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Before learning to meditate a lot of my time energy chased highs. I didn’t have a teacher and knew nothing about yoga, t’ai chi, or ch’an at the time. But I knew that when I was skiing or mountain climbing or motorcycling or free fight in competition there was some point reached when on the edge of exhaustion or immersed in treat and fear when I was totally lost in the activity. At that point, if only for a few fleeting seconds, the ordinary "me" was gone. I was what I was doing. There was no subject/object, no analyzing, no thinking--just doing and harmonizing with something outside and through and beyond "me." It was crazy dare devil death tripping, but for those few moments it was worth it. Unfortunately it always ended and try as I might I couldn’t hang on to it.
It didn’t take long to realize that the "high" came from within. Those stunts were tools, fingers, not the moon they pointed to. T’ai chi ch’uan and meditation was the first step off the stunt machine. Then my t’ai chi teacher said, "Someday you must know, Ch’an is the highest!" So I checked it out. I’m finding the highest "high" isn’t like I thought it would be. It’s much more. It’s much less. It’s mysterious and simple and every day from wonder to wonder it opens. I’m just beginning and it’s a most incredible journey, this one, inside and beyond the "high."
So I kind of knew where that surfer was coming from and myself too when I said, "We are mid surfing."
"Well all right!" he grinned.
At the Beach
From behind, a little voice. "Hey aren’t you embarrassing yourself?" I keep bowing. Again, "Hey mister, what are you doin’?"
Me: "We’re Buddhist monks. We’re praying."
"Oh." he says.
Kid: "Watch’in you be dumb."
I smile and start to bow again.
Looking over to my left are oodles of people in swimming suits playing volleyball, sunbathing, swimming, surfing, sailing, eating, smoking dope--just plain old Saturday afternoon good times at the ocean. I start looking pretty dumb to myself at times. Baking in this hot sun under T’ang dynasty robes, picking glass and gravel out of my hands and forehead…that water looks so inviting right now.
The aunts have gotten bigger--huge red ones. They are easier to see. I think we are killing fewer of them…Well, I’ve done all that, the beach and smoking dope and sunbathing, so I’ll keep at this cultivating stuff some more. All in all one could be worse than a bower of beaches. The water still looks inviting, though, and we still look dumb.
Got an ugly fungus itch on my hand. Might be we are starting to hit the roadside weed killer--a nasty critter found commonly along the banks of the Detroit and it’s tributaries.
Camped at the end of a "No Through Street" in Pacific View Estates. Heard these weird sounds. Outside in a large fenced in area was a buffalo and some African rams lazily grazing and watching us.