Author Archives: Helmut

(a)stonished…

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2014-09-14 13.28.54

As far as the eye can see, 200,000 people showed up a block from the temple for the Solano Ave. Stroll. If you look real close you’ll see me about twelve blocks down the street, waving. Oh, Wait! That can’t be me. I’m taking the picture.

Lots of nice people out for a Sunny stroll. Kids with their faces painted. Young women with temp henna tattoos and groups of young men trying to look cool and unconcerned about, anything. Lots of rock, jazz and soul bands with 50-somethings (to be kind),dancing by themselves in some re-creation of an ancient (70’s), festival they may, or may not, have been at. Plenty of food and snacks and police and potties and emergency personnel, and lot’s of room to just Stroll; with the odd baby-carriage log-jam as young parents stop to admire each others babies, and each other for having the wisdom to have babies born into a (for now), fortuitous circumstance. Ahhh, youth and the unending brightness of the future. Yet, the worry is there, because it is becoming clearer that we may not have all the answers to some real concerns that loom just a tad past the brightness.

Nevertheless, it was a beautiful day and that can never be changed.

What we can change though is the way the future plays out, by how we do things today, after all, the future is just another way of saying tomorrow, and that’s almost here.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the people I can’t change;

The Courage to change myself, and

The Wisdom to know the difference.

(a)gog….

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I look at the modest little yard at the temple I’m living in and can’t help but smile at the abundance in modern life,  in California in particular. We have two lemon trees, a cherry tree, a plum-tree, a fig tree and an apple tree. Figs and apples in the salad with lunch. California, for sure.

Another aspect of living here is the tortuous path political correctness can create syntactically (is THAT even a word?). I go to some AA meetings and when there is reading to be shared from the AA literature (most of it written in the 30’s 40’s and 50’s), and almost all gender references are male with a lot of “God” as “Him”: it often sends the readers scrambling to replace and insert gender-neutral or gender-equal terms. The impulse is pure, but it sure makes for stilted reading and listening and is sometimes quite amusing.
The steady schedule of meditation and activity within the temple is doing its work on me and I seem to be regaining some lost (and much-needed), perspective; kind of like turning the Queen Mary in mid-Atlantic. Very wide turn..
I’ll be here for a while longer, some things may be in the offing as to future choices but nothing that need any attention as yet or in short-term, so I can buckle down a bit and let go of my opinions, judgements and all those pesky fears, doubts and worries that are the handmaidens of the opinionated and judgemental mind.

This weekend we will be setting up a little booth at an event called The Solano Stroll, which is a 15 to 20 block-long street-fair on Solano Ave. which is just a block away from us. Solano Ave. is half in Berkeley and half in Albany and they expect an attendance of almost 250,000 people. So, a big event. Our little booth will be put in a section where they are clumping together all the religious spiritual groups that will have booths, and right across from us is the booth for the Atheists. Buddhism doesn’t actually take any position as to whether there is or isn’t a “God”, but we are taught that all beliefs require respect, and that would of course, also include active non-belief. To make the whole thing a little more amusing is the fact that all these groups are clumped together in the area of Solano Ave. where all the various therapists and counselors have their offices, and since this is California there’s a bunch of those too.

The cultural contrasts abound abound. The surface differences between Bay Area California and the eastern side of Washington State seem many but they pale in comparison to the wonderful humanity shared by all these diverse groups. We really are all doing our very best to live sanely; and that is hard to do no matter which area of the cultural or social spectrum one one identifies most closely with.

We all yearn for a slightly

different Good Old Days;

None of which ever existed

Except in imagination. Is

That true of the present

Too? Makes you wonder…

(a)float

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Soon I’ll have bit of a routine that I’ll get used to and just settle in more at the temple and just do the practice. I’ve made some good new friends and re-established some old friendships and have a growing confidence that I will learn what I need to learn from my sojurn to this part of the world and that the next step(s) will unfold and become apparent in due course.

I’m a little behind in keeping in touch with friends from Tekoa and other parts of country because I’ve felt a little like a traveller for the last six months or so, and so I have been of course, but there hasn’t really been a destination and that has been unsettling until I realized I’m not travelling as much as being in transit, from where to where is still not clear, but there certainly has been movement.

I’m learning some new things internally that have to do with accepting me as I am, moment to moment, and to drop my preconditions as to what constitutes an acceptable world, one suitable for The Great One, and all his(my) complex  wishes and wants.

Note to self:

Must drop dream of personal past;

Present description of self, and the

Future as it should be outcoming

For this wish and demand riddled,

Foolishly inclined and hope filled

Returner to the eternal Now. Where

Dreams and wishes become a puff

Of Golden smoke that wafts through

The air in This direction, and then That. 

(a)ground…

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A few days ago after a couple of conversations with people that I take refuge in (monks), I felt a load lift. It was an old load that I’ve carried around for a very, very long time. Longer than I can remember; it’s sometimes a part of me and other times I want to get rid of it, because i feel the weight.

Yet, yet. I also know that there is nothing I need to excise or get rid of, but there are some things that could use a fresh view and closer seeing/looking on my part.

So it was, and I feel less dis-eased. “What a difference a day makes”, as the old song title would have it: “Twenty-four little hours brought the sun and the flowers. where there used to be rain…” (toss up between whose version was better; Dinah Washington or Little Anthony?), yes this too shall pass, and return again in a slightly different form.

I do need to see all the facets of this jewel it seems.

Tomorrow I return to temple full-time(ish) and look forward to buckling down a little in my practice. At this point I foresee maybe a couple of months there, but time and situation will determine things. I may want to get a little job at some point or find a to great to pass up deal elsewhere in regard to a living situation in this super-tight and expensive real estate market; but mostly I want to drop my little plans and designs for a while and just abide and allow things to develop without all my effing input.

Cheesh! I can be a load.

Today I am very grateful and content. So many nice, honest, compassionate people in my life and I persist in worrying about unessential things. Oh, well.

I do look forward to tomorrow though.

Another day to try and do better.

What could be better?

Nothing, that’s what!

(a)flip in the air

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It’s been a while since I last posted because I seem to be adrift. With the move, then the temporary settling into the temple, then the two weeks house sitting (and dog and cat caring), and then back to the temple; for not too long I’ve since decided, because I feel I need more freedom of movement. I need to be flexible so that I can find some part-time work that interests me and have the time and space to pursue some other interests as well, and have time for some traveling that I wish to do in the Fall/Winter.

So, up in the air.

It’s not a place I particularly like being at this point in my life but it is not incongruent with my over-all situation. There is a real need, though to go very carefully and mindfully in any directions I decide on because I am at a point, too, where I can probably get into screwy places just by virtue of the fact of being at loose ends. Attaching to the temple and the monk who is there is a good firm foundation for me and I see I have lots to learn and lots that I’ve “learned” that bears deeper scrutiny and more meditation. 

I’ve also been going back to more AA meetings because they too provide a solid anchor that has served so well in my and Linda’s life; after all that’s where we met and without which we would not have been able to cobble together a reasonable life.

The process of facing my yearning and neediness shortly before and after Linda’s death continues and is still uncomfortable because even though I can swallow some tough truths about myself; they do take time to digest fully.

A process it is.

Today I’m waiting to hear from a friend who I was supposed to visit this morning up in Napa, but it turns out the earthquake that woke me in the early hours of Sunday (It actually centered in American Canyon where I worked for almost ten years), did a lot of damage to his house and the section of downtown Napa where we were going to have lunch; so I offered to come up and help for a few hours, but I expect I’ll be more in the way since the whole are has difficulties with water and various services that have been curtailed by the damage, California; fires earthquakes and drought.

I’m sure there are various sects of crazy people all nodding their heads and and praying for more of the same for the heathen liberal left wing communist,bla-bla-blah Californians. Ad nauseum.

Anyway, my friend just called and I’m going up to Napa for a couple of hours just to say hello. I started to sponsor him in AA over 25 years ago and we developed a long time friendship, so this is a good thing to do.

More tomorrow, hopefully….

Air tossed, I fly.

It is not freeing. 

Causes looking

and then seeing.

 

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