Not Zen 208: The Panicked Crowd

from wikimedia, totodu74

The Panicked Crowd

In a shallow lagoon, reef lizardfish took advantage of the natural protection of a hollow in the sea bottom. They rested, surrounded by the coral and rocks. Soon, their scales adjusted color and they blended in with the sandy floor. They barely moved, drifting just enough to let water slip over their gills. They lay in wait for their prey. 

A pair of blue crabs crept across the edge of the rock shelf. 

Later, a few more crabs shuffled through. Two of them clambered over the ridge of coral and down into the hollow. Then a larger cast arrived. A handful of the crustaceans passed close to the predators. The lizardfish did not lunge at them. They waited. The fish were still the color of sand and hard to see, motionless and impossible to detect. They knew the tide was going out. More crabs would come. 

The numbers of travelers continued to rise. When the hollow started to fill, the crabs finally noticed the lizardfish. As they did, the predators attacked. 

The entire cast of blue crabs exploded in panic. Many of them ran in random directions. A few scrambled to the top of the rock shelf and escaped. Others gathered in a defensive structure, a ball of pincers facing all directions.

In the midst of the puffs of sand, the scuttling legs, the claws, and frenzied motion, the lizardfish each struck once. They plucked panicked stragglers as they ran by. Only a single lizardfish failed to find an easy target. That one tried to take her victim from the defensive ball of crabs. However, she found it too spiky. 

"Run, little ones," she said. She feinted at the defenders. 

Several crabs shuffled to avoid her but they did not leave the group. They did not waver as they kept their pincers raised high. 

"Run!" shouted a crab at the top of the rock shelf, above. She waved to her recent mate. He gazed longingly at the ridge of the hollow and the safety there.

"Don't be foolish," said the crab next to him. 

"But these lizardfish," he complained. "They will take one of us." 

"Hold steady," the big crab insisted. 

The lizardfish kept diving at them. Once, the biggest blue crab managed to snip an edge off a fin. However, after eight false strikes, one of the crabs broke position. He and ran for the west wall of slope. A second crab followed. The lizardfish grabbed the second one. Like the rest of her school, she crunched the body of her prey with her mighty jaws and sharp, thick teeth.

"You see?" said the big crab to the one whose mate awaited them at the edge of the hollow. "When you panic, you make it easy for the predator. When you calm yourself and direct your actions with care, you make it harder. Now, finally, we may climb this rocky ridge together."

"Still together?" the smaller crab asked as he watch the lizardfish eat.

"It's a small thing," replied the other. "But yes. Not panicking and achieving something small is worthwhile. Your see? Come, do another small thing." 
 

Not Even Not Zen 449: Biomythography - Note 153, The Plate Dancers

The Plate Dancers

In the Hampshire College library, late at night on an upper floor, I found it. My memory of the moment is so dim, I'm not sure if I simply thumbed through my notebook to find a copy that I had been given previously or if I located the original article somewhere in the journal archives. In either case, I started reading. And I understood it was going to be as good as one of my classmates described it to me when he enthusiastically endorsed the multi-page feature in Science magazine.

The piece told a story about our physics professor, Herb Bernstein - or rather, it described his solution. He and a partner had worked out a valid model for an integer spin value of a neutron. They had based their work on an inspiration Herb had while watching African plate dancers. During a recital at his university, the dancers had balanced a stack of plates in one hand, twisted their wrist to turn the plates 360 degrees counterclockwise and then, instead of turning back, they had kept turning the plates counterclockwise again.

They made a complicated motion to do it. However, it wasn't so complicated that Herb couldn't duplicate the motion while he was sitting in the audience. Years later, at Hampshire College, Herb repeated his dance move for us in his quantum physics class.

"See?" he turned his arm and wrist. Then he twisted again. "Look!" 

After the first move, the dancer's arm is out of position. After the second, both the stack of plates and the hand holding them return to the start. It takes two turns for a dancer to come back to the original position. The move looks beautiful, even when done by an amateur.

When Herb first saw the performance, the dancers had made the moves seem natural. Their arms flowed like water. Plates rose and fell in a hypnotic pattern. Of course, Herb found that he couldn't balance things on the plates the way the professionals could but, as he imitated them, he realized that two spins could indeed return to the same place. For a physics student, it was an important realization.

The spin value of a neutron had been defined as a fraction. Apparently, that bothered some theorists at the time. Herb realized the spin value could also be two, a whole number. He was pretty sure the math would work. The formal announcement of his full-blown theoretical model was hailed as a success. 

Looking back on it, though, the theory never became mainstream. The math seemed to work but the experimental verification of the model somehow never panned out. The spin value of a neutron is still accepted as 1/2, which makes it a type of fermion. At the time, the wonderfulness of Hampshire College, a place where I could hear about why neutrons have a spin value and how it can make intuitive sense - even though it doesn't have to - made me love the promise of the place. I read the physics story with a joy I had usually associated with science fiction.

The college library was a cozy place to study. The friendliness of the Hampshire classes, the ability to design our own coursework, and the closeness we could have with professors all added up to my re-discovering a love for learning - or maybe I was discovering it, really exploring it, for the first time. Pursuing my interests was a powerful sensation. The idea that I could learn something for the pleasure of it and not be measured by anyone was a liberating one. So was the concept that I could self-teach or direct my own intellectual explorations.

For me, an era of passively accepting what someone decided I should learn was coming to an end, although I didn't know it. I was starting to realize I could participate in the decision, at least. I could push back against a nonsensical requirement. I could reach out and choose to learn something that only I felt was related to what I needed to know. 
 
It was a daunting idea for the lazy me. When you explore an area on your own, well, you're on your own. There's no one to help you, no one to make the material easier. There's no one to figure out how one field of discourse applies to another, no one to say that boolean logic can apply to electricity, or that botanical details apply to poetry, or that a plate dancer's arm movement can apply to particle physics. Sometimes, that has to be you. 

Not Even Not Traveling 78: Canada - Touring the Countryside

Touring the Countryside
and Running Out of Chores

My wife took it upon herself to do deep cleaning in Donna's house. Basically, when she realized she couldn't finish the gazebo alone - we were going to need multiple sets of hands working at the same time, one of them belonging to someone tall - she started looking for other ways to help.

Diane can be surprisingly thorough about cleaning. Well, I've lived with her for over thirty years so it's less of a surprise to me nowadays. But I haven't stopped being impressed.

1. She decides an area, which may look tidy to me, is hiding dirt
2. Usually, she shows me a cleaned spot, proving, for instance, that the tan-colored tiles should be white
3. Then she approaches the dirt with so much determination you can see the steam rise off her (and off the floor or counter or the couch, which is sometimes, I admit, the color of our pets)
4. If I volunteer to help, she growls until I go off to my own project
5. When we next meet, the offending area is a different color

I grew up in a household of all boys. I had not been aware that dried soap counted as dirt. I'd considered it to be the opposite, in fact. Soapiness was, by definition, cleanliness. That's why I had never been bothered by the twenty years of soap scum on the walls of the shower I grew up using. Whereas Diane had to disinfect her eyes to look at it a second time.

Our host woke up to the partial results of my wife's cleaning decision. Fortunately, Donna could see Diane was in an unstoppable 'don't even look at me I'm working' mode and decided to roll with it. In fact, she labored side by side with Diane. And after a while, she decided to pursue her own project, which was finding someone to help build the gazebo.

She found someone, too, a young man named Jack who was looking for side jobs.

As they introduced me to him, Donna and Diane mentioned that he was building the gazebo for me and that I wasn't going to help. He was mildly amused to see mosquitos start to land on me while we shook hands.

"Oh, I see," Jack said. He continued to smile. In fact, he kept his pleasant attitude the whole time he worked on the gazebo roof.

I put on layers of clothing and insect repellent so I could finish stacking the woodpile. When I finished and cleaned up after myself, I headed indoors again to telework. (I've been leaving that out of the Canada trip descriptions, I guess. I was doing a lot of remote work and it helped extend our stay.)

A few hours later, Jack was still laboring away on the gazebo roof. Donna and I had reached stopping points in our telework. We took a look at the construction process but it was clear Jack didn't need help yet. With Diane, we decided we could afford to take a break while Jack continued. This would be our third visit to Tweed.

It's a really nice town. Tweed is so cozy (and pretty) that it reminds me of Frederick, Maryland in years past, back when Frederick was not so cosmopolitan. We visited the shops. Diane and Donna bought gifts. I got a paperback at one of the bookstores. In an herb shop, Donna finalized our plans to visit a lavender farm. 

Finally, we headed home and helped finish the gazebo. Jack had done a lot but the job needed many hands near the end to move multiple pieces in place at once. With the aid of insect repellent and a special candle, we all helped, even me.

#

We knew the next day would be our last in the area - at least for a while.

At the lavender farm, we saw yet another gift shop. Of course, we'd seen plenty in Tweed. This one, isolated, sold more product categories than the farm grew in its crops. The shelves offered herbal products from neighboring and not-so-neighboring farms. Now, if you think I was there because of the company I kept, Donna and Diane, you would be correct. But I also didn't mind. I'd never been to a lavender farm. I had never even considered that someone would farm it. But they do.

We got a tour of the lavender plants and the four types on the farm. We picked our own lavender, which sounds fine enough although it mostly involved crouching at various spots in a field while bees conducted surveillance on us.

Afterward we sat down to a lavender-themed menu — lavender scones, lavender honey, lavender shortbread, lavender soda, and a tea that tasted like someone had brewed a bar of fancy soap. We drank it because it's rude not to and talked about the trip and the general mystery of rural Ontario. Rather sadly, we started planning our drive back home.

The drive north had not been too bad. But it was hard to look forward to our return. Queensborough had been beautiful and Donna, a great host. The weather had seemed lucky, too, almost always perfect.

#

Rural Canada - A Review

Don't go for the food. But aside from that, it's highly recommended. Really.

Queensborough: small. It's got a hundred people. And it's a difficult place to visit unless you know someone there. If you do, it's fantastic.

Madoc: The town's principal export is the outdoors. It has got enough people to need a few stores. Still, if you visited Madoc deliberately, it would probably be to spend time in the parks. There are a lot. On the whole, there are fun things to do in the Madoc area but you're probably doing them on the back of a horse or a snowmobile.

Tweed: a full, if small town. Good stores. Pretty. Tweed is what economists call 'emerging,' which means there are three new stores and an optimistic sign advertising a fourth if you know what I mean. The town has a hotel and bed and breakfast apartments. It seems interesting in the longer term, too, because I know that I, at least, looked around and considered living there. I don't know where I could work but I saw plenty of homes where I'd like to move in.

The "Front Porch Ruckus" music festival was great. It wasn't a singleton attraction, either. Tweed hosts lots of other events during the summer. There are film festivals, art events, music, and more.

For a lot of the time, the folks in rural Canada - all over the small towns - did not look at their phones. They looked at one another, at us, or at least at their pets. People were hardly ever so busy they couldn't hold a pleasant conversation. And the dogs were friendly.
 

Not Even Not Traveling 77: Canada - The Tibetan Temple

The Tibetan Temple

For days, Donna had been offering to take me to a Buddhist temple. And for days, I had felt unsure about going. I know my reaction was puzzling to Donna and my wife. They were keenly aware I had been reading about Buddhism and talking with Buddhists for forty years. Why wouldn't I want to visit a temple?

There are so many reasons, I'm not going to try to list them. Among them, though, are how Western Buddhism, Zen, and Pure Land Buddhism are all different from one another. Navigating among the slightly different faiths can get tricky. And then there's Tibetan Buddhism, which is differently different from any of those. 

Pure Land emphasizes scriptures and devotion to Amitabha. (I realize I'm being so brief it seems flippant.) Zen focuses on meditation and koans. Western Buddhism is in the process of sifting through the parts of the philosophy that appeal to westerners. Tibetans, on the other hand, incorporate a lot of rituals, tantra, incarnations (think 'saints' if it helps), and a hierarchy of instructions under the guidance of lamas. It's not like the others, at least outwardly. And Tibetan temples, as all buildings do, tend to gather a lot of material goods. 

No one has a choice about being material. We live in bodies. Lots of other forms of Buddhism - there's plenty more - have temples hosting rituals and sacred objects. But avoiding attachments is a significant, guiding principle behind the practice of Buddhism in all its forms. That's why it can feel odd to be confronted by the imperfect people, their ceremonies, and their attachments to rituals or ritual objects. 

We were going to have a guide, though. That seemed helpful. He was a longtime resident of the area. He worked as a volunteer caretaker at the temple and he could meet us there. Plus, Donna's friend who knew the guide also sounded like an appealing person to meet. Basically, I thought we would at least meet good people if Donna could make the logistics work.

In the end, she did. Donna made the friendships and appointments line up. And so I leapt at the chance to go.

We arrived at the compound to discover a closed gate. That was usual. Donna's friend had the key to the gate. We rolled on in after shutting it behind us. The place looked beautiful. It also seemed deserted, which I hadn't expected. I didn't understand how the temple made sense here, how it did its business. 

The roof of one of the buildings was slate red. Someone had painted its walls a warm yellow, too. I hadn't expected the colors. The place didn't seem as fancy as some other holy sites or even churches downtown. Likewise, we parked behind a second building that was mostly red and yellow, this one with aluminum siding to keep out the Canadian winter weather. At the door, we met a gray-haired couple. They seemed to be weeding and doing chores. Sure enough, one of them introduced himself as Sangha, our guide to the grounds. The woman was his wife, apparently also a volunteer.

"I'll have to replace this weather stripping," he said as we stepped through the door. He ran his hand over the left side of the doorframe. 

He and his wife were the caretakers for the temple when the monks weren't around, which was most of the time. The monks treated the temple as a summer retreat and a place to hold special events, perform ceremonies on holy days, and hold meditation seminars.

Sangha gave us a private tour. How often do you get a private tour of a holy place? I gathered he had given it a few times before, though. And a minute or two after we started, his manners changed. He asked a few questions. I asked a few in return about Tibet, about the ceremonies, and suddenly he relaxed and grew more energetic. Any reservations I'd had about the visit melted away in the face of his warmth. 

He seemed delighted, and a little surprised, to find I was genuinely interested in Buddhism. And I wanted the details about Tibet and the history behind the establishment of the monastery. He beamed. He wasn't a dogmatic ritual-minder at all. And Sangha wasn't simply a janitor, either. He was spiritually drawn in. He took care of the trappings around him but he didn't seem particularly attached to them.

He didn't quiz me about Tibetan incarnations or rituals. Instead, he told us about how some of the art had arrived here after the Chinese invasion of Tibet, about the practices held here, the statues of incarnations, and more. He seemed happy I knew enough about Tibet to understand details of its geography and history.

(I absolutely did not let on that some of what I remembered came from reading and re-reading Seven Years in Tibet. I was pretty sure everyone even slightly associated with Tibetan Buddhism must get tired of hearing about a single book, however popular and respectful it is.)

As it turned out, Sangha was giving us a tour of the retreat house. It had once been a hunting lodge. To the south of us lay the lama house.

(Backstory on the corporate hunting lodge: for their very first hunting trip at the lodge, the company bosses invited their secretaries with them, not their wives. When the group returned home, someone told one of the wives. And that was the beginning of a scandal, a lawsuit, and the end of the hunting lodge. Apparently, there was never even a second company trip.) 

The monastery bought the land after the lodge closed. Monks converted it to a holy site. It was attractive because the lodge sat with a mountain to the north (as required for temples in Tibetan Buddhism) and a river to the south (again a requirement). All that remained was to orient the monastery facade to the south or east. (They did both.)

I could have spent hours talking with Sangha. We covered philosophy, history, and religious ceremony. He was spiritual and thoughtful. His wife stepped between us to remind him of the time and the chores he still had to do. Maybe everyone started looking at their watches, too. (I don't really think so, though.) 

Normally, when I describe a place I try to recommend it or warn everyone against it. This time, well - I highly recommend getting a private tour of a Tibetan Buddhist temple, especially if Sangha is your guide. It seems sort of hard to arrange, though. 

Next: Touring the Countryside