Another Plan

The good news is that Sarah is finally out of the hospital, after five days of attachment to state-of-the-art electronic telemetry and a great deal of pain. She was--I'm searching for the word. Dismissed? De-accessioned--no, that's library... Released? Sorry, can't find it. I know there's a right word--yesterday afternoon and is happy to be home. Now my wish for her is that she can allow herself to take it easy for a few days of convalescence. And there's a word I have not used for a while... Anyway, rejoice with me: she's out.

My own work for the next few days is to prepare for the publication and release of "Persist," and that will be the focus of my writing. First up is an essay I have promised for the January issue of ArtScene magazine--a monthly publication in which a number of the essays in "Persist" have appeared over the years, and which welcomes thoughts on a wide variety of topics relevant to its readership of visual artists. Obviously, it's not kosher to tout my own book--though I will place an ad in the same issue. But I can and will be writing on a related topic: the repercussions of the current recession on the art scene. My first sentence, already formulated, is this: "It's a great time to be an artist!" The temptation is to get whiny about the financial hardship of an artist's life, and I do hear a lot of whining. What I want to say instead is that the further constriction of financial opportunity offers a kind of liberation. Where there's less than little hope of "making it," I'm released to do whatever the hell I please.

But the key is the determination to "persist." And persistence, as I see it, is just a nicer way of thinking about discipline; and discipline is something that is not very much taught in schools, from kindergarten on. Our educational philosophy leans more to the notion of creativity, and while creativity has its place--and was perhaps stifled in earlier times, when rote learning was the norm--it's not much use to anyone without the discipline to back it up. It took me many years to come to a useful understanding of discipline. Having experienced it as applied from without--in the form of rules and expectations of parents and teachers--I was too advanced in years before I discovered that it comes, most effectively, from within. What I'm doing at this very moment is a part of my discipline as a writer: showing up, and getting the words down. It would be very easy not to. My path to this discipline was paved by another: the meditation practice.

So it's these ideas that I explore in the essays in "Persist," and will be exploring in a different context in my ArtScene essay. From there, and with these same ideas in mind, I'll be starting to prepare for the the more terrifying prospect of speaking engagements. I say terrifying advisedly: no matter how many years I spent in the classroom, teaching, it's a huge challenge for me to stand up in front of a bunch of people and pretend that I know something they don't know. I never liked to "lecture," and in fact never did, throughout my teaching career. I tried to turn even large classes into something more like Socratic dialogue--not always with success. Lecturing has its place, but it's not something I was cut out to do. Now that I have a number of speaking gigs lined up for the beginning of next year, I must discover a way to speak to an audience with ease and fluency, in a sense to "entertain" them with my ideas, and I'm thinking in terms of a Socratic dialogue with myself.

I notice, in the context of the previous entry in The Buddha Diaries, that I have already made another plan, for God's amusement. But these are things I need to work on, obviously. This morning has been useful to me in finding a focus for the work that needs to be done. Thanks for listening.

The Plan

The plan was to come down to Laguna for Thanksgiving and spend the following days down here, to get away from the stress of city life and get some writing (P) and painting (E) done. Ah, well, God (if He exists) must be having a good chuckle, if you believe in that old saying, if you want to see God laugh, make a plan. This morning we're on the road again, headed north to Los Angeles to check up on our still hospitalized Sarah. We're hoping to find her better that she sounded yesterday on the telephone, still in severe pain with her kidney infection.

I like an ordered life as much as anyone. I'm comfortable when I know what the schedule is for the day--for the week, for the month... But when things fall out the way they have these past few days, I'm forced to recognize that my sense of order is yet another delusion, and that to become attached to it is simply to cause more suffering. From moment to moment, truth be told, I have no idea about what might happen, still less am able to control it. Predictability is no more than an illusion with which I comfort myself about the uncertainty of the future.

So the plan today is to get in the car a little later in the morning and head for the 5 freeway. The hope is that along the way we do not encounter too many of the crazed post-Thanksgiving bargain-hunters thronging to the malls in their cars. If we do, I'll be confronted once again with the need to find some way to live with my impatience--a not-too-endearing quality that tends to show up with alarming regularity in traffic. Breathe...

No Way...

... to spend Thanksgiving! We drove up to Los Angeles to see how Sarah was doing and found her pretty much comatose with pain medications. Still she was certainly aware that we were there, and was happy--not quite the word, perhaps!--to see us. She was still in the emergency observation ward when we arrived, but quite soon after was wheeled up on her gurney to a room in the general hospital. I must say that Kaiser has done a very nice job with their new building. Sarah's room is abundantly well equipped with technological marvels, and manages also to be a reasonably pleasant space in which to ail. The staff, too, were all friendly and efficient. We left after a couple of hours feeling assured that, if she had to be in the hospital, this was not the worst of possibilities. Then we drove back down to Laguna Beach and enjoyed some of the fruits of our previous day's kitchen labors in quiet solitude. And watched "Bridget Jones's Diary" on the TV. It was still funny.

I'm reading two books--both advance copies--which are providing some insight into our current situation. The first, The Compassionate Instinct, edited by Dacher Keltner, Jason Marsh and Jeremy Adam Smith, is subtitled "The Science of Human Goodness." The collection of essays by various scientists includes not only a great deal of research information but also a good deal of story-telling and personal anecdote challenging the old survivalist assumption that we humans are hard-wired for self-interest. The newest studies of primates are now telling us a different story--that such qualities as empathy, forgiveness, community, cooperation and trust are as much a part of the survival imperative as the ones that have commonly been accepted: competition, aggression, the urge to dominance and so forth.

The book is divided into three parts, the first examining "The Scientific Roots of Human Goodness"; the second, "How to Cultivate Goodness in Relationships with Friends, Family, Coworkers and Neighbors"; and the third, "How to Cultivate Goodness in Society and Politics." Heaven knows, these qualities and practices are needed if our species is to survive the near-disaster it has brought upon itself, and it is encouraging to know that the scientific community is beginning to promulgate a rational undergirding for them.

Perhaps--who knows--we can use some of this research to our mutual benefit. Who knew, for example, as research has revealed, that in combat situations--at least until recently--the majority of soldiers fired their weapons into the air rather than targeting the enemy? The revulsion for killing a follow human being was so powerful, so innate, that many went through the motions without actually following orders to kill. A hopeful discovery. But of course, once discovered, the finding resulted in the development of new training techniques to overcome the "natural" instinct." The kill rate, in our recent wars has significantly increased.

Still, "The Compassionate Instinct" is a worthwhile read, and one that suggests that what we are discovering about ourselves as a species may, just conceivably, help us to redirect our sense of who we are and where we're going with this fragile planet of ours. The question remains as to whether we have yet "hit bottom," to revert to the language of addiction--and addicts we all seem to be, don't we? We're addicted to our fossil fuels, to our comforts and conveniences, to the kinds of food we eat, to our "rights"... To paraphrase yet another great writer, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, we must change our lives. ("Du musst dein Leben aendern.")

I'm having a lot of trouble with the second book, the third in "The Art of Happiness" series by the Dalai Lama and the psychiatrist Howard C. Cutler. I had the same problem with the first in the series, when I reviewed it for the Los Angeles Times a number of years ago. But I need to read a bit further into the book before I talk about it in any further depth.

Thanksgiving: Only Connect

I woke this morning with the familiar quotation from E.M.Forster on my mind. Only connect. We had been talking about this yesterday at breakfast with our friend Les, who is visiting from Las Vegas--about that sense of isolation which we often feel and which, more broadly I believe, is at the root of many of our social ills.

We had been hoping to connect at least with family today, having invited our daughter Sarah and friends down to enjoy a Thanksgiving feast with us here in Laguna Beach. We were looking forward to the occasion, and spent the afternoon yesterday in the kitchen, preparing the good food that is in itself a metaphor for connection on such a day. Then the phone rang last night and Sarah's boyfriend told us she had been admitted to the emergency hospital in severe pain and would have to spend the night there. This morning, he called again to let us know that she is being transferred to the general hospital for further care. Instead of the Thanksgiving dinner we had been looking forward to, we'll be driving up to Los Angeles in a little while to see how she is doing.

The lesson, I guess, is not to count your turkeys. I don't want to seem frivolous, with my daughter suffering, but this is clearly one of those times when it's particularly important to let go of the expectations and deal with the reality as it unfolds. In the meantime, our connection will be different from the one we had anticipated; but it will still be connection, and will be valued for what it is. As for Thanksgiving, we extend our gratitude to all those who are selflessly giving of their time to take care of our daughter on a day when they might otherwise be with their own families; and to all those good people throughout the world who devote their lives to taking care of others.

Addendum

As a footnote to this morning's entry, please read this note in today's "Arts Briefly" in the New York Times, and see if you don't want to throw up. Or throw something. "Someone had to write us a check." Indeed.

Just Taking a Moment...

... today to draw your attention to this article in yesterday's New York Times. It reports on a survey by a non-profit organization called Leveraging Investments in Creativity in conjunction with Princeton Survey Research Associates International and Helicon Collaborative, and it tells you nothing you don't already know (if you're an artist!) about the plight of artists in a cultural climate dominated by commerce and the cult of celebrity. It says, presumably in the dry language of statistical analysis, precisely what I have been observing and writing about in essay form for thirty years and more: that in terms of economic theory alone, the supply of artists and their work vastly exceeds demand. The "market" is limited to the topmost strata of the fortunate (and usually, but not always gifted!) few; and the great majority of those who think of themselves as artists (and that includes writers, actors, dancers, musicians, and so on) must find other than conventional definitions of "success" if they are to fulfill their sense of mission in life. This is where the notion of practice comes in handy. As one who could imagine himself in no way other than as a writer, I am grateful to have discovered the daily meditation practice that now serves me as a model and inspiration for a daily writing practice. Together, they make it possible for me to "persist"--by no coincidence, the title of my soon-to-be-published collection of essays, "Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad With Commerce."

A Slow Day

Ellie came back from her morning walk with her friend Nancy and told me, as we were getting breakfast together, that they had been talking about me behind my back--specifically about their mutual perception that I am always in a rush, always feeling the pressure to move on, and often so impatient to get the job done that the job gets done more hastily than it should be. I need, they decided for me, more time for the poetry in my writing--not necessarily poems, but just the poetry.

I get what they mean. I know this about myself, and have struggled with this pattern for years. It's an old story, a bit boring at this point and familiar to anyone who has followed my writing over the years, because I have returned to it on more than one occasion. I first became consciously aware of this reactive pattern at a "Write For Your Life" workshop led by the writer Lawrence Block. In a process designed to uncover the "Big Lie" that holds us back from the full power of our creative potential, Larry nudged a memory of my near-strangulation at birth by the umbilical cord and the resultant, unconscious conviction that "I have no right to be here." I had been hurrying away from everything ever since--from academic jobs, from writing, from relationships, from social events. It was always time to leave, time to be done with it, time to move on.

So it was no surprise to hear it again. Though I have struggled mightily to remain conscious of the pattern, and despite years of meditation focused on the here and now, I'm aware that I slip back into it all too easily. Even this blog, though I write in it virtually every day, bears the stamp of my impatience. It offers me the opportunity to get it said fast and move on to the next thing to be taken care of. It's not often that I linger over a thought or image, or allow myself to delve too long or deep into its meaning. I started out, as a writer, as a poet. I even published, early on, two books of poems. But I didn't stick with it, did not allow myself the mental space and time to fully develop that potential. I moved on.

So I took my time yesterday. I did not do much. Sat around a lot, and tried to pay attention every time the urge to be doing something, to be doing the next thing, took over. It's not new, what Ellie relayed to me from her conversation with Nancy, but that fact makes it no less important to listen to.

More poetry, eh? We'll see....

Culture Vultures

(Our weekend in Los Angeles... continued.)

We were looking forward to a fine theater experience on Saturday night--that is, until we got there. But more of that in a moment. On the way over to Westwood, we stopped at a couple of galleries we had missed the previous day. First stop was Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects, where we found an entertaining installation of objects and wall pieces by Sean Duffy. Riffing exuberantly on American culture of the 1950s, Duffy mixes sound, iconic object and image to update formative memories--presumably from childhood--and give them a new context in the contemporary world. Among the highlights are an old-style vinyl long-playing stereo player...

... rebuilt with three pickup arms to play the same record (Dusty Springfield) three times simultaneously at fractional intervals--with surprisingly mellow results! It's as though the song is echoed twice, lending the music an eerie quality of depth and resonance, like memory itself. The surface of the player was used as a palette for the paint used to make a three-dimensional "painting" of this wrecked car engine...

... whose every surface has been scrubbed, gessoed, and meticulously repainted to reproduce the original stained and rusted surfaces. The piece is about recycling, reinvention, entropy and renewal--the stuff of human experience. I'd be remiss to omit mention of a piece de resistance, installed in a separate, small gallery space--a large, gleaming disco ball constructed entirely out of spinning fans, lights, and colored plastic ties...

... to create the suggestion of a hectic, overworked globe struggling with the winds of change. Curiously, with so many fans working in conflicting directions, the winds succeed in virtually canceling each other out, leaving nothing but a persistent, gentle whirr. Duffy's work is a charming and engaging blend of nostalgia, fantasy, imaginative exuberance, and sly cultural observation.

Sharon Lockhart, by contrast, at Blum & Poe's palatial new quarters on La Cienega, offers a sober reminder of the plight of the worker in today's recessionary times through the unsparing lens of her film and still cameras. "Lunch Break," the title of the show, combines two film installations with three related series of photographs documenting the activity in a shipyard in Bath, Maine. In one set of photographs, stand-alone lunch boxes, left open...

(sorry, I have no pictures other than this online gallery announcement, but I'm sure you'll find others if you visit the site) ... double as portraits of their owners; in another set, workers are seen at lunch around institutional dining tables. The whole collection is an uncompromising, quasi-anthropological investigation, a study of the bare-bones dignity and individuality of those who labor on society's behalf, for little money and often in heart- and soul-less environments. All of which led me to reflect on the odd and, yes, striking contrast between the life depicted in these powerful photographs and the high-end gallery environment in which they come to our attention. The new Blum & Poe space is cavernous, spectacular in its immaculate whiteness...

... a veritable temple to our society's best substitute for religion: art. There's a certain poignancy in the juxtaposition of the two.

Okay, theater. We had, as I said, been looking forward immensely to seeing "Equivocation," the current offering at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood. We had heard wonderful things about the play from friends, and came with high expectations. And were disappointed. That, actually, in an understatement. I always say that every theater experience is a good experience, if only because of the social interaction that takes place between stage and audience, and amongst the audience members themselves. I may have to revise my adage. My instinct prompted me to leave this one at intermission, one hour and fifteen minutes into the event, and with another hour and a half still to go. We stayed, hoping to be proven wrong in the second part--and regretted our decision.

I really did want to like the play. Here's what it boils down to: lies--the "equivocations" of the title--often tell the truths that the truth is unwilling or unable or dares not tell. The play posits the fictional commissioning of Shakespeare ("Shag") by James I of England, through the agency of the (equivocating) courtier, Sir Robert Cecil, to write a historical drama documenting the Guy Fawkes plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament--and with them, the king himself along with his family; and conflates this plot line with the contemporary real life tragedy of the destruction of the Twin Towers and the subsequent equivocations resorted to by the boy "king," George W. Bush and his administration to justify torture, revenge, and further bloodshed.

It's an interesting conflation of metaphors, surely, but it all gets into a dreadful wordy, pedantic muddle in the play. The headiness of the play's central conceit is compensated by over-the-top emotional conflict between the actors which, for me, never quite rang true. The whole thing is further muddied by a heavily Freudian sub-plot having to do with the character of Shakespeare's daughter and his guilt over the death of her twin brother, his son. It all gets to be too much, too complicated, too fraught with false emotion, too noisy with set-up conflict. The graphic torture, disembowelment and execution scenes do nothing to relieve the agony of argument. Homage to Shakespeare it may be; Shakespeare it is not.

I do see where this kind of drama fits in the modern-contemporary tradition of theater of cruelty and theater of the absurd, of Brecht and Artaud, Genet, Ionesco, Piaranello and Beckett. It's as close as we can come to tragedy, some have argued, in a world abandoned by the gods whose wrath made sport of human fate even as they gave it universal context. I know about post-modernism and its love of fractured narrative. Even so, I have always believed in the theatrical concept of tragic necessity--that sense of inevitability that promotes the suspension of disbelief, a kind of karmic logic--and I could not find it here. It felt like what it is--a clever conceit, extended far beyond dramatic necessity into intellectual play.

I'd be interested to hear from others who may have seen the play, and have had a quite different experience from my own... For me, the magic of the theater simply didn't happen.

Art Rounds 11/09

We're in town for the weekend, and will be spending the better part of it checking in on the art galleries to see a number of shows we have been postponing. Yesterday, Friday, we started out at the furthest point from our house, LA Louver Gallery, where we had been looking forward to seeing the latest collection of paintings, drawings and etchings by Tom Wudl, whose work we have followed since the early 1970s. I was especially interested because I had read, in advance, the text included in the announcement, that the work in this show were inspired by the Avatamsaka Sutra, the "Flower Ornament Sutra." This painting...

and this drawing...

... should give you some idea of the result. (Please use the link above for titles and other details. You'll also find a useful statement by the artist.)

In an art world where it seems that size is still regrettably some measure of success, these pictures dare to be quite tiny in scale. (The gallery even offers a magnifying glass for close examination!) They are meticulously executed, accumulations of finely painted details which come together to create the overall image in much the same way as pixels create the digital image--or atoms gather to create what our eyes perceive as objects. I see each of these pictures as a meditation, an enactment of practice as an aid to focusing the mind even as it creates an object of remarkable, compelling, breath-taking beauty. Acts of uncompromising, dedicated attention, they require the same commitment from the viewer, inviting the eye to participate in each moment of their creation. They become, seductively, without overt or pious religious intent, objects of spiritual devotion in the same way that icons and mandalas have done over the centuries. A truly wonderful experience.

From Venice, we drove back to Culver City to Cardwell Jimmerson Gallery to see the work of a good friend, Peter Sims, who has been a loyal member of our artists' group for years in a fine exhibition that also includes the work of another friend, Bob Burchman, and a third artist, Ron Griffin. Titled Abstraction in Reverse, the show explores the interface between representation and abstraction in the work of these three artists. Peter Sims, our friend, has been taking as the "subject" of his paintings tiny fragments from the world of design--a candy wrapper, a bar code--and enlarging them into what look to be large-scale geometric abstractions. In this remarkable painting (excuse the cell phone photo; be sure to link to the exhibition site, above, for better images) ...

... he takes one small corner of a tapestry by the Bauhaus artist Gunte Stoelzl and transforms the image on a huge canvas, building up layer after layer of paint (160 lbs of it!) until the thing becomes a gleaming mass of pattern, flowing form, color. The texture of the paint mimics, in a strange way, the texture of the weaving, but takes it to a place the original designer never could have imagined--a place where paint itself reigns as the monarch of the moment of its making.  In this way, the artist transforms the cultural trivia of our times into an aesthetic reality of its own--showy, sexy, seductive, sensual, rich in sheer abundant presence.  The trite phrase "a treat for the eyes" takes on a whole new meaning here.  This is a visual banquet.

Bob Burchman--a sometime reader of The Buddha Diaries, I'm happy to report--has a different approach.  He paints reflections of art works, captured as photographs and rendered as faithfully as possible in paint on canvas.  Here's the reflected image of a famous work by the Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha... 

... with, in the background, the reflections of the other pictures in the exhibition in which it is included.  Skillfully done, these paintings leave the viewer's eye in the illusory space between the real world and its mirror image--and the mind in the same space between reality and illusion.  For the Buddhist, it's all an experiential, existential reminder of one of the basic truths of the Buddha's teaching: that what we perceive to be the real world is no more than the construct of our minds.  Burchman's paintings place us smack in the middle of the enigma of our selves and our relation to the apparently solid world around us.  

Ron Griffin also addresses the illusory nature of reality.  In paintings like this one...

... the seemingly collaged common objects--sheets of office stationery, envelopes--are in fact painted on the surface of the canvas (the printed lettering, reversed, is done by a transfer process).  In two remarkable, large-scale "books", Griffin walks us through a series of similar fragments of the real world--a take-a-number ticket, for example, of the kind you pull to mark your place in the supermarket line--recreated in trompe l'oeil detail in modeling paste and paint.  The play, here again is between what we imagine that we see and the reality that actually meets the eye.  The skill with which this play is set in motion is what assures the success of the visual and mental tease.    

We made a final stop at Cherry and Martin where we found a stunning series of C-print photographs of the Biosphere in Arizona by the artist Noah Sheldon.  

This man-made "natural" closed system proved to have a curious history.  Once the pride of biological sciences, it is now apparently in a state of some neglect, and Sheldon's pictures capture some of its shabbier aspects.  This is not, clearly, their intent, which perhaps more accurately to reflect on the environment itself--the beauty and the mystery of planet we inhabit and the way in which we apprehend and experience it through the senses.  His interest in the synesthetic experience in which sight, sound, smell and touch are stimulated simultaneously is evident in the sensual quality of his photographs, whose matte surfaces contrast with the usual glossy expectation of the C-print and seem to open up the image seductively to the eye.  At the same time, Sheldon's pictures remind us poignantly of the delicacy and vulnerability of the natural world, at a moment in history when such reminders are an important remind of its need for our protection.

Altogether, a good day at the galleries.  Thanks for joining me for this brief review!

The Teaching

So here I sit, wondering about what the teaching might be, about those light bulbs I was writing about yesterday. And about the new problem that came up only a few minutes later, when our whole telephone system went haywire--on precisely the day when I had telephone interviews scheduled and appointments made. I call out, and my voice can't be heard at the other end of the line. I hear my respondent saying Hello, hello, hello, but they clearly don't hear me.

Okay, first the anger. That's the initial response to these glitches that occur in life--having mostly to do with technology, of course, or with home maintenance. I suppose the truth is that I'm not good with chaos. I like things to do what they're supposed to do, and would wish to live in a universe where order was assured. Unfortunately, that happens not to be the universe I live in. Perhaps one day I'll wake up and find myself on such a planet, but here on Earth... not going to happen. The anger, though triggered by real events, is in fact as irrational as most emotions: I do know, somewhere in the recesses of what I like to think of as an intelligent brain, that such displeasing events are not of my own making and, in many cases, beyond my ability to correct. In dire cases, I call in Joe the gardener, as I did yesterday, or some person better equipped than I to fix the problem. But in the meantime I know too that I can choose to cling on to the anger and make it worse, or simply watch it grow and dissipate, as it surely will. The difficulty arises in the disconnect between that knowledge and its implementation. I have learned the proper tool: the breath. And there are times when I do indeed manage to rise above the situation and watch it from the comfortable viewpoint of equanimity. But it's hard...

Then there's the panic. I'm obsessively punctual. When the appointed time comes for me to call and I pick up the phone and the phone doesn't work, the panic immediately sets in. I'll be late. I may miss my appointment altogether. What will this person think of me? I imagine her sitting there, awaiting the call with the kind of impatience I myself would be feeling at this moment, and projecting all kinds of bad thoughts in my direction! What kind of a flake is this Peter, who said he'd call at noon? The panic spreads--subtly, though; I'm not throwing fits, but I can feel it as it permeates the body--and threatens to take control. So here again is the teaching moment. Breathe. Acknowledge that mistakes can happen, frequently do, and that reparations are always possible, post facto. If I can't control the situation, at least I can do something to control the way the mind reacts to it. The mind wants to be my tyrant, but I have learned to make it my friend, also, my collaborator not my enemy.

It's a slow process, this learning. I have to relearn each lesson so many times, and even when I think I have it down, I watch myself slip back into the old reactive patterns. It's good, though, to have acquired at least a glimmering of the wisdom that the Buddha taught--lessons that are as relevant and vital today as when he taught them, so many centuries ago.

(Readers: Please note that John Torcello, a regular reader and frequent commentator on The Buddha Diairies, has just released a new ebook called Torcello: Reflections on an Affirmative Path 3, the third in a series of free-verse collections. I'm happy to help him spread the word, and wish him congratulations on his publication, and good luck.)

Changing Lightbulbs

I do not like changing light bulbs. It's an absurdly simple task, no? The subject of innumerable yuks, often of the ethnic variety. I can tell you that this one Brit needs help when it comes to even this simplest of household chores.

My heart sinks at once when Ellie takes note--she's more attentive to these things than I--that one of our ceiling bulbs has blown. It used to be--remember?--that all it took was to unscrew the bulb that dangled from the fixture and screw another one back in. Those days, friends, are gone. First, can anyone account for the sheer number of different types of bulb they use these days? It seems that every socket, or at least every socket in each different circuit of lights, has a different configuration, a different voltage, or wattage, or whatever. (I never understood the difference, nor why it mattered; as for amperes, well...) So first you have to find the right bulb for the particular socket where it needs to be replaced. No mean feat. We seem to have drawers full of the things, indoor and outdoor, each in a different location--and of course the one you want is the one you fail to find after your half-hour search. That means a trip to the hardware store, and more bulbs to add to the collection. You probably had the right one in the first place--you just couldn't find the damn thing.

Once you have the right bulb in hand, you have to secure it in the socket. Again, unscrewing and screwing back in are things of the past. There's the push and pull, the push and twist, the tiny prongs to be inserted into tiny receptacles--and what's the chance you'll find that it's a different size? There are bulbs you can touch, and bulbs you can't. The bulbs you can't, you have to hold in a handkerchief, which of course obscures the holes supposed to receive the pins. This operation can take another half-hour of your precious time, just when you wanted to get down to some work.

Oh, and lest I forget... the ladders. All this juggling of light bulbs and finding of sockets has to be done, inevitably at the top of a ladder. I don't know about you, but I'm dead scared of heights, and two steps up the ladder is already a dizzying height in my experience. One step up, and my head begins to whirl. Two steps, and I'm ready to come crashing down to the floor. Picture me this morning, then, on a short ladder, juggling a bulb (screw-in, thank God!) on a suction cup at the end of a long pole and trying to fix it into a socket twenty feet above my head. Picture me on that same short ladder in the hallway, trying vainly to get the pins of one of those nasty little halogen jobs stuck in and twisted in just the right way to hold.

Lucky it's Wednesday. Wednesday Joe the gardener comes by to help us tend the yard. This Wednesday he was called into service as Joe the light bulb changer. Without him, doubtless, we'd be living eternally in darkness. (Memo to self: change light bulbs, in the future, only on a Wednesday.)

A Useful Insight...

... at the meeting of my men's group last night. I arrived back in Los Angeles from the beach filled with anxiety about the week ahead, particularly the deadline I have set myself for the completion of my next Art of Outrage podcast installment and a seemingly vast number of details to be attended to before leaving for Thanksgiving at the beach--to be followed immediately by a full month down there. What happens is that the anxiety around the details tends to get in the way of the smooth flow of things, and sets up unnecessary obstacles to the work that needs to be done. It delays the moment when I can actually get down to some writing.

So the work I needed to do when my turn came to take a deeper look into where I stand in my life right now was to "get into the flow." And what I came to, in response to thoughtful, probing questions from those around me, was the understanding that I could choose to see those details as a part of the flow, not as extraneous and annoying distractions. Some asked this question: When do you see yourself as a writer? The answer was an easy one: there's never a moment when I don't see myself as a writer. The follow-up: do you see yourself as a writer when you're taking out the garbage? When you're doing the dishes? Of course...

I guess I had known this before, but the questions brought it into renewed focus: I'm not just "writing" when I sit down to write. Clearing the desk to prepare for it is also a part of it. And making the appointments for interviews, if they need to be made. Even answering the ton of email. How much easier it gets to be when I manage to get past the separation that my mind wants to make, between "working" and all those distractions that keep me from it! When I see it all as a part of the flow. The distinction itself sets me up for an unnecessary, time-consuming and discouraging battle.

A useful insight, then... I'm grateful to those who helped me come to it.

A Curious Meditation

It's one of those days when I hit the New Post button with not the first idea what to talk about. I showed up yesterday for my Sunday morning sit at the Laguna Sangha and did, indeed, sit for a full hour without once coming to the place of serenity and focus that I usually manage to find. My mind was scattered, flitting from object to object without settling on one for more than seconds at a time--unusual, because when thoughts take control, they normally tend in one particular direction and follow it for minutes on end before I realize what has happened, and bring it back to concentration on the breath. Strangely, too, in such a circumstance, the hour passed very quickly. The gong sounded before I'd had time to fret about how much longer it would be--the common experience when the mind wanders.

When I sit for a full hour, too, I usually like to structure the experience in some way. I start out with metta--wishing goodwill in ever widening circles to include all living beings--then move on, always following the breath, to one of several different body scans that I use to create a framework in which to establish intention and concentration before moving into full body breathing and, if I'm lucky, a sense of moving out beyond the confines of the body and becoming nothing more than a part of the everything that surrounds me. Yesterday, though, I didn't even manage to maintain concentration for long enough to work through the metta practice, let alone the body scan.

Altogether, a very curious sit--and a rather unsettling experience. Since my mind apparently gave up any notion of discipline or struggle, it was absolutely painless. And I yet I judge it to have fallen short as meditation. It was more like being adrift on shifting currents, with no sense of direction or resistance. I might as well have been asleep and dreaming. But no one, afterwards, complained about any snores!

Poppies

After reading my entry last week, "Eleven Eleven," about the commemoration of the end of World War I on Armistice (Poppy) Day, my cousin sent me a copy of the original of In Flanders Fields, the famous poem by the Canadian physician, John McCrae, who served as an army Lieutenant Colonel. He died, not on the battlefield, but of pneumonia.

It's many years since I first read it--any years, indeed, since I last read it--and I had it classified in my head with the anti-war poems of men like Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen, so I was surprised when I came to that last stanza. "Take up our quarrel with the foe" sounds more like a call to arms than a call for peace; and "If you break faith with us who die..." has the distinct ring of a threat. Guess I should have read it more closely all those years ago--or read what was there rather than what I wanted to see. The first two stanzas are quite beautiful and seem to promise something different from the last, vengeful one. Understandably, I guess, since McCrae had just watched his good comrade die.

I trust, though, that McCrae--along with those other men who died too young in the First World War--is sleeping peacefully among the poppies, if sleep is possible after we human beings depart this planet. Not to mention those who followed all too soon, in World War II, and Korea, and Vietnam, and Iraq and, now, in Afghanistan. And all those other conflicts...

Mob Rule

I was fascinated and appalled by the PBS docudrama, The People Vs. Leo M. Frank. I had not known the story before. Frank, as the docudrama portrays him, was a rather distant, stand-offish Jew who held a supervisory position at a pencil factory in Atlanta in the early 20th century--a time when Jews had only recently begun to migrate to the South. When a 13 year-old girl, an employee, was found brutally murdered in the factory basement, the police investigation focused first on the black night watchmen who discovered the body, but soon turned to Frank. At his trial, a second African American man, one John Conley, was also implicated, but was brought in to testify, falsely, against Frank.

After Frank's conviction, his case became a national cause celebre, with the Northern liberal press protesting loudly about the unfairness of the trial and the anti-Semitism it had unleashed. It soon became clear that Frank was indeed innocent and that Conley was the real culprit, but the then governor of the state took the political route, commuting Frank's death sentence but denying him pardon. Frank was then sent to a prison far from the epicenter of the affair in Atlanta. Fired by blind fury and vengeance, and by their virulent anti-Jewish bias, a posse led by a former governor and a judge drove a hundred miles to the prison and dragged the object of their vengeful fury out, driving him back to the home town of the murdered girl where they hanged him summarily from a tree. The dangling body became a public spectacle that fed the rage of those swept up in the fires of mob justice.

The event marked the expansion of KKK-style hatred from blacks to Jews and other ethnic groups beginning to migrate from north to south. Watching the docudrama, I could not resist the analogy between that lynch mob and the crowd on the Capitol steps, just a week ago, who had been summoned there by extreme right-wing ideologues to shout their slogans against those lawmakers who support a perfectly reasonable--indeed, already much watered-down--health care bill. No lynching, of course, in the literal sense. But the depth of raw rage expressed in the slogans and the banners--including the one that showed images of stacks of naked bodies at the Dachau concentration camp--seemed to me to come from the same well of vile ignorance and blind hatred. Mob mentality was the rule. No amount of factual information or rational argument would have swayed those minds. Aside from their prejudice, nothing would speak to them--not even their own self-interest.

It is truly dreadful to see this spirit alive in America today. The KKK has been long discredited by the vast majority of Americans, but their spirit still infects the thinking of that small, loud minority that we hear so much about in the media. It appeals to the darkest aspect of the human species, an instinctive fear of change and abhorrence of otherness. It's the spirit that leads, in its extremest form, to genocide. Even its less catastrophic manifestations--homophobia, sexism--it reveals a repellent, ugly side to human nature. It is sad indeed when it is institutionally fostered for political ends, and particularly so when its passion are fueled by what claims to be religion.

We were talking about this phenomenon with friends last night. History provides too many examples to demonstrate that it is not peculiarly American. One might have hoped that the modern world would bring with it advances in education and some resultant evidence of greater mutual tolerance on this, our shrinking planet. But no. From the holocaust to Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur, hatred and ignorance persist and bring with them mass slaughter of innocents. That mob on Capitol Hill were not wielding machetes, perhaps; they had not brought ropes to hang those in opposition to their cause. But the words and images proceeded from the same willful ignorance, the same well of fury and mistrust, the same deeply-rooted fear of difference and change.

It's a frightening spectacle. We claim, self-righteously, to be a better, more enlightened place than other, dark spots in the world. As I was saying only the other day, even as we point the finger at others on this planet, we are in great danger of forgetting the beam in our own eye.

Eleven Eleven

In England it's called Armistice Day. When you see Brits of all kinds wearing a poppy in their lapel, it's a reminder of the poppy fields of Flanders, where so many young men died in the First World War. That dreadful conflict was concluded with the signing of the armistice at Compiegne, France at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

The date has a more private significance for myself and Ellie. We signed our own private armistice in front of a downtown judge on this day in 1972 and, with our good neighbors who were witness to the deed, drank our marriage toast at the eleventh hour precisely in a lounge at the Biltmore Hotel. It is, then, thirty-seven years of marriage that we celebrate today.

This evening, we will sit down for dinner with those same neighbors, and with our daughter, Sarah, who was eight months on the way at the time, and arrived safely in this world almost exactly one month later. Ellie's father, ever the romantic, had been boasting among his friends that he was to be an illegitimate grandfather, and was much chagrined when he received my telegram that evening: "Illegitimate grandfatherhood forestalled by downtown judge."

A telegram! That speedy mode of communication in 1972 seems quaint, in these days of texts and emails. Unfathomable, how much time has passed, how much has changed in the world, how much has happened in our lives since then! And here we are, together still, looking around in wonder and considering ourselves fortunate indeed to have survived so long. There have been times when we have had to work hard to keep it all together in the face of life's vicissitudes; but ultimately we have every reason to be grateful for it all, and we look forward to as many years as we are given yet to spend together.

Rhythm

I'm feeling off my stride. I judge that I'm at my best as a writer when I have a rhythm going, and these past few months have been more than usually fragmented--and that's a word I find myself coming back to a lot in recent days. I have been traveling, yes, a couple of times; but more than that, I've had a number of bumps in the road, not unwelcome bumps, but certainly distractions.

This past weekend's training is a good example. I was thoroughly engaged for several weeks before the actual event in the various tasks involved in simply getting ready for it; and there is, too, for me, a kind of emotional preparation that causes my attention to stray from its comfortably familiar paths. Which is all to the good, don't get me wrong. I find it invaluable to be on the edge of my capabilities, because that's where I learn. At the same time, I value the stability of days and weeks in which I can find the rhythm again and build on it. Once lost, it's hard to find again.

Another distraction has been the preparation for the publication of my new book, which will be out shortly, though the publication date is not until January, 2010. Anyone who has published a book without the support of the commercial publishing system will know that along with the many tasks involved in getting it ready to go to press, the book will rapidly be swallowed up into vast void of printed matter unless the author him- or herself takes on the responsibility of promoting it. I have already devoted long hours to brainstorming and planning my own version of a public relations campaign--not because I have any illusions about making a lot of money, or indeed any money. Even my commercially-published books, some by major publishers, have generated no more income than a church mouse might need to survive. No, it's because I really do want to reach out to readers who might be interested in what I have to say. Writing, for me, is about communication, which doesn't happen until a reader sits down with a book and cracks it open.

So I have been getting some speaking and reading gigs lined up, and am making plans to reach out to my online contacts--and that includes you, my friends! Be forewarned!--to let them know when the happy event occurs. (If you have any ideas, please let me know...) It's a time-consuming and yet quite interestingly creative distraction, which takes me out of my writer's chair and makes me think about what it takes to be... a salesman!

The PR business will continue to require my time and attention for a good while to come, but I will be freed up of other major distractions for the foreseeable future--aside from Thanksgiving, of course, and Christmas, and the New Year. Oh, and the continuing health care debate!--so I'm promising myself and others to be a better blogger in the coming days. I have been negligent in visiting my neighborhood, and am looking forward to being more neighborly again. And getting back into the rhythm.

Conflict

"Endgame", I have discovered, is a popular title that covers everything from science fiction video games to the movie I recorded on PBS and watched yesterday--the one that tells the story of the last days of apartheid in South Africa. It's part historical docudrama and part political thriller--and both parts are excellent. I learned a lot about the personal risks men took to join the secret talks that led to the end of that dreadful era in African history. Nelson Mandela--imprisoned and isolated, of course, in the time that these events unfolded--is central to the story as a symbol, but peripheral to the real action. The main players were Professor Willie Esterhuyse (superbly played by William Hurt), Thabo Mbeki (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and Michael Young (Clarke Peters), the go-between who got the whole ball rolling--these two characters no less superbly played. (Knowing more about the vital role he played in ending apartheid, I was surprised and saddened to recall Mbeki's later denial, as President of South Africa, of the scientific facts about AIDS--a stubborn and astounding assertion of ignorance that proved so tragically costly to so many lives.)

What I'm interested in this morning is not so much a movie review--it was excellent, engrossing, moving, written and directed with extraordinary attention to detail. I'm actually more interested in the model the story offered for the resolution of conflict. If two sides as bitterly separated as the National Party government of apartheid South Africa(NP) and the African National Congress (ANC) could end a system so deeply rooted in the national consciousness, anything is possible. I learned that the model was the inspiration for the truce between the Irish Republican Army and the British Government and other, subsequent conflicts between intransigent enemies; and that it is serving again in the form of (assuredly secret) talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

The key, as manifested in "Endgame", is the prompting of an infinitely patient third party, and the slow development of a relationship of growing trust between two men--in this instance, Mbeki and Esterhuyse. There were others, surely, working in the wings to make this possible, but the fate of a nation turned eventually on the shaking of two hands, one black, one white, after countless round-table meetings that seemed at first to offer no hope of reconciliation between two sides so radically far apart.

It comes down to this: men (and now, of course, finally, increasingly, women,) sitting across the table from each other, can come to terms. There is a common interest in accommodation. There are lives to be spared, mutual advantages to be gained in cooperation. There is usually nothing to be gained in the persistence of enmity and conflict. It's a matter of eroding away the mutual suspicion and mistrust, and replacing them, through hours and days and months and years, if necessary, with the kind of trust that permits the opening of dialog and eventually agreement.

I am not naive enough to believe that the heritage of centuries of racism and injustice were dispelled by a single handshake. But the event opened the door that needed to be opened, and cleared the way for such progress as has been made in the years that followed. "Endgame" inspired the hope that we can learn to live together in an increasingly small world, if we can all learn to take responsibility for who we are and be uncompromisingly accountable for our actions. The resolution required that each man look deeply into the shadow of his own reactive patterns--Esterhuyse to recognize the racism rooted in his own South African soul, Mbeki to acknowledge his reverse hatred and the urge to violence it inspired--each man embodying the side he represented.

If I refuse to recognize who I am and the shadows I project on those I disagree with, I will never be able to see clearly who they are, and the shadows they project on me. Connection happens when those barriers between men fall, and connection is the path theat leads toward mutual tolerance and perhaps, eventually, agreement.

Teaching/Learning

I'm home. Back from my weekend on the mountain with the men--staff and participants--from whom I always learn so much. The big piece for me this time was this: when I take on too much, I succeed only in creating confusion in myself and those around me. Not that I created too much confusion, really, nor that the confusion was significantly disruptive. But I do contribute to a more harmonious world when I pay more careful attention to my strengths and limitations. When I take on too much, I realize that I'm just being less than fully conscious, allowing an old reactive pattern to take over--one that I learned at a very young age, a Mr. Nice Guy urge to please, no matter the cost. There were several occasions at the weekend when I was given the opportunity to observe the results of that Nice Guy's actions, and they were not the ones intended. Hence the confusion I just mentioned above.

I don't mean, though, to diminish the contribution I was able to make. Learning and teaching often happen at precisely the same moment, and I believe strongly in that old adage, that we only teach what it is we need to learn. Because there is so much potential for chaos when more than sixty men come together, each with their own beliefs and needs, their own power and their own magnificent potential, there is huge risk and huge possibility, both of which are needed to create the opportunity for transformation. The magic for me personally was the realization that confusion transforms into clarity.

What I have come to understand is that these weekends, magical as they are, offer each participant the opportunity for true transformation, and that virtually every man finds it in his own way. I have been privileged, these past fifteen years since my initial involvement, to watch men of all professions, all ages, all religions, all sexual orientations and all races come to their own moment of transformation, and each one of them has been my teacher. I feel enormous gratitude for having found the path to a place where I am always able to take a good look at where I stand at this moment in my life, and to help make it possible for others to do the same.

One of the recurring motifs I heard this past weekend was the injunction to wake up. And, yes, it's all about consciousness. It's about being conscious of those reactive patterns and emotions (shadows!) that can control our lives when we are not aware of them and how they work, it's about being conscious in our relationships with those we love; it's about being conscious in our actions, and conscious of their results; it's about being conscious of our sense of purpose, of what--as I like to say--we were "given to do" with our lives.

I don't know about you, but I slip up all the time. I drop easily into the grip of unconscious reaction, even though I have the tools and the knowledge to avoid it. I guess--I hope!--that makes me human. Perhaps what I learned will help prevent me in the future from taking on too much and creating confusion. Or perhaps it will simply help me recognize it sooner!

Hiatus

I will not be posting between now and Monday. I leave this morning for a weekend in the mountains and will not be taking my laptop. It would be too much of a distraction at a time when I need to be fully present for the task at hand, serving on staff at a training weekend offered by the Los Angeles Community of The ManKind Project. If you're interested in reading more, here's a piece I wrote after the last time I served on staff. It's good work. There are many men out there in the world who could benefit from the two things we offer with oft-proven success: healing, and a sense of powerful, purposeful intention in their lives.

800 Years Old

It's not often you get invited to an 800th birthday party, so Ellie and I were keen to accept the one we received a while ago, and have been eagerly anticipating the occasion. Last night we dressed up in "business attire"--Ellie looking her usual brilliantly put-together self and myself in a jacket, button-up shirt and tie for the first time in as long as I can remember--and showed up for the event at the stately residence of the British Consul General, Dame Barbara Hay. The honoree? My alma mater, the University of Cambridge.

It was a gala evening--minus, thankfully, the long speeches. Dame Barbara took the microphone very briefly to welcome us, graciously, and to introduce a representative from the Cambridge in America organization, who made the obligatory pitch for funds. A current billion-pound (sterling!) effort has apparently already reached 800 million--an impressive achievement. And Eric Idle, of Monty Python fame and a Cambridge alumnus, gave us all a couple of hearty British laughs. It was a good idea, then, to hand the microphone to representatives of individual colleges to bring together their members from among the substantial crowd. I made an appeal for alumni from my own college, Gonville & Caius, to check in with me but alas, with no result.

(For those unfamiliar with Cambridge, the university is a loose assemblage of a good number of colleges, each with their own campus and facilities. Students are members of one college or another for living, dining, and other collegiate activities, but the instruction and course work is offered by the university at large. As a member of Caius, I lived in college for one of my three years--the full length of study for a Cambridge degree, as opposed to the usual four years over here--and most of my friends and associates were fellow Caius men. Yes, in those days, men. Today Caius, like most of the colleges, also welcomes women. The professor who directed my studies over the years was also a Caius don, but several of my other tutors, with specialties in their fields, were affiliated with other colleges; and the lectures were offered by the university in university facilities. I was shocked to discover that there are now new colleges I had never even heard of!)

My appeal from the podium produced no results, as I say. Ellie said it was barely audible above the din of socializing voices as the drinks and canapes were passed around. But I did run into a couple of Caius men, one of whom I already knew from the party Ellie and I gave for my fellow alumni a couple of years ago; he teaches yoga in a variety of venues. The other was a man I had not met before, who lives up north but owns a communications business down here in Los Angeles, located close to us in the Silver Lake area, so I do hope to get together with him on one of his frequent visits south.

I am particularly sensitive, these days, to the privilege we Cambridge graduates enjoyed--and indeed, continue to enjoy to this day. Deserved or not, my Cambridge degree has served as an impressive calling card for me, both personally and professionally, throughout my life. I felt that privilege keenly last night, in the company of so many abundantly gifted people, men and women, gathered on the lawn at the British Consul's residence. I was impressed by the quality of everyone I spoke to, young and old--by the intelligence, the wit, and the social poise of these people who had shared with me the good fortune to be one of the privileged few.

I doubt, these days, that I'd even qualify. The competition for places at the great universities, Cambridge included, is intense. I'm not that smart. But it does feel good to have spent three years of my life at an institution that has been a major force in the academic world for the past 800 years, and I am profoundly grateful to have been granted that opportunity.

So Happy Birthday, Cambridge! I wish you many more--and that billion-pound sterling shot in the arm should give you something to be working on.

Co-ed

Yesterday evening I showed up at the meeting of the group of men with whom I sit down twice a month for an opportunity to take a look at what is happening in our lives. We have found a new location, in a space that is used primarily as a yoga studio, and a part of the deal--aside from contributing a fee for our use of the space--is to put our collective knowledge and expertise at the service of the women who organize and teach in this still fledgling operation.

Our meeting last night provided us with the first opportunity to sit down with our gracious hosts, and it proved a wonderful occasion. The women were sitting in a circle, engaged in a business meeting when we arrived, and I sat and watched the arousal of my familiar irritation and impatience as we were kept waiting on the sidelines while their meeting spilled over, past the time we had arranged to meet with them. My stuff, as they say. I have this obsession with time, a pattern that has repeated itself innumerable times over the years: I can't bear to be late for anything, and I very easily get pissed off when others are late for me or keep me waiting. It feels like a personal insult to my tender ego. I like to start on time, every time, no exceptions.

All of which was good, since it put me on edge and made me particularly aware of what was going on inside. Still waiting for their meeting to end, we men stepped briefly outside to do our customary check-in with each other, and I was happy to have a moment to take a look at how that old pattern had been triggered again. The result was that when we did join the circle of women on the floor of the yoga studio, I'd got past my petty irritation and was able to be completely present for the occasion.

And as things turned out, it was a terrific meeting. We were the smaller group--only four of our number made it for the evening, joining ten women in their circle. I think all of us were tuned in to this great blend of conscious masculine and conscious feminine energy. We spent some time telling them about our organization and our activities, and suggesting ways in which we might be able to offer them support in the work they do. Their response was gratifying. It's not vain bragging, I believe, to say that our training and the intensity of our group meetings keeps us in touch with an inner strength and sense of mission which shows up in the way we choose to live our lives. Not to sound too pompous, I hope, we demand integrity of ourselves, and of other men in our circle, and hold each other accountable for our actions in the world. We many not always succeed, but we do make the effort and we make it in full consciousness of our failings as well as our success.

We clearly managed to convey something of this spirit in our shared circle last night. It simply felt like we were all in the same space, on the same wavelength, in an immediate and pleasing common bond. A rare and delightful sense of mutual acknowledgement between men and women, on terms of comfortable and unquestioned equality. We look forward to more.

This coming weekend, I'll be heading up into the mountains to serve as a staff member on our next training. It's my hope and belief that we'll enable another small group of men to come down from the mountain more fully in touch with themselves, each other, and with those they love. It's our immodest intention to change the world, "one man at a time."

The Novice: A Book Review

The Novice: Why I Became a Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit, & What I Learned, by Stephen Schettini, Greenleaf Book Group Press

I wrote about this publication last week, if you remember, before even reading it, simply to praise it as a beautifully-made book. I promised to write more about it after actually reading it.

If “The Novice” were fiction, it would be called a Bildungsroman—a novel of education. It’s not fiction. It’s the personal story of a young man who was brought up in Gloucester, England, where he felt himself a bit of an oddball with his Italian surname and an immigrant father who operated a fancy restaurant—exotic for its location, surely, on the main street of an English county town. In compensation, he chose to rebel—against his parents and their Catholic faith, against his school, against the rules, values and conventions of his middle-class social environment. The book is the long story of his battle with the rebel within, and of his coming to terms with himself as a finally liberated man.

His path is not a comfortable one, nor does Schettini attempt to make it so as he recounts it. We follow him from his early, angry years as a child and his defiant, shop-lifting youth to a disillusioned and disenchanted young manhood. At loose ends and casting about for some kind of meaning to his life, he breaks away from family and home, and takes us along on his cross-continental hitchhiking journey to India. Once there, he describes his discovery and embrace of Buddhism; he introduces us to his teachers and his fellow students at a Swiss Tibetan center where he goes to study, and to the often conflicted path toward his initiation as a monk.

We accompany him, back in India, to the Tibetan Sera Monastic University, and watch him grow disillusioned once again by discrepancies he perceives between the ideals of the orthodox Buddhist teachings and the devastating reality of a quasi-medieval environment rampant with hunger, disease, ignorance, and ubiquitous filth. We return with him to Europe and observe his downward spiral as he persists in obstinately questioning the certitudes in which his teachers would seem to have him believe—along with the upward spiral that brings him to a mature, less dependent sense of self and a release, not only from his monastic vows, but from the intellectual torment of doubt. He finds, finally, his heart, and the balance between heart, mind and spirit that can lead to the kind of inner peace for which he has been searching.

It’s a lively read. Schettini excels at evoking the particularity of environment, whether natural landscape or bustling city. Here he is, describing his arrival at the foot of the monumental Bamiyan Buddhas (since that time, of course, barbarously destroyed by the Taliban):

Beyond the open space an enormous shadow dominated a sheer rock face at the western end. It was surrounded by several hundred smaller shadows—caves, most of them impossibly high. The lorry brought us into a direct line of sight, and the large shadow resolved itself into a niche in the vertical cliff. It contained something of immense bulk. In a flash of sunlight, the sandstone features were set in sharp relief and the ancient standing Buddha was revealed.

And here’s a back street in Kabul, at night, in 1974:

The main streets were lit only dimly [...] I turned into dark laneways and the moon shone in eerie silence, full and accusing. Thick tobacco smoke and male conversation wafted from an open window. In a corner outside, a girl’s voice crouched in a shapeless burka, whispering protectively over a bundle in her arms. The embroidery around her face rustled. A bubbling sound from within made me look up, and I watched a refilled narghile being set down amid a circle of men. One of them glanced in my direction and turned away. The girl’s hand brushed my ankle and her voice pleaded. I dropped some coins in her hand.

This remarkable facility with language as an evocative tool brings us into the action and places us vividly in the situations Schettini describes. It moves us along, as readers, as much as does the narrative itself. We are present, engaged. That the author is able to bring the same clarity to describe his inner states and his relationships with those around him makes his story as profound as it is compelling to read. As one who myself abandoned the Christian beliefs with which I was brought up and who also found in Buddhism, later in life, the source of a potential inner serenity, I found myself resonating with much of Schettini’s experience. His doubts and his intellectual conflicts, as well as the intensity of his pursuit of an elusive truth about the life we’re given to live here on earth were intimately familiar to me.

I did find myself wishing that the end of the book—the mature commitment to a life of family and service—had seemed a little less rushed in the context of the whole. In terms of the personal journey, Schettini’s re-dedication of himself as a teacher and counselor along the path to happiness could usefully have been given more attention than it receives in the final “Epilogue.” Still, this remains a quibble that reflects, perhaps, my personal priority rather than the author’s. All in all, a truly satisfying read.