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Heng Ch'au
Monday
February 27, 1978
Cambria, California-a small seaside community of about 2,000 people. Rain clears by 8:00 AM. Tourist traffic and narrow wet roads, so we keep bowing in yellow rubber rain slicks for safety. Marked change in terrain to rolling hills of conifers and ferns. Low cloud cover and thick fog. It feels like southern California abruptly stopped and northern California began. Suddenly we're in tall pines, fog -wet mornings, moss in hanging strands and deep greens. Behind is dry heat, yellow parched grass, treeless fields and straight roads.
Charlotte Beal from the local newspaper, the Cambrian. Asked is during a roadside interview:
"Do you ever have any problems? I mean do some people give you a hard time…like throw things or shout insults?"
At that very moment a car sped by and let fly a volley of rotten oranges. The journalist was standing with her back to the highway. The oranges zipped by the back of her head, missing by inches. She never knew.
"Well, we try not to notice and just treat it like a no affair. If you don't pay any attention, then it's just like nothing happened." I answered.
"Oh, that's interesting!" she said," I'll have to try that."
Route Change?
"Be careful. If one of you got run over it would ruin the whole purpose of the pilgrimage, wouldn't it?" said a man yesterday.
When we told a reporter our intention to stay on highway I north of here he exclaimed, "You mean you're staying on highway I past san simeon!?" as if such a plan was sheer madness.
Last night we parked in an isolated spot next to a small inlet by the county park. After meditating I went outside. Out of the thick fog a man walking his dog approached.
"Oh, I've been looking for you" he said. "The name's Fillipini, Alvin Fillipini."
Fillipinini got right to the point.
"I'm the superintendent at the nearby state correctional faculty, the minimal security center. My men and I are concerned for your safety north of the Hearst castle. We know this road. We work on it with crews everyday. It's a bad one, especially if you're going to try and bow it."
Fillipini leaned over our map in the hood of the car and switched on his flashlight. The alternatives: 1) go back 3 miles and pick up highway 46 which crosses over the coast range and Santa Lucia Mts. to highway 101. Bow the frontage roads of 101 until we hook up with a county road that goes to carmel. A bid detour around the entire Big Sur Ventana wilderness area, 2) take the Nacimiento-Ferguson road through hunter-Liggett military reservation, 3) stay on highway I and hope for the best.
The highway 46 route is round about. Adds about 100 miles to the trip, and involves the 101 freeway. The second alternative is a parted national forest wilderness. It would take 3 months to bow it, bypassing Big Sur and ending up in Carmel. Gas and water are non-existent. We would have to mount big red gas cans on the car and take our chances with finding water in streams. The third alternative gave our local supporters worry wrinkles and raised eyebrows. Not much of a selection.
Fillipini said he would send one of his foremen to scout it out with us. But it was clear he was telling us as gently as possible, "Highway I is out of the question. It's miles of narrow switchbacks and curves not wide enough for 2 cars top pass side by side. It's treacherous in a car-on foot, on your knees, it's impossible," said Fillipini. He was supportive and genuinely interested in our bowing.
"I'd like to get together at the end of it and talk some more," he said. "They call our place a 'rehabilitation facility'; but that's just a bunch of baloney. They're just nice kids who made a mistake and get institutionalized."
"Well, I'll be in touch. We're all really interested in what you're doing. We talk about it every day as we drive back and forth. It's got a lot of people thinking, of I can help in any way, let me know, good night." He said and walked back into the fog with his dog.
We tentatively decide to take the Nacimiento-Ferguson route to g-16 past Tassajara and through Carmel valley.
A barrage of oranges, apples, tangerines, rocks and eggs hit the car in the middle of the night and then all was perfectly quiet the rest of the evening.
"Highway Teaching"
The highway is like our minds and like the world: good and bad, true and false, pure and defiled are all mixed together.
"Truth and falseness interlink and mingle: Within the ordinary mind one sees The Buddha mind. Specifics an principles are Together cultivated: One relies on basic wisdom to seek The Buddha's wisdom. -- Avatamsaka Sutra
Only a straight mind can sift true from false; only true principles can glean the good from the bad; and only pure practice can smelt basic wisdom into the Buddha's wisdom.
If we don't cultivate the way, it all just stays a mixed up mess. If one cultivates, then even though pure and defiled, ordinary and enlightened are still mixed together, you yourself aren't mixed up about it. All the fighting stops aren't mixed up about it. All the fighting stops, and inside and out there's no obstacles, and so,
"A thousand distinctions combine without obstruction."
This is the highway teaching.