Hermitcraft: Hermit Zabuton

Red-letter day here at Rusty Ring: a new zabuton has been sworn in.

The old one, which has appeared on these pages numberless times (here, for example, with my zafu, or here, if you look closely at the upper righthand corner of the second photo), had been in service since I became a hermit monk 24 years ago, and I'm a bit heartbroken to set it aside. But the cover had become dirty and threadbare, and finally a dog tore a hole in it.

That last may sound a bit alarming if you've never seen the object in question, but I assure you: pets never missed the joke.

I got that zabuton for free from a person who no longer had a dog. And it worked great – ideal size and weight, highly durable, insulating in the winter and airy in summer. Together we travelled the continent, sitting indoors and out, keeping my physical plant in monastic trim without the least trouble or worry.

(My zafu, less than a year younger, also soldiers on, having as sole intervention been fortified about midway through by a tough, weatherproof cover. True to form, I usually protect that with a cloth shoulder bag, so that the whole looks like a bagful of laundry. Note to self: we need another bag to protect that bag with.)

Any road, just as my winter robe began life as an old fleece bathrobe, I sit zazen on a dog bed. The scepticism this raises in certain quarters is worth the paltry money such kit costs. Welcome to eremitical monasticism, bitches.

But it was time for a new meditation mat, and two decades of experience has taught me that the dogs are right: this-here is what you want. Still, you'd be amazed how broad is the canine mattress market, in every sense: colour, design, shape, expense, comfort… even dimensions vary remarkably.

You gotta know a lot about pet supplies to nail this one. Especially these days, when it often must be purchased sight-unseen.

In the end, after a mere six months' research, I got what I needed. The new pad is a little loftier and has a textured checkerboard cover (see photo) – ironic echo of certain so-designated zabutons meeting fewer criteria and costing four to twelve times more. (Set me back twenty-five dollars Yank, for those playing at home.)

One thing I do miss is the extra 4 inches; where my old zabuton is 28 inches by 35, this one is only 24. However, there are some good reasons for a shallower mat, chiefly that they're less obstructive in a multiuse room; fit more readily into many outdoor sites; and are easier to transport by car.

As for wear or ergonomic issues, only time will tell. But for the moment, it's holding lotus admirably.

So if you need a zabuton but can't afford spiritual materialism, come join me out here with the dogs.

Company's better, anyway.

WW: Falling apart

(Nice minus tide today, so I decided to have a good wade. I grabbed my sandals – the ones I took to the mountain, where I wore them all day, every day, under very demanding conditions. They never flinched.

Since then these Tevas have remained my mainstay… until I went to put them on this afternoon and found a sole about to fall off. Eager to catch the tide, I slapped on some duck tape and made off down the steep access to the beach.

Duck tape is a rescue product, enabling temporary fixes but not much more. Among other things, it's not impervious to water. So I didn't push it any further than my first intentions. As you can see, both tape and sandals delivered.

But I'll have to glue that sole back on. Which means it'll eventually come off again, and some time later, my prized sandals will have to be discarded. Sad it's come to this, but I can't complain about the performance. They've given undaunted service for 15 years.

Still poignant. Like the man said, all things made of parts.)

WW: Derelict treehouse

(Kids love treehouses, but the treehouse years are few and fleeting, and as the demographics of a neighbourhood age and change, those much-loved adult-proof hideaways quickly return to the source.

This one is relatively unusual, in that it was built by adults to an actual plan, and features a host of architectural novelties. (It's also not even technically a treehouse, since no part of it is a tree, but I'm sure the child who owned it considered it one.)

And though its construction was obviously both time-consuming and expensive so far as such structures go, within just a few years – that probably seemed like months to the child's parents – its owner grew up and out, and with no other potential residents in the vicinity, even this carriage-trade example became uninhabitable.

Which is why you see many more abandoned treehouses than occupied ones.

So next time you see an occupied treehouse, take note. Because chances are you're seeing impermanence in action.)



Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

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.)

Gone, Gone

This morning a brother in my Twitter sangha posted the following five paragraphs from the Pali canon (Dutiyaassutavāsutta, SN 12.62).

OK, four, plus intro. That, with allowance made for the verbose, refrain-heavy nature of Buddhist scripture, really comes to about half as much.

Nevertheless, I've dropped a TLDR at the end for the hard-of-waiting.

(Note: "disillusioned" is a positive thing in Buddhist texts. It means "freed from delusion". When you think about it, it's weird that we use that word as a complaint in English.)

So I have heard. At one time the Buddha was staying near Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s monastery. …

“Mendicants, when it comes to this body made up of the four primary elements, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to accumulate and disperse, to be taken up and laid to rest. That’s why, when it comes to this body, an unlearned ordinary person might become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But when it comes to that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’, an unlearned ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, or freed. Why is that? Because for a long time they’ve been attached to it, thought of it as their own, and mistaken it: ‘This is mine, I am this, this is my self.’ That’s why, when it comes to this mind, an unlearned ordinary person is unable to become disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

But an unlearned ordinary person would be better off taking this body made up of the four primary elements to be their self, rather than the mind. Why is that? This body made up of the four primary elements is seen to last for a year, or for two, three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or a hundred years, or even longer.

But that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night. It’s like a monkey moving through the forest. It grabs hold of one branch, lets it go, and grabs another; then it lets that go and grabs yet another. In the same way, that which is called ‘mind’ and also ‘sentience’ and also ‘consciousness’ arises as one thing and ceases as another all day and all night.

TLDR: It's not hard to accept that our bodies are temporary. What we really don't like is that our personhood is just as biodegradable. It changes constantly – we cease to exist and then reappear in different form from moment to moment – until one day no trace, physical or metaphysical, remains of us.

Reading this, I became disillusioned, dispassionate, and freed.

Deep bow to my brother.


(Photo of a fragment from an 18th century Thai anthology of Pali canon teachings courtesy of the Chester Beatty Library [Dublin] and Wikimedia Commons.)

Anitya Kyôsaku

Forget your perfect offering
There's a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen,
Zen hermit monk


(Photo courtesy of Dean Hochman and Wikimedia Commons.)

Economics

(The following is a passage from Rough Around the Edges, a manuscript I began 20 years ago. Though my Zen practice was still about six years in the future, it's interesting to me today to read a fundamentally exact description of what the Buddha called "world weariness" – the mainspring of enlightenment practice – written in my own pre-monastic hand. Like the man said, we come by it honestly.)

The problem, the problem. What is the problem?

You're born. Somewhere, someone sets an egg timer. For a quarter-hour you rave like a rich man in a burning mansion, snatching at a vase, a string of pearls, anything to show you lived there.

The timer dings; you're unborn. The necklace falls to the ground.

We get it about wealth. The prophets have all warned us. But there are other treasures just as fleeting.

I hunger for love, to share life, and not to be alone. Except it won't do. Even if you find love, the timer still goes ding. The necklace falls to the ground.

What's the problem? I'm afraid to die alone. But I live alone. I work alone, and most of the time, I love alone.

The seconds tick. The words echo in my mind. A thought occurs:

Perhaps the most valuable thing in that house is the fire.




(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo of the mechanics of egg-timing courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and generous photographer.)

Stupid Wisdom

I always massage a broken heart with danger. Once in college, I memorialised a girlfriend's abrupt adieu by riding my bike a hundred miles, up the side of Mt. Rainier and back, in a single day.

It helped. I don't know why.

Not long after that I fell in love again, and not long after that, got bounced again. Days later found me high on a sheer rock face, alone, with little experience or equipment.

I almost didn't survive that one.

That September morning remains vivid, these many years later. A scent of sun-baked basalt and cool alpine breeze, the memory of grey stone driving into my gut like a lithic fist, and once again I'm crimped over the ledge, cheek pressed against the Olympics. Below, the toes of my hiking boots are wedged against a shallow nub on an otherwise featureless wall, while above I'm literally clinging by my fingerprint ridges to the shelf. Suspended between worlds, I am simultaneously of one piece with the mountain, and apart.

Backing down is not an option; toeholds are few, and I can't see to find them. I can't climb up for the same reason. So I cling, and ponder. Indian summer makes my palms sweat, and that makes them slip, in tiny jerks that send electric jolts through my body. Yet I'm strangely detached, as if it's happening to someone else.

I suck a lungful of air, and my expanding chest deducts another quarter-inch from my account.

The fall, fifty feet to jagged rocks, will surely kill me. I could channel my strength into a desperate upward surge, but my boots might slip and their weight drag me to my death. On the other hand, if I deliberate much longer, the problem will solve itself.

Calmly, I choose to panic.

Knotting the muscles in my legs, I shove off hard, back arched, arms thrust forward like an Olympic swimmer. My face slams into the outcrop, but my fingertips find a crevice. I jam my knuckles into it, lips numb and swelling, head throbbing, and dangle. My boots kick briefly in the void, then find a ripple of their own. Chin clenched against the ledge, I cling and gasp, and wait for the nausea to pass. A rivulet of blood trickles down the rock and into my tee shirt collar. But I'm well-belayed now, hanging by my own skeleton. A heavy heel flung over the rim, and I throw my arse into the job to flop myself onto the deck like a halibut.

For a long time I just laid in the hot grit, trembling, one arm tossed over my eyes. At length, choking on blood now flowing backward, I rose to half lotus, clamped a bandana over my nose, and panted through my mouth. Golden morning whispered the dry grass in the cracks. A Steller's jay screamed in the treetops below, neon blue amongst the needles. Far below that a forested valley stretched pristine to the edge of the world.

The bleeding stopped eventually, and some time later, the singing in my spine. I swallowed cold water and laid back again.

That day I decided I'd got what I came for. Since then, my heartache remedies trend to solitary journeys through remote places.

Still dangerous. But not stupid.



(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo of a guy doing it right courtesy of Jakub Botwicz and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Mysterious sand castle

(Every October this team of wheelbarrow-pushing men appears on the beach in front of my house and proceeds to spend the entire day building an immense, elaborate sand castle. They mould the bastions with buckets, garbage cans, and pre-made plywood forms, and surround them with a deep, precisely-engineered moat. Then they abandon their work to the waves, which are usually at the gate by this time. Six hours later, the whole project is nothing but a shapeless puddle with a few islands in the middle.

I have no idea who these men are, where they come from, or why they observe their annual rite at this cold and blustery time of year, but I choose to see their art as a comment on defence spending.)

Street Level Zen: All Things Made of Parts...

Iron lantern placed in the leeward garden in the 1970s.

...will fall apart.

Gautama Siddartha