Truth is a Pathless Land.
— krishnamurti, reminder taped to my cabin door
FEBRUARY 1, 2002
I’m just back from four days camping near the point. It rained half the time and was clear the other half. Wearing rain gear instead of using the sleeping bag, I slept for two nights in the nook in the woods and two beside the sea. I built a tiny fire for cooking, and spent most of the time simply being rather than doing anything. Continually outside, I felt more closely linked to sea, sky, and forest than I often do here at the cabin.
On the morning of the third day, my heart urged me to give Dad’s ring and the remainder of Mom’s ashes to the sea. I also hung the amulet I’ve worn for the past five years on a dead branch, where it will stay in the wind until and after I leave here. The ring is a beautiful lion’s head with a diamond in its teeth and rubies for eyes. Dad wore it for almost fifty years until he died. The amulet and ring were two of my most valued possessions, and it still hurts to have parted with them. But I’ve received so much here that I wanted to give back something important. I feel I’ve finally invited both Mom and Dad into my heart.
The rock walls of Staines Peninsula are full of faces. Three of them have become very real to me these past months. Even though I realize they’re projections of my mind, viscerally I experience them as beings who live in the stone. One is a sensual full-lipped woman: desire, rapture, and ecstasy with the wonder of life. Another is a bitter old man: my dark side of aversion and judgment. The third, an ancient wise man: steady, patient, and tranquil. Exposed to endless wind and rain, the face manifests profound equanimity. Each day at the point I bow to all three and to the wind.
I can’t really see the earth anymore when I look that way, but only the faces I’ve created from the shapes and textures of rock, trees, and waterfalls. Nonhuman stimuli have become eyes, nose, and mouth in my consciousness, and it’s difficult to let them go. Now that my time alone is coming to an end, I’m working to bring those faces back to my mind and give the rock walls back to themselves.
This anthropomorphizing has allowed me a clear look at how — by abstracting from the flow of experience certain features that I focus on and make concrete (and by ignoring whatever doesn’t fit) — I create an image of myself that I then believe is me. When we do this to each other, we largely create our collective social realities. Even more difficult than seeing the mind create such images is breaking the habit and returning to the flowing, ambiguous living world.
It’s not that creating a conceptual entity — a mountain, for example — is problematic as such, but when I stop really seeing the endlessly changing shape and color, and instead see the mountain as static, I then lose the experience and joy of being alive. It’s especially damaging when I do this with other people and with myself. I have a semifixed idea of who we are and so stop experiencing the ever-changing rhythms of our living together. Perhaps the best way to see through this layer of conceptualization is — as meditation teaches — to pay attention to the details: to the changing colors, smells, shapes, movements, feelings, thoughts.
NO ENTRY FOR FEBRUARY 2–5, 2002
FEBRUARY 6, 2002
Yesterday the year was completed, and what an amazing year. At times I still feel an inner disquiet that I never fully let go to wander wherever the winds of Life would carry me physically, psychologically, and spiritually. As I sit here feeling this doubt and regret, I recognize that it’s this very niggling that keeps me from letting go in this moment. And I do let go....With surrender, the inner clenching dissolves into the flowing now. I sense this cycle will be with me for some time yet, and I’m learning to open my heart to the doubt and sorrow, too.
I went boat-camping to the Owen Island inlet for the last three days of the year. I wanted to give the process all I had. It was a wonderful time. The first two days and nights were stormy, but my plastic boat shelter kept me dry. It wasn’t elegant in appearance, and it rattled in the wind, but I was cozy inside and delighted to be away from the cabin and Cat.
On the second day, a pod of dolphins came into the cove where I was anchored. They’d followed me in when I arrived, and now returned to coax me (actually the boat and motor) to play. They kept leaping completely out of the water — straight up or in an arc to twist and land on their backs. What a lovely treat. When I didn’t start the motor they gave up and left.
After the storm passed, it was cloudy and calm; perfect weather for black-flies. I used spray, shooed many away, killed some, and let a few bite to share a meal with them. Unless I’m inwardly very still and focused, it’s hard to wish them well as brother creatures.
I took the kayak for a paddle down the inlet. How peaceful and beautiful it is in there. Sheer rock walls drop to clear water, and gnarly trees cling to the tiny islets that dot the winding waterways. I was glad I’d come, even though I’d again been anxious about leaving the security of the cabin. I hope to take Patti there, and if she wants, I’ll anchor the boat near the inlet’s mouth and let her paddle in for some time alone.
That night was still and I awoke to a silent dawn. I sat and soaked in the silence and in the faint murmur of a tiny stream a ways away. In that moment I felt my time here come to completion. I know that the cycles of ups and downs, joy, peace, doubt, fear, aversion will continue; but they — for me at least — are part of the flow of the universe, the fabric of my life.
I’m not sure what enlightenment is, but I believe there have been moments. If so, enlightenment is not something I can get. It’s the process of abandoning myself to the world. There have been times when, like a clear bell, I could hear the sound of one hand clapping and feel the sacredness of everything. It’s the sound of the world, once I remember in my heart that there is truly nothing to get. What I’m looking for, I already have.
On the way home I crossed the channel to visit the sea lions, but they have gone. Along the way I came upon a pair of butter-bellies with four chicks. As I approached, the adults fled running/flapping across the water — dad that way, mom straight ahead — and the chicks dove; every duck for herself. I looked and looked along the shoreline and in the kelp beds, but never saw the chicks again. How do they disappear like that? Perhaps, like electrons, they have a discontinuous existence and pop into and out of this physical world. That seems the most parsimonious explanation, but I don’t really know; I just don’t know.
Back here, I set up the lodge and sweat beneath the stars, then checked my email. Patti sounds great. She’s hooked up with the navy and will arrive here on the fifteenth. I’m glad to have another nine days alone.
Today, a new year begins, and I wonder where my life will take me. It’s a grey, rainy, windy day, and I’m feeling restless.