WW: Zafu cat

(Putting my meditation cushion to productive use.)

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: Rare mushroom

(To the best of my ability to determine, this is the European honey mushroom Armillaria cepistipes. In the late 90s, specimens collected by mycologist Tom Volk led to the first positive ID of this species in North America, at a site in the Olympic Mountains. That's just across the bay from the site of this photo. These two were part of an effusive inflorescence growing in the litter of a well-rotted log. [A former trunk of Acer macrophyllum, unless I miss my guess.]

I ate them.)

Humans

Where there are humans
you'll find flies
and Buddhas

Issa



(Photograph of Musca domestica joining the picnic courtesy of Thomas Besson and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: 'Nother earthstar

(Geastrum saccatum; a clearer explanation of the common name
than I uploaded last autumn.)

Christian Meditation

In the late 40s, a British Colonial Service officer named John Main began to frequent a Malaysian ashram. There, in meditation, the devout Catholic finally tasted his life's ambition: to sit in the presence of God. At length he approached the abbot about converting to Hinduism. The guru's reply astonished him:

"No."

Like most Westerners, Main assumed all religions were about signing people up. But Hinduism (and Zen) actually discourages conversion. One's path is an invaluable, hard-won treasure; throwing it away to start all over again is a bad strategy, if you can help it.

Instead, the guru told Main to find a Christian way of meditation. The idea intrigued the Anglo-Irishman. Was there such a thing? He returned to the UK, became a Benedictine monk, and spent the rest of his life researching and resurrecting a form that had indeed, he discovered, once been central to Christian practice.

As one might imagine, there was some blowback. Notwithstanding Main's watertight historical case – the Desert Fathers, a prominent early Christian lineage, made sitting a pillar of their monastic practice, as did such seminal Church figures as John Cassian and John of the Cross – many insisted that meditation was unChristian by definition, on the well-worn pretexts that "I've never heard of it before" and "non-Christians do it." (For the record, they/we also pray, though I've yet to hear any Christian call down the Lord on prayer.)

Then came 1962. In that year, Pope John XXIII convened his now-famous Concilium Oecumenicum Vaticanum Secundum, otherwise known as the Second Vatican Council. The goal of this historic in-house revolution was to modernise, democratise, and personalise the Church. Main's reconstituted meditation lineage, envisioned as a loose œcumenical affiliation of small, often lay-led groups, fit the bill perfectly. He was given the Pope's blessing and a building in Montréal, and told to make it happen. The result was the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM), or Christian Meditation for short.

There being no Zen centre nearby when I began my practice, I sat with the local Franciscans, who led a WCCM group, for almost two years. (Nor was I alone; one of my brothers there was a Vajrayana lay practitioner.)

There I discovered that WCCM-model sitting is virtually identical to zazen. A typical weekly meeting starts with a few minutes of teaching from the group leader – generally a brief elaboration on some point of mindfulness, with supporting Bible references – and then a few bars of soothing music, ceding to silence. (Some groups use a Buddhist-style singing bowl instead of music.) Group members repeat the mantra "Maranatha" inwardly, by way of stilling their thoughts and letting God get a word in edgewise. Afterward the music comes back up, or the keisu rings, and meditation ends. There may be shared commentary, or the session may simply disband, amid smiles and "see ya next week"s. The entire ritual takes an hour.

Some groups sit Asian-style, on zafus and zabutons, while others sit on chairs, as mine did. Lotus-sitting groups may follow the Tibetan aesthetic, or Japanese Zen; somewhere there may be a Hindu one. How these matters are decided I don't know, but it's just cosmetic; the practice remains the same.

I remain a major fan of Christian Meditation, and recommend it to the many Christians I meet who voice interest in Zen or meditation. The teaching is indeed œcumenical; there are no specifically Catholic elements in it, and no need for anyone to feel uncomfortable, regardless of denomination. (And you got that from two Buddhists.)

So Christians who hunger for a meditation practice should check out the WCCM. Sadly, there are not as many groups as the lineage deserves, but most large cities have at least one. A good place to start is the WCCM website.

Failing that, contact your local Catholic parish. You might have to insist a little; even among Catholics, Christian Meditation has yet to become a household word. If it turns out there is in fact no group nearby, talk to the priest about starting one. (You don't have to be Catholic to talk to a priest or to ask him for help, yea though Protestant eyes sometimes grow large when I suggest this.)

Any road, if you're looking to "be still and know that I am God", this-here'll get it done.

WW: Screamin' Eagle

(Emphasis on "screaming".)