StephenLegault.com
Writing
Finding Home
May 4th
Today is the 20th anniversary of my migration west.
The mental and emotional migration west started a few years before when I contemplated running away from home as a teenager. Being a fan of both Led Zeppelin and John Muir, I called Yosemite National Park and requested some pamphlets and maps of the park (going to California with an aching…).
But I didn’t run away. Not for a few more years. And when I did it was only after I’d secured a job, not in Muir’s Sierra Nevada, but at Tom Wilson’s Lake Louise.
When I got the job I didn’t even know where the place was.
It went like this: I was studying Parks Management at Sir Sandford Fleming College and knew that I wanted to work outside, preferably in the wilds, possibly in the mountains. Somewhere. But I was in south-central Ontario, and had never been west of Wawa; what did I know from mountains?
After my first summer at SSFC I got a great job, possibly my best job ever, at a small provincial park called Murphy’s Point. It was on the Frontenac Axis which is an arm of the Canadian Shield that reaches down through the southern lowlands around Kingston, Ontario and connects New York states’ Adirondack Mountains with Algonquin. Murphy’s Point was on this spine of rocky uplands and it was magical. Sometime, when nostalgia strikes again, I’ll write more about it; suffice to say, early mornings in a canoe watching loon chicks hatch and snapping turtles patrol the shore left an indelible impression on my 20-year-old heart and soul. I fancied myself a modern Henry David Thoreau, minus the pencil business and the theodolite.
The following spring I cast my lure wide looking for more permanent employment. I sent out more than eighty applications to provincial and federal parks across Canada. I got two bites: St. Lawrence Islands National Park, just an hour from Murphy’s Point, and Banff. Some considerable distance further away.
My interview went well for the position in Banff. I had studied hard, practically memorizing everything on the Park in my college’s library. This consisted mostly of old Park Management Plans and Parks Canada policy documents. I drew heavily on my experience at Murphy’s Point during the interview and a few weeks later I was offered the most junior position possible in the Park’s interpretive service. I’d be stationed in Banff, and would work at the Parks information centre, pointing tourists to the bathroom. If I did a good job of it I might get to lead a hike or two by the end of the summer.
I was ecstatic. This was my ticket west! I continued to study for the job. My father bought me a copy of Ben Gadd’s Handbook of the Canadian Rockies and it became my bible. Then, three days before I was to fly to Calgary I took a call from someone identifying themselves as Mike Kerr. He said he was my boss. He asked if I would mind working in Lake Louise instead of Banff. I would lead hikes and do campground talks instead of telling people how to get back on the highway. I said an enthusiastic yes.
The first thing I had to do after hanging up the phone was figure out where the hell Lake Louise was.
I knew it was in Banff, but I had spent all my time studying the Hot Springs and the Cave and Basin and the history of Canada’s first National Park. I found Lake Louise on a large scale map in the Management Plan but failed to note that the TransCanada Highway ran straight to it.
I’m going to be living on a lake again, I thought. I can get up early and canoe with the loons.
How right I was.
My dad drove me to the airport at 4 a.m. on May 4th 1992 and I remember waving goodbye. And then I was gone. Doug Brown, another park interpreter, met me in Calgary. On the way out of city he asked if I wanted to stop and get something to eat. We were going to arrive in Banff just as a meeting of all the Park’s interpreters were being held at a popular picnic site outside of the town of Banff so we stopped at a Subway I bought two foot long sandwiches: I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get groceries in remote Lake Louise.
Then it was on to the mountains. I fell asleep. I recall waking somewhere around the Morley flats and being gob-smacked as the sheer face of Mount Yamnuska pressed into the sky; then I drifted off again. It would be another week before I ventured into Calgary for a training session and got to experience the Eastern Slopes rising up from the foothills in all their magnificence once more.
We arrived at Cascade Ponds and I met my fellow interps (including Joel Hagen and Nadine Fletcher, who I have remained friends with ever since.) For whatever reason I had chosen to dress in my Toronto clothing that morning: black dress shoes, fashionable jeans, a dress shirt and my impracticable oilskin coat. Everybody else sported fleece and hiking shorts. I didn’t wear those clothes until I got on the plane the following September.
I tried to stay awake as Charlie Zinkan told us about the important role we would play in presenting the park to the millions of visitors that came to Banff every year. (So important, in fact, that the following summer half of the interpretive positions in the Park were cut.)
What I was really inspired by was the luminous form of Cascade Mountain rising up behind the Superintendent. I asked my new friends about the mountain names and wondered how I would ever remember them all.
Then, at last, it was onto Lake Louise. That’s when I learned the awful truth about my new home. Two million people would visit Lake Louise that year, and all but one or two who couldn’t find their way out of the shopping mall parking lot would venture to the lake shore. Dreams of another summer in peaceful contemplation of nature were replaced with the reality of motor homes belching diesel fumes. Worst of all: someone had built a seven-story hotel where my log cabin was supposed to be.
Memories of my home on the shore of Loon Lake were dashed when I saw Charleston Residence where I would live for the next three summers; a massive log structure owned by the ski area and used in the winter to house the grunts who operate the ski lifts and work in the concessions. In the summer Parks rented a few dark rooms with ski-wax stained floors for their transient staff. It was year round party central. The upshot: I met lifelong friends Jim, Jack and Josh there.
Despite these annoyances, it was a glorious summer. It was magical. I lead hikes and did campground talks about grizzly bears. I got firsthand experience in that subject matter when I was bluff charged by a notorious female grizzly named Blondie just a few weeks after I arrived. I climbed my first mountains and took up rock climbing to overcome my fear of heights. I logged nearly a thousand kilometres on trail and off in the backcountry and up and down the Plain of Six Glaciers. I fell hopelessly, madly, bottomlessly in love with the mountains.
I struggled to square my love for the backcountry wilderness with my disdain for Lake Louise itself. The scenery was magnificent; it was the scene that drove me bonkers. People bustled for a snap-shot of the lake, or of the penitentiary-like facade of the Chateau Lake Louise, and then blasted off for the next appointed attraction. It was a zoo. It was loony. It soured my disposition and I my outlook on National Parks. From time to time it made me grumpy.
Twenty years later I don’t like it any more than I did in 1992, but age and miles have taught me some patience and compassion, and I no longer grow frustrated when I stroll into that picture-postcard scene. People come to appreciate nature in their own way, in their own time, at their own speed. Who am I to judge?
Before I had left Ontario for Banff and Lake Louise I’d secured a job for the following winter as a “sustainability consultant” at my college. The summer tourist season drew to a close and on September 4th I put on my city clothes, tucking my hiking shorts and fleece deep in my pack, and Jim drove me to the airport. I remember watching the mountains grow distant as we drove over Scott Lake Hill. I thought: I’ll be back. I’ve found home.
And I had.
For the next four summers I was employed by Parks Canada. Just before Christmas in 1996 they grew tired of my grumpiness and my relentless activism on behalf of Banff and Canada’s National Parks and told me that I wouldn’t be offered a job the following summer. I didn’t leave; not for good. I just did what everybody else who had been canned by Parks for being too pro-nature did: moved down valley and got a new job.
I’ve come and gone a great deal over the last twenty years. For more than five years I lived on the west coast. While still the “West” it never felt like Alberta, like the Eastern Slope, like home. During that time I drove back and forth dozens of times, missing the feeling of peace that the mountains provided. Having been back in the Rocks for more than a year now, I know for certain I am home once more.
There will be more coming and going. But for twenty years this place has been my heart’s true home; every day here is a gift. Every sunrise is a delight and every eventide perfect. I wake and am grateful for the blessings in my life; principal among them is the opportunity to call the Rockies home.
Now my children are coming to love the mountains as I do. When I walk with Rio and Silas in the mountains, and they take my hand or run ahead on the trail, skipping, or crouch down on the fragrant earth to admire some wonder I become dizzy with gladness. My love for this landscape is now inter-generational.
Rio, Silas and Jenn at Buller Pass, Kananaskis Country, 2011
I recall during my fourth summer based out of Lake Louise meeting a pair of horse wranglers and guides deep in the backcountry along the Red Deer River. They were towering men, more imposing from the saddle, and as we chatted one of them looked down and asked: “So, just how far east are you from.”
In a rare moment of quick wit I responded, “We can’t all be born in the place we call home.”
You might not come from the place you call home, but you can be born when you find it.
And so, I have.
The Prayer Tree
Feb 21st
There is a tree on one of the grassy benches above my home that is sacred. It’s a stalwart Douglas fir that rises up just a little taller than the other fir and spruce that surround it. From its base there is a standard tremendous view of the Bow Valley, the Three Sisters, Mount Peter Lougheed and Wind Ridge. It’s both easy to find and a surprise when stumbled upon. It’s like a thousand other Douglas fir that dot the sunny south-eastern side of this deep mountain vale, and singular in every way.
It is a prayer tree. Around its roots are a circle of stones with an entrance that allows access to the tree’s circumference. Approach the tree as I often do from the path that winds by its bottom and soon all manner of offerings appear: beads and glass bobbles scattered in the dust among its roots; hand written notes, an empty vile of homeopathic medicine, coins and a key are wedged in its thick bark; notes and pouches are suspended from its branches by string. A spiral of twigs is laid out in a neat pattern on the bare earth below the spreading limbs.
I found this tree by accident on one of my first runs through the woods above my home more than a year ago. I’ve had other such companions throughout my days on the trail over this lifetime. In high school I named a spreading American Beech ‘Phaedrus’ after a character in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and mourned it’s lose when my precious woods were cut to make way for the 427 toll highway. When I lived in Harvie Heights for six years in the 1990’s I named a massive Engleman Spruce Issrigill, one of the pillars of the earth in Roman mythology.
By the time I worked at Royal Roads University a few years ago I had stopped naming my favourite trees, but found them never the less. On a campus full of extraordinary trees – 16 of the largest Douglas fir left on the Vancouver Island were on the upland slopes of the grounds – there was a massive Norway Maple that at its base was six feet across. I found a way to run by that tree almost every day I was on campus and it never failed to fill me with a sense of magical wonder.
But never have I come across a tree that is so obviously important to so many other people. Despite the conspicuous adoration felt for this particular tree, I’ve yet to meet anybody there on my dozens of runs past it. And that’s just as well, because the sort of druidic reverence I and others evidently feel for this tree is best practiced in private.
A few days ago while running in the warm afternoon sun I came upon the tree as I usually do: by accident. On my circuitous routes through the woods and meadows along the slopes of Grotto Mountain I often let whimsy decide my course, so I’m always pleasantly surprised to find myself at the base of this tree.
I stopped running and walked through the opening in the stones that circled the tree. For some reason I have it in my head that the offerings left at this tree have been done so by young people. I figure most adults have lost the sense of wonder and suspended judgment that is required to leave a prayer in the form of a note, a coin or a key in such a place. I wanted to offer something but didn’t have anything to leave: somehow I didn’t think the wrapper from a Cliff Shot could be interpreted as anything but garbage.
But I did have something I needed to take with me. I circled the tree a few times, trying to quiet my racing mind. There has been a lot of pain in the world of late; a lot of pain in my family too. Several dear family members are sick. Two of the people I love the most in this world are facing the end of the journey. I do not want them to leave just yet. A friend is passing through dark times. And on the same day I was saying my prayers at this tree the father of friends I grew up with – a man whose presence when I was a child seemed like it would last forever – was being put to rest after a massive heart attack.
There were other prayers to offer. Last week a child was born to friends who are love incarnate, and this little boy will grow up deeply cared for and cherished. They named him Isaiah and recalled the Words: Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed. (Isaiah 54:10)
When we need something that we believe is beyond our control we sometimes pray for it.
More money.
More health.
More choices.
More time.
I do not believe there is a supernatural being to pray to, and nobody will respond to my supplication except the wind and the sun. So why do I find myself praying when I run past this tree?
Because all life is a prayer. Because every moment, every word, every breath is a prayer. Prayer focuses our intent, and calls together the sometimes magical and often mundane coagulation of hope and belief and the power of our thoughts to create reality.
And because sometimes prayer is all we have. And sometimes prayer is all we need.
And so, at the base of the tree where others have left gifts I leave love and courage for my family and friends who are struggling to hold onto life, and offer the gift of hope and peace for baby Isaiah. And then, the afternoon sun warming my face and the wind speeding my steps, I keep running through the prayer filed woods.
Heisenberg, relativity and precious little time
Feb 9th
Walking the kids to school is one of my favourite things to do. They don’t need it. Both boys can easily find their way there and back on their own. But I need it. On the mornings when they are with Jenn and I, it gives me an excuse to take a 30 minute walk early in the day, and it provides an opportunity for connection.
This morning’s walk was extraordinary. I said something about “time flies when you’re having fun” and Silas picked up on this and wanted to know what that meant. I asked him instead. He said it that when you’re doing something that you like, time doesn’t seem to take as long. The three of us discussed this: how could that be so? I thought one second was one second and one minute was one minute.
It just seems that way, said Rio. Again I pushed back. Rio responded that when you were doing something that you really loved, you could lose track of time.
So time is relative? I asked.
What does that mean? Silas’ face twisted into a 6-year-old question.
It means that sometimes time seems to go fast and sometimes it feels to drag on forever.
Like when you’re not having fun, Rio added.
That’s right. It’s a matter of perception: how we experience something can change it, and us, I said. That’s why our attitude about things is important. Having fun, I said, is a choice, and if we can choose to laugh, have fun, then we change the properties – the physical make up – of things.
I should point out that our morning conversations aren’t always this philosophical. Just yesterday we had a long discussion on if you combined fire and lightening would you get a laser, and if so, just how much damage could you do with it? This morning I threw in a bit on the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, but that was taking things a little too far.
We circled back to time flying as the school hove in view. Rio was up just after 6 and wanted to write. I had been up for an hour doing the same, so I know how it was to wake up with a story banging at your head, trying to get out. Rio said to me: this morning when I was writing, it felt like just a few minutes.
That’s right, I said, but it was in fact an hour.
Is that what you mean? He asked.
That’s it exactly. When we’re doing something we love, time seems to disappear. I told him that’s how I felt every single morning. That’s why I got up before five each day to write novels, before getting him and his brother ready for school and then starting my day job.
I told him he had learned an important secret: do what you love and you feel the sense of bliss that accompanies having discovered your Dharma. But I think I made it simpler for the ten year old: do what you love and it feels so good time flies.
The boys went to school and I walked home. Every single moment is a choice between bliss and boredom; between time flying and time dragging on and on. Choose wisely; this is the only time we have; there is no other time.
Follow me on Twitter @stephenlegault.
Read more posts like this one here.
Poem for Rio
Jan 25th
When you were born, ten years ago today
Moments after you came into this world
Perfect
I held you in my arms and began a mantra
I haven’t stopped repeating since.
I intoned:
There will never be a single minute
Of any hour
There will never be a single hour
Of any day
There will never be a single day
Of any week
There will never be a single week
Of any month
There will be never be a single month
Of any year
Of the rest of your life
That I don’t love you more.
And there never has been.
Just another grateful day
Dec 31st
I’m going to start 2012 the same way I start every other day of my life: by remembering how grateful I am to be alive, to have been born not only into this human corporal being, and in a country where I can live in relative ease.
Meditation on gratitude has been part of my morning ritual for the last few years. As I am making tea, I consider all the things that I am grateful for. I almost always start with where I live. I feel blessed beyond words to be back in the Rocky Mountains. It is a privilege and an honour to live here. Many people around the world vacation here; they spend hard earned pay to come here for a week and experience the beauty and peace of this magnificent landscape. I get to wake up every morning and breathe mountain air and gaze on another flawless sunrise.
I am grateful too that I live in Canada. It’s by no means perfect, but I am thankful that I live where I can work hard each day to change what I don’t like, and still return home each evening alive, un-harmed.
My gratitude is deepest when it comes to my family. I have a loving wife who adores me and cares for me and for whom I would do anything. My children are like shining stars to me, and I love them more than words can say. I don’t see them every day, but my gratitude to have them in my life grows each and every moment. I am grateful that they have two loving households, and that we all work so well together in the interest of raising these amazing boys.
My gratitude extends to each member of my family. As 2011 ticks over to 2012 I am grateful, and meditate daily, for the recovery of my step-father Ernie, who married my mother just months ago, and who now is very sick. He is a good man, and I am thankful to have spent time with him over the last few years, and hope I get to spend more time with him in the future. My mother needs you, Ernie: I am grateful for you being in her life.
I am healthy, strong, and have all my wits about me most days. I’m pretty grateful for that blessing.
And I am grateful for my talents, and that I have found a way to align those with a way to earn a living. I can write, and have found a publisher who believes in me. For this rare, precious gift, I am so deeply grateful. And I have a job that allows me, each and every day, to work with amazing people in an effort to make the world a better place. How fantastic is that?
For all of these gifts I am appreciative. None have come particularly easy. Hard work, and years of patience, have been required to attract them to my life. I have never thought that the world owed me these blessings, but I do believe that I deserve them and the contentment that being grateful for them brings. Maybe if I had felt entitled to them I would not wake every single morning with a song of gratitude in my heart and the mantra “how can I express my gratitude for all that is precious in my life this day?”
The science behind gratitude has been in the news lately. Western medicine and psychology are waking up to what indigenous and contemplative cultures have known for thousands of years: that if we are grateful for what we have in our lives, we are happier; we want less, and are satisfied with our place in the universe and feel less anxious about what we don’t have.
To me it just feels like saying thank-you. I was raised to say thank-you, and we’re raising Rio and Silas to do the same. Every single day I want to say thank-you to the world around me for giving me this one precious heart-breakingly beautiful life to live as I choose. It’s not always easy; in fact, sometimes it’s very hard. But it is always filled with wonder.
So 2012 begins the way 2011 ended: by saying thank-you. I am grateful.
Turn on lights, sit before the tree
Dec 29th
The boys went back to their other house today. We’ve had an amazing Christmas, sledding, playing games, making Lego and being together as a family. I spent Christmas with my father for the first time in seventeen years, and that was the greatest gift of the season. I love Christmas and this was a really good one. Now, the house quiet and the boys gone for another week, and I’m experiencing the post-Christmas doldrums.
Everything looks the same; the tree is still up and the mantel still decked with ornaments and lights and boughs, but something is missing.
There is a saying in Buddhism: before enlightenment, cut wood, haul water; after enlightenment, cut wood, haul water. Before Christmas, turn on lights and sit before the tree. After Christmas, turn on the lights and sit before the tree.
Of course, celebrating a family Christmas isn’t the same as enlightenment, but there are some similarities. Christmas is one time of the year that many people experience peace, if only for a short while. For me it often comes after all the hullabaloo of the day is over, and I can sit quietly with my family and look at the Christmas tree, and hold them in my arms and feel completely at peace. Others feel it during a once-a-year trip to the Church; others still while offering some generous charitable gift at a homeless shelter or the Salvation Army.
Whatever its cause, this harmony is a glimpse of a possible permanent peace that comes from enlightenment; the enduring end of suffering. In short, that suffering ends through unconditional love.
For a few, including Gautama Buddha, suffering can be conquered through devotion to meditation and a lifetime of practice, study, laughter and good will, the rest of us only catch fleeting glimpses.
And so it is at Christmas. The company comes and goes, the day passes, and soon the New Year is upon us and before we know it, the brief moment of peace is a fading memory.
We turn on the Christmas lights and sit before the tree, but the peace it brought has slipped away.
My favourite book on Buddhism is called After the Ecstasy, the Laundry, by Jack Cornfield. For the longest time I had only read the opening chapter, the title of the work being enough to keep my mind occupied.
Life is punctuated by moments of bliss, pure love, complete peace, clear vision, and total unity, but then they are gone, and we’re left doing the dishes again, trying to hurry the kids off to school and meet some deadline at work. We crave a return to those moments of perfection, and sometimes grow weary or resentful of the day-to-day humdrum that occupies most of our lives. We crave distraction from it; we want to escape.
But as the saying goes, both before and after enlightenment, life is almost entirely made up of routine. It can be either tedious, or blissful; the choice is ours to make. Even for those achieving enlightenment, it is a reality. In fact, for those conquering suffering, facing that choice may be the key to creating a lasting peace.
The boys are gone and the house is quiet. There is no monumental war of Star Wars Lego figures taking place across the living room carpet. Nobody is asking for one more piece of Christmas candy. I’m sitting by the fire, the tree lit beside me; and every single moment I am making the choice to be at peace with myself and my life. It is a gift that transcends the season.
Peace on Earth…and Eggnog with Rum
Dec 20th
Silas, my six year old, wanted to know what Buddhist’s do to celebrate Christmas. We’ve been talking a lot about spirituality, and its distant cousin religion, lately, and I’ve been telling him and his brother Rio, 9, about the Christmas story. At random times of the day I’ll fire questions at them, pop quiz style, about the birth of Jesus, and offer them a range of ideas to ponder about his life and death. I want them to understand why people started celebrating this season, and how it came to pass that we associate it with the giving and receiving of presents.
I also weave in as many of the other holiday traditions around the approaching darkness, including the Hindu festival of Diwali, known as the festival of lights, and the Jewish Hanukkah when the nine branched Menorah is lit as a meditation on the meaning of the holiday.
Though all of this, the boys know what my beliefs are, but I insist that they should make up their own minds on spirituality. I remind them that belief in the teaching of the Buddha – that there is a path to the end of suffering – is not exclusive, and can be paired with any other set of spiritual beliefs we choose.
But Silas is persistent; he understands that there is something a little different about Dad’s beliefs and administers his own pop quiz as we walk to school one morning.
What can I tell him? I love Christmas, but not because of the birth of the son of God. I believe that Jesus Christ was born, possibly even in Bethlehem, on Christmas over two thousand years ago. But I don’t think he was the son of God in the literal way the bible would have us believe. I think he was a prophet and an Avatar, like the other great spiritual teachers Mohammad and the Buddha.
What I love about Christmas is that it’s a time of peace and good will and love towards one another. It’s possible that peace, good will and love were what was born as the “son” of God on that night so long ago. I have said elsewhere that I think that the bible should have stopped by saying that “God is love” and left well enough alone. I also believe that love is the infinite power of the universe to create life, and that all living things are manifestations of love’s will to exist in the vastness of time and space.
It’s not so much of a stretch, then, to say that Jesus Christ as the “son” of “God” was the emergence of very focused, intense love into the world at a time when humanity was particularly troubled. With true love comes peace, between nations, but also within. Peace was the prophet Jesus Christ’s greatest message; so it was with Lord Buddha: together they taught that peace within one’s soul is needed before we can have peace between nations. And from that comes good will towards one another.
That’s a lot for a six year old to think about, and the conversation diverges to a discussion about which Star Wars Lego set he might find under the tree.
I don’t know what Buddhists do at Christmas to be honest. I’m not part of the club. I know what I’m going to do at Christmas. I’m going to continue to greet every person I meet by silently saying Nameste, which means “the spirit in me greets the spirit in you.” What better way to welcome the spirit of the season into our hearts than through this benediction?
I’m also going to make an extra effort to bring peace, even just for a moment, to those who need it the most: the weary, the downtrodden, those who are suffering for whatever reason, big or small. I’ll do what I can to teach peace and be at peace during this time when we must be the light that shines through the veil of darkness. I’ll do this by telling perfect strangers and my closest friends with a smile, with small talk, and often without words, that they are loved. I’ll likely slip-up and get frustrated or flustered over the holidays, trying to impose my notion of perfection on an already perfect world. That’s why God, who loves us and wants us to find peace, gave us rum and eggnog at this time of the year. Or maybe that’s the Buddha.
For more seasonal merriment see: Holiday Shopping with the Buddha Claus.
Lighten Up
Dec 10th
One year ago my family and I moved into our home in Canmore, Alberta. 365 days seem to pass very quickly and now, in many ways the nearly six years I spent on the coast feel dreamlike in their signature.
In a nearly comical way I continue to ruminate on the extraordinary journey. The part of the adventure that still makes me laugh, in a nervous, slightly manic way, was the extraordinary effort to haul all of our stuff across the mountains from Victoria back to Canmore. Fishtailing into on-coming traffic a fully loaded, 35-foot long U-Haul van on black ice on a mountain road has a way of sharpening the mind.
Five years ago I had almost no processions. Everything I owned fit in a friend’s Delica van. When I moved into the big old Victorian house on Chambers Street in Fernwood that I lived in for four years, the place was practically empty. It felt pretty good.
Over the next few years, it filled up. Old third hand furniture was discarded for better second hand stuff. The bed I built for Rio and Silas was replaced by two beds bought at a garage sale. As if by spontaneous cellular division, children’s socks, toys and outdoor gear just materialized. When Jenn and I moved her possessions from Canmore to Victoria for our two years together there, we unloaded a medium sized U-Haul into the house, and it started to feel like a home.
By the time we were ready to move our combined lives back to Canmore together last December, we had to rent the largest U-Haul on the lot and still made dozens of trips to Value Village to unload our unwanted processions.
I get attached to things. They represent comfort, security, and ease. But they also act as talisman for memories. Before I made the move from Victoria back to the mountains I got it in my head that I would expunge some of these mementos from my life. I had this notion of throwing something away every day for 180 days to symbolize turning around 180 degrees.
That’s the way I imaged our move back to the rocks. Turning around completely; leaving old patterns, old habits, old fears, and old attachments behind.
I threw a lot of stuff away. I wish I had kept a list, but that too would have been just another damn thing to keep track of and I didn’t need that. I think the most significant thing I discarded during that time was a clay statue that had been sculpted and given to me by my first significant girlfriend back when we were in high school. It had broken several times over the last twenty-two or –three years and I’d glued it back together. For me it represented an attachment to my past that I had to discard to fully embrace the present. It left without ceremony.
When it came time to finally load the U-Haul, we were overwhelmed with the amount of stuff we still had. It took two and a half days to load the truck. The first three-quarters were easy. The last quarter took a day and a half. By the end I resorted to rigging a net of yellow rope to hold all the stuff in. And then we loaded our pickup: plants, cleaning supplies, the third coffee maker, and other random things we couldn’t let go of.
Why are we holding onto all this stuff I kept asking myself, and random passersby?
Why indeed? Some of our things provide us with necessary comforts, like the toaster, the first coffee maker, the tea pot and the cork screw. We need some things to live day to day, to earn a living, to enjoy our time with our families and friends. But much of the stuff jammed and jimmied into the back of the U-Haul, like much of what we surround ourselves in modern society, isn’t needed to enjoy our lives; it comes between us and our ability to live fully.
The mass of accumulated possessions in modern life force us into a sort of spiritual indentured servitude and insulate us from the real world. We must work like dogs to afford all the things we think will give us pleasure: TV screens the size of a fridge, cars the size of armoured vehicles, a basement full of toys, gadgets, equipment and memorabilia.
Some of it is useful. Much of it is clutter, under our feet and in our hearts.
It holds us down and ties us to the past and creates barriers to living fully in the present.
Much of this stuff is also wasteful and necessitates gobbling up vast quantities of minerals, petroleum and the remaining ancient forests so we can live in massive homes, drive massive vehicles and watch massive televisions.
Why? Four reasons: First, because we are afraid of being uncomfortable. Second, because we are attached to our past. Third, because we are afraid of confronting our own suffering. Fourth, because we are afraid of our impermanence: we are afraid to die.
Our things give us physical comfort. Some of them make our lives easier. But at what cost? In addition to the slavish labour we must undertake day in and day out to afford the things that supposedly make our lives easier, many of these so-called comforts distract us from the true source of our discomfort, and keep us from confronting our own fears. What are we so afraid of that we must distract ourselves for so much of our lives?
All the stuff in our lives keeps us looking backwards. Reflection on, and celebration of our personal history is wonderful. But there comes a time when we have to let it go. Too often we hold onto things long after they have served their purpose. Too often rather than living in the present we surround ourselves with mementos to a time of our lives that no longer serves us.
Suffering is a fact of life. We all suffer. Conquering suffering is the purpose of Buddhism. Suffering is overcome through the practice of daily meditation, purposeful living, practicing loving-kindness, among other tents of the Eightfold Path. Too often we don’t even realize the depth to which we suffer because we’re distracted. We watch TV, or listen to our iPods or amass untold numbers of gadgets that keep us from sitting quietly and reflecting on the true purpose of our lives: to overcome suffering, and to help others do the same.
And then there is death. We are possibly the only creatures on earth who are aware, from a very early age, that we will die. My own sons and I have talked openly about this since they were four years old. Is it any wonder that we are also the only creatures on earth who amass such extraordinary piles of stuff? Huge homes, massive cars, cottages, boats, collections of books and music and play-things. Do we need these things to survive? Absolutely not. Do they extend our lives? In some cases, by a few years. The stress of struggling and yearning for them more often ends our lives prematurely. Do we need them to be happy? Some bring momentary comfort, even joy. But for the most part, our things serve the purpose of insulating us from the inevitability of impermanence. They distract us from the suffering caused by this knowledge, persuade us that we needn’t face this fear and surmount it, and convince us that maybe we will cheat death if only we can protect ourselves from the world with our processions.
This has been on my mind for the last year. Why all this stuff? Like many others, I’ve had fantasies of throwing it all in the dump (or having a nice big bonfire), strapping my backpack on and disappearing to some remote corner of the world, taking with me just a little bit of the stuff. But that would only be a temporary solution. In a few years, there would be more stuff.
And I like my things. Jenn and I have a small, tasteful home filled with books and keepsakes from our travels and photos that have meaning.
The solution isn’t external. It’s not about the world the surrounds me, cluttered or otherwise. It’s about the world within.
There is a wonderful scene in the Pixar movie Up. In the film a deeply unhappy older gentleman, Carl, and an enthusiastic boy named Russell take a tremendous journey by tying thousands of balloons to Carls’ house and flying, dirigible fashion, to South America. The house is filled with memories of Carl’s deceased wife Ellie. While alive, she and Carl dreamed of adventure and visiting Paradise Falls, but instead lived a quiet, even contented, life. When Ellie died, Carl was wracked with guilt for failing to fulfill his wife’s dream.
Towards the end of the movie, Carl is unable to let go of all the memories entangled in his home in order to help one of the duo’s tag-alongs, a ten foot tall bird named Kevin. Russell is furious and departs to help Kevin on his own, leaving Carl to confront his memories alone. In a moment of clarity, Carl realizes that all of the things that he thought mattered were weighing his house down, so he throws them all out the front door. Last to go are the symbolic chairs that he and his wife sat in throughout their marriage. The house is lighter, the balloons lift it off the ground, and Carl flies to both Kevin and Russell’s rescue.
Carl realizes that his past is weighing him down, and that he has to lighten the load before he can live fully in the present.
Does this mean that I’ll be throwing more of my books, photos, my beloved mountain bike and furniture out the window this weekend? No. But I am aware of how all the things in my life tie me to my past, and distract me from addressing what is truly important. I’ve made a commitment to lighten up, both physically and emotionally so that spiritually I can strive for some manner of freedom from suffering.
Goodbye Jack
Aug 23rd
I met Jack Layton only once, but that was enough. It was six years ago or so, in Calgary. He was speaking at several events and I met briefly with him between sessions and we walked down the Stephen Avenue Mall together chatting about how to engage people in the NDP in a more systematic way. I don’t really remember much about the conversation; what I do recall is the character of the man. As a friend of mine who knew him very well told me yesterday: “He was the real deal.” And in politics, that is not always the case.
When Jack Layton died yesterday morning he left a gaping hole in Canadian politics. Soon there will be the predicable questions about whether the NDP and the Official Opposition can survive without him. That’s not what I am asking: What I want to know is who will step up and remind us through his or her every action, every word, that “love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair?”
The space left behind by Jack Layton is simply one of kindness, and of love. One of the quotes in the sound montage used by the CBC yesterday had Jack proclaiming that there were so many familiar faces in the room that he just wanted to wade in and hug everybody.
Really? Is it possible to imagine another Leader of the Official Opposition speaking like that? Maybe in time Jack’s true legacy will be that our leaders will see that if we’re trying to build a country, we can’t tear each other down in the process.
This morning my heart goes out to those who truly knew and loved Jack. His partner Olivia, his children Mike and Sarah and grandchildren who didn’t yet have the opportunity, but will in time know of his legend; and his colleagues in parliament and his myriad friends. Nothing ever really ends; nobody really dies: we just change. And maybe from this change, inspired by his final words to Canadians – “So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world” – we can learn that by wielding lightness, not the dark, will allow us to build a better word.
Entering the (Costco) Market
May 2nd
In the Zen Buddhism tradition, after one has attained enlightenment, they return to the world with helping hands, easing the suffering of others, and helping them follow the way of the Buddha. This is called Entering the Marketplace, and is the culmination of the Ten Oxherding Pictures, a parable on the path to enlightenment.
Let me be clear about this from the start: I’ve skipped over steps four through nine and rushed headlong and willy-nilly into the Market. There will be more on that later.
My first time in a Costo, to do anything more than gawk in stunned amazement at the brazen consumerism, was on December 23rd of 2010. It was pretty exciting. Jenn and the boys and I had just moved into our new home in Canmore, Alberta, and had resolved to investigate the option of buying some of our staples in bulk to save money.
During our time together in Victoria, Jenn always threatened to drag me to Costco, just a few kilometers away in Colwood, to stock up on things we used a lot of: flats of juice and cases of Almond Breeze were the examples she suggested. Now, with the nearest Costco a solid hundred kilometers down the road in Calgary, we decide to finally visit one. We did this on the second-to-last day before Christmas.
I think for some this might sound like a recipe for disaster.
It likely would have been five years ago. And it likely would have been had I not been to India in 2008.
But a lot has happened in the last five years; I’ve done a lot of work: the sort of work that allows me to step into a Costco store teaming with crazed consumerism and see it as an opportunity to make people’s lives a little easier. Where else could I find so many opportunities to greet so many other human souls? And get little blocks of cheese on fancy crackers for free as a reward?
A couple of years ago, Jenn and I spent some time in India, where one of our favorite activities was to visit markets. We found an amazing open air produce and fish market in the City of Emakulam, across the bay from the Fort Kochi, which was simply fabulous. And the Thieves and Crawford Markets in Mumbai were extraordinary.
Markets in India aren’t all that different from, say, a modern urban Farmer’s Market, except they are more intense in nearly every way. They are brighter, noisier, darker, more fragrant, and extremely crowded. At one point in the Thieves Market the pedestrian and motorcycle traffic was so congested that we could barely move. I remember an Indian man putting his hand on my shoulder and gently guiding me through the throng. The temperature was in the high thirties that day in Mumbai. We were the only white people in a male dominated, Muslim sector of the city. That takes some getting used to.
Jenn likes to tell stories of our visits to these markets because of how paradoxical they are: two white people, often the only Westerners in sight, weaving their way through these crowded, chaotic locales. I learned that one of the secrets to survival in such quarters was to be effusive with smiles. Smiling is a powerful means of dissolving cultural barriers. So when I would walk into a dimly lit corridor filled with men at work preparing garlands for Shiva ceremonies, I would beam my brightest smile and greet people by saying Namaste: the spirit in me greets the spirit in you. With very few exceptions, this produced warm smiles, handshakes and invitations to photograph the goings on in return. I found myself perched on concrete platforms, talking with men in broken English (their’s was often perfect; mine, not so much) about their work and their lives.
Costco isn’t Kochi, and North-West Calgary isn’t Crawford Market in the world’s third largest city. But something is the same. So when Jenn and I stepped inside my first Costco I made a decision. To use this opportunity to try and relieve people’s suffering.
For most of my life, and for the last five years or so, I’ve been trying steadfastly to find an end to the suffering that characterizes all human endeavors, and certainly has been a dominant force in my own life.
The Buddha taught that, simply put, life entails suffering. Some mistake this to read life is suffering. That’s not what Gautama Buddha taught. What he said was that in life, there is suffering. He also taught that there is a cause to that suffering, and that among the root causes of suffering is attachment, and our failure to see understand the reality of our universe, which is that we are all connected to one another.
The reality is that we’re all part of the same interwoven fabric, and only our dim perception of the world keeps us from seeing that. We see ourselves as isolated sacks of flesh and blood and bones moving about the world, when really the boundaries between ourselves and everything else around us are more like the difference two colours in a sunset. It’s nearly impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Costco is a good place to look if you want to find people who are suffering. Walmart too. We rush through the aisles, scanning the case-lots for something, anything, that will provide us with the illusion of relief from what causes us pain. Inside we feel an ache: loneliness, an isolation, a separation. We mistake these things we are purchasing for our true source of comfort. We believe that if we just had a flat of juice or a case of almond breeze in the cupboard, then we’d be satisfied. But of course we’re not. Because drink the damned things and then we need more.
I wandered around Costco, following my wife up one aisle and down another, loading up the cart with all the things that we regularly buy – from rice to cereal to loaves of bread – and greeting people with the same phrase: “This is my first time in Costco, how about you?”
People would smile and say hi and a few would laugh and we’d strike up a conversation. We’d talk about Christmas plans and the kids and the Calgary winter and then we’d both move on.
“We are all so much together,” said the philosopher and theologian Albert Schweitzer, “but we are dying of loneliness.” I believe I can see this in people’s faces; in the distracted way they move through the world. Telling people that it was my first time in Costco was my way of chipping away at that loneliness, and dissolving the illusion of separation. Suddenly the shell around us cracks, and we become human again: we connect, and for a moment the barriers we erect to protect our fragile souls from the arrows of the world are withdrawn.
When Jenn and I got home from our Costco orgy of consumerism it felt good to fill up the cupboards with the necessities of life. Two cases of Almond Breeze and a double sized box of Cheerios means less trips to the local Safeway, and more money to pay for the other necessities of life. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, so long as we’re being conscious about what we buy. But let’s not mistake that feeling of temporary comfort from the permanent relief from suffering that the Buddha taught was possible.
My next venture into Costco came a month ago, during the kid’s Spring Break. The three of us went into the city to visit the Zoo, and Jenn and I prepared a lengthy shopping list for us, and programmed my phone to dial 911-Shopping Hell if I needed to. But we didn’t.
The three of us went up and down the aisles again, filling our cart, and I did my very best to smile and say hello and chat with people as we went. I couldn’t use my refrain of “first time…” anymore. But I didn’t need to. I simply sought out every opportunity to greet people – fellow travelers – as I encountered them.
I wasn’t always successful: the second person who cut me off to take a parking spot in the massive blacktop lot didn’t win a smile. But that was an exception.
In Zen, the Oxherding Pictures are a parable on enlightenment. There are hundreds of versions of this fable online and in books, and each is illustrated with simple, eloquent line drawings or watercolors. I take my interpretation from Roshi Philip Kapleau’s book The Three Pillars of Zen (Doubleday, 1980).
One: Seeking the Ox. Even though the Ox has never gone astray, we search for it, forgetting the true source of peace. Instead we mistake worldly gain and fear of failure for our true path.
Two: Finding the Tracks. Through the sutras and teachings of the Buddha we come to learn about the Ox. Though still living in the mist of illusion, we know that there is another way.
Three: First Glimpse of the Ox: We realize that everyday distractions are blinding us from seeing the Ox. We catch our first glimpse of him through a brief parting of the mist of illusion.
And for the record, after twenty years of study and five years of challenge and practice, I think I’ve just started to glimpse reality through the mists. The hard, sometimes deeply painful work, of step four yet eludes me.
Four: Catching the Ox (or, as Cat Stevens put it: Catch Bull at Four). After some effort, we are able to rope the Ox, but it is wild, and is attached to its old habits, so struggles. We must use strength and courage to hold onto what we have caught.
Five: Taming the Ox. The struggle with the Ox is won: we have conquered suffering. We no longer struggle with our true nature, but instead accept it, and smile at the paradox of existence. We overcome delusion, accept and triumph over attachment and harbor no illusion of separation.
Six: Riding the Ox Home. Serene, we are no longer in conflict over “gain” and “loss.” Though temptations still ply us, we retain undisturbed.
Seven: Ox Forgotten, Self Alone. In the Dharma – our purpose in the universe – there can be no separation between ourselves and others, ourselves and the world around, and ourselves and enlightenment. This is in part because there never was any separation; it’s only our thinking, and the illusions that this creates, that make us believe we alone.
Eight: All Forgotten. All attachment is vanquished, including attachment to holiness, and to being the Buddha.
Nine: Returning to the Source. We have never been separated from enlightenment. We are already home; we are already a part of the source. We always have been.
Ten: Entering the Marketplace with Helping Hands. Having seen through the illusion and having conquered suffering, our job now is to help others find the tracks of the Ox and embark on their own passage.
But I don’t think we need to wait for steps four through nine to occur in order to cut straight to the desire to enter the marketplace with helping hands.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m not always successful. I’m inpatient and hot-headed and have a temper and sometimes I’m not very nice. When I catch myself behaving this way – behaving as if the people I’m curt with aren’t simply an extension of my own fearful, fragile self – I make a point now of apologizing and remembering the greeting of Namaste: two sprits greeting one another; we are the same thing.
Rio and Silas and I proceeded towards the check-out, the long lines stretching back towards the cases of impulse items: chocolate bars and twelve packs of socks. I felt a wave of panic that I’d just loaded hundreds of dollars of food into my shopping cart and that there were people in this world who would never see such a bounty. I looked around me and felt a wave of pity (that most regrettable of emotions) at all the people there who looked tired and sad and lonesome. And then I looked behind me in the lineup and saw such a face; two faces, a couple who looked worn and weary.
“Hi,” I said, and smiled. “How are you?”
But what I really meant was: You are not alone.
“How was your day today?”
You and I are one.
“I hope that you have a good night. Take care….”
You are loved. I love you. Find peace.