My legs fold into an ankle-aching half lotus, and my mind races with all of the sitting to come. I am built for a deep, comfortable armchair, and my spine yearns for an ergonomic Ikea desk chair, but I sit my ass to the grass. I tap page by page on my kindle through Alan Watts, and discover in it a Hindu idea of the schematic of the universe, like a kind of game God plays with himself. If the divine encompasses everything, then the great being “God” is all alone, and maybe a little bored, and the finite mind is his activity, just for fun. So he plays a game to entertain himself, a long game of hide and seek. Over millions of years, through all deaths and rebirths, in pigs and people, worms and birds, in every grain of rice, he shines. Slowly, the many appearances converge to the one reality, he reveals himself to himself, and the hide and seek is over. The wonder and curiosity man feels looking at the stars, the cosmic inkling that there is something greater out there of which I am a part, there must be. This hunch is a hint. Watts calls it the wisdom of insecurity.
My gaze lifts from the tablet and onto my bed and out the window, everything shines. I wonder what I would do if I really have to pee in a za-zen meditation. My thoughts intrude. What if I just started screaming or singing in the center of the silence? Test how much zen these zenmen really got, what these monks are really made of. And when I picture that scene, when I imagine myself sending a resounding “bum bum bi-dum” from my meditation cushion into the tranquility of the monastery, I wonder, where is that image I see?
I read on. Watts distinguishes signs from things, the names from that which it names. The disconnect feels liberating. The “shoe” is just a four letter word. The shoe itself is something different, something adjacent. The question, “what is the meaning of life?” takes a new meaning and I feel stupid. My attention finds the glass again, and without naming anything, everything breathes and feels alive, it’s all so “there,” I can’t explain. They say “Naming is the mother of the ten thousand things.”’
I’ll get off the scholarship. The other day, I saw monkeys. Six or seven, swinging from the trees, and stomping through an open pasture. I wanted to chill with them. Reminded me a lot of me and Jack. Observing how human the ape moves left my jaw on the floor. We may have a little lead in evolution, but not by much. Humbled, the “monkey mind” I fight on the meditation mat comes as no surprise.
Alan says we are dreams in the mind of God. He says we are hiding places in this big long game God is playing. Alan Watts is like the guy who holds the joint too long. He says everything exists for the sake of this moment, for you, right here, right now. All of this, just so you could hear me regurgitate Alan Watts.
When the evening comes, I go for a run through Kyoto. After a while my hips grow stiff and my the air hardens my lungs, so my mind wanders and takes me with it. The heat in my face snaps me back to the road ahead and wonder where the thoughts are. That Pixies song rolls in my head, I know I’m not the first to ask. My stride slows and the rhythm settles, and the concrete beneath my feet glows golden. Beautiful and but I’m exhausted and I’m less interested in the sun than in the the neon “moxy hotel” sign emerging in the distance, salvation. While I close the gap I turn the Watts about hide and seek over in my head. Why God choose hide and seek? Didn’t he ever play spotlight at the family reunion? Way better.
September 10, Ride the Wave
There sits, by a seaside surfshop on the Southern coast of Japan, a tan van which leaves its home base only for special occasions. The sandy machine grumbles to a stubborn start and in the blur of the rear window, my eyes catch one more glimpse of where the dark ocean meets the bright blue sky. This little town and its locals feel more like Hawaii than Japan suddenly it strikes me what perfect sense that makes. A sign reads “Aloha” in the entry of my ryokan. Shikoku is just as much a Pacific Island as is Hawaii. I guess it was the names that confused me.
Still, I do not know the name of the lady who drives the Mystery Machine and my legs dig into the felt of the passenger seat so that the metal rods push right into my knees. It reminds me, in Japan, I am the Big Friendly Giant (BFG). There is not a house slipper, kimono, bathtub or doorway designed for me. But every time I bang my head or sigh in the face of a 2 oz “glass” of water meant to accompany a meal, I remember, I chose Japan. I could have gone to the Mariner.
They say a picture is worth a thousand words, see for yourself:
I look like a conquistador, damn it, I am supposed to be a measly pilgrim. Holding that staff like I planted my native flag and took over the poor man’s hotel and his little home Zen garden. And his wife and all his tea and slippers and bonsai trees, mine!
At last the van screeches to a halt and she opens the door. The smell of the open ocean wafts through me, we have arrived. I said they only took out the van for special occasions. When this time comes, the surf shop owner drops everything to shuttle elite lifelong surfers like me to this rock-ridden cove, the blackbelt surfer dojo of the Pacific Ocean. They call it the “Beginner’s Beach.” The special occasion is a surfer so nooby that he has no chance at the other beach. The special occasion is me.
September 8, Land of the Free
Fried chicken on its way, my eyes set on where the blue sky meets the sea. Land of the free. Meet me there. “Bum bum bi-dum, bum bum.” Sun waning. I found the Jamaica of Japan.
Wafts of the ocean air, Japanese surfers are not so different from the surfers of America with whom they share the Pacific. Today, I stopped along a hot highway at a cluster of vending machines selling seafood cup a noodle from 1992, pass. But I bought a Japanese drink called “Chill Out.” Try it sometime, works like a charm. Drank a cold can and sooner or later I’m standing in the Pacific Ocean, thinking swimming feels so smooth, watching a crowd roar for surfers taking turns, and only a little bit afraid of the Asian ocean parasite that slithers into your dick, I heard about a long, long time ago. Unsure where first, but I want to say from a middle school line on the way to recesse “Did you know that there’s this parasite…” This fear has been with me the longest, I see no possibility of getting over that. I would need 5,000 more kilometers and 500 more temples to welcome that force of evil in this life.
A little fear for the right things is healthy. “Radical acceptance” has its limits. That seamonster motherfucker is not welcome in my infinite awareness, hell nah. Me and my fear of the ol’ privatepart parasite are riding it out till the bitter end.
There’s my friend chicken. The light wanes until the moon shines white glimmers, and I can see only the whitewater and the mosquitoes are having their way with my feet. I sleep like a rock.
September 7, Around the Corner
I’m not sure, thinking about it now, what exactly I was searching for coming to Japan. Step after step I push on along the mountain path from roots to rocks and and when sweat drenches my shirt and a green tint glazes over all I can see from the looking at trees so long, then the trail meets the road. Now the going feels easy and I talk to Johnny for the first time in a while and we contemplate like we are smoking a joint on a summer night in the city and not before long we are talking about Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd, the greatest ever. And not before long and the album plays in my headphones and my steps fall into the rhythm of ominous beating and alien guitar which commence it.
The music drowns out my thoughts and I feel the ground press into my soles. Having listened to no music for so long, Pink Floyd does not ease me in and the sound is so powerful and abstract it tickles my brain. At some point I reflect on my life and recognize, nineteen years old, backpacking through the 88 temples of Shikoku, so much precious life to live and love to give, no time to waste. “Ten years have got behind you, no one told you when to run… you missed the starting gun.” I cry. A New York City mantra picks my chin up. “Two tears in a bucket, fuck it.” The sun shines on my skin and my eyes meet the road, I go on.
September 6, Long Time No See
First I lean my walking stick against the bench, only then can I sit. I hardly know why. Everywhere I look there is something beautiful to behold. To my left, a small stone buddha with a red beanie defends two cypress trees, which connect so solidly to the Earth. Ahead, steps of cobblestone and moss extend infinitely into the trees, the stairway to heaven, to the main temple 20. To my right, a cherry blossom tree and a statue of a peacock and snake whose mouth pours fresh, clear water into a basin for pilgrims to drink and wash their hands. My neck aches from looking around over there and I curl over my phone and see what is closer to my feet. A large root clings to the Earth and claws a pathway deep into the ground that I cannot see. I imagine how even though we can’t see it how the trees are all connected in a system, this one great invisible root through which they share water and sunlight and nutrients. I think if I was tree, about my strategy for making friends. I think I would grow close to the trees around me inevitably. I think of a couple of birch trees hanging out drinking water you know eating sunshine and one of them nudges another and asks him “how are the wife and kids?” And the other birch tree says “good, good, you know,” and there’s silence and then his branches shrug and the wind blows, and he says “but there’s this oak tree who just moved in across from us, a real dick, who just sits there and stares at us all day long.”
Two ants circle a turned over leaf in the dirt, stopping and starting, on the same rhythm. I imagine they are best friends with empty memories kinda like Dory from Nemo. So one of them sees the great big leaf and stops dead in his tracks and turns to his friend and goes, “woah, you see that?” And the other ant looks up at the leaf in complete awe and then looks back at his ant friend and forgets the whole thing happened. So when he goes off on his way again he looks up and sees this great big leaf and stops and looks at his friend and goes, “woah!! You see that?” And his friend is clueless and goes “what, where?” And sees the leaf and they stop and go “woahhh,” mindblown. The same way I go “woaahhh” when I walk into a great big Buddhist temple.
Each day surprises me, and I am happy. Every corner brings something new and unexpected. Sometimes I go long spells just walking, and forget about everything and then I look up and I’ve gone ten miles. Other times I call my friends or think about this or that, but it’s always very pleasant and by the end of the day I am exhausted and never have trouble sleeping, no matter how uncomfortable these big, firm neck aching Japanese pillows are, literally filled to the brim with beads like rocks. Everything works so well in Japan, the world of bullet trains and short lines and working water fountains. Except for the pillows, but I guess it’s good training. I joke with Mom about suffering. She says she’s trying to give it up. Me too. But these damn pillows.
The temples feel sacred and this one, number twenty, is a trek through the trees to a mountain top. But a mile from the temple I catch a glimpse through the trees of the sweeping valley and the river in the sun and when I make it to the top I can put my things down and pray and explore. Like a reward. Kind of like how deep sleep is the reward of a long day and a new morning is the reward of a long sleep. Every evening when I collapse into mattress I think I could hardly walk another step. Everyday I wake up and walk on. What could be better? I take it one day, one step, one temple at a time.
September 2, Highway 61
In an air conditioned Ryokan I lay defeated by the day, heavy and depleted enough to sink through the floor. From Temple 5 to Temple 11 I melted across the countryside. But not all by myself.
Temple breakfast seated beside the same pair from Denmark as dinner yesterday; still, too early for chopsticks, too early for talking. I collect my things and pack my pack and hit the road. At Temple 6 I pray to Buddha shrouded in golden lanterns and when I open my eyes there is Sisho, the journey’s first comrad. I bow. In an uncertain English, “Today, together?” I say hai. Yes. We walk on together.
The first mile my shoes bounce on the road and my stride is energetic. By mile ten I am exhausted and hungry. Each Japanese we pass I bow to greet them and one old lady stops and speaks to me in Japanese and I am grateful Sisho is there to bridge the gap so she receives more than a blank stare and a smile. When we walk on I turn and look and he reads in my expression “please explain.” So with wide eyes he exclaims “Japanese food to the right!” I smile and he picks up the pace, hungry to arrive.
But we never do. The path winds deep into the country, pushed on by grumbling bellies. The pavements fades into gravel and shops blur into rice fields. Now keeping us company are only rice farmers and their plots and the bamboo enclosing them. Watching their hunched back work I feel lucky to stand up straight while I walk. Sisho leads me astray and I should have known not to trust him to navigate since I befriended him because he took a wrong turn thirty seconds in. We laugh when we know there will be no Japanese food and we now must retrace our steps and go back on route and settle for a SOYJOY bar at a roadside vending machine, thanks a lot Sisho.
But the sarcasm is earnest because when I taste the SOYJOY bar I discover a salty, burnt, green tea flavored crunch, a moment for which I have travelled 3000 miles across the sea. We are rehydrated and our appetites calm down and the grin returns to Sisho’s face and we walk on, praying at each temple, throwing coins, bowing down, resting here and there. I check the path every so often, even when Sisho is certain of the way. Today I barely spoke words except for when I spoke with Emma and Jack. Emma looks beautiful and she as at a concert in Vermont and the sun sets and she shows me, and I hold the image in my mind for a while after we hang up. She always brings me back to reality and I crack jokes and say I’m so fucking zen, holy shit. In the end I am a shirt, a plum even. The same with Jack except that we talk about rushing and the old college qualms and the Yale blues. We laugh goofy but he takes the Zentalk more serious having just come from Buddhist meditation, the first of the Yale year. I miss him. We talk about being a Rolling Stone. He wonders what I learned and I say nothing for a while searching for some right words. I do my best snd say when we suffer we split and when we split we suffer. Ion know.
When I make it last to the Awayaruka I am revived by AC, iced tea, and a very sweet Japanese delicacy called sohonke atagiya honten. This is my holy trinity. A hot shower, my baptism. When tea is drank and ice munched, grub grubbed and skin clean and dry, and all is said and done, I feel reborn. The days belong to the road and the evenings are my own. So I lay down and write about it.
Wait Without Hope T.S. Eliot
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning. The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry, The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony Of death and birth.
September 1, muuuuuuuu
I am exhausted, sitting on my bed, in a room not unlike my freshman dorm at Lawrenceville and Yale. A bed, a desk, a small tv and a pot of tea. I drink green and a cookie.
I am at Temple six, ten miles deep, and I made many friends today. The first, Sisho, a fifty three year old Japanese man, who took a wrong turn and went off the trail not even thirty seconds into the pilgrimage. Guy has no idea how to pilgrim.
I showed him the way with my GPS and we walked together all the way until Temple 5, hardly saying anything, but enjoying the mountains and the sunshine together.
I wear a white “henro” (pilgrim) coat and use a walking staff with my name, in Japanese, Jōji, and I have a conical straw hat which sits on my head.
At each temple I bow at the gate, wash my hands and mouth at the basin with a ladle, and pray at the main temple. It is difficult for me to remember exactly each one. I look up from my phone and pour myself another cup of tea, the days adventures replaying in my mind.
At Temple 5 I am exhausted and my friend is happy to finish the day’s walk. I say goodbye and buy him water and say “Arigato” before I walk on. When I go over a bridge I lift my walking staff and hold it above the pavement, a custom to not wake Benkei, a monk and Bodhisattva who is said to live under a bridge somewhere in Shikoku. By this time in the walk though I am tired and I can hardly take it anymore so I smash my staff into the bridge to wake his ass up and ask him where the next temple is. He comes out and I bow and he says shut the fuck up, I was sleeping. I say my bad and give him the monster noodle sub from the taxi driver as an apology and he takes it reluctantly. He goes back to bed and says the temple is that way.
When I make it to the Temple they sign my stamp book, a collection for markings from the 88 sites. I give them 500 yen. Five red symbols appear one after another and then the lady reaches for a paintbrush and sweeps along the page with swift control and draws a beautiful Japanese character and hands me a slip with a small image which is said to be in the incarnation of the deity.
Now my back is aching so I lay on my bed. I think of the dinner I ate and how I sat with a mother and daughter from Denmark and how a monk came and talked in Japanese and I listened even though it made no sense. I drank sake with these two and spoke some English and afterwards I attended a ceremony called “Otsutome.”
Given a small tree and a candle and two slips, a monk explains the instructions and a Japanese visitor translates for the yankees in the room. I write my name and the date on a white slip. On another slip, I commemorate the death of a loved one, an ancestor. Aunt Janie.
The ritual is called “Otsutome.” First we chant and recite mantras and I do not because I don’t know them in memory and nor in Japanese. But I feel the energy in the room building with the chanting and then we pray and bow to the Buddha. When that is done we walk through the temple under the lanterns and outside I hear running water and the croaking of a frog. I put my white slip into a small box next to the Buddha and bow. Then we are in a candelit stone room with a river flowing against the back wall from the mouth of a turtle shrine, and statues and drawings of Buddha coming out of the walls. I light my candle and let it drift down the river. The other slip is tied to the small tree with a wire and I plant it into one of eight sand “islands” against the river bank. Then I sit and watch the candles drift along and think of Aunt Janie.
Once more we pray and honor the “medical” Buddha. In broken English a monk tells me when they make it to this temple most are disheveled and hurting all over. I nod in agreement and gratitude. He says that to touch a Buddha shrine elsewhere is sacrilege but here it is necessary. Rub the Buddha with your hands and put your hands on your body, and pray and you will feel better. “Arigato” and I bow to the Buddha. On my way out I notice a tray of offerings and three crispy Fuji apples sitting at the Buddha’s knee. I wonder what would happen if I just picked one up and munched. Intrusive thought.
After the ceremony I go up to room and write some, and make some tea. I dissolve into a deep slumber, goodnight moon.
September 1: day one, temple one
I slept well in Otoriiten Ryokan and I arrived at nine o’ clock last night, in the dark. People do not lock their bikes and cars, and everyone is kind here. Locals give small gifts that pilgrims receive. My taxi driver gave me a bag of food from a convenience shop. Candy and rice seaweed sushi and sports drinks and a noodle sandwich that might have ended my journey right there and then: With all my spiritual force and power of will I was not strong enough to eat the great monster noodlesub. It is heinous, and a dangerous play to try to let that sit before bed.
A delicious Japanese breakfast and 16 kilometers ahead. The blue bowled family of fish eyes stare back at me and I gulp as I did in the face of the noodlesub monster. But I lock my eyes with the fundamental white rice and I am not afraid of the fisheye bowl. I drink green tea which has powerful flavor and move quickly, I am excited. I think of a koan Mr. Jordan told me about.
It is, “show me one hand clapping” or “what is the one hand way.” The innkeeper comes and smiles and my hands join together in prayer and I say “Arigato, itadakimasu.” Thank you, I humbly receive. Here goes.
August 31, misty morning on Temple time Hemingway says, “it is easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.” This morning I am hard-boiled. I rise at five thirty in the obi hostel and quietly pack my things, by six I step onto a misty street fresh with rain. I am hungry and the street is bright and silent. Today I go to Shikoku. Tokyo still sleeps.
“Arigato,” andiamo. Three stops on the metro. Japanese business men in suits with black briefcases and dead eyes in the reflection of the door there I am in a dirty patagonia t-shirt and a big packpack buckled across my chest. I sit and the train grumbles and then smoothens to a hum and then screeches to a halt. Onto Sensoji for my first taste of temple hopping.
The red temple towers over me and has been there forever. Five stories tall, each layer with a shimmering roof that wings into curved corner, a golden spire reaching toward the sky. I bow at the entry and drop a coin or two and find an opulent sanctuary but I am kept behind a glass barrier and watch monks pray. Like they are monkeys in a zoo, and people take pictures. One wears white and prays to a rosary on the floor, one reads from a book and chimes a metal bowl, and in the back right there is a fire where two sit still with the dancing flame. I bow again and another coin and wander the grounds.
A small path leads from the temple’s main road under the trees to a shrine where an old Japanese woman clasps her hands and pays her respects. I wait patiently and I can hear the silence and I feel light and spacious. Above the round stone Buddha, bonsai trees give shade. I have not eaten or had caffeine but everything appears vividly clear and I forgot how it is six thirty. I sit and meditate in a small sanctuary with a shrine and a mat; my legs are sore but I better get used to that. It is an early, misty morning and I am there and there only.
Then there is a quiet tavern near the temple and a black tea over ice and my eyes land on a Japanese omelet. Old beams run wall to wall overhead and red and white lanterns sit between them. The omelet is perfect and steamy and I order some sashimi and rice and having some practice and some sleep, I improve and my chopsticks cradle rather than stab my food. I text Emma and Miles and crave coffee. I wander the neighborhood for a while and there is sunshine and I wait until the blinking crosswalk sign goes green even when they are no cars in sight. There is no trashcan anywhere on the corner and yet also no litter and I wait outside a coffee shop until it opens at eight thirty and I talk to Simon. I thank him for the Way of Zen and he gives me support and tosses me a bone from Emerson. In his room his white board reads “primary evidence.” It confuses me then Simon recounts Self-Reliance: “I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions.” I am a pilgrim hiking the other side of the earth yet still it is like this time last year on the Appalichain Trail invorgorating our orientation with Cormac McCarthy.
I drink three coffees on a small wooden plate and walk on. Today I go to Shikoku while Tokyo wakes up, and I am hard boiled. Then I talk to Emma in the airport and I crack and I am a shirt. Such a dumb joke but gets me. The rain clears and I’m off to Shikoku.
August 30 – Tokyo Cinnamon Milk Tea Miles Davis Jazz Bar Evening I am amazed by the of Japan. The streets are clean and well lit and a little wet so it shines. On billboards and bars and cantilevered streetlights the language glows in the dark. I cannot read them. To my eyes each character is an indecipherable painting, I have no clue where the fuck I am going. I lose myself in the flow of the crowd. The people are put together and move swiftly like New York. I slip under a metro sign and take the train to Shinjuku station. I facetime Emma and she keeps me company and shares in the excitement of Tokyo from her bed. Up too early, or too late. When I surface I am back in the neon state of mind. I cross into an alley where hand-roll bars and Japanese barbecue restaurants sit side by side. Outside in a green apron and pillowy white hat there is a chef smoking a cigarette and staring blankly into space, I pass and wander on, going nowhere.
Then I stop and find myself in front of an Italian-Japanese cucina called “Cucina Zen” and I laugh at the red, white, and green lantern and know I am exactly where I am supposed to be. But the place is empty and I have had enough Italian food so I walk on. There is a dim wooden tavern which spills onto the street with locals and I trust, they know where to find the good food. I go inside and an old man meets me at the door and speaks to me in Japanese which is meaningless noise but his expression welcomes me and I sit alone at the bar which rides along the kitchen. There is a window with fresh fish and octopus and only chef hats and eyes poke out above and peek over. I have a plate and a warm towel and I drink water and say “Arigato.” And they laugh and then I am laughing too.
The smell of spices and broth wafts over and I feel the heat from the kitchen and order as kindly as I can. I feel so American and a little embarrassed. Then there is a tomato salad, a salmon rice ball, four steaming skewers of chicken and steak and a plate of fresh fish in front of me and I chow. The man stands behind my right shoulder and I feel like I am being watched and my chopsticks are shaking god damn it so I just stab in when it gets too difficult. I hope I am not a disgrace. But then he laughs as I try to get my chopsticks and I smile and eat. The food is delicious and fresh and when I am done and I am back onto the street and take a deep breath and wade through the alley with a fill belly and a warm feeling.
I roam the streets and find a Jazz bar nearby and then I am sitting and listening to the music. The piano is the tempo and the saxophone sounds so clear and the music fills the air along with cigarette smoke, soft orange light, chatter and clinking glasses. I watch a vase of water drip drop by drop through grounds and down a spiral glass waterslide into a pot collecting coffee below, patiently. Patience is a Japanese virtue and behind the bar a man and a woman work quickly but they have a smooth rhythm and are not scrambling to pour their drinks and make the plates. And I think how Miles would like the slow drip coffee and this jazz bar. A row of wine bottles and a beer tap and a model car, a vintage Porsche, next to a miniature copper statue with the figure of a sumo wrestler blowing into a saxophone.
I flip through a Japanese book about Miles Davis but I learn nothing because everything is in Japanese. Then the waiter sneaks up behind me with something a little more my speed. It’s a picture book, a collection of Miles Davis’ abstract art. I think how cool and order a cinnamon milk tea which comes with two little biscuits and a cinnamon stick. It looks delicious and smells like a cinnamon bun and I think of it as a one way ticket to slumbertown tonight. Steam rises from the foam and the jazz plays on but I dive in too quickly and take a lump of cinnamon straight to the throat and choke on that quietly in the corner, fighting for my life while Miles Davis serenades me. I recover and look around uneasily but everyone is taken by the music or by their friends or by their work and no one is aware. For a moment I wobble and get self-conscious and don’t know where to rest my eyes but then they fall onto sumo saxophone shrine and I come back to myself, and the scene captivates me and the noises play on my ears without effort. I am all there. The drums and the piano start to sound like a song falling up and down the stairs. It is a marvelous place but only one of many stairwells which draw you from the chaos of the city underground into the different world of the Jazz den. What I have found is really nothing special. I smile when I think about how Jack would make fun of this oompa loompa on the sax.
August 29 – Four hours until landing
The time so far has gone by quickly, and I have not been watching the clock. The man next to me is Patrick, he is in his late twenties, and works for a defense contractor on classified quantum computing techniques. I am curious and ask him about quantum entanglement. I remember Nathaniel’s Dad, Bill, once explained it to me simply like this: Ronit has red high heels. When I go into her closet, I see only one of the shoes, and the other shoe is not there. I know that the other shoe must be elsewhere because the singular shoe is there. This is like how electrons behave. When they are not observed, they behave as both a particle and a wave. This is what the double slit experiment shows you. But when they are observed, or there is any energy which enters the system, the electron acts as either particle or wave. But before you look at it it is in both places at once. This is the superposition.
It makes me wonder whether there is an end to science, or a limit to how far science can take us in our understanding of reality. The scientist wants to know what the world is made up of, so he studies it, but in a way that makes him apart from it. And then he divides a substance into molecules, molecules into atoms, and an atom into electrons, protons, and neutrons, and then finally he has it! The electron. But then if fundamental form, matter, is electrons, and they are in two places at once, and change when they are observed, then how could they really be there? There is something else maybe he is missing in his understanding. Maybe because the electrons do strange things when he is aware of them, that is what he is missing in his understanding. Himself. I don’t know man, this is Dax talk.
I land in Japan in an hour. I text Emma and I have never texted anybody like this before. Listening to the Rolling Stones and Kanye West and I think about going to a Jazz club. I will be a pilgrim for four weeks and a monk for two, and I will gain nothing, and make no progress, if I succeed. If there is a lofty spiritual conquest in my mind, then there is expectation, and this is not right practice.
I had a dream a couple of weeks ago. I met a sage after swimming down a river in Arizona, chasing some pro triathlete down the stream. It was a woman. Then she scaled the cliff and rock climbed and sped toward wherever she was going. And I stopped and there was a sage, a small stocky black guy with a robe and a gray beard and gentle eyes. He said with a smile that I would have to abandon my ideas of right and wrong if I wanted to preserve my peace and face the challenges ahead. In the following weeks, I went to the hospital for five days with an infection in Siena. My aunt Janie passed away. The sage was right… or maybe all I can say is that he was there.
Now nearing landing, with a turbulent spilled coffee and a plate of scrambled eggs and a croissant beside a single serving butter, I do not know if there is such a thing as right practice, or wrong practice. And that is right practice.
I don’t know. I’m hungry. I’m flying over Japan, and when I look out the window, I wonder: what is this place? It is perfectly flat, squared by fields of shades of green, and it looks like a minecraft world. I see forests and rice fields, red and white towers, and a train unlike any I have seen before. Now it is real. Now I am here.
August 29 – Three hours into the flight
When I remember how I can speak about Buddhism and Zen especially when I am trying to make Mom or Jack feel better I cringe at how I can speak and be sometimes. I told Mom before I left for Japan that soon, I would shut up. This is because of the Chinese saying, he who speaks does not know, and he who knows does not speak. I understand but I do not understand.
It is like the first koan in my practice with Mr. Jordan, my teacher. The student says to the master, “the voices of torrents flow from the same great tongue. The lines of the hills are the breathing body of Buddha. Isn’t that right?”
“Well, yes,” says the master. “But it’s a pity to say so.” I want to convey what I know to my friends and family, because I love them. But in trying to convey what I know I know nothing. In speaking of it, I lose it. By thinking about it, I stand over it, apart from it. How could it be put into words? Maybe it could, maybe not. Maybe the right words will point you to it if you have right effort, right orientation, and right practice. But to speak of Buddha-nature as something lofty and grand is not right practice. It is perfectly ordinary. It is you. This is my way of studying myself.
My Mom wants me to keep a journal for her of her humor. Things like “Guys, today I had to eat a fish eyeball.” And she joked with me to give that to her here and write the lofty bullshit over there. Okay, but maybe I should not write any lofty bullshit. Maybe I will just write about ordinary things like trees, and walking, and tea. But at least I will write about something everyday and express myself truly. And my family and friends will know I am safe and what I am doing.
August 29 – Before Japan
I sit on the airplane and talk to Kazuma. He seems fond of Shikoku, and he speaks clearly about what he liked about it, and what to expect. Temples who give stamps, locals who give little gifts. Like a cold rainy morning a Japanese trucker stopped on the side of the road and gave him a hot tea. He said it brightened his day. Everybody looks out for you in Shikoku.
The plane rolls forward and I hang up the phone. I look out the window and we speed up and leave the ground and there is a floaty feeling in my stomach. I have a Kindle full of books and a window with a vacant middle seat to my left. Everything is straightforward and I am comfortable and happy.
I see New York City and we climb into the clouds and the blue tinted wing with the water and city behind it fade into the clouds until I can’t see anything at all. Then the plane flies above the clouds and there is an endless bed of white pillows extending in all directions. I think about how I am flying and how I am sitting on a seat in the sky.
I have to pee badly and there is a small Japanese lady sitting in the flight attendant seat fidgeting and moving around a lot. I sit still but wherever you are even if it’s the rolling hills of Tuscany or drifting above the clouds to Japan if you feel like your bladder is gonna burst it sucks. I have my neck pillow and not my solar charger and I get up to take a piss and eat some food from the airport.
August 27 – Sitting in the Highline Hotel
Emma says it looks like somewhere women are not allowed. I laugh and get Mom and latte and we sit by a gleaming red truck in a hotel courtyard in Chelsea. She is unhappy but she says she has no problems and I am there and with her and I worry about her and want her to be present and this takes me away. What do I know really?
I tell her about Emma and Spannocchia and what I learned. Cutting wood and making fires, and making some pasta and liking thinking and being myself. I miss Ardian and my girlfriend. We go down to the water and into a market on the pier and I have a Caesar salad which is okay and we walk around and talk about Miles and his new girlfriend.
Now he lives in a new apartment and his room is colorful and geometric. It’s a groovy little place and perfect for him. For a moment I can see how he leads a very steady and hardworking grown up life and he made it look awfully easy.
We walk home and I go for a run through the city and I feel strong especially in my mind even though I am not as fit. I am happy.
I sit on the old roof and look out at the skyscrapers and the dark clocktower behind me with the orange circle and the Google fortress. My eyes are warm and red and they feel at home with heavy eyelids looking at this view. I talk to Emma about how my family is all going in different ways and she says yes but you are doing it together. I am happy and whole and I love her and I sleep like a stone.
George in Japan 