After ten days of little and big motels and Interstate Highways, but mostly on State highways, usually within 20 miles or so of the Interstate, weaving in the same direction but through endless little towns, villages and hamlets; I ‘m finally spending three days visiting with friends. Schroon Lake in the Adirondack Park ( First and biggest in lower 48 States) is glistening in the full moon of October 2020 and three miles up from the lake we sit outside and enjoy a great vegetarian meal and have stimulating and mostly gentle conversation as the temps drop just enough to warrant a coat, and the moon and the light of one lantern are sufficient amidst the shedding Maple trees.

The trip is interesting in that it has no real purpose or intention other than to deepen refuge in the Dharma, a sort of pilgrimage by trying to expect nothing but being willing to accept the unexpected, which it turns out is really just another way of saying trying to live a daily life.

Wherever I go there I am, and in unfamiliar settings that has proved to be unexpectedly challenging, which, it turns out, allows me to see that the practice is everywhere and available; I merely have to turn towards it and suddenly strange places are no longer strange. It’s up to me to remember that the practice and the teachings and the existence of Sangha are with me in my travel. Wherever I go, there it all is.

Including the guy sitting now outside in the motel courtyard lit by blazing barbecue pit, talking to someone on the phone about a recent traffic stop ending up with him being convicted of eight violations and having to do six months in jail, and pay a lot of money in fines. He feels he really messed up this time and something has to change.

I know the feeling. Something has changed but change is not a one time transaction; it’s a process not an event.

Here’s your change sir,

Thank you stopping in.

Have a nice trip. Bye!

Middle America. For a couple of hundred miles, both on the Interstate Highway and the secondary State and County Roads, as far as the eye can see, it is mostly corn, unharvested and rotting; thousands of square miles (?) of food is rotting because of politics, greed, corruption and an old boy network that says the American farmer is going broke. No. Our taxes in the from of subsidies make sure there are very, very few going broke. The old joke about how can you tell whose the richest farmer in the local area? The one that’s got two mailboxes in order to hold all the subsidy checks.

Even farmers laugh at that but in a funny kinda way.

So, this is not meant to be a screed against farmers, they are just regular folks, and like most of us if you luck into a system by birth, marriage or schooling connections, that caters to you, why would you want to investigate that morally or ethically, obviously you are one of the chosen or the blessed,;and that’s that.

That’s one corner of the picture of Middle America, the other parts show kindness, consideration, deeply-rooted conventions of fairness and deep belief in a system that works. The sheer hard work and industry of coming across all that distance and then usurping the folks already there, which never makes you popular with them, and the dang cussedness of staying in place just to show you can. It is worth all the agony and effort and blind willpower to make the desert bloom, and the land of plenty become fruitful and give even more than you can use or sell or just give away; then again that would devalue the thing, So, no. Anyway…

Most of the other corners of Middle America are on the Dow Jones 500.

I am ambivalent when I take great joy in aspects of our history and settlement and cultivation and building and invention. At some point, probably the year 1927 (or so), when Henry Ford built a car on a the assembly line that basically sold for a 1/5 of the price of his early models because he could, and still make a handsome profit. Of course wiser and greedier heads prevailed and that was the last time a product was sold for less when it could be made for less.

In Middle America I was 84 mph on I-90 in South Dakota and the speed limit was 80 and, I was just trying to get past that little gaggle of potential bottleneck traffic when I encountered a Bodhisattva, one of millions and billions,.

This one was parked in his State Police car in the median and I saw him and looked at speedometer and saw I was 4 miles over the limit and hoped/assumed it was going to be a pass…but it wasn’t.

I saw him in my rearview mirror jump onto the road and with no lights come up behind me a couple of miles down the road and just stayed for a bit and then hit his lights and we both pulled over, very safely, to show that I was responsible.

The Bodhisattva was Officer Johnson, and he politely asked if I knew what speed I was doing when I passed by him. I said, “84 maybe 85” raised eyebrows and small friendly shrug; basically totally in the wrong and I had no story. It was what it was.

He then explained that in South Dakota they allow 2 miles above speed limit as a cushion but after that they ticket. He then asked for my license, the whole time scrutinizing my rolling habitat, obviously an elder-coot on the road. I even had a Rand McNally 2020 Road Atlas of the US (A modern artifact/specimen of a bygone time).

He asked me where I was going and I said I’m driving ’round the whole country. He then asked, very astutely and correctly, where I was the day before and where I was going, and when I told him he asked what about the day after that? and I told him I hadn’t decided yet, it was an open ended trip. He gave me back my license, asked me to be cautious with my speed limit awareness and wished me a good trip.

I thanked him and we went our separate ways. He taught me things I need to know about what traveling with Right Mind and Right Effort and Correct Aspiration might be about.

In gratitude to Jizo, Guardian of the Vulnerable (including travelers).

To Kanzeon, Regarder of the Cries of the World.

To Officer Johnson of SD State Patrol, Re-Alligner of the Errant.

Today, a long meander through the Black Hills and visiting the Crazy Horse Monument after a night in the shale-oil production center of America, Gillete, WY.

Yesterday I drove through a beautiful 110 mile stretch alongside winding rivers running past little farms and large holdings, horses and cattle mostly, and a 75 mph speed limit on a well-constructed and maintained two-lane State road. In one 20 minute period, I never saw another car, it was very refreshing.

As one approaches Gillete, a prosperous and busy little city, things started looking rather bleak with the vast pits of the mines and huge slag piles in many dozens of places as far as the eye can see. That’s the source of a thriving economy in that area with no thought or realistic memory of the former mining towns whose remains were turned into “Trading Posts” that now cater to tourists by selling fake Western and Indian clutter-stuff. Those new housing developments closer to the slag-piles than the towns won’t last more than another few years. Economic success and lots of new trucks and new stuff, and some price is just now being tabulated for some final total bill due sooner than later.

Just humans going about their lives in a culture that needs some help but is too busy to notice. That includes all of us. That special coffee from that special place in some impoverished country where coffee bean cultivation is destroying useful habitat, and yet it’s so delicious when it is ground and roasted and done in a “pour-over” (hmmmm,,what a concept:) Where people and the earth are mined for the profits and we assert our inherent right (It might be in the Constitution through the Foresight of The Founders), to enjoy on every street corner a Latte or a Cappuccino. We are all doing similar stuff with very similar intentions. Momentarily feel good while dreaming of contentment.

Simultaneously, we point fingers at each other and cannot see that the problem is not an us or a they, it’s merely that we are all just-a-little off in how we view the relationship of the World to Us and especially to the Me.

And, this is a beautiful country.

All these well-paved roads. I bet we have more well paved roads by milage than the rest of the world. I know, but look at all the State Highways and County Roads all of it?

Anyway, we can build just about as good as we destroy, we are adept at both. It’s the wrong kind of balance but it does point directly to something. What is that some thing for me?

Then again, we can’t really judge a balance as such, maybe it is merely choices we are trying to balance?

How do I actually

Be more mindful

Look for proper place

Rather than discarding,

Including all Things

I left Walla Walla Friday 18th to Joseph, OR and in the afternoon went to St. Maries, ID in both places there are temples of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives within which I do my Buddhist practice. I hope to visit the seven other temples of our Sangha as I criss-cross the U.S. and turning this trip into a form of pilgrimage as well. That is to say, I sense there is a deeper purpose to this trip and am sort of following little prompts that seem to indicate this is a good thing to do. Of course following little prompts that “feel right”, is also what many people do and end up making big mistakes, but all-in-all its generally a learning experience for ones own good. I’ll see; I don’t really have any expectations but some hopes of at least getting a little distance/perspective of my current life/situation and see what is the next good thing to do. I’m getting old, no longer getting older. I’m there, so…

This hotel in Kalispell I’m in has paper thin walls and is three stories of busyness. This morning at 5:30 the folks next door turned on a preacher of some sort and it was astounding the anger and disturbing takes this speaker had on life etc. I felt deeply sad that these folks who listened to this, were making this the first thing they started their day with. Then I realized they were playing the same thing over and over and the logical conclusion I could come to was that the man of the couple was either studying the style and cadence of the speaker, or it was him listening to his own talk and figuring out how to hone his craft. Whatever the case there sure are a lot of different people in this world. Sorts and types.

In a few hours I’m going to have a cup of coffee with a fellow Buddhist trainee, who after years of hard work by herself and her husband, are both experiencing some of the challenges that Life throws, or places in front of us especially as we get older and our realities become accommodations, rather than the fruition of goals.

Grace, and confusion all to be encountered by me this morning in the world that I act in, and the world that I live in. Life is only wonderful because it can be so sad.

Things sure change as they

Get old and comfortable and

A little dusty with a Sprung

Spring showing in memory.

Wonder fully sad and real.

Getting ready to leave on a trip on Friday morning and drive around the US, literally, with a few diversions inland. I’ve got family in Virginia and some friends scattered along East coast  and will let whim and conditions guide me as to where to go and what to see. I’m not one to go some place just to say I’ve been, or for the “view” or scenery, so to assign some meaning to this other than ‘old coot wants to ramble’,  I’ve decided to turn it into a bit of a pilgrimage and visit nine of the temples of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives in contiguous US. I know all the monks at those temples for about 30 years and it will be a treat to just touch base, have a cup of tea, do some bows and move on.

I see this little adventure as a gathering-in occurring during a time when I sense very strongly that I’m getting much more scattered hither and yon mentally. So a weird combo of me in a motion within some fear of my going Goofy, while simultaneously deepening the unformed spiritual space within and learning to trust that it is all for my own good. My only ‘job’ is to see that and allow things to flow out/in from that unknown place.

The last week with its fluctuations of the AQI smoke index has gone from several days of deep purple and lighter purple and my hope tomorrow  to be firmly in the Red Zone, under 200 of the possible 500, and in a few days of heading east will start to encounter the Old Normal with particulate matter not being a health concern.

When I was young I wound up in a variety of interesting and quite dicey situations, sometimes clumped together and overlapping so that I thought that’s what normal life was like, since almost everyone I knew and considered friend or partner lived just like me. The culmination was several years of scrambling towards my personal ‘bottom’ and then having to make some choices, actually one choice with various strings of effort attached to it. Was I willing to change completely and allow for the possibility that there might be more to life than waking up, more like coming too, and starting the recapitulation of the night or days before to find out if I made any new enemies, or worse.? And then it got worse; the last several years were a swirl of recklessness and a sort of trepidation and ultimately a willingness to give up and die in the streets. Something changed and I started to participate in the change and then I changed.

I encountered Buddhist training at a real practical level and I’ve had several rearrangements of my body and mind at kind of a molecular level, and this little late life jaunt seems to be an extension of that motion and seeking in the direction of that Stillness which can hold everything equanomously and with very little intent.

So, I’m curious how this will eventuate, it may die on the vine or it may be a loosely reordered life based on the Precepts and whispering the ongoing question within which is built the answer.

May I know what is good to do, may I do what is good to do.

Maitraiya, Buddha of the future; We are all part of becoming you.

Too cease from evil, to do only good, to purify ones Heart.

I don’t know who wants these answers. How can this being help?

I bow in gratitude and talk nonsense to the animals and they listen, a rabbit on a lawn at midnight listening an old fool natter on about the common language having no words. Or was the rabbit saying that to the fool. 

Hard to tell sometimes if we are talking or speaking, hearing or listening.