WW: Native rhodendron

(Rhododendron macrophyllum, the Pacific rhododendron, is the state flower of Washington. In late spring it bursts out in the grey-green twilight of the North Coast jungle, where its pale pink blossoms seem to glow above the undergrowth. When my mom was in high school, kids in her small Puget Sound town used to cut truckloads of these from the forests along the bay, to fill the gym for prom.

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Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Hermit Nation

For some years I've enjoyed sporadic correspondence with a fellow Zenner in England. After a few less-than-uplifting experiences with her Zen teacher, she's decided to try the hermit path, and asked me for a little sanghic perspective. Inevitably, the exchange ended up clarifying some things in my own mind as well. (Hence the value of sangha. As any teacher will tell you, helping others helps the helper.) So I thought I'd excerpt a bit of that conversation here, to spread the support around.

The sister in question is feeling the pull of her nature, though uncertain she can sustain a solitary practice, or that it will prove as fulfilling as the organised model. At the same time she feels like the institution doesn't respect her – that it views her as an isolated failure that must be repaired, or in extremis, rejected. That has led her to question her teacher's "never hermit" stance on alternatives.

As always, I didn't advocate any path to her, since I lack comprehensive knowledge of the facts and entities in play, and anyway, it ain't my karma at risk. But on this issue of only-ness, I felt compelled to give witness.

And so I wrote the following, with allowance for judicious editing:

As is frequently the case, I've been struck by the similarity of our life paths. We are, as I often say, a nation. This is very hard for the gregarious to grasp.

Although the neo-traditional Zen institution views people of our nature as unevolved or learning disabled, the fact is we are and always have been a demographic. One unserved by the innovated monastery model.

The same one that gave us the Buddha and Bodhidharma, to name just two.

And we seem to be coming out of the closet in greater numbers since the Boomers – great believers in authority, their market stance notwithstanding – began their slide into irrelevance.

Hermits don't necessarily seek isolation from others – I don't – but most of my adult life I've lived in rural areas; was raised in one, and have chosen to live in others when choice was mine.

But we live in a time when the rural areas that used to be despised by the urban and urbane have become chic, and they're clearing us rednecks away so they can take our land. It's a big topic, and for me, a painful one. Reminds me of the age of enclosure, and the segmenting of the European countryside into landed estates, which was the driving force that colonised the New World. 'Cept there's no place for us peasants to go this time.

From a practice perspective it doesn't matter much; you can be a hermit anywhere. But my preference is to be comfortably buffered from the rest of my species, and to be in daily contact with what remains. And that's harder to achieve in town.

As for your musings on Zen, I quite agree on all of them. Most of us find, when we encounter each other, that we've had similar experiences, received similar openings, and have much to offer each other in the way of teaching and support. We're the Buddha's only given monastic model, but formal Zen teachers (as well as those of other faiths) are great ones for saying that an unsupervised monk will quickly go off the rails and begin spouting bizarre, self-serving nonsense.

Which happens, of course, but not more often than it does in the Institution. And the result isn't crazier or more dangerous. From where I'm standing, it's clear that ordination is a risky state that few survive. Whereas my formal eremitical practice of assuming I understand nothing, mixed with a disciplining lack of social acceptance, has done a pretty good job of keeping me in my lane.

Anyway, when you mention Zen masters who run their monks as servants, that's my immediate thought. As a hermit, I can't imagine anybody cleaning up after me. Aside from the presumption, there's the fact that cleaning up my own messes is central to my practice; confronting chaos, accepting the necessity of soiling and breaking things, understanding how entirely I participate in universal entropy.

I suspect teachers who don't settle their own accounts have forgotten how unimpressive they are; given their working conditions, they can't help it.

As for me, "I'm nobody" has been my breathing mantra for twenty years. And I still think I'm the lead character in a movie from time to time; that tells you how much harder ordained types must have it.

Any road, society creates us, through a sort of petty terrorism, and at some point we just shrug and pull on the robe, to its great indignation. It's one reason I won't accept spiritual authority from other humans. I'm sometimes asked to address groups about Zen, and I always start by pointing out that I've never been ordained by anyone but my mother, that I have no unique understanding of anything, and that the next Zenner they meet will probably tell them I'm wrong about everything.

And I finish by telling them that anyone who says different about themselves is lying.

We hermits are a very diverse crowd – if we can be said to be a crowd – but I suspect all of us would agree with that last statement, at least.


Robin

(Photo courtesy of Matt Sclarandis and Unsplash.com.)

WW: My mom's hydrangeas

(My mom's favourite flower, seen here from her bedroom window. Since she died I haven't performed any maintenance on these, though a neighour did clean them up a little last fall. And yet they're still coming on strong.

Flowers were so important to my mom. I think I'll invest a bit more effort in these from now on.)


Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Memorial

(This rhododendron grows just outside my mother's kitchen window. Since she moved here 6 years ago it has never bloomed – a fact she drew to my attention just last year.

But this spring it brought on four small white blossoms [one of them out of frame]. Rhododendrons grow riotously on the North Coast, and there are a great many of every colour in this neighbourhood, including the stunning pink native ones. But white heads are rarest. Especially such delicate ones.

As you can tell by its sallow leaves this plant isn't happy, which is undoubtedly why it hasn't bloomed before. I don't know what's bothering it – several other rhododendrons in the immediate vicinity are doing great – but when the bloom falls I'll feed it and see if that helps.

As my mom died three months ago, I'm especially drawn to these timid white blossoms – the colour of mourning in Japan.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

WW: Champion flower arrangement

(This is one of a long line of grand-champion county fair entries my mom made throughout her life. This time it's a 2018 flower arrangement - featuring among other things some teasel I'd brought home for her from one of my tramps. 

Mom belonged to a few garden clubs, and held most of the offices in them at one point or another. At show time, if they didn't get enough entries in a given class, they couldn't award a ribbon to any of those who did enter, so to prevent their efforts coming to nil, my mother would hastily stick something of her own in, to keep the category open.

Which "prop", more than once, took the entire class. To her eternal embarrassment, and the family's endless amusement.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Histoire d'hiver

My mom died three nights ago. I had been looking after her for several years, managed her home hospice daily over the last six months, and as usual, was alone with her in the house when she went.

The blessing is that she went quietly, after dropping into a two-day sleep from which she did not rouse. Finally she simply declined the next breath, and that was that.

Likely the death any of us would choose if choice were given.

It's famously hard to know what to say to a person in my place. What is less well-known is how hard it is to know what to say when you're the person in my place. Aside from Issa, few meet the challenge.

Which is perhaps why one of my favourite cinematic moments has been running through my mind.

It's the last line of the brilliant Canadian coming-of-age memoir, Histoires d'hiver. As the final scene of his childhood plays out, the protagonist, now my age, says this in voiceover:

« Papa est décédé il y a quinze ans déjà, et maman, elle, la nuit dernière. Et aujourd'hui, je me sens comme un enfant qui n'a plus le choix de devenir enfin un adulte, car il n'est plus le petit gars de personne. »

(English translation here.)

I expect I'll share further meditations as they become available.

(Photo from the final scene of Histoires d'hiver. The movie itself, like most Canadian films, is difficult to find. The YouTube video linked in the text is the only source I could locate, and of course, YouTube tends to blank such things straightway.)

WW: The 70s called

(My Christmas present to my mom, ca. 1974.)

WW: Красный угол

(Photo by Thomas Gimlin. Offered in honour of Mothers' Day.
Because every so often, when you least expect it,
an ikon happens.)

Street Level Zen: Stepmothers

Remember: This is a test you cannot pass.

This may be the best opening line ever. Not only is it memorable, it sums up the entire koan of step-parenthood, with Zen-worthy genius. Jōshū could have done no better. The fact that Beverly Rollwagen chose to open with the solution and then elaborate is further proof of her enlightenment.

How to Become a Stepmother, by Beverly Rollwagen, is the definitive guide to a delicate undertaking, in six brief quatrains.

Out of respect for the author's copyright I've linked to the full text on Garrison Keillor's site, rather than copying and pasting it here. Not only has my brother Garrison permission to post, but you can hear him read the poem aloud if you click on the audio link above the title. I heartily recommend it; Keillor is as good at reading poetry as Rollwagen is at writing it.

(On a purely frivolous note: if Zen had come to the West a thousand years ago, so that monks here took names in our own languages rather than Asian ones, Rollwagen could easily have been one of them. Check out this speculative Wikipædia entry from that parallel universe: "Road Across the Moors is a collection of koans from the fourteenth century, popularly attributed to Zen hermit Rollwagen of the Yorkshire lineage.")

An auspicious Mother's Day to Avalokiteshvara in all her disguises.

Deep bow.