Yesterday, a college student who had recently transferred to the University of Massachusetts which is not far away, came by to snoop some of the local Zen landscape. We looked at the poor old zendo and then went out for coffee.Adam -- his name as well as mine -- seemed to be inclined to the outdoors, was studying landscaping and had been on a number of adventurous trips, one of them to Alaska where a part of the adventure was to take a tarp and some supplies and spend two days alone in the whiteness. The adventure was part of what put him on a Zen-snooping path, he said.
Imagine that: Absolutely alone, with nothing but cold and white and silent for company.
And the words just popped out of my mouth: "You can't bullshit the silence."
Just hearing the tale second-hand made me wonder about 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, whether fairy tale or not... the strange and inescapable moment when each person hits a wall and none of the devices work any more. Is it God or is it Satan and....
Is there a difference?
This morning i really wanted to take a leak, but the cows were bellerin' impatiently. So i pulled on my boots, called together the dogs and puppies, and the pack journeyed some hundred and fifty yards to the barn. Cattle fed, puppies exploring and frolicking, dogs reclining, i took the best leak of my life.
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