them so that they can be removed from the premises. There are tin cats (which strikes me as a great name for a band – the tin cats,) placed at strategic locations, and they frequently catch mice that would otherwise invade the dining hall or one of the residence halls. I zip around on the golf-cart and check each location and sure enough, there is a little fella in one of the traps. I jump in the golf-cart with the tin cat containing my prisoner, and drive out to the far end of the property. All the way there, I am looking into the trap, catching glimpses of the little mouse as he peeks out at me, and then hides again. I’ve never dealt with a mouse this way. It feels very Buddhist, very enlightened to practice non-harming. I get to the liberation spot, and place the trap on the ground, carefully opening the lid to allow Mr. mouse to exit at his leisure. I have to coax him out, by shaking the trap. It’s an incredibly poignant moment. He pokes his head out a bit at me, with an expression of waryness…is this a trick? I calmly savor the moment of watching the mouse reclaim his freedom. My heart is open. He is clearly shaken by the experience. He climbs out and scurries away into the tall brush, probably mouse-miles from his home. But he is free, and very alive.
So am I – and just like that mouse finds himself in strange uncharted territory out on the far end of the land beyond his little mouse-village, where he probably has never ventured before, I am getting out past the edge of town…lost but making good time as they say. There is nothing that even remotely resembles a crisis in my life. There is a fire, but it’s something akin to what the forestry service does to clear the forest floor of dead wood and stuff, to facilitate new growth and keep the elders healthy. I am getting empty, getting still and formulating a plan. This goes against the grain of my high-achiever self that has always pushed to be saddled with various indiscriminant commitments. I think this is some of what my friends are recognizing about themselves – seeing the yoke for what it is. There is a beauty in that. I can’t speak for anyone else, but clearly this is the work I need to be doing. The collapse of identities associated with my old life can be seen as making room for new identities, or it can be seen as an all-together liberation from the trappings of identity. Identities are cheap, but the care and feeding of them weighs on us like debts and obligations – this gets very expensive. Voluntary simplicity requires the retirement of these debts and obligations, and in our culture, it’s like learning a new language. I feel like such a novice.
After my bike trip from Ashland, I will be house-sitting for a couple weeks, and then going to Burning Man. When I return from that, I will depart to go stay at a monastery for two weeks, sitting and working with the monks in silence, and sleeping in a tiny hut in the woods. Maybe others live like this all the time, but I am not used to having such rich texture of variety in my life, such meaningful flirtations with freedom as this. Like Franky Says, the World is my oyster. I am investigating the idea of being a traveling caretaker for awhile, and WOOFing is definitely on the menu. The World Organization of Organic Farms has member farms all across the planet. I could combine bicycle-travel with periodic stays volunteering on organic farms (in exchange for room and board) across the country, and then across Europe – that is the big vision. “It’s good to have a plan,” he says with a crooked smile.
The possibilities are endless, and therein lies the stress. That’s what I am experiencing right now – a bit of freedom-related stress. More than anything, I am nervous about back-sliding and simply getting myself yoked – yoked once again. I want to be completely immersed in zero before ramping back up to whatever lies beyond. In that sense, danger lurks around every corner. Can I transcend mere survival? Can I get my ass out of this crappy neighborhood that feels like dead society with lipstick on? It’s clear that I am longing for something other than zero…but What? What do I replace zero with? This is the honest-to-God dilemma– there may be nothing beyond zero, or at least nothing that I desire. Is there a balance I can strike? Can I craft a life that combines a forward trajectory in career and material prosperity with an extraordinarily high quotient of time-autonomy, deep job satisfaction and personal well-being, freedom for adventure - to roam when I want to, and the financial resources to make it all happen? Can I craft a life that uses my biggest gifts, and strengths, and cultivates the highest wellness? I’m pretty sure I can.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
The Real Dharma
Jumping from my meditation retreat with John Travis to my weeklong stay at Spirit Rock Meditation Center should have been a simple matter of getting from Nevada City to Marin County...via Sacramento. I had only scheduled one day of transition time back home, because I knew in a day, I was headed back into a calm, meditative environment – the opposite of how re-entry is usually experienced. Usually we drop ourselves back into the craziness of our lives at home, and stay there, to watch as the unfolding days and weeks quickly wash away any mindfulness we developed while on retreat. After my first-ever silent retreat (1 week long ) I arrived home on Sunday afternoon, and was back at work on Monday morning , gripping the desk with white knuckles, bulging eyes and smoking ears. I’ll never do that again. Coming out of retreat is a delicate process, ideally with one gradually ramping the stimulation back up. Simple objectives like piloting one’s car onto the freeway or checking all of the accumulated emails and voicemails pack a high-intensity jolt to the senses…senses which have been reopened and recalibrated with what we might call “sensory deprivation” but is really just the experience of more deeply sensing less.
I had decided to use my transition day to repack, run some errands and take my car in for some minor repairs. Yes, minor repairs. 3 days and several hundred dollars later, I was finally departing for Spirit Rock, to begin my weeklong “trial” stay as a residential caretaker…or caretaker candidate, as it were. The residential caretaker position is basically part handyman work, and part logistics - A perfect fit for me. My initial interview was filled with all of the positive energy and words that essentially indicated my trial week would be simply a formality. It’s always fun going into an experience that one has been lead to believe is “simply a formality.” It’s a lot more fun than say, taking a college entrance exam, or auditioning for a part in Hamlet.
Driving out over the Yolo Bypass, I finally got to taste the sense of departure that had me salivating while on retreat, and was so elusive for the last few days in limbo. It was easy to connect with my sense of purpose and focus, and to release the chaos of late. Breathing in unison with the rhythmic highway noises, I set my cruise control and reflected on the awkward feeling of entering into this deeper relationship with Spirit Rock after having to stall for time while my car repairs spun out of control. The truth is that they were compassionate in the extreme, and I never really felt compromised by my situation.
On the other hand, it’s always interesting with Spirit Rock. I had experienced in earlier times, a pervasive sense that "the Dharma" was out of my price range. I carry a few too many old stories of worthiness, and my lack thereof. It was clearly a shadow theme for me, and one difficult to fully flush from my system, even after sitting 4 retreats there - two of them covered by scholarships based solely and generously upon my ethnicity. There is something to this history of ambivalent feelings - it has always infused my connection to this place in the land of milk and honey. Spirit Rock, in my more cynical moments, seems more like a resort than a Buddhist retreat center. Indeed, it has been hard to avoid scoffing at the pricey-ness of the Dharma at Spirit Rock, the clichéd exclusivity of Marin culture that looms over, and more recently, the unfolding, behind-the-scenes dialog between two generations of Dharma teachers there.
Over time, I have been granted some access to that dialog, which revolves around the viability of continuing the 2500 year-old tradition of Dana (the Pail word for generosity, referring to the principle that there is no price placed on the Dharma) as the sustaining support for the teachings and teachers. Undeniably, there is a solid sincerity of practice that remains the norm there, and it has been easy enough to keep returning for that alone. But as my intimacy with Spirit Rock deepened, I could feel a foreboding sense that I might confront with some intensity, my more subtle feelings about this place - This coupled with the fact that I had already been gently warned about the staff discord afflicting the Spirit Rock community over the past couple of years. Arriving and pondering my commitment to service, I bid to hunker down and follow the advice of my teacher John Travis. He had provided a key personal reference for me, and at the retreat, had warned me to fly above all the rankor, and treat my time as personal and work retreat, for my precious time in this state of repose would be short.
Good advice. Truth is, this opportunity is exactly what I was looking for at the moment. First-off, I needed to buy some time while I completed my application process with the Peace Corps. I had already made up my mind to dedicate my life to service for the next few years, and this opportunity landed in my lap just when my life was morphing into this wild, creative commando mission to transcend mere survival. The evening of the day I lost my job at the church, I got an email from a long-time Buddhist friend, who, without knowledge of the day’s events, had forwarded me the caretaker posting for Spirit Rock. It synched perfectly with my kamikaze brainstorm of selling my belongings and going weightless – eventually traveling abroad. I clicked into action toot-sweet, to update my resume and hammer out a cover letter. I sent the application items off in a midnight email, and to my delight, had a call back from Spirit Rock management by 9:30 am the next morning. Based on my skill-set and history with meditation practice, I was not entirely surprised. But yea, I was surprised.
And so here I was, ready to give ‘er a whirl. The trial work period was necessary because this was a residential situation, featuring full room and board - a bedroom in the community house among the caretakers and other residential staff. The free access to three vegetarian meals a day, nightly Dharma talks, and full medical and dental benefits, along with the small cash stipend, was shaping this up to be a pretty sweet arrangement or someone in my shoes, and I was very motivated to make it work well for me – for everyone involved.
I was finally arriving. For weeks I had been preparing, imagining the joy of being back in Marin, and committing to extended personal retreat. As I piled my week’s provisions on the bedroom floor, I peeked out the window to dig the view and the little family of deer grazing just inches from the wall. Later, down in the shop, I bonded instantly with the other caretakers, all of whom were coming from very similar backgrounds to mine – having run various contractor businesses, and having been battered by a comotose economy. It was clear that the collective level of skill, coupled with the obvious depth of Dharma practice, would constitute a nice tight team. That was comforting. I was received warmly everywhere I went, and my heart was expanding to meet the bigness of it all.
But from the very beginning, there were also symbols of warning. The first day, at lunch, I sat at the table with the venerable Jack Kornfield and listened as he defended the Dana tradition to a younger teacher. He pulled his medicare card from his wallet and waved it around with a big noble smile – “this is how you make it work.” The young teacher scoffed, insisting that his various associations around Marin are always surprised when he told them how little he makes leading retreats at Spirit Rock. Another of the younger Dharma teachers chimed in that “so many people that come here think Dana is a tip…Dana is not a tip.” I resolved to be fascinated and compassionate, rather than put off by an early peek behind the curtain. At almost every mealtime, I was privy to the controversy – the calm but obvious discord about how lucrative and how pure the Dharma should be. After my 4th day, I sat next to one pretty well-known teacher, who declared upon hearing of someone’s being hired as retreat registrar, that “she’ll probably make more money than I do here.” He continued on to explain with some sarcasm, that since he is responsible for generating a significant amount of revenue for Spirit Rock, it would be nice to see more of that money coming his way. I thought of the Audi’s and BMW’s parked in the parking lot. This was a tough thing to hear, and I reflected back to my time early in my practice, when I was still very star-struck by these Dharma teachers – bedazzled by their books, and the Marin vibe permeating the practice. As someone coming here to Spirit Rock to work for less than minimum wage, and live a life of renunciation to help support the practice of others, I was slightly saddened by what I was hearing.
In Thailand, everyone grows up with the experience of the forest monks coming through the village on Alms rounds, taking only what is offered as sustenance, and with deep humility. The monks are a symbol of the practice, and the villagers give gladly – hold them in reverence and a kind of symbiotic gratitude. The Buddha himself made the teachings available free of charge, to everyone who desired to end suffering in his life. It was really that simple, and those teachings have been passed forward for 2500 years in this very way. It is challenging in our Western culture to carry on the tradition of Dana. We have the forces of capitalism to reconcile, and no monks coming to call each morning to remind us and humble us. Considering the other religious orders in the US, and the sordid relationship that many churches have had with capitalism, the idea of Dana is comparatively a nice respite – it seems like a return to the wellspring…A debunking of the myth. It is kind of a shame to see this 2nd generation of American teachers attempting to turn the Dharma into a product.
By my 2nd day at Spirit Rock, I was coming down with some kind of stomach flu, and had to use one of my scheduled days off to recover. I began to speculate that I had accidentally eaten some expired leftovers from the community fridge. Who knows. I had a few days to stew with my latent ambition of cycling the fire-roads and winding hills of Marin again, and in fact spending the lion’s share of my off-time hours doing this. I had logged so many hours daydreaming of this on retreat, that in my ill, bedridden state, I could run the movies in my head and almost feel the pedals under my feet. Certainly, this was not shaping up the way I had daydreamed – the two days of illness, the teachers and their money woes. I was really enjoying everyone in the “double-wide” as they call the modular house for residential staff – loving the daily group meditation at 8am. My determination to stay above the judgments and see the highest truth was still strong. After recovering a few days later, several of us staff met up at a Dharma talk down in Fairfax, presented by the Tibetan monk, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, visiting from his Dharma center in Pt. Richmond. He has been a monk since the age of 5, and owned no possessions. He was speaking from his most current book called No Self, No Problem, and as always, was extremely soothing and funny to listen to. He was talking about “the real Dharma.” The real Dharma, he said in his English through Tibetan accent, “does not come from a book, or from a fancy temple, or even from some smart, funny guru. The real Dharma comes from the heart," said Rinpoche. Makes sense to me.
It’s not that I want those Dharma teachers at Spirit Rock to be impoverished – they are hard-working people. Maybe some of them are having difficulty with the demands of their chosen profession. Maybe Marin is too expensive a place for them to reside. Maybe they have consumer-conditioning to grapple with like the rest of us. Surely they are not expected to go without healthcare, as I currently do. Maybe the royalties from a few more books would help make the payments on the brand new Beamer a bit less heavy. I don’t mean to be sarcastic…I don’t want to go there, really. I just couldn’t help but think that I came here to work, meditate, connect with great folks, and ride my bike. I shared with someone in the house that I really did not want all this moaning by the teachers to ruin my attitude. She looked at me kind of funny - kind of concerned.
The day before the end of my trial stay, I had finally gotten out on a fire road with my cross-bike. After obsessing for days about feeling the gravel under my tires, I hit the White Hill Fire Road with gusto. About 30 minutes down the trail, I came upon a dropoff that I didn’t remember where the trail shrinks to single-track. I took a wrong line down the overly steep section of trail and plunged myself through a near-death experience, losing control of my bike. To bring the rolling chaos to a halt, I drove the bike into a tree stump protruding from the side of a hill. I spiraled over the bars and landed on my back in soft brush. I did a quick body-scan…not a bruise, ache or even a scratch. My bike was totaled, but I was overcome with gratitude, for the completely unharmed state of my body. The universe seemed to be letting me know that I would not be staying in Marin this time – I caught that loud and clear.
Back home in Sacramento, I got the call the evening of my return. I had been voted off the island. The facilities manager, who would have been my supervisor, was beside himself with disappointment. He had no control over the final decision, which really seemed odd to me. There were two pieces to this equation – the work piece and the residential house piece. I was baffled myself, having not collided with anyone, nor had anything less than positive, joyful interactions. It was turning out to be a dicey experience having my work tied to my residence in this way, and I could only speculate on the cause of my rejection. The residents needed full consensus for my selection to be final, and it did not happen. Maybe there were reservations about what I had expressed regarding the teachers. Maybe I should have been even more friendly – talked more about my love of cleaning. My mind was filled with speculation, but I would probably never know any more than I knew in that moment.
I had decided to use my transition day to repack, run some errands and take my car in for some minor repairs. Yes, minor repairs. 3 days and several hundred dollars later, I was finally departing for Spirit Rock, to begin my weeklong “trial” stay as a residential caretaker…or caretaker candidate, as it were. The residential caretaker position is basically part handyman work, and part logistics - A perfect fit for me. My initial interview was filled with all of the positive energy and words that essentially indicated my trial week would be simply a formality. It’s always fun going into an experience that one has been lead to believe is “simply a formality.” It’s a lot more fun than say, taking a college entrance exam, or auditioning for a part in Hamlet.
Driving out over the Yolo Bypass, I finally got to taste the sense of departure that had me salivating while on retreat, and was so elusive for the last few days in limbo. It was easy to connect with my sense of purpose and focus, and to release the chaos of late. Breathing in unison with the rhythmic highway noises, I set my cruise control and reflected on the awkward feeling of entering into this deeper relationship with Spirit Rock after having to stall for time while my car repairs spun out of control. The truth is that they were compassionate in the extreme, and I never really felt compromised by my situation.
On the other hand, it’s always interesting with Spirit Rock. I had experienced in earlier times, a pervasive sense that "the Dharma" was out of my price range. I carry a few too many old stories of worthiness, and my lack thereof. It was clearly a shadow theme for me, and one difficult to fully flush from my system, even after sitting 4 retreats there - two of them covered by scholarships based solely and generously upon my ethnicity. There is something to this history of ambivalent feelings - it has always infused my connection to this place in the land of milk and honey. Spirit Rock, in my more cynical moments, seems more like a resort than a Buddhist retreat center. Indeed, it has been hard to avoid scoffing at the pricey-ness of the Dharma at Spirit Rock, the clichéd exclusivity of Marin culture that looms over, and more recently, the unfolding, behind-the-scenes dialog between two generations of Dharma teachers there.
Over time, I have been granted some access to that dialog, which revolves around the viability of continuing the 2500 year-old tradition of Dana (the Pail word for generosity, referring to the principle that there is no price placed on the Dharma) as the sustaining support for the teachings and teachers. Undeniably, there is a solid sincerity of practice that remains the norm there, and it has been easy enough to keep returning for that alone. But as my intimacy with Spirit Rock deepened, I could feel a foreboding sense that I might confront with some intensity, my more subtle feelings about this place - This coupled with the fact that I had already been gently warned about the staff discord afflicting the Spirit Rock community over the past couple of years. Arriving and pondering my commitment to service, I bid to hunker down and follow the advice of my teacher John Travis. He had provided a key personal reference for me, and at the retreat, had warned me to fly above all the rankor, and treat my time as personal and work retreat, for my precious time in this state of repose would be short.
Good advice. Truth is, this opportunity is exactly what I was looking for at the moment. First-off, I needed to buy some time while I completed my application process with the Peace Corps. I had already made up my mind to dedicate my life to service for the next few years, and this opportunity landed in my lap just when my life was morphing into this wild, creative commando mission to transcend mere survival. The evening of the day I lost my job at the church, I got an email from a long-time Buddhist friend, who, without knowledge of the day’s events, had forwarded me the caretaker posting for Spirit Rock. It synched perfectly with my kamikaze brainstorm of selling my belongings and going weightless – eventually traveling abroad. I clicked into action toot-sweet, to update my resume and hammer out a cover letter. I sent the application items off in a midnight email, and to my delight, had a call back from Spirit Rock management by 9:30 am the next morning. Based on my skill-set and history with meditation practice, I was not entirely surprised. But yea, I was surprised.
And so here I was, ready to give ‘er a whirl. The trial work period was necessary because this was a residential situation, featuring full room and board - a bedroom in the community house among the caretakers and other residential staff. The free access to three vegetarian meals a day, nightly Dharma talks, and full medical and dental benefits, along with the small cash stipend, was shaping this up to be a pretty sweet arrangement or someone in my shoes, and I was very motivated to make it work well for me – for everyone involved.
I was finally arriving. For weeks I had been preparing, imagining the joy of being back in Marin, and committing to extended personal retreat. As I piled my week’s provisions on the bedroom floor, I peeked out the window to dig the view and the little family of deer grazing just inches from the wall. Later, down in the shop, I bonded instantly with the other caretakers, all of whom were coming from very similar backgrounds to mine – having run various contractor businesses, and having been battered by a comotose economy. It was clear that the collective level of skill, coupled with the obvious depth of Dharma practice, would constitute a nice tight team. That was comforting. I was received warmly everywhere I went, and my heart was expanding to meet the bigness of it all.
But from the very beginning, there were also symbols of warning. The first day, at lunch, I sat at the table with the venerable Jack Kornfield and listened as he defended the Dana tradition to a younger teacher. He pulled his medicare card from his wallet and waved it around with a big noble smile – “this is how you make it work.” The young teacher scoffed, insisting that his various associations around Marin are always surprised when he told them how little he makes leading retreats at Spirit Rock. Another of the younger Dharma teachers chimed in that “so many people that come here think Dana is a tip…Dana is not a tip.” I resolved to be fascinated and compassionate, rather than put off by an early peek behind the curtain. At almost every mealtime, I was privy to the controversy – the calm but obvious discord about how lucrative and how pure the Dharma should be. After my 4th day, I sat next to one pretty well-known teacher, who declared upon hearing of someone’s being hired as retreat registrar, that “she’ll probably make more money than I do here.” He continued on to explain with some sarcasm, that since he is responsible for generating a significant amount of revenue for Spirit Rock, it would be nice to see more of that money coming his way. I thought of the Audi’s and BMW’s parked in the parking lot. This was a tough thing to hear, and I reflected back to my time early in my practice, when I was still very star-struck by these Dharma teachers – bedazzled by their books, and the Marin vibe permeating the practice. As someone coming here to Spirit Rock to work for less than minimum wage, and live a life of renunciation to help support the practice of others, I was slightly saddened by what I was hearing.
In Thailand, everyone grows up with the experience of the forest monks coming through the village on Alms rounds, taking only what is offered as sustenance, and with deep humility. The monks are a symbol of the practice, and the villagers give gladly – hold them in reverence and a kind of symbiotic gratitude. The Buddha himself made the teachings available free of charge, to everyone who desired to end suffering in his life. It was really that simple, and those teachings have been passed forward for 2500 years in this very way. It is challenging in our Western culture to carry on the tradition of Dana. We have the forces of capitalism to reconcile, and no monks coming to call each morning to remind us and humble us. Considering the other religious orders in the US, and the sordid relationship that many churches have had with capitalism, the idea of Dana is comparatively a nice respite – it seems like a return to the wellspring…A debunking of the myth. It is kind of a shame to see this 2nd generation of American teachers attempting to turn the Dharma into a product.
By my 2nd day at Spirit Rock, I was coming down with some kind of stomach flu, and had to use one of my scheduled days off to recover. I began to speculate that I had accidentally eaten some expired leftovers from the community fridge. Who knows. I had a few days to stew with my latent ambition of cycling the fire-roads and winding hills of Marin again, and in fact spending the lion’s share of my off-time hours doing this. I had logged so many hours daydreaming of this on retreat, that in my ill, bedridden state, I could run the movies in my head and almost feel the pedals under my feet. Certainly, this was not shaping up the way I had daydreamed – the two days of illness, the teachers and their money woes. I was really enjoying everyone in the “double-wide” as they call the modular house for residential staff – loving the daily group meditation at 8am. My determination to stay above the judgments and see the highest truth was still strong. After recovering a few days later, several of us staff met up at a Dharma talk down in Fairfax, presented by the Tibetan monk, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, visiting from his Dharma center in Pt. Richmond. He has been a monk since the age of 5, and owned no possessions. He was speaking from his most current book called No Self, No Problem, and as always, was extremely soothing and funny to listen to. He was talking about “the real Dharma.” The real Dharma, he said in his English through Tibetan accent, “does not come from a book, or from a fancy temple, or even from some smart, funny guru. The real Dharma comes from the heart," said Rinpoche. Makes sense to me.
It’s not that I want those Dharma teachers at Spirit Rock to be impoverished – they are hard-working people. Maybe some of them are having difficulty with the demands of their chosen profession. Maybe Marin is too expensive a place for them to reside. Maybe they have consumer-conditioning to grapple with like the rest of us. Surely they are not expected to go without healthcare, as I currently do. Maybe the royalties from a few more books would help make the payments on the brand new Beamer a bit less heavy. I don’t mean to be sarcastic…I don’t want to go there, really. I just couldn’t help but think that I came here to work, meditate, connect with great folks, and ride my bike. I shared with someone in the house that I really did not want all this moaning by the teachers to ruin my attitude. She looked at me kind of funny - kind of concerned.
The day before the end of my trial stay, I had finally gotten out on a fire road with my cross-bike. After obsessing for days about feeling the gravel under my tires, I hit the White Hill Fire Road with gusto. About 30 minutes down the trail, I came upon a dropoff that I didn’t remember where the trail shrinks to single-track. I took a wrong line down the overly steep section of trail and plunged myself through a near-death experience, losing control of my bike. To bring the rolling chaos to a halt, I drove the bike into a tree stump protruding from the side of a hill. I spiraled over the bars and landed on my back in soft brush. I did a quick body-scan…not a bruise, ache or even a scratch. My bike was totaled, but I was overcome with gratitude, for the completely unharmed state of my body. The universe seemed to be letting me know that I would not be staying in Marin this time – I caught that loud and clear.
Back home in Sacramento, I got the call the evening of my return. I had been voted off the island. The facilities manager, who would have been my supervisor, was beside himself with disappointment. He had no control over the final decision, which really seemed odd to me. There were two pieces to this equation – the work piece and the residential house piece. I was baffled myself, having not collided with anyone, nor had anything less than positive, joyful interactions. It was turning out to be a dicey experience having my work tied to my residence in this way, and I could only speculate on the cause of my rejection. The residents needed full consensus for my selection to be final, and it did not happen. Maybe there were reservations about what I had expressed regarding the teachers. Maybe I should have been even more friendly – talked more about my love of cleaning. My mind was filled with speculation, but I would probably never know any more than I knew in that moment.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)