meaningofwilderness.com

Welcome to the meditation overview page of meaningofwilderness.com, the home of Cabeza and the Meaning of Wilderness: An Exploration of Nature, and Mind, by Phil Grant. 396 pages text (size: 6x9); 24 pages of color photographs by the author (published by Desert Peak Press). List price $18.95, online price 14.99. (Click here to order through PayPal's SSL encrypted site, the safest way to pay online -- by major credit card or funds from your PayPal account -- then scroll down. ) For more on meditation visit our companion site, wildernessofmindzc.org

“The text as well as the photos are captivating. . . . It is helping me shape in my mind the dreams I have to occupy the rest of my life . . .” M. V., Montréal, Québec (More readers' comments on home page.)

In Cabeza I present the possibility of a way of being that might be termed the meditative mind, a way a person can just be . . . with the wilderness of Nature, and Mind. The Mind that takes in the entirety of the human condition, including this strange, unutterably profound Universe we inhabit, and of which we are an integral part. As one Zen "master" put it, “What is truth? I will tell you after you have swallowed all the waters of the West River in one gulp.” I also make plain that this “way” was well known and understood by the most profound minds that have graced our species: The finest artists, composers (especially Bach, Beethoven, and Schubert, without whose works  I don’t know where I’d be, if I’d be; see this page), writers, scientists, mystics, and others, including many who loved the wild, such as Colin Fletcher and "Pathfinder" John Charles Fremont. They have all entered into that state whether they called it meditation or not. And I try to show, to give a feeling for, through my own example, that of my wife, and many others, just how— though there is no how— a person might find that “way” within themselves. Or, rather, allow that “way” to operate . . . on its own. (I prefer the word "sitting" to meditation as it suggests less willful intention.)The following excerpts and comments may provide some insight into this aspect of Cabeza:

Flashing back to 1969 in the chapter, "The Last Sonata":

So when Philip Kapleau came to Ann Arbor where I’d dropped out of the University of Michigan, I was ready. His Three Pillars of Zen described not only spiritual experiences similar to my own, but most importantly the way to attain, deepen, and integrate them with one’s whole being: Meditation. Sitting. And told exactly how to meditate: first counting the breaths (up to ten, repeat), then experiencing the breath, and up to working on a koan (see TheThree Pillars; all these methods have I long since jettisoned) which will bring one to “Enlightenment,” or “Spiritual Awakening,” or “Satori,” or . . . etc. I read the book repeatedly, moved to Rochester, New York to join the Zen Center, worked rebuilding the Center after a fire for four months until I was accepted into my first meditation retreat—sesshin—for which I’d been longing by that point for a full year . . . and . . . had . . . the most nightmarish, hellish week of my life. 

In despair—and shame, for I was a total failure in my eyes—I stopped going to the Center. But not sitting. I never stopped sitting at least two, and most the time four or more hours virtually every day of the last thirty-six years. And that led me to the wilderness. . . ." 

[Later I rejoined the Center, “studying“ under Kapleau’s “Dharma heir,” Toni Packer, who soon departed to form her own Springwater Center, where I served on staff for a few years; since 1990 I have not been a member of any center.] 

From the chapter, "Me and the Moon" 

"Back to . . . Cabeza that April of 2003 when American tanks were rolling into Baghdad . . ." 

Up to now things had gone smoothly between Anne and me, but that night after the hike . . . maybe it’s that each of us wants something from the other that the other is incapable of providing. Maybe that something is far beyond what any person, anytime, anywhere can provide. Maybe. . . . Albert Einstein wrote, after a failed first marriage, an unfulfilling second, and numerous affairs, “I must seek in the stars what is denied me on earth.” This is only learned, if at all, the hard way. Einstein does seem to have ripened from an arrogant, egocentric young man into, judging by his final letters and pictures, a far more gentle, spiritual soul. But that spirituality was always there, if latent, from the beginning.
But for now, for me, the end result is I’m in a grand funk. After the trip Anne and I talk things out and our relationship deepens, but for the moment it’s: Stupid people, stupid relationships, stupid Iraq, stupid Bush, stupid Saddam, stupid Muslims, stupid Americans, stupid planet, stupid galaxy, stupid Universe—stupid, stupid goddamned mess! We eat, and I take my nap. When I wake it’s late . . . and the moon is up. Anne’s sound asleep, so it’s just me and the moon. I stretch my legs and body, walk around, then make tea . . . and sit, just sit with the whole stupid, stupid thing. What else can I do?

What choice do I have?

Divorce Anne? But who’d do the dishes?

Divorce myself? Now there’s a thought!

Move to another planet? I recall a Twilight Zone episode from forty years past: Two scientists working on the space program received word that what they feared most but had surreptitiously prepared for—nuclear Armageddon—was about to occur. Quickly they ushered their families into a rocket they’d secretly customized, and blasted off just as the missiles flew. As they all looked back at the retreating globe, one father explained to his son that they were going to another wonderful planet where there was only love and peace and no more war.
“What’s the name of this planet, Dad?”
“Earth.”
. . . 

Immigrate to a parallel universe? But what if they don’t have tea there?

Of course there’s always suicide. After reading the chronicle of explorers locked in the Arctic ice on their ship, starving and freezing but still overawed by the perpetual aurora and infinite panoply of dancing stars all close enough to touch, I conceived the idea—if things ever got too bad—of driving to Inuvik, Northwest Territories in midwinter, renting a snowmobile, and heading north until the gas was exhausted. Then hiking as far as I could. When I’d had enough, I’d break out a large flask of whiskey, a Discman loaded with The Art of the Fugue, and just settle in.

But Anne had scoffed, shattering my idle dreams: “Oh, you’d probably get eaten alive by a polar bear.” Hmmm . . . not an appetizing thought (for the eatee, at least). Besides, at fifty-five I must be more than halfway through this nonsense anyway—why bother? (What about Prozac, you ask? I don’t do drugs.)
So there’s no choice, no choice at all. I sit . . . with the whole stupid thing. The next day there’ll be Border Patrol helicopters and low-flying planes, cars, SUVs and pickups, with agents running across the sagebrush plain searching for who knows who. But tonight it’s still, still, totally, absolutely, utterly still. The moon is full . . . and dazzling . . . and all illuminating. And, as if I’ve just hit the right button on a magic combination lock, which in a sense I have, it all starts to open up.

How does one describe what is beyond description? It is not a revelation. It is not “kosmic konsciousness.” It is not “nirvana.” And it is, I know full well, only the tip of the iceberg of what a human being can experience. It is, just, very simply, very, very simply, an open fullness, a beingness, a wholeness, a completeness. Nothing lacking, nothing wanted, nothing to fear, nowhere to go, nothing to think about, nothing to do, nothing to be. Just being . . . here and now . . . me and the moon. I sit . . . and sit . . . and sit . . . and sit. Tomorrow—well it’s now today—is the start of our three days of driving back, so I should sleep. But I sit. And sit. With the moon.

Beethoven’s last Piano Sonata, No. 32 in C minor, opus 111: Hans von Bulow, the late-nineteenth-century pianist and conductor, writes in the notes to my edition that the two movements of this piece may be characterized as “Resistance . . . Resignation, or, still better, Samsara . . . Nirvana.” The first movement is as bad as it gets for us humans. . . . When I was eight I received a “magic” kit. Included was a small tube of thatched grass of some sort. The trick was to insert your index fingers into each end, and then remove them not using any other part of your hand. The fibers would tighten as you pulled, the diameter of the tube become smaller, and the harder you pulled, the more impossible it became. This, simply put, is the first movement of Sonata No. 32. Resistance. Samsara. Hell.

A Zen koan: What do you do if you are trapped in a burning house with no escape? The answer . . . lies in the second movement. Von Bulow says “Resignation” but this is not accurate in its usual sense. Nirvana? A term trivialized by the perhaps justly cynical. One answer to that koan (there is no “right” answer to a koan because the “answer” is . . .) is given in The Three Pillars of Zen: Die, what else. Beethoven understood. The first movement—the last pages of which remind me of nothing so much as a bird fluttering wildly, hopelessly trapped in an inescapable net—literally dies away. And from the ashes arises. . . . Words are impotent here. They only have use in describing shared emotions and experiences. The second movement, the Aria, is shared by few indeed. . . . You could call it ecstasy, but there’s that drug and besides, ecstasy is something that happens to you. The second movement does not happen to anyone. It is, when there is no one there wanting. Or trying. Or fearing. Just “a condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything” . . . 

Let’s call it J-y. All caring. All consoling. All suffering. All embracing. All loving. All encompassing. All knowing. All everything. 

Not much more I can say. It’s there, waiting: here . . . now . . . always. Listen to it . . . when you’re ready."
I don’t claim to be some super-duper supremely enlightened guru—in fact, I hope Cabeza makes clear my glaring deficiencies—but I’m not sure that breed exists outside of fairy tales (if you’re really into fairy tales, best not buy Cabeza.) For instance:

From the chapter, "Guru I"

"Much of TheThree Pillars was devoted to Kapleau's two teachers, Harada Roshi and Yasutani Roshi.They recited all sorts of great, wonderful, beautiful words. I read that book eight times, always getting something new.To me, it was clear Harada Roshi and Yasutani Roshi were the highest of the high, the Ultimate, the Unmatchable Masters of the Universe. . . .

Zen at War, by Brian Victoria, himself a Zen priest. I wonder if Kapleau put it on his reading list before he died. I kinda doubt it.

Harada Roshi, 1934 (p137): “The Japanese people are a chosen people whose mission is to control the world.”

Harada Roshi, 1939 (p137): “The unity of Zen and war . . . extends to the farthest reaches of this holy war [then against the Chinese and soon against the world].”

Harada Roshi, 1943 (p138; the war is not going well): “We must push on in applying ourselves to ‘combat Zen,’ the king of meditation.”

Harada Roshi, 1944 (p138; things are getting desperate): “It is necessary for all 100 million subjects [read drones and workers] of the Emperor [read queen bee] to be prepared to die with honor . . . isn’t the purpose of zazen [meditation] . . . to prepare . . . for this?”

And his chief disciple Yasutani Roshi (p167) “was, in postwar years, ‘no less a fanatical militarist and anti-Communist’ (i.e. anti-Chinese).” But Victoria adds, Yasutani (no dummy he) carefully edited and tailored his pronouncements to his Western students (he led meditation training in United States a number of times). I suppose such statements he made in Japan as “The universities we presently have [in Japan, supporting peace in Vietnam, etc.] must be smashed one and all (p168)” might not have been that big a hit on American campuses.

Finally, Harada Roshi, 1939 (p137): “[If ordered to] march—tramp tramp; or shoot—bang bang. This is the manifestation of the Highest Wisdom.” 

Yes. Be one with the moment. Right."

Numerous other such examples are given. Some are from first-hand personal experience (Kapleau himself, and Toni Packer), others are from books I've read (Krishnamurti and Gandhi, who was "sweet and kind to everyone except his wife and sons"; I detail his special remedy for wet dreams -- sorry, you'll have to read Cabeza to learn more). Not to prove these gurus are "bad," but just to illustrate Oscar Wilde’s dictum: “All of us are lying in the gutter, but some of us are gazing at the stars.” And, to show why we are lying in the gutter: Due to the programming of our genes by evolution. But I ask over and over, Isn’t there something, Something, more to a human being than this? The following three quotations are especially relevant: 

The alternative to thinking in evolutionary terms is not to think at all. 
—Sir Peter Medawar, British biologist and Nobel laureate

Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult—at least I have found it so—than to constantly bear this conclusion in mind. 
—Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species

Consciousness is the most profound mystery facing biology today. 
---Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene 

Yes. What is that Something called consciousness? 

Then in the chapter, "The Unfree Will":

"The will. Yes. Experiments using MRI have shown that when people make decisions, the prefrontal cortex of the brain uses more oxygen. So if you want, pin it to that location. But Harvard University psychologist Daniel Wegner argues, “The average person’s sense of having a self that consciously controls his or her actions is an illusion.”(An illusion? Interestingly Einstein called our obsession with our individual self an “optical delusion of our consciousness.”) Experiments have shown that “although volunteers’ conscious decisions to perform a simple action preceded the action itself, they occurred just after a distinctive burst of electrical activity in the brain signaled the person’s readiness to move.” In other words, people “decide” to act . . . “after their brains [have] unconsciously prepared them to do so.” 

On top of that it has been discovered that even though the conscious mind has not initiated the act, there is still time—one-tenth of a second—for the mind to intervene and abort it. Abstain from it. Daniel Dennett, in "The Self as Responding and Responsible Artifact," in The Self from Soul to Brain, edited by Joseph Ledoux, Jacek Debiec, and Henry Moss, p41, writes, “As the astute neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran once quipped, ‘This suggests that our conscious minds may not have free will, but rather “free won’t” !’ ” Interesting. . . .

So . . . all our actions and thoughts . . . are unfree. The only freedom is “free won’t.” Which just happens to be what sitting, my kind of sitting, is all about.

So, the will. It could be likened to a vital organ such as the heart. And if it were to stop its beating? But . . . it’s not that simple. Not simple at all.
And this is what being “one with the moment” is really all about. All you have to do is allow free won’t to operate, abstain from unfree willing, allow all the feelings of wanting and fearing profoundly programmed by our genes to come up to the surface without acting on or reacting to them. . . and there’s nothing to it. 

And, in this person’s view at least, there is nothing of greater import." 

And the chapter "And the Stars" gives a plausible (but probably not provable), and profound, scientific underpinning for this “unfree will” that is what we really are: the mind-boggling truths discovered by Einstein, Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, etc. The truths of relativity and quantum mechanics, which totally undermine our conception of a separate self. String theorist Brian Greene sums this up in his fine book The Fabric of the Cosmos(page 12):

The reality we experience [in everyday life] is but a glimmer of the reality that is.

But meditation, "sitting," or learning to just Be, allowing our mind to just Be, might just help us glimpse that Something that is more. 

There is nothing that goes so against the grain as meditation done seriously—to what we think we are.

And there is nothing so profoundly important—to what we really are. The dedication page quote of Einstein on the home page tells it all: We are imprisoned in the “optical delusion”—programmed by evolution—of a separate self. “Our task must be to free ourselves.”

Yes.