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I first met Doug Peacock to interview him for a book. I was thirty-six years old. I arrived on his doorstep lost, discouraged and bewildered, working on a book no one believed in but me, married to a woman who expressed her ever-increasing dislike of me, with two young sons and a bank account that was shrinking with an alarming alacrity. And I was two hours late for the interview. It turned out to be one of the best nights of my life.

The afternoon before I had called my wife in upstate New York from an all-night truck stop in Arizona. No answer. I phoned several times over the next few hours. Still no answer. Concerned, at 10pm at night, I called a neighbor. She’s there, they told me. She’s got a friend with her. The friend shows up whenever you leave town. I asked if they would go over and ask her to answer the phone. They did. We had an unhappy phone conversation. His name was Wayne. I had left a career on Wall Street to write a book about people who lived life by their own rules, who marched to a different drummer, who dreamt a life, and then made it real. The literary agent I was working with told me that she had found a publisher if I would change the entire theme and central message of the book. I didn’t get to sleep until 4am and then slept till noon. Then I went for a run in a field of some kind of agribiz monoculture that stretched as far as the eye could see.

When I returned home a couple of weeks later, Wayne’s World hats were scattered around our home. Two months later I was diagnosed with an incurable cancer – non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Stage IV. It was in my bone marrow. Our marriage broke up the day I was diagnosed. Eighteen months later, having not died and having not found a publisher, I started Heron Dance based on the interviews I had done for Free Spirits. In honor of the night he gave me courage, and maybe changed my life, four years later, in 1999, I devoted issue 22 of Heron Dance to Doug. That’s the only issue I’ve ever devoted to one person.

Heron Dance (now Zen Mountain Journal) was a magical journey. Not only did financial help show up when I needed it most, not only did encouragement show up when I needed it most, but also, through a strange series of circumstances, an experimental medicine (WF-10 or TCDO) developed in Germany showed up when I needed it most. It kept me alive until Rituxan was developed. But that’s another story. I offer this background to put in context why I showed up for my interview with Doug two hours late.

I found Doug chopping mesquite in his backyard on the edge of the desert outside Tucson. He was a little grouchy at first, but when I pulled out a six pack of dark German beer, his mood improved dramatically. It was a sunny January afternoon. We sat back there surrounded by clucking quail, who wanted us to move on so they could come in to feed. As afternoon became night, we sat in the dark and drank wine and then scotch. Coyotes howled in the hills around us and a pack of javelinas -- which look like small pigs with big incisors -- wandered into his back yard, snorting around the table. When we reached for a drink, or raised our voices, they would scramble off into the desert. A few minutes later they would be back, rooting around, a couple of feet from where we sat. As I said, it was a magical night.

I have met a half a dozen people in my life with a real passion for life. When you leave their company, you are on a high. They somehow give you a boost. Doug is one of them. I would like to share with you some of what he said to me that first day and evening that we met. I hope it doesn’t come across as hero worship. Doug’s life isn’t all wonderful. There is anger, paranoia, fear; ever-present loaded handguns occasionally used indiscreetly, the drunken rambles through Tucson and Katmandu, the fist fights, the car wrecks, the friendships abandoned over some slight (real or imagined.) The bullshit and bad manners. There are some funny stories mixed up in all that, but they kind of miss the point. This man is alive. He offers a perspective on the importance of wilderness to a society that has removed itself from the natural world. He has truly lived. He knows profound sadness and joy. He lives with an open heart -- open to the beauty of nature, open to the beauty in the spirits of others. As we became friends over the ensuing years, I spent some of the best times of my life with him and some of the worst. He probably has more intuition about others and about bears than anyone I’ve ever met, and more wisdom – about everyone else but himself. About his own life he’s strangely unaware. But he came into my life when I desperately needed encouragement, and he gave it to me. His courageous approach to life, and his belief in me, gave me courage.

When we first met, I had no idea who Doug was. Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, had suggested a dozen people I might interview. Doug was one. As we sat in his backyard, I came to know his story. Doug is an ex-Green Beret medic who, after one and a half tours in Vietnam, had returned to America and spent time in Wyoming wilderness getting himself together, during which he developed an affinity for grizzly bears. His friend Ed Abbey got him interested in monkeywrenching -- eco-sabotage. Given his expertise in C-4 plastic explosive, he was a natural. (Just kidding). Edward Abbey wrote twenty books, mostly centered around uninhabited landscape. Perhaps his best known book is The Monkey Wrench Gang, about a group of environmental saboteurs who tried to slow the destruction of wilderness by rendering oil, mining and logging machinery permanently inoperable. A favored technique was dropping monkey wrenches down recently drilled oil wells, hence the title. A principal character in that book was ex-Green Beret Sergeant George Washington Hayduke, a character based on Doug. The last book Abbey wrote before he died was Hayduke Lives! In my gallery in Asheville there is a sign above the door: Hayduke Lives! And yes, yet he does.

Earth First! was inspired in part by The Monkey Wrench Gang. Doug did not ever actually join Earth First!, but the founders were friends of his, and many ex-Earth Firsters describe Doug as someone who inspired them in their work, both farious and nefarious. The FBI infiltrated Earth First! and arrested a number of key participants. The group split up. Many found less risky ways to work for wilderness.

Doug grew up in the woods around Saginaw, Michigan. His father left a job as a chief chemist in a sugar beet factory to become a Boy Scout leader. For seven years, while Doug was growing up, and his mother taught school, Doug was out in the woods with his dad. He was too young to be a Boy Scout, so he spent his time roaming around by himself -- bass fishing, canoeing, catching turtles.

He found a lot of Indian artifacts, including, at the age of fourteen, a major archeological site. His picture was on the front page of the local newspaper. “But just as I was riding the crest of my first wave, I fell from grace. I got drunk with three buddies, and shot fourteen pigs. We had to pay for every one of them. After the pigs I never quite made the Boy Scouts myself.”

(Years later, sometime around 2000, I was hanging out at Doug’s place in Paradise Valley near Livingston – on Jeff Bridges’ ranch – and there was a guy there who had known Doug since they were both kids. He may have been one of the fellow pig shooters. I asked him how much of who Doug is was due to Vietnam. He told me that Doug was just as crazy as a kid as he was after Vietnam.)

After high school, Doug went to college for a while -- in order to avoid the draft -- but he hated school. After a few months each year, he would get in his jeep and head west to work in the copper mines or as a carpenter. Then he would have to hurry back to school to avoid the draft. Eventually they caught up with him and sent him off to MP school. “MP school was schizoid city. I had been an outlaw all my life. I would be watching the training films on stockade duty and dreaming of escaping over the wall myself. The only way to get out of something like that in the army is to volunteer for more and more serious, dangerous shit. So I volunteered for Airborne. Then I got interested Special Forces medical training. I have a need to be self-sufficient and I wanted that training. In one year, they teach you everything a doctor is taught with none of the bullshit. I was against the Vietnam War, but I had to see it for myself. What could be more perverted than going to experience the Vietnam War just to see what was going on?

“Anyway, I lived for a whole year looking at a road map of Wyoming, staring at the little blank spaces. This was before I went to Vietnam and had bullets to dodge and real things to worry about. I used to just stare at the map and take off like a bird. Soar like a bird above the peaks and the ranges and the glaciers and the basins.”

He describes it as good training. Tough training. “Green Beret medicine is a counter-insurgent weapon. You go out there and patch up tribesmen, and fix up their kids, in the hopes of recruiting more and more guerrillas to fight your dirty little war. It’s horrible.” He spent a lot of time with Montagnards in mountainous jungle. He would be the only American, or one of two Americans in patrols of six to two dozen men. “They would helicopter us into a place surrounded by Viet Cong and NVA. We would sneak around in the woods, get in trouble and run for our lives… I have been shot at I do not know how many thousands of times. Not 20,000 but certainly more than 2,000. I had bullets go through canteens on my hips twice. I was only hit once… A lot of the bullets we dodged were from U.S. helicopter gunships. But being a Green Beret medic is an anarchist’s military dream. You are totally on your own.

“I can remember being in really horrible places like the village next to My Lai about a month before it happened. At the time it was off-limits to Americans, but I smuggled myself in with my Vietnamese medic. We had become close friends, and we were walking around in this town together. You could just feel the animosity and hatred. There were a lot of Americans stationed at Duc Pho, which is very close by, but they were not allowed in.

“We were speaking Vietnamese and walking the streets. I really didn’t want to be an American then at all. I was swimming in another stream. I was good enough by then that I could have a real conversation. After a couple of hours, I could feel the whole mood of the village change. I was not an American anymore. It was such a sensual pleasure -- speaking Vietnamese, walking into the stores -- just a very sensual pleasure. You could just feel the hatred evaporate.

“The last day I was in the field in Vietnam was March 16, 1968 -- the day of the My Lai massacre. I was forty miles away, back in the interior, behind a couple of mountain ranges… The war really had an impact on me. I was not immune to some of the horrific effects, but on the other hand it solidified all the doubt about where our culture and society is going. What I don’t like about it. It turned out that most of my suspicions were right.”

He got out of the army at the age of twenty five -- “a very old twenty-five.” When he got back to the states he bought a jeep, went back to Michigan to see his parents for a few days. “I didn’t have anything to say to anybody. I was aware of the impact I was making, but I couldn’t help myself. I just wasn’t there. These were the people I loved most in the world, and I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t have anything to say to anybody. It was years before I could have a serious conversation with anybody.” So he headed west. The mountains were in deep snow. He went to the Arizona desert and camped out in the canyons until June. Then he headed for the east side of the Wind River Range in Wyoming. “After a month, I got so sick of the rain, and eating trout and my own company that I decided to go up to Yellowstone where it was relatively flat and warm and dry. After I got there, I had a malaria attack, and ended up laying in a sleeping bag for three days. Soaked the sleeping bag all the way through. Temperature got up close to 106 degrees. Unloaded my pistol so I wouldn’t do anything crazy.”

He packed into a thermal area where there were hot springs to regain his health. He had a sow and her cubs saunter up to him. He scrambled up a tree. “It was stupid, but I didn’t know any better in those days. Bleeding, naked in forty degree winds. She didn’t pay any attention to me.” That was when the park was trying to wean the bears from the garbage. He had accidentally camped right beside a dump. The bears would walk past -- fourteen grizzlies in a line. “Those were the days before more and more pigdom in Yellowstone. Before the crowds of people. There was almost no one there that time of year.”

He had seen grizzlies before he went to Vietnam, but this time they made a real impact on him. He spent many summers filming them. He would camp out in Arizona in the winters, and then head back up to Yellowstone in the spring. “I have lived most of my life on the fringes of our culture. The most I have ever worked is four or five months -- as a hippy mailman. My whole life I have been totally unemployable. Whenever I make money, it is by accident. A total accident.” His friend, Ed Abbey, suggested he consider a seasonal job with the forest service because: “It’s got a quitting date that you can look forward to.”

“So I would take these seasonal jobs. I worked in North Cascades as a backcountry ranger for three years. Objectively, from anyone’s point of view, I was the worst park employee in their history. Horrible. Anarchists make lousy law-enforcement agents. The only thing I ever busted was an illegally parked Winnebago. I got in a fight with the deputy sheriff of Whatcom county and totaled a Ranger pick-up truck under highly dubious circumstances. I still hold the park record for property damage. So, with the support and encouragement of the Park Service, I left to find more suitable employment. That was twenty or so years ago. I am still looking, I guess. But apparently not too hard.

“I discovered that bears were having trouble, and I started sneaking into Yellowstone in April. I did that every spring. I would hide my tracks. Then I’d go from Yellowstone to Glacier in the fall. There are a lot more bears in Glacier. That became a seasonal pattern.” Eventually he was working two and a half months a year and getting a little unemployment. Just enough to live off. That pattern went on for fifteen or twenty years. “I had a dog. I had girlfriends from time to time. They would come and go. Well, the dog wouldn’t come and go -- but the girlfriends would. The dog socialized me, really.”

He met Lisa, his then wife, in the back country hiking. They had two kids. By then he was in his forties, and had some need for a little income. He decided he should become a writer. “One thing you can do if you are unemployable is write. It doesn’t involve collaboration and you don’t have to raise funds or buy equipment. I thought about crime but, you know, you have to knock over a lot of Safeways these days to pay the rent. If there were honorable trains or banks, I’d take them. But there aren’t.”

For many years he lived a migratory lifestyle -- Yellowstone to Glacier National Park and then, around Christmas every year, he would go on a solo trek in the desert of southwest Arizona -- the Cabeza Prieta. When I interviewed him, he told me, “I have been going on the walk for seven winters -- roughly from Yuma to Ajo. A different route each time. It takes me a week or ten days to walk about 160 to 200 miles. I have a little cairn out there in the desert. A place where I mourn my dead. I spend a day there and fast.” He has other memorials back in the woods in Yellowstone and Glacier. For twenty years he has been gathering buffalo skulls in Yellowstone -- animals from the same herd. He places them in a giant circle. He considers himself sort of a caretaker of their spirits. “I take my kids there now too. We make little offerings and things.

“I’m not out of the woods yet. I am the kind of person who does everything for therapy. I write for therapy, I walk for therapy. I cook for therapy. I pound nails for therapy. And every year I have to spend a lot of time out, by myself. I need great expanses of desert, tundra and wilderness. I travel constantly. My time is my own. I love new country. I love wild country most of all. I spend a lot of time in Mexico, a lot of time on the coast. A lot of time in Seri Indian country.

“A lot of my strength is really knowing what is unacceptable. And there is a whole lot that is really unacceptable. Most ways that people think they have to live -- I just could not do that. That’s not an acceptable way. It’s not acceptable to stand by and see something go on that is unjust. You would think you could let things slide after a time, but I just can’t do that. It gets you in a little bit of trouble, but at the same time, you really know where you stand at all times. I don’t preach to them, but I hope my kids see that.”

The underlying theme of Doug’s life is a passion for life, a reverence for life. Life of all forms. Wildlife, the way he spends his own life. The other is an uncompromising pursuit of what he believes to be right, regardless of the cost. Most of what he believes to be right is connected in some way to preserving wild areas as sanctuaries for wild things, and, secondarily, as places where people can go to get in touch with our original habitat.

“My habits are bad, like a hobbit. Drugs and booze are breaks for the soul. To be driven. Obsessive love, obsessive drinking -- it doesn’t matter -- they are notions close to my heart. I pay attention to them. It gets me in a lot of trouble. I’m old now. Fifty. And not in great shape. Last year I broke eight ribs in fights. I don’t look for trouble. These things just happen, but I can’t walk away.”

Here are some more excerpts from my interview of Doug:

I’m against TVs, but there is one in the house. Some days you get lazy. I take care of the kids for weeks at a time. When I have to get some writing done, I find myself just putting a tape in there and walking away. You probably shouldn’t do that. But on the other hand, what is really exciting about children is not what you teach them, but what you share with them. More than anything else, I just share my life and my love for things in the out of doors. The way children see the world is the way you should see the world. It’s like William Blake’s Songs of Innocence. The smell of discovery around every bend, every meander of the creek, and all of your troubles disappearing, like bubbles down a sunny river. You can learn about that from kids and it’s really wonderful. But you share it. You don’t teach it. You don’t dispatch it. You don’t even borrow it.

I take my kids up in the canyon lands, exploring ruins that are virtually untouched. Or we go to the ocean and camp on the beach. We gather clams and oysters at low tide. We take a thirty-year-old drift boat and bottom fish and catch crabs and salmon. We make huge chowders. You learn about the world that way, and it’s a good way to learn. You don’t force anything. You get hungry and you go out and satisfy your hunger. Every day we go and get something to eat. I take sampa, a bag of lemons, some condiments, but unless we score some fish or something we won’t eat much. That is a real incentive. Diving for moonsnails. Catching trigger fish off the reef. Then returning to share the catch. I make a sauce with garlic and olive oil and some lemons. It’s incredible. A feast night after night. And you learn things.

There hasn’t been anyone some of these places for hundreds of years -- since the Indians disappeared. A lot of wisdom resides in that land, in the ruins and middens. What were the lives of those people like? Not bad, by all indications. They stored up food for lean times. And had lots of leisure -- lots of time to just enjoy life. Every day, all the clams you could eat, giant leatherback sea turtles. Desert cactus for vitamins. It’s possible to go back and touch those roots -- our roots as human beings.You can still find the middens of the pre-historic Seri -- middens with thousands of broken moonsnail shells. We know they’re good to eat because the Indians ate tons of them. That is such a great way for anyone to learn -- a kid, an adult, anybody. . .

“You find yourself by losing yourself. By not thinking about yourself all of the time. I love new country. Wild country most of all. I consider my time to be my own so I have travelled constantly. It’s so important to get out of yourself and out of your culture because a lot about our culture isn’t great. And you get outside yourself most easily in the wild. The places that are strange and different. It has to be different than your own life, your own culture. A place that is strange and new -- where what you know doesn’t necessarily apply. You need to get out in order to see back in.

That’s what I need to do when I am in a slump with my writing. I’ll go and walk for a week. Walk and not see a human being. Or go for a walk through one of the few places on earth where the people still live as hunter/ gatherers....

“The notion of following your passion is a cheap instinct and a good instinct and it’s worth indulging. Your passion is your source of power. In order to have power, you have to live a life of passion. You have to live a really full life. You need to follow those paths, no matter where they lead...in defiance of all things conventional, perhaps. And of course it is at a price. It’s going to cost. You have to know that going in. But the price you pay, in my opinion, is not worth the time of day to think about. It is so important not to knee-pad around the world. You should never bow down to anything but those you love and respect. Ever. For anything.”

In 1999, I decided to take Heron Dance on an exploration of the subject of creativity. Doug’s friends include a number of authors, poets and musicians. He gave me their names and numbers or addresses. During the trip, I interviewed some of them. They talked about their work, but what they really wanted to talk about was the impact Doug had had on their life. And so I decided to devote an entire issue of Heron Dance, the predecessor of Zen Mountain Journal, to Doug.

Here are some excerpts:

Doug comes down to visit driving some old Honda or Subaru. It leaks toxic fluid that ends up all over my driveway. He’ll have to add a quart of oil when he gets here, but he’ll miss the oil tank, so that will end up on the driveway too. As he is bumming a quart of oil from me, he’ll tell me that I ought to get my Ford serviced. Meanwhile he is driving this piece of shit.

Then he will bring his black hole bag in and all of the sudden, every room of my house will be completely full of his stuff. He will decide he has to cook dinner. He can’t cook dinner just for my wife and me. We need guests. So he’ll get on the phone and all we’ll have a dinner party for twelve. We’ll go to the grocery store. I will buy a lot of groceries. We will go to the liquor store. I will buy all the liquor. And he will go buy a couple bottles of good wine. We’ll go back and he’ll cook. And he always somehow manages to get garlic on the bottom of his shoes and walk all over the house. There will be garlic all over my tile floors. Totally destroy the kitchen. People arrive. It will be the most extraordinary meal. The conversation will be incredible. You will wonder why all dinners can’t be like that. You usually pick up the tab at dinner. And you feel wonderful about it.
- Dennis Sizemore

I have my own twisted view of karma. I believe it does come back. The intent of what you do is very, very important.

I refuse to call it God, but I believe it is larger than yourself. That’s all I know. If it exists it resides in between. And indeed it seems to. In Vietnam I came to believe in arrowheads and invincibility and talismans. You believe in a lot of nonsense. But somehow, something works. I don’t have any theories. I just believe in the Earth. I believe the wisdom resides on the Earth, in the Earth. If your intent is to serve the larger good, the Earth itself -- if you serve the Earth -- you serve yourself. Basically, you don’t have to do this on a large level. You can just collect a lot of garbage from the side of the road. The sides of the roads of life, perhaps. That’s power. That’s karma. That’s the best you can do.

And even if it’s actuarial. Even if, perhaps, every good person doesn’t get rewarded. Maybe some get hit by garbage trucks. Maybe some get hit by a hearse on the way to a funeral home on a motor cycle. Those are exceptions. I think, on the average, you can count on karma.

Except watch out for garbage trucks.
- Doug Peacock

In 1990, on my way to collect mesquite cooking wood in a sadly overgrazed valley east of the Picacho Mountains, I stumbled across a coyote caught in a number-3 trap con­nected to a chain leading to a re-bar grappling hook attached to a mesquite tree. I slowly approached and the coyote, naturally figuring I was his tormentor coming to kill him, charged violently and desperately, then dislocated his paw tugging back away from me. At ten feet I stopped and spoke in a low, calm voice to show I meant him no harm. After a few minutes -- with me not moving -- the young coyote ceased his futile lunges.

I moved in slowly, a half step at a time, talking to the coyote constantly, much like I talk to grizzly bears. It took me at least ten minutes to reach the trap. I knelt and reached out towards the trap with my bowie knife, trying to pry apart the steel jaws. The spring was too strong; I couldn’t open the trap. The pathetic animal leaned away from me. I dropped the knife and moved forward. I took the trap in my hands. The coyote took a step towards me and sat down, one paw raised (caught in the trap that I now held) like my old collie dog used to do. I worked my fingers into the steel jaws and touched his mangled paw. I pulled against the spring and opened the trap. The wounded coyote -- sitting on his haunches, paw in the air, his nose only four inches from my own -- didn’t move a muscle. I leaned slowly into his face and whispered “go.” My little brother -— God’s dog -— vanished into the creosote.
- Doug Peacock, The Patagonia Catalog.

Life goes by so fast. And it is so lovely. And it hurts so much. And in the end you get a chance to open your arms to death. An endless marriage of loving life. And wrapping your arms around death. Especially as you get older. Everything is so quick. I am devastated by loss. I have had loss all my life. I never catch up with it. You blink your eyes...you outlive a friend...you wonder what happened. You didn’t live fully enough. You have to keep that in mind all the time. It is really easy to blow life. Blow life by not spending the kind of time you need to with your children, or with the other people you love. Being inattentive. Lazy. To live fully in each day is an onerous responsibility.

Life is so difficult and so easy at the same time.
- Doug Peacock

I am not a scotch drinker in general -- but last night I had a distinct nagging taste in the back of my head. It finally came to my tongue. And it was scotch.

The last time I had scotch I was with wild Indians in Siberia. They are Mongol natives -- hunters and trappers. I was traveling with Yvon Chouinard, Rick Ridgeway, Doug Tompkins, Jib Ellison and Tom Brokaw. We bribed an Aeroflot helicopter to drop us and our gear and kayaks at the head of a big river in Southeast Siberia. We land and are breaking out our tents and putting together our kayaks. At dusk these Udehe Mongols come over with a huge stew pot full of fresh moose meat -- liver and sirloin. It is just incredible. I love moose. Brokaw goes into his pack and brings out a bottle of Johnny Walker Black and pours shots for all of these Indians. So we shared dinner and scotch and watched the sun go down.
- Doug Peacock

I would not spend one minute on a cushion, inside a house, meditating, when I could look out, ponder a great valley of cottonwood and aspens and mountains beyond. I party, I drink, I swear, I fight. I am a poor candidate for a Zen life. And yet, there is nothing quite so total as being completely tuned into the present. To the moment. How you get it really doesn’t matter.

Human beings are complicated. You can live in the past, you can dream all the time of the future, but every now and again you need to be right there. But it’s hard because most of the modern world isn’t worth paying attention to. Who wants to pay attention to the traffic jam on I-10? The more you live in the suburbs or urban areas, the more you want to shut everything down -- see little, hear little, smell nothing. Who wants it? Who needs it? The total sensory experience of living in a shithouse.

When you walked by a period of life when you could have been really happy, you should have seized it. You should have leaped upon it. I just try to let myself go. It’s not necessary to live in the moment every day, in the traffic jam with smog creeping in your window, listening to bad rap music on the radio. But when it’s there you have really got to live it. The best reason for living it is knowing you are going to die. It’s no big deal. I have had some sense of my own mortality for a long time. It’s not a negative thought. It’s just the way things are. If you want more life, that’s fine. But you should get as much out of the life that you have got left as you can. I wish I had a clue as to how to find happiness, but I know it slaps you in the face all of the time. You just have to stop long enough to pay attention.
- Doug Peacock

When we are on a long journey, one prone to setbacks and disappointment, we need kindred spirits to tell us we’re making a worthwhile contribution to their lives, to their well-being. As I mentioned when I first met Doug I was starting to wonder exactly how crazy I was to be chasing a dream of becoming an author. Doug’s message wasn’t Ra! Ra! It wasn’t “This book of yours is going to be great! It is going to be a great success!” It was if you tell your story with integrity and courage, it will find a market. Not a big market, but a market. You will make a living. Don’t worry about what anyone else says. What we need most as a culture is courage and integrity. If you don’t have that, go back to Wall Street. We don’t need you.

“You have to buy the groceries, but waiting for the confirmation that your work is worthwhile is utterly unimportant. You create this thing and you lay it out there. It’s not yours anymore. Other people like it or hate it, but you can’t worry about it. The only thing a writer should care about from a publisher is keeping his books in print. People can buy ‘em or not buy ‘em, read ‘em or not read ‘em. You have to do what you have to do. You can’t let it affect your life in any way. You have to have a sense that it is the right thing to do, and if it is real important, believe me it will show.

“Anxiety – fuck it. You can’t let money get to you. It’s like people blackmailing you, or people that could black mail you. The more you worry about what people could do to you, the more they get to you. You should just not let it get you. The world is basically fucked. The people in People magazine – the people who write the garbage – make all of the money. But there is enough of a market out there that if you have something serious to say, you can buy your groceries. If you have something to say in a half-way intelligible way, not a slick way but an understandable way, you will buy your groceries, and you should not worry about any of that other garbage. Shouldn’t give it a thought. If you need to waste some time on it, spend a whole afternoon on it all at once, and never think about it again.

“Just get your stuff out there. It doesn’t matter who does it. Or how much money you get for now. If somebody wants to buy it, you will get the money back sooner or later.

“But you will never get rich doing this either. If you want to make money, you need to write a really sexy novel. A really glitzy story that will be sold for the movies.”

It was my plan, with the Free Spirits book, to keep myself out of it as much as possible. That was mostly because I thought what others had to say on what it means to live a big life, a meaningful life, was more interesting than my own thoughts. Doug disagreed. That was thirty-four years ago. I’m just now rethinking my writing around what he had to say – tell my story as I tell the stories of those I met that had an impact on me.

“You have to stick yourself in the middle of it all the time. You don’t just start out with an introduction, and end with a conclusion. You are -- the way you interact with these people you are interviewing -- is as much of the story as any of their stuff is. It’s the thread that carries it through. The way you see it all is the way the reader is going to see it all. We need to know all of the way through what you think.

“You can’t render it through the tape recorder. You are going to offend some people. That doesn’t matter. You are going to take a chance of being wrong. But that doesn’t matter. You have to stick yourself in the middle of it. You have to arbitrate it. You are doing a really cosmic mix here. These people would not get along in a bar, or in a helicopter.

Years later I wrote in my journal:

Doug Peacock Helped Me Keep The Faith

Doug Peacock -- man with a soul
Man with a lot of friends
A good friend to have.

Doug Peacock -- ex-Green Beret
Man who knows death
Man with a hurt.

Doug Peacock -- desert rambler
Grizzly bear man
Revering the spirit -- the wild, past and present.

Doug Peacock -- man of passion
Following his passion
With conviction.
Hayduke.

He helped me keep the faith.
When I needed it most
A man without
the courage of his convictions
the courage of his values
is just another man
of which there are too many already.

What do I do
when doing right is uncomfortable?
How much security
do I get from my values?
From who I am?
Do I believe in who I am?
Do I believe when it is tough to believe?

Those are the measures of a human.

People pass through our lives. They sometimes give us an immense gift and then disappear over the horizon. That was what it was like with Doug and me. He gave me a huge boost when I needed it most. But there were lots of dark times too. The worst was a sea kayak trip with his son Colin in Baja Mexico. Doug and his wife broke up when Colin was about ten I think. Colin was probably fourteen on our trip to Mexico and really struggling. Doug had a lot of guilt about that and he took it out on me on the trip. Angry outbursts. Actions too hurtful to repeat here. We hugged as we said goodbye at the airport, but for twenty years after that trip Doug and I didn’t talk.

Then a couple of years ago I went to Montana to show a friend Glacier National Park and look for grizzly bears. Doug lives outside of Livingston Montana so I contacted him, and took him and his wife out for dinner. Below, a photograph of him and me walking down the street afterwards. The three books I was carrying are his latest three.

I told him that when we first met he told me that he had one foot in the grave. He responded, “Yes, but now it is actually true.” I said to him that we’d probably never meet again but I wanted him to know what a profoundly positive impact he had had on my life.

Doug has written several published books: The Grizzly Years, Baja!, Was It Worth It?, In the Shadow of the Sabertooth, Walking it Off, In the Presence of Grizzlies, and The Essential Grizzly as well as a number of articles for Men’s Journal, Outside, Amicus Journal, Audubon and others. All of his books are available on Amazon.

Here are three Doug Peacock pages on the Zen Mountain Journal website.

• Doug’s foreword to the Heron Dance Back Issue Anthology.

• Issue 22, Hayduke Lives! Published in 1999.

• Doug Peacock, author and eco-warrior — much of the same material, and some new stories.

. . .

You can view this post on the Zen Mountain Journal website here.

You can learn more about the Zen Mountain Journal and Heron Dance here.

Hawk Blue and White

Young, I was never made for the common world —
my nature was to love the hills and mountains.
By mistake I fell into the dusty net
and was gone, all at once, thirty years.
The caged bird longs for its old forest;
the pond fish remembers deep water.
Now I’ve cleared land at the edge of the southern wild,
keeping things simple, come home to garden and field.
Too long shut inside a cage —
now I return to what I am.
- Tao Yuanming (365–427, Taoist recluse-poet) — from “Returning to the Farm to Dwell”

When I get together with friends around a campfire or to share a meal, and an interesting subject comes up, I don’t launch into a Taoist/Zen interpretation of the topic. I tell a story. Over the years, mostly because I find other people’s words more interesting than I do my own, I’ve rarely told stories in Zen Mountain Journal or its predecessor, Heron Dance. A week ago a literary agent approached me expressing an interest in publishing my memoir. This has happened five or six times over the last thirty years. I’ve always declined, including last week, because I don’t like looking backwards. But since that conversation last week I’ve been thinking about the number of times friends have told me that they find my stories to be unusual and interesting. It is important I think, that we who do this kind of work listen to what others tell us about where the work is adding something unique and worthwhile to others, regardless of our own inclinations. Sometimes those inclinations – like for instance other people’s lives are more interesting than my own – may not be valid.

I left home for the first time when I was fifteen. I hitchhiked across the country looking for a group of Indians led by Chief Smallboy who had left the Hobbema Reserve south of Edmonton to live traditionally on Crown Land in Alberta, Canada. (Crown Land in Canada is roughly the same as BLM land in the US). I had become fascinated by the lives of indigenous peoples from wilderness canoe trips with the YMCA in northern Quebec. We came across old abandoned log cabins, some that had been occupied by white trappers in the 1930s, and some that were Indian cabins. There were usually several Indian cabins in a row huddled together in sheltered coves and we’d go into them and get a glimpse of their traditional lives. The cabins fascinated me. When I returned home I read every book on the traditional ways of native peoples in the high school and city libraries. I also, through a serendipitous chain of events, had gotten to know a family of Mi’kmaq Indians who made jackets out of smoked moosehide. I spent many evenings and weekends with them learning how they did it and about their lives and philosophy.

So I set off at the age of 15 from Ottawa in search of Chief Smallboy, about 2300 miles away. I came close. A couple of Indians in a pickup truck stopped outside of small town that was, as close as I could figure, about 20 miles from Smallboy’s camp. I explained who I was looking for. They told me to jump in the back. About twenty miles later at a crossroads way back in the woods, they stopped the truck, told me that Smallboy’s camp was somewhere around here, and it was time for me to get out. I grabbed my pack, got out and started walking. I didn’t know what else to do. No more vehicles passed by that evening. I walked for a few miles and camped. The next morning another pickup with Indians stopped. They had never heard of Smallboy they said. I knew enough about Indians to know that what they were really saying is that they didn’t want a teenager with long red hair living with them. I was who they were trying to get away from. They drove me back to the small town where I had started from the previous day. Having no where else to go and since it was still early summer I decided to hitchhike to Vancouver – the Haight-Ashbury of Canada. Along the way a beautiful eighteen year old woman picked me up. She lived in Field BC in a beautiful pass – Kicking Horse Pass in Yoho National Park right on the Alberta border. I spent the summer with her and her American deserter and draft dodger friends – this was during the Vietnam War. We had a fun time.

The next summer my dream became a reality through a circuitous chain of events and I did end up living with Indians in the bush. I hitchhiked up to Great Slave Lake in Canada’s subarctic. There were hundreds of fires burning in the scrub and stunted boreal forest surrounding Yellowknife. The Forest Service was desperate for firefighters. I was broke. I told them I was eighteen. No one checked my ID. Being 18 was the sole qualification needed to get the job. The Northwest Lands & Forest Service flew me out to a fire in a helicopter. The crews were all Dogrib (Dene). Most couldn’t speak English. They were familiar with Edmonton – that’s where the prison and hospital was – but they had almost no concept of Canada and had never heard of the then prime minister, Pierre Elliot Trudeau. I learned a lot about their lives. A few weeks later the nearby tower lookout quit. I was the only person nearby English-speaking and available. They sent the helicopter back to get me. I spent the rest of the summer living alone in a tent on top of a big rock and reporting on fires from an old tower that would sway back and forth in the constantly howling wind.

I’ve spent most of my adult life on some edge or other. I haven’t worked on an hourly or salaried basis since I was seventeen. It has always been my own endeavors, some of them creative some of them business. In that time I’ve met and interviewed about a hundred and fifty fellow travelers on the periphery of the culture – Outward Bound Instructors who went on radical adventures in their time off, people who volunteered in refugee camps, in prison, in homeless shelters. People who climbed the world’s highest mountains, who sailed alone around the world, who sailed with Thor Heyerdahl, who worked to protect wilderness. And I volunteered in a medium security prison with the Quaker Alternatives to Violence program in order to interview inmates serving long sentences and who were working with young inmates to help them find a better path.

When I published those interviews back in the earlier days of Heron Dance I didn’t offer much in the way of commentary or reflection. The earliest of these interviews and road trips occurred thirty five years ago so I’ve now had time to reflect on them and on the friendships I’ve built with those I’ve gotten to know. Now I’m ready to share what I’ve learned, including the hard lessons of failure and sacrifice that living in your own way on your own terms doing your own thing entails. On the whole it has been a big, exciting, full and interesting way to live life.

Thinking over this idea – making storytelling a big part of Zen Mountain Journal going forward -- I approached a long time reader and supporter of this work whose opinion I deeply respect. He said to me, “The most sacred thing we have to share is our story. The most sacred thing we can receive is another person’s story.” (Jim Newsom, backwoods forest dweller and possible future interview subject.)

And I’ve begun approaching people for new interviews. Some are people I interviewed years or decades ago. Some, like Red Pine/Bill Porter, would be new interviews.

For more thoughts on stories from the outer periphery of our culture, and the questions they leave behind, see the new home page on the Zen Mountain Journal website here.

To view his post on the Zen Mountain Journal website, visit here.

The Empty Canoe

One of the things he liked most about the hermitage was the silence. “Silence is my music now.” He could pick up the small sounds of insects and animals. Sometimes when the wind was strong, it blew the sound of the traffic to him. He liked to think of all the people going on with their lives and to think of himself as in a sense staying where he was for their sakes, “like a lighthouse keeper.”
- Phyllis Rose, “The Music of Silence”, Atlantic Monthly, writing about Thomas Merton

Forests and fields, sun and wind and sky, earth and water, all speak the same language: peace, solitude, silence. Happiness is not a matter of intensity, but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.
- Thomas Merton

I’ve long been an avid reader of the works of Thomas Merton, Trappist monk, who lived for many years in a hermitage on the property of Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky. He wrote sixty books including the posthumously published “My Argument with the Gestapo,” from which I’ve frequently quoted over the years.

“If you want to identify me,” he says to the British officers who are questioning him, “ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how I comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person.

Merton is also the author of one of my favorite all time essays, Rain and the Rhinoceros, which I’ve posted on the Zen Mountain Journal website here. One of Merton’s books, and the subject of this post, is The Way of Chuang Tzu. In Merton’s words, from the introduction:

The classic period of Chinese philosophy covers about three hundred years, from 550 to 250 B.C. Chuang Tzu, the greatest of the Taoist writers whose historical existence can be verified (we cannot be sure of Lao Tzu), flourished toward the end of this period . . .
- Merton, Thomas. The Way of Chuang Tzu.

Merton worked on the book for five years and and said that he “enjoyed writing this book more than any other I can remember.” The Dalai Lama wrote in the foreword,

I have been moved a great deal today at this memorial or recollection of the life of Thomas Merton, and I am very happy that we have done this. From the point of view of a religious practitioner, and in particular as a monastic, Thomas Merton really is someone that we can look up to. From one point of view, he had the complete qualities of hearing—which means study, contemplating, thinking on the teachings—and of meditation. He also had the qualities of being learned, disciplined and having a good heart. He not only was able to practice himself, but his perspective was very, very broad. . . for the rest of my life, the impact of meeting him will remain until my last breath. I really want to state that I make this commitment, and this will remain until my last breath.

Several of the poems Merton interpreted for the book deal with the subject of inner peace. One has in particular captured my imagination. I offer my interpretation below.

The Empty Boat

If, when crossing a river
A paddler encounters another canoe
And that canoe collides with his
What follows depends on whether or not
There is someone in the offending boat.

Empty, the paddler shrugs and continues
Perhaps puzzled but not angry.
But, if the offending boat contains another paddler
And especially if prior to colliding that paddler
Was warned off, anger, unkind words
Often ensue.

Chuang Tzu, Taoist poet
Suggests we empty ourselves
And in doing so, we abandon
Emotion, anger.
Empty of self-righteousness
We cross the river of the world
Unopposed. Unimpeded.
Almost invisible.

Be lost in the masses of men
No name, no fame, no distinction
Unseen, you will flow like the Tao
Judge no one, and no one will judge you.
The boat of the perfect man
Is empty.
- Zen Mountain Journal interpretation.

In offering my interpretation, after study and meditation, I try to boil the poem down to its Zen-like essence as shaped by my own experience. To read Merton’s interpretation, visit here.

For my favorite Thomas Merton quotes, visit here.

For my favorite Thomas Merton essay, “The Rain and the Rhinoceroses”, visit here.

Island Abstract II - One of a series of abstract watercolors painted after a summer spent paddling the north shore of Lake Superior solo.

Journaling, in combination with meditation, has been a big part of my life.

I first became aware of this approach to journaling from an article in a now defunct magazine, The Tarrytown Letters, given to me by a friend. He had attended a workshop offered by Dialogue House on the journaling techniques developed by Ira Progoff. One of those techniques included the use of imaginary guides — a figure who you perceive as being a person of wisdom. You then imagine meeting with that person and seeking advice from them.

I created in my mind a guide that was partly who I imagined myself to be in the closing years of my life, and partly an Indian I had met paddling by a cabin on a remote lake in northern Quebec when I was fifteen. He was quiet, thoughtful. One evening at dusk, he and I went out paddling looking for beavers and he showed me how to paddle silently. He didn’t talk much but nevertheless was friendly and seemed to understand me in a sensory sort of way.

Over the ensuing 55 years I’ve frequently turned to this figure for advice. Earlier this week I spent most of a day in meditation and then turned to this imaginary figure, and my journal, for clarity on where I next take my art and writing for this Substack and for my next book.

The advice I get from this imaginary guide often surprises me. Sometimes it offers advice that is completely contrary to what I want to do. The directions and decisions it proposes have often, in my younger years, seemed no fun. Boring even. For a while I called him Mr. Kill Joy. In retrospect though, over the years, I’ve learned that his advice could have saved me much wasted time and heartache.

The first time I asked him for advice we were sitting in his living room in front of a large window that overlooked a backcountry lake. I can’t remember the question, but I clearly remember that he got up and without a word left the room, went down to the shore, got in a canoe and paddled away. I think he was trying to tell me that the thing I was concerned about at the time was of no consequence and to ignore it.

Earlier this week I asked him where he thought I should go with my work now that the Tao Te Ching Journal is published and successful. I had been considering a number of ideas, and was more or less settled on a combination of the journaling meditation techniques described above and a revised edition of the book I published thirteen years ago, Wild Waters and the Tao. It had quickly sold out and I’ve long planned a reprint, but something about that idea gave me a vague feeling of discomfort and I was trying to figure out why.

When I asked my imaginary guide for his thoughts, his answer was unequivocal — write about different perspectives on the search for inner peace. Combine that with your reflections on the passages you offer readers. I’ve often written about the search for inner peace over the years but it never occurred to me to write about it exclusively.

I see my life as having developed along two contradictory paths. One definitely has been the search for inner peace. There have been periods of my life when I’ve submerged into inner peace, mostly on long solo canoe trips. I’ve also experienced it on long solo road trips — trips I did many times in the early years of the Heron Dance Art Journal (Zen Mountain Journal’s predecessor) when I was conducting interviews. I’d drive across the country in an old Toyota Previa van, and sleep in the back.

The other path has been one of striving and competition — working on Wall Street, amateur boxing and judo, whitewater kayaking, running a business, growing a business. Those two paths, as you can imagine, are contradictory. In Song of Myself (Leaves of Grass) Walt Whitman wrote:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

I too contain multitudes, so much so that sometimes I wonder who I am. As Bob Dylan once said to an interviewer:

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

As I probed my guide for his reasoning, he responded that the thing I most want to achieve in my life, one month short of seventy years old, is inner peace. Inner peace as a daily state of mind rather than an on again off again experience. And, he said, I have done hundreds of interviews and accumulated thousands of quotes from books, many of which explore different perspectives on the search for inner peace. So I have a lot to draw on. In particular, I’ve been engaged in a multi-year study of the poetry of ancient Zen and Taoist hermit monks. In their search for inner peace they sacrificed almost everything in the way of comfort and family life to live solitary lives in nature, focused on their inner life, in the remote Zhongnan mountains of China.

Thinking this over, I shared the idea with a writer friend I turn to when something I’ve written concerns me, often because it is personal and revealing. He suggested building the new home page of the Zen Mountain Journal website around an interview I did more than thirty years ago, in the years before Heron Dance and way before Zen Mountain Journal. His suggestion sent me back to the transcript.

In Colorado, I interviewed Jeff Casebolt, then a Colorado Outward Bound instructor, who had traveled the entire west coast of North and South America — kayaking from Alaska to just north of Vancouver and then, from there, cycling to Tierra del Fuego at the tip of South America. Jeff opened the interview by probing my motivations: was this book about thrill-seeking adventure, or about the deeper questions surrounding what it means to live a spiritual life, a life on your own terms? Apparently satisfied, he told me to go ahead with my questions. I wrote afterwards:

The intensity of his gaze startled me. The first thing I asked him was why he did the trip.

“It was both a physical and a spiritual journey. The word ‘spiritual’ has a lot of negative trappings associated with it, but I think all of us are on an inward journey. On the trip, people kept asking me why I was doing it, and the answer always changed. The picture changes. I am realizing, more and more, that it really was something that I was looking for internally. The external was certainly an incredible adventure, but it is more and more clear to me that we are all looking for inner peace.

That two and a half years is something I will carry with me for the rest of my life. It’s like a metaphor. Life is a journey. It’s an external journey and an internal journey. My desire now for a spiritual depth and awareness of a presence in my life is a result of the trip. Having encountered some really amazing people — encountered highs and lows — that I could never have accessed within myself. The trip was a glacier that gouged internally. Gouged my soul. The marks are indelibly inscribed in my soul. Meeting people who had nothing, who would take the shirt off their back to help me — taught me just how greedy we are. How people who have lots of money and lots of resources don’t know how to be generous. People who have nothing but who have a real connection with themselves and with their family and with community realize that life is really about people and love. The kind of connection and love that we can create and give each other.”

I asked him to explore that further. It has been my impression that very few are actually searching for inner peace, and in fact, if more people were on that search, the world would be a much different place. He answered:

“I think a lot of people are not conscious of what they are looking for, they couldn’t articulate it, or even think about it. But yes, I think everybody is searching for an inner kind of place that is more peaceful.”

Thirty years later, I still think about Jeff’s answer.

So that is where this Substack is going: different perspectives on the search for inner peace — the ancient hermit poets, Thoreau and Thomas Merton, Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chödrön and the people — the Free Spirits — I’ve interviewed over the years — combined with my reflections and paintings.

The mountain hermits talk about wu wei — the art of effortless flow. The quest for inner peace carries within itself an inherent contradiction. What you reach for cannot be captured. It is perpetually just beyond your grasp. It is shy, timid. So instead of reaching, you sit down and wait. Inner peace comes to you at its own pace, on its own terms. In silence. You rest your mind. You remain receptive: watching, listening, accepting. You exist inside a quiet awareness.

I’ll close with a quote by U Thant, the third Secretary General of the United Nations. He was from Burma (now Myanmar) and was a Buddhist.

Through meditation I seek inner peace. I heartily agree with Father Dominique Georges Pire, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, when he says: “I still think that to be a peacemaker, that is to say a man of peace, one must first be at peace with oneself. One must first achieve inner peace. This involves getting to know oneself and learning to control one’s impulses. Only then can a peaceful being approach the immense task of creating harmony between groups and between individuals.”
- View From The U.N., The Memoirs of U Thant

There will be more from U Thant in the days ahead.

. . .

To view on the Zen Mountain Journal website, visit here.

Another Horizon

The pottery and brush paintings of old Japan and Korea embody a rough, aesthetic beauty. That rough beauty is influenced by Zen Buddhism simplicity, which in turn has roots in the Tao mountain hermits of China two thousand years ago. Perhaps the most fascinating exploration of this beauty is the book The Unknown Craftsman by Soetsu Yanagi and potter Bernard Leach. Here are a couple of short quotes to give you an idea.

Beauty dislikes being captive to perfection. That which is profound never lends itself to logical explanation: it involves endless mystery.

Why should one reject the perfect in favor of the imperfect? The precise and perfect carries no overtones, admits of no freedom; the perfect is static and regulated, cold and hard. We in our own human imperfections are repelled by the perfect, since everything is apparent from the start and there is no suggestion of the infinite. Beauty must have room, must be associated with freedom. Freedom, indeed, is beauty. The love of the irregular is a sign of the basic quest for freedom.

Every artist knows that he is engaged in an encounter with infinity, and that work done with heart and hand is ultimately worship of Life Itself . . . a degree of enlightenment wherein infinity, however briefly, obliterates the minor self.

My respect for Yanagi’s work has led me to devote a couple of pages on the Zen Mountain Journal website to favorite excerpts from The Unknown Craftsman. You can view these here, and The Beauty in Imperfection here. A key concept in this work is that our lives, as well as our work in the world, are manifestations of our inner beauty, our friendship with ourselves, but also the result of grit, discipline and persistence. The creative life, the creation of a unique and beautiful life, is like the tip of an iceberg – what is manifested outwardly derives from the larger inner work under the surface.

Belief in these concepts is not confined to Zen Buddhism and Taoism. As Jesus reportedly said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 7:16), “By their fruits ye shall know them”. I have been fortunate to come to know, through interviews I did in the early days of Heron Dance, the predecessor to Zen Mountain Journal, a number of individuals whose outward work was a manifestation of inner beauty. Frédéric Back, creator of the Oscar-award winning film, The Man Who Planted Trees was one such individual. Balbir Mathur, co-founder, with his wife Treva, of Trees for Life, which has provided tens of millions of fruit tree saplings to impoverished villages in rural India and other third world countries another. Len Soucy and his wife Diane who founded The Raptor Trust another. I could mention many more.

And there have been others that I’ve not met, but read about, including furniture maker Sam Maloof.

I have always believed in living a good life, aiming myself -- oh, how shall I put it? -- aiming myself true. . . I try to live right. I always try to adhere to what I think is right, and that, to me, is the most important part of creative work. Fashion comes and goes, but my pieces have to have the integrity of my vision.

Maloof derives his strength from resorting to something outside himself, from an appeal to an honorable code of conduct, an elevated sense of order, to a deep, abiding faith. He lives an ethical, right-minded life and cites integrity as the most important part of his work and of his creativity.

Sam believes in the unseen influences that guide him. That is the source of his risk taking, of his courage to create. He gives a quiet thanks, he shows respect, he behaves in the most correct way he knows how, and then he sits down to make a piece of furniture.
- Furniture-maker Sam Maloof, as quoted in the book Uncommon Genius by Denise Shekerjian.

I recently came across the work of Japanese potter Shiro Tsujimura and his work, and the life he’s led, captured my imagination. He was born in 1947 to a farming family near Nara, which in turn is near Kyoto, a beautiful ancient city of Buddhist temples, gardens, imperial palaces, Shinto shrines and traditional wooden houses. After high school, he entered a Zen monastery.

I shaved my head, donned a robe, and began a life of Zen-centered asceticism. I arose at 4:30 a.m., meditated, read sutras, and did all kinds of chores. When this was no longer enough, I was sent on a pilgrimage. I took enough money with me to cover my funeral expenses.

Sometimes I slept in a temple, sometimes in the open air; sometimes I headed for the mountains, taking along a little food, and did zazen [Zen meditation] for a few days. All the same, after less than two years had passed, I decided to conclude my life as an ascetic monk. I felt that these Zen practices were only a way to escape from myself and from my painting. At the same time, pursuing something that emanates from my inner being, and something that emerges from making things-these two things are the basis of my life.

I chose ceramics, calligraphy, and painting because they are spontaneous art forms. In the spiritual sense, they are all the same -- art is an expression from the body.
- From the beautiful book of his art, Shiro Tsujimura, An Art of Living, as are the quotes below.

In 1969, at the age of 22, Shiro purchased three quarters of an acre near Nara, upon which he built a small shack out of found, abandoned and donated building materials.

Building this hut, painting, ceramics, selling my wares -- these are all one and the same thing for me. I wish to continue searching for that “something” that comes from my inner Zen and from making things.

In 1970, I visited the Japan Folk Crafts Museum in Tokyo, where much of the folk art collected by Soetsu Yanagi and his folk art movement are exhibited. There I discovered a large oido teabowl among the many works on display. “This is it!“ The generosity that emanated from this bowl -- the way it embraced everything, good and bad, and yet was not overbearing -- moved me deeply. I reveled in gazing at it for a long time. . . (but) when asked what it was about the shape and color of the oido bowl that attracted me, can’t remember a single thing about either. The bowl was not identified; it was simply marked oido and was kept in a glass case along with other objects in a room on the second floor. There were also a lot of old textiles, furniture, and pottery downstairs, but once I found the oido bowl, I forgot about the rest of the exhibits and didn’t move. Thinking back, all that I remember is what a comforting feeling it gave me.

I can only say that I felt as if I was facing a person rather than a bowl, and that I seemed to be in the presence of the [Buddhist] Divine Mother and the Great Compassion. The bowl was far more than its form, far more than its color. . . In my handiwork made with clay, I wish to express the state of divine motherly compassion, the quietude embracing all good and evil, which the oido teabowl had expressed. In other words, I want to create nothing other than this state of mind. Imitating the shape of the oido bowl is not the point; I have no desire to imitate an oido bowl, no matter how wonderful it is. All that I can hope to do is to clarify how I felt when I saw the bowl, what had been hidden inside me, and what had attracted me to it so intensely.

Have I been able to explain to some extent why I create ceramics? It seems to me that there is a limit to what can be expressed in words. I wish to live my life without being overwhelmed, wondering all the while how far my working with soil, starting from scratch, can advance and expand within me.

Within a year after seeing that oido bowl he built his first pottery kiln. One of the more fascinating aspects of his work is his preference for the clay found around his home over that which is commercially available. In the book, he often refers to it as “soil”.

As if caressing the soil, help it along with your fingers. This is a way to create: lend a hand to the soil just a little. If you try to force it, you’ll destroy the soil. Don’t try to control it, try to follow it.

As I have already said, clay has a strong personality. If I emphasize myself in the process, the personality of the clay will vanish. In practice, however, I try to make the clay my own, even if it is difficult to find the right balance between myself and the clay.

From fields and mountains, I gather soil that suits me. Then I pound it with a mallet, sift it, and mix it with water to make potter’s clay. If you use clay that has been mass-produced in a factory, the process is simple. Factory-made clay is easy to use and has no imperfections. On the other hand, it is also a clay without character. The clay I collect in nature is exceptionally rough and does not stretch. It’s viscous and easily degraded. It’s too easily damaged by fire yet too resistant to it. In a word, a clay with such “drawbacks” is also a clay with character. Accordingly, unique pottery can be made from unique clay, even if many “mistakes” can occur in the process.

For decades, Shiro sold his tea bowls and other creations on straw mats in front of the Nanzenji temple, the Kyoto National Museum, along the rice paddies in Ohara, and in front of the Sanjūsangen-dō temple in Kyoto. In the book, a collector of his work, Hiroshi Sugimoto, described his first meeting with Shiro.

I met Tsujimura forty years ago when I was just starting to dabble in antiques. He took me to a dilapidated shack on the very edge of the forested hills, far from the inhabited parts of Nara. I recall him telling me, with no hint of boastfulness, that he had built the place himself. He had either scavenged or been given all of the building materials. He struck me as a man with no interest in the business world. There were two small children cavorting about, stark naked and barefoot. They reminded me of free-range chickens.

. . .When I asked him where he sold his teabowls, he explained that until recently he and his wife had been selling them off a straw mat on the ground in front of the Sanjūsangen-dō temple in Kyoto.

There was an earthenware jar to one side of the door of the shack. Peering in, I caught a glimpse of some coins and banknotes. When people who dropped by bought his ceramics, they would throw cash into the jar, which he would help himself to whenever he went shopping. I felt as though the money economy had suddenly intruded into the life of a man from the Jōmon period (c. 14,000-300 BCE).

Now his pottery is world-renowned and sells for thousands of dollars per piece.

. . .

Journal Notes: A conversation with your creative work

Standing before the oido bowl, Tsujimura felt he was “facing a person rather than a bowl.” He gazed at it so long he forgot the rest of the museum. He has spent the next sixty years creating pottery, and he’s not done yet. A work of art — including the ones we make, finished or not — has an inner life of its own. Imagine it as a person, a person of wisdom and beauty. Converse with it

First, choose the work. It may be the one that is the focus of your creative life now, or one abandoned years ago. If an abandoned one, look for the unfinished works that still carry emotion or awaken a feeling when you think of them — that twinge may be a sign that they are still alive. Now, with the changing circumstances of our life, with our deeper and more complete life experience, that work may offer possibilities not recognized or available in times past.

Write a few lines about the history of your current work, or your previous endeavor. When did it begin? What led to the idea? What difficulties did you, or are you now, encountering? Record brief entries — facts and memories, not explanations or apologies.

In your quiet place, close your eyes. Let your breathing slow. Feel the presence of the work — its beginnings, its possibilities, its setbacks — and let it take the form of a person sitting across from you. Greet it. Ask it if it has anything it would like to say. Then write the conversation as it comes without contriving or editing. Long pauses are fine. Wait for it to finish speaking.

Then ask it how it thinks you are treating it, or did treat it. Ask it what it needs to flourish. Ask it if it has anything else to say.

Don’t judge what emerges. A neglected work may be angry; an old one may surprise you with its patience. Whatever it says is a reading of where you actually stand together.

Put the pages away. Wait a week before reading them. Then, if the conversation wants to continue, let it.

. . .

To view on the Heron Dance website, visit here.

Lucid Journey

Bashō (1644-1694) is the haiku patron saint of travelers and wayward wanderers. Years ago I put together a book arts collection of my poems and art and named it, “The Journey Itself Is Home”, a title taken from the opening lines of Bashō’s Oku no Hosomichi (”The Narrow Road to the Deep North”), Basho’s travel journal from his 1689 journey through northern Japan.

The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
- Basho

Sampu, a wealthy merchant and admirer of Bashō’s haiku, built him a small house in Edo. It burned down a couple of years later in a fire that swept through town. He lived for a while with someone he had studied Zen with at the Chōkeiji Temple in Edo, Rokuso Gohei. He found himself constantly dreaming of the open road, and decided to, as he put it, cast himself away, restore his true identity (which he described as the ‘everlasting self which is poetry’) and hit the road. Bashō wrote, “I left my broken house on the River Sumida in the August of the first year of Jyokyo among the wails of the autumn wind.”

Bashō was inspired in his travels by the example of a priest from bygone days, probably Saigyō (1118–1190) who is said to have travelled thousands of miles “caring naught for his provisions and attaining the state of sheer ecstasy under the pure beams of the moon.” Basho wrote, “I leaned on the staff of an ancient who, it is said, entered into nothingness under the midnight moon.”

In The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Bashō wrote:

Days and months are the travelers of eternity. So are the years that pass by . . . I myself have been tempted for a long time by the cloud-moving wind –- filled with a strong desire to wander . . . I walked through mists and clouds, breathing the thin air of high altitudes and stepping on slippery ice and snow, till at last through a gateway of clouds, as it seemed, to the very paths of the sun and moon. I reached the summit, completely out of breath and nearly frozen to death. Presently the sun went down and the moon rose glistening in the sky.
-Basho, The Narrow Road to the Deep North

. . .

Where am I on Basho’s narrow road?

Bashō left his broken house and walked into the autumn wind to recover what he called his everlasting self. Most of us won’t cast ourselves away onto the open road. But the road is there regardless — we are on it whether we notice or not. The seasons of a life arrive the way weather arrives on a long walk: gradually, unannounced, and we may travel a long while inside a new one before we recognize it.

So, a question to carry into stillness: Where am I now in my life?

Find a quiet place. Close your eyes. Let your breathing slow. Don’t think about your life — thinking only retrieves the story you already tell, worn smooth by repetition. Let the question settle beneath thought, and let something answer for you: an image, a metaphor, a single unexpected word. This stretch of the road has been like... mist on a mountain path. A gateway of clouds. A long walk without trees. It doesn’t need to make sense.

Whatever comes, write it down without judgment. Don’t welcome the hopeful image or turn from the dark one. The image is not a verdict — it’s a reading of where you actually stand, and where you stand is the only place a journey can continue from.

Then ask: when did this chapter of your life begin? Was there a moment — an event, a departure, a loss, a fire? Jot down what you remember. Brief entries, facts and memories, not explanations.

Finally, at least for now, right down what first comes to mind about the possible significance of that first image or thought that came to mind when you asked for something, however vague, that summarized this time of your life.

. . .

To view on the Heron Dance website, visit here.

The journaling explorations in this series are inspired by Ira Progoff’s At a Journal Workshop, the book I’d point you to first if you want to go deeper.

Painting: Horizon II
Original and Prints available.

Reflection

Silence thoughts, invite emptiness
And the universe beckons.

Spend time alone in nature and after a while a strange sense of internal quiet takes over. It is very mysterious. The silence inside starts to dominate. A lot of it has to do with the absence of talk. That part of the mind that determines speech relaxes into disuse and is taken over by a kind of emptiness that is deeply peaceful. You don’t notice it at first because you are so deep inside it, but then, all of the sudden, comes the realization that the pre-verbal soup you’ve relaxed into brings a very wonderful and deep sense of internal calm.

If you decide to go on such a journey though, and haven’t done it before, be prepared for a rough two or three days. The mind, formerly engaged in a constant search for things to worry about, for threats, now has nothing to focus on and the result can be a kind of internal anger. A friend of mine who facilitates silent retreats describes it as your internal world settling unfinished business.

Journaling question to consider

• When was the last time you gave talking a few days off to to relax, rest, and recover?

. . .

To view enlarged on the Heron Dance website, visit here.

With this behind us, and with a number of other major projects now done, it is my objective to resume publishing this Substack 2-3 times a week, alone with work on the next journal.

In order to focus on the creation of these new journals, going forward the gallery in Asheville will be open just on Saturdays (11-5) or by appointment. If you plan to be in Asheville but Saturday is not convenient, you are very welcome but please either call or text first. 802-234-3120.

The items below will all be removed from the website at noon tomorrow.

Liquidation Sale

All nature art originals are now $100. Visit here to view the selection.

• Framed nature art prints are now $65-$100. Visit here to view the selection.

• The liquidation nature art prints at 75% off. View the selection here.

• The hardcover first edition book, Nurturing the Song Within. This book was originally published at $95. Now $40. Description here. Order here.

• Meditations on Gratitude, Beauty and Mystery. Only two copies left. $43.95. Description here. Order here.

• The Pausing for Beauty Poetry Diary. $20. Was $39.95. Description here. Order here.

The following items are print-on-demand and not discounted. They appear here because they will be removed from the website in one week.

• Zen Mountain Art Canvas Prints. You can view the selection here.

• Nature Art Canvas Prints. You can view the selection here.

• Nature Art Canvas Prints. You can view the selection here.

• All nature art posters. You can view the selection here.

. . .

To view this on the Zen Mountain Journal website, visit here.

Painting: Chuang Tzu Horizon
Original and Prints available.

The text from the journal painting above:

The ancient hermit poets sought wisdom
By remote mountain streams.
Status, power over others, held no interest.
— Chuang Tzu (4th century BCE). This interpretation was inspired by Thomas Merton’s fascinating book, The Way of Chuang Tzu.

I keep notes on a wide variety of subjects of particular interest. Here are my notes on wisdom, collected over the last several years.

• The basis of wisdom is the seeking of a positive future.

• Wisdom makes the lives of others better.

• Wisdom looks for, tunes into, the beauty of others.

• Wisdom is thoughtful, quiet, contemplative.

• Wisdom looks with skepticism at the flow of the mainstream culture that surrounds us, which is based on desire and fear.

• Wisdom avoids rushing, avoids frantic, desperate behavior.

• Wisdom avoids waste.

• Wisdom boils things down to their essence.

• Humans are complicated.

• Wisdom lives within its own center, and doesn’t depend on others or hook into others in an effort to achieve equanimity or peace.

• Wisdom is careful what it engages in, especially what it gets emotionally wrapped up in.

• Wisdom seeks harmony, the point of agreement.

• Wisdom believes in focusing on points of leverage where small action achieves a big result.

• Wisdom seeks transcendent beauty in nature, people and art.

• Wisdom knows how to relax mind and body.

• Wisdom is resourceful.

• Wisdom believes in the simplest, easiest way to accomplish an objective with the fewest moving parts.

• Wisdom knows it doesn’t have all of the answers.

. . .

Journal Question to Consider:

• How would you describe the role of wisdom in your life — wisdom as you define it?

. . .

To view enlarged on the Heron Dance website, visit here.

Changes at Heron Dance

I’ve narrowed the focus of my work to the creation of journals that explore questions at the core of a quality life. As part of that change, most of the art and books on the Zen Mountain Journal website are being liquidated or discontinued.

Details, including the liquidation sale, are here.

Changes at Zen Mountain Journal: Narrower focus, liquidation sale.

Narrower Focus:
Journals That Explore Questions at the Core of a Quality Life

The reaction to the Tao Te Ching Journal has been so positive that I’ve decided to focus on the creation of more journals, all with the common theme of exploring questions at the core of living a quality life. The quality of the questions we are willing to explore has a profound effect on the quality of our lives. Quality is of course subjective — the role of these journals is not to define quality, but to act as a companion in thinking through that definition. And manifesting it.

For the foreseeable future these journals will relate in some way to ancient Zen and Taoist poetry and writing (Questions from Cold Mountain, Wu-wei, wabi-sabi, the Book of Tea, etc). Ultimately the subjects of these journals will expand to a Thoreau journal, a journal based around my book from years ago, Meditations on Nature, Meditations on Silence, etc.

As a result, I’ve decided to liquidate or discontinue 75% of the art and related products on the Heron Dance website – the art not related to the Tao Te Ching Journal or upcoming planned journals. We’ll also liquidate or discontinue the books that fall outside this narrower subject area. The PDFs of all of these books, and some from the distant past, will remain available free to supporting members. And going forward, in place of canvas prints, I’ll offer limited editions of five — each printed on archival fine art paper, signed and numbered — in addition to the original paintings. These limited-edition prints will be priced at $300 each.

We’ll run this liquidation for one week (until Monday, July 13th), after which all liquidation and discontinued items will be removed from the website.

Also, in order to focus on the creation of these new journals, going forward the gallery in Asheville will be open just on Saturdays (11-5) or by appointment. If you plan to be in Asheville but Saturday is not convenient, you are very welcome but please either call or text first. 802-234-3120.

Liquidation Sale

All nature art originals are now $100. Visit here to view the selection.

• Framed nature art prints are now $65-$100. Visit here to view the selection.

• The liquidation nature art prints at 75% off. View the selection here.

• The hardcover first edition book, Nurturing the Song Within. This book was originally published at $95. Now $40. Description here. Order here.

• Meditations on Gratitude, Beauty and Mystery. Only two copies left. $43.95. Description here. Order here.

• The Pausing for Beauty Poetry Diary. $20. Was $39.95. Description here. Order here.

The following items are print-on-demand and not discounted. They appear here because they will be removed from the website in one week.

• Zen Mountain Art Canvas Prints. You can view the selection here.

• Nature Art Canvas Prints. You can view the selection here.

• Nature Art Canvas Prints. You can view the selection here.

• All nature art posters. You can view the selection here.

. . .

To view this on the Zen Mountain Journal website, visit here.

To focus on more abstract Zen-inspired work, all of our best-selling nature art prints are now 70% or more off. When these are sold, we’ll move on to just offering the original and five prints of each new painting, each signed and numbered.

Over the last thirty years Heron Dance has offered and sold over 3000 of Rod’s originals and many more thousands of prints. The prints in these collections are of the most popular of the paintings he’s done over the years.

All are nature paintings, though a couple in the in the broader sense of nature.

Some are painted in the classical watercolor tradition.

Some are painted out of the memories of the thousands of miles paddled. The painting below is of Big Trout Lake in Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada, a huge lake way back in the woods — a lake with more wolves than campsites. For 22 years Rod spent the last week of September exploring this Park, sometimes alone, sometimes with friends.

Each set includes a bonus print or watercolor sketch chosen by the artist.

These are the selections:

• Ten different 10 x 14 inch Nature Art Prints $100. Visit here.

• Five different 20 x 14 inch Nature Art Prints $100. Visit here.

• Another five different 20 x 14 Nature Art Prints $100. Visit here.

• Ten different 20 x 14 inch Nature Art Prints $175. Visit here.

Painting: Flock at Old Mountain
Original and Prints available.

Contemplative Watercolor Experiments

I’ve been deep into studying Picasso’s journals of preliminary sketches lately, and been experimenting with my own rough, quick watercolors and acrylic ink paintings. Inspired by the ancient poetry of the mountain hermits that means to much to me, these quickly executed paintings are abstract and Zen-like in their simplicity. I will begin to include them here in the Zen Mountain Journal — preliminary creative ideas from the outer peripheries of my vision. The idea is to plumb the depths of deep imagination, so to speak, and see what bubbles up.

These posts will continue to include, as did today’s, the ancient poetry of Taoist hermits and Zen monks of old Japan. I’ll also include recent notes from my own journal which are selected from what I’m reading, thinking about, struggling with.

When I look at the two-page spread above the concept of a a new journal comes to mind. The image on the left accompanied by a blank page on the right for reader notes and sketches. And then moving the words and images on the right to the next two pages — images and words on the left and a blank page on the right. I’m going to start to work on that.

The Tao Te Ching Journal: Updates and Reviews

The first printing of the Tao Te Ching sold out. More paper arrived at the printer today for a second printing and there will be more journals in about a week.

Some readers have taken the time to write and offer their reaction to the work. You can see those early reviews here.

You can order the hardcover layflat journal here. $67. Shipping $3.99
Members ship free.

Order the PDF of the Tao Te Ching Journal here. ($9.99)

. . .

The text from today’s post:

Wandering the River’s Edge

Now thirty-six years have somehow flowed by.
Time passes and disappears; all there is is today.

I wander under clear skies,
And meet up with friends and sit on the river’s bank.

Fish weave gently against the current;
birds drift by headed to distant valleys.

The ridges in the distance carry memories
Of solitude and quiet days.

I pour wine for my friends and myself,
and we toast this special day:

Who knows how many times we’ll share
our friendship again in this way. Maybe never.

A few more cups, and

I forget old sorrows
Tomorrow too distant to think about.
-After T’ao Ch’ien’s ‘Wandering at Oblique Creek’ (401 CE), Zen Mountain Journal interpretation.

. . .

Erase the lines: I pray you not to love classifications:
The thing is like a river, from source to sea-mouth
One flowing life.
- Robinson Jeffers, from the poem “Monument”

. . .

Reflection

Rivers have long captured my imagination and I’ve spent many weeks and months of my life paddling them, both on long wilderness trips and whitewater kayaking. That interest, and my interest in ancient Taoist poetry, was what inspired me to create the book Wild Waters and Tao, which I published in 2013 and which quickly sold out. I’m thinking through now what a sequel might look like.

Before Heron Dance was Heron Dance it was a book that couldn’t find a publisher. The working title of that book was Free Spirits and it included excerpts from my interview of Verlen Kruger who paddled more miles than anyone else ever has in recorded history — over 100,000 miles. His trips included the entire length of the Pacific coast of the US and Canada, the Grand Canyon upstream and the Amazon upstream.

Here’s an excerpt from that interview:

A river is life. A river attracts life. Rivers are always changing -- the water constantly changes, the wildlife changes. Rivers are movement, life, growth. The rivers are the arteries of the earth. They are what transfers life. Wildlife is attracted. People are attracted. Civilizations grow along waterways.

A river comes from somewhere and it goes somewhere. Where does it go? Can I go along? I cannot look at a river without wondering where the water is going. Ultimately it goes where all good waters go -- to the great sea beyond.

Sitting by a wild river, just listening can be a deeply spiritual experience. Something deep inside us resonates with wild water.

A close friend from my twenties has MS and spends much of his day sending his friends interesting things he finds on the internet. Knowing of my interest in indigenous peoples, emailed me recently about a book he’s reading, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne. He included in the email some images of paintings that were actually of the Mandan by George Catlin — an artist financed by J.P. Morgan to document the last days of the plains Indians.

That brought to mind some excerpts I had recorded in my journal twenty or thirty years ago from Catlin’s journals about his time with the Mandan. In closing, I offer them here.

I love a people who have always made me welcome to the best they had...who are honest without laws, who have no jails and no poor-houses.. who never take the name of God in vain...who worship God without a Bible, and I believe God loves them also,...who are free from religious animosities...who have never raised a hand against me, or stolen my property, where there is no law to punish either...who never fought a battle with white men except on their own ground...and Oh, how I love a people who don’t live for the love of money!

...No man’s imagination, with all the aids of description that can be given to it, can ever picture the beauty and wildness of scenes that may be daily witnessed in this romantic country; of hundreds of these graceful youths, without a care to wrinkle, or a fear to disturb the full expression of pleasure and enjoyment that beams upon their faces -- their long black hair mingling with their horses’ tails, floating in the wind, while they are flying over the carpeted prairie, and dealing death with their spears and arrows, to a band of infuriated buffaloes; or their splendid procession in a war-parade, arrayed in all their gorgeous colors and trappings, moving with most exquisite grace and manly beauty, added to that bold defiance which man carries on his front, who acknowledges no superior on earth, and who is amenable to no laws except the laws of God and honor. . .

They live in a country and in communities, where it is not customary to look forward into the future with concern, for they live without incurring the expenses of life, which are absolutely necessary and unavoidable in the enlightened world; and of course their inclinations and faculties are solely directed to the enjoyment of the present day, without the sober reflections on the past or apprehensions of the future.

With minds thus unexpanded and uninfluenced by the thousand passions and ambitions of civilized life, it is easy and natural to concentrate their thoughts and their conversation upon the little and trifling occurrences of their lives. They are fond of fun and good cheer, and can laugh easily and heartily at a slight joke, of which their peculiar modes of life furnish them an inexhaustible fund, and enable them to cheer their little circle about the wigwam fire-side with endless laughter and garrulity. ...Their lives are lives of idleness and ease, and almost all their days and hours are spent in innocent amusements. Amongst a people who have no office hours to attend to -- no professions to study, and of whom but very little time is required in the chase, to supply their families with food, it would be strange if they did not practice many games and amusements, and also become exceedingly expert in them....

One has but to walk or ride about this little town and its environment for a few hours in a pleasant day, and overlook the numerous games and gambols where their notes and yelps of exultation are unceasingly vibrating in the atmosphere; or peep into their wigwams (and watch the glistening fun that’s beaming from the noses, cheeks, and chins, of the crouching, cross legged, and prostrate groups around the fire; where the pipe is passed, and jokes and anecdote, and laughter are excessive) to become convinced that it is natural to laugh and be merry. Indeed it would be strange a race of people like these, who have little else to do or relish in life, should be curtailed in that source of pleasure and amusement; and it would be also strange, if a life-time of indulgence and practice in so innocent and productive a mode of amusement, free from the cares and anxieties of business or professions, should not advance them in their modes, and enable them to draw far greater pleasure from such sources, than we in the civilized and business world can possibly feel. If the uncultivated condition of their minds curtails the number of their enjoyments: yet they are free from, and independent of, a thousand cares and jealousies, which arise from mercenary motives in the civilized world; and are yet far ahead of us (in my opinion) in the real and uninterrupted enjoyment of their simple natural faculties.

• George Catlin, Letters and Notes On The Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians. Written during Eight Years Travel (1832-1839) amongst the Wildest Tribes of Indians in North America

To view enlarged on the Heron Dance website, visit here.

Our life and work in the world are manifestations of our inner work. The heart of this work is the nurturing of a friendship with yourself.

The Tao Te Ching Journal is a contemplative refuge of Taoist wisdom, art, and quiet. It offers a journaling practice, inspired by the ancient words of Laozi, for those who seek to create a life and work in harmony with their vision of a quality life. That quality is related, in part, to the questions we are willing to explore.

The quiet center of a human life needs to be nurtured. This journal is for those who manifest an inner life in some creative work or project that contributes to the lives of others. It is for those who choose a quiet, contemplative life in nature. It is for those who march to a different drummer, who live a set of values outside of those of the dominant culture.

. . .

Order the hardcover layflat journal here. $67.
Members ship free.

Order the PDF of the Tao Te Ching Journal here. ($9.99)

Distilled down, what does the Tao Te Ching actually mean? What does a human life lived according to its principles actually look like?

The Tao Te Ching Journal is a contemplative companion for those seeking a quieter, more meaningful life. Combining Taoist hermit poetry, abstract Tao/Zen-inspired art, and guided reflections, it turns the Tao Te Ching from a book you read into a practice you live. Each chapter pairs a distilled verse with space for personal insight, helping you reconnect with your inner world, your intuition, and the “soundless music” at the center of your life. This is not merely a translation — it is a path toward understanding one’s life and the hidden currents that underly it from a Taoist/Zen perspective.

The Tao Te Ching Journal explores the Tao not just intellectually, but inwardly.

Each verse is presented in clear, poetic language alongside original Zen-inspired art. Instead of commentary or doctrine, you’re invited into your own quiet — with prompts and spacious pages for journaling, contemplation, and stillness. This structure turns reading into self-discovery, and the journal becomes a companion on your path toward simplicity, clarity, and inner freedom.

Rooted in thirty years of creative work, wilderness solitude, and study of Taoist hermit poetry, this journal offers a modern gateway into ancient insights. Whether you are new to Taoism or deep on the path, the Tao Te Ching Journal helps you reconnect with your inner world — gently, honestly, and in your own way.

About half the book consists of art, writing and questions to consider. The other half is blank, for your own notes and sketches. Printed on Mohawk Superfine, a beautiful uncoated paper that renders color beautifully and provides an excellent writing surface. It is wire-o bound to lay flat. Hardcover. 9.5 x 8.5. 160 pages.

The Tao Te Ching Journal:
Example interior two-page spreads.

Order here.

To view on the Zen Mountain Journal website, visit here.

Journaling has been a friend and guide to me at the significant turning points of my life. The hidden undercurrents that shape us — many of them taking form in childhood — affect the quality of our lives and our relationships, both with ourselves and with others. In this journal those currents weave together.

And so I offer you this work, which has grown out of a creative life lived on the edges of our culture. Some of those lessons were learned the hard way. Some I seem to be still struggling against, still resisting. Sometimes the easiest way forward — surrender — appears the least attractive.

I was out for dinner the other evening with an old friend visiting from Charlottesville, and somehow a conversation got going between him and our server about how he and I met. “Before I met Rod,” he said, “I read his publication Heron Dance for years. It got me through some tough times. It gave me the courage to make the changes in my life that I needed to make.”

I’ve been turning that conversation over in my mind in the days since. I try to listen carefully when friends and readers tell me what they get from this work. It is better to know what I actually contribute than it is to know what I think I contribute. And, when I thought about it, I realized that I’ve received thousands of emails and letters over the years from readers saying essentially the same thing — that this work helped them through a difficult time, and that the stories I tell, about my own life or the lives of others, gave them the courage to do what they needed to do. Listening is important, even when it isn’t exactly what I’d like to hear. To many readers ancient Taoist hermit poetry is a tool, one tool of several, not the endpoint.

Taoism and Zen, in particular the ancient roots of those spiritual traditions, resonate deeply with me from my own time alone living in a cabin way back in the woods. The poems of the mountain hermits of old embody a deep peace similar to what I’ve experienced living that life. Their poetry is about connection with nature and with interior realms, and building a life out of that. And about sacrificing for it — nothing sacred happens without sacrifice. Zen and Taoist poetry will always have a central place in my work and in my life. They bring me back in touch with the stillpoint out of which my life and creativity evolve. Others I know find it in other places. In the end, it doesn’t matter where or how we find it.

What matters is that creative work, and a life, grow out of a stillpoint. Without quiet reflection at the center, a life spent moving from project to project, from adventure to adventure, can lack focus, a purpose and even spin out of control. The particular practice or spiritual tradition probably doesn’t matter. The stillpoint can be found in a hammock listening to birdsong. It can be found by laying in bed in the morning daydreaming. I don’t think it really matters.

Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.
— T.S. Eliot

Or as Chuang Tzu wrote in the fourth century BCE, as rendered by Thomas Merton — a hermit monk of another kind:

Emptiness, stillness, tranquillity, tastelessness,
Silence, non-action: this is the level of heaven and earth.
From the sage’s emptiness, stillness arises;
From stillness, action.

The heart of this work is the nurturing of a friendship with yourself.

This week, as I thought this over, I wondered if though I may think that my contribution to the lives of others is my interpretation of this mysterious and beautiful ancient poetry, my readers may have a completely different idea. I need to listen to what readers think.

And if I’ve helped people at turning points, the questions are how, and why. What have I learned from the turning points of my own life? From leaving home at fifteen to hitchhike across the country, and a year later from living deep in subarctic wilderness with Dene people who spoke no English? From all the other choices, many of them incongruous with who I am and what I want — starting a business in my twenties doing pre-offer due diligence for corporate acquirers on Wall Street; amateur boxing in my twenties; whitewater kayaking in my fifties; a romantic life that has involved more than a few unpredictable women who were themselves chasing the next adventure, the next thrill? They were exciting to be around, but a source of peace they were not.

When I meditate and journal on those decisions, the question that keeps surfacing is how much of it was an effort to avoid a confrontation with myself. Did I embark on adventure after adventure in order to avoid exploring my interior world and understanding myself and thinking through where in my then short life I had actually found peace. Slowing down and looking inside can lead to questions we’d rather avoid and confronting patterns of our lives that are uncomfortable.

Our lives are, to a large extent, spent avoiding confrontation with ourselves. When you realize that, you can begin to make sense of the enormous amount of our culture’s daily activity, which attempt to distract us from ourselves, from deep reflection, from existential confrontation.
- Roger Walsh, in The Search for Meaning by Phillip L. Berman

This is something the old hermit-poets understood. Ryokan, Han Shan, Chuang Tzu — they didn’t go looking for the exciting edge in life where unpredictable things happen. They were drawn instead to the stillness most people spend their lives avoiding. They found that a way of seeing was waiting there too, just without the spectacle. The outer edges of inner landscapes are also where the enclosure thins. It is quieter there, and you come back without a photograph to show for it. The story you have to tell will be difficult for others to understand. That’s probably why the territory isn’t crowded.

I salute the skill and courage it takes to run a class four rapid, but now I’m more interested in the other kind: the courage to sit alone in a room and confront oneself, confront the patterns that underlie a life, both helpful and unhelpful.

Before Heron Dance was Heron Dance, it was a book that couldn’t find a publisher — Free Spirits. It grew out of interviews with people who had arrived at their own unique vision of what they wanted from life and then built an existence around that self-knowledge, living by values often at odds with those of the dominant culture. They made films about living simply in nature, and about generosity as a source of happiness. They volunteered in refugee camps, or nursed injured raptors back to the wild, or worked in the inner city with the addicted. Some were peace activists who had spent serious time in prison for nonviolent civil disobedience. They sailed with Thor Heyerdahl, climbed the world’s mountains, or paddled the Amazon upstream to its source. From there, Heron Dance went on to explore the human connection to the natural world, creativity, and gratitude as a spiritual practice and a philosophy of life.

Now, approaching seventy, I think about how to take all of it — the adventures and the misadventures, the learning and the mistakes, the triumphs and the abject failures – and offer what I’ve learned in the context of how our inner journey shapes our lives in the world. If readers tell me that I’ve helped them at times of turmoil and loss or at major crossroads in their lives, I want to offer what I’ve learned about that. I know a little about the search for the wisdom a major new direction requires, about the search for the kind of insight that can only come from deep within, and the courage needed to take a direction in life where the outcome is uncertain.

For me, the quiet strength of a life lived on its own terms comes from meditation, walks in the woods and the study of the ancient roots of Taoism and Zen. Not the retreat centers, not the sanghas, not the chanting of the temples — but the simplicity of life built around a friendship with oneself. I respect every spiritual tradition, but I am a solo practitioner whose temple is the woods. The simplicity of Zen attracts me – the search for the essence of the thing, of life, even while acknowledging that it probably can’t be found. And the surrender of Taoism. Surrender is what I most need to learn in life, not what I’ve mastered.

And then creating a life, a unique life, a unique work, out of that inner work. What does Zen look like, lived? What can be made of a life out of a friendship, carefully tended, with the soundless music within?

The journeys of our lives, our journeys out in the world, are a manifestation of our inner journey, our inner life.

. . .

• To view this post on the Zen Mountain Journal website, or read more about the work of Zen Mountain Art Studio, visit here.

Painting: At the Threshold

Reflection

Now that that the Tao Te Ching Journal is at the printer, what’s next? If the Tao is my guiding light, my compass, where does it point next? On its own, absent a real life, the Tao is interesting reading. What’s harder is living it. What does a life lived in harmony with one’s inner world, with nature, with the Tao, look like lived? How does the inner work and the outer journey become one? A life lived with integrity and courage has its own costs. Simple in concept, living the Tao presents a series of real challenges, acceptance and surrender among them.

Life is a desperate struggle to be in fact that which we are in design.
- Ortega Y. Gassett

I spent much of the last week reflecting on that question. The easiest path would be to continue exploring the great Taoist and Zen poets: Han Shan, Ryokan, Basho, Li Po. Their writings are beautiful, profound, and endlessly rewarding. Yet the question that interests me most is how one lives those teachings.

What does a life look like that genuinely attempts to live the Tao? In practice, the path is often uncertain, challenging, and filled with both setbacks and progress. There are moments of clarity and moments of confusion. At times, life flows effortlessly; at others life is an upstream swim, movement in a resistant medium.

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of a fiasco. But there’s also the possibility of bliss.
- Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss, published after his death. (I’ve posted my favorite quotes by and about Joseph Campbell on this website here.)

Campbell was a scholar and a teacher. He grew up in an upper class family, went to private school, walked into a tenured position at Sarah Lawrence at thirty, and stayed there for thirty-eight years. He wrote movingly about the hero’s journey but did not embark on one himself. Risk in the abstract is a different thing from risk lived. This isn’t a criticism. The scholar’s view has its value. Cartographers map mountains they haven’t climbed, and the maps are still useful. But the climber’s account carries something the cartographer’s cannot.

Campbell’s question, Do I dare?, appears again and again when one embraces their adventure and embarks upon a journey that entails risk in the pursuit of a deep experience of life. And it constantly appears when one seeks to live a creative life according to a set of deeply held values. I’ve experienced (or created) more than my fair share of fiascos. I have also lived a life deeply connected to the beauty and mystery of wild nature. I’ve lived according to my own values, pursued dreams and visions of what my potential is, in particular my creative potential. For most of my life I have chosen uncertainty over security, self-employment over the security of a paycheck, and the pursuit of meaningful work over the promise of predictability. Whether as an artist, writer, or whitewater kayaker, I have spent much of my life exploring the outer edges of my own comfort zone. I’ve spent more than my fair share of time going down rapids upside down.

I’m not saying any of this to suggest others should take the path I took. Most shouldn’t. The path is hard, and the costs are real. What I’m saying is that I know something about the territory because I’ve spent decades living it.

Fifty-three years ago, at the age of sixteen, I hitchhiked up into northern Canada as far as the road went – Yellowknife — and lived in the bush with Dogrib Indians who couldn’t speak English and had only a vague concept of what Canada was. A couple of years earlier, canoeing in northern Quebec, I came across abandoned Cree cabins by remote lakes and became fascinated by the lives of those people. I read everything I could about how they lived and saw life. I wanted to know how they connected with nature and with each other. I learned, living with the Dene people in the bush, that their lives are a lot different than the romanticized version on TV and in books. Living in the subarctic with stone age technology where it is dark four months a year is a spiritual adventure yes, but it is also a survival adventure. Nature is not your friend. Many people knew family members who had frozen, drowned, or starved. Survival required skill, resilience, and cooperation. And some luck. Yet alongside those hardships I encountered qualities that often seem scarce in modern culture: patience, generosity, humility, and a deep awareness of one’s dependence upon others.

So where do I go from here as I strive to live the Tao, and sometimes succeed and sometimes fail? I have hundreds of stories to tell about that life. There’s the theory and then there’s the life lived. The territory where the two meet and where the two diverge contain some insights and deep, challenging learning. Real life is a lot messier than the Tao.

Life is either daring adventure, or nothing.
- Helen Keller

As a tool in this exploration, I plan to use my art journal from which the image above originated — quick, relaxed watercolor sketches accompanied by thoughts and quotes that bubble up from deeper levels of consciousness.

. . .

Soetsu Yanagi’s The Unknown Craftsman

Along the way, certain books have become trusted companions. Few have influenced my thinking more about the manifestation of one’s inner life in creative work than Soetsu Yanagi’s The Unknown Craftsman. It explores the ancient Zen arts and handcrafts of Asia, and the spiritual practices and philosophies that underly that work.

I’ve posted my favorite excerpts here and intend to explore the significance of the book from time to time in posts over the next few months. . .

• To view this post on the Zen Mountain Journal website visit here.

Painting: Blue Descent

Wu Daozi, the legendary Tang dynasty painter, remains one of the most influential figures in Chinese art. Although none of his original paintings survive, stories about his Taoist creative process continue to inspire artists, writers, and contemplatives. This reflection explores the contrast between careful study and the art of painting from memory—asking whether great art comes from preparation alone, or from absorbing the spirit of a subject so deeply that it moves through the hand without force.

The River Had Entered Wu

The emperor, enamored of the Jialing River,
commissioned the two leading artists of the day,
Li Ssu-hsun and Wu Daozi,
to paint its course on palace walls —
rapids, waterfalls, gorges and quiet pools.

Li sketched and catalogued,
filled notebooks with river facts,
measured the angles of cliffs
and the river’s flow.
Thus prepared, he returned to the capital
and began to paint.

Meanwhile, Wu drank wine,
relaxed in bars,
and enjoyed the company
of sing-song girls.

After thus achieving a relaxed frame mind
Wu headed off to walk the river’s banks,
Meditate along its shore.
Listen to birdsong
And swim in quiet pools.
He saw more than looked.
Listened more than heard.

Meanwhile, the deadline loomed
And the emperor’s courtiers fretted.
Li’s brushwork now adorned the palace walls —
accurate, magnificent, complete.
Still, from Wu, no word.

With only two days left before
the emperor’s deadline,
Wu finally appeared
and picked up his brush.

Wu painted not the river.
But the thirst of the river.
Not the cliff face —
but the way stone dreams of falling.
Not pilgrims on a bridge
but the hollow sound
their footsteps make
when the gorge below
is very deep.

Two days later,
no one could say
exactly what Wu had painted,
only that it was very good.

The river had entered Wu:
early morning mountain air
rising cold from river gorge.

. . .
Background: The Way of Wu

Wu Daozi is considered the supreme figure of Tang dynasty court painting — one of those rare artists whose legend outlasted every canvas he touched. None of his originals survive. What remains are descriptions, later copies, and stories that were probably already legendary by the time they were first written in 847 CE. One story in particular has traveled across twelve centuries without losing its potency.

Emperor Xuanzong commissioned two painters to depict the Jialing River on palace walls — three hundred li of wild Sichuan gorges, cataracts, and mountain air. Li Ssu-hsun, who had invented the distinctive style of dramatic, jagged mountains rendered in mineral azurite and malachite, worked with characteristic discipline: sketches, notes, the long careful labor of a man who trusted preparation. When he finished months later, the emperor said that at night he could hear the water plunging over the waterfall in Li’s picture.

Wu Daozi on the other hand went to Sichuan, haunted the inns, drank wine, cavorted with the bar girls but did no visible work. Afterwards, his spirits in fine form, he headed off to the river, walk its banks, lay under the trees, and listened to river music. Then, the feeling of the river deeply impressed upon his psyche, he returned to the capital full of creative imagination. In a single day, or maybe two – the legend varies from teller to teller – he painted the entire river from memory — three hundred li of it — with brushwork of such sweeping power that crowds gathered to watch him work.

Both painters were judged masters. The story does not ask us to dismiss Li. It asks us to consider what Wu knew that Li did not — or rather, what Wu trusted that Li could not afford to.

The river had entered Wu. The wine, the aimless wandering allowed Wu to relax into the spirit of the river.

This is an old argument in art—what the Taoists called wu wei, effortless action: whether the thing is made from careful study of reference material or made from the images that impress themselves upon the deeper levels of the mind. Wu’s answer was not laziness. It was a different kind of discipline — the discipline of full absorption, of letting images settle on the back of the mind, and then wait to see which ones prevail, which ones emerge.

What emerges moves through the hand without interference.

Reflection

The ultimate creative expression in art is to capture the essence, the spirit, of a subject with as few brush strokes as possible. It doesn’t have to look like the actual subject. In fact, if the artist can, through exaggeration, capture something deeper, the work is, for me, more profound.

Wu’s wild brush strokes, executed without hesitation and without preliminary sketches, are often on my mind as I paint. I strive to capture his lessons in my work, and occasionally succeed.

. . .

To view this on the Zen Mountain Journal website visit here.

Painting: Raven and the Tao

The Moment Before Excess

Knowing when enough is enough.
Knowing when wanting more
Disturbs the balance.

More food, more stuff, more talk.
Empty roads leading nowhere.
The moment before excess
Is the moment of completion.

Quiet days by a lake.
Simple food. Silence.
Wind, trees. Bird song.

. . .

Reflection

We know what too much feels like — afterward. The third helping. The hour past tired. The sentence we shouldn’t have spoken. We feel it as a small heaviness, a vague regret. Sometimes worse than vague.

What we miss is the moment just before. The pause where enough was already there.

On a long canoe trip you carry what you carry. There is no more. A bag of rice. A bag of oats. Coffee. A few onions. The pack is heavy and the portages are real, so every ounce needs to earn its place. Strange thing happens around day four or five. The food tastes better. Not because the cooking improves — it doesn’t. Because hunger has returned. Because there is no surplus. Because dinner is a small ceremony at the end of a long day on the water, and the fire takes time, and the rice takes time, and you sit and watch the lake while it cooks.

Back home, the same rice would be unremarkable. Excess dulls the senses. Sufficiency wakes them. Thoreau wrote that he avoided alcohol, tea and coffee because he didn’t want to ruin his taste for water.

The poem names three appetites: food, stuff, talk. The third may be the most Taoist. The Tao Te Ching returns again and again to silence, to the value of what is not said. Many words exhaust, says Chapter 5. Most of what we say we say to fill space — to be seen, to smooth over, to assert. The few words that matter would matter more if surrounded by silence.

Sit with someone who knows how to be quiet and you feel it. The quality of attention sharpens. Each word means something.

There is an art to stopping before excess.

This is the secret of the chapter, and perhaps of the whole Tao Te Ching: enough is not a quantity you arrive at. It is a recognition. It was always there. The moment before the third helping is already complete. The moment before the unnecessary sentence is already complete. The lake at dusk, before you reach for your phone to photograph it, is already complete.
. . .

Question to Consider

• Where in your life is enough already present, waiting to be noticed?

. . .

This is the last of this series on the Tao Te Ching

Except for the listing of art on the final two pages, the journal is finished. The hardcover cases are being printed now and will ship to the interior printer shortly. The first copies should ship in early June. Order information below.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what direction to go in from here now that it is time to branch away from the Tao Te Ching. When I ask myself what Substack I’d most like to subscribe to it would be a rough journal of an artist’s preliminary creative process. I’d love, for instance, to read the journal of Picasso’s process as he thought through his first Cubist paintings, or Bob Dylan’s journal of his early thinking that led to Like a Rolling Stone or I ain’t gonna work on Maggie’s farm no more.

Several years ago I read the Thoreau’s journals and was fascinated by how they later evolved into his books, in particular Walden. So fascinated, in fact, that I created a book based on my favorite excerpts from his journals which totaled two million words, Thoreau and the Art of Life.

Nothing was ever so unfamiliar and startling to me as my own thoughts. . . My journal should be the record of my love. I would write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any aspect of the world, what I love to think of . . . I feel ripe for something . . . yet can’t discover what that thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seed time with me. I have lain fallow long enough.
- Thoreau, in his journal

Next on this Heron Dance journey, I want to take the sections of the ancient poems of the Tao mountain hermits that most get me thinking about the gentle arts of life, about my connection to the natural world, about the role of peace and quiet in my life and my creative process and create from those an art journal. But not a lot of words. Just enough to capture the essence along with rough preliminary watercolors — the ones that lead to my paintings. So we’ll where this next experiment goes.

Loose, relaxed art, where mistakes are part of the process, is just plain fun. It might be particularly fun to explore the concept of wabi sabi, the art of imperfection, which has a humorous aspect to it.

. . .

To view this on the Zen Mountain Journal website visit here.

Painting: Heron Dance Impression I

At night, on Cold Mountain

Sitting by a stream, moonlight shadows of blue.

Thoughts silent, emptiness welcomed
And the universe beckons.

- Han Shan (aka Cold Mountain), 9th Century T’ang Dynasty, Heron Dance interpretation with acknowledgment to the interpretation by Red Pine in The Collected Songs of Cold Mountain.

. . .

Reflection

Han Shan does not say the universe arrived. He says it beckons. The stream had not changed, nor the blue shadows. What was already there became visible when the noise inside him went still.
. . .

Question to consider:

• What becomes visible when the noise inside you goes still?

. . .

To view this on the Zen Mountain Journal website visit here.

As I have worked on this journal over the last year, it has amazed me how often the Tao has suggested a different course than the one I had planned. Sometimes I have taken the way it offered. Sometimes I have not. When I have ignored what the Tao had to say, the results have generally been adverse. And the more I ignored, the more severe the consequences. It is almost as if the Tao was trying to teach me — first gently, and then, when that did not work, through more rigorous lessons. Always those lessons have to do with surrender, with yielding. With gentleness, and with putting harmony ahead of desire and ambition. With faith in the Taoist way, the watercourse way.

The Tao Te Ching itself emerged twenty-five hundred years ago, out of one of the most violent and unsettled periods in Chinese history. Cities burned. Armies grew into the hundreds of thousands. Peasants were taxed into desperation to fund military campaigns. It was not written in a peaceful time. It was written by people who had seen what striving and cleverness produce, and who turned instead toward the quieter intelligence of water and the wisdom of silence.

This journal pairs prose poems interpreted from the Tao Te Ching with my reflections on each, a single journaling question, and original paintings throughout. The paintings and the words have always belonged together in my work, and they belong together here. The journaling question at the heart of each chapter is not a prompt for cleverness. It is an invitation to listen — to the quiet voice, to the song within, to whatever current the pen wants to follow.

Journaling has been a friend and guide to me at the significant turning points of my life. The hidden undercurrents that shape us — many of them taking form in childhood — affect the quality of our lives and our relationships, both with ourselves and with others. In this journal those currents weave together.

And so I offer you this work, which has grown out of a creative life lived on the edges of our culture. Some of those lessons were learned the hard way. Some I seem to be still struggling against, still resisting. Sometimes the easiest way forward — surrender — appears the least attractive.

The journal will be hardcover, double wire-o bound so that it lays flat for writing. It will be printed on Mohawk Superfine — a premium uncoated paper that reproduces color beautifully and takes a pen well.

The journal ships in about a month. After publication it will sell for $67. Pre-publication orders are $57. Shipping is $11.45, and free for Supporting Members.

You can pre-order here.

More on the journal here.

Every journal pre-ordered will arrive with a signed bookplate inside the front cover, expressing my gratitude for your help in making this work possible.

If you are not a Supporting Member and would like to support this work (the art, the Substack, this journal and the others planned for later this year) you can read about the benefits Members here.

Painting: Seascape

What the Current Knows

Some days the river carries you.
Some days you push against it
and blame life.

I have spent time with people
who left me lighter than they found me,
and time with people
who took something I did not know I had.

I have done work
that returned me to myself,
and work that took me to places
where I was totally lost.

The Tao does not ask
which path is correct.
It asks which one
gives you energy.
Which path brings you joy?

. . .

Reflection

The Tao Te Ching returns again and again to a single question: are you moving with nature – both your nature and that of the reality that surrounds you -- or against it? The Chinese word for this is “ziran” — sometimes translated as “naturalness,” sometimes as “self-so.” It points to the way a thing is when nothing is forcing it to be otherwise.

Work that is aligned with who we are leaves us tired but not emptied. We finish and something has been returned to us. Work that runs against our grain — work we don’t like but do for money, work we do for status, for approval – takes more than it gives. It takes takes and destroys a piece of us.

The same is true of people. Some people bring out the best in us, and we bring out the best in them. Together we are stronger than the sum of our parts. One plus one equals three. Others, often without meaning to, pull us toward a lesser version of ourselves, and we diminish them. One plus one equals one and a half. The Tao does not judge either group. It simply asks us to notice the difference.

A life lived in alignment with ziran is not a life without effort. The river wears down rock, but it does not work against itself.

. . .

Question to consider:

• Where in your life right now are you pushing against the current — and what would it feel like to stop?

. . .

To view this on the Zen Mountain Journal website visit here.