acrophobia and cathexis

If I remember my M. Scott Peck correctly, cathexis is a term used in psychology to refer to the extension of one's ego-boundaries toward and around something outside oneself. Example: when a guy cathects his favorite football team, their triumphs and disappointments become his triumphs and disappointments, even though the team has no idea the guy exists. Cathexis is therefore often one-sided, as it can happen not only in dude-team situations, but also in dude-inanimate object situations.

With all that in mind, I confess that I've probably cathected my BlackBerry, and have cathected various other pieces of Walk-related equipment. This state of affairs was brought home to me today when, while my laundry was perking, I decided to take a stroll across the Bridge of the Gods.

The bridge is located a few dozen yards uphill from the laundromat; vehicles entering and exiting on the Oregon side must pay a toll. Pedestrians, as the grandmotherly lady at the toll booth informed me, may cross the bridge for free.

Not having read anything more than Alan Cook's comment (appended to a previous post) about the history of the bridge, I simply started across, my eyes sweeping the bridge for some sign of a pedestrian lane. Seeing none, I shrugged and moved onto the span.

Are you the kind of person who never watches his/her feet when walking? Long years of bad luck have made me the sort of person who watches where he's going; the moment I stop doing so, I'm sure to step on a stone or partway into a pothole (this may, in fact, have contributed to my fall back in Washington). Were I to look up while descending a staircase, I'd be Gerald Fording every time.

So I was looking down when I started across, and after a few yards I stopped cold, because what I saw froze my heart in my chest: the grating under my feet allowed a full view of the bridge's underlying structure and the Columbia River. Yikes.

It was years ago that I discovered I had a thing about heights. One summer when I was in high school, I worked construction. It was very educational, and the gentleman who hired me, a man from our church, paid me very well by 1980s standards: 20 dollars an hour.

But I spent only two weeks on the job because I learned I was a zero at construction. Three incidents motivated me to quit: first, I forgot to lock the wheels on a rolling scaffold, and the thing slipped out from under me while I was working on a joist. The scaffold rolled toward the rectangular hole in the floor that was to become the head of a set of stairs (I was at attic level); it fell sideways into the hole and stuck there, while I hung stupidly from the joist, watching the disaster unfold.

Second, while outside the house, I was asked to carry a bucket of nails up to some guys on the second floor. To do this, I had to use a long ladder that was leaning against the side of the house. As I climbed, I could feel the ladder shaking beneath me, and I was gripped by the conviction that I and the ladder were going to pitch sideways. I'll never forget how much that ladder shook.

Lastly-- and this was the straw that broke the camel's back-- I was on the roof laying out roofing paper, laying chalk lines, and hammering nails into the chalk lines to fasten the paper to the roof.

Laying out the roofing paper was easy and didn't even require standing (or maybe it does require standing, but no one ever told me otherwise). You simply sit on one side of the roof with your huge, heavy roll of black roofing paper, then bowl it across the roof so that it covers a strip of the roof as it unrolls. After you've done one strip, you shift to an uncovered portion and repeat the process with another roll of paper.

Creating the chalk lines did require standing, which is when it finally began to dawn on me that I might have a serious thing about heights. The device that makes the chalk line looks like one of those heavy metal tape measures. Once you determine where the underlying joists are, you hook the chalk line to the edge of the roof, move to the roof's peak while making sure the chalk line is exactly over the joist, then you snap the line, which is covered in chalk. If you've done your job right, you've just given yourself a reliable guide that'll help you drive your nails in a straight line, securing the roofing paper to the joist below (the joist generally isn't visible because the roof is usually covered, at that point in the construction process, by large rectangles of plywood).

I managed to snap a chalk line correctly, but it was when I began to hammer the nails into the roof that I knew this was my last day on the job. I had worn all the wrong clothing for construction (wrong clothing seems to be a recurrent theme in my life): I had on my New Balance running shoes and a pair of sweatpants, much like the heavy cotton things I just sent home. Bad move: neither my shoes nor my pants allowed me a firm purchase on the smooth roofing paper, so each blow of my hammer sent me inch by inch toward the roof's edge. I had started hammering from the very top of the chalk line, but as I drove successive nails closer to the roof's edge, I felt I was going to fall off. I can't remember whether I finished all the chalk lines or not; I suspect I quit early that day. I do remember apologizing to Mr. Lowdermilk for being a poor worker; he took the whole thing with good humor and paid me fairly for my work. Maybe "work" should be in scare quotes. Frequent commenter Max Watson is right: I'm a wuss.

So that's how I discovered that high places and I generally don't get along. That fear was brought back to me today as I realized that only a thin gridwork of rusty metal lay between me and a long plunge to the river below. The blowing wind, a near-constant feature of the Gorge when you're near the river's edge, wasn't helping matters.

My fear was irrational, of course: cars were rolling placidly back and forth across the bridge, a testament to its trustworthiness.* I also found that, as long as I didn't look down, the bridge appeared solid, and I was much calmer as a result.

While walking from the Oregon side to the Washington side, I pondered taking a downward-pointing photo with my BlackBerry, a thought that sent a new thrill of fear through me. This is where cathexis played its role today, for I couldn't help feeling that, if the BlackBerry slipped from my fingers and fell into the river (the gaps in the bridge's surface could easily allow the BlackBerry through), this would be like me slipping through the bridge's surface and into the river.

It wasn't until I'd forced myself across to the Washington side that I decided to take the BlackBerry out and get it ready to take pictures during the return trip to Oregon and my laundry. I snapped a pic of the bridge's entrance from the Washington side, then started back across, keeping my eyes up until I was far enough to be over the river. Cars in the oncoming lane passed me with polite, deliberate slowness; I began to wonder how many pedestrians crossed this bridge each day. Once I reached a decent spot, I steeled myself, looked down, aimed the BlackBerry at the grid, and snapped the photo you saw in a previous post.

While I'm perversely proud to have crossed the Bridge of the Gods twice on foot, I admit it's not an experience I'd care to repeat. However irrational it was, the fear was real.

One final note: never having been to a therapist, I haven't been officially diagnosed with acrophobia (come to think of it, I'd also like to be tested for dyslexia). I do know that I'm OK with heights when I'm on soaring balconies, bridges with high railings, and mountain paths and overlooks with safety features like handholds and such. I've been up Seoul's Bukhan Mountain a few times, and that's a place that might scare a severe acrophobe. I mention all this in anticipation of questions like, "If you're so afraid of heights, why are you doing this walk? Didn't you realize you'd be dealing with heights?" I have a problem with heights, yes, but in general, if I feel that security is within arm's reach, I'm OK. A staircase can be a thousand feet tall, but if it's firm and has high railings, I can climb it. By contrast, I can't see myself tackling an obstacle like the US Air Force Academy's Tiltin' Hilton. No, sir.

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*There's an interesting philosophical discussion to be had here about the rationality of trusting something merely thanks to a history of trustworthiness. David Hume comes to mind as an empiricist philosopher who would hesitate to conclude the bridge was safe merely because of its track record (beware the pitfalls of inductive reasoning!). But as a pragmatist, he probably wouldn't have hesitated to use the bridge.


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geese provide scale

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on the move

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no... human being could have made prints like that

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Cascade Locks at a glance

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...and this is why you DON'T LOOK DOWN while crossing the Bridge of the Gods

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Bridge of the Gods, Washington side

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more thoughts on the Wed-Thu hike

I still don't know how far I walked all Wednesday and early Thursday, but wouldn't be surprised to discover it was over twenty miles.

Back at Chanticleer Point, I met a Korean family that was doing a driving tour. We spoke almost entirely in Korean; I asked them what they were doing, and they asked me what about my walk and how I was dealing with blisters and such (my hiking shoes give me no more trouble, by the way; they appear finally to have been broken in). I haven't had blisters in a while, which is great. Even at the end of yesterday's long hike, nada.

Man, yesterday feels as though it happened a year ago. The first half of that hike was a lot of fun-- passing through downtown Troutdale and Corbett, stopping at the Chanticleer and Crown Point overlooks, enjoying the great weather and gorgeous scenery-- fun, indeed. But the second half of the journey, which involved descending to the water's level, feeling trapped on the Historic Highway, then finally reaching the freeway and walking along it, was a world of hurt.

Surprisingly, my knee held up pretty well through all of it. I was shuffling along at a little more than 2mph; during the night, I passed a number of sightseeing stopping points on the Historic Highway, the most memorable of which was Horsetail Falls, a waterfall that, unlike Multnomah, was immediately visible from the road, and did indeed look like a flowing horse's tail, ghostly gray at night.*

The Historic Highway played with my emotions until the very end, when it finally turned and plunged into I-84. Before the end of the highway, I passed the Ainsworth campground and seriously considered stopping there for the night, but some stubborn impulse kept me pushing onward toward the freeway.

In retrospect, I think stopping at Ainsworth would have been the better choice: reaching the freeway wasn't the solution to my problems. While it's true the freeway isn't as hilly as the Historic Highway, exits are few and far between. I was reassured by the freeway's broad shoulders, but walking along the freeway, even after 2AM, is a gritty, noisy business. All the trucks are out in force, headlights glaring, engines roaring, kicking up gusty, sandy wakes as they pass by.

The temptation to stop grew in force as time dragged on that night. I was walking eastward on the westbound side of the freeway, head bowed in anticipation of truck gusts, and frequently looking to my left, evaluating patches of grass and dirt for their camp-worthiness. I wondered whether I could get away with lying just behind a jersey barrier, out of sight of all drivers. In almost every instance, I decided against it.

Around 3:30AM, though, it had become too much and I knew I needed to stop. A leftward glance showed me I was near some sort of narrow road or bike path, separated from the freeway by a screen of vegetation that varied in thickness. I wearily stepped off the road and walked until I was behind a thick patch, then removed my pack and sat heavily down, doing Not Much of Anything until I felt I could move again. My fanny pack, which contains my toiletries and hangs off my neck when I'm hiking, frequently doubles as my pillow; I unrolled my foam pad (after realizing how cold the asphalt was; it was a very cool night), took out my windbreaker and my dad's poncho, then kicked back with my foldable, laminated map of Oregon to see what I had passed and where I was headed.

Earlier, I had looked across the interstate and, with the aid of my flashlight, seen the big green sign announcing that Cascade Locks was eight miles away.** When I looked at the map, I saw that the city's name was written in medium-sized print, i.e., this wasn't a one-horse town. A Google search of hotels in Cascade Locks revealed several, including a Best Western whose rooms were in the $110-$120 range-- too much if I planned to stay two nights.

Anyway, I was glad to see that Cascade Locks had what I was looking for. I decided to take a nap on the bike path, and I slept from about 4AM to 5:15AM. The sky was brightening and the stars were gone when I rolled up my poncho and foam pad, and creakily re-shouldered my backpack. The morning was still cool, so I kept my windbreaker on, though I eventually threw the hood back once my noggin began emitting too much heat.

And now comes the part of the narrative where some of you more delicate folks might want to turn away, because I'm about to discuss what it's like to poop en route without recourse to the accoutrements of civilized society.

I pooped twice during my walk-- once while on the Historic Highway, and once more on I-84, not long after waking up from my nap.

My first session occurred while I was at that parking lot described in a previous post, the one where all was dark and quiet except for the rude SUVer who drove into the lot, shined his headlights at me, and drove away.

The cover of darkness is bizarrely reassuring when you need to poop in the open, but it also prevents you from doing a proper finger-check to make sure you haven't sullied your digits during the wiping process. At the moment when I needed to go, I had a flashlight with me, and was able to find a spot well away from the road at which to do the evil deed.

I've never been a good squatter, so when I'm in the wild I require something to grip for balance, like a thin tree trunk or a low tree branch (in the squat toilet stalls in Korea, I normally brace my hands against the cubicle walls). Nature provided: I found myself near a tree with a low, dead, barkless branch-- the perfect handhold. After that, it was a matter of "dropping trou," as they say, and letting fly.

My greatest fear, whenever I squat-poop, is that I'll accidentally hit my pants. This is why, in Korean toilet stalls of the squat variety, I simply take my pants off. But out in the open here in America, pooping on public land with the possibility of being seen by any random driver, I thought it best to keep the clothing on in case I suddenly needed to button up. So in the end, I had to squat very carefully, using my handhold to help me lean back and provide Harry Enos with a clear shot of the ground. It worked. I wiped using the porta-pack of tissues I'd brought along (one of several such packs). A flashlight-aided finger check confirmed digital cleanliness, though I did see a glistening patch on my palm that turned out to be pine resin. I'm glad that's all it was.

But almost immediately after wiping, I was struck by the urge to poop again. I attribute this to the evening coolness; as much as I like cool weather, it often makes me want to dump. So I redid the whole stinky procedure, from squat-prep to finger-check, and managed once again to avoid hitting my pants.

That's when I realized I'd forgotten to dig a cathole, which is what you do in the wild when pooping. You dig the cathole, keep the dirt nearby, void into the hole, and replace the dirt on top of it.

I had a trowel buried somewhere in my backpack for just that purpose, but in my fatigue I didn't want to bother taking it out, so I used my shoe's heel to scuff out a cathole next to the landing site, then used some nearby sticks to maneuver my leavings (and tissue) into the hole and cover the whole thing up. I placed a few rocks atop the burial site to mark my, er, passing, then made my getaway not long after.

The second poop session was far worse, as it occurred around 6AM, i.e., in broad daylight-- and on the freeway, no less. I was somewhere between exits 40 and 41 when the intestinal urge struck again, strongly, making me wonder whether the gods were playing a sick joke on me.

I've been in similar straits before; my normal strategy is to stave off the horrible feeling of increasing pressure by counting breaths or by taking a random phrase and making it into a mantra that takes my mind off the impending cataclysm. But in every previous case, I had some idea how far off the nearest toilet was. On Thursday morning, I had no clue when, or even if, I would happen upon a place where I could crap in peace.

By 6AM, the freeway was a crowded place, with almost no carless intervals, and therefore no time to hop the barrier and disappear into the bushes. And in my case, loaded down with a backpack, fanny pack, and trekking pole, shedding my equipment before shedding my load would take time. In other words, I couldn't just make myself vanish, ninja-like, from the road.

As the brown urge became overwhelming, though, I became less worried about what some random drivers might think of a nameless guy moving into the bushes. All I wanted was a place that was out of sight of traffic, which meant walking until I found a patch of ground that sloped downward and offered adequate cover.

I found what I was looking for not long after crossing a bridge. At the end of the bridge, the ground sloped away. Tall grass, Queen Anne's lace, and some unidentifiable thorny plants graced the margin closest to the freeway, and a thick patch of bushes screened me from oncoming westbound traffic. I would have been visible to eastbound traffic, but at that point on the freeway, the eastbound lanes were separated from the westbound ones by a wide median.

Nearly frantic at this point, I brunted my way through the grass and thorns, walked down the short slope until I was hidden from traffic by the bushes, dropped trou, gripped a pile of fallen branches and twigs for balance, and let fly with a bellow of relief that was immediately covered up by the noise of the traffic. As before, I managed the miracle of not hitting my own clothing, Allah be praised.

You can't know how worried I was that a police cruiser was going to stop where I was right then, but I encountered no police at any point during my walk on the freeway. About a mile or so farther down the road, I stopped at a spot that would have made for a far better pooping site; while there, I called various hotels and motels, which is how I ended up at this, the Cascade Motel.

I'm sorry to have put you through the agony and ecstasy of the poop story, but this is a special situation. Unlike when you're going from house to house, toilets aren't readily available on the freeway; there are no residences, gas stations, hotels, or porta-johns to succor you. And unlike when you're camping, you aren't guaranteed the privacy that comes with being in the wild (or at least having access to a campground toilet): cars are everywhere, and cover is hard to find, especially if you're loaded down with a backpack and other equipment. That's something for you prospective transcontinental walkers to keep in mind.

I reached the Cascade Motel, which lies outside the town center, at 8:57AM, having taken Exit 44 off the interstate to reach Cascade Locks. The town is small and tourism-oriented; the main drag greets you with a Best Western and a Char Burger restaurant, along with some other local hotels, a few shops and ice cream places, and the inevitable Shell and Chevron gas stations that seem to dominate the Pacific Northwest.

The lady who runs Cascade Motel is very nice; she allowed me to check in early. I got my key for Room Number 1 (shown previously), shed my equipment and clothing, took a shower, and was dead in bed by 10:30AM. I woke around 3:30PM, then must have gone back to sleep, because when I woke again it was dark outside.

All in all, that Wednesday-Thursday walk was a real adventure: draining, frightening, and frustrating, but also a pleasure. I had the chance to meet new people, drink RC Cola, and enjoy some incredible vistas. What more could you want?

And now that it's 5:45AM, guess what: I'm gonna sleep some more!

A note before I go: I'm very achy right now, so it's possible I'll hang around Cascade Locks another day or two. I didn't know this, but the motel lady told me there's a KOA campground not even a mile from where I am. If I do decide to stay longer, I'll be shifting to that site.

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*For all I know, the Multnomah Falls might be visible from the road during the day. I heard the falls that night, but didn't see them.

** It was a thirteen-mile walk from Corbett to Multnomah Falls, and I'd already walked a few miles from western Troutdale to Corbett; it was an unknown distance from Multnomah to the I-84 junction, and from there to my stopping point on the freeway. My walk might have been as long as 25 miles, maybe longer, but I'd have to check that on a real computer. All I know is that I was going at a snail's pace by the end, marching like a zombie. "Go easy on the knee," indeed.


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interior view 2

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interior view 1

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Cascade Motel: it's bungalow style!

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the so-called Bridge of the Gods

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journey's end (for now)

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Horsetail Falls, 12:42AM (Thu.)

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taking a break

It's about 11:30PM, and I've been walking pretty much all this time. I stopped at Bridal Veil Park to take a much-needed dump (hello again, turkey club sandwich!), but otherwise I've been on this Historic Highway, wanting like hell to get onto I-84, but always unable to.

It's been an exercise in frustration. From a bit before Crown Point, the highway began to descend, switchbacking along the mountain contours, bringing me ever closer to my goal, which was to walk eastward on the shoulder of westbound I-84 until I found an exit to a campground or cheap motel (yeah, I saw a hitchhiking site that quoted Oregon traffic law re: hitching and pedestrians, and pedestrians do seem to be able to walk the freeways here; a commenter linked to a different hitching site from the one I saw, but linked the same legal info).

Unfortunately, the highway began to behave more like a graph of "1/x." You know the graph: the plotteds curves come closer and closer to the X and Y axes, but never touch them.

Yes: tonight, I-84 is my asymptote, and it's pissing me off. The Historic Highway has on several occasions brought me downward and leftward to put me within spitting distance of the railroad tracks separating me from the freeway... but every time I swerved nearer, I'd end up swerving away, upward and rightward. I'm ready to kill the people who constructed this road. Or maybe I should kill the builders of I-84; the highway's probably been around longer, and it would have been up to the freeway builders to add the requisite off-ramps.

The ex-Marine at the Super 8 motel in Troutdale had told me that Mulnomah Falls was a must-see; it was a shame to pass it in the dark tonight, as all the restaurants and shops were closing for the night. I was starting to hope that the Falls would have a hotel on the grounds; it's probably a good thing they don't, because I imagine it'd be pretty expensive.

So here I sit, still on Historic Highway, barely 150 yards from I-84. I'm in some sort of parking lot, perhaps one of those places where a driver can pull off the road and take a nap. Aside from the distant glow of headlights and taillights from the freeway, the night is dark. The trees rise above me on either side of the road, a jagged trench of blackness. The sky grins its starry grin, and the night is, thankfully, cool enough to send most of the mosquitoes packing.

I had refilled my Camelbak at Chanticleer Point, so I don't currently lack for water. After I rest a bit more, I plan to keep walking until I finally hit the damn interstate, and when I see an exit for a cheap hotel, I'll take it and book myself for two nights. I think I'll have earned it.

So... gotta get up and go soon. Ah, yes-- one more thing I should note: after about 9PM, the highway pretty much emptied out. Except for the very occasional car, I've been alone with the forest sounds, walking in the dark. Unlike that walk along Chuckanut Drive in Washington, though, the night here is darker, so I've been hugging the middle of the road (the double-yellow line is a barely-visible gray blur, easier to see when you look away from it) to avoid pitching off a steep drop on my left or grazing mossy boulders on my right.

More later, folks. I'll be curious to see how many miles I walked when I next get hold of a real computer.

A quick PS: just as I was finishing this post up, an SUV drove by, braked, stopped, then swerved partway into the parking lot to point its lights right at me. I understand the driver's curiosity, but shining your headlights on someone is pretty rude. I wonder whether the driver has called the police. Maybe I'd better get going, eh?


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Multnomah Falls, 10:09PM (Wed.)

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my first ever DEAD SKUNK!

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this sort of drop-off always freaks me out: if a car comes, I have nowhere to go

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the bridge I just crossed (over Latourell Falls)

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Crown Point

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LaRhesa and Josh from San Antonio

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sitting cross-legged on a bench at Chanticleer Point

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at Chanticleer Point

So I've walked from the western edge of Troutdale (effectively the eastern edge of Portland; Monday's walk was barely 7 or 8 miles) through Troutdale's very cute and very brief main drag, through Troutdale's farms and burbs, then through Corbett,* following the Historic Columbia River Highway pretty much all the while.

But that may have been a mistake. You see, the Oregon side of the river has plenty of campgrounds where a tired Kevin can kick back for the night (Corbett's lone B&B was, as mentioned, $350 a night), but those campgrounds appear to be accessible only from the water's edge. As you saw in the previous photo, I'm several hundred feet above the river, and the roadway that follows the river is I-84, which at this point also doubles as Route 30.

Here's the thing: a dude at the bar told me that, in Oregon, it's legal to walk along the freeways. If this is true, and it's absolutely urgent that I confirm this, most of my navigational issues will disappear for at least half of my trek along the WA/OR border. The only other thing I'd need to confirm is that I-84 has wide shoulders all along its length. If those two questions have "yes" for an answer, I plan on dumping the high road in favor of the low, and following 84 as far as possible.

Today's walk has been only mildly hilly, but even mild hilliness bothers my knee. I'm hoping that hugging closer to the river's edge will mean less variation in elevation.

Am going to try to confirm the interstate's walkability now. In the meantime, if you know the answer to the walkability/wide shoulders questions, please leave a comment. But only if you're sure and can point me to an authoritative online source. I don't want to be picked up by police more frequently than I absolutely have to.

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*While in Corbett, I did stop for lunch at a bar, where I had a (cheap!) turkey club sandwich and another blast from my past: an RC Cola, which is almost impossible to find in northern Virginia an nonexistent in Korea. I'd forgotten how much I missed RC.


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Chanticleer Point (Columbia River Gorge overlook, next to the Portland Women's Forum)

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Portland Women's Forum??

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a little help, please

I'm on the road, but racking my brains about BlackBerry setup. I've managed to figure out how to restore just about every lost function, but I still can't check my voicemail because I don't know what the voicemail number is.

So I turn to you, O Ye BlackBerry Curve owners: how does a person with a 703 area code find out what his voicemail number is?

Please leave a comment, and thanks in advance. (BTW, I did try the byzantine ATT.com service, but got lost in the labyrinth. Perhaps someone can navigate it better than I?)


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I really AM in a foreign land

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remind me: what country am I in, again?

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...and to the right is the Sandy River

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leaving the motel this morning (and sweaty, as usual, after packing!)

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Jesus and politics

Many of you may be aware that there exists a small but vocal school of thought that claims that Jesus of Nazareth never existed. The basic argument is simple: there is no direct evidence that Jesus walked the earth-- no hair, no bones, no clothing (unless you consider the Shroud of Turin authentic), no writing directly from his hand.

It's easy to see why such a school of thought might form: the ancient evidence for Jesus' existence boils down to the canonical gospels, the Pauline epistles, and a few other canonical and non-canonical writings. Two other ancient extra-biblical authorities are known to have mentioned Jesus: the Jewish historian Josephus and the Roman historian Tacitus. Neither spends much time on the man from Nazareth.

The writings of Paul are, chronologically speaking, the earliest writings of the New Testament. Most or all of the Pauline epistles would have been written late in Paul's life, putting them generally in the 50s-- that is, about two decades or more after Jesus' death. This makes it very unlikely that anything written about Jesus was actually written by eyewitnesses.

My point in mentioning all this isn't to agree with the "Jesus didn't exist" school of thought; it's simply to reinforce the fact that over two billion people base their faith in Jesus on almost no historical support (doxastic practices will have to be a subject for another post; much of the current debate in philosophy of religion focuses on epistemological issues related to belief-formation). Given what we know about human psychology, it seems natural, to me at least, that we might try to fill in the gaps of Jesus' life and, as often happens when humans approach the divine, to re-create him in our own image.

This point was reinforced recently when I heard two interesting claims while at the Metanoia Peace House. One claim was that Jesus preached socialism (a claim I've heard several times before); the other was that Jesus preached against capital punishment.

I'm a bit leery of seeing Jesus as the advocate of or spokesman for a socioeconomic theory, especially in light of the general tenor of his preaching, the dominant theme of which was the coming Kingdom of God (or "the KOG," as it was joshingly called in a christology class I took in grad school). We have far too little evidence to say for certain what economic system Jesus would have been partial to, so I'm equally leery of the "Jesus was a capitalist" crowd. In both cases, I sense an effort to remake Christ in the image of the theorists.

I do, however, find it at least somewhat plausible that Jesus would have had trouble with capital punishment. It was this past Monday morning, during the Peace House prayer session that included a reading from the beginning of Chapter 8 of the gospel of John, that I heard the claim put forth that Jesus, in the story about the condemned woman saved from stoning ("let the one without sin cast the first stone"), was essentially saying that, because none of us is sinless, none of us has the right to condemn another to death. It was noted that Jesus, who was being tested by his detractors, had cleverly given an answer that remained consistent with Mosaic law while also providing what was, effectively, a compassionate solution to the woman's situation.*

But the Jesus of the scriptures isn't easily reducible to Gandhi-style pacifism. If the scriptures are to be trusted, Jesus spoke casually about hellfire and famously said he had come not to bring peace, but the sword. This isn't consistent with the Indian notion of ahimsa, nonviolence or no-killing. The Christus Victor of the Book of Revelation also strikes me as far removed from the pacifistic image we normally have of Jesus. Here, too, as with the socialism issue, scripture will be interpreted by different people according to their different orientations.

I suppose the meta-issue here, that of creating God in our own image, is tied to the axiological issue of whether it's good or bad that we do so. Is it necessarily a bad thing that we see what we want to see when we look at Jesus or the Buddha or Krsna or Allah? I have no quick or easy answer to that, and I leave the issue on the table as something for my readers to dwell on.

But before I sign off, I should note that great things sometimes happen when we see those we love the way we want to see them; it's not always a matter of self-delusion when we view others resolutely through the prism of our own perspective. After all, what other perspective is truly available to us, yes?** Imagine a relationship in which both partners took a crisply realistic and harshly pragmatic view of each other. How long do you suppose such a relationship would last?

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*One person at the session astutely noted that the woman was a pawn in the proceedings, as the real point of the confrontation between Jesus and hoi iudaioi was that hoi iudaioi wanted to snare Jesus and thereby find a reason to condemn him).

**Remind me to write more about Nick Rescher's concept of orientational pluralism sometime. This concept informs the fascinating (and, to me, frustrating) work of S. Mark Heim, an evangelical Protestant who has been a prominent critic of John Hick's more classical philosophical model of religious pluralism. Heim, riffing off Rescher, takes seriously the idea that perspectives are "one to a customer." Or if you'd rather read thoughts I've written on Heim's work, go buy my book (see this blog's sidebar), which devotes a good deal of space to examining and critiquing Heim.


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one big-ass dawg

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shower... or teleportation booth? let's find out, shall we?

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only as far as Troutdale

I checked out of the Portland Super 8 a little after noon yesterday; the motel's shuttle bus driver saw me and exclaimed when he saw the size of my backpack. "How much does it weigh?" he asked. I told him it was about fifty pounds, and he said, "I remember back when I was a Marine, and we had to march thirty-five miles with seventy-five pounds on our backs." I told him I didn't envy him. I don't.

Front-desk staffers started to involve themselves in the conversation, asking what I was doing, and what my walk was all about. I told them I was visiting various homes and religious centers to talk with people about interreligious issues, and one staffer, also named Kevin, asked, "So are you trying to find your own religion?"

"Nah, I know who I am," I said with a smile. "This is more about finding out where other people stand."

I've discussed before my hesitancy in using the word "pilgrimage" to describe what I'm doing, and as time goes on, the more right I think I am. You see, a religious pilgrimage is a focused act of devotion, not a willy-nilly exploration. Perhaps the term can be used in a whimsically metaphorical way to describe any long trek done on foot (are there biking or driving pilgrimages? how about sailing pilgrimages? how relevant are the seafaring pilgrims, who landed in the New World purportedly in search of the freedom to practice their religions, to this discussion?), but in the strictest sense of the phrase, I'm not dropping everything to walk an immense distance to a specific point in order to venerate an object of worship and/or participate in some sort of ceremony that caps off the journey. That, I think, would be a true pilgrimage in the religious sense, distinct from other forms of pilgrimage, and distinct from what I'm doing.

So I left the motel and started the next leg of my non-pilgrimage, starting off on Airport Way and walking east along Marine, the riverside drive.

I didn't get far, though. I called the only hotel in Corbett, the one whose address I had used to plot my MapQuest route, and made a rude discovery: the hotel was a bed and breakfast that would have cost me a whopping $350 a night. So I changed plans then and there: it was around 5 o'clock and my knee wasn't feeling so hot, so I decided to stop in the town of Troutdale, where I found a Motel 6 ($45/night before tax) and opted to hole up for two nights while I figured out how best to proceed. I'm typing this entry from a surprisingly comfortable bed.

For the time being, it appears I'm going to have to take it easy on the knee, keeping my walks to ten miles or less. What's funny is that my manager Alan had privately recommended exactly this strategy a while back, and I'd said no. Well, Alan, it looks as though you were right all along. Lessons in humility never cease. Guess I need more of them than the average person.

So where do we go from here? Alan wrote up a 19-day itinerary to get me to Lewiston, Idaho, and I'm going to try to follow it, but I'm also going to have to listen to my body and stop each day before any problems become too severe. I suspect the itinerary will stretch to at least a month.

I'm going to slap Alan's proposed route up on the blog, and in subsequent posts I hope to give everyone a clearer idea of the overall path this walk will take. Several people have, over the past two months, written in to volunteer their homes; I hope to plot those points and use them as markers for the larger itinerary. I further hope this will make it easier for readers of this blog to anticipate where I'll be and to help us figure out how to "fill in" the huge spaces between those points (as always, I strongly recommend that you click on the "How Can I Help?" link on the sidebar).

More in a bit.


_

the worst of Kevin's face rash (NB: the dark blotch is NOT a scab)

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view of the Columbia River from Monday's walk

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cotton almost all GONE

Along with mailing back my dead BlackBerry (data recovery didn't happen; a rant about AT&T may be in the works), I also mailed back a few pounds' worth of clothing and paperwork. Among the clothing items were my bulky blue jeans and my bulky sweatpants, both of which had served me well, but had also taken up a lot of space in my backpack. In their place is a pair of lightweight "convertible" pants made from synthetics (thank you, REI); I also now own a pair of shorts to "wear around the house," so to speak.

My dry-food errand was unsuccessful; the local outdoors shop says it doesn't open until 10AM, but despite hitting Metanoia for the final goodbye at 7:20AM (I attended the prayer service) and waiting downtown until the store's purported opening time, I saw, when I got to the store's entrance, that it was still closed. I have to check out of Super 8 by noon, so I'm now on the Max's Red Line, on my way back to the motel. Not a big deal; I can order food packs online... the next time I'm near a computer.


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thank you, Portland!

I've been in Portland for thirteen days, and while my right knee still isn't fully recovered, the time has come to forge ahead.

Very early tomorrow morning, I'll be heading to the Metanoia Peace House to say a final goodbye to the good folks there, after which I have one shopping errand to do before going back to the hotel, packing up, and heading off to a hotel in Corbett, a little more than a 17-mile walk away.

I'm impatient to be moving eastward. Staying at motels is a major drain on the finances, and barring a significant cash windfall, it appears I'll be stopping at some point and finding work for a few months to make up for the drainage. I have cash for the moment, but plotting the graph of my expenses is a rather depressing exercise.

Aside from lodging, another major expense is eating. I normally eat just one meal a day, either lunch or dinner, and often add a cheap snack to that. When I eat, I'm not shy about gobbling carbs, so my one main meal is usually large: it's where most of my daily calories come from.

The problem, though, is that I generally eat this meal at a sit-down restaurant, which makes it hard to cut costs. I'm not the type to order the top-rank menu items; in general, what I do is order an appetizer and a modest main course, one that includes veggies where possible. Unfortunately, with appetizers running anywhere from $4 to about $10, the final cost of my single meal of the day often approaches or slightly exceeds $20, once we figure in the tip. That's a cash hemorrhage in itself: if I do this over thirty days, that comes to $600-- way too much for a single person to be paying for food.

The solution-- and this accounts for my morning errand tomorrow-- is to bite the bullet. A single dry food pack from the camp store, containing a meal that serves two normal people, costs about $8 or $9 at the local stores here (cheaper single-serving meals are available, just so you know, but they're pretty puny); spending $8-9/day for a meal, and staying disciplined about it, means paying only $240-270/month as opposed to $600. If possible (and much depends on the availability of camp stores), that's the new plan.

I wish I could shop for fresh ingredients and save even more money, but storage then becomes an issue, as does time: how much time should I spend departing from my route to shop for food? Where am I supposed to keep these bulky goods, storing them in such a way that they don't spoil?

I have moments where I wonder whether it might not be better to strip down to the barest essentials: a single change of clothing, my toiletries, my wallet, however much drinking water I require-- and simply chuck the rest, hoping that fortune will favor the foolish. Such moments are, at least for me, akin to the temptation we feel when leaning over the edge of a precipice: we know we mustn't jump, but some basic urge is tickling and goading our rational mind.

Anyway, it's time to leave. I've enjoyed Portland and have started to familiarize myself with its "TriMet" public transportation system (a bit reminiscent of some European cities, what with the light rail system that passes trolley-style through the downtown streets). I've come to like Lewis and Clark College, whose law library I used for transcription of the Genjo dialogue you saw in the previous post. I've also come to enjoy the people who, although they lean way too leftward for my politically centrist tastes, are generally very open and very friendly.

I'm happy to be BlackBerrying again (still a lot to do on that front), but worry that this new phone will also conk out on me. The warranty replacement policy stipulates that AT&T has the right to send a refurbished phone as a replacement, and that's exactly what I got. Having had nothing but bad luck with refurbished equipment in the past, my policy is Buy new. Keep your fingers and tentacles crossed in the hopes that my luck with refurbished equipment will change. At the very least, I hope this BlackBerry lasts longer than six weeks before dying.

And with that, it's time for bed.


_

TRANSCRIPT: my talk with Genjo Marinello (Seattle)

The following is a transcript of a talk I had with Genjo Marinello, who heads up Choboji, a Rinzai Zen temple in Seattle, Washington. I was at Choboji in mid-June, and felt very welcome at the temple, even though I was a mess during meditation the following morning (as I've written before, the Japanese way of handling zazen is markedly different from the Korean way of approaching ch'am-seon). The transcript has been edited for style and content. The original recording is not currently available online.

KEVIN: I think we're go.

GENJO: All right!

KEVIN: OK. Well, first off, I'm acquainted with the Korean pronunciation of a lot of Chinese characters, but "Genjo" means what?

GENJO: It could mean several things. The two characters in my name, given to me by my ordination teacher quite some time ago now, back in 1979, are the characters gen and jo. Gen, in this case, is the character sometimes translated as "heavenly silence"; it could be translated as "essential mystery"; the most literal translation is "the black before black before black."

KEVIN: Huh. Interesting.

GENJO: And gen-cha, in Japanese, is very black tea. And jo is the character for "realize." So: "realizing the black before black before black" is my name.

KEVIN: So then, having put those two characters together, "realizing the black before black before black," what does that mean?

GENJO: A dharma name is something you aspire to, and in this case, I aspire to the realization of what is the mystery of the universe, and he [i.e., the ordination teacher] saw some potential in me back then, that I would be able to experience in an intuitive way and relate with the mystery of the universe. So that was his dharma name for me-- that I would be someone who not only could intuit what the black before black before black was, but share it with others.

KEVIN: OK. How does one share something like that?

GENJO: We're doing it right now. You know, it doesn't have to be through words; just through the presence of one's ordinary activity would be best. But certainly, and also in dharma talks, trying to explain the ancient dialogues between masters and disciples, and making, say, ancient Chinese poetry accessible to modern American idiom.

KEVIN: Is that part of what happens here at your community?

GENJO: [nods]

KEVIN: I notice you're wearing an aikido shirt. [NB: I don't want to give the impression that Genjo was sitting on his front porch while wearing a full-dress aikido uniform, which might be a breach of aikidoka etiquette; he was, instead, wearing a shirt with some sort of aikido logo on it, and this had caught my eye.] When I was walking up here, I saw there was an aikido--

GENJO: Dojo.

KEVIN: Dojo. And when I was in Bellingham, there was an aikido dojo very close to the Red Cedar Zen Center. It's just a random connection, but it makes me wonder: do you have any connections with those communities?

GENJO: I do. Morihei Ueshiba O Sensei was the founder of aikido in Japan, of that particular martial art form, which [essentially] blends judo and kendo, which is sword. And he very much was taken with Zen, and didn't insist, but invited his senior students to also practice Zen. And most of the major art forms in Japan, anyway, turned to Zen as an augmentation of that art form, so whether it's martial arts or the high arts of calligraphy or painting or pottery-making or flower-arranging or whisking tea, they all turned to Zen as a way to augment or nurture their art form, and this was no exception when it came to O-Sensei [and] aikido; some of his senior students in the West have followed that, and I'm sort of the aikido-- I'm the Zen master that the aikidoists use, at least with a particular branch. There are many branches of aikido, in the same way that there are many branches of Zen. But there's something called the Birankai International branch of aikido, and I'm their Zen teacher.

KEVIN: Oh, OK. So does that mean that you visit the dojo and do your teaching there, or do they come here?

GENJO: Both. Our most intensive retreat is in the winter, and at our winter retreat, very often, senior students and instructors from Birinkai International will travel from all over the world to come to our retreat here in Seattle. It's also true that I go to Michigan, Pennsylvania, San Diego, Birmingham, England, and Strasbourg, France, and teach Zen to aikidoists in those locations.

KEVIN: Oh, wow! Fantastic! In France... you speak French?

GENJO: No, but I have good translators.

KEVIN: Oh, that's good. I was reading a book that came out in [French] first, and then it came out in English maybe a year or so later. It's called The Monk and the Philosopher. It was a dialogue between father and son: Jean-François Revel, the French humanist philosopher, and Mathieu Ricard, his son, who became a monk in the Tibetan tradition, and is the Dalai Lama's French interpreter whenever the Dalai Lama goes to France.

GENJO: Oh, how interesting!

KEVIN: I think the dialogue was mainly about how the father couldn't really understand why his son, who had been on a path toward science, suddenly switched gears and went into Buddhism. For you, what-- are you a cradle Buddhist, or--

GENJO: I'm a cradle nothing. My parents were both fallen-away Catholics, as they were married to other people when I was born, so that didn't sit too well with the Catholic Church on either side of that family, and my mother was afraid that if she let me too close to the Church, I would've been a priest, so the standard joke in my family, from my mother, is: "I shoulda' let you become a priest. At least then, you'd have hair!" And--

KEVIN: So in your strain of Zen here, you can't have hair.

GENJO: We shave our heads.

KEVIN: You do that, like, every two weeks or so, or--

GENJO: Oh, no; every few days.

KEVIN: Every few days. [At] many Korean temples, they do it every two weeks, like a big shaving event.

GENJO: Yeah, in Japan, it's on any day that has a 4 or a 7. I don't know why, but any day-- so the 4th, the 7th--

KEVIN: The 24th--

GENJO: Right. The 14th, the 17th...

KEVIN: Interesting. So, here, what-- would I call this building that we're sitting at now... would you consider this a temple, or what should I call this?

GENJO: We call it a temple. It's really more like a city center. It's not formally a temple, it doesn't look like a temple, it doesn't act formally like a temple would in Japan or Korea or Vietnam, but it's a little bit more on the temple side than it is on the center side. Basically, this is the Zen house, where my wife and I and the two dogs live, and there's one student who lives here, too, and then the group comes every day to sit, and four times a year, we do a week-long retreat.

KEVIN: This group is the one I'll be meeting tomorrow?

GENJO: Correct.

KEVIN: OK. How big is the group?

GENJO: Our mailing list is a hundred; our active paying membership is about forty; the number of people who will be here tomorrow morning, on any given morning-- about a dozen.

KEVIN: You told me about your aikido affiliation, but your strain, uh... how would you describe that affiliation?

GENJO: My sect of Buddhism?

KEVIN: Well, yeah, I guess that, and any specific organizations you belong to.

GENJO: Well, this temple, as I am, [is] in the Rinzai form, which would be Lin Chi in Chinese--

KEVIN: Im-jae in Korean.

GENJO: Right. So we're in that sect of Buddhism. And then within the Japanese stream, we're subsection Hakuin, so we're a Rinzai-Hakuin line. We're loosely affiliated-- we're definitely associated and loosely affiliated, though there isn't a direct financial link or directorial link, but we're associated with one of two Hakuin-Rinzai monasteries in the United States. There's an active one in Los Angeles and another active one in New York. And there is one on Whidbey Island that's also Rinzai Zen, but the teacher comes only twice a year. There are residential teachers in New York and Los Angeles: Joshu Sasaki-roshi in Los Angeles and Eido Shimano-roshi in New York. And of those two mother temples here in the United States of the Japanese Hakuin-Rinzai line, I'm most closely associated with the New York Zendo.

KEVIN: OK. So "Genjo" is how I should address you? You say it's your dharma name--

GENJO: The complete title would be "Genjo Osho"; "Genjo Osho-san" would be the most formal.

KEVIN: (repeating) Genjo Osho-san.

GENJO: Hai.

KEVIN: You speak Japanese? You trained in Japan?

GENJO: I was trained in Japan, briefly, and I speak a little Japanese. (speaks in Japanese)-- which means, "I humbly beseech you, I really don't speak much Japanese at all."

KEVIN: I caught the "ma-sen"-- "don't," "not," negation.

GENJO: That's right.

KEVIN: And "nihongo"-- I caught that part, too. I don't speak any Japanese at all. When I went to Japan [once], I had to stay for a day. I was in Fukuoka because I was changing my visa status. I don't know very many kanji, and I don't speak a lick of Japanese, so it was the first time I'd ever felt totally lost. I'd been in Korea, and so, going to Japan, I saw a lot of things that looked similar, but it was really a cool feeling to just kind of realize: "I can't say anything to anybody!"

GENJO: Of course, they looked at you and probably thought that you might be able to say something.

KEVIN: That's-- that's possible. Well, actually, in Korea, though, they don't look at me and see a Korean. They usually just see an American.* Whereas when I was in France, they saw: "Vous avez l'air asiatique," you know-- "You look Asian." That was the first thing they caught on [to].

GENJO: Clearly, you speak French.

KEVIN: Yeah, I was a French teacher.

GENJO: Ah.

KEVIN: So, all right, let's turn a little bit to interreligious issues, because I have a feeling tomorrow, in a half-hour, I'm not gonna be able to get much substance in that [time]. Your background is very interesting.

GENJO: Pretty unchurched.

KEVIN: "A cradle nothing," as you said. "Pretty unchurched"... oh, so you're familiar with that term! I thought that only Christians tossed that around.

GENJO: Well, I still grew up in the Judeo-Christian tradition, so I understand the things, and about the same time I found Zen, or a few years after, I found Quakers. So I'm also a Quaker.

KEVIN: OK.

GENJO: And I'm a member of the University Friends Meeting here in town.

KEVIN: You do self-identify as a Quaker--

GENJO: Correct--

KEVIN: As well as a Zen master?

GENJO: Correct. And there are a number of Quakers from the University Friends Meeting who sit here at the temple. So there's definitely a crosscurrent there. There's also a UCC minister, who'll probably be here tomorrow morning; an Episcopal priest, a woman, who comes here to sit; there's people who have a Jewish background who come here to sit...

KEVIN: What do you think these people are doing this for? These people coming from very specific traditions, they sit zazen here. Why are they doing that?

GENJO: You know, meditation, whether it's called "centering prayer," or it's called "contemplation," or it's called "meditation"... my attitude is that it all gets to the same place.

In many Christian traditions, prayer or contemplation or centering prayer is not terribly strong-- not nearly as strong as it's been handed off in the Buddhist tradition. And even Quakers, who are used to having an hour in silence, sort of once or twice a week... you know, we do an hour of silence every single day. So even for Quakers, who are a contemplative branch of Christianity, it's not as sharply honed.

So I think a number of people who want a contemplative part of their religious spiritual life can turn to Zen, and either identify as Buddhists or not, but use the tools that have been handed off from the Zen tradition as a way to deepen their spirituality, period. And whether that spirituality is Christian-based or Buddhist-based doesn't much matter to the people who come. It's deepening their sense of touching the divine, however they define it-- spirit, Ground of Being, however they define it.

And we're not so tightly wound up in words or definitions, especially in the Zen tradition; we're much more interested in the experience, and the commonality of the experience, at least from my reading and my cross-religious endeavors. The genuineness and universality of the experience seems to be anywhere and everywhere. Zen just happens to have the tools that appeal most to me, that help me, speaking for myself, go the deepest quickest, or more solidly, in a rooted way. I obviously am a Buddhist in the sense that I'm a Zen Buddhist priest, but I don't really cling to definitions of what "-ist" I am-- Christian or Buddhist or... that seems so, to me, superficial, and I think [that's true for] many others who come here.

I think the point, at least for the people who come to this temple, is that it [i.e., Zen practice] provides a kind of-- for them-- a direct route to their own sense of the divine and spirituality, and they take that and put it into their ordinary lives, hopefully, and it augments, hopefully, whatever religious tradition they're from, if they're from any. There are many who aren't from any.

KEVIN: I've been talking with other people about that. In Korean, the label for such people is mu-gyo, mu meaning, you know, "not" or "no"--

GENJO: Yes!

KEVIN: --and gyo meaning "-ism," tradition, or whatever. You don't belong in any particular... you don't fit into one of those squares.

GENJO: So even though we do very definitely fit into a certain square in terms of tradition, we understand that the tradition is handing off tools, and the tools bring us to a place of no-religion or non-religion. So I like that character mu a lot, of course. In Zen, we use that quite a lot--

KEVIN: The very first koan, right?

GENJO: Yes, indeed. One of your questions on your essay was "What metaphor do you use for the differences between religions?", and I want to give you mine.

KEVIN: Oh, good! Yes! Please! That's a religious pluralism question. I'd love to talk about that all day.

GENJO: To me, the great religious traditions are like trees. They may be entirely different species of trees, but they've all got great trunks, great roots, and beautiful canopies. They may be very different species of tree, but they're still trees. They reach towards the same source, in terms of the water table, and they reach towards the same light. So they stretch in both directions, and they're both trees; they've got a lot more in common than what separates them, and yet they're distinctly and uniquely different. You wouldn't want to say, "Well, because I've got this tree, I don't wanna have that tree." Why can't we have an olive tree and a pine tree and a eucalyptus tree, all right here in the yard? Yeah, that makes better variety! But they do still reach toward the same water table, exactly the same water table, and exactly the same light, and to me, that's how I see different religions.

In terms of Zen and Quakerism, for me again, just speaking for myself, if you thought of two trees of different species, great trees, reaching down to the same water table and the same light, and they're on different banks of the same river-- pretty different, and yet, where their branches intermingle and just gently blend-- for me, [that's] Quakerism and Zen.

Also, people have asked me, "Well, how can you do two traditions at once?" And I say, "Well, I have two legs! I get by just fine with two legs. In fact, I walk better with two legs. You don't have to have one leg; it's perfectly fine to have two legs."

KEVIN: Um... where did I wanna go with that... The question of the same source and the same light: would you apply that to just the major religious traditions that are out there, or would you apply [that] to even some of the wackier stuff that's around? I'm being a little bit difficult on purpose, here.

GENJO: I really can't say and I don't want to venture, because there's only two traditions that I've explored. I mean, I've done reading in Taoism and Islam and Judaism, and from what I can see-- very superficially, because I haven't delved into them greatly-- the great religious traditions do all do that [i.e., reach toward the same water and light], but I haven't explored sufficiently the others to say. I have no right to say. The only ones I have experience with to some degree are Zen and Quakerism. On those two fronts, I can say, because I'm practicing both traditions.

KEVIN: So there are at least two trees in this forest.

GENJO: There are at least two; I think I see many more. And whether it's a relatively new tree, or trunk of a tree, time will tell. But unless I investigated more directly, how could I say?

KEVIN: Right. I think one of my questions, probably not a very good question for you and for this community, was about marrying outside of the community and so on...

GENJO: (chuckling) Uh, yeah; probably moot. People want me to marry them, and they're from two different traditions, I'm happy-- I've done several ceremonies where we've had a priest from both traditions, or as the priest, I've mixed in elements from two traditions. I've had many people who would normally identify as agnostic, but have some sense that there's some unifying reality, turn to Zen and to Zen priests because they want something more than just a secular union, but they don't want something with too many trappings of the religions that they grew up in, and yet they do sense some kind of unifying reality that they want to speak to in the course of this ceremony. And I'm happy to do [it] that way, too. I say, "You can have anything on the altar you want." It can be a rock, it can be a tree... I ask that there be flowers, representing compassion, and a candle, representing wisdom. But anything else they want to put on there is fine.

KEVIN: Do you do some counseling for people, whether it's couples or one-on-one?

GENJO: Mm-hm. I do.

KEVIN: How does that work, usually, I mean, you don't have to go into specific cases, but just in general...

GENJO: Well, first of all, since I am a Zen Buddhist priest, I'm not gonna marry somebody that wants an entirely secular ceremony. I say, "Hey, look: here are some kinds of ceremonies that I've done, and can you pick and choose with what I've done to make something that works for you?" And if it doesn't [work out], then it's not a good fit, and, you know, you may need to go someplace else to find someone to help you celebrate a "spiritual" ceremony. I don't care if they call it "religious." There's a place on the marriage license that says, "Is it secular or religious?" and I always check "religious" if I'm doing the marriage. But in terms of counseling, mainly I'm looking at whether or not-- I don't care what traditions they're coming from, or whether they promise to bring up their kids in the Buddhist tradition or some other tradition. I'm trying to find out whether or not, as a couple, they have some common ground when it comes to their ideas of spirituality. And also, whether or not they have common ground as a couple: are they missing something that I might be able to help them see? And is this gonna be a couple that I feel [has a] sufficient bond to celebrate? If I don't feel like there's a sufficient bond, then I wanna work with them a bit to discover whether or not there is, then [if there's no such bond] I don't wanna get involved, either.

KEVIN: You're talking mainly about up to the marriage, right? I think my question was more along the lines of, uh, afterward-- you know: conflict arises or something... have you engaged in that--

GENJO: I've done that, too, from the Buddhist perspective, but I'm also certified as a spiritual director, and I'm also a licensed mental health counselor, so I've got quite a bit of background in that way. I have a private[?]** practice, but I also see people wearing either my Zen Buddhist hat or my therapist hat or my spiritual director hat. So yes, I do do that kind of counseling.

KEVIN: I'm curious as to how that works in Korea. I know it [i.e., counseling by Buddhist clergy] happens. I've seen ads for that sort of thing-- some smiling monk, a little phone number, but I don't know how that differs or how it's similar to psychotherapy as traditionally imagined in the West...

GENJO: I suspect it's very different, but I don't know, because I haven't been to Korea, or recently to Japan, even, to know. Here's another thing: I think Buddhism-- as it's moved from its original source, India, and has moved across the Asian continent to the US-- has picked up things, especially the branch of Zen Buddhism. When it moved to China, it picked up a lot of Taoism, and when it moved to Japan, it also picked up quite a bit of the Shinto sort of animistic ancestral component. I don't know whether it [i.e., Buddhism] did that in Korea, too. And as it moves here to the West, I think it's picking up a lot of psychology. And I think that's a wonderful blending, and it says a lot for the tradition that it's kind of, "Oh! That can be added to this! We can see how that can blend." It's a big jump to blend with whatever is indigenous to that location. I really like that about Buddhism.

KEVIN: I think a lot of religions, when they move from place to place, culture to culture, whatever, they do begin to pick up some trappings from the local--

GENJO: Sure.

KEVIN: I mean, if you go to Tibet, you see a lot of shamanism inside Tibetan Buddhism--

[Editor's note: I said the above so glibly that you might get the impression I've been to Tibet. Full disclosure: the only Asian country I've visited or lived in is South Korea. I've spent a day in Fukuoka, Japan, and several hours in Osaka and the Namba shopping district, but none of that really counts; in all cases, I was merely waiting for a new visa from the Korean Consulate or on layover as I waited for a connecting flight to Seoul/Incheon. So, no: I've never been to Tibet, or to any Asian country other than South Korea.]

GENJO: Exactly. And even Christianity, when it moved to South America or Central America, picked up a lot of indigenous components--

KEVIN: Right, right. Absolutely. The question of conflict spurred by religion: what's your diagnosis? I mean, if I take something like, say, Nigeria-- Christian-Muslim [conflict]-- how would you analyze that situation?

GENJO: As Buddhism in general would: that it's ego. Ego can corrupt anything. Whether it's individualistic ego or nationalistic ego or cultural ego, ego corrupts everything. Ego's all about having enough or having more, or being better, or being best. It can take the highest teaching and easily corrupt it to its cause of being better or best or more. And whether it appears in an individualistic way, or a more sophisticated or complex social, cultural, or nationalistic way, it's still ego. From the Buddhist perspective, it is the root of all so-called evil. It's where we get most corrupted. In Zen we would also say ego is nothing but no-ego; it's just one end of a continuum, but we so often get isolated in just that end of the continuum that we become quite corrupted and can do quite a lot of harm, nationalistically or even environmentally: raping the planet, our own mother. So whether it's conflict between natural resources, or conflict between nations, or conflict between cultures, or conflict between religions, from a Buddhist perspective, it all comes back to ego.

KEVIN: That sounds a little bit similar to a dharma talk I heard in Korea. There's an American monk there named Hyeon Gak [NB: romanized spellings vary: Hyun Gak, Hyon Gak, Hyungak, Hyeongak, etc.; credit to The Marmot's Hole, where I first saw this video]-- I don't know if you've heard of him. He's got some videos on-- some people put them up on YouTube and so on. He speaks fluent Korean; he's been living there for years and years now. He was talking about flipping channels-- watching the news on one channel, and he saw the people [on TV] were really angry and holding up their holy book and-- [mimics a demonstrator screaming in anger while holding up a holy book]-- like that, neck cords out and everything... and then he flipped the channel over to a conflict in America, and it was about the Ten Commandments being put into a courtroom, and the people were standing outside, demonstrating, and they had their holy book, and they were doing this [mimics angry demonstrator again] and he was like, "You know... it's the same thing." Pretty much the same thing. So I see where you're coming from.

OK, so, uh, I don't wanna hold you much longer, but one more question: What is God?

GENJO: The lovely thing about Zen is that we can say, "No-knowing." Beyond any kind of packaging. Even to use the word "God" or "Buddha-nature" or "Tao" or "dharma" or "sunyata" or "Ground of Being"-- anytime you put a name on something, you're already conceptualizing something that can't be conceptualized, that is inconceivable. And if it's not inconceivable, you've missed it, and if it's inconceivable, it cannot be grasped. So we're quite comfortable saying, "No-knowing," and there's actually a great relief in being able to say, "Can't be known. Cannot be said." But that doesn't mean it can't be experienced. It can definitely be experienced.

KEVIN: It should be, probably, the most ordinary thing, right?

GENJO: It is the most ordinary thing, if we have the eyes to see it or ears to hear it.*** It's the most ordinary thing, clanging at us in the wind chime or the motion of the leaves or the falling rain. It's shouting at us all the time, but usually we don't see it. However, the good news is there are ways to nurture our capacity to see what we think of as the divine in the ordinary, and that's exactly what Zen is all about. And when you have that experience, that realization of the divine in the ordinary, it's not only a relief, it's a blessing. It certainly generates a great deal of compassionate open-heartedness and peace of mind at the same time. If you're feeling that, you don't need to know.

KEVIN: Again, that's very similar to what I heard from Zen Master Seung Sahn, who was the teacher of the American monk I talked about before. He [Seung Sahn] wrote a book called Only Don't Know. "You have to keep that don't-know mind!" That's how he put it.

Well, I have a thousand more questions I could ask you, but I think I'll stop here and let you go.

GENJO: I'll let you get a good rest. I think your quest and your trek are really quite admirable. Happy to host you. See you tomorrow morning.



That marks the end of the recorded exchange between Genjo and me. I hope you've enjoyed reading it. I wish I had recorded the subsequent conversation with Genjo's meditation group; I didn't take notes and can no longer rely upon my shaky memory to relay who said what during that fascinating exchange (which, unlike my prediction, did turn out to be substantive).

I'll be writing some commentaries about this exchange as time goes on; in the meantime, I'll continue to prep the transcript of the hour-long dialogue between Brother Luke and me at St. Martin's University. Can't say when that will appear, but it'll appear. Sit tight.

Oh, by the way... this post is Number 500! We're at the half-millennium mark.

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*This was one of those regrettable racial slips that comes from hanging around Koreans, especially older-generation Korean-Americans or Koreans in Korea (i.e., Koreans who haven't been fully assimilated into American culture). The word "American" is often a substitute for "Caucasian" or "white" in the Korean mind. All other races are swept under the rug. If you find yourself hanging around Koreans, you might find yourself sucked into this same linguistic vortex... unless, of course, you're a non-white American! If you hear a 50-year-old ajumma in Annandale, Virginia say, "Yeah, my daughter's dating an American guy," that probably means, "My daughter's dating a white guy."

**I wasn't clear, in listening to the audio, on whether the word was "private" or "prior." I think "private" makes more sense in this context. Genjo...?

***Compare what Genjo says here with Hyeon Gak's Jesus quotation (I'll need to dig up a scriptural reference, but quick online research reveals one possibility to be Mark 8:18, in which Jesus seems to phrase the eyes/ears matter as a question, not a declaration) from the above-linked video of the Hyeon Gak interview.


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fortunate or unfortunate choice of words?

Headline seen on the Drudge Report:

"Passenger Strips; American Airlines Boston-LA Flight Diverted... "


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the shower curtain question

In a bathroom with poor ventilation and air circulation, what's the best thing to do with the shower curtain after you shower? Should you draw the curtain closed, thereby minimizing wrinkles and allowing more of the curtain's surface area to dry, but trapping the steamy air inside the bathtub for longer? Should you pull the curtain as open as possible, thereby risking mold and mildew inside the curtain's humid nooks and crannies, but allowing most of the steamy air to escape from the bathtub and dissipate in the bathroom as a whole? Or is a compromise solution, such as drawing the curtain only halfway closed, the best way to go?


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time to git a move on

My dad never seems to call at a good time, though it's not his fault (I do wish he'd text or email me more). Today, he called around 9:45AM, Pacific time, just as I was starting to swim upward from the depths of slumber. While I'm usually able to wake up early for morning functions (e.g., teaching my first classes at 7:40AM in Seoul), I generally revert to my nocturnal ways when no such outside pressures exist. I'm not a morning person by nature, and my body sees my time in this motel as vacation time, even though I actually have a lot to do.

Medical note: the bruised ribs seem to have healed. Now, I'm dealing with some sort of rash or swelling-- allergy? bite?-- directly under my right eye. There's always something.

Family note: my brother David had fun during the mountain bike race last week. He didn't win, but he didn't finish last, either. My parents are in Texas, spending two weeks with my aunt (Mom's big sis) and her family in their spacious new home. Especially for Mom, retirement's going to mean a lot of travel over the next few months. I hope she enjoys this new phase of life; she and Dad both had stressful jobs, and deserve some rest before they begin to focus on some large, house-related projects.


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on, but not 100%

I've activated my new new BlackBerry, but there are still a lot of issues needing resolution. One problem I've noticed is that the Blogger comments window no longer "wraps" text: the field is already narrow, and when I try to write a sentence, I end up writing right off the screen, leaving me unable to see the text.

Another problem is that I'll have to ask the AT&T folks whether they'll be able to transfer data from my old phone to this new one-- not only all the phone numbers and emails, but also the pics I had taken of my border crossing. I'm hoping the data transfer will be (1) possible and (2) free.

A third problem is that my phone is saying I've got four voice messages, but I'm unable to access the messages because the "call voice mail" number isn't programmed in, and the Setup Wizard on this phone isn't very helpful about where I can find the number. I'm racking my brains about how I accomplished the setup last time around.

I'm in the Super 8 motel not far from Airport Way; the walls are thin and I'm currently surrounded by a large family in at least two rooms. One of the kids has already dialed my room twice, and two have been banging on the adjacent door and running down the hallway, all of which makes me wish I had a baseball bat.

Tuesday was spent mostly resting; the walk to the motel on Monday was largely uphill, and I got a bit turned around when I was close to my goal, adding up to a mile to my walk. I made it to the motel around 6PM that evening, and was too tired to do much of anything. Hence the quiet Tuesday.

As for the future: Wednesday, I'll be visiting the AT&T folks, mailing off some more unnecessaries (as well as mailing off the old BlackBerry, per the conditions of the warranty), and figuring out more about this new BlackBerry. If I have time, I'll trip over to Lewis and Clark College for some serious transcription. If not tomorrow, then definitely Thursday and Friday.

I'll be visiting Metanoia one final time on Saturday before leaving Portland on Sunday morning; my first stop will be the town of Corbett, which I've been told is a fairly uphill walk.

Let me take this opportunity to respond to a criticism voiced in a recent comment re: the general lack of explicitly interreligious writing on this blog. I would like to note first that I have mentioned, several times, that transcripts of my conversations are on the way, but finding the time, energy, and actual computer resources to make commentaries happen isn't easy when you're on the road and usually moving from place to place.

I know from experience with transcription at my previous job that thirty minutes of dialogue takes about seven hours to transcribe-- that's roughly five hours to write everything out in proper format, then another two hours to edit and proofread. This is solid computer time; I'm not counting breaks.

Trying to get seven hours of computer time in a country with no real "PC-bahng" culture (I'm referring to Korean Net cafes, where you can log on to a fast computer for $1-2 an hour) is no easy task. Many public places in the States advertise "Internet," but in reality are only offering Wi-Fi access; you have to bring your own computer to the party. If I were to try transcribing dialogue on my BlackBerry (actually, I did start transcribing on the BlackBerry, but then it conked out), my typing speed would be reduced from an already-slow 65wpm to around 20wpm, i.e., about 21 hours per thirty minutes of dialogue.

My point is that the content is there-- is in fact growing-- but still needs to be put up. All I can do is ask for patience, and I'll also ask that, instead of taking time to voice disappointment (which isn't particularly useful or constructive) as this commenter did, it might be better to relax and adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Let's have faith that the desired content will appear in its own good time, OK? Disappointment often arises from attachment to a preconceived outcome; it's one of the more avoidable and unnecessary forms of suffering. Meanwhile, just enjoy the blog on its own terms, and leave its content up to the author, who needs no prodding. Thanks.


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shipping out this afternoon

More later.


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thanks

My thanks to the people who have mailed me contributions in recent weeks, and to the folks who have bought products from my CafePress site. Let me take this time to ask readers once again to keep spreading the word about this walk, and to read-- if you haven't done so-- the How Can I Help? section for further information on ways to keep this walk going on and going strong. Believe me, I need all the help I can get.


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afternoon worship

My final full day at the Peace House included the attendance of the 4PM Peace Vigil (I was a bit late for that, as I'd been out running errands) and the 4:30PM service, which offered me the chance to meet some new folks. Tonight, I'll be squaring things away; tomorrow, I'll attend the 7:20AM prayer service and will likely leave in the early afternoon, once the BlackBerry has arrived by FedEx. Because a large group is arriving at the Peace House tomorrow and will likely need my room, I'll vacate the room and leave my backpack somewhere on the grounds but out of the way.

It's been a great week of rest and recuperation, as well as a great chance not only to meet new folks but also to get a feel for a different religious rhythm than the ones I'm familiar with. My sincere thanks to the Metanoia community.


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all reserved

I've just become a proud member of the Super 8 Motels chain (and will probably become a member of quite a few other chains as well) in the hopes of saving several hundred dollars over the course of the next 12-18 months. I've reserved three nights at the Super 8 by the Columbia River, which will mean walking uphill back north. Now that I'm getting a bit better at navigating the public transportation system, it shouldn't be a problem for me to continue to access Lewis and Clark College, which is south of Portland in Clackamas County, despite the added distance.

Alas, buses are pretty expensive here in Portland: it's $2.05 for an "all zones" ticket (for a single one-way ride!), and $1.75 for an adult going one or two zones. Then again, I don't know how this compares with current transportation prices in the DC-Metro area, so perhaps I shouldn't judge; my memory is stuck in the early 2000s. Digression: I'm also curious as to how much the bus and subway fares have gone up in Seoul, which has always enjoyed rates significantly cheaper than those in most American cities (this goes for taxis, too).

So there we are. Sunday will be my final full day at the Peace House, then I'll leave late Monday morning or early in the afternoon; my new BlackBerry, which is being FedExed to the Peace House, is slated to arrive around 1PM (there was some sort of mixup, which is why it didn't arrive yesterday or today), so I might hang around downtown, get the SIMM data issue resolved, get the old phone packed up for mailing back to the warranty folks, and then schlep over to the Super 8. We'll see. Tomorrow, I'll get to see what a full Sunday service at the Peace House looks like (it'll be in the afternoon; check the website for the worship schedule); I'll also be doing laundry, testing some of my new stuff (I bought a hat and some dry food from REI today; won't be testing the food), and prepping to leave. It's been almost a week since I came here... I'm humbled by everyone's generosity, and as was the case all through Washington, I'm more than a little sad to be leaving. I've apologized several times for imposing, but Pastor John said with a smile that I've been "very unimpositional."

I do know I need to do something for these folks-- give them a gift or make a meal or I-don't-know-what. Will be working on that issue, too, while I'm at the Super 8.


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