Just a moment....

Satori is dead. Enlightenment comes from the glow of a 42 inch HDTV. Zazen is sat on a couch. If you are to ponder and weigh the entirety of life, if you are to see into your nature, then why not simplify? Your special transmission comes from a satellite disc. No need for knowledge of words or letters. All you have to do is point directly at whatever it is your nature wants.

Let’s wallow in a kshantic acceptance of life, its irrationalities and momentary glimpses of impersonal, intuitive insights that might waft about like psychic fart. Because c’mon, what’s the point of all this gibberish? Life is pain? They’ve got pills for that. Do I really want to see into one’s nature? Talk about pain. Hsing me a song just like the other one and waltz me around by my willy. What is the use of toiling and moiling so? Why beat your ego shell on the wall? Why twist your own nose?

Hey, why not get with the program. No mind is where it’s at, sunyata for the masses. No pain, no nature, no mind, no problems. Need a momentary sense of exaltation? Have a Prozac and wash it down with Red Bull. Turn on, tune in, and cartoon out. What else is there to do? Your wants and desires are provided for almost instantaneously. Nature is a channel on the TV anyone can look into anytime. Enlightenment is likely overrated. Once you have peaked, once you have broken the game wide open and achieved the dreams meted out, where do you go from there?

I wonder about the dumbing down of existence, of experience, of nature. Most cruel is the dumbing down of change. Hope for a new world order. Rescue from any chaffing irritation of the moment. The people have spoken, the system has rules, good over evil, rah rah rah….Only when was the last time you saw a revolution where any of the promises were carried out? How soon before the nature of the thing outweighs any promise or intention?

God is just some dude sitting there in his white beard and robes and someday he is going to get his shit in order. Individual peckerwood existence is just a well oiled hamster wheel. Good and evil, cats and dogs, all the dualistic stereotypes are so banal and washed out that they don’t mean a thing. Occasionally there is some horrific natural cataclysm that only serves to punctuate the insular quality of the mass’s opiate addled, everyday stumblebum dream. Welcome to the warm doughy amniotic embrace of the American experience. Why think or thrash or give a shit? Why make it any more complicated than it already is? Why look into the nature of things, into yourself, or any of the connections that still may exist? Go with the flow. Who is it that carries for you this lifeless corpse of yours?

ceaselessly against the tide

For a long time I would take the time to go watch the salmon. At first I would just go to the observation window at the locks because I just didn't know where else to go. Later I would watch them come back to a small stream they left from. They would arrive and and circle in front of the mouth of the stream. Round and round for days. Once I put on a snorkel and went out to try and swim with them but all I could do was wait for them to come around and file past. They seemed unconcerned to see me, intent as they were on whatever the forces that moved them.

Sometimes it rained, but more often not. As the days passed the salmon would circle closer and closer to the mouth of the stream. A big gravid female would lead them. She would bring them in close and I would think , well this is it, but she would veer away almost as if undecided at the last instant. Around and around they would come. By now people are coming to fish, throwing treble hooks over the school and reefing it back to snag one. I fished for awhile but in the end I just felt foolish and wrong. The fish never wavered, they would plow by driven by a force I could only accept. The lead female would come around to the mouth of the stream with her head up, almost out of the water. Her mouth would be open as she gulped in the fresh water, buoyant on top of the salt. Her head would sweep back and forth searching for whatever was the key to the next step. And one day all of it made sense and she would charge upstream. Their tails just pounding the water with a force that always surprised me. I wondered if it wasn't a signal to the rest of the fish or if their sedate pace in the Sound wasn't just conserving energy for this push. Over the next couple of weeks they would keep coming until this portion of their cycle was complete.

In late October I make the time to go to Tumwater Canyon on the other side of the mountains. The salmon there have arrived by a more arduous route. They have negotiated the Columbia and the Wenatchee and pushed up the east side of the Cascades. By October there isn't much left. The cycle is complete. The last of the males are still heading upstream. I don't think they eat. They are just living on what's left of their own tissue, though still driven by the force that brought them back here. It's cold and wet and the traffic on the road roars by without a second glance. The males with their rotting flesh and hooked jaws push upstream, only to slowly drift back. I used to think that I'd see one give up, but they never do. Maybe only in the night or when the light first hits the water. You can see they are exhausted, finished, and not about to quit. I take something away from that too.

How do you mess up something like a salmon run? It takes some effort. Look at how the Native Culture of the Northwest lived. Their year was spent doing artwork while waiting for the fish to come back. The connection between the fish and the culture was never out of their minds. Nature was linked with survival. I wonder if modern civilized man just destroyed nature so not to have to think of that. This endless stacking up of goods and money might just be some primitive hording instinct. How much fear is really out there?

I'm thinking about this as I head out the door. I'm going to drive around. Screw the price of gas, or what projects I have going on, or the deadlines I think I have to meet. I want to head up some creek, circle around the mountains. I want to see something differently. Experience a moment. I'll do what I do and it will motivate me somehow. On my return I will channel that energy into shaping something that has meaning to me and maybe someone else looking at it. I'm not going to some numbing slave job that serves every interest but mine. I'll pay for that I guess. My life has become economically superficial, a cultural afterthought, like the salmon.