Reflection

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Søren Kierkegaard…

Fall brings a period of refection in my life. I have missed that time in the five years living nine degrees above the equator when the seasons
 are measured in wet and not so wet and high and low.
Back in the world of falling leaves and falling temperatures it is a time of passing. This is the time of year that I am most moved by the passing of life and the beauty that is inherent in all things. in fifteen days I am mindful of the passing of life as it is the time of the second anniversary of the death of my granddaughter and another year without my best friend. Not a time of sadness alone but sadness tempered with the celebration of life. Quiet reflection on the reality that everything changes and nothing is permanent. Life renews in spring and passes through fall into the quiet of winter when everything is the simple hue of purity and the silence that comes with its cover reminds me of the stillness of my practice.
The fall season graces us with a show of brilliant color here in New England as everything dies there is the final brush stroke of brilliant red and orange filling the trees of the wood and draping the river with a garland of beauty. The setting sun casts it’s diamond luster on this vision of promise that it will be back in the new growth of spring and renewal.
I sit quietly everyday by the river and listen to the passing water that has and always will be there with and without me.
In this time of reflection I look around me and within me seeing both fullness and emptiness and comforted by both.
The days are not alone as the starry sky of night is unblemished by the pollution of light here in the country and in a few days the night will give me both a super moon and the quiet eclipse that for a few hours will let me watch it go from the illuminated landscape to the still orange into darkness only to return.
It is a thoughtful time, filled with memories and understanding. In the river I can almost hear the voices of the two who meant so much to me and were both a wonderful presence in my life. One who was always there since childhood and one who never went beyond her childhood. It’s too easy to feel that neither completed the passage of life and both went into the quiet of their winter to be reborn somewhere in spring.
My practice informs me that life is cyclical and like the seasons comes and goes, so I don’t get stuck in sadness but reflect on the meaning of change and how my life is no different than the seasons and Iwill also pass from the fall of life through winter and into spring.
As life passes in moments. days, months and years we should never be too busy with living to not take the opportunity to sit by a river, an ocean or in the wood and see the beauty of life around us and be filled with the joy of being alive and present.
Reflection is the chance to know how much there is for us in our lives and to again promise to be present and appreciate this life and all those who bring their voices into our experience…

I sit on the bench by the river every afternoon as the sun casts a mirror of light on the water. It is my dorje of diamond edge, cutting the moments as I sit. The river is my ocean here the ever flowing water unfettered by tides or vessels. It is my place of quiet reflection. The only motion the flow, the breeze and my fingers on the beads of my mala.
I find solace in the movement of the water and the brilliance of the late day sun.
I am blessed and present in this place. 
In this world of stillness, practice and service I find refuge and understanding in the five elements.
The webs of the daily toil of spiders not yet catching the dew of the impending night. Everything changes and nothing is permanent except the flow of the waters of the river as nothing stops its progress. The flow of the river is the flow of life. Here is the constant of creation, of the essence
of life.
The realization that my life is but an instant in the march of time as I am a passing measured in the eons of the path of the river. How can I be anything more than the present in the history of the flow of the waters? I am humbled and awake to the moment. This is the moment I share. It is nothing more and I  grateful.
The sun warms my face and the flow of the water comforts my soul.
The diamond edge cutting through the distractions of the living of the day.
The coolness on my back as the tired sun takes its journey to find new energy in another place...

“Burning Man will change your life...You just do not know how yet. 

Everything you take to Burning Man including yourself will never be the same’' 

Anon and universal…

It was a bucket list item and on the 4th of February I had an epissany, which is the thought that comes to a 70 year old man when he gets up to take that early morning bathroom visit. The epissany that morning was to celebrate my 70th year celebration on the playa at Burning Man.

I was one of 40K people that lost the ticket lottery but I gave it another shot with a low income ticket application which was approved and suddenly a ticket and a long list of how to make my virgin burn happen.

My Bocas del Toro, Panama amigo, Larry Michael Robertson said the playa provides and he approached his colleagues of the Pinhole Project Collaborative to see if they would welcome a Buddhist monk, who devoted his life to service and wanted to celebrate his 70th on the playa, to their camp. The response was the start of the playa love they showered me with through the journey. These 25+ Pinhole people became my desert family and provided the gear of my survival on the player. I bought a dust proof {there is no such thing on the playa} and made my way to Reno, Nevada on the 25th of August to go to the staging site in Truckee California.

We made our way to Black Rock on the 27th and the start of the magic began by getting through the gate and the ten miles to the camp site in less than 2 1/2 hours.

Hustling to establish our site by midnight we tried to prepare for the weather of high winds and dust storm that was forecasted. I spent the next two days in the winds and dust whiteouts that became the windiest, dustiest, coldest nights in the last ten years of BM. Sunday I surrendered to the dust and for the next seven days was the dusty monk of Black Rock City.

Burning Man was everything I had heard, read and viewed on You Tube times 10+ a visual, audio extravagant experience. The ten thousand illuminated bikes, the art cars from glorified golf carts to roaming playa mega vessels, the endless installations and fire. Fire everywhere gave birth to my gashead self and the smell of propane and heat of flames fanned the fires in my soul. El Pulpo Mechanica, fire farting art cars and my favorite favorite Lucy’s Satan’s Calliope! Blame The Illumination Village if you catch me sniffing the tanks outside your doublewide now. Burning Man provided the visual paradise for this deaf dusty monk.

There is no need for money on the playa (unless you had to have mocha coffee at Center Camp to wash the dust and increase the heartbeat) as BM is the world of gifting. My gift to BRC were moments of meditative tranquillity with one on one meditation, early sunrise walking meditation to the Temple of Promise, short Dharma dribble talks on the back stage and protection threads for everyone that wanted or needed one. The playa one on one was limited by the dust winds and I was nearly run over by two phantom bicycles during one whiteout. The favorite moment of the Dharma dribble was when two twenty something topless girls sat in the front row and smiled at me during the talk. I mentioned that we take 227 vows and in the first three days in BRC I saw 145 ways of violating those vows!

The morning mindfulness based walking meditations to the Temple of Promise became the daily practice for me and I was happy to be in Sangha with those who joined this hour long meditation on life, impermanence and touching the earth. The Pinhole family joined me on this contemplative walk everyday and the Temple was a beautiful destination. I also had the opportunity to sit with random burners who after a few days understood that I was a monk and not just an old guy with an interesting costume. Next year I will bring an appropriate tutu to wear on Tuesday. 

I was not the only monk on the playa as a Vietnamese monk blessed and performed a fire consecration ceremony at my favorite Temple of Mazu dedicated to the Vietnamese goddess of those who do not return from the sea. There was also a Zen Buddhist monk standing alms rounds in front of the Temple of Promise one day and it surely must have seemed visually interesting to see both of us in robes in front of the Temple. On Saturday at Red Lightening there was a talk on Buddhism by the great David Kittay who carried the load in the absence of no show Robert Thurman. He was wonderful and  I enjoyed the visit after his talk as his first teacher was Chogyäm Trungpa Rinpoche in whose lineage I teach.

The Temple of Promise was my respite in the dust and I spent time there everyday feeling the love, grief and celebration of life and death as burners brought the remembrances of those who came in spirit. I brought along my grand daughter Havana Eve O’Flaherty, my brother Dr. Paul Anthony Vernaglia Jr., Bill Koch, Mike Jones, Mike Brant, and three of the best four legged friends a guy could have Bonehead, Maddie and Mariah. I watched the burn of the Temple with tears mixing with the dust, freedom in my heart, respect and the hope that there was peace for all who brought their love to the Temple. I even got to be interviewed for a documentary on healthy ways to grieve around the world. Pretty cool until the film dude said the audio was great but the video didn’t record. Did a retake but never as good as the initial talk from the heart. I said I would just move my lips and they could dub the audio but realized it would look like one of those kung fu movies with English dubbing.

I was physically challenged by an environment that they warn you can die in but I survived with determination and the watchful eyes of my Pinhole Project family and my great friend Otis Kunz who came to the playa to enjoy the burn with me. I survived not only the conditions but the great fall on Wednesday. While walking in Center Camp with Otis and grabbing a lemonade {too late for mocha} I tripped over a small step to the back stage that someone had moved out and that was the same color as the playa. I went down like a bag of stones and Otis said he had never seen anyone drop that quick. I did a massive face plant and had blood from both inside and outside my nose all over my face and lemonade/dust all over me. I’m grateful that I had Otis there to witness the “it wasn’t my fault” fall and to get me to EMS where he was volunteering to attend to my injuries and help me clean up as it was not a pretty sight. No, I do not have to wear a Fall Risk bracelet when on the playa as I never fell off my bike the whole week.

My heartfelt gratitude to the Pinhole Project family for being the portal to the joy of my first burn. You’re a family of amazing, diverse, talented, passionate, strong willed and creative artists who gild the word collaboration. To be able to observe the group dynamic for 17 days was a lesson in the essence of community.

That you welcomed this old monk into your midst, challenged, nurtured, taught and showered him with your playa love was an experience of life time. I am forever grateful for your presence in my life on the playa and going forward. Bless you all and we will burn again together in 357 days if life is good to us.

Yes, I will go back because the dust gets in your blood, the music in your ears, the experiences in your heart and like so many other burners to try and see way more than I did this year {and Sam Baron I promise to dance the night away with you next year.}

“I began to believe the fairy tales: You know, how we're all out there looking for our magical missing half.”

Michael Bergin

Alone…

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.”
Octavio Paz…

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.”
Albert Schweitzer…

     
“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”
 Orson Welles…
 
It is the season I know that highlights the being alone in my life. Christmas brings the loneliness from family with my children and grandchildren on my mind and the memories of Christmas past with stockings on the mantel, a big tree in the front room overlooking the fields and the valley. Santa impersonation for years with footprints on the hearth, sleigh bells around the farm, letter to the children from Santa and the excitement of Christmas morning. All that is years ago and far away but the lonely feeling at Christmas is to be expected and is understood.
New Years Eve is a time of much excitement and fireworks which fills up the night until the magic hour of midnight when everyone greets another year with great hopes, expectations and promises. Perfunctory kisses according to tradition and then everyone is walking hand in hand or hooking up also with great hopes, expectations and promises that most likely only last the rest of the night and not the rest of the year.
It is a couples time and the many memories of NYE past are fun filled times with much celebration as a pair or as a pair for the rest of the night. The rains came back this NYE after midnight so I went home with my umbrella and great hopes, few expectations and no promises.
This life now is a commitment. A commitment that takes discipline especially in this world of transient relationships, tropical paradise and the lifestyle that goes with both. The expectation is that you are above the human emotions, the feeling of being alone. It is as if monks are without human emotions and feelings like anger, sadness, intimacy, humor, longing. The image of the typical monk is Buddha like, devoid of all that worldly care. As if we didn’t laugh, cry, shout or even shit. We are capable of all and like the Buddha, we have to shit. Humanness is a requirement for wearing the robes as far as I know but we are to restrain ourselves, hold ourselves in check, repress those urges and emotions. If you spend your entire life as a monastic and are trained in restraint since childhood you have a better grip on it as you have no personal experience with a “regular life”. You are a witness to it but not a participant.
Almost all monks have the buffer, the protection of a sangha, the community of monks. You are one of many. You dress alike, study, eat, sleep, pray, work, experience the life together. If you start to falter there are many who will encourage you, strengthen your resolve, discipline you and smooth your life in the monastic tradition. As Thich Nhat Hanh has said;
“A real sangha always carries within itself the energy of love, the energy of brotherhood and sisterhood, hope and compassion. Our sangha is our home. Our sangha is our hope.”
-TNH, December 24, 2010
As an Enji (western monk) you come to the tradition later in life, full of the personal experience of secular living and full of memories of all that goes with it. All Buddhist monastic orders will make sure that you are prepared and committed to this life. That you don’t come to it to escape or runaway from your life out here to the insularity of the monastic sangha protected in the monastery. Enjis are more than capable of living the life we do. They can assimilate well into monastic living if they have the commitment and can surrender to the devotion to a guru or teacher and follow the teachings.
Being an Enji and a wandering monk has great risks they will tell you. Some of the life long older monks call us “White Crows” because the feeling is that an Enji can be a good monk when you find a white crow. Being alone without the protection and inspiration of the sangha is risky because it becomes easy to lose your way in the world of desires, hopes and expectations. In fact many of those western monks ordained do in fact disrobe figuratively and literally. It’s difficult to make your way in the world without financial support and a community that supports the sangha with alms support. It is difficult to live in this western world with it’s pace and promise and keep the commitment you have made especially with the people you meet. It seems that many of the Enjis who disrobe fall in love and that kindles those feelings of intimacy and longing for the warm companionship of another person that some define love by.
I love intimacy as much as anyone but view it differently now than before. I think we can define intimacy in a broader way and I spread my intimacy across many so that I can give and share myself with as many people as possible. Sure there is no sharing of some of the basic components that we understand to describe intimacy but the feeling of connectedness, human warmth and relationship can still happen. It is just not centered on one person.
The vows we take were established 2500 years ago in the teaching on The Fruits of the Homeless Life where the Buddha, it is said, gave the rules and obligations of being a monk and living in sangha. They were vows that were consistent with the era and geographic culture of the original monks who followed the Blessed One and lived according to his teaching. Being celibate, abstaining from intoxicants, right speech and all the other examples in The Eightfold Path had important meaning for an exemplary life. There were also many prohibitions like avoiding music, not wearing robes made on certain looms and avoiding high beds to sleep on. Well there are so many of the vows that would make living a wandering life in a secular world impossible that I have chosen the more important ones and not necessarily the easiest, convenient ones for this world I live in. It is the commitment I have made for the rest of this life and I honor it with respect and love of this life.
It’s just that sometimes you look around and remember what life was before, the warm touch, the sense of being loved in that way and the company of someone that you want to be with and share with.
And of the Christmas’s and New years in the past…

The Man and the Monk-cycle I first heard about the trike from mutual friends in Floating Doctors. I had been using my neighbor's tricycle while she was in Asia. It made my movement around the island a lot easier and covering more ground I didn't have to lump all the day's chores into one long walking meditation. From the reports i learned that the designer, engineer, build crew leader, tricycle visionary was getting a lot of enjoyment from the project that was to be his gift to me. His gift to me because, "I wanted to do something nice for you." The MAN: John has been here for awhile and is well known on this island. you either know him as a friend, a business man, a good man, or the guy in the "motorized scooter chair thing". John was injured when he had 17 years and was left paralyzed from the shoulders down. The details and subsequent challenges of his injury come out when asked but they are only background to his life now. People who are paralyzed face challenges every day of their lives so John decided to take his to an island off the coast of a "developing" nation. He has met his challenges head on with blend of scholarly sarcasm and a dry, clever wit. He's the bravest guy I know. THE MONK-CYCLE: John's toolbox is his brain and he assembled a crew to build the M-C and he designed the ideal trike for me on a collection of cardboard box pieces and napkins with soy sauce on them. i enjoyed listening to the enthusiasm for the project in his voice as he explained tire size and gearing and even had me come to his warehouse to check a googled picture of a Vajrayana monk to make sure of the colors so they could paint the trike. Some minor delays due to availability of parts and availability of pit crew. I went to the warehouse to get the M-C and I enjoyed that feeling of anticipation that comes on birthdays and Christmas mornings. It was a beauty with color coordinated by google and Julio Iglesias, Johns scooter chair thing chief mechanic and assembly by Pepi and his crew. I was humbled by the effort and know it was neither an easy or inexpensive project but the fun was just starting or not starting yet depending on how you look at it. I didn't make it out of the driveway before there was a snap and the pedals moved but the M-C didn't. Sheared a pin on the rear axle so a stronger one was inserted and off I went on the maiden voyage which led to another snapping, spinning, no movement bike walk back home.A friend saw me and explained how to use a trike and then offered assistance when he heard mechanical failure. A bigger pin inserted and off I went again until a bigger snap and I broke the axle. So Pepi, a craftsman who could weld a fart to a cloud, went to work fixing the axle only to have me break it again a few days later. Bigger axle from the mainland, more welding and I was ready for days of buzzing around the island, with a basket on the back and my face in the wind. Problem was the M-C was hard to get rolling and you couldn't turn because the front wheel would start scrubbing. Six of us stood there as I went on about free wheeling and trike axles when the collective light bulb went off and in a five minute adjustment I was off and riding. I wanted to get a bike here two years ago but every time I was going to get one I dislocated my hip, had surgery and started rehab all over again. Friends were worried about the idea of me on two wheels with any kind of speed and using my neighbor's trike was the perfect fit for the clumsy monk. it was then that John decided to build the Monk-Cycle, to do something nice for me. "A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer." Lucius Annaeus Seneca The next day I went out to Palmar Tent Lodge on Red Frog Beach and tripped on a step getting up to my tent and broke my left wrist and will have a cast for six weeks. Go figure...

It's been awhile

The Ngöbe family and the bag of cats

I was riding into town by the futbol pitch and saw a Ngöbe family
group heading the same way in front of me. I watched a young boy chasing a skinny cat across the street and grabbing it by the hind legs, he dropped the limp cat into a bag he was holding. As I passed I was filled with a osense of there is something wrong here so I wheeled the Monk-cycle around and went back to the group of two women and four children to ask what was going on. I noticed the other boy also carrying a bag that was moving with life inside it and the silhouette of a round head pulsing against the restraint of the small bag. There was weight to the bag from the way the boy carried it and there looked like what could be rocks or some kind of ballast at the bottom. Communication was poor with my poor Spanish and their blank looks as the young girls and two boys just giggled as the two bags vibrated.
My mind quickly fixed on a scenario of the group on their way into town for whatever purpose with a stop and drop at the ferry landing and the end of the cats in the bag.
What to do? Try to understand the situation and reason for the sparing of the cats? Call the Policia and Sgt. Sanchez? Buy the bags of cats? Follow them to see the final chapter of this story or ride on to the obligations that awaited me in town?
I rode on.
I have thought about this incident many times since that moment and wondered how it fit into my practice, how it influenced my practice. If the situation did end at the ferry landing did I fail to benefit and preserve life or did I turn my back on the life in those bags and miss a moment of goodness?
This practice of mine is far from perfect as I am far from perfect and I have to use everything that approaches me as teaching. I learned that I can't do everything and I can't know everything to be as it appears to be or is it anything else as the Zen axe says.
Life is delicate and not always with a happy ending and there will be another moment, another bag of cats in my life and I hope that I will understand and do that which is right effort and compassionate.
I am grateful for that bag of cats and may any benefit arising from this effort serve to alleviate the suffering of all beings: those near and far, above and below, seen and unseen; beings with 2 legs and 4 legs, wings and fins, born and yet to be born. May all beings be happy, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings realize their Buddha Nature...

Courage... 

Wandering thoughts on a Bocas night...

“Trying to pick one thing to tell is a hard task when you have these lapses between stories. Another hip adventure led to the last post and it’s back to the recovery/rehab part of the travail. A certain paranoia exists after this many times and the impending doom of the next dislocation. I’ve had conversations with the Floating Doctors, who tried so hard to red uce me and took such good care of me, that I don’t know what I would do if it happens again. I surely can’t afford another one here at $14,000USD and labor over whether I’m keeping my Medicare to finance the next one even though getting to the hospital in the U.S. would be  almost an impossibility from this island because the anguish and pain. To think the amount of time that has been consumed in the last year by my fucking right hip.”

 Words which were intended to become part of another post for the blahg, joined together to be some witty piece that would bring a smile to a reader or maybe some respect for the writer. Like many other thoughts that were to become part of the compendium they were just words that were stored here for some later point in time. Typical of my journal and blog writing diligence, nothing but random thoughts never to collate into anything.

 Since these random words with the recalcitrant hip the centerpiece there have been two more hip adventures, the latest a week ago. Each time with the pain and recovery I was faced with, the “what if it happens again” thoughts came to mind. Just beginning the process of transportation, treatment, paying for it and recovery I was jumping to the next time it happens and how I will deal with it before I have even begun to deal with the present situation. Now that’s how a lifelong Buddhist approaches the be here now, perfect imperfection!

 The thoughts percolate in the pain of the moment, with every movement of the leg, with every contraction of the muscles, when every attempt to alleviate the pain brings more pain. The worry about the next time germinates in the agony of the present and while wondering if I can stand this pain the mind puts it in a twisted perspective that maybe it isn’t as bad as the pain could be the next time.

After the Floating Doctors tried their best to reduce or relocate the hip while I was lying on my kitchen floor Otis told me that i showed a lot of courage to let them try it so many times during that adventure. I shrugged it off because I didn’t look it as an act of courage only necessity and I didn’t realize it was going to happen twice again. I couldn’t apply the word to my situation because I viewed courage as a battlefield word, one applied to either heroic deed or dreaded illness. The word worn by people who throw themselves on a hand grenade to save their mates or describe their battle with cancer. People willing to die for their convictions are courageous not some dude with a bad hip. Calling myself courageous seemed arrogant and uttered by the same voice that had begged for the doctors to stop their efforts in a high pitched plaintive squeal seemed wrong.

Reading Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram during this latest hip adventure, I was impressed by the brilliance and eloquence of all of his words and struck by the timeliness of one of his thoughts, “One of the ironies of courage, and the reason we prize it so highly, is that we find it easier to be brave for someone else than we do for ourselves alone.” I’ll display courage on your behalf but not for me.

After that time on the floor of my kitchen with those painful moments and all the ones to follow until recovery weeks later I didn’t dwell on the “next time” thoughts. I just tried to get the present one over with so I could resume what I viewed as my normal life. Oh I did try to humor the situation by saying that “the next time this happens” they were not going to get my phone call for help but rather someone would either notice I had not been seen lately or notice a strange smell emanating from my apartment. Apparently I was the only one who saw the humor in the silly comments. But call I have twice more. There is no other choice. I can’t wait for it to go  away like a headache or heal on it’s own while I continued to function as well as I could through my normal routine. I couldn’t move without the agonizing grip of the pain and it wasn’t going to heal on it’s own like a sprain or even a break that would heal into a distortion. Nope it would just hang there with the leg four inches shorter than the other leg and the muscle contractions and nerve impulses the constant reminders that it wouldn’t get better on it’s own. 

 So I would plod on to cover the “distance to service”, as they say, in the shortest amount of time possible. An act of desperate necessity but not of courage. The waiting time, the boat trip, the long ride to David was the only choice for relief.

So this time when it happened again {the next time I thought about during those previous times} I knew immediately that I had to get back to the U.S. for treatment. It wasn’t because the treatment in Panama was inferior, it was because there is Medicare in the U.S. and I was already $21,000 in the hole from the last two. An emergency doctor in the hospital that did my original hip replacement in Massachusetts was “driving Miss Emma” {IV morphine} two days later. Those two days were filled with getting on and off three plane rides, two taxi rides, a fourteen hour wait at the airport in Panama City and a lot of pain. I don’t know if it was the worst pain I’ve had as it is all relative {I’ve never given birth, passed a kidney stone or been severely burned} but it was the longest duration of pain that I have had to experience.

So now I head to a rehabilitation center {a more expensive nursing home}to once again do the dance of recovery. I have had another surgery with parts removed and replaced, more staples in my ass and it’s time to get better, to move on. I don’t think of myself as courageous for getting through this several times as I believe as Nicholas Murray Butler did when he said “Necessity does the work of courage.”

A synonym for courage is pluck so if this happens again I won’t say I have been courageous, I’ll just say I’ve been plucked!