St. Valentine's Day Meditation

Love is an act of courage, a losing bet that makes all who place it holy. Absurdity, sacrifice, and heartbreak are integral to it; marks of valour, not folly.

Those who refuse to honour it are first damned and last saved.

– From the journal of my 100 days of solo meditation in the forest, the story of which – 100 Days on the Mountain – I'm currently shopping to publishers.


(Photo of traffic signal trafficked for St. Valentine's Day – a lighthouse in the trackless night – courtesy of François Detemmerman and Wikimedia Commons.)

Boom Town

Where it swelled near its confluence with the Willapa River, Wilson Creek bore incongruous signs of heavy industry: breastworks of peeled cedar, crumbling now and wrenched apart by ramming drift, and a few pilings left standing midriver, where log booms once floated.

Here in the 1850s, Daniel Wilson built the area's first mill, to rip the logs that ox teams skidded off the surrounding hills. It would have had a sash saw – essentially, a giant handsaw, pumped back and forth by a steam engine that chugged so slowly the sawyer could almost fish the river between passes. The planks it wore off in this way were stacked on scows tied along the breastworks, to be taken first to Raymond and South Bend, and thence the ports of the world. Soon steamers stopped here as well, and the busy town of Willapa sprang into being, complete with shops and hotels.

It all happened in weeks, and a few years later, when the big trees were all gone, it unhappened just as fast.

What remained – a sleepy village and a small primary school – is now called Old Willapa.


(From an earlier draught of my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of the Willapa country courtesy of Tony Webster and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermit Habit

The wildlife of the North Pacific rainforest is famously reserved; where the East has its flashy cardinals, red efts, and indigo buntings, our own rubber boas, rough-skinned newts, and varied thrushes are modestly beautiful. The odd Steller's jay or goldfinch may be a pleasant change of pace, but we're satisfied to return to the brown and russet uniform of our understated nation when they've passed.

While sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain, I sometimes daydreamed about founding a North Coast-native order of forest monks. And should that fancy ever gel, we will sit in the forest of my forebears, wearing the habit of our Douglas squirrel hosts: a hooded robe of honest Cascade umber, over an ochre jersey.



(Text edited from the notes for my book, 100 Days on the Mountain. Photo of Tamiasciurus douglasii courtesy of Ivie Metzen, the US National Park Service, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: T-Bone in the jungle

(My nephew, currently 28, photographed at 16 in the forest where I sat ango.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Guarding the Walls

Palladius said, "One day when I was suffering from boredom I went to Abba Macarius and said, 'What shall I do? My thoughts afflict me, saying, "You are not making any progress, go away from here".' He said to me, 'Tell them, "For Christ's sake, I am guarding the walls"'."

The Paradise of the Desert Fathers


(Pictured: the Bodhi Tree, the huge old bigleaf [Acer grandiflora] I guarded while sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain.)

WW: Elk Ridge trail

(This is the trail up Elk Ridge, just across the ravine from the jungle camp where I sat ango.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Ango

True nature;
It is on this mountain.
Because of the heavy mist, the exact location is unknown.

– An Ancestor's commentary on the Mumonkan.


(Photo of a North Coast mountain that looks remarkably similar to the one were I sat ango, courtesy of John Fowler and Wikimedia Commons.)

Hermitcraft: Towel Zafu

When I first became a hermit monk I had no zafu, so I sat on a sofa cushion. That got me off the ground – no pun intended – but was bulky, interfered with my thighs, and couldn't be transported on road trips. So a few months in, having researched zafu alternatives on the Enlightenment Super-Path, I upgraded to this. Since it took some time to perfect, I thought it might help others to share my experience here.

The suggestion I found online was "use rolled-up towels". This proved underwhelming for a few reasons, worst of which is that bath towels unroll readily beneath a sitter.

So I rolled the three thick terrycloth bath towels again, as tight as I could – painfully so – and bound them with jute twine. That prevented them migrating in the cardinal directions. It did not, however, stop them from telescoping out of integrity and firmness.

So I cut them loose again, fluffed them up, and started over. This time, after layering them on the floor, I cut two lengths of jute about a foot longer than the towels were wide and laid them width-wise across the stack, about four inches from the end. Then I cut four new jute bindings and tore up my knuckles hard-rolling them again.

After retying as before, I knotted each lengthwise string on opposite sides of the roll. (Be sure to weave them over and under the four shorter bindings before tying, to dissuade all from wandering. Also, I suspect four long strings would do even better.)

This was major improvement. But the roll still mushed down quickly, no matter how hard I rolled and tied it, and contact with the floor and my backside caused the bindings to wander and fray, and even untied the knots.

So… again with the unrolling, fluffing, knuckle-grinding, and tying. But this time I also made a drawstring cover to protect the bindings. (The velours I used has velvety knap that grips mat and meditation trousers and reduces travel while sitting.) For maximum structural support, I cut it so tight I could barely get it on. And because the fabric was under constant stress, both from me and the resentful towels inside, I double-sewed all seams and took other sailmaker measures to toughen them up.

After a lot of jerking, shoving, and swearing, I managed to force this cover on. (Pro tips: push the terrycloth down with two fingers and pull the cover up over them a half-inch with the other hand. Then turn the roll three inches and repeat, continuing patiently till you've got the cover on. A quicker trick is to tape collars cut from round plastic bottles around the roll and remove them as you progress.)

The result served me daily for a year, until I received the buckwheat zafu I now use, a birthday gift from my mom. (And during my 100 days I sat on a roll of closed-cell foam, which worked out somewhat better than the towel roll.) But I still keep the old bolster around, just in case; for example when passing my zafu and/or seiza bench to people who've asked me to teach them how to meditate. It's also a memento of the determination I brought to this pursuit, and the wonderful sense of growth and success in that early practice.

To be sure, even a well-built towel zafu isn't the equivalent of a real one; it's heavy and hard, and needs regular rebuilding – say, every two months or so – to restore loft and elasticity and repair bindings that come adrift. Also at those times, launder or rotate out the towels, which tend to compress and become stiff and thin with service. If at all possible, machine-dry before rebinding, because hang-dried towels don't recover their nap until they dry somebody.

The bursitis I've since developed would axe my old friend for twice-daily, hour-long sits – a problem I also had, though not as severely, with my closed-cell foam on the mountain.

But at the time this old bindle technology was just the ticket. I sat on it daily, travelled with it, and built a solid monastic practice on it. Given that store-bought options are expensive, this can get you into Zen right away, even if you don't have much money.

Deep bow to all who enter the Path, by whatever trailhead.

Just Sleep

Among many incisive observations in Adam Savage's maker manifesto Every Tool is a Hammer, I found this boldest:

"There is no skill in the world at which you get better the less sleep you have."

Reading it, I declared aloud, "AMEN."

The belief that sleep deprivation is useful to enlightenment practice figures highly on the list of counter-productive teachings inflicted on Zen by the organised sangha. Our monasteries – largely indistinguishable from boot camps – glory in it: rousting monks afoot at freezing 0-dark-30, and then chastising those who fall asleep on the cushion. (Dōgen actually attained enlightenment to the sound of his neighour being beaten for this.)

It's worth mentioning that such machismo isn't limited to Buddhist houses, either. Most monastic establishments, of any kind, think stumbling about in a numb stupor is God's plan for humanity.

But it's not.

The fact is, any state that compromises your brain's ability to focus – being drunk or high, cold, hot, hungry, under stress, in pain – reduces the quality of zazen. And sleep is possibly the most important of all. I've found the more seriously I take it – valuing sleep as highly as sitting – the better I practice.

This lesson landed with an audible thud in the early days of my 100 Days on the Mountain. I hadn't planned for an adequate bed, and the lack of rest complicated my practice for every one of those 100 days.

In the end, it's your right and responsibility to decide whether to sleep or sit in any given moment. I eventually learned to do both simultaneously, out there on ango, a technique I still fall back on sometimes here in the Red Dust World.

In any case, it's always well to keep self-hatred – such as "I wouldn't be sleepy if I were a better monk" – in view. It's so easy to confuse that with practice.

(Photo of a sleeping monk ...seal, courtesy of Jared Wong and Wikimedia Commons.)

Remembering Ango

Today's top headline:
"Free-range Buddhist Eaten By
Health-Conscious Cougar."

– Haiku written eleven years ago, in anticipation of my 100 Days on the Mountain.

(Photo of Katsushika Hokusai painting courtesy of the British Museum and Wikimedia Commons.)

Lichen Love

This is Lobaria, either oregana or pulmonaria. (Probably the latter.) Common lichen of the North Coast, it completely sheaths some trees – especially apples, for some reason – like a ragged union suit.

I've been a big lichen fan since primary school, when my teacher took us on a walk in the forest beside our school and pointed out several. He explained that lichens are actually two organisms, living in collaboration: a fungal base with an algal or bacterial rider. Together they secure the wherewithal of life for each.

He also said that lichens possess the amazing ability to die in drought and spring to back to life when it rains. I'd seen this happen – the shrivelled grey fuzz on summer trees and rocks, suddenly ballooning three times larger, supple, and fluorescent green in autumn – but hadn't truly remarked it till then.

I promptly collected seven or eight types, dried them to crispy death on a plate in my bedroom, then sprinkled them with water.

Boom: miracle.

Now I can't not see it; neither their sudden absence in August, nor their full-spectrum blitzkrieg in October. In fact, it's among my favourite moments of the year.

Though acid rain endangers European Lobarias, they remain rife here. Some sources say our local species are useful in tea, but while sitting my 100 Days on the Mountain I tried it and ended up with a gen mai that smelled and tasted powerfully of rotten fish. From this I conclude that, like most edible lichens, they're best reserved for survival food.

And you'd have to really want to survive.

But what else would you expect from a class of organisms that includes fairy barf?

Yes. It's really called that.

UPDATE 8 JANUARY 2021: A friend and reader advises me that lichens have been found to comprise two, and as many as three, different fungi, not just one as previously thought. More information here.

Cutting the Crap

Among the more dubious traditions of Western Zen is a particularly frustrating custom we might sum up as "crap on Korea".

We needn't look far for its origins. The West was first missionised by teachers from Japan, where crapping on Korea is a national sport. That, coupled with the tedious piety of their Western descendants, about covers it.

And that's too bad, because not only is Korea a world power in actual Buddhism – equal to Japan, both historically and currently – but its take on the matter is refreshingly bold and vivacious.

My first encounter with Sôn – the Korean iteration of Ch'an, the parent tradition of Zen – came very early in my practice, when I discovered the teachings of Seung Sahn. To say he influenced my calling is an understatement; this is the guy who introduced me to 100 Days on the Mountain, which would go on to become the cumulative event of my enlightenment practice to date.

Seung's non-Imperial impact may also explain my love of Korean Buddhist cinema – a felicitous coïncidence, given that most Buddhist cinema is Korean. I've already reviewed one prime example in these pages, and have a few more in the tubes.

But when it comes to the power of compulsive crapping, Wonhyo must be Exhibit A.

Here's an experiment: ask any Zenner for an opinion on my brother Wonhyo. I don't say this to get you in trouble; chances are slim this person will vociferate. Rather, he or she will probably strike a blank expression and seek more information. Korean poet? Sôn ancestor?

Well, yeah. And also one of most influential Buddhist scholars in history.

You know, little stuff like that.

How seminal was Wonhyo? Dig this: few historians identify him as a Sôn (or Zen, or Ch'an) follower. Mostly they sum up his religious training in words similar to those of the New World Encyclopedia:

He entered Hwangnyongsa Temple as a monk, studied Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, and diligently practiced meditation.

Yeeeeah…. that's Zen, son. So why don't they just say Zen?

Well, after delving a bit and observing multiple sources dance around the subject, I've come to the conclusion that there wasn't any Zen/Sôn in Korea at the time.

Or rather, it was in its fetal stages.

Or rather, Wonhyo invented it. (In sangha with others, of course.)

One thing is certain: Seung Sahn refers to him multiple times as "Zen master Wonhyo". (At least in English.)

I could go on. How Wonhyo's works fill a library. How they directed the development of Zen throughout Asia – including Japan. How the man himself practiced a kind of assumption-busting Buddhism that elicits comparisons to Ikkyu.

And how his bounteous, germinal scholarship is only just now being systematically translated into English. (Ahem.)

But I'd rather share a particularly potent fragment of his Sôn. Check out this text, lifted from Wikipedia:

In 661 [Wonhyo] and a close friend […] were traveling to China [when] the pair were caught in a heavy downpour and forced to take shelter in what they believed to be an earthen sanctuary. During the night Wonhyo was overcome with thirst, and reaching out grasped what he perceived to be a gourd, and drinking from it was refreshed with a draught of cool, refreshing water. Upon waking the next morning, however, the companions discovered much to their amazement that their shelter was in fact an ancient tomb littered with human skulls, and the vessel from which Wonhyo had drunk was a human skull full of brackish water.

Upon seeing this, Wonhyo vomited.

Startled by the experience of believing that a gruesome liquid was a refreshing treat, Wonhyo was astonished at the power of the human mind to transform reality.

That-there's a straight-up shot of Korean Zen. It has something – ineffable, powerful – that other Zens lack.

And it busts open my mind.

(Photo of Seoul's Wonhyo Bridge courtesy of Minsoo Han and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Skull tree

(This is a tree on the edge of my camp during ango. As I've mentioned twice before, humans like to hang skulls in conspicuous places. I'm no different.)

WW: Jungle creek

(A shot of a creek in the jungle where I sat my 100 Days.)

Used-To-Do Zen

I often meet people who "used to do" Zen.

Many were deeply engaged, once; some were students of famous teachers. It's an inherent weakness of institutionalised practice. Where Zen is a social act it becomes a lifestyle, and like all lifestyles it demands a weighty sacrifice of time, money, and freedom. Your whole existence becomes Zen Centre. And Zen Centre always wants more: more time, more money, more obedience.

That wears people down, uses them up. And when they reach the end, they don't just drop the kowtowing and the koo-koo-ka-choo. They drop Zen.

Hence the risk of the ordained path. It can displace real Zen, at the cost of old suffering unhealed and new suffering inflicted.

It doesn't always end that way, of course; many find a healthful home in the zendo.

But wherever my hermit path leads, it guarantees one thing: I will never used-to-do Zen.

There's nothing for me to stop doing.


(From my notes for 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Bodhidharma painting courtesy of Sojiji Temple and Wikimedia Commons.)

Good Book: Cat Attacks

I didn't want to read this book. And I really didn't want to keep reading after I started. But as I've often said, denial is an unskilful response to danger.

Most of my life has happened in cougar country, much of it in the woods, where I prefer to practice Zen when possible. A few years back I sat 100 Days on the Mountain, an ancient Buddhist ritual, in Washington's coastal jungle.

The cat threat there, of which I was generally aware, comes up several times in my book. (Which is now finished and seeking a publisher.) But if I'd read Cat Attacks: True Stories and Hard Lessons from Cougar Country, I wouldn't have slept once during those more than three months.

Authors Dean Miller and Jo Deurbrouck are careful to point out that human-cougar encounters are extremely rare, and physical contact a tiny blip in that statistic. But they are also conscientious – downright didactic, in fact – in recounting, second by horrific second, exactly what happens in a mountain lion attack.

And though it's apparently impossible to escape a gruesome death if you're alone when the stats turn against you, your chances of avoiding that actuarial convergence drop to zero if you've no hard data on your predator's habits and methods.

Some of which, thanks to Miller and Deurbrouck, I now know:

•    Cougars prefer silent, lightning ambush from behind and above, after extensive, close stalking. When in the woods, turn and look behind you, thoroughly and often.

•    Your predator's single-minded intent is to kill and eat you. This makes your bear-mollifying skills guaranteed death. Instead, if one atypically shows itself before lunging, go big, mean, and criminally insane. This may convince the cougar to go back to just stalking you for now. If on the other hand you make yourself quiet and small and avoid eye contact, you've green-lit a kill.

•    The charge, when it comes, is supernaturally fast; witnesses uniformly report a "brown blur". And its dump-truck impact is instantaneous. So even if you see a lion crouching to strike (which they take great pains to conceal) you have no time to raise or aim, much less draw, a firearm.

•    Though they'll attack groups, particularly children in the midst of one, as readily as they'll strike a loner, cougars rarely turn on rescuers. (It's bizarre, un-prey behaviour that evolution has not prepared them to answer.) So if a companion is hit, come in hot and hostile and fight hard at close quarters, with feet and fists if necessary. Once engaged, a lion may cling stubbornly to its quarry, but they seldom or never accept third-party combat. So keep on hammering until you completely weird it out and it withdraws.

•    Solitary humans have no chance of survival.

This is just a smattering of the practical, unromantic intelligence Cat Attacks contains. The authors' steely pragmatism, while traumatic, gives the work great strength. Particularly valuable is their bullheaded refusal to get sucked into either of the silly postures – "kill 'em all" or "poor persecuted kitties" – one usually encounters when the topic is raised.

To counteract the first, they illuminate in equal detail the harsh reality of a cougar's life, which is astonishingly brutal and getting crueller by the day, thanks to overweaning human arrogance.

As for the second, well… in the same instant a cougar touches you it rips your face off. This allows it to begin eating you without waiting for you to die.

That image brings me keenly in mind of Meditation in the Wild, wherein Charles S. Fisher points out that early Buddhist monks – originally all, and then most, of whom were hermits – had a tendency to enter Asia's primordial jungles and never be seen again. Tigers are even bigger than cougars, and not one whit more sentimental.

These are the conditions that forged our nihilistic Zen world view.

So if you live or travel in the northern and/or western half of North America, read Cat Attacks. Get schooled. Be prudently terrified.

Because when I think of all the times I've been afoot in the rough at dusk – including every day of ango – I break into a cold sweat. One unmoderated by the knowledge that cats also attack people in broad daylight. (Even housecats creep me out now.)

So be safe out there, brothers and sisters.

As safe as this existence allows.

(Note: a slightly updated release of this book came out in 2007 under the title Stalked by a Mountain Lion: Fear, Fact, And The Uncertain Future Of Cougars In America.)

UPDATE, 31 MAY 2018. Coverage of a local fatal attack, with further information on staying safe in the forest, is available here.

Practice Models

What I most ached for on the mountain was a musical instrument. They're like languages, each complete and distinct and irreplaceable. Sadly, of the several I play, only the harmonica is easily carried. Which is why I learned it, but as I never acquired the true harpist's seatbelt-sense of "nowhere without it", I'd managed to forget mine before leaving. And I missed it every day.

Flautists have it figured out: a simple tube, and a jackknife with a reamer, and you've got music. Archaeologists believe that, percussion excepted, the transverse flute was the first instrument we invented.

Of course, simplicity on that order demands complexity on another. I tried to learn, once.

And so, the harmonica. Because anything your instrument won't do for you, you have to find in yourself.

(Photo of 43,000-year-old Aurignacian bone flute, which clearly demanded more talent than I have, courtesy of José-Manuel Benito, Parque de la Prehistoria de Teverga, and Wikimedia Commons. Photo of my old Hohner Chromonica model also courtesy Wikimedia Commons.)

Holy Hogwash

I have Christian friends who revel in the notion that God attends to them personally, that they are important. But true peace lies in the opposite. For then your sadness is nothing. Your hopes, fears, disappointments, and ambitions, all made of the same hogwash. Creation stretches on and on, tangible and timeless, and you...

Well, there is no you, is there?

Perhaps you died laughing.


(Adapted from 100 Days on the Mountain, copyright RK Henderson. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and Troy and Rusty Lilly.)

WW: Monk robe

(Why is it so satisfying to see it neatly folded for the road, like this? I'll actually come up with excuses to meditate in something else, just so I don't have to unfold it. See it in action here.)

WW: Book manuscript

(100 Days on the Mountain. Fourth draught. Headed for No. 5.)