Walking In Sixes

Walking. How many different kinds of walking are there? We’re going to explore that a bit more later but for now let’s consider two – well… really just one. One can either walk with others or alone. Imagine yourself walking with others - in town, in the city, in the country, or even in the mountains. What are you likely doing? Talking! Now, imagine yourself walking alone in any of those places. Same question – hopefully a different answer. In the first three settings you’re probably going to find people looking at you slightly askance if you are talking to yourself. Someone so long ago in my past that I can’t even remember who it was used to say “I was givin’ them the old hairy eye ball”. I think you know what I mean. Technically, you could probably get away with talking while walking alone in the mountains. Yet, I suspect (hope!) most of us would have the wherewithal to raise a reflective brow within a mile or two. So what does one do while walking alone in the mountains? Trick question! Anything they want to do – or nothing at all.

The sequence of events that created my preferred option for mental (i.e. non-verbal) activity while walking alone in the mountains is frankly, not the point of this post. So with your assumed consent I’ll skip that part and get only slightly more directly to the point. It turns out non-verbal chanting, i.e. to yourself, exclusively within the confines of your own cranium, silently – but make no mistake the target audience is the entire universe – is a great way to go. Recognize that there is a plethora of potential chants – everything from “Hi ya, hi ya, hi ya…” to “Hup, two, three, four…” to “The ants go marching one by one…”. You get the picture. Now, allow me to take a leap. Please leap along with me.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Familiar to you or not, we’re going there. For those familiar, please allow the pathetic abbreviated personal interpretation that follows to suffice (or, as always, you are free to write a comment directed at this post). For those not familiar with Om Mani Padme Hum, it is a mantra which Tibetan Buddhists believe when repeated to oneself silently or aloud invokes the powerful benevolent attention and blessings of Chenrezig, the embodiment of compassion. It is also said that all the teachings of Buddha are contained in this mantra. (These same words and more can be found at: http://www.dharma-haven.org/tibetan/meaning-of-om-mani-padme-hung.htm if you want more information.)

For those of you that didn’t put enough personal effort into the leap we just took, what I’m suggesting here is that one could, when walking alone in the mountains, on say, a three day solo climb of Mount Wood (see previous post), choose to repeat this mantra to themselves more or less endlessly. It is said that repeating this mantra helps one to get centered. It turns out that being centered spiritually, mentally, and physically can be of great benefit when climbing in the high mountains. I had some sense of this as I headed out toward Mount Wood so I took to repeating this mantra in my head as I walked. The results were…, well…, wow!

It is helpful to imagine that there are lots of ways one can walk and chant this mantra. It could go like: ommanipadmehum – step with the right foot, ommanipadmehum – step with the left foot step, ommanipadmehum – step with the right foot, ommanipadmehum – step with the left foot. Repeat. I have to admit I never got there. It seemed a little too angsty when done quickly enough to make any kind of time while walking in the mountains. You know, sort of contrary to the intent of the entire exercise. It could go like: Om – step with the right foot, Mani – step with the left foot, Padme – step with the right foot, Hum – step with the left foot. Repeat. Or it could go like: Om – step left and right, Mani – step left and right, Padme – step left and right, Hum – step left and right. Repeat.

In my limited experience with chanting this mantra on this trip (really only almost every waking hour for three days), I found that how you chant, i.e. the cadence of chanting depends upon whether you are walking on the level, climbing, or descending. It also depends upon whether you’re walking fast or slow, and whether you are walking on dirt, grass, rock (scree, talus, boulders), or water (only sort of kidding…). Synchronizing the cadence of the mantra with your breathing is not only an option, but likely, and very beneficial. On a prolonged climb up a 45 degree talus covered slope at 11,000 feet it became:

Inhale lift and place left foot, exhale Om – step up.

Inhale lift and place right foot, exhale Mani – step up.

Inhale lift and place left foot, exhale Padme – step up.

Inhale lift and place right foot, exhale Hum – step up. Repeat.

During the first day, mostly on the trail and on modest grade, I’d get distracted by one thing or another and forget to chant. Then I’d find myself walking around a blind corner in tall pines with thick underbrush and the wind to my face, and suddenly I’d remember why I wanted to chant and I’d start up again.

This is the part where providing the reader a frame of reference would be helpful. I mentioned this in a previous post but I’ll briefly set the stage again. Taking a three day solo trip in the Beartooth Mountains was not in my comfort zone at the time. The Beartooths are aptly named. When hiking in the Beartooths it is common to see clowns carrying 44 Magnum revolvers with eight inch barrels. One also encounters many fairly normal looking hikers carrying bear spray – the US Forrest Service’s recommended bear deterrent. Occasionally one experiences a Zen master walking bare (pun totally intended). I know at least one Zen master and when walking in the Beartooths with him I don’t carry my bear spray either. But as I was going solo I thought I ought to start developing my Zen side. So I took up chanting. I also made occasional tobacco and cedar offerings in the spirit of Native American practices – to which I have had some exposure (perhaps the topic of another post at another time). I really am working my way toward the title of this post…

You’ll note that Om Ma-ni Pad-me Hum has six syllables. Recall that within these six syllables are all the teachings of Buddha. That makes pronouncing each syllable seem kind of important!

As an aside, I will admit that I found occasion to stretch this mantra to eight syllables: O-om Ma-ni Pad-me Hu-um. It just fit the situation. Remember all of this is going on quietly in my head. So no-one on the outside world was any the wiser. I don’t think it was demons or the dark side that brought this on and I don’t think I’ll face eternal damnation for this personal deviation from a practice that is thousands of years old. It’s just not the Buddhist way (Thank God! [smirk]).

As I said, on the first day I’d get interrupted, or I’d mispronounce the syllables, or I’d get distracted and get them out of order. By the second day, I was eight to twelve miles in to the back country, navigating my own way to the intended destination without the benefit of trails or cairns, not likely to see anyone at all, and needing all the support I could get to climb my way up 3,000 more feet of vertical and over thousands of acres of boulders, talus, scree, and delicate sub-alpine tundra to negotiate Mount Wood. It’s fair to say I was “in the moment”. By that time chanting the mantra was at least easy, if not totally automatic.

Breathing, chanting, stepping.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Climbing.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Navigating.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Being present.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Being grateful.

Om Mani Padme Hum. Om Mani Padme Hum. Not only becoming the little engine that could, but being elated to find a whole new way to engage with Mother Nature.

Om Ma-ni Pad-me Hum. Om Ma-ni Pad-me Hum. Walking in sixes.

Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time. Don’t if neither exists.

Regards,
JR

This I Know to be True

“The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.” – Japhy Ryder

For those of you who don’t know him, Japhy Ryder is a real character. No really, he’s a character in a book called The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, first published in 1957, and the character is based upon a real person (a poet) by the name of Gary Snyder (more info at http://www.litkicks.com/GarySnyder/).

The truth in this statement became abundantly clear to me last weekend when I spent three days on a solo trip climbing up Mount Wood, the second highest peak in Montana. Admittedly it had been a long time since I’d done a solo overnight trip and I was going somewhere I’d never been before and which was miles beyond the end of the established trails I’d use to access the backcountry, so I had reservations. Yet, somewhere deep down inside my consciousness the lesson this trip had to offer was calling me like temptation calls an addict. “You know you want it, boy”. I knew I wanted it.

It was no big deal really. Start at 6,500 feet. Climb a trail for 6 miles to 7,600 feet, past an often visited lake, leave the trail, cross the outlet of the next lake up the drainage on a 200 foot long serpentine log jam, climb 2,000 more vertical feet and find a level place to camp at the edge of the forest where the trees reluctantly yield their hold on the ground to rock.. The next day climb a quarter mile long 45 degree slope of loose scree and retreating ground cover to the top of an unnamed plateau, and then just keep climbing slope to shelf to slope to bench for another 2,600 vertical feet and almost three miles until atop the second highest mountain in Montana. Even in theory and on the maps, it certainly didn’t look like a walk in the park, but as I said before I wanted it. So that was that.

This was for me, what Joseph Campbell might have called The Hero’s Journey. This of course is a long standing historical, even biblical, metaphor for the journey a young, troubled, or seeking soul takes to find themselves - seeking answers, experiencing trials, and then returning to the home and family a different, more evolved and mature soul.

Ok, Maybe The Hero’s Journey is a bit of an exaggeration. I wasn’t going on a ten year crusade, in fact I wasn’t even going into a subterranean cave on Dagobah to face my Vader voiced father, although some in my family have inferred something to that effect. All the same, the challenges of this trip were enough to set me on edge. Little did I know that I’d come home from the trip with no sharp edges at all.

Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time. Don’t if neither exists.

Regards,
JR

High Mountain Solo

Ink black high mountain
Night sky and my solitude
Dipper holds a tree

Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time. Don’t if neither exists.

Regards,
JR

Emptiness, Ghosts and Empties, Graceland, and Connectedness

In Buddhism there is a major philosophical insight described in the theory of emptiness. My understanding of this theory – honestly, calling it a theory diminishes its clear impact on reality – is infantile at best but in essence as I now understand it, emptiness is a recognition that how we see and interact with our world is based upon a fundamental error. That error is the assumption that the things we encounter in this life – people, material things, events, and even abstract concepts – are discrete intrinsically unique and exist independently of all other things (people, material items, events, etc.). This assumption leads to a whole host of what I would call “obstacles to enlightenment” – the greatest among them being ego. Think about it… without ego would we perceive anyone as better than or less than anyone else? Without ego would we have prejudice, conflict, attachment, or control issues? Again, working within my limited understanding, one of the realizations of the acceptance of emptiness is that all things are connected. That is to say, all things are subject to interaction with all other things. In more simplistic and demonstrative terms, none of us is an island. We are all susceptible to influence by external forces. I dare you to proclaim that you are not!

Personally, I don’t struggle with any of that. I am regularly impressed however by the magnitude of the impact external influences can have on who we are and what we become… Is anyone else besides me recoiling at my use of the word “external?” Isn’t THAT inconsistent with the theory of emptiness? Anyway, there are hundreds of influences exerted upon us every day by friends, family, the public, the (bleech!) media, and then those things to which we willing expose ourselves like books and mountains.

Each and every encounter has the potential to shape what we think, what we do, who we are, and what we become. But the emptiness, or more accurately the connectedness, can go deeper. A non-trivial transformation occurs when one internalizes the connectedness. Instead of being influenced or acted upon and then responding, when one really “gets it” – more to say understands, embraces, and incorporates this concept into their being – then one goes looking for the connections and then willingly accepts and appreciates those with learning attached. If in your personal pursuits, you explore this concept far enough you start reading and hearing phrases like “collective consciousness” or “the consciousness of many”. The idea that we are all connected, that we all share connections – whether it be only three degrees of separation or the carbon atoms from the same dinosaur or an often masked and rarely recognized spiritual unity – is a staggering concept for most. Embracing the emptiness, the collective consciousness, is a big step. It takes courage and it yields instinct and grace – all of which are subjects for future posts.

Continue to follow if you are inquisitive - and have the time. Don’t if neither exists.

Regards,
JR