Zen, Music and Madness

In between excursions around Laguna Beach with the James family,  I meditated in my room under a print of Van Gogh's sunflowers.  I was also faithfully keeping my journal.  I had an experience just before I left of waking up within a nightmare, still dreaming, but conscious enough to begin to chant a mantra.  This banished the nightmare completely and woke me up.  It was an auspicious start to my journey, I felt, for it seemed to signal a new plateau in consciousness, a growing awareness in me of the power of meditation in my life.

I found my cheap charter flight to Hawaii and soon found myself walking through the exotic, somehow dreamlike landscape outside the Maui airport, guitar in hand as always.  It was the one possession I could not leave behind me. 

I had a strange encounter with a huge, pock-marked Hawaiian man who picked me up hitching and began checking my arm for "track marks".  It scared me and I got him to drop me off at a hostel where I took a room for the night, changing my initial plan to sleep on the beach. 

In the morning I set out for the community of Haiku where the zendo was, found the path leading up to it through a jungle-like grove of trees and shrubbery and arrived, asking to speak to Robert Aitken, the roshi.  He was there, in shirt sleeves working in the garden with the students, a gaunt, gray-haired, fatherly, academic-looking man who, when he heard that reps had sent me, asked me a few pointed questions about reps and then directed one of the other students to find me sleeping quarters.

I was put on a foam mattress under a picture of Suzuki Roshi in the office, because the main dormitory was full of students.  I realized soon enough that this was not a strictly religious center full of monks, but also a kind of Zen school for paying students who came for a couple of months to work and meditate and that my acceptance here on the spur of the moment was a minor miracle, probably due to my association with Reps. 

I had already read "Zen Mind, Beginners Mind" and so sleeping under a photo of Suzuki Roshi seemed to be a kind of benediction.  I had also, on the way here, been strenuously studying Philip Kapleau's "Three Pillars of Zen" to get a feel for the discipline of zazen or sitting meditation.  It had already become clear to me by reading this latter book that there was nothing "imaginary" about doing zazen, but the reality of being suddenly immersed in this community was a physical shock, for I was immediately put to work in the kitchen and during my first hour there sliced off a sliver of my finger, grating beets into a huge salad.

The regimen was tough.  Work, meditation, more work and more meditation, but mostly work.  Turning the compost heap, weeding the garden, picking and preparing vegetables, cooking and a labor-camp, blistering discipline of cutting down trees and building a road using no power equipment.  The sitting meditation was very rewarding as I was prepared by my long residence in the cabin and solid meditation practice leading up to this. 

There were others sitting next to me in physical pain and some who had to meditate on chairs, but I was able to sit reasonably comfortably in "half lotus" position.  My sitting posture was corrected by a senior student and I had some difficulty in learning to breath more quietly but all in all I found the meditation extremely relaxing and rewarding, especially after long periods of hard physical labor. 

Since everyone at the zendo paid their way,  the subject of how I would pay came up and it seemed that there was an opportunity for me to do some accounting and bookkeeping for the zendo.  However there was some confusion around my not having a U.S. "green card" in terms of earning wages and during this time I made a decision to leave. 

I had been there only a short while  and I used most of my spare periods to play my guitar.  It seemed that the problem of money was going to become an issue and I did not want to be forced to leave because of it.  At the same time, some old confusion within me was becoming clarified, the romantic issue about the life of a monk.  I had now had a sharp taste of life in a zendo and it seemed to me that the life of an itinerant musician was infinitely more important and more to the point to me, than trying to turn myself into a full-time monk. 

Many of the students gathered around to join me in music making during our breaks and many complimented me on my skill as a guitarist, reaffirming for me that my musical discipline was a very valuable part of my life.  Perhaps I had not valued it enough?  After all, was it not in its own way as spiritual an art as sitting meditation?  Could I not also continue to grow spiritually as an artist, through the medium of the music?

 These were some of the thoughts that percolated through me at this time and gave me the strength to make a decision before one was made for me.  So, when Robert Aitken heard I was departing he gave me "dokusan," a personal interview, during which he said "Remember, you can surf to the left and you can surf to the right, 180 degrees, but you can't go backward!"  I departed from the zendo with the good wishes of all my new friends there, feeling very supported and confident of my direction.

But as I left along the road, my thumb extended for a lift, I realized my problems were far from over, for although I had a ticket to Honolulu, I was all out of cash.  I was also remembering Reps' injunction to find a community to work in and felt that perhaps I had failed in this.  Now I would not get to see him in Hawaii after all. 

As I was pondering this I became aware that someone was coming up behind me on the road.  I turned to see a youngish, long-haired man walking a German Shepherd on a leash.  The dog was straining and growling with bared teeth and the man seemed to be imitating the dog, except he was raving into the empty air around him like a lunatic.  I have had more than my share it seems,  of encountering maniacs along the road and this one seemed to be gaining on me.  If I was having any second thoughts then about choosing to sleep on the beach until something developed, they vanished at that moment and I saw that I really wanted to get off Maui. 

I guess this represented a much larger fear of the unknown in my life that I had not come to grips with, something that had been driving me down the road already for many years, something I was running from which scared me badly but which I couldn't put my finger on.  Why I should have to witness this even in the paradise of Hawaii seemed to me very unfair but after all,  wasn't this a facet of life that had to be faced wherever one went?  Hadn't I come up on forms of this madness during my drug experiments, in my own dreams, in my relationship with my father and in many past encounters on the streets of other cities at other times of my life? 

Yet, once again I felt scared and even betrayed by my purpose in coming here, to find myself and maybe to meet my teacher again.  This one ranting, apparently crazy person coming up behind me on the road brought up this "stuff" in me that couldn't be denied but which life itself was forcing me to look at.  I crossed the road and went into the courtyard of a restaurant and fruit stand just to get out of this person's way.  I had just sat down when to my horror, into the courtyard he walked, still yelling obscenities into the air and holding back his growling dog and he began to swear at the person behind the counter who basically ignored him, as though maybe he was a familiar character in these parts.  He ordered something to drink and came towards where I was sitting but I didn't wait around to see what might happen.  I just got out of there. 

All the way to the airport I kept looking over my shoulder to see if he might resurface but he did not.  It was with a great sense of relief that I took my seat on the short flight to Honolulu, for I felt that whatever difficulty I might have to face there without money, paled in comparison to what I felt I had just escaped from. 

Once in the Honolulu airport, however, my fear returned because I had no way of getting out of there, except into the streets of the city without a dime.  I walked briefly a few blocks from the airport just to get a feel of things and they did not feel good.  Bars, hotels, strip joints, endless traffic and business as usual did not seem a good location for a homeless minstrel to go strolling in, not in the state I was in.  I wandered back into the airport and got into a short conversation with a ticket clerk who divined that I was stranded and told me I could always sleep in the airport.  He asked if I had anyone I could call and I immediately thought of my friend Kent Steele, who might wire me the money.  But I did not have his phone number so I decided to call Veronica instead.

Another miracle!  Kent was visiting with her.  He got on the phone and said it was almost 5 p.m. there but that he'd go straight into town and try to get the money to me.  The weekend was coming up and I was certain that I'd be spending the next few nights in the airport.  But about 10 p.m. I decided to check at the ticket counter and lo and behold, hallelujah, my ticket awaited.  I left an hour or so later, Victoria bound and ever grateful for the presence of friends.

The flight back to Vancouver was like a warm bath to my emotions.  If going to the Andes mountains was the "wrong" direction, this was surely the right one.  Never in my life has going anywhere felt so right. Perhaps it was simply the security of moving back toward the familiar, the known after such a long period of uncertainty and perhaps it was the feeling too that there were friends who cared enough about me to bail me out in an emergency, that I was not alone in the world.  It didn't even matter where I was going to stay when I got back, just that I was going back.

I knew my brother Ken was living in a rooming house in Victoria, so when I got to the Victoria airport I called him and he invited me to come and stay.  It was late fall and with winter coming on I was very grateful for the old mattress on the concrete floor in the furnace room, where the hum of the furnace was like the soothing beat of the womb to my ears.  I had complete privacy and could spread out my sleeping bag and meditate into the wee hours. 

During the day I had the run of the suite, which Ken shared with another friend but it was not too long before I ran afoul of his boundaries.  I was not motivated to do much except sit still, play my guitar and meditate.  Ken was urging me to do something, get a job, anything but this was the last thing I felt like doing.  I felt I needed quiet and the space to just play my guitar.  Soon my guitar playing began to get on Ken's nerves.

My mother and youngest brother Eric arrived from Winnipeg for a short visit.  I hadn't seen them for years and so the ice was broken momentarily.  But when they left,  it became obvious something had to give.

One day I was practicing and Ken blew up, forbidding me to play any more in the apartment.  I wasn't angry but that was a warning bell to me.  It had started to snow, but I packed my bags and left.  Mumbling something like "once more into the breach, dear friends", my face set against the elements,  I set off for Shawnigan Lake and the protection of my friend Kent Steele who was teaching school there and had a little cabin in the village where he was living alone after the breakup of his marriage. 

I stayed with Kent a few days and resolved to head for Vancouver since I was newly decided on living the life of a musician.  Kent drove me to the Nanaimo ferry terminal.  There was some classical music playing on CBC, something very strong and soothing and as we drove I once again had that feeling of complete rightness and security about my direction, though I had no destination or money to speak of.  Kent was another friend who continued to support me through all my difficulties, giving me confidence and never making me feel that I was making a mistake in my life.  Rather he used to admire my music and assure me that one day, with a little luck, I was sure to "make it in music".

I arrived in downtown Vancouver and called my friend Bruno Castellan from a payphone at the Hotel Vancouver.  Bruno was an architect who came from Brittany and who I'd met years ago in just these circumstances, no place to go, stranded in the CN terminal in town. A stranger had handed me a newspaper asking if I wanted to look at it.   I'd turned to the housing ads and called a number advertising for someone to share a communal house. Though I had no money, the man who took my call accepted me on faith.  That was Bruno. 

Now he was married and living with his wife Brigitte and two children in Kitsilano and once again he invited me to come and stay.  I was given a sleeping bag on the living room couch and tried to make myself as unobtrusive as possible, helping with housework and whatever else I could do.  But it was close quarters for them.

Fortunately, I found a job working with Greenpeace on a project preparing a slide show on whales that was intended to be shown in the schools.  This gave me enough of a boost to take a room in a crumbling old building down on 2nd Avenue near Arbutus. Bruno lent me a little blue bench he'd made and which was my only piece of furniture in that completely empty room, except for a mattress which I'd salvaged from the storage out back.

I worked and lived here for the next few months but the job was unsatisfying to me as I felt nothing was really being accomplished and that I was out of my element.  There were also constant distractions in the building itself, drunken parties that went on until all hours with the sound from them coming straight through the heating registers.  I couldn't cook at all and the whole feeling of the place was transient.  However, fate was on my side. 

The Castellans had planned a trip to France and needed someone to look after their house for a month or so and I was elected.   It worked out in the best of all possible ways for all concerned.  Even for Kent, who'd decided quit teaching school and make the jump to Vancouver, because he was able to stay with me while he found a place.  The job with Greenpeace came to an end but I had put in enough time to collect unemployment insurance which started to arrive regularly.  Then, only two or three days before the Castellans returned I found my little room on Trafalgar, just half a block away.

This was like an urban echo of my cabin at the foot of the mountain.  Finally, a place of my own where I might write and meditate in peace and play music to my heart's content.  It was a small second story room looking out over the street with a tiny balcony and old fashioned radiant steam heating.  The bathroom was shared with two other suites, both occupied by single men like myself, one an aspiring actor/musician named Gary Chalk and the other a Nicheren Buddhist named Phil whose meditation bell and chanting gave the floor a very familiar feel.

The place was simply furnished with a kitchenette that was basically just a cubbyhole with room for one person to sit and eat, or in my case, write.  I put a few samples of Japanese calligraphy on the wall and with my books and possessions that Kent had kept for me and returned, I had the makings of a workable bachelor pad.

My insurance cheques continued over the winter and then the ubiquitous notice forms arrived in the mail, stating that my claim was finished and so I went through the dance with the welfare office once again.

It was a powerful healing time for me.  I did a lot of writing and playing in my solitary way.  I was reading "The History of the Kings of Britain", other "Arthurian" material, the writings of Arthur Machen and exploring the magic of myth and the myth of the magic of writing.  Every poem or song I wrote seemed to me to be a real exercise in magic and outside the misty winter ambiance seemed to support and reaffirm my ongoing daydream.   I seemed to be wrapped in a cloak of mystery and magic.  But as spring came and the pressures from the welfare office for me to work grew,  I had to make a decision.

I remember sitting in a coffee shop on Broadway across from the Manpower office.  I was reading a book of poetry and trying to decide whether to follow the dictates of a dream I'd had or not.  A few days before this I had a dream that I was dressed in a cap and bells like a medieval fool and had dispersed all my possessions once again and hit the road, eastward this time. 

It was now spring and it was a good time to travel, so I'd taken the few journals that I'd kept over the last months down to the beach and burned them.  These included all the records since my trip to Hawaii.  My idea was to completely erase the past.  Thank God I didn't have all my journals at the time.  Having taken this step, I began to have second thoughts and now was seriously considering my future.  Did I want to become that wandering fool again?  Yet, getting a job now seemed to be a further admission of failure in my quest to live the life of an artist.  But I had been cut off by welfare before and they were threatening to do it again and I was tired of living on the edge.  I wrestled with my conscience and made up my mind that I needed some security in my life.  So I bit the bullet.  My mind made up, I went to the Manpower office and there found a sympathetic ear in a worker there who immediately sent me out on an interview for a job that the employer had not wanted advertised generally.  This job was to become my occupation for the next five years of my life, the longest job I'd ever held.  I was hired on as a courier for a customs broker, a job that provided me with a good salary, benefits, a car during the day and the chance to redeem myself from the pathway of errors that had led me to failure to make a living as a musician.