And It Stoned Me To My Soul

“…Stoned me just like goin' Home…And it stoned me…” In a final twist of fate, singing Van Morrison’s ode to quasi-mystical childhood experiences, I took a right on 63rd street last night, and with one final bend in the road, I was home. Home, after driving a hundred other roads singing a hundred other songs, on a spiritual odyssey that carried me over six thousand miles, 32 days, and 12 united states. Beginning on a white Christmas morning in the tiny central Michigan town of Concord, the journey lead me through Kansas City, Missouri, to the San Luis Valley of Colorado, across the hardpan of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and happily paused on the Pacific coastline of Ranchos Palos Verde in southern California, where we flipped a proverbial bitch and took it East - bound and down - all the way back. Along the jagged route there were people and places visited, nine days of noble silence during a meditation retreat with my Teacher the Mighty Shinzen Young, a Ceremony in a sweat lodge surrounded by Joshua Trees, art and treasures procured and prayers proffered . Finally spitting crushed concrete, punching it up the hill to my house, I felt a flood of positivity, surrounding me, uplifting me, welcoming back to a familiar place made new. “Subtle voices in the wind, hear The Truth they're telling, a World begins where this road ends… See...You’ve… left it all behind… Far behind…”  Enveloped back in the winter quiet of my country homestead, the stove fire sharply snapping, land and sky blanched a serene winter white, all is well. Considering I left on December 25th and returned just over one month later, my tree is still up and silently twinkling, thinking we'll keep Christmas going all year here. All is calm and bright. 

With a glance back, my month-long, cross-country jaunt may not at first appear to be a working vacation.  But around here business is personal, the reason for the long ride clearly tied to my efforts as Chief Creative Officer of The Higher Haven Retreat Center. The unhealable can be healed here, Miracles have and will occur, and Ceremonial purification - rooted in the spiritual practices of America’s indigenous people - is one of a few powerful modalities of alternative therapies we offer on The Farm. Although somewhat of a modern day mystery, whenever the workings of the Inipi or Sweatlodge Ceremony are explained, one begins by referencing the Lodge-istics as I like to say, as in: "You begin by taking stones and heating them in a fire". But not just any stones.  The diamonds of the Ceremony world, the most high quality, semi-precious stones are of the porous, volcanic variety, small chunks of ancient lava flows that have cooled to a warm, beaver-like, sepia brown color of dark desert sand. And the desert, namely the Sonoran Desert of the American Southwest, is where you find ‘em, mounds of them, mountains even. Like a good rock, they’re stable, firm and dependable, these Grandmas and Grandpas being the Grand Masters of the material world. Plus, when it comes to upholding a tradition, it’s always g'ut to do it the way you was taught. 

Sure feels good to back in my own bed, attending the Sunday Church of The New York Times. Foxes have holes and birds have nests, and I too have been super blessed with a fortress of peace in which I lay down my achey head and body. After long-ass twelve hour plus days on the road, everything starts to come unhinged, a bit blurry, and a late at night, a little hallucinatory. The road becomes an endless typewriter ribbon stretched long, black and yellow to the horizon, a dotted, lined sheet – a flat, thin, endlessly rolling expanse. Stanzas of poetry in green and white creative blips wicket past, from Last Chance, Colorado to Sweet Home, Texas to Truth or Consequences, New Mex. There are words and  pictures, too, images in my minds-eye of CO’s Great Sand Dunes Natl. Monument, OK’s Gilcrease Museum's  Native art collection, and AZ’s hundred year-old Sagauro Cacti Standing people, along with many, many more. Unbuckled, feeling a bit more unbound, I’m back home, with a truckload of healing stones and new stories to tell. 

Zen Center'd

Alternative titles for this tale were Zen Samurai Boot Camp, Zen Sharp Stick to The Eye, and Zen Iron Maiden, not harkening to the heavy metal band but rather the heavy metal medieval device of physical torment. The more edifying heading came about after finding an inner place of psychological clarity inspired by an outer place of physical practice - Arizona’s Haku Un Ji Zen Center. While The Temple of the White Cloud may sound exquisite, Haku Un Ji is in reality a modest home with a small backyard Zendo or meditation hall in a quiet, residential neighborhood of suburban Tempe. Upholding the martial tradition of Lin-Chi - a prominent 10th century Chinese Master -  Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism focuses on Kensho, or “seeing one’s true nature” with an emphasis on ongoing mind-training to embody the free-functioning of wisdom in everyday life. But before you can see a damn thing or there's even a whisper of wisdom, there’s negotiating the sharp severities of Zen practice.

Up at 4 a.m. Saturday morning to drive cross town and be in the hall and on the cushion by 5:30, I took part in a One-Day Zazenkai, in Japanese literally meaning “to come together for meditation”, often the name given to a short Zen Buddhist retreat. Saturday’s day-long Sit consisted of a number of Zazen periods - sitting meditation sessions - of roughly thirty to fifty minutes, coupled with short, ten-minute sessions of walking meditation, called Kinhin, good for rescuing hips and legs from complete implosion. Thankfully, these were sitting period lesser in intensity and duration than a Sesshin - literally “touching the heart-mind” - a period of strong sitting that can go on for days or even a week. Along with chanting and a Samu or physical work period done with mindfulness, we also practiced a meditative form of eating called  Ōryōki, meaning “Just enough” that  emphasizes awareness practice by abiding to a strict order of precise movements. Bowls are set out in a customary pattern, chop stick points hover just off the table, and hand movements communicate, “Yes, more please!” as well “I’m good. Thanks.” Finally, gestures and offerings were made to appease Buddhism’s Hungry Ghosts, a concept representing beings driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way. In other words, the goading, unconsciousness desires we all share, uncomfortable inner urges that meditation practice helps disarm.

Well-known for its rigorous training methods, the bleakness, the blackness of Rinzai Zen practice goes beyond the dark robes of traditional Zen garments. There’s an austerity to Zen ceremony on a soul level, a gloominess, a sullenness, a just-you-and-your-mind-and-the-grind-grind-grind –on- the-cushion vibe. The bell ring three times and there’s nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide, as you’re left to contemplate your own inner chaos for ongoing, hour-long stretches of time in the voluntary cell of your tiny square Zabuton, hopefully cushioning aching ankles and knees. The good news, the Gospel according to The Buddha, is that standing your ground and wrestling with your psyche for a few hours opens the gates for a sweet Samadhi to arise, a trance of stillness or one-pointedness of mind that has one totally sensorial aware of the present moment. This stability of the intrinsic mind, this psychic grounding, is the mind-state writer’s like Jack Keroauc described as “feeling the ripples of birth and death… like the action of the wind on a sheet of pure, serene, mirror-like water… a sweet, swinging bliss.”

On an even more personal note, the return to Haku Un Ji was a triumphant one. Living in Arizona from 1998-2006, the Center was a place of refuge during my wild, wild west days, a time when I engaged in regular psychic gun battles with my well-armed demons in fights for my spiritual footing. Back then, I was lucky enough to partake in Kōan practice with my Teacher Shinzen’s Teacher - Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi Joshu, a Zen Master who passed in 2014 at the age of one hundred and seven. Considering a Koan is a story, dialogue or question answered intuitively and designed to test a Zen student's progress, I’m not sure I ever answered one correctly. That said, I did find myself standing on my head with my shirt off in the Roshi’s presence once, which excited both him and Shinzen, who I later recounted the experience to. “That’s great, that’s how he can really get inside of you!" commented Shin. 

Half-exhausted but happily abiding in the pure land of practice Saturday morning, listening to a recorded Teisho, or Zen teaching of the Roshi's, his words, with renewed significance, found their way back inside. “The story of Buddhism is the story of a loving couple" he grumbled in Japanese, a translator conveying the colorful imagery.  "It is the story of the masculine and feminine coming together in a cooperative effort of perfect accord to give birth to the world. Plus and minus, negative and positive, expansion and contraction. The man gives a perfect gift to the woman, and where is the complaint? (laughter)". With hands in Gassho, at heart-center, a deep bow. 

We're Not In Kansas Anymore

We're in Rancho Palos Verdes, California. Wait, let me throw it in reverse here for a minute. Happy New Year 2018!  A quick numerological study reveals 2018 to be The Year of Healing - more on that shortly - and at The Higher Haven we’re leading the charge. With South Haven, Michigan currently buried under two feet of pow pow - an old (51 in April!) snow-boarder's term for snow- we're looking forward to kicking off the year’s retreat schedule the weekend of March 18th, starting with a One-Day and potential overnight lead by standout Detroit yoga teacher Soojin Kim. But before our Spring bloom, there’s our annual Winter break, including the Holiday season.

This year’s personal Christmas plans proved a bit unorthodox. After spending a traditional Xmas eve and morning with my sister’s husband’s family in central Michigan, I headed out West to my meditation teacher Shinzen Young's annual southern California year-end retreat. Ending and beginning the new year on the cushion for nine days with The Mighty Shin is standard personal practice. This year, however, we eschewed Uber fares and long airport lines, loaded up the F150 and drove to California instead. “Who the heck gets up Christmas morning and rolls West on The 60?”, I thought, gunning it across the frozen, sun-glittered landscape. I’ll return triumphantly in early January with a truck bed full of Sonoran Desert lava rocks to run Ceremony and retreats all Spring, Summer and Fall.

But before Arizona, there’s New Mexico, and before Colorado there's Incredible Kansas. To slightly misquote Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, there’s no place like Kansas. Studying the U.S. map pre-trip reminded me of a book I read years ago titled Blue Highways by William Least Heat Moon. The two points I recall from that book are 1) the author referred to his relationship with his former wife as The Indian Wars and 2) truly connecting with the land and having an authentic, quality run cross-country comes about by taking  byways that aren’t readily visible from the major interstate routes. "When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then." writes Heat Moon. "People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road." 

 So inconceivably cool, Kansas' yellowed, snow-dappled swath offered a sweeping horizon, a stretch that's escaped the impact of human progression for centuries.  The expansive skyline provided a magnificent backdrop for rugged grasslands, one of the world's most endangered ecosystems. Reveling in the wide open space of undisturbed nature, I imagined Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche and Kiowa people roaming the area over a century ago in search of great bison herds before signing a peace treaty with the United States in 1867. Being an indigenous U.S. history buff, I may be back later in 2018 and sit on a bluff (a buff on a bluff) overlooking a natural amphitheater as more than 1,000 actors perform the Medicine Lodge Peace Treaty Pageant, a reenactment not far from the original site. It's easy to see why the original settlers, The Ioway tribe and Chief, Ma-Hush-Kah (White Cloud), held an undying passion for this land. 

The Sunflower State offers an impressive portfolio of Land and Sky Scenic Byways. But check a map of those endless ribbons of road and you won’t find any at all in the state's Southwest corner. On the way to Colorado's Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, dropping off the I-70 and south onto the I-40,  I hardly passed another car, truck, person or God help me a gas station from noon to sunset. For over five hours, there was nothing but me, half a dozen awesome birds of prey and some of the most wide-open, wild but barren country I’ve ever cut across. Spooky! All that was missing was a vicious black Twister ripping across the horizon.

If there was a town, it wasn’t much of one, more a decrepit clump of homes with some burned out old grain elevators and other agricultural buildings. I could tell by the tracks in the snow that people did reside there, but it certainly wasn’t bustling. God bless my bro-in-law Kevin, who, right as I pulled out of his home town of Concord, Michigan, suggested I “just pull over and fill up at every half-tank." Half empty of half-full, the recommendation was a Good One. More news from the road to come, along with some super duper articles for all you would be-meditators on Shinzen’s mighty teachings and nightly dharma talks. Toksha