Walking in Silence

Aisle of crypts

I've already mentioned that I've walked in the cemetery just 10 minutes up the street.  It's going to be my hangout.  It's full of a chorus of silence of a river of lives.  Today I had my camera and took an array of snaps.  Being there influences the creative mind as a million stories enter the imagination.  Mercifully, the sun came out again today and I had to peel off some layers to keep from melting and by the time I returned home I was soaking wet.

Crypt with abandoned chair

Earlier today I'd had brunch with Linda, Rob Weinberg's widow.  I hadn't seen her since the funeral and I was glad to see that she looks well and is moving along in her life, studying music and making frequent visits to her family in Paso Robles.  Linda is a gifted classical pianist and is interested in making a transition to jazz, an amazing venture since jazz is no easy deal as it requires a deep understanding of music theory and structure in order to be spontaneous.

This leads me to mention a lecture that I heard on UC Berkeley's iTunesU.  It was delivered by Hubert Dreyfus, author of ALL THINGS SHINING: READING THE WESTERN CLASSICS TO FIND MEANING IN A SECULAR AGE, a new work just hot off the press and not yet delivered to the book stores.  I saw that Professor Dreyfus was teaching a course in a continuing education program and thought I'd try to take it, but it ultimately wasn't going to work out.  So, I found him on iTunesU.  In this talk he was speaking about communications and he came to a discussion of the five stages of skills development.

Tomb door

He mentioned that the first stage is to learn the rules, followed by the learning of features and facts about the skill, followed by learning to apply the rules, followed by learning meaningful aspects that apply to performance, and the last stage is to act spontaneously.  He points out that this last stage comes through lots of practice and experience in practice and the learning of relevance, an important aspect of a skill.

For instance, if we are learning to drive a car, we'd learn the rules, facts and features of driving, how to apply the rules, what aspects are important to safety, and ultimately we'd drive without having to think about what we are doing.  We'd just drive, applying the gas according to the flow of traffic.  But "relevance" is of great importance as without it, we might apply the rules inappropriately.  When all of this comes into play and we have mastered all of these stages, we can say we are expert at a given skill.  It takes 10 years at 4 hours a day of practice.

But, Professor Dreyfus points out that there is a stage beyond expert.  This is the stage we reach that for the good of the practice we keep learning.  He says we "become something like a Zen person," one who continues to pursue learning because it is a domain that one loves.  We can't be at this level without having carefully mastered the skill through the earlier stages of learning.  If we leave out some part of the learning, we cannot consider ourselves expert.  Imagine for instance that we learned to drive, but we never learned to work with the car in reverse.  We would always be insecure and incomplete.  So, to "become something like a Zen person" we undertake our learning with the joy of a beginner, being completely thorough and direct in our focus, not leaving out any aspect of our exploration and training.

Garden reflection

On Monday, I went with Hozan Alan Senauke to Marin to attend the evidentiary hearings for Jarvis Masters which are taking place for three weeks.  Jarvis received a death sentence having been convicted of sharpening a tool that was used by another to kill a prison official.  Jarvis has been on death row for twenty years.  The California Supreme Court ordered the hearings in response to a habeus corpus brief filed by Jarvis and his legal team.  If the current judge finds in Jarvis' favor, she can recommend to the Supreme Court that he receive a new trial.  The Supreme Court will take this under advisement and consider granting the trial, or not.  If yes, and there is a  trial and he is found innocent, then he will be freed from prison.  If the conviction stands, then he will await execution.

There is quite a bit of tension in the court room as, on the day that I was there, three people gave testimony:  one, an attorney who had decided not to represent Jarvis.  I didn't understand the legal reasons for his testimony.  The second was a former P.I. who was shown to be an expert witness in the behavior of gangs in prison.  Because the murder of the prison official involved the Black Guerilla Family, gang behavior is fundamental to the case.  The third person giving testimony on behalf of Jarvis was a former inmate with Jarvis at San Quentin and a member of the BGF who is serving a life sentence and is now at another prison.  Both prisoners appear shackled and in their bright orange prison jumpsuits and they are each guarded by four or five officers.  Then there are four or five attorneys representing Jarvis.  There are two attorneys representing the State of CA.  The gallery is full of Jarvis supporters, maybe 20 in number.

We are now in the middle week of the hearings.  You can read on Alan's blog a good synopsis and description of the people who gave testimony.  Alan also describes more background of the case.  I plan to attend one more day next week.  Here is the address for Alan's blog:  clearviewblog.org.  You can also read more about Jarvis on freejarvis.org.

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I had lunch today at a sidewalk cafe in Rockridge, and it turned so warm I had to move into the shade.  You can't imagine how good it felt to capture some vitamin D in the old fashioned way.  Later I worked in the library which is comfortable with areas set aside for quiet study.  Various professional people and students work with varieties of manuscripts and books, pounding away at their computers, as you'd expect in a library.  I'm quite in league with others and find that being at the library is helpful to focus and attend to my work even though there is no one in the apartment to intrude.  Still, I jump into gear in the library and as well I can enjoy a poetry or art book here and there that I wouldn't otherwise pick up.  What more could a body ask for - sunshine, delicious food, writing, good health, quietude, and the California hills rising into the blue, blue sky.  

Cemetery Blues

Mt. View Cemetery and St. Mary's Cemetery are at the top of Piedmont Avenue.  This is the place where people in the neighborhood go to stroll, take their daily constitution, go for a jog.  Several times now I've forgotten my camera so this is a view of the highest monuments taken from my window.  Some of the grassy areas above are also part of the cemetery.  You can see the homes of the Oakland Hills rising high above.  And just above the wires in the center, the narrow dome is the tomb of Mr. Charles Crockett, one of the big four investors in the transcontinental railroad. To the right, obscured by the tree, is the tomb of Dr. Samuel Merritt, a philanthropist, former mayor of Oakland, and posthumous founder of Merritt Hospital, and Samuel Merritt University, a health sciences institution in Oakland.  I thought first from my window I was looking at a church, but when I went there I realized these were rather impressive tombs.

So I walked in the cemetery and read stones as I went.  Couldn't help it.  (I'll take snapshots pretty soon.)  So many born in Scotland and Ireland around 1850 and emigrated to New York then California.  What brought them?  Perhaps the promise of gold, the wild frontier, something better than what they could find at "home" in the coal mines and foundries.  These would be women and men who were born at the time of the potato famine in Ireland and perhaps into poverty in the cities of Scotland.  They sailed over, made their way west, and landed in the golden sun.  Some of them did all right.

The flow of lives fed through me as I walked.  A long river of life being lived and turning again into the earth.  Not so many spirits still awake, but something murmuring in the deep settledness, a collective aura of peace in the certainty of our eventual outcome.  We'll all arrive, do our best, then Rest in Peace and let others take over to be awake for their turn in consciousness in the 'flowing now'.  Carpe diem, my dear ones.  Carpe Diem!
  

Neighborhood Markers

St. Leo the Great Catholic Church in Piedmont now 100 years old

Churches played an important archi-tectural role in the develop-ment of American towns and cities.  Oftentimes, the church steeple was the highest tower reminding us of the sacred, with lower buildings paying deference to the sacred marker and the meaning of religion in daily life.  But then the 20th century changed things and skyscrapers became the symbol of success and power with architectural designs reaching into the heavens identifying industry as the new religion.  The old churches seemed minute as they were walled in by gargantuan growth. 

In the neighborhood where I’m staying, the church of St. Leo the Great is celebrating 100 years of service.  I pass it each day on my walks. The doors are locked so I haven’t been able to step inside, nor have I been tempted to venture in on Sunday when I do know it will be open.  Still, there is something comforting about its presence.  It speaks to spiritual values in everyday life.  It has an aura of quietude.  Its presence reminds that there is another dimension other than the to and fro hauling of purchases up and down the street.  It reminds of what it is to live in a ‘neighborhood’ with marks of identity that give a settled quality to a community.  It gives the feeling that everything is all right where we are and that there are people around who care about and support one another.

This is the feeling of this neighborhood, and it’s good to feel, good to experience.

Evidentiary Hearing for Jarvis Masters

I wanted to alert you to Rev. Hozan Alan Senauke's blog <http://clearviewblog.org>
which, from now and through the next few weeks, is covering the evidentiary hearing for San Quentin death row inmate Jarvis Masters who is seeking a retrial.  Alan has been Jarvis' spiritual adviser and friend for fifteen years.  Jarvis is a well known Buddhist and published writer who was sentenced to death in 1990 for allegedly having sharpened a knife that was used to kill a San Quentin official.  Two other men received life sentences: one ordered the killing, the other carried it out.  Jarvis was accused of sharpening the knife (which was never found) by two other prison inmates and received the death sentence.


Alan is in court each day with Jarvis and is giving updates.  The blog is compelling and I thought you might be interested as some of you may have come across Jarvis Masters' writing and be concerned about his plight.  In any case, do keep good thought for Jarvis during these coming weeks as his life depends upon a fair outcome.


Many of you remember that Rev. Hozan Alan Senauke was one of our Ryokan san Lecturers who spoke on "The Teachings of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr."  He is Assistant Abbot of Berkeley Zen Center, director of the Clear View Project, and former director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.  

The Selective Eye

Piedmont Street, late afternoon.

Even when we live in the nondis-criminatory mind, still the eye sees what it sees and the artist in us selects images all day long.  Actually, artist or not, we all do it.  We are especially aware of it if we are taking a photograph, painting a picture, writing a poem, or any art that must select in order to speak.  We select faces, things, bits of trees, bushes, flowers, shadows, signs, movements.  This also happens without our even knowing we are doing it. 

Some images resonate to tell us about ourselves, stick within for awhile, then translate into expression.  We must pay attention at every moment because something is always speaking to us.  And these are the stories we bring home to supper to reflect on if we are alone, or to tell others if we are in company.

So I was down on Piedmont Street, the village area two blocks away.  The sidewalk was crowded with people and the burnt umber face of an old man sitting outside a used furniture shop caught my eye.  He was rubbing the reed of his clarinet while watching people go by, but no one was noticing him.  Then our eyes met, but one of his eyes pointed to the side and I couldn’t tell if our eyes had really met or whether the good eye had looked the other way.  I wondered if he inhabited a double world, if he could see both ways.  Or, did he see like a man-bird who knows his language is music, and knows he can fly off when the street gets rough. 

As I went past, he put the clarient to his mouth and began to play, not to show off, not as performance, but because it was the next thing he quite naturally was about to do.  This happened several days ago yet the image of him is tucked into a soft place in me, perhaps because he was so utterly authentic in his presence, and for a split second we really did meet. 

New Year Begins

Fruit trees in the Central Valley, California

I didn’t especially choose Piedmont as my place of respite.  Rather, it was somewhat known, a place well located, and it was excellent to be in relationship to my daughter for this while.  It was startling on the drive down, once I’d entered California, how emotions that I’d forgotten came sweeping over me in the space of the wide landscape - emotions necessary to the artist in order to dream, to connect to myths, to understand vision and translate it into expression.  I felt I’d hindered some genuine articulation by living away from a topography that speaks to my soul.

It isn’t that I think I’ll do something great with art.  I simply want to remember how to contemplate in the natural way that I do.  As a teacher and leader, there is no choice but to put one’s own needs aside and care for what has to be done.  There is no room to grieve, no room to “simply be” even though that is what we teach.  People’s projections weigh heavily on our public leaders, teachers, ministers.  Can we imagine the weight of expectation and demand that we place on President Obama, and on other public people?  My heart aches for what the President, the human-being-man must carry.  Our Zen teachers are simple human beings, but still we weigh them down with who and what we want and think they should be, what we think “Zen” is.

I’ve come to deeply sympathize with the poet-priest Basho who also became abbot of a temple.  Numerous times in his life, he left the demands of the temple behind and went off for years at a time to find himself, to be in the world as a free agent, to be away from pastoral care and listen to the sound of the wide world, to walk where no one knew him, to recover the heart of compassion, to live in a natural way.  Because of this we have his great travel poems and we have an example of the priest-artist who must live his art in order to survive.

So, for better or worse, here I am for the next three months.  This is where I hang my hat.