Bicycle Buddha

It is the full moon, and our monthly Zen Fusatsu service. During fusatsu we renew the ten basic lay precepts. We commit to ethical and responsible action, with an eye toward serving all beings.

We bow and we chant and we vow and for the most part i am totally down with it. It is easy enough to get behind not killing or lying or stealing, although even those precepts are subject to endless argument and hair-splitting. It is easy to agree, but the act of wrestling with the underlying concepts and their real-life applications presents the chewy nugget of the buddhist way.

I do fine until we get to Precept #3: “A disciple of Buddha does not engage in sexual misconduct.” What does this mean, exactly? Sure, sex is big, but given that buddhism has no moral stance on the rightness or wrongness of sex, what is so special about it that it deserves its own Precept? (more…)

Dear little girl with the wild red hair and mad eyes. Buck up kiddo. Here is the life you will lead when you are 50.

You will live in a sunny apartment in the coolest neighbourhood in the most beautiful city on earth. Your best buddy will live on the other side of your closet wall. You will live in the high desert in a community of wise monks. You will live alone in a cabin deep in the rainforest.

You will swim naked in the Pacific Ocean. You will ride a fine silver bike. Sometimes you will dance all night and other times you will rise before dawn and nap all afternoon. You will do work that is fun to do—in fact, you will make art, for good people. You will have countless funny friends, some of whom are old people and some of whom are children. (more…)

I am playing this game of trying to cut through my own bullshit. As i shift the pieces i keep finding …ah! look! more bullshit! It is painful and ridiculous, but it feels so true.

In spasms of indecision that sometimes feel debilitating, what i am trying to remember is that it doesn’t really matter which path i choose to take. That sounds negative but really it is liberating. I will act with the highest intuition and logic available to me in any situation. I will act in consideration of all the information available to me in the moment. But then, but then, but then… (more…)

I am a crazy freak and my life is shot through with beauty. You are as crazy as me.

I can and I do bitch all day about the queasy terror of the Big Whateva—and it is. Terrible with a capital T. But oh, my god, the sweetness! Of the sitters in the zendo, of the bike shop boyz. Of all the many sad wanderers. We are all just wandering down the path, sweet and sad.

And for all its nail-biting uncertainty I know my life is solid. Solidly real as the lives of the accountants and the grandparents, of the rocks and the trees. As real as the clouds.

I don’t own anything or anyone. Nothing permanent, no security, no insurance, no guarantee. Well sherlock, no shit. We’re all sweet freaks, just crazy little snowflakes floating free.

I remember Tammy Fudge.

That really was her name. As if that wasn’t enough, Tammy was gangly and awkward and kind of funny looking. She had no friends. If you sat beside her you wouldn’t have any friends either. You knew that in that dangerous and delicately balanced pre-adolescent universe, to befriend Tammy Fudge would have constituted social suicide.

A boy put gum in Tammy’s hair and the teacher had to tease it out with an ice cube. I was haunted by the quiet shame in her face as the teacher worked through tammy’s hair with the ice cube and the comb. (more…)

I go to visit Rose at her assisted-living facility once a week. She is 98, tiny and frail, semi-blind and semi-deaf. She can shuffle slowly around with a walker, but needs a wheelchair to go beyond the building. As she breathes she makes a high peeping sound in the back of her throat, an effect of the cancer in her thyroid.

Rose bullies me mercilessly when i wheel her through London Drugs (“stop, STOP! I said turn left are you an IDIOT?!”). She is probably not unaware of the sympathetic looks people give me as I try my best to patiently follow her directions. I am so humbled by the kindness people show to her in her most enraged moments. Still, strange as it sounds, I really do like Rose and she is getting to like me. I perversely enjoy her company. (more…)

Somewhere between Fort Rodd Hill and the Tsawous rez where I camped for the night, my little black notebook disappeared. All my notes from the past year at Upaya and beyond, my lists, contacts, ideas, drawings, quotes, maps, jokes. The archive of my experience, the fresh tracks of my mind. The one item most precious to me: fallen away. Taken by the road. (more…)

If i was three years old i would laugh at the sound of laughter. I would ask for milk and have it handed to me in a spill-proof cup. I would discover the alphabet in a clothbound book. I would run full tilt, trip, fall flat out, cry, be comforted, get up, run and fall again. Such wonder.

If I was ten years old i would go to summer camp, meet soul sisters, share secrets. I would watch my mermaid shadow on the sandy lake bottom. (more…)